The Sylvr Pen

Even in the dark days following Christ’s death, some strange and hopeful things occurred that must have given His daunted disciples some pause to think.

If you’ve ever raised a handful of beloved sheep (as Husband and I have), the thought of killing one for sacrifice tears at your heart. If the lamb in question is the best of the flock, flawless, one who runs to you when you enter the pasture and follows at your knee with devotion, so much the harder. 

It seems such waste, such loss, so unjust, and so personally painful.

What if it were your own little lamb in greater ways: what if it were your child? Your only child?

Yet God is the One Who prescribed this lamb sacrifice, knowing that’s what it would lead to…

Leviticus says that not just at Passover but various times through each year, multitudes of such sheep—and bulls, and goats—had to face slaughter as sacrifices for the people. At Passover their blood sprinkled doorposts to mark death’s passing over those who had put their trust in God via that blood (Ex 12:22-23). Other times it sprinkled the altar, and the animal’s head and limbs were laid “in order on the wood,” offered as a “sweet aroma to the LORD,” in atonement for those who had laid their hands on the animal’s head (Lev 1:2-9).

However, the Bible also says, the blood of any animals (no matter how innocent) cannot take away sin, and so the process had to repeat every year (Heb 10:4).

Then came that man, that mysterious man, whom John called both “Logos” (meaning “Word”—John 1:1-2,14), and “Lamb” (John 1:29). Born in flesh like any little lamb, He grew to perfect maturity, and emerged from Nazarene obscurity with John’s announcement, “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” Now, at this landmark Passover, the priests, searching Him diligently for flaw or evil defect, could find none—none at all (Mt 26:59-61). Nor could Pilate (John 18:38).

Then (how bitterly ironic!) the temple officials laid their hands on His head in the form of slaps and blows (Mt 26:67). They approved His horrible slaughter. His head and limbs were “laid in order on the wood.”

They had to be men of their priestly station. It had to be a flawless “lamb” they offered—and more than that. It had to be God Himself in bodily form, offering Himself for humanity. For no mere human since Eden’s Fall has lived without the taint of sin (Rom 3:23).

Yet the priests who offered that Perfect Sacrifice didn’t realize that’s what they were doing. (Or did one? What did Caiaphas, the high priest, mean about one man should die for the people (John 11:50)? Strange statement, that!)

And so, as Isaiah had prophesied, “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers” (sheared of his clothes, Mt 27:28) “is silent, He opened not his mouth. He was taken… from judgment… cut off from the land of the living. For the transgression of My people He was stricken… And He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isa 53:7-8,12).

The perfect sacrifice, once for all.

‘Zeal for Your house has eaten me up.” –Psalm 69:9: John 2:17

If you knew you had only one week to live, how would you spend it? Jesus knew, and how He spent it is telling.

I must not have been paying attention, for so many years of gospel reading. I didn’t really notice how much, and what kind of activity, He crammed into that week. My mind must have jumped from Triumphal Entry to Last Supper and Crucifixion, and lumped all the text in between with His earlier time of ministry, the three-plus years before.

But what a loaded week!

[If you’d like to follow His days from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Day, Blue Letter Bible has this guide. To choose different translations, scroll to the top of text.]

First, He came in lamblike: Riding on that donkey, fulfilling ancient prophecy.

Came in, evidently saying little, except that the stones would cry out if the crowd didn’t.

But next morning, what a lion!

Starting with a bang, or two or three—shocking, provocative, and highly demonstrative: killing a fruitless fig tree with a curse on the way into town, overturning  temple tables, confronting money-grabbers head-on. Coins flying everywhere. Money-changers  scrambling to retrieve “their” scattered cash. Him with a whip of cords, driving them out. Tumult!

(Was this not a foreshadowing of the kind of return He’s going to make someday — riding not a donkey but the figurative war horse of conquering Hero and King?)

Then he went to healing (another foreshadowing?) and teaching a more traditional way. But not wimpy. Incisive. Confrontational. Full of warning. Dangerous. Its aim: Truth! Which is not always usually welcome. So, like true prophets before Him, He put His life in jeopardy.

As masses gathered to hear him—and also scribes and Pharisees—he minced no words, avoided no truths needing utterance. Addressing hypocrisy with thinly veiled parables, He told of wicked and unfaithful vineyard keepers, of a son who says he’ll serve his father but doesn’t, of a wedding guest thrown out because he lacks the acceptable garment…

After this He did a lot of verbal jousting with those scribes and Pharisees and the spies they sent into the crowds to try to trip Him up, confound His teaching, make Him look bad before the people.

Were His answers quiet and even-toned — or like Ravi Zacharias’s machine-gun-rapid shooting forth of demolish-the-opposition answers? Whichever the case, this was verbal war, and the stakes were high: the honor of God and the souls of men. In the process, even many of the Pharisees and scribes came to true faith. But those who didn’t were now stirred to murderous anger.

That didn’t stop Him. He went on. And He told them what they most needed to hear, whether they would receive it or not. He knew He was “asking for it.” But then, as He also pointed out to the disciples, it was for His execution that He had come in to Jerusalem.

So, how would you spend your last week? That’s how He spent His. He came into Jerusalem to lay down His life as a ransom for many. But before He did, He poured Himself out in zeal and love for God’s house, God’s truth, and God’s people.

Truly He came in not only as the Lamb of God, but also as the Lion. 

[Edited post from archives]

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