Editor:  This week is Easter Week, also called Passion Week and Holy Week.  During each day this week, Every Day with God will focus on some of the events involving Jesus on the different days of this week, which ultimately led to His death and resurrection. 

Read Mark 15:21-40

On Good Friday, Jesus was crucified on Golgotha, which means the Place of the Skull (Mark 15:22) The sky turned dark for three hours (Mark 15:33). Jesus cried, “Father! Into your hands I commit my spirit!” and He died (Luke 23:46).

But why did Jesus have to die?

From a human perspective, the Jewish leaders plotted against him, Judas betrayed Him, Herod and Pilate tried Him, and the Roman soldiers executed Him. As Luke puts it, “Wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23).

But Acts 2:23 says, Jesus was “handed over by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge.” To understand the death of Christ, we have to understand that He died for two main reasons:

1. Jesus Died to Bring Us Near to God.

The Apostle Paul declares: “You who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13).  All humans stand condemned before God. Our sins separate us from Him whose character is holy and perfect.  

By shedding His blood on the cross, Jesus took the punishment we deserve and offered us His righteousness. He died for us…. in our place.  To bring us near to God, “Christ died for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous” (1 Pet. 3:18). If “the unrighteous” is all of us, “the righteous” is Jesus Himself.

When we trust Christ for our salvation, we are making a trade. By faith, we trade our sin and its death penalty for His righteousness and life. This is called the “substitutionary atonement.”

Christ died on the cross as our substitute. Without Him, we would suffer the death penalty for our own sins. “He [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The writer to the Hebrews puts it another way: “And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22).

Some object, “Shedding blood seems so barbaric. Is it really necessary? Why doesn’t God simply forgive us?” Because God is holy, He must judge sin.  At the cross, God poured out His judgment on His Son, satisfying His own wrath and making it possible for Him to forgive us.

But there’s even more…

2. Jesus Died to Reveal God’s Infinite Love.

God reveals His majesty and power in creation.  His promises to Abraham show His concern for the whole world. But at the cross, we witness the final and dramatic proof of His love and justice.

Romans makes this clear: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Christ’s death puts beyond all doubt the fact that God loves us.

God doesn’t forgive us by turning a blind eye to our sin or by overlooking it. Forgiveness is costly. At the cross we see not only God’s love, but also the seriousness with which He takes our sin.

Where would we be if God had not sent His Son to die for us? Without the cross, we’d be “darkened in our understanding of God and alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18).

The death of Jesus simply changes everything. I pray each of us will join Paul in saying, “I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 6:14).

Bob Fetterhoff

Editor:  This week is Easter Week, also called Passion Week and Holy Week.  During each day this week, Every Day with God will focus on some of the events involving Jesus on the different days of this week, which ultimately led to His death and resurrection. 

Read Mark 11:13-18

Do you know that God sometimes gets angry? When asked to describe God, people often say, “God is love.”  And He is!  But, contrary to what some believe, that’s not His only quality. Among many other ways He is described, God is also holy!

God is not some gentle, soft spoken grandfather-in-the-sky with a casual indifference to what is happening here on earth.  When things in this world get radically twisted from what He planned, it angers Him!

Does it surprise you to learn that Jesus got angry?  While walking from Bethany to Jerusalem on Monday of Holy Week, He cursed a fruitless fig tree. Jesus knew that fig trees bear fruit twice a year — in June and September. This was April.  Even unripened fruit should have still been available for Him to eat, yet it was fruitless, so Jesus cursed the tree.

In the same way, the nation of Israel was professing to be fruitful and faithful (waving palm leaves as He entered their city), yet the Jewish people were fruitless in practicing their faith.  Someone wrote, “Profession without practice was the curse of the Jews.”   A few days later, the Jewish leaders would deny their King and crucify Him.

Nowhere is God‘s distaste for religious hypocrisy more evident than when Jesus cleansed the Temple on Monday of Holy Week. When He arrived at the Temple, he found the courts full of corrupt money changers. He began overthrowing their tables and cleared the Temple by saying, “My temple will be a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46).  Apparently, the merchants had forgotten whose house the Temple was!

