i’ve been thinking a lot about holy week, and i wanted to dust off the blog that i’ve neglected for a while and share over the next week some observations that i’ve had on the days leading up to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. i will make two posts today, because i missed yesterday due to travel, and you can’t start a series on the holy week without referencing the triumphal entry of Christ into jerusalem. the coming posts will have pictures from my trip to the holy land, as visual guides, and will even likely have some videos. so i will be changing up the format a bit, but these are necessary changes to fully convey the message contained within the posts.
as we look at the holy week, i would like for you to take a moment and think with me about your own life. what if you knew that this was your last week on earth? perhaps you were given a glimpse into the future and you knew that at the end of the week, you would be killed in a horrific manner, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. how would you react? would you go into hiding, hoping it would somehow protect you from the calamity to come? what if you knew that no matter what you did, you could not avoid the end that awaited you in a few short days? what then? i would like to be so bold as to postulate that you would become very intentional in your last days. you would likely get your affairs in order, ensuring that your loved ones were taken care of, and you would make a point to spend time with those you loved. Jesus was no different. so as we go through the next few days, i want to start looking at the intentionality in each of Jesus’ actions in His final days on earth before, and after, His crucifixion, and that starts with the triumphal entry.
when we look at Scripture, we tend to want to focus on the big picture, and miss out on the minute details. perhaps because it’s easier to do so, and doesn’t require as much work on our part. humans, after all, have a tendency to be lazy, especially with things that we are not passionate about. but just as Christ was intentional in His final week, He is intentional in the details that are in Scripture. if God felt it was important to say, then it’s important for us to pay attention to it. when we look at the triumphal entry, there is a detail that is mentioned right at the beginning of all four accounts of the triumphal entry, that unless we are paying attention, we dismiss it as a minor detail and then gloss past it to the entry itself. all four accounts of the triumphal entry mentions two places: bethphage and bethany. these were two small communities on the eastern side of jerusalem, both along the same road. we know that Jesus was staying in bethany in the days leading up to His entry into jerusalem, as this is where He was anointed at mary and martha’s house, which was in bethany. from bethany, He would have traveled through bethphage, which was on the western side of the mount of olives. why is this detail important? it told the direction which Jesus was traveling, and therefore would result in His entering into jerusalem on the eastern side through the eastern gate. jerusalem, like most cities in the time of Christ, was a walled city to protect it from invaders, and the only way to enter the city was through one of the eleven gates. on the eastern side, the eastern gate, also known as the lion’s gate, or the beautiful gate, was the only gate, which meant that this is the gate He would have entered.
you may ask, why is the eastern gate an important detail? there are a few reasons. first, it was the gate that led directly into the temple complex. this was to be Jesus’ first destination when He entered the city, because He had business there. we will get to that detail in the next post, but for now, just know that the temple was a very central point to Jesus’ ministry. He frequently taught there, already had cleansed it once, and made prophecies concerning the temple. so the eastern gate was important because it was central to His next task. from the mount of olives, you would have been able to see directly into the temple. one of the most striking things i learned in my visit to the holy land, was how close in proximity everything was. when we read Scripture, we tend to think of the holy land as being very spread out, but many places were only a few hundred yards away from each other. this is the case with the mount of olives. as you can see from the picture below, which was taken from the western side of the mount of olives, jerusalem was only a short walk from the mount. and the eastern gate (now sealed) is directly in view.
the second reason the eastern gate is important, is its significance to the temple operations. the eastern gate was the gate that the sacrificial lamb would be brought through. therefore, as in many other details in His life, this pointed to His reason for coming. even though the crowd outside the gates cried, “hosanna!” meaning “save us!”, expecting Him to liberate them from the roman occupation, He was there for a different salvation. He was to be the sacrificial lamb that was sufficient for not only the sins of the year, which was the case with the lamb sacrificed each year on yom kippur, but was to be sufficient for all mankind for all time.
the third reason the eastern gate is important, is its significance in prophecy. in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 43 speaks of the return of the glory of God to the temple, which would return through the gate facing east, meaning the eastern gate. in Ezekiel 10, we read about God leaving the temple because His people had turned away from Him, and took for granted His presence in the temple as something that would always be there and as a result jerusalem would be protected. but a prophecy was made that His glory would return through the eastern gate. Jesus’ first triumphal entry was the first part of that prophecy. the second part will happen when He returns for His second coming. when Christ ascended at the mount of olives, and angel said He would return in the same way, which many scholars interpreted that He would return at the mount of olives. this meant He would again enter into the temple through the eastern gate. after jerusalem was destroyed in 70 a.d., the walls and gates, along with the temple, were all destroyed along with it. in 1538, a muslim ruler from the ottoman empire named suleiman the magnificent had the walls rebuilt on top of the old one, as well as nine of the gates. for three years after the wall was completed, excitement began to brew among the christian world since the eastern gate was now rebuilt, with talks of Christ’s second coming being imminent. suleiman feared this so greatly, that he had the gate sealed, and it has remained that way ever since. he also installed a large cemetery in front of the gate, thinking that a jewish messiah would never defile Himself by passing through a graveyard. by doing so, he unwittingly fulfilled another prophecy from Ezekiel 44, which states that the gate is to be sealed and remain shut, and no man is to enter through it. we know the efforts of man to stop God are futile, just as now there is a large mosque called the “dome of the rock” sitting atop the temple mound, but when the day comes, the temple will be rebuilt, and no sealed gate or cemetery will stop the Messiah from reentering it.
as you see, even the gate that Christ chose to enter was intentional. after all, there were 10 other gates at the time that He could have entered, but He specifically chose this one, and made sure to place that detail in His Word so that those willing to dig and study would find it. just as He is intentional in these little details, we can apply that to our lives. there are many times when we feel that things are happenstance, and that perhaps God has forgotten about us. we take the attitudes of the deists, which believe that God is not involved in our world, that He simply created everything, gave the globe a spin, and then sat back to watch. this is not the case at all. God is involved in the seemingly most minute details of our lives. we just have to learn to trust Him, and to ask Him for eyes to see where He is at work. i don’t know about you, but this is a tremendous comfort to me, especially in the time in which we live, where people are trying to “fix” God’s supposed “mistakes.” rest assured in this fact, God does not make mistakes, and if He can be intentional in a small detail such as which gate He enters a city, He is intentional in the same way in our lives.
as we go through the final week of Christ, i encourage you to look for His intentionality, not only in His final tasks on earth, but also in your life. as Scripture tells us, “He who began a good work in you, will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
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