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Palm Sunday at Greenfield Presbyterian Church, Berkley, MI. The Scripture Reading for today is Mark 11:1-11 Jesus enters Jerusalem 11 When Jesus and his followers approached Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives. Jesus gave two disciples a task, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village over there. As soon as you enter it, you will find tied up there a colt that no one has ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?' say, ‘Its master needs it, and he will send it back right away.'” 4 They went and found a colt tied to a gate outside on the street, and they untied it. 5 Some people standing around said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 They told them just what Jesus said, and they left them alone. 7 They brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes upon it, and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread out their clothes on the road while others spread branches cut from the fields. 9 Those in front of him and those following were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessings on the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest!” 11 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. After he looked around at everything, because it was already late in the evening, he returned to Bethany with the Twelve.

SEQUENCE HYMN # 435 At the Name of JesusAll stand. GOSPEL READING Luke 19:28-40PriestThe Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke.PeopleGlory to you, Lord Christ.After telling a parable to the crowd at Jericho, Jesus went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They said, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,"Blessed is the kingwho comes in the name of the Lord!Peace in heaven,and glory in the highest heaven!"Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."PriestThe Gospel of the Lord.PeoplePraise to you, Lord Christ. THE SERMON

Luke 19:28-40 - Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' say, ‘The Lord needs it.'” Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They replied, “The Lord needs it.” They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Message for 04/13/2025 "Palm Sunday" by Justin McTeer. *All verses are NLT unless otherwise noted* Matthew 21:1-11 - As Jesus and the disciples approached Jerusalem, they came to the town of Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two of them on ahead. 2 “Go into the village over there,” he said. “As soon as you enter it, you will see a donkey tied there, with its colt beside it. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone asks what you are doing, just say, ‘The Lord needs them,' and he will immediately let you take them.” 4 This took place to fulfill the prophecy that said,5 “Tell the people of Jerusalem, ‘Look, your King is coming to you. He is humble, riding on a donkey—riding on a donkey's colt.'” 6 The two disciples did as Jesus commanded.7 They brought the donkey and the colt to him and threw their garments over the colt, and he sat on it. 8 Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.9 Jesus was in the center of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting, “Praise God for the Son of David! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Praise God in highest heaven!” 10 The entire city of Jerusalem was in an uproar as he entered. “Who is this?” they asked. 11 And the crowds replied, “It's Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” THE CARE Luke 19:39-44 - But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, “Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!” 40 He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!” 41 But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. 42 “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.43 Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. 44 They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you. THE CLEANSING Luke 19:45-48 - Then Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people selling animals for sacrifices. 46 He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be a house of prayer,' but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” 47 After that, he taught daily in the Temple, but the leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the other leaders of the people began planning how to kill him. 48 But they could think of nothing, because all the people hung on every word he said. Psalm 139:23-24 - Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. THE CORRECTION Matthew 21:23-32 - When Jesus returned to the Temple and began teaching, the leading priests and elders came up to him. They demanded, “By what authority are you doing all these things? Who gave you the right?” 24 “I'll tell you by what authority I do these things if you answer one question,” Jesus replied. 25 “Did John's authority to baptize come from heaven, or was it merely human?” They talked it over among themselves. “If we say it was from heaven, he will ask us why we didn't believe John. 26 But if we say it was merely human, we'll be mobbed because the people believe John was a prophet.” 27 So they finally replied, “We don't know.” And Jesus responded, “Then I won't tell you by what authority I do these things. 28 “But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the older boy, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.' 29 The son answered, ‘No, I won't go,' but later he changed his mind and went anyway. 30 Then the father told the other son, ‘You go,' and he said, ‘Yes, sir, I will.' But he didn't go. 31 “Which of the two obeyed his father?” They replied, “The first.” Then Jesus explained his meaning: “I tell you the truth, corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the Kingdom of God before you do.32 For John the Baptist came and showed you the right way to live, but you didn't believe him, while tax collectors and prostitutes did. And even when you saw this happening, you refused to believe him and repent of your sins. Matthew 22:15-33 - Then the Pharisees met together to plot how to trap Jesus into saying something for which he could be arrested. 16 They sent some of their disciples, along with the supporters of Herod, to meet with him. “Teacher,” they said, “we know how honest you are. You teach the way of God truthfully. You are impartial and don't play favorites. 17 Now tell us what you think about this: Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” 18 But Jesus knew their evil motives. “You hypocrites!” he said. “Why are you trying to trap me? 19 Here, show me the coin used for the tax.”When they handed him a Roman coin, 20 he asked, “Whose picture and title are stamped on it?” 21 “Caesar's,” they replied. “Well, then,” he said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” 22 His reply amazed them, and they went away. 23 That same day Jesus was approached by some Sadducees—religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They posed this question: 24 “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies without children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother's name.' 25 Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children, so his brother married the widow. 26 But the second brother also died, and the third brother married her. This continued with all seven of them. 27 Last of all, the woman also died. 28 So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her.” 29 Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don't know the Scriptures, and you don't know the power of God. 30 For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 “But now, as to whether there will be a resurrection of the dead—haven't you ever read about this in the Scriptures? Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, God said, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' So he is the God of the living, not the dead.” 33 When the crowds heard him, they were astounded at his teaching. THE CROSS Luke 23:33-34 - When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, “Father,forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Luke 19:29-40, 45-48 29 When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.'” 32 So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. 33 And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” 35 And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. 37As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, 38 saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” 39 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”45 And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, 46 saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,' but you have made it a den of robbers.”47 And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, 48 but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.Sermon Questions:1. What position does Jesus most often occupy in your life? (e.g. teacher, example, guide)2. What control do you need to relinquish to his authority?3. When does Jesus' character/leadership not meet your expectations?4. How have you relegated Jesus to a part-player in your life? Does that feel like a rejection of him?5. How can you 'hang on his every word' this week?

On this Palm Sunday, we imagine we're the two disciples Jesus sent to get his donkey before he entered into Jerusalem. What do we learn about being a disciple from this story? Rev. Peter Lebhar | April 13th, 2025 __________________________________________________________ We're Incarnation Tallahassee! Visit our website! www.incarnationtallahassee.org/
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Palm Sunday // What It Means For UsPastor JF WilkersonLuke 19:28-37 NIV 28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' say, ‘The Lord needs it.'” 32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.” 35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. 37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen1. Will you risk and rejoice for Jesus?Matthew 21:9 NIV 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”Matthew 16:25 NLT 25 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.1. Will you risk and rejoice for Jesus?2. Will you rest and remain in Jesus?Luke 19:41-44 NLT 41 But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. 42 “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes. 43 Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. 44 They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.”John 15:3-5 NIV 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.1. Will you risk and rejoice for Jesus?2. Will you rest and remain in Jesus?3. Will you receive and respond for Jesus?John 12:16–17 NIV 16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him. 17 Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word.

{ILS} The Masters Tournament The stunning beauty and difficulty of the golf holes The extraordinary effort to make the flowers bloom The expectations for the patrons Trash management - wrappers on the sandwiches {SCR} Luke 19:28 After Jesus said this, he continued on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.29 As Jesus came to Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, he gave two disciples a task. 30 He said, “Go into the village over there. When you enter it, you will find tied up there a colt that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks, ‘Why are you untying it?' just say, ‘Its master needs it.'” 32 Those who had been sent found it exactly as he had said. {MPT} Jesus was born among simple animalsThe master needs your stall {MPT} Jesus was called people from simple villagesThe master needs your skill set {MPT} Jesus entered town on a simple animalThe master needs a ride {MPT} Jesus walked to Golgotha with a simple manThe master needs your help {SCR} Luke 19:33 As they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They replied, “Its master needs it.” 35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their clothes on the colt, and lifted Jesus onto it. 36 As Jesus rode along, they spread their clothes on the road.37 As Jesus approached the road leading down from the Mount of Olives, the whole throng of his disciples began rejoicing. They praised God with a loud voice because of all the mighty things they had seen. 38 They said, “Blessings on the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heavens.” {MPT} No debate after one question and one answer Picture 1 - Because it is for the MasterWhat can we attribute that immediate understanding to? Picture 2 - The incredible network that builds in the villages and countryside  {SCR} Luke 19:39 Some of the Pharisees from the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, scold your disciples! Tell them to stop!” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if they were silent, the stones would shout.” {MPT} The beauty and structure is being dismantled How would you describe facial expressions in the painting? Security plans Political plans All delicately orchestrated Religious Plans Has been whispered in the countryside - will now be declared in the city Animal  People All deliberately gathered Savior

[Luke 19:29-35] As he came to the towns of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, he sent two disciples ahead. [30] "Go into that village over there," he told them. "As you enter it, you will see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. [31] If anyone asks, 'Why are you untying that colt?' just say, 'The Lord needs it.'" [32] So they went and found the colt, just as Jesus had said. [33] And sure enough, as they were untying it, the owners asked them, "Why are you untying that colt?" [34] And the disciples simply replied, "The Lord needs it." [35] So they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it for him to ride on.Kings would ride horses as a symbol of ________________, but Jesus rode a donkey are a symbol of _______________.[Zechariah 9:9] Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey--riding on a donkey's colt.Jesus rode on a donkey's colt to ________________ ancient prophecy.[John 1:29] The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!Jesus is the ________________ would would ___________ to remove our sin.[John 12:13 NIV] They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Blessed is the king of Israel!"The people wanted someone to wear a ________________, but Jesus came to carry the ________________.Jesus didn't come to save us from our ________________, He came to save us from ________________.[Matthew 21:10-11] The entire city of Jerusalem was in an uproar as he entered. "Who is this?" they asked. [11] And the crowds replied, "It's Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee."Disappointment often reveals our spiritual ______________.Are you following Jesus for what He ________________, or for ________________ He is?[John 12:32] And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself."

Mark 11:1-11 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?' say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.'” 4 They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, 5 some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” 6 They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. 7 When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” 10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 11 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve. FROM THE SERMON Cherubim - creatures with human heads, animal bodies, and often wings. They were guardians, standing outside of temples and other sacred spaces to serve as a warning. The Garden Genesis 3:22 - Humanity in its sinfulness is no threat to God, but a threat to itself and creation. Genesis 3:24 - The Cherubim guard the entrance to Eden for our own protection. From the book: The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross "It is wonderful to live with Him, but because of your sin you can't come in." The Curtain The account of building Solomon's Temple - 1 Kings 6, 2 Chronicles 3 Garden Iconography in the Temple: Carved with trees, flowers, and fruit (1 Kings 6:18, 29) Golden lampstand (Menorah) represents a tree (Exodus 25) The CURTAIN is covered in Cherubim Palm Sunday Mark 11:11 - Jesus visits the temple, remembers the garden, and sees the curtain. Discussion Questions Share a time when you or someone you know failed to heed a warning (funny or serious). What does the garden narrative in scripture (Genesis 2 and 3) tell us about God's design and intentions for humanity? How does the temple (or the tabernacle before it) point back to Eden? (Some examples were shared during the sermon, but there are more ways that weren't discussed as well!) Why would God have instructed the creation of the tabernacle and temple in a way that would reference and remind people of the Garden of Eden? How do you think Jewish people felt when they saw the curtain covered with Cherubim blocking the way to the Most Holy Place? When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the beginning of the week of his death, he went into the temple and looked around (Mark 11:11). What thoughts do you think went through his mind, knowing that his death was soon approaching? One way we worship God is by loving and caring for those who bear His image. What are some ways you could join others or your family in doing that this week to prepare to celebrate the resurrection on Easter?