The events on Monday of Easter Week set up the events which happened on Thursday. By clearing the temple, Jesus criticized the leaders who allowed and promoted the activity happening in the Temple. He rebuked the religious leaders and told a parable meant to criticize them (Matthew 21:45-46).

The religious leaders had been concerned about Jesus before this, but His actions on Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week clinched it. They wanted him dead!

So why did Jesus flip the tables?

1. The religious leaders were turning what was supposed to be God’s house of prayer into a marketplace! 

• It had even become a place where those selling animals and exchanging currency were ripping off the people. Greedy merchants probably cheated their buyers whenever they could, especially during the feasts when pilgrims from far away crowded the temple area.
• Was Jesus upset at the Temple becoming a market place?  Sure!  Was Jesus upset that there was dishonest gain and “robbery” happening in the market place?  Absolutely.  Was Jesus upset that the religious leaders of His day were part of the problem in the Temple?  Yes! Most likely, it was a combination of all the above.

2. The market cut off the Gentiles from their place of worshipping the God of Israel. 

• The court of Gentiles was a promised worship location for the Gentiles, built specifically in the Temple for those outside the Jewish faith to worship the God of Israel! They were supposed to be included, but were restricted by the practices taking place at the Temple. 

Here are some crucial questions for all of us, based on these events from Monday of Easter Week:

1. Do I create barriers in my life that distract people from seeing the presence of God?
2. Does the profession of my mouth match the attitudes in my heart before God?
3. Are my personal resources used in a wise, God-glorifying way?

Bob Fetterhoff

Read Mark 11:1-11 

Palm Sunday!

Instantly most of us think of palm branches, donkeys and Easter. It’s one of the best recognized Christian holidays on our calendar.

In some churches, children hear the story in Sunday school, wave palm branches while marching through the aisles of a worship service and picture themselves welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem. Nothing substitutes, however, for actually standing on the Mount of Olives to imagine the scene on the first Palm Sunday 2000 years ago. It’s a moving moment, even for the stoics.

The shouts of the crowd long ago provide some of the most familiar words in the Bible: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Mark 11:9b).  Zechariah’s prediction was fulfilled in this moment: “See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, and a colt, the fall of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9b).

What was behind the events of that first Palm Sunday? Some Bible students believe that, when the people waved palm branches, they were making a political statement – like waving a national flag to commemorate when the Maccabees revolted against Antiochus, the Syrian tyrant. After all, palm branches were used to celebrate that victory!

For sure, some in the crowd hoped that Jesus would reestablish the glory of the Davidic kingdom to Israel. They thought He might be the One to fulfill the words of Isaiah: “In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.” (Isaiah 2:2).

The first coming of Christ was not designed to establish a political kingdom, however. In the eternal plan of the Father, Jesus came as a Suffering Servant who would be “…pierced for our transgressions, …crushed for our iniquities”. (Isaiah 53:5). Clearly “the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6b).

A few days after that first Palm Sunday, the religious leaders stirred up the crowd to yell, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Talk about the whim of public opinion!  Is it hard to imagine that some of the same people who wanted to crown Jesus as king demanded His death a few days later?

Well, it’s not hard for me.  As I look honestly at the cracks, crevices and corners of my life, I see the inconsistency, rebellion and sin in my own heart. I recognize that, at times, I “speak out of both sides of my mouth.”  I pledge undying love and loyalty to my Lord and Savior yet still choose to disobey his clear guidance for my life. 

I understand what Paul meant when he said:

“I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me” (Romans 7:21-24). 

Is there any hope?  Am I just doomed to imitate the fickleness of the 1^st Century crowd that ultimately called for the crucifixion of my Lord?  

The only answer is to immerse my heart, mind and soul with the following words of Romans: ^“Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord…Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 7:25;8:1-2).

Bob Fetterhoff