Palm Sunday.  One week until Resurrection Day Celebration.  This is my opportunity to remind you to read the events of the final Passover Week in the life of Jesus.  Matthew 26-28, Mark 15-16, Luke 22-24, and John 13-21 record the critical events leading up to the Calvary moment.  Please take the time to read these chapters in all four of the gospel accounts.  Prepare your hearts for the Victory Party beside the rolling stone which had covered the gaping entrance to His tomb.  

Scripture tells us that Jesus and His family attended Passover every year.  It was their purposed custom or habit observed in full, willing, joyful compliance with the command of God in the Old Testament.  Jesus would give His life at this final Passover.  From before the foundation of the world, God had planned to provide the one and only perfect sacrifice to redeem mankind.  

God’s Lamb of God was to be Jesus.  There was never a Plan B. 

We have been looking at people who encountered Jesus on His way to Jerusalem for the Calvary Passover…the woman at the well, the lame man beside the Pool of Bethesda, the woman caught in the very act of adultery and the man born blind who went to the Pool of Siloam to wash the clay from his eyes.  In John 2, Jesus encountered folks at a wedding and turned water into fine wine.  In John 3, Jesus met with Nicodemus (I call him Nick at Night) and told him that he had to be born again from above.  The other gospels share stories of additional people who encountered Jesus while He was on earth.  

In my lifetime, have spent many Palm Sundays reflecting on the gruesome suffering Jesus endured for us that final week.  The Pharisees and Sadducees were totally focused on getting rid of this “up-start son of a carpenter from Nazareth” Who claimed to be One with The Father. With the help of the betrayer, Judas Iscariot, they finally had Jesus in their clutches, right where they had wanted Him to be. From foot washing in the Upper Room to the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, we walk with Jesus as He climbs that Hill called Golgotha for our salvation.  

Arrested on Thursday night under a full Passover moon, Jesus was deprived of sleep and totally void of any tenderness while he experienced a meeting with Annas and then Caiaphas, the High Priest.  He was denied three times by Peter in the courtyard while that meeting was going on.  The sun rose on Friday morning after the rooster crowed. 

He was taken to the Praetorium to meet with Pilate, the Roman governor.  At least five times, Jesus was declared innocent by Pilate.  The Jewish leaders kept pushing all the right buttons to manipulate Pilate into abiding by their wishes.   All the while, Jesus was giving His life.  Nobody killed Jesus.  He died willingly by the prophecy and perfect plan of His Father. 

He was covered with a purple robe of royalty and mocked.  They left it on Him long enough for the blood to clot from His beating and then ripped it off, along with the scabs.  He was scourged.  He was beaten.  He was spit upon.  He was blindfolded and struck with strong blows to His face as they played a game called “guess who hit you.”  He knew each one of them.  They didn’t even know that He was about to die for them, too.  He was crowned with plaited thorns.  He was compelled to carry His own cross.   

At 9A.M. on that Friday, He would be crucified on the center sinners’ cross, hung between heaven and earth…rejected by both…while darkness reigned for three hours from noon until 3P.M. On His right and on His left, there were two thieves.  One would ask to share eternity with Jesus, the other would completely reject Him.  I call the first thief “Mr. Remember Me.”  I call the other thief, “Mr. Could Have Been Forgiven.”  They represent the choice offered to the entire human race.  

The truth of this story is that Jesus was born to die for us…born to die so that He could live again and conquer death forever for us.  He died for the acceptors, and He died for the rejectors.  Jesus came to encounter those who lived before the cross, those who lived during His own lifetime as contemporaries and those of us who have been born since the cross.  

Jesus came to encounter everyone.  The cross was His plan.