At the procession with palms - GospelLuke 19:28-40Jesus proceeded on his journey up to Jerusalem.As he drew near to Bethphage and Bethanyat the place called the Mount of Olives,he sent two of his disciples.He said, "Go into the village opposite you,and as you enter it you will find a colt tetheredon which no one has ever sat.Untie it and bring it here.And if anyone should ask you,'Why are you untying it?'you will answer,'The Master has need of it.'"So those who had been sent went offand found everything just as he had told them.And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them,"Why are you untying this colt?"They answered,"The Master has need of it."So they brought it to Jesus,threw their cloaks over the colt,and helped Jesus to mount.As he rode along,the people were spreading their cloaks on the road;and now as he was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives,the whole multitude of his disciplesbegan to praise God aloud with joyfor all the mighty deeds they had seen.They proclaimed:"Blessed is the king who comesin the name of the Lord.Peace in heavenand glory in the highest."Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him,"Teacher, rebuke your disciples."He said in reply,"I tell you, if they keep silent,the stones will cry out!"At the Mass – Reading IIsaiah 50:4-7The Lord GOD has given mea well-trained tongue,that I might know how to speak to the wearya word that will rouse them.Morning after morninghe opens my ear that I may hear;and I have not rebelled,have not turned back.I gave my back to those who beat me,my cheeks to those who plucked my beard;my face I did not shieldfrom buffets and spitting.The Lord GOD is my help,therefore I am not disgraced;I have set my face like flint,knowing that I shall not be put to shame.Reading 2Philippians 2:6-11Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with Godsomething to be grasped.Rather, he emptied himself,taking the form of a slave,coming in human likeness;and found human in appearance,he humbled himself,becoming obedient to the point of death,even death on a cross.Because of this, God greatly exalted himand bestowed on him the namewhich is above every name,that at the name of Jesusevery knee should bend,of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue confess thatJesus Christ is Lord,to the glory of God the Father.GospelLuke 22:14—23:56When the hour came,Jesus took his place at table with the apostles.He said to them,"I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer,for, I tell you, I shall not eat it againuntil there is fulfillment in the kingdom of God."Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and said,"Take this and share it among yourselves;for I tell you that from this time onI shall not drink of the fruit of the vineuntil the kingdom of God comes."Then he took the bread, said the blessing,broke it, and gave it to them, saying,"This is my body, which will be given for you;do this in memory of me."And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying,"This cup is the new covenant in my blood,which will be shed for you."And yet behold, the hand of the one who is to betray meis with me on the table;for the Son of Man indeed goes as it has been determined;but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed."And they began to debate among themselveswho among them would do such a deed.Then an argument broke out among themabout which of them should be regarded as the greatest.He said to them,"The kings of the Gentiles lord it over themand those in authority over them are addressed as 'Benefactors';but among you it shall not be so.Rather, let the greatest among you be as the youngest,and the leader as the servant.For who is greater:the one seated at table or the one who serves?Is it not the one seated at table?I am among you as the one who serves.It is you who have stood by me in my trials;and I confer a kingdom on you,just as my Father has conferred one on me,that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom;and you will sit on thronesjudging the twelve tribes of Israel."Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demandedto sift all of you like wheat,but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail;and once you have turned back,you must strengthen your brothers."He said to him,"Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you."But he replied,"I tell you, Peter, before the cock crows this day,you will deny three times that you know me."He said to them,"When I sent you forth without a money bag or a sack or sandals,were you in need of anything?""No, nothing, " they replied.He said to them,"But now one who has a money bag should take it,and likewise a sack,and one who does not have a swordshould sell his cloak and buy one.For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me,namely, He was counted among the wicked;and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment."Then they said,"Lord, look, there are two swords here."But he replied, "It is enough!"Then going out, he went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives,and the disciples followed him.When he arrived at the place he said to them,"Pray that you may not undergo the test."After withdrawing about a stone's throw from them and kneeling,he prayed, saying, "Father, if you are willing,take this cup away from me;still, not my will but yours be done."And to strengthen him an angel from heaven appeared to him.He was in such agony and he prayed so ferventlythat his sweat became like drops of bloodfalling on the ground.When he rose from prayer and returned to his disciples,he found them sleeping from grief.He said to them, "Why are you sleeping?Get up and pray that you may not undergo the test."While he was still speaking, a crowd approachedand in front was one of the Twelve, a man named Judas.He went up to Jesus to kiss him.Jesus said to him,"Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?"His disciples realized what was about to happen, and they asked,"Lord, shall we strike with a sword?"And one of them struck the high priest's servantand cut off his right ear.But Jesus said in reply,"Stop, no more of this!"Then he touched the servant's ear and healed him.And Jesus said to the chief priests and temple guardsand elders who had come for him,"Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs?Day after day I was with you in the temple area,and you did not seize me;but this is your hour, the time for the power of darkness."After arresting him they led him awayand took him into the house of the high priest;Peter was following at a distance.They lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it,and Peter sat down with them.When a maid saw him seated in the light,she looked intently at him and said,"This man too was with him."But he denied it saying,"Woman, I do not know him."A short while later someone else saw him and said,"You too are one of them";but Peter answered, "My friend, I am not."About an hour later, still another insisted,"Assuredly, this man too was with him,for he also is a Galilean."But Peter said,"My friend, I do not know what you are talking about."Just as he was saying this, the cock crowed,and the Lord turned and looked at Peter;and Peter remembered the word of the Lord,how he had said to him,"Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times."He went out and began to weep bitterly.The men who held Jesus in custody were ridiculing and beating him.They blindfolded him and questioned him, saying,"Prophesy!  Who is it that struck you?"And they reviled him in saying many other things against him.When day came the council of elders of the people met,both chief priests and scribes,and they brought him before their Sanhedrin.They said, "If you are the Christ, tell us, "but he replied to them, "If I tell you, you will not believe,and if I question, you will not respond.But from this time on the Son of Man will be seatedat the right hand of the power of God."They all asked, "Are you then the Son of God?"He replied to them, "You say that I am."Then they said, "What further need have we for testimony?We have heard it from his own mouth."Then the whole assembly of them arose and brought him before Pilate.They brought charges against him, saying,"We found this man misleading our people;he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesarand maintains that he is the Christ, a king."Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"He said to him in reply, "You say so."Pilate then addressed the chief priests and the crowds,"I find this man not guilty."But they were adamant and said,"He is inciting the people with his teaching throughout all Judea,from Galilee where he began even to here."On hearing this Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean;and upon learning that he was under Herod's jurisdiction,he sent him to Herod who was in Jerusalem at that time.Herod was very glad to see Jesus;he had been wanting to see him for a long time,for he had heard about himand had been hoping to see him perform some sign.He questioned him at length,but he gave him no answer.The chief priests and scribes, meanwhile,stood by accusing him harshly.Herod and his soldiers treated him contemptuously and mocked him,and after clothing him in resplendent garb,he sent him back to Pilate.Herod and Pilate became friends that very day,even though they had been enemies formerly.Pilate then summoned the chief priests, the rulers, and the peopleand said to them, "You brought this man to meand accused him of inciting the people to revolt.I have conducted my investigation in your presenceand have not found this man guiltyof the charges you have brought against him,nor did Herod, for he sent him back to us.So no capital crime has been committed by him.Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him."But all together they shouted out,"Away with this man!Release Barabbas to us."— Now Barabbas had been imprisoned for a rebellionthat had taken place in the city and for murder. —Again Pilate addressed them, still wishing to release Jesus,but they continued their shouting,"Crucify him!  Crucify him!"Pilate addressed them a third time,"What evil has this man done?I found him guilty of no capital crime.Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him."With loud shouts, however,they persisted in calling for his crucifixion,and their voices prevailed.The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted.So he released the man who had been imprisonedfor rebellion and murder, for whom they asked,and he handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they wished.As they led him awaythey took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian,who was coming in from the country;and after laying the cross on him,they made him carry it behind Jesus.A large crowd of people followed Jesus,including many women who mourned and lamented him.Jesus turned to them and said,"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me;weep instead for yourselves and for your childrenfor indeed, the days are coming when people will say,'Blessed are the barren,the wombs that never boreand the breasts that never nursed.'At that time people will say to the mountains,'Fall upon us!'and to the hills, 'Cover us!'for if these things are done when the wood is greenwhat will happen when it is dry?"Now two others, both criminals,were led away with him to be executed.When they came to the place called the Skull,they crucified him and the criminals there,one on his right, the other on his left.Then Jesus said,"Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."They divided his garments by casting lots.The people stood by and watched;the rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him and said,"He saved others, let him save himselfif he is the chosen one, the Christ of God."Even the soldiers jeered at him.As they approached to offer him wine they called out,"If you are King of the Jews, save yourself."Above him there was an inscription that read,"This is the King of the Jews."Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying,"Are you not the Christ?Save yourself and us."The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply,"Have you no fear of God,for you are subject to the same condemnation?And indeed, we have been condemned justly,for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes,but this man has done nothing criminal."Then he said,"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."He replied to him,"Amen, I say to you,today you will be with me in Paradise."It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole landuntil three in the afternoonbecause of an eclipse of the sun.Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle.Jesus cried out in a loud voice,"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit";and when he had said this he breathed his last.Here all kneel and pause for a short time.The centurion who witnessed what had happened glorified God and said,"This man was innocent beyond doubt."When all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened,they returned home beating their breasts;but all his acquaintances stood at a distance,including the women who had followed him from Galileeand saw these events.Now there was a virtuous and righteous man named Joseph who,though he was a member of the council,had not consented to their plan of action.He came from the Jewish town of Arimatheaand was awaiting the kingdom of God.He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.After he had taken the body down,he wrapped it in a linen clothand laid him in a rock-hewn tombin which no one had yet been buried.It was the day of preparation,and the sabbath was about to begin.The women who had come from Galilee with him followed behind,and when they had seen the tomband the way in which his body was laid in it,they returned and prepared spices and perfumed oils.Then they rested on the sabbath according to the commandment.

