Palm Sunday and Holy Monday
Holy Week, Days 1 and 2
Day 1
In Psalm 24, David asks the question,
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
The answer?
4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.
But who can say that? Only the King, the King of Glory. And
8 Who is this King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle!
10 The Lord of hosts,
he is the King of glory!
That is, the Lord Jesus, riding into Jerusalem on a royal donkey, the return of the King.
Day 2
Thus it is no coincidence that the first thing Jesus did upon entering Jerusalem was to cleanse the temple. He did this for us, because the moneychangers were taking up the court of the Gentiles - the place reserved for Canadians and Bulgarians and Americans to worship God.
This great work he would finish a few days later, when he said from the cross, “It is finished,” and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. The temple is a microcosm of the entire cosmos. On the second day of creation, God separated the water from the dry land. In the fall, man was separated from Eden. But in Christ, the door back to Eden is opened again.
So then, what is our duty in light of this?
First, it is be like the doors of Jerusalem, and let him (7). We have a duty to welcome our King’s reign. The second duty is to have the same good sense that the crowds had on that day, and rejoice. We have a duty to delight in Him. For when he reassumed his throne, he received from God, v. 5,
. . . blessing from the Lord
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
And we share it with him:
6 Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob.
Under His reign, we share with him in His blessing and righteousness. So we find that our duty to him as King is the same thing as the delight of our souls. They are two sides of the same coin. For we were once far off, alienated from God, but through Him, we’ve been welcomed as sons. Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!