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from: Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
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05-03-08
22:48:14
In the midst of this spiritual blindness, the word of God tells all of us that we first need to personally establish peace with God by placing our faith in his son Jesus, the Prince of Peace. The fruit of this spiritual relationship will be a new life---an eternal life filled with wholeness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. This was what Jesus came to earth for the first time. And his life and message could not have been clearer on the first Palm Sunday when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey colt to proclaim that truth as the Prince of Peace. Approaching Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples had come to Bethphage, the Mount of Olives, and Bethany, which was the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, just two miles east of Jerusalem. It was now spring and the beginning of Passover. When we left Jesus last week in John 11, it was the winter before his last Passover. Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, had raised his beloved friend Lazarus from the dead. His Father was glorified, he was glorified, the disciples' faith in him as God's Messiah was increased, and many Jews came into the kingdom as a result of that miracle. But the Jews in Jerusalem were seeking to kill him, and Jesus, realizing his hour had not yet come, left town for several months and eventually arrived in Jericho some fifteen miles east of Jerusalem. In that city he healed two blind men and invited Zacchaeus into the kingdom. Then he and his disciples walked out to the Jericho Road and headed up to Bethany and Jerusalem for the last time. As our story opens, Jesus has entered Bethany and enjoyed a Sabbath meal in the home of Simon the leper, where he met again with the risen Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. After supper Mary symbolically anointed his feet with some very expensive burial oil. At the same time many of his disciples from Galilee were arriving in Jerusalem a week before the Passover feast to prepare for it and to find an opportunity to visit the now famous Lazarus. It was that final Sunday that we now call Palm Sunday.... Jesus: the Prince of Peace Matthew 21:1-7 And when they had approached Jerusalem and had come to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with her; untie them, and bring them to Me. And if anyone says something to you, you shall say, 'The Lord has need of them,'
