Eight Days To Easter: What Have You Done With This Man?

This is post 9 of 9 in the series “Eight Days to Easter”

The Gospels tell us about Jesus’ birth and ministry in order to tell us about his death and resurrection. Two-thirds of their pages focus on the last week of his life. Eight Days to Easter follows Jesus from Palm Sunday to Easter Morning to show us how the Savior saved us.

Eight Days to Easter
Eight Days To Easter: Hail the King of Kings
Eight Days To Easter: What Does He Want?
Eight Days To Easter: Whose Side Is He On?
Eight Days To Easter: Who Is On This Man’s Side?
Eight Days To Easter: Who Loves like This?
Eight Days To Easter: Whose King?
Eight Days To Easter: What Now?
Eight Days To Easter: What Have You Done With This Man?

There’s no need for spices. As the women make their way to finish preparing him for burial, Jesus had enough of death. From this Sunrise forward death would lose its ground and life would rise from the earth like it did when the First Adam rose up filled with the breath of God. Everything is new. Jesus is alive!

Read John 20

It all makes sense now. His reserved demeanor in the midst of “Hosanna!” his confrontational spirit, Judas, the disgrace of the Cross. He came to save. And if he came to save, he must have come to die that we might live with him. Today the disciples would complete their journey through Christ’s week of glory. They have passed from foolishness to fear and finally to faith. At the end Jesus told Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Read The Revelation 1:17-18 and, if you believe, fall down before your Savior.

Prayer

O my Lord, I am blessed. I have not seen, but I have watched you in your Word and seen your week of glory and I know now that you are alive. You have risen! Blessed is he who took my death that I might have his life. Blessed is he who bore my sins that I might wear his righteousness. Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord. Amen.

Prayer Prompts

Pray for joy worthy of Easter. Ask God why your heart is still so heavy.

Pray for the declaration of the Resurrection across the World. Pray that his elect would respond with faith.

Pray that the world itself would be made new its God’s time.

Pray that the resurrection life in you by God’s Spirit and your new birth would rise up and grow in grace.

Ask God to bring the life of Christ to your neighborhood, your workplace, your family, and your own heart.

Eight Days To Easter: What Now?

This is post 8 of 9 in the series “Eight Days to Easter”

Today Jesus’ body lay silent, still and cold in the tomb. He was truly dead. He disciples will hide from wolves like sheep without a shepherd.

Read Luke 22:55-56

Still in obedience these women rest on the Sabbath. Still in the tomb Jesus is silent and there is no hope for Israel or the world. Still his faithful are waiting in silence, for what is not clear. Survival, perhaps comfort but, certainly not for the Kingdom of the Son. He is dead. They saw him die just yesterday.

Read Isaiah 25:8-9 and ask for faith to wait on a crucified Messiah.

Prayer

O Father, with the Church I cry out “Come quickly Jesus. Come quickly.” With the Church I ask you to bring hope from despair, joy from sorrow, even life from death. Hold me in your and that I may have the courage to wait upon your mercy. Amen.

Prayer Prompts

Pray for a vison of what your life would be like if Christ just died and didn’t rise.

Pray for a vision of what your life would be like if God had been silent and there

Pray for the faith to wait in faith when you don’t understand how God could possible make things right.

Pray to understand the disciples despair, how it was both real and unnecessary. Then ask for insight into your own.

Pray to see all that God told you over and over, yet you haven’t really heard or understood. How would your life be different if you had ears to hear that?

Eight Days To Easter: Whose King?

This is post 7 of 9 in the series “Eight Days to Easter”

“You are mistaken! I have never met the man. I am not one of his disciples.” “Crucify him! Crucify Him! We have no King but Caesar.” “I wash my hands of this man. His blood is on your heads.” Those are the words of a friend, countrymen and Rome’s judge. They speak in harmony today. The Christ, who alone can save, will die alone, the solitary Savior.

Read Matthew 26:36-27:61. Read for the e broad narrative strokes and not the details.

Christ is alone upon the cross, abandoned by friends, rejected by countrymen. His piercing grief and pain is so full and so deep that the Messiah cries out “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me.” The loneliness of crucifixion is a bruising burden that crushes him. A man dies today on that cross and in death he will taste every sorrow we do and infinitely more.

Read Psalm 69:20-21 and Matthew 27:28 and ponder the solitude of an uncomforted Savior.

Prayer

To Him we left alone, yet did not flinch to save us,

To Him who was so alone that angels hid their faces,

To him alone we offer up our litany of praises.

May the multitudes return again to feast upon your graces,

May the nations offer you endless praise for ending sacrifices,

May the Bride surrender on her day to your divine embraces,

And may endless praise attend the One we left to suffer our disgraces.

Prayer Prompts

Pray for faith to feel the weight of your own sin as demonstrated in the Cross. Could it be that you deserve that?

Pray for faith to feel the weight of God’s grace as demonstrated in the Cross. Ask for insight to God’s love.

Pray that the world would know of God’s justice and his mercy and of Christ’s perfect life and undeserved death.

Pray for understanding into the spiritual, relational, and physical solitude Christ’s endured too ultimately be with us.

Pray for the moment of your own death, that you might have lived in faith up to then, and die with hope.

Eight Days to Easter

This is post 1 of 9 in the series “Eight Days to Easter”

Eight Days to Easter is a daily devotional that follows the Savior into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, to the Cross on Good Friday, and then out the tomb on Easter. You’ll receive an email every morning at 7:16 PDT (see the Gospel of Mark). Each devotion has Scripture readings, a brief meditation, and prayers to help you answer the questions Holy Week asks.

Palm Sunday: Who is this?

Monday: What does he want?

Tuesday: Whose side is he on?

Wednesday: Who on his side?

Thursday: Who loves like this?

Friday: Whose King is he?

Saturday: What now?

Sunday: What have you done with this man?