COVID 19 ENCOURAGEMENT EPISODE 08

Hi this is Chris Benjamin, the director for the Salvation Army sound. We want to take this opportunity to share some additional messages of encouragement from some of our hosts from shows like 24th of life in a heartbeat. We just pray that these are an extra blessing to you.

If they are prescient with a friend this is me dreaming Riordan. I'm happy to be able to share a few thoughts with you today. As you know, it's holy week and we just recently had Palm Sunday and were coming up on Good Friday, I was thinking about the crowded Jerusalem in other crowd that welcomed Jesus and yet then not too many days later cried out to crucify him in the contest that happened there. A lot of times I've heard people say what a surprise it is that they moved from a welcoming crowd and celebratory crowd to a condemning crowd that sought out his death just a matter of days.

I was really given some thought and I'm sure it was all that surprising. What I mean is when Jesus came to Jerusalem. The people thought that he was coming as a conquering political hero.

That's what it meant by spreading their cloaks on the ground that was a Jewish symbol of the coming king and palm branches were waived to show victory so demonstrating that they really believe that Jesus was making his entry and now the time had finally come when he was going to conquer the Romans and set them free from that oppression they been hoping for. So by the time Good Friday came never happened.

Jesus hadn't conquered the Romans called together an army.

He hadn't done any of the things that they expected.

What did he do well. He did a lot of teaching in that time in one of the things he taught was of the people should pay their taxes to Rome so obviously this was quite different from what they had in mind. Maybe they were just angry enough that change their hearts that they felt betrayed that they really just thought of Jesus as a traitor to what they expected because they expected the wrong things. So as we are here in this cold at 19.

We also aren't really sure what to expect. We're in this holding. Just like the Jews were sort of doing holy week. We don't know what's coming next. Some people say that this is the end of history as we know it, never walking into the times that we talked about by Daniel or that spelled out in Revelation other people say that know this isn't the end of history and practice is the beginning of a great new era in the church is going to shine and were going to become better people than we ever were. We don't really know what's going to happen. We don't know what God is going to do.

We don't know what his purposes are. We are in a waiting period but I think we need to make up our minds to be nothing like the people in Jerusalem. We need to have hope and faith when God doesn't do what we are expecting him to do. Or when he makes us wait for what he's going to do. We need to be people of hope and confidence when a steward is that we live on the side of the resurrection.

We know who Jesus Christ is, when you know what victory is because even though Jesus Christ had to return for the second time yet. We do know that he is the conquering King of the universe.

We do know that he has conquered sin, we do know that he resurrected and that we will live forever with him. So we know so many things as those people long ago didn't know.

So this holy week, even as we wait and we wonder what is going to happen next to us to our loved ones to our land as remember that we serve the risen King. We know the end of the story and it's a hopeful one