March 24, 2024
Greetings and blessings to all of you. This is Palm Sunday. This day will have us recalling how the people in the first century were just like us. Fickle, confused, easily influenced and just plain evil at times. That day Jesus came into Jerusalem at the time of Passover on a donkey denoting His humility. In Zech 9:9 this scene was prophesized. “Rejoice greatly people of Jerusalem! Your King is coming to you. He does what is right and he saves, He is gentle and riding on a donkey, on the colt of a donkey.” Some were worshipping him yelling “Hosanna Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Jesus then goes to church (the temple) and shouted at the Judaizers who were selling and bartering. Jesus turned over the table in a rage while attacking the religious group. Why did Jesus do such a thing in church? Because common people knew that the best place to purchase officially certified and unblemished birds and animals would be at the temple …which they could not afford hence haggling which included cheating and exploitation. Jesus saw what was happening in His church and He quoted from Jeremiah 7:11 “is it not written ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations?’ “but you have made it a den of thieves.” We recall the other people…the scribes and the chief priest. After the cleansing of the temple the Word says, “and sought how they might destroy Him; for they feared Him because all the people were astonished at His teaching.” I submit that it is time for the true followers of Christ to break its long pattern of capitulation and compromise and submit to the authority of God’s Word. We live in a day of compromise. We seem to lean toward the way of the least resistance. We hold a conviction until it gets in the way of our comfort or our ease. We hold to a standard as long as it does not violate something we want to do. We as a church have failed to keep a clear separation from the corrupting influence of the world’s system. The modern church is virtually indistinguishable from the world; following every materialistic self-indulgent trend; taking our orders from the world instead of God. We have compromised with the world for so long that we have effectively brainwashed ourselves. We have accepted the worlds mindset, values, attitudes, even the self-indulging morality. We have let society (the culture) become the final arbiter of truth and forced God’s Word to bow to an immoral ungodly mob mentality. Read James 4:4
With the Love of Christ
First Lady Vivian C. Currie
Pastor ALC