This morning marks the beginning of holy week, the final week of Jesus’ life, and so I am taking a break from going through Philippians to help us to understand the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Next week is Easter, where we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, but today I want to do an overview of the final week of Jesus’ life and why he came to die. Quick summary of the events of Jesus’ final week: he will enter Jerusalem on a donkey to a crowd cheering his entry. He will go to the temple and teach and get involved in many confrontations with the religious leaders there, who will resolve to have Jesus arrested and killed before he leaves Jerusalem. Jesus will celebrate the Passover with his disciples at what comes to be known as the Last Supper. Jesus will go out to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. And there he will be betrayed by Judas, arrested by the Jews, denied by Peter, abandoned by his disciples, put on trial by the Romans, humiliated, rejected by the Jewish crowd, tortured, and then brutally crucified.
But is there more to the story than just a tragic end to a beautiful man? Are we just here this morning to remember a tragedy? Or was there a meaning behind Jesus’ death?
Before we read, I would ask you to take to heart these words of A.W. Tozer in his book “God Tells the Man who Cares”: “The Bible was written in tears and to tears it will yield its best treasure. God has nothing to say to the frivolous man.”
Before Jesus came, there were many prophecies written about his coming, his birth, life, and death. And I think that the best place to go in the Bible in order to understand why Jesus died is to a passage that was written 600-700 years before the birth of Jesus. That passage is Isaiah 52:13- 53:12.
