Jesus the innocent, intentional sacrifice and Jesus the excellent, gracious King who laid his life down out of love for us.

Though Jesus did not find it good to defend himself, he did find it worthy to gout of his way to  make it abundantly clear by a 5 way statement that He indeed was the divine messiah.  You cant have Jesus without embracing this claim of his.

The Spirit and the apostles want us to know how humanity utterly failed Jesus after everything, either in wicked hatred or wicked failure and how excellently and beautifully Jesus handled Himself as he willingly chose to be put to death despite being blameless.

In watching Christ in his great hour of need we learn that much of our preconceived notions of prayer are fictional and often foolishly religious.  As we watch Him here, he is leaving us an example of what perfection in prayer really looks like. It is earnest, communal, non boxed or formulaic but resting on the foundation of covenanted love with his… and now our…Father, who is all powerful, all wise and all loving towards us.

Jesus cherished the delivery and celebration of his New Covenant to us wherein we could finally fellowship deeply with Him through the indwelling Spirit and gave us Communion to remember this and how it took the willing death of Jesus to accomplish it. Let us Cherish our Savior and His amazing covenant!

Like this admirable woman… who brought pleasure to the heart of Jesus….  Truly Follow Jesus……Seek the pleasure… seek the honor of your Savior using the resources you have… despite the reactions of others.

Christ tells us the road ahead is hard and it will be filled with apocalyptic events, imposter Christs and false prophets who are powerful, inescapably persuasive and able to perform the supernatural.  But God is faithful, He is with us and we are with him as he gathers his elect across time and peoples and is coming back.  Though we are to know the signs, no man knows the moment and we are called in every stage to not live in panic or fear but rather living very awake and mindful of God’s placement of us in our particular moment and longing for Him.

So the future gets hard … really hard before he makes all things right.  Christ has told how to expect false messiahs, teachers, prophets and others who will capitalize on this to gather followers out of fear.  But our call is to expect such times and to be dedicated to being Christ’s witnesses through the power of the indwelling Spirt with relentless pride in Christ, even at the cost of our loved ones rejecting or killing us.

Our savior is seated in majesty right now until the Father is finished subjecting all spiritual authorities, rulers and powers to him…. And part of our worship is praising and adoring Him in that majesty and authority and patience.

Praise God that He raises us up after death and that we are forever with him.  And may each of us deeply know and love the power of our Great God and his authoritative Scriptures.

God created and appoints governing authorities for a specific work of providing justice and human flourishing.  Both the people of government and the hearts of people must never allow government or leaders to become greater than their role, laying claim on things that belong to God alone such as glory, divinity, becoming a truth absolute, a hope of the soul or using his church.

The leaders of Israel knew who Jesus was and so-loved themselves that they decided to murder Jesus, the Son of God and the prophesied Messiah, to keep the money, power and honor that really belonged to Jesus and the Father.

At a pivotal point, the most central leadership of Israel meets up with Jesus to attempt to trap him.  This time, he turns the tables and calls their bluff, placing them in a spot where they cannot escape their manipulative ways.

Prayer is a core priority for the believer and his corporate people.  In it God communes with his people, granting them prayers, confidence and answers as they strive to align with him, with particular attention to maintaining a heart of forgiveness to all.

In a stunning fulfillment of prophecy, Christ came to “Save us” (Hosanna), but do we understand and value exactly what he came to save us from or do we still love it.

The new life in Christ is marked by radical Christ-worshiping servanthood of others which only flourishes where idols are repented-of and guarded-against.