Matthew 21:1-11 ESV1 Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,' and he will send them at once.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, 5 “Say to the daughter of Zion,‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'” 6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. 8 Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” 10 And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” 11 And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.” • • •Question:How should we react to the Palm Sunday story today? • • •1. The Backstory • • •Mark 1:14-15 ESV14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” • • •Matthew 4:23 ESV23 And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. • • •Luke 18:31-34 ESV31 And taking the twelve, he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. 32 For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. 33 And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” 34 But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. • • •2. Palms of Blessing • • •John 12:13 ESV13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” • • •Psalm 92:12-13 ESV12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 13 They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. • • •Nehemiah 8:14-15 ESV14 And they found it written in the Law that the Lord had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, 15 and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem, “Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.” • • •3. The Coming Messiah: The Crowd's Perspective • • •2 Kings 9:12-13 ESV12 And they said, “That is not true; tell us now.” And he said, “Thus and so he spoke to me, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel.'” 13 Then in haste every man of them took his garment and put it under him on the bare steps, and they blew the trumpet and proclaimed, “Jehu is king.” • • •Jeremiah 23:5 ESV5 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. • • •Zechariah 9:9 ESV9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. • • •Zephaniah 3:14-20 ESV14 Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel!Rejoice and exult with all your heart,O daughter of Jerusalem! 15 The Lord has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil. 16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:“Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. 17 The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. 18 I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival, so that you will no longer suffer reproach. 19 Behold, at that time I will deal with all your oppressors.And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. 20 At that time I will bring you in, at the time when I gather you together; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes,” says the Lord. • • •4. Future Hope • • •Colossians 1:4-5 ESV4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, • • •Romans 8:23-25 ESV23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. • • •Colossians 1:27-28 ESV27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. • • •Application:Hope, when rooted in God's promises, transforms our hearts and minds. It produces joy, peace, and a deep assurance that surpasses worldly understanding. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, hope is a vital element of the Christian worldview and life. It enables believers to look beyond their present circumstances and confidently anticipate the fulfillment of God's promises, which are secured not by human strength but by divine grace. True hope in Christ leads us to the blessings of faith, offering strength and perseverance as we await the fullness of God's Kingdom.

A sermon for Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025 Luke 19:28-40 After telling a parable to the crowd at Jericho, Jesus went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They said, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."   Luke 22:14-23:56 When the hour for the Passover meal came, Jesus took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. He said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table. For the Son of Man is going as it has been determined, but woe to that one by whom he is betrayed!" Then they began to ask one another, which one of them it could be who would do this. A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. "You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. "Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." And he said to him, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!" Jesus said, "I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me." He said to them, "When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?" They said, "No, not a thing." He said to them, "But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, `And he was counted among the lawless'; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled." They said, "Lord, look, here are two swords." He replied, "It is enough." He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, "Pray that you may not come into the time of trial." Then he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down, and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, and he said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial." While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, "Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?" When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, "Lord, should we strike with the sword?" Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, "No more of this!" And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple police, and the elders who had come for him, "Have you come out with swords and clubs as if I were a bandit? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!" Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house. But Peter was following at a distance. When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a servant-girl, seeing him in the firelight, stared at him and said, "This man also was with him." But he denied it, saying, "Woman, I do not know him." A little later someone else, on seeing him, said, "You also are one of them." But Peter said, "Man, I am not!" Then about an hour later still another kept insisting, "Surely this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean." But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you are talking about!" At that moment, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times." And he went out and wept bitterly. Now the men who were holding Jesus began to mock him and beat him; they also blindfolded him and kept asking him, "Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?" They kept heaping many other insults on him. When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered together, and they brought him to their council. They said, "If you are the Messiah, tell us." He replied, "If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God." All of them asked, "Are you, then, the Son of God?" He said to them, "You say that I am." Then they said, "What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips!" Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king." Then Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He answered, "You say so." Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, "I find no basis for an accusation against this man." But they were insistent and said, "He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place." When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate. That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies. Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people, and said to them, "You brought me this man as one who was perverting the people; and here I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us. Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death. I will therefore have him flogged and release him." Then they all shouted out together, "Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!" (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, "Crucify, crucify him!" A third time he said to them, "Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him." But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished. As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews." One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, "Certainly this man was innocent." And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

13 April 2025 | This Palm Sunday, Pastor Evan preaches from Luke 19:28-40 on how Jesus is worthy of our commitment despite our hesitance. Luke 19:28-40 28 And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.'” 32 So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. 33 And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” 35 And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. 37 As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, 38 saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” 39 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

At Bethany, We are God's People who are: Gathered! Connected! Sent!We want to connect with you through this Podcast! Leave us a comment! Tell us where you are at! Leave a Review to help our audience grow!---April 13, 2025 -- Pr. Kyle Blake -- "Yearning to Deliver!" -- Luke 19:29-4429 When he came near Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives (as it was called), Jesus sent two of his disciples ahead of him. 30 He said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you. As you enter, you will find a young donkey tied there. No one has ever sat on it. Untie it, and bring it. 31 If anyone asks you why you are untying it, say that the Lord needs it.” 32 The men Jesus sent found it as he had told them. 33 While they were untying the young donkey, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the donkey?” 34 The disciples answered, “The Lord needs it.” 35 They brought the donkey to Jesus, put their coats on it, and helped Jesus onto it. 36 As he was riding along, people spread their coats on the road. 37 By this time he was coming near the place where the road went down the Mount of Olives. Then the whole crowd of disciples began to praise God for all the miracles they had seen. 38 They shouted joyfully, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven.” 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell your disciples to be quiet.” 40 Jesus replied, “I can guarantee that if they are quiet, the stones will cry out.” 41 When he came closer and saw the city, he began to cry. 42 He said, “If you had only known today what would bring you peace! But now it is hidden, so you cannot see it. 43 The time will come when enemy armies will build a wall to surround you and close you in on every side. 44 They will level you to the ground and kill your people. One stone will not be left on top of another, because you didn't recognize the time when God came to help you.”http://www.bethanylutheran.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.facebook.com/Bethany.Long.Beach⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.youtube.com/c/BethanyLutheranLongBeach

Sunday 13th April 2025 - West and North SitesSpeaker - Gary SmithGary continues our Easter 2025 series - The Last Week - with a look at the first Palm Sunday, the fulfillment of Zechariah's prophecy._______________________Matthew 21 v 1-111)  As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2)  saying to them, ‘Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to Me. 3)  If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.'4)  This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:5)  ‘Say to Daughter Zion,    “See, your King comes to you,gentle and riding on a donkey,    and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”'6)  The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7)  They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8)  A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9)  The crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed shouted,‘Hosanna to the Son of David!'‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!'‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!'10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, ‘Who is this?'11 The crowds answered, ‘This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.'____________________________Recorded at the West site - 13Apr2025

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?' say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'”  And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?”  And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go.  And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.  And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”

An Expectation Shift   Matthew 21:1-11 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:  5 “Say to Daughter Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.'” 6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on.  8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.  9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”     Jesus may not meet your expectations.   Jesus will exceed your expectations.  Following Jesus includes surrendering our expectations, and embracing His.   Shift from shallow celebration to deep commitment. Shift from projecting your image onto Jesus to being conformed into His.   Shift from chasing a crown to carrying a cross.    

On Palm Sunday, Pastor Dave emphasizes the crucial need for a savior and the daily reliance on Jesus, not just for eternity but for everyday life. He reflects on the events leading to the crucifixion, highlighting that while people welcomed Jesus with shouts of "Hosanna," many later turned against him, illustrating the fickleness of public opinion and the need for genuine faith. Pastor encourages the congregation to know and understand their beliefs, underscoring that Jesus came to save everyone, including those who seem beyond redemption. Ultimately, he calls for a personal commitment to Jesus, reminding that true transformation happens when we recognize Him as our Savior and respond to His love.Luke 19:28 After telling this story, Jesus went on toward Jerusalem, walking ahead of his disciples. 29 As he came to the towns of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, he sent two disciples ahead. 30 “Go into that village over there,” he told them. “As you enter it, you will see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks, ‘Why are you untying that colt?' just say, ‘The Lord needs it.'”Matthew 21:9-11 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”Luke 19:39-40, Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” 40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”Psalms 22:16-18 Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce[a] my hands and my feet.17 All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my clothes among themand cast lots for my garment.Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey,on a colt, the foal of a donkey.Psalms 118:25-26 25 Lord, save us! Lord, grant us success! 26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.From the house of the Lord we bless you.Romans 10:9-10 if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

On Palm Sunday, Pastor Dave emphasizes the crucial need for a savior and the daily reliance on Jesus, not just for eternity but for everyday life. He reflects on the events leading to the crucifixion, highlighting that while people welcomed Jesus with shouts of "Hosanna," many later turned against him, illustrating the fickleness of public opinion and the need for genuine faith. Pastor encourages the congregation to know and understand their beliefs, underscoring that Jesus came to save everyone, including those who seem beyond redemption. Ultimately, he calls for a personal commitment to Jesus, reminding that true transformation happens when we recognize Him as our Savior and respond to His love.Luke 19:28 After telling this story, Jesus went on toward Jerusalem, walking ahead of his disciples. 29 As he came to the towns of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, he sent two disciples ahead. 30 “Go into that village over there,” he told them. “As you enter it, you will see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks, ‘Why are you untying that colt?' just say, ‘The Lord needs it.'”Matthew 21:9-11 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”Luke 19:39-40, Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” 40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”Psalms 22:16-18 Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce[a] my hands and my feet.17 All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my clothes among themand cast lots for my garment.Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey,on a colt, the foal of a donkey.Psalms 118:25-26 25 Lord, save us! Lord, grant us success! 26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.From the house of the Lord we bless you.Romans 10:9-10 if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Palm Sunday 2025   Exodus 12:1-6 ESV   The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.       Exodus 12:12-14 ESV   12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.       Matthew 21:1-11 ESV   Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,' and he will send them at once.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,   5 “Say to the daughter of Zion,   ‘Behold, your king is coming to you,   humble, and mounted on a donkey,   on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'”   6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. 8 Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” 10 And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” 11 And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”       Luke 19:39-40 ESV   39 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”       Habbakuk 2:11, 9-10 NIV       11 The stones of the wall will cry out,       and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.       9 “Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain,   setting his nest on high   to escape the clutches of ruin!   10 You have plotted the ruin of many peoples,   shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.       Luke 19:41-44 ESV   41 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”       2 Kings 9:13 ESV   13 Then in haste every man of them took his garment and put it under him on the bare steps, and they blew the trumpet and proclaimed, “Jehu is king.”       Psalm 118:25-26 ESV   Save us, we pray, O Lord!   O Lord, we pray, give us success!   26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!   We bless you from the house of the Lord.       1 Macabees 13:51 NRSVU   51 On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred seventy-first year, the Jews entered it with praise and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel.

