palm sunday: day one of my week-long fast

Isaiah 53:1-6 NLT

Who has believed our message
   and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
   and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
   nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
   a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
   he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities
   and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
   smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
   and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
   each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
   the iniquity of us all.

It is Holy Week, the week preceding the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is simultaneously good and bad. It is good because by the fact that Jesus took our sins upon himself, we do not have to have them upon ourselves. It is bad because he had to die.

Back in Genesis 3, right after the fall of mankind, God told Adam and Eve that things were going to be different, that they were going to be living in a completely altered world than the one they had lived in before. It would be a world of sin and the consequences of sin.

But before he told them anything, he told the serpent, the devil, satan, that one of these days one would come that would change that again.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

A friction that had never before existed would not only exist, but also dominate. Sin would rule, Or so it would seem. Then one day someone would come, who wold crush the head of sin.

The sad thing about it all, though, is that although sin would indeed be crushed, the heel of the crusher would be bruised.

Jesus would come. He would take away the sins of the world and make humanity once again able to, as Hebrews 4 says, boldly approach the throne of grace. When God sees us in the new era, he would no longer see our sins. We would be able to come before him knowing that we were clean and pure.

But – and there is the big problem – but Jesus, the bringer of grace and freedom, would have to die.

All sin and because of the entrance of that sin that all succumb to, all die. The devil says, because of sin, you die. However, Jesus was sinless (1 Peter 2:22). And yet he died anyway.

The devil says, okay, now you are dead and you are in my territory. Jesus, through the power of God (Romans 1:4) to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.

Jesus had already told his disciples this same thing. He said, in Matthew 16:18, that his church would stand and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Even though Jesus had died, it did not mean that death had power over him or over his church. He came back to life and in so doing, broke the hold satan had over humanity.

Today is Palm Sunday. Today we begin that holy week and we will walk with Jesus on that week.

I begin a week long fast today. I want to participate in some way in that suffering he went through. My puny little fast will not stand  up to his magnificent sacrifice. I know that. But if in some way, some little way, I can be a part of it, I will.

Father God, I ask for power through your Son and through his Word. Give me strength, and show me your will for this church. I praise you. Amen.