Preparing to Enter Holy Week

The Road to the Cross: A Lenten Journey of Surrender and Hope | Day 36

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” — Zechariah 9:9 (NIV)

Good morning, beloved in Christ! Holy Week is nearly upon us. The season of preparation that began on Ash Wednesday, the six weeks of honest self-examination, surrender, community, and drawing near to the cross, now gives way to the holiest and most sacred days of the entire Christian year. Holy Week is not simply a calendar event. It is an invitation to walk, step by step, through the final days of Jesus’ earthly life, to stand where He stood, to feel the weight of what He carried, and to arrive at Easter Sunday not as tourists who skipped the journey but as pilgrims who walked every mile of it.

The prophet Zechariah wrote his words five centuries before they were fulfilled, and yet he captured the scene of Palm Sunday with a precision that could only have come from God: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9, NIV).

Righteous and victorious, and yet lowly. That combination of attributes tells us everything about the kind of king Jesus came to be. He did not arrive with a conqueror’s parade of military might. He arrived on a borrowed animal, fulfilling a prophecy that most of Jerusalem had probably forgotten, entering the city in a way that only those with eyes of faith could recognize as the entrance of their long-awaited King.

Psalm 24:7–8 (NIV) gives us an ancient call and response that takes on its fullest meaning in the light of Holy Week: “Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” The King of glory is coming. Not to a throne room adorned with gold, but to a city that will cry “Hosanna” on Sunday and “Crucify” by Friday. Not to receive a crown of jewels, but to receive a crown of thorns. The gates that will ultimately be lifted up for this King are not the gates of Jerusalem but the gates of death itself, flung open by the power of His resurrection.

What Holy Week Asks of Us

Entering Holy Week well requires a particular posture of heart, and it is worth naming it clearly before we step across the threshold. Holy Week asks us to slow down. In a culture that moves at relentless speed, that prizes efficiency and productivity above almost everything else, the church has always known that there are realities too deep to be grasped on the run. The suffering of Jesus, the weight of what He bore, the magnitude of what He accomplished, these things require our unhurried, undistracted, genuinely attentive presence.

Holy Week also asks us to be honest. Not the performed honesty of people who know the right things to say in religious settings, but the genuine honesty of people who have spent six weeks in this Lenten season examining their own hearts and have arrived at this week knowing freshly what they needed Jesus to do and what it cost Him to do it. The mercy of God is not diminished by our honesty about our need. It is, in fact, the very thing our need was designed to lead us toward.

John the Baptist pointed to Jesus with words that echo through every Holy Week: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, NIV). That phrase, the Lamb of God, would have carried immediate and layered meaning for every Jewish listener. They knew the Passover lamb, whose blood marked the doorposts of Israel and turned aside the angel of death. They knew the daily sacrificial lambs of the temple. They knew Isaiah’s suffering Servant, led like a lamb to the slaughter. When John said “the Lamb of God,” he was telling them that every sacrifice they had ever offered, every lamb whose blood had been shed across centuries of worship, had been pointing to this One. And this One was now here.

A Week Worth Walking Slowly

Each day of Holy Week carries its own weight and its own gift. Palm Sunday brings the joy of the King’s arrival and the sober knowledge of what that arrival will cost. The days that follow bring Jesus’ final teachings, His cleansing of the temple, His conversations with the religious leaders who sought to trap Him and found themselves silenced instead. Maundy Thursday brings the intimacy of the Last Supper, the washing of feet, the new commandment given in love. Good Friday brings the cross, the darkness, the words spoken from it, the death that should not have been possible for the Son of God and yet was the very thing He had come to accomplish. And Holy Saturday brings the silence, the waiting, the not-yet of a world that has not yet heard the news that everything has changed.

Lamentations 3:22–23 (NIV) has sustained the people of God through every dark Saturday, every season of waiting: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Even in the silence of Holy Saturday, His mercies are new. Even when the tomb is sealed and the disciples are scattered and hope seems to have died with the One they followed, the faithfulness of God has not wavered. The morning is coming. It is always coming.

The book of Revelation gives us a glimpse of what this week will look like from the other side of eternity. In Revelation 5:12 (NIV), thousands upon thousands of voices cry out: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” The Lamb who enters Jerusalem on a donkey, who is betrayed and denied and condemned and crucified, is the same Lamb who is worshiped forever at the center of the throne of God. Holy Week is the hinge on which all of eternity turns. And Jesus Christ, who walked every step of it from the triumphal entry to the tomb and out the other side in resurrection glory, is the one for whom every voice in heaven never stops singing. As we enter this week, may our voices join that eternal song.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, as I stand at the threshold of Holy Week, I want to enter it well. I do not want to rush through it or observe it from a comfortable distance. I want to walk closely behind Jesus through every day of it, to feel the weight of the palm branches and the sorrow of Gethsemane, the darkness of Good Friday and the stillness of Saturday, knowing that every moment of it was lived for me. Thank You for the six weeks of Lent that have been preparing my heart for exactly this. I am more aware of my need than when I started. I am more grateful for Your grace than I was before.

Lord, open my eyes this week to see Jesus clearly. Not only as the triumphant King of Palm Sunday or the risen Lord of Easter morning, but as the Lamb of God who walked the full distance of the road to the cross with my name on His heart. Let this Holy Week do something lasting in me. Let it deepen my love for Him, widen my wonder at His grace, and send me out of Easter Sunday changed in ways that last far beyond the season. In the name of Jesus, the Lamb who is worthy of all praise, I pray, Amen.

Holy Week is almost here. Walk it slowly. Walk it prayerfully. Walk it with your eyes on Jesus, who is not merely a figure in a story but the living Lord who walked this road in history so that we could walk with Him now and forever. The holiest week of the year is a gift. Receive it as one.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

If you received this message and are not on the daily distribution for them via text or know someone you would like to share these messages with, just have them text “add” to 833-779-8793.