Our Lenten journey has been an in medias res, or Latin for in the middle of things. We started in the middle of the story with the Passover and ended last week with Jesus' crucifixion. And today we are going back to the beginning, Palm Sunday, where everything was set in motion for Jesus to go to the cross. What was the meaning of this lowly rabbi riding into town on a donkey? Was this a triumphal entry or a humble act foreshadowing what was to come? What does this all mean for us today as we continue to prepare for Resurrection Day?Luke 19:28-44 (ESV)And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.'” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Teacher: Adam Barnett As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. - Luke 9:51 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' say, ‘The Lord needs it.'”  Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They replied, “The Lord needs it.” - Luke 19:28-34 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 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”  - Luke 19:35-38 1 - Jesus embodied peace. Romans 5:1 – “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Our sin has put wrath between us and God, and a mere ceasefire will never suffice—we are not meant to live under the cloud of an uneasy standoff with God. Instead, Jesus became incarnate, died, and rose so that believers might be adopted into God's own family and eat at the table with him in unbroken fellowship forever.”  - R.T. France Luke 19:41-42… But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace.” 2 - Jesus embodied healing. “The blind and lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.”  - Matthew 21:14 3 - Jesus embodied hope. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” - Matthew 21:9 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  – 2 Corinthians 4:16-17

Passion Sunday The Gospel Luke 19:28-40 After telling a parable to the crowd at Jericho, Jesus went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They said, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out." The Psalm Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 Confitemini Domino 1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; * his mercy endures for ever. 2 Let Israel now proclaim, * "His mercy endures for ever." 19 Open for me the gates of righteousness; * I will enter them; I will offer thanks to the Lord. 20 "This is the gate of the Lord; * he who is righteous may enter." 21 I will give thanks to you, for you answered me * and have become my salvation. 22 The same stone which the builders rejected * has become the chief cornerstone. 23 This is the Lord's doing, * and it is marvelous in our eyes. 24 On this day the Lord has acted; * we will rejoice and be glad in it. 25 Hosannah, Lord, hosannah! * Lord, send us now success. 26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; * we bless you from the house of the Lord. 27 God is the Lord; he has shined upon us; * form a procession with branches up to the horns of the altar. 28 "You are my God, and I will thank you; * you are my God, and I will exalt you." 29 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; * his mercy endures for ever. at The Liturgy of the Word The Collect Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Old Testament Isaiah 50:4-9a The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens-- wakens my ear  to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious,  I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame;  he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty? The Psalm Psalm 31:9-16 In te, Domine, speravi 9 Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble; * my eye is consumed with sorrow, and also my throat and my belly. 10 For my life is wasted with grief, and my years with sighing; * my strength fails me because of affliction, and my bones are consumed. 11 I have become a reproach to all my enemies and even to my neighbors, a dismay to those of my acquaintance; * when they see me in the street they avoid me. 12 I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; * I am as useless as a broken pot. 13 For I have heard the whispering of the crowd; fear is all around; * they put their heads together against me; they plot to take my life. 14 But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord. * I have said, "You are my God. 15 My times are in your hand; * rescue me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me. 16 Make your face to shine upon your servant, * and in your loving-kindness save me." The Epistle Philippians 2:5-11 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God  as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,  being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself  and became obedient to the point of death--  even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name  that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,  in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,  to the glory of God the Father. The Gospel Luke 22:14-23:56 When the hour for the Passover meal came, Jesus took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. He said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table. For the Son of Man is going as it has been determined, but woe to that one by whom he is betrayed!" Then they began to ask one another, which one of them it could be who would do this. A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. "You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. "Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." And he said to him, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!" Jesus said, "I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me." He said to them, "When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?" They said, "No, not a thing." He said to them, "But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, `And he was counted among the lawless'; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled." They said, "Lord, look, here are two swords." He replied, "It is enough." He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, "Pray that you may not come into the time of trial." Then he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down, and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, and he said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial." While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, "Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?" When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, "Lord, should we strike with the sword?" Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, "No more of this!" And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple police, and the elders who had come for him, "Have you come out with swords and clubs as if I were a bandit? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!" Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house. But Peter was following at a distance. When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a servant-girl, seeing him in the firelight, stared at him and said, "This man also was with him." But he denied it, saying, "Woman, I do not know him." A little later someone else, on seeing him, said, "You also are one of them." But Peter said, "Man, I am not!" Then about an hour later still another kept insisting, "Surely this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean." But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you are talking about!" At that moment, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times." And he went out and wept bitterly. Now the men who were holding Jesus began to mock him and beat him; they also blindfolded him and kept asking him, "Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?" They kept heaping many other insults on him. When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered together, and they brought him to their council. They said, "If you are the Messiah, tell us." He replied, "If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God." All of them asked, "Are you, then, the Son of God?" He said to them, "You say that I am." Then they said, "What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips!" Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king." Then Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He answered, "You say so." Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, "I find no basis for an accusation against this man." But they were insistent and said, "He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place." When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate. That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies. Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people, and said to them, "You brought me this man as one who was perverting the people; and here I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us. Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death. I will therefore have him flogged and release him." Then they all shouted out together, "Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!" (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, "Crucify, crucify him!" A third time he said to them, "Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him." But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished. As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews." One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, "Certainly this man was innocent." And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment. or Luke 23:1-49 The assembly of the elders of the people rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king." Then Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He answered, "You say so." Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, "I find no basis for an accusation against this man." But they were insistent and said, "He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place." When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate. That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies. Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people, and said to them, "You brought me this man as one who was perverting the people; and here I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us. Indeed, he has done nothing to deserve death. I will therefore have him flogged and release him." Then they all shouted out together, "Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!" (This was a man who had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, "Crucify, crucify him!" A third time he said to them, "Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him." But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished. As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews." One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, "Certainly this man was innocent." And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

1 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and […]

Luke 19:28-40After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.' ” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. Now as he was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” Why do we do hard things? Why do we voluntarily endure pain, like summiting mount everest, writing a novel, or finishing all the New York Times games, including Sudoku! I don't understand for the life of me why people run marathons… 26.2 miles? Hours of running just to run? And people pay money for that?! Why do we choose things that will undoubtedly bring us pain? Most of us are wired to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. We tend to choose activities with low cost and high reward. Effort is hard; pain isn't fun—so we try to reduce both whenever possible. We say we want things to be easy. But strangely, we often value the things that cost us something—things that ask more of us than we thought we had. We want some place or thing to pour our effort into. But why?There are a few theories. One is called the Effort Paradox. Ian Hutchinson wrote about it in The Atlantic recently. While effort is typically something we shy away from, it can paradoxically draw us in and enhance the value of what we're doing. Hutchinson gives the example of the Comrades Marathon - a 55 miles race in South Africa. But here is the kicker, you have twelve hours to complete it. Right at the twelve hour mark, a group of people link arms and block the finish line! You're not even allowed to complete the hell you've put yourself through. And yet, those who don't finish often come back year after year—because the effort itself is satisfying.We see this paradox elsewhere, too. Kids at play make up extra rules or obstacles, just to make the game harder—and more fun.Now Hutchinson admits the appeal of hard work varies among people. Some are motivated by the joy and purpose derived from tackling difficult tasks. But the Effort Paradox doesn't explain which hard things we choose, or why. Yes, effort can make us feel good and imbue a sense of value. But is that enough to explain the hard things we really choose? Things like parenting. Marriage. Leading a team. Starting a business. Caring for a dying parent. The pain isn't part of the appeal—so why do we stay in it?This is where our friend David Brooks offers a deeper take. He asks: how do people endure the most severe challenges and overcome the most alluring temptations? It's generally not through heroic willpower and self-control. If those faculties were strong enough, diets would work, and New Year's resolutions would be kept. No, we tend to endure great pain only when we are possessed by something more gripping, namely love. When something or someone seizes us, we can't help but fall in love. And love demands devotion. It animates us — but it also conquers us. It calls for persistence, obedience, and sacrifice. This is not just why folks get married but how they stay married. It's why you make a third breakfast for your toddler after he fed the first one to the dog and threw the second one across the table. It's why after decades you continue in the same vocation, no matter how maddening it may be at times. It's this kind of love—not satisfaction from a completed task—that makes hard things meaningful. And paradoxically, Brooks argues, the more we embrace difficulties in this life, rather than avoid them, the more meaningful, passionate, and purposeful this life becomes.So all week I kept asking myself: what seized Jesus? What love compelled him? Because that's the only way to make sense of what he does. Why would Jesus willingly make his way into Jerusalem? Why does he choose the pain that lies ahead? He doesn't just allow it—he pursues it. Why is he determined to face death?All week as I read the text, it just made little to no sense to me. Why would anyone get on a young donkey that has never been ridden and ride it down the side of a mountain? Have you ever ridden a horse or a donkey downhill? I have. It's terrifying. And that was on a trained animal! Jesus zigzags an untrained donkey down a steep slope to the very city where he knows he'll be crucified, all while seemingly celebrating the ceremonial chants of his kingship? What kind of king chooses this? What kind of God volunteers for death? Why would anyone, Jesus included, go through such effort? And, is there any effort greater than bearing the sin of the whole world with open arms? Than defeating death once and for all? It can't just be about grit. This isn't the kind of effort that brings satisfaction just because it was difficult. No, it has to be something else. It has to be that for some reason Jesus is captivated by love, a deep irradiating love for you, me, and all the world. A love that is beyond our logic of pleasure and pain. A love that is so animating and self-denying that it demands devotion and obedience, obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. That's what Palm Sunday is all about. It's not just the triumphal entry, but the choice to love us all the way to suffering and death. It's a celebration of such all-consuming love.This Holy Week, allow yourself to be consumed by that love. Let this story, which is about to unfold over the next few days, grip you. Let it captivate you, whether you've heard it eighty times or it's your first. Brooks says, “The capacity to be seized is a great and underappreciated talent.”So be seized—by this God in flesh, riding on a donkey to his death in order to give you and me life. Don't turn from the pain thats coming. If anything lean into - ponder it, see it for what it is - effort! Effort on your behalf. As one psychologist wrote, “effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means that you care about something”. And it is Jesus' effort that gives meaning to our life, to your life. All through Lent, we try our best to do hard things, painful things; not because we want the satisfaction of doing something difficult, but because the effort is a sign of devotion, an outpouring of love. This week, take your practice one step further. If it's fasting, add a day, if it's not eating something, remove something else. If it's prayer, add more time. If it's generosity, give even more. And if you didn't start a practice—don't worry. It's not too late.Come to the prayer vigil. Make Maundy Thursday a priority—hear again the Last Supper and Judas' betrayal. Witness the pain of Good Friday. Feel it. It will make Easter Sunday all the more joyful!We do all of this not so that we will be loved, but to see and experience just how much you are loved already. Maybe—just maybe—you'll begin to feel the devotion that led Jesus to his death. Yes, I'm asking you to voluntarily choose pain this week. But paradoxically I think it will make the week all the better. As C.S. Lewis said “When pain is over, it is over, and the natural sequel is joy.” The same is true for this week. There will be pain. There will be death. And there will be resurrection. But let's not skip over the first two.Why do we do hard things? Because love demands it. And this week, Love rides in on a donkey, walks through betrayal, bears a cross, and cracks open a tomb. Let this love seize you.Amen.

