All posts tagged: Easter

Why did Jesus ride a donkey into Jerusalem?

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When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, people laid their robes and palm branches on the street before the Lord, proclaiming him King. But why did Christ ride in on a donkey? It was a prophetic act. The Apostle John wrote that Jesus told His disciples where they could seek out a donkey colt for the Lord’s final journey into Jerusalem (John 12:13-16). And in this passage, John referred to a prophecy in Zechariah, where the prophet proclaimed that there would be a new King over Israel, the Messiah, who would enter riding a donkey: Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!    Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!See, your king comes to you,    righteous and victorious,lowly and riding on a donkey,    on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:10 NIV) Donkeys or mules, the interbreeding of a horse and donkey, were often associated with royalty in ancient Israel. During times of peace, kings typically rode donkeys or mules, so they wouldn’t instill fear into a population (John 12:15). Having just come through a bloody civil war with Absalom, in 1 Kings 1:33, King …

You Celebrate What?

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Easter! To kids, it means candy, Easter egg hunts, and baskets of goodies. To adults, it means days off from work, lots of food, and of course, candy. We do like to celebrate. But what do we celebrate? Let’s take a look of some of the things that make people really excited. Sex is probably the number one thing about which people get excited. Without sex, there would be no people, so this may be a good thing. Yet, we celebrate the first time we have sex, and then the first time we have sex in a relationship. Then we celebrate almost any sexual identity or activity there is. Sex sells and sex excites. So, we celebrate it. Sports is undoubtedly the number one group-thing we celebrate. Soccer is the beautiful game. Hockey is the fastest game on ice. Fans plan their days and holidays around their team’s schedule. Sports have become the priority in many people’s lives. I attended one church that on the days our home team was playing, many and maybe even …

Three Crosses

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On Easter we focus on Jesus and the cross. This is awesome and good. However there were three crosses that Good Friday. The middle cross has Jesus on it and you can’t do what he did on that cross. No one can. But the one on the right and the one of the left each one had a thief hanging on it. The Bible doesn’t say much more about them. If you were there, you’d just think three men were being executed. The reality is much different. Jesus was paying the price for us all. He chose to hang there and to die out of love. He became the sacrifice so we could be set free from the consequences of our sins. So this wasn’t just a bad guy dying. This was the only person who never sinned dying so everybody who did sin could live! The two thieves represent us. It’s hard to believe our lives can be summed up by two thieves I know but hear me out. The guy on the left …

Crucifixion by Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669)

Some say Easter is early this year, one ancient scholar says it’s right on time

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I have heard a few comments that Easter is early this year, which leads to the obvious questions why is it early and why do the dates fluctuate so much? Well you can blame the council of Nicea, held in 325 AD, for this. During that meeting the early church leaders laid down the calculation used to determine the date for Easter. At the time, there were two camps with differing opinions as to when Easter should be celebrated. There were those who felt it should be held at the same time as the Jewish Passover when the Romans crucified Christ. Since the Bible describes Jesus as the Paschal lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7), this seemed the logical choice. However there was a second group wanting to separate it from the Jewish Passover, since the Jews had rejected Jesus as their Passover lamb. This was only partially true as thousands of Jews did accept Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. It was this latter group that won the day at Nicea. Easter would be separate from the …

Jesus, the Passover lamb

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[by Dean Smith] The Catholic tradition of Easter has diluted the connection between Jesus’ crucifixion and Jewish Passover and its annual sacrifice of a lamb. Even renaming it “Easter” disconnects it with the most important sacrifice on the Jewish calendar. During Passover, each family bought an unblemished lamb (called the Paschal lamb) to the temple as part of their sacrifice. It was sacrificed in the outer court, the blood collected by the priests, and parts of the animal sacrificed. Later that evening the family would eat what was left of the lamb in the Passover feast called Seder. The connection and Catholic diluting starts at Christ’s birth. We read in Luke 2:8-20, about shepherds out in the fields watching their sheep, when an angel appears announcing the birth of Israel’s savior. Why did an angel announce the birth of Christ to a group of shepherds and no one else?