A Sermon for Palm Sunday Philippians 2:1-11, St. Matthew 21:1-17, and St. Matthew 27:1-54 by William Klock The Pantheon in Rome is famous for being one of the architectural and engineering wonders of the ancient world.  It was one of the buildings we studied when I took Architectural History and I remember our professor stressing that the photos in our book could never do it justice.  It's a great round building covered by the largest vaulted concrete dome in the world.  It looks big.  It is big.  The dome is 43 metres high.  But you don't realise just how big that is until you add people into the photos.  It's about twenty-five times higher than the average person is tall.  And it was built by the Romans two millennia ago.  It's survived all these years, even after builders scavenged the bronze off its roof and left the concrete exposed.  It is, again, known for being an architectural and engineering marvel. But Brothers and Sisters, the Pantheon is important for another reason that's hardly ever discussed.  It was, again, built almost two thousand years ago—in the early second century.  Begun under the Emperor Trajan and finished during the reign of Hadrian.  It stood on the Field of Mars and replaced an earlier temple dedicated to Mars, the god of war, and built by Agrippa during the reign of Augustus.  But the Pantheon, fairly quickly it seems, became an unusual temple.  The Romans usually dedicated a temple to a single god.  The gods were jealous.  They didn't like sharing.  And if a temple were, say, struck by lightning, you'd know that it was the god of that temple who was angry.  But the Pantheon became a temple for all the gods—or, at least, many of them.  That's what the name means: pan…theon.  It was one of the greatest temples of pagan Rome.  But in the Year of Our Lord Six-hundred-and-nine, at the instruction of the Christian Emperor Phocas and the Bishop of Rome, Boniface IV, the Pantheon was stripped of its pagan idols and its pagan altars.  Twenty-eight cartloads containing the bones of Christian martyrs were exhumed from the catacombs and reburied there, a Christian altar was placed in the building, and it was established as a church in honour of the memory of those martyrs whom the pagan Romans had killed in the name of their gods.  To this day, over fourteen-hundred years later, the Church of St. Mary and the Martyrs remains there, a faithful witness to conquest of Rome by the gospel and of the Lordship of Jesus.  A testimony to the power of the cross and the blood of Jesus not only to purify us from our sins and to make us a dwelling fit for God's Spirit, but to wash creation clean from our sins as well. We began Lent, listening as St. Matthew told us the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness.  The devil took him off to a very high mountain and showed him all the magnificent kingdoms of the world.  Off on the horizon was Rome.  “I'll give the whole lot to you,” the devil said, “if you will fall down and worship me.” It was, after all what Jesus had come for.  He was creation's true Lord.  Caesar and all the other kings were pretenders, shams, parodies of who and what Jesus really is.  All of it, from Jerusalem to Rome and beyond belongs to him.  “There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” to quote Abraham Kuyper.  But this was not the way.  Jesus will not reclaim his creation without also setting it to rights, without dealing with the problems of sin and death.  Without purifying it from our idolatry.  To do that requires more. And so today we hear Matthew again as he tells us of Jesus' triumphal procession into Jerusalem.  When they came near to Jerusalem, and arrived at Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of the disciples on ahead.  Go into the village over there and at once you'll find a donkey tied and a foal beside it.  Untie them and bring them to me and if anyone says anything to you, say, “The Lord needs them and he'll send them back right away.”  He sent them off at once.   Jesus was about to act out another one of his prophecies.  This time it was to show and to remind the people what sort of king the Messiah was to be.  They did want a king who would set all to rights, but in their heads, to their way of thinking, that meant leading a revolt against the Romans.  He would be like David, who defeated the Jebusites to take their city Jerusalem as his capital.  He would be like Judas Maccabeus, who defeated the Greeks and established an independent Jewish kingdom under the high priest.  The Messiah would be like that, only better, greater, more powerful, and his kingdom would be forever.  He would raise up Israel and put the gentile kings in their place.  The day before or maybe even that same day, as Jesus came to Jerusalem from Bethphage, Caesar's governor, Pontius Pilate, was marching into the city from the opposite direction, from his base in Caesarea, at the front of a column of Roman soldiers.  They were there to represent Caesar's might and to keep the peace during Passover.  If Jesus was the Messiah, now was his time—or so a lot of people thought—now was Jesus' time to finally and really be the Messiah, raise up his army, and cast down Pilate and the Romans and take his throne. But that wasn't the way to the throne any more than bowing down to the devil was.  Matthew says that Jesus did it his way to remind the people of what the Lord had said about the Messiah through the Prophet Zechariah: Tell this to Zion's daughter: Look now! Here comes your King.  He's humble, mounted on a donkey, yes, on a foal, it's young. The king they expected was going to ride into Jerusalem on a chariot or at least on a great warhorse.  But God's king is different.  A great warrior might take care of the Romans and even take his throne.  He could set things to rights in the way of earthly kings, but the world would still be subject to sin and death.  So Jesus acted out the prophecy.  The disciples brought the donkey and Jesus humbly rode it into the city.  And the people cheered all along the way.  They spread their cloaks on the road.  Others cut branches form the trees and scattered them on the road.  The crowds who went ahead of him, and those who were following behind shouted, “Hosanna to the son of David!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!”  And the whole city was gripped with excitement when they came into Jerusalem.  “Who is this!” they were saying.  And the crowds replied, “This is the prophet, Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.   With that prophetic reminder, at least some of the people seemed to get it even if it wasn't what they expected.  Jesus was fulfilling Zechariah's prophecy.  The long-awaiting king had come.  But not everyone got it.  Jesus wasn't finished with his acted out prophesies.  Matthew says that he went straight to the temple and when he got there he threw out the people who were buying and selling in the temple.  He upturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of the dove-sellers.  It is written, he said to them, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a brigand's lair!”  The blind and lame came to him in the temple and he healed them.  But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the remarkable things he was doing, and the children shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David!” they were very angry.   The king was fulfilling the words of the prophets.  He came in humility.  And he came announcing that he really was going to set the world to rights.  He was going to set the world to rights in a way that would make the temple obsolete.  All through his ministry he'd been showing how he was the new bridge between God and sinful humans and that last week he spent in the temple—starting with this acted out prophecy and continuing as he healed and preached, he made it clear.  So clear that the people invested in the temple and the priesthood and that whole system took it all for blasphemy and had him arrested. Our long Palm Sunday Gospel today—Matthew 27—vividly depicts the Messiah's humble way to his throne.  Betrayed by his friends, rejected by his people.  Standing humbly before the Roman governor so many people expected him to slay.  Facing trumped up charges made by lying men.  Left condemned to death as the people chose instead that Pilate should free a brutal, violent revolutionary—a man truly guilty of the trumped of charges against Jesus.  Standing humbly as the very people he came to save cried out to Pilate, “Crucify him!”  Standing humbly as he, the king, was rejected by his own people who cried out, “We have no king but Caesar!”  Standing humbly as Roman soldiers mocked him, beat him senseless and scourged him, ripping the skin from his body.  Humbly dragging the very cross on which he would be crucified through the city.  The king, nailed to a cross and hoisted to die between two violent thieves as his own people shouted blasphemies at him, as the chief priests and scribes mocked him shouting, “He rescued others, but he cannot rescue himself.  If he's the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross!  He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he's really God's son!” For hours it went on.  Jesus, pulling on those nails driven through is wrists, pushing on the nails driven through his feet, lifting himself to gasp for breath through the pain, while the people gathered around: Jews, Romans, even the pastors, the shepherds of his people who claimed to speak for God mocked him and shouted blasphemies.  Luke writes that Jesus prayed for them: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.  And eventually his body could take no more and Jesus breathed his last breath.  And, Matthew says, the earth shook.  The great veil that guarded the holy of holies in the temple was torn in two.  And the Roman centurions standing guard were scared out of their wits and announced the very thing Jesus' own people would not: He really was the son of God!   Brothers and Sisters, there can be no Easter without Good Friday.  To set the world to rights—to really set to rights—not just to take a throne, not just to defeat the Romans—but to defeat sin and death and to reconcile sinful men and women to God required a king willing to let evil rise up to its full height, to let evil concentrate itself all in one place, and to let it do its worst, crashing down on him all at once.  It required a king willing to throw himself into the gears of this fallen, broken, and sinful world to bring them to a stop.  It required a king willing to give his life for his own people even as they mocked and blasphemed him, so that he could rise from that humiliating death to overturn the verdict against him, rise victorious over sin and death and the absolute worst that they could do.  Only that humble king could defeat death and bring life—real and true life—back to God's creation and gather a people forgiven, cleaned by his blood, and filled with his Spirit to become a new temple, a new holy of holies where the nations would—where the nations now—enter the presence of God. It was in that humble king that those Roman centurions saw something they had never seen before.  Their Caesar called himself the son of God, but in Jesus they saw the God of Israel at work in all his glory, in all his love, in all his mercy, in all his faithfulness—like no god they'd ever known—completely unlike any god or goddess honoured in the Pantheon.  Whether they knew it or not, those centurions that first Good Friday announced the defeat of Jupiter and Mars, of Hera and Diana, of Neptune and Vesta and all the others.  And they announced the defeat of Caesar, too.  In less than three centuries, the Emperor of Rome himself would be captivated by the good news about Jesus, the son of God, the great King who was setting the world to rights. But Brothers and Sisters, the good news about Jesus, crucified and risen, didn't go out through the empire and to the nations all on its own.  It was carried, it was stewarded by a people—by a church—that, itself, took on the humility of the Saviour.  The bones of those martyrs buried in the Pantheon are a testimony to the faithful and humble witness of Jesus' people in those early centuries.  They didn't just proclaim a message.  They lived it out as a community—as the vanguard of God's new creation born that first Easter morning.  In the midst of a world of darkness, of false gods and idolatry, of brutality and immorality hard for us to imagine today, they gave the pagans a glimpse of God's future.  By the way they lived, they lifted the veil and showed the world God's new creation.  It was not only the proclamation of the church, but the very life of the church that showed the world a better way, a way no one before had ever known. Here's the truth of it: The people of the humble king must be humble too or it's all for nought.  This is why Paul, writing to the Philippians, says to them, If our shared life in the king brings any comfort; if love still has the power to make you cheerful; if we really do have a partnership in the Spirit; if your hearts are at all moved with affection and sympathy—then make my joy complete!  Bring your thinking into line with one another.  In other words, if you're going to be a gospel community for all the world to see  Have this mind amongst yourselves!  Here's how to do it.  Hold on to the same love; bring your innermost lives into harmony; fix your minds on the same object.  Never act out of selfish ambition or vanity; instead, regard everyone else as your superior.  Look after each other's best interests, not your own.   But it's so hard to do that, Paul!  So, so hard!  And Paul knew that.  And so he takes them back to the cross.  Brothers and Sisters, everything goes back to Jesus and the cross!  This is how you should think amongst yourselves, Paul goes on—with the mind that you have because you belong to Jesus the Messiah.  And now he doesn't quote from the passion narratives because they weren't written yet, although I think that would have worked just as well.  Every Holy Week we immerse ourselves in the passion narratives and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John remind us of the very thing Paul writes here.  But instead Paul breaks out into song.  He reminds them of a hymn they presumably all knew and he copies it out for them: Who, though in God's form, did not regard his equality with God as something he ought to exploit.  Instead, he emptied himself, and received the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.  And then, having human appearance, he humbled himself, and became obedient even to death, yes, even death on a cross.  And so God has greatly exalted him, and to him in his favour has given the name which is over all names.  That now at the name of Jesus every knee within heaven shall bow—on earth, too, and under the earth.  And every tongue shall confess that Messiah Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.   Paul reminds them of the humble king, the son of God who not only took on our flesh, but who gave his life in the most painful and humiliating way possible so that on his way to his throne he might take us with him. Brothers and Sisters, the only way we will ever be faithful in being the people Jesus has called us to be, the only way we will ever be faithful in being the new creation people the Spirit has made us, the only way will ever be faithful stewards of the gospel is to keep the cross of Jesus always before us.  There's a reason why we confess our sins before we come to the Lord's Table.  There is a reason that we repeatedly recall our unworthiness to enter the presence of God on our own merit.  There is a reason why, as we rise in the morning and as we go to bed at night, we confess our sins.  It's so that as we hear the absolution and as we come to the Table, we will remember just how gracious and merciful and loving God has been to us.  It's why we sing songs like “Amazing Grace”.  Amazing grace is such a sweet, sweet sounds, because apart from grace we are such sinful wretches.  And it is inevitable that when we forget this, when we start to think of ourselves as deserving of the gifts God has poured out on us, when we forget the heinousness and offensiveness of our sins and our rebellion against God, dear Friends, that's when we forget the true power of the gospel and the true mercy of the cross and the great depth of the love of God for sinners.  When we forget the sinfulness of our sin, we lose sight of the amazingness of God's grace.  Eventually we lose the mind of Jesus the Messiah and we cease to be the community of humble servants that he has made us.  And our light grows dim.  Our witness fails. We see it happening all around us in the West.  We've stopped talking about sin and we've thought more highly of ourselves than we ought.  We preach a doctrine of cheap grace.  And our light has gone dim.  Our churches have emptied and the culture has claimed them for its own.  In some they preach false gospels of prosperity or the divinity of man or the goodness of sexual perversion.  We setup idols to politics and earth power in them.  Some are literally gutted, becoming theatres or bars.  Others are little more than tourist attractions: testimonies to the power of the gospel in the days we proclaimed it, but now empty, dead shells.  The culture removes the cross and sets up altars to its idols.  Brothers and Sisters, before it is too late, let us knee before the cross of Jesus and look up.  Let it fill our vision.  Let us remember that he—the sinless son of God—died the death we deserve.  And let us meditate on the depth and power of his grace that we might share the humble mind of our humble king, that we might be the people he has called us to be, the people he has given his Spirit to make us, the people who will steward the gospel until every knee bows and every tongues confesses that Jesus the Messiah is Lord and gives glory to God the Father. Let's pray: Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for mankind you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility:  Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

“The Arrival of the King” Mark 11:1-11 April 13, 2025 Pastor Nathan Currey  Sermon Application [file]   ----more---- Mark 11:1 Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples [2] and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. [3] If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?' say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'” [4] And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. [5] And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” [6] And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. [7] And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. [8] And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. [9] And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! [10] Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” [11] And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.      The history of redemption reaches the final climactic march of the Messiah King to Jerusalem. Here we see a faulty coronation for the rightful King.         •  A Significant Setting         •  A Simple ‘Steed'         •  A Confused Crowd         •  The Glory Returns

Luke 19:28-44 ESV And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.'” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Jesus is the ordained, reigning, and ruling king and he gets all of our glory and praise as he entered Jerusalem to become the king we desperately needed.Luke 19:30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' say, ‘The Lord needs it.' ” 32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”  We'd love to connect with you https://newlifephilly.churchcenter.com/people/forms/224507 Would you like Prayer today? https://newlifephilly.churchcenter.com/people/forms/382423We pray the New Life Philly Podcast encourages you today! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at NewLifePhilly.

In a city that never sleeps, where skyscrapers touch the heavens and life moves at lightning speed, let us pause and reflect on the eternal King who reigns above it all. Just as the disciples rejoiced in witnessing His mighty works, we too can celebrate His faithfulness in our lives today. As we gather on this Palm Sunday, let us reflect on Luke 19:37, which says, "His disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen: 'Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!'” Let's lift our voices together and let us shine His light brightly over our city, guiding us with wisdom and grace. If you are new to Community Church, WELCOME! We would love to get to know you. Please fill in the following form and we look forward to connecting with you: https://bit.ly/cc-new-connect You can find all timely and relevant links from this service on https://bit.ly/cc-links You can also find out more about us at https://communitychurch.hk/ ================ This Week's Scripture: // Luke 19:28-44 // The Triumphal Entry After Jesus had said this, he continued on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. Now when he approached Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 telling them, “Go to the village ahead of you. When you enter it, you will find a colt tied there that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?' just say, ‘The Lord needs it.'” So those who were sent ahead found it exactly as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying that colt?” They replied, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt, and had Jesus get on it. As he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he approached the road leading down from the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” But some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if they keep silent, the very stones will cry out!” Jesus Weeps for Jerusalem under Judgment Now when Jesus approached and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you had only known on this day, even you, the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and surround you and close in on you from every side. They will demolish you—you and your children within your walls—and they will not leave within you one stone on top of another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”

The weekly Sunday morning sermon delivered by Rev. James Wiles.Mark 11:1-11“Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?' say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'” And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” 1. The casual observer 2. The calloused critic 3. The convicted sinner 4. The committed believerwww.huntsmbc.com

“Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me.” — Matthew 21:2 There is a little donkey named Rosey where my daughter rides horses. Rosey lives in a large enclosure with a herd of ponies. She loves to come to the fence to get scratches from all of the kids and adults who walk by. Every once in a while she cries out as only a donkey can. You can hear her from a distance. Once a year she is taken out and fitted with a pack to parade around with a man dressed up as an 1849 miner searching for gold. Sometimes she follows him well, and other times she stops and refuses to move. She is a donkey, after all. Sometimes I imagine Jesus riding on her. It's not what people would have expected. They'd expect a king to ride majestically on a horse. And a donkey might go where it is directed, but it also might not. The donkey in Jesus' story, however, played an important part in communicating Jesus' purpose and who he was. He came to be a humble servant, showing that as the true King over all things, he came to show his love and care for us by dying to save us. We play important parts in the Lord's great story too. We don't need to be wealthy rulers or important leaders. We just need to be who God created us to be. God has a role and a plan for us in his story. And he will use us as he sees fit. God, thank you for choosing me and giving me a role to play in your story for the world. Help me to know that role, and help me live into it more and more each day. For Jesus' sake, Amen.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of a significant week in the Christian calendar, commemorating Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem and culminating in Resurrection Sunday. This religious observance is enriched by key events, notably Holy Thursday, which re-enacts the Last Supper.As Jesus approached Jerusalem, He was fully aware of the events leading to His crucifixion. In need of a mode of transportation, He instructed His disciples to retrieve a colt for Him to ride. He detailed the mission with precision: "Go to the village ahead of you; as you enter, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here" (Luke 19:30). This colt was uniquely reserved, never having been ridden, and symbolized a purpose yet to be fulfilled. This colt, like each one of us, was chosen for a specific role in God's plan. Imagine, for a moment, if the colt was a person. In this narrative, we see a profound lesson in patience and purpose. The colt waited in a state of readiness for its divine assignment. Every moment of waiting prepared it for the moment it would bear the Lord. Such waiting is not easy; it requires a heart of surrender and trust in God's timing. When the disciples followed Jesus' command, they were confronted by the colt's guardians. Yet, they recognized the authority of the Lord and allowed the colt to fulfill its destiny. The colt, patiently tied, had been set aside for a greater mission, even when its owners were unaware of its significance. The atmosphere during Jesus' entry into Jerusalem was majestic. The procession was filled with joyful shouts and royal drapery, celebrating the King. While the colt was destined to ride triumphantly, it would later face hardship, embodying the sacrifices made for humanity's sins. For anyone feeling like a "colt" waiting to be called into purpose, take heart: your time is coming. Consider your journey. Have the past days, months, or even years been a preparation for your moment of glory? Like the colt, you may have been set aside, waiting for a special assignment that the Lord has prepared for you. In life, many face limitations that feel binding. But remember, when the Master calls, timing is of the essence, and you are ready. You are prepared for your divine mission. The disciples did not waver in their mission, trusting completely in Jesus. Their assignment was driven by a timely command: "The Lord needs it." This assurance brought them clarity and confidence. If you find yourself longing for your calling, remember that now is the time. As Jesus entered Jerusalem on the colt, remember that He arrived in style on prepared vessels. Your struggles and waiting periods, dear reader, are not in vain; they mould you for significant purposes. May this be a pivotal point in your journey? I pray that you will be found useful for the Lord's special mission. As He rides triumphantly through you, let the world celebrate your purpose.Matthew 21:1-9 – "Go to the village ahead of you; you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her...The Lord needs them." Luke 19:30-38 – "When He came near the place...the whole crowd began joyfully to praise God..." Imagine the jubilation, the anticipation, and the joy that filled the air as the crowd welcomed the King. Your time of celebration is coming, just as it did for the colt and the crowd on that triumphant day. When the Lord focuses on you, the world will notice. Embrace the waiting, as it's all part of the miraculous journey designed for you. Remember, your time is now!

This Palm Sunday message explores the other side of the triumphal entry the side marked by tears. Journey with us as Jesus enters Jerusalem not in might and pomp alone, but in deep sorrow and compassion. Experience the emotional resonance of a humble King and glorious Messiah who pauses to weep for his people, and discover what breaks the heart of our Savior even as he offers the hope of peace. To catch up on the latest sermons from Deep Creek, go to iTunes, Spotify ordeepcreekanglican.comand check out the website for more info about whats happening. We are a welcoming and growing multigenerational church in Doncaster East in Melbourne with refreshing faith in Jesus Christ. We think that looks like being life-giving to the believer, surprising to the world, and strengthening to the weary and doubting. Read the transcript Good morning. This mornings reading is from Luke chapter 19, starting at verse 28: After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany on the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, Why are you untying it? say, The Lord needs it.Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, Why are you untying the colt? They replied, The Lord needs it.They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, rebuke your disciples!I tell you, he replied, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peacebut now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of Gods coming to you. This is the word of the Lord. Well, its really special to be able to share Gods word with you this morning, especially if you are a guest of the Malone family. Were really just delighted to have this moment with you. And thank youthank you for being here, especially if church isnt a place where you usually find yourself on a Sunday morning. It is our privilege to share this time with you. Weve been going through Lukes gospel, and Ive got a bunch of them sitting on the table at the front there (and some scattered around in the foyer as well), because you might find that you want to take one with you when you leave. And youre very, very welcome to do that. Weve been looking at Lukes gospel, particularly at the questions that Jesus asks people and the questions that they ask him back. In Lukes gospel, we find theres a shape to it that wants us to come to a decision. Luke speaks roughly in thirds: to the mind, to the will, and to the heart. Luke, the writer, says, Im putting these things together so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. And Jesus stands up in the synagogue in Luke 4 and says, This Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. In the first third of the book, there is evidence upon evidence that Jesus is who he has claimed to be. We see Jesus authority over sickness, we see his authority over evil, and his authority over nature and creation. Hes really encouraging us to say, Well, who is this person? Who do you say that I am? The mind. Then the second part of Lukes gospel speaks more to the will. Will you follow? Now that you have seen the evidence of who he is, will you take that step and say, I will count the cost? It is worth losing many of the things that I have valued, so that I may gain Jesus and ultimately become myself, who God intended me to be, and experience what God intended me to for eternity. What does it mean to follow him? How do I take that step and choose? Its fascinating that we use that language when we have a baptism, because we are embracing baby Reuben into this community. Were also praying and trusting that as the Holy Spirit works in his life, he will see the evidence of who Jesus is in the Scriptures and in his experience, and he will choose he will make an act of the will. And sometimes (if youve been a Christian for a long time, or even if youre just thinking about it) it actually takes an act of the will, because life can be terribly challenging. So Luke appeals to the mind and to the will, and then he comes to the heart. Will you, having seen the evidence and having made a choicewill you love him? Will you say, This is so worth it, because Jesus is the King. I wonder if youve ever been in an argument with someone and theres been evidence and theres been counter-evidence, and, you know, voices might have become more heated and its only when you see the tears in the others eyes that you realize this isnt just an intellectual transaction. This is something that means so much to someone. Well, weve seen evidence upon evidence, and weve had an appeal to our will. But now we see the tears in Jesus eyes. We know this is not an intellectual exercise for him, nor for us. Will we love him as he loves us? So today were going to see not just the triumphal entry of Jesus, but in fact the heart-breaking entry of Jesus into Jerusalemand how that shows his heart and what that means for our love for him. The Intention of the Humble Lord After Jesus had said this to his disciples, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives (keep that in your mind), he sent two of his disciples ahead and told them to fetch a colt for him The Lord needs it was the password that would make the owners let it go. Jesus is intentional about coming to Jerusalem. Jerusalem. The place of worship. Jerusalem. The place where the identity of the people of God found its truest expression. Jerusalem it held the hopes of this people that had been destroyed and rebuilt, and destroyed and rebuilt. And here they were again, coming to Jerusalem, knowing that in the temple and outside the city gates events would transpire that were both dramatic and painful, and ultimately for Jesus, the crucifixion his death. Jesus chose to come to Jerusalem full of courage, but he came to Jerusalem riding on a donkey because it was the fulfillment of prophecy. So in the Old Testament book of Zechariah, we read: 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. Jesus is not being swept up in events beyond his control. He is full of intention, and he is full of courage. He had, without the disciples knowledge, set up this arrangement in advance that he would enter into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey. Here is the promised Messiah, fulfilling promises from centuries earlier. But more than that, he is entering on a donkey. Now, donkeys are hilarious creatures. They sound funny; their eyes are big and fun. Theyre just ridiculous (and of course, Shrek comes to mind!). But the donkeyrather than being a foolish choicewas really just the choice of something normal, something day-to-day. We think donkeys are funny. Well, I doI love them. Im allergic to horses, so I cant really get up and give them a big hug (although I havent really tried; maybe my allergies dont cross over to donkeys. Well try it one day!). But this is a normal way of traveling. This is a normal way of carrying things. This is a normal beast of burden. And Jesus chooses the donkey not simply because this is the way in which the promised King (the Messiah) would enter his city, as foretold in Zechariah, but because Jesus is the one who is with us. Jesus is one of us. When his birth was promised, it was said that he would be Emmanuel God with us. Now, one day the Scriptures tell us that he will come riding not on a donkey, but on a warriors horse. Revelation 19 gives us this vision: I saw heaven standing open, and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: King of kings and Lord of lords. One day the identity of this King will be undeniable, as he rides in on a great warriors horse. But here, in this moment for us, Jesus is coming in as one of us, into a city that he loves a city that stands before him not as an object of judgment, but of deep compassion. When you read Lukes Gospel, sometimes you see that Jesus interacts with people in miraculous ways and then says to them, Dont tell anyone Ive done this for you. You think, Thats madnessyour PR person would be furious! But he wanted to ensure that he could come to this moment without the terrible distraction of being seen simply as a miracle worker or a power-person. But now, as he comes into the city, there is no hiding. He is the King promised in Zechariah 9. He is riding on a donkey, and he is one of us. He is coming to Jerusalem, facing his death for us. And hes doing it with full intention and courage. The Return of the Glorious King They brought the donkey to Jesus, threw their cloaks on it, and put Jesus on it. Now, in Lukes gospel it doesnt talk about palmsactually its kind of Cloak Sundayand so I was like, Oh, we could get the lost property and just put that along, because I think that would be really classy, very aesthetically pleasing! But that is what we see in Luke. People were willing to put down their cloaks. They made a red carpet out of whatever they had for Jesus to enter into the city. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives (take note), the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen. The evidence had been put before them, they had made the choice to follow, and now they cry out in praise: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest! Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Jesus replied, I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. Jesus knows that as he travels into Jerusalema King from among humankind, humble yet courageous, and truly the King who would one day ride in on a warriors horseit was right that he was praised. It was right that people joyfully shouted and praised God, saying that in heaven things are being set right and glory is here: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Jesus had been offered by Satan all the kingdoms of the world, and he said, No! I worship the Lord and serve Him only. And as he enters into Jerusalem and receives that worship, he shows us who he is: God the Son, coming as King. Now, I called this the return of the glorious King. Theres an interesting reason we might use that phrase. Way back in the Old Testament, some centuries before Jesus entry into Jerusalem, there was a prophet called Ezekiel. (Ezekiel is the guy that had the weirdest visions of allI dont know if youve seen those internet memes about biblically accurate angels covered with eyes or wheels; well, that comes from Ezekiel!) Ezekiel had a terrible burdena heartbreaking burdento tell the people of God that Gods presence was leaving them. Ezekiel saw the presence of God in these crazy visions, and the message he received was that God was coming up out of his temple, moving to the edge of the city of Jerusalem, and then leaving. It was a terrible, terrifying message of Gods judgmentthat He would be absent from the heart of his people because they had turned away from Him. They had closed their eyes and stopped their ears. And so in Ezekiel 11 it says: Then the glory of the Lord went up from within the city and stopped above the mountain (the Mount of Olives) east of it. This was a sign of judgment leading to destruction: God leaving the place where He once dwelled, moving out of the temple, eastward from the city, up to the Mount of Olives. But Ezekiel also received from God a message of hope that one day the temple would be restored and God would return to it. And so in Ezekiel 43 it says: I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east... and the glory of the Lord entered the temple. And so I wonder: as we see Jesus coming in from the east, from the Mount of Olives, moving down into the city and into the temple, do we see here the return of the glorious presence of God? What Jesus would do when he entered that city and what would happen to him was the only way for the glory of the Lord to return and stay with his people. Jesus encountered the same sort of rebellion, the same sort of blindness, from his very own people (we see that in the Pharisees saying, Stop your disciples from crying out!). It was the same sort of rebellion that had meant the glory of the Lord left and went up to the east. But now Jesus says that the only way the only way for humankind to dwell in the presence of God is for the glory of the Lord to return to Jerusalem, to the temple, and then for the people of God to crucify him. This is the only way. The return of the glorious King. The Weeping Savior As Jesus reached the top of the Mount of Olives and saw the city spread out beneath him, he wept. His heart breaks as he approaches Jerusalem and sees the city. He weeps over it and said: If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peacebut now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of Gods coming to you. We only see Jesus described as crying twice in the Gospels. Once is at the tomb of Lazarus, where Jesus weeps at the death of his friendJesus weeps at the seeming victory of death, at what that means for the disruption of human relationships and the burden of grief on those left behind. Jesus weeps. And here, this is the second time: Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. I dont know if youre much of a crier. I have been a big crier over my life. Huge. Its lessened maybe over the last ten years, but I tell you, as a woman leader it is awkward. You really feel embarrassed and, you know, its just kind of part of who you are. It plays into this narrative and youre like, Oh, stop it! But Ive come to realize that when you cry, something is happeningsomething telling you to take notice. Just telling you to take notice of what is going on. Sometimes its because youre particularly tired or stressed. Sometimes its telling you that theres an injustice happening and you feel really helpless about it. Sometimes its telling you that a boundary has been crossed. Sometimes its telling you that youre really invested in whatever is going on. Sometimes it can even tell you that youre happy. We had a wedding on Friday, and there were tears they were very happy tears. You see me when people are giving testimonies: they are happy and proud tears. Well, for Jesus, we need to ask: is this an indication that hes worried or stressed over what is to come? He is moving into a time that he knows will be agonizing (we actually do see him described in Hebrews as praying with loud cries in the Garden of Gethsemane). So possibly he does have some tears in another moment that we dont see recorded in the Gospels. But here were not seeing him crying for himself. Were not seeing him crying because of whats to come. Hes not stressed about that, even though he may have been. What were seeing is him crying with a broken heart over the people that he longs to draw to himself, and yet who are blind and deaf to his cries. He is crying with a broken heart over the people that he longs to draw to himself, and yet who are blind and deaf to his cries. He is coming to the people of God who should be recognizing the King when he comes to them, and yet he knows that they will not. And he has seen this pattern. You know, maybe its a cry of frustration hes seen the pattern of the people of God: being warned and then ignoring, and experiencing pain and destruction, and then rebuilding and returning and then doing it again, and again. He sees that that is possibly the pattern that is going to happen again now, even though the glory of the Lord is returning to these people. But more than that, hes weeping and the language is pretty strong. Its like sobbing. Hes crying because he longs to have these people know the peace that he brings. They longed for peace. Theres almost no human being that doesnt long for peace, even if its a self-centered understanding of what that peace is. Jesus knew Jerusalem longed for peace; they wanted political peace, they wanted spiritual peace, they wanted religious peace. But they werent able to see the King coming, returning to bring that peace. If only, he says, you had known what would bring you peace. But they were spiritually blind in the previous chapterwhich is one of the reasons why I think it would be really great. (Grab one of these!) In the previous chapter, you meet someone who is physically blind and yet who is spiritually very able to see Jesus the King, the Son of David. And he receives his healing, his peace. His heart is open to Jesus. His deepest need is met. But here here, Jerusalem is spiritually blind. They have gone down a path that has made them move towards darkness for themselves, and ultimately darkness for the Son of God. And just as Jesus would come one day on that warriors horse to set things right and to bring true justice, the destruction of Jerusalem would come as a symbol of that, in about 40 years time. Walls would be built, hemmed in on every side, and people whom God loved would suffer. And so Jesus is not crying angry tears, or tears of judgment. Jesus is crying grief-filled tearscompassionate tears. God is not a cold God who says, I told you so, and revels in being right. Gods heart breaks when people do not see the way of peace. So, in Lukes gospel, this is particularly a heart-breaking entry into Jerusalem: with a humble Lord, a glorious King, but a weeping Savior. And so I think there are, in the spirit of our previous series, some questions for us at the end of this passage. First of all, can our hearts (perhaps today more than ever) recognize a humble Kinga King who doesnt bring victory like that, who exercises his courage in facing suffering?A King who exercises his power in service and sacrifice, a King who turns the power structures of his world upside down. Can our hearts recognize a King like that? Because when we look at leaders in our world, that might be very different. When we look at what we feel we need to set our lives right, can we recognize a humble King? Secondly, will our hearts praise the glorious King?Can we really see in Jesus the return of Gods presence this Emmanuel, God with us coming to set things right on a cross and then in an empty tomb? And will we praise him? Will we move from assent to Yes, I see the evidence, to Yes, I will follow you, to I praise you you are wonderful, I love you? Or will we simply allow creation to do that for us when Jesus returns? Because his kingship is cosmic; it encompasses the entire creation, and the creation will recognize him and respond. But will we do it now? And finally, have our hearts received the One whose heart breaks for us?When we think of Jesus and the events of that first Holy Week, do we see this as just a person in history, or do we allow this One who loves his people so much that he would sob for them (not for himself, for them) into our lives? Have our hearts received this One? And do they break for those who have not? In our day and age, its quite easy to keep church to a Sunday and to keep our beliefs to ourselves. I dont mean its easy because we want to, but we just feel that wed make fewer enemies and smaller waves if we dont talk about it. But we must know that Jesus looks at the entire worldanybody who has not yet been able to come to that point of saying Yes, I receive himnot with judgment, but with weeping compassion. It is good for people to know him. It is the thing that will help them flourish and live. And that is why Jesus wept over Jerusalem: because bad things that they would have to handle themselves, without any courage and without any presence of God, were coming. And so he calls us to have that same softness of heart that radical grief for those who do not yet know him, but also the confidence that if he did everything in his power then, he is doing everything now. Today is still the day of his weeping compassion, not his warrior white horse. Today is the day to see him as the humble Lord, the glorious King, and the weeping Savior. Amen.

John 11:3-7,17,20-27,33b-45The sisters of Lazarus sent word to Jesus, saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.”When Jesus heard this he said,“This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.Then after this he said to his disciples, "Let us go back to Judea.”When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home.Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here,my brother would not have died.But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,God will give you.”Jesus said to her,“Your brother will rise.”Martha said,“I know he will rise,in the resurrection on the last day.”Jesus told her,“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.Do you believe this?”She said to him, “Yes, Lord.I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,the one who is coming into the world.”He became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?”They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”And Jesus wept.So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.”Jesus said to her,“Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”So they took away the stone.And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me.I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”And when he had said this,He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”The dead man came out,tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.So Jesus said to them,“Untie him and let him go.”Now many of the Jews who had come to Maryand seen what he had done began to believe in him.

April 6, 2025. Fr. Tyler's homily for the 5th Sunday in Lent. Gospel John 11:1-45 Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,  the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil  and dried his feet with her hair;  it was her brother Lazarus who was ill. So the sisters sent word to him saying,  “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death,  but is for the glory of God,  that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill,  he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples,  “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him,  “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you,  and you want to go back there?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,  because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks at night, he stumbles,  because the light is not in him.”  He said this, and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.” But Jesus was talking about his death,  while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.  So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe.  Let us go to him.” So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,  “Let us also go to die with him.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus  had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary  to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus,  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life;  whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” When she had said this,  she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,  “The teacher is here and is asking for you.” As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village,  but was still where Martha had met him. So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her  saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her,  presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,  she fell at his feet and said to him,  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,  he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,  “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said,  “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man  have done something so that this man would not have died?” So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him,  “Lord, by now there will be a stench;  he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe  you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me;  but because of the crowd here I have said this,  that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice,  “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands,  and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him. OR:  John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45 The sisters of Lazarus sent word to Jesus, saying,  “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death,  but is for the glory of God,  that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill,  he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples,  "Let us go back to Judea.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus  had already been in the tomb for four days. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him;  but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus,  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life;  whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” He became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,  “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said,  “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man  have done something so that this man would not have died?” So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him,  “Lord, by now there will be a stench;  he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe  you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said,  “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me;  but because of the crowd here I have said this,  that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice,  “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands,  and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.

Palm Sunday. The Triumphal Entry. Dr. Chris Croghan explains how to preach this text ahead of Holy Week, especially when many people might hear this triumphant text, skip the cross on Good Friday, and the next thing they hear is Jesus is alive on Easter Sunday. Jesus had been predicting his death and resurrection but no one believed him, now, he's going to show that what he says, happens. The Jews had heard Zachariah's prophecy of the coming Messiah for thousands of years. Now, it's happening right in front of them. All of creation will rise up and confess that this is our God. HOLY WEEK GUIDE“The cross stands before us, and the empty tomb beyond it. Nothing will ever be the same. The road is narrow now. The hosannas will fade like the last notes of a half-remembered song, and in their place comes a malevolent, oppressive evil. Holy Week is upon us, and there is no turning back.”As we enter into Lent, we know that Holy Week lies on the other side of these 40 days. And though its completion is marked with triumphant joy, there is no “skip to the end” option here. The only way out is through, but it is not even our burden to bear — “We come only to hear, to receive, to be repented.”As you prepare for Holy Week, we invite you to take advantage of our brand new, free Holy Week Planning Guide, courtesy of Pastor Mark Anderson, which includes weekly planning outlines, Bible studies, activities, liturgies, and hymns. Access the guide: https://lutherhouseofstudy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/HolyWeekPlanner.pdf SING TO THE LORD Martin Luther said, "Next to the word of God, the art of music is the greatest treasure in the world." To understand the importance of hymnody in the Lutheran church, Lars Olson and Mason Van Essen sit down with Zachary Brockhoff to discuss the lectionary's hymns, their meaning and history, and how the music preaches the Gospel. 

Message for 04/06/2025 "Joy in Humility (Can I Have Your Helmet?)" by Justin McTeer. *All verses are NLT unless otherwise noted* Philippians 2:3-11 - Don't be selfish; don't try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. 5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. 6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. 7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form,8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross. 9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Luke 14:7-11 - When Jesus noticed that all who had come to the dinner were trying to sit in the seats of honor near the head of the table, he gave them this advice: 8 “When you are invited to a wedding feast, don't sit in the seat of honor. What if someone who is more distinguished than you has also been invited? 9 The host will come and say, ‘Give this person your seat.' Then you will be embarrassed, and you will have to take whatever seat is left at the foot of the table! 10 “Instead, take the lowest place at the foot of the table. Then when your host sees you, he will come and say, ‘Friend, we have a better place for you!' Then you will be honored in front of all the other guests. 11 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 1 Peter 5:5b-6 - And all of you, dress yourselves in humility as you relate to one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 6 So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. John 6:5-13 - Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him. Turning to Philip, he asked, “Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” 6 He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip replied, “Even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough money to feed them!” 8 Then Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up.9 “There's a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?” 10 “Tell everyone to sit down,” Jesus said. So they all sat down on the grassy slopes. (The men alone numbered about 5,000.) 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them to the people. Afterward he did the same with the fish. And they all ate as much as they wanted. 12 After everyone was full, Jesus told his disciples, “Now gather the leftovers, so that nothing is wasted.” 13 So they picked up the pieces and filled twelve baskets with scraps left by the people who had eaten from the five barley loaves. Matthew 21:2-3 - “Go into the village over there,” he said. “As soon as you enter it, you will see a donkey tied there, with its colt beside it. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone asks what you are doing, just say, ‘The Lord needs them,' and he will immediately let you take them.” Matthew 26:6-13 - Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon, a man who had previously had leprosy. 7 While he was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume and poured it over his head. 8 The disciples were indignant when they saw this. “What a waste!” they said. 9 “It could have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.” 10 But Jesus, aware of this, replied, “Why criticize this woman for doing such a good thing to me? 11 You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me. 12 She has poured this perfume on me to prepare my body for burial. 13 I tell you the truth, wherever the Good News is preached throughout the world, this woman's deed will be remembered and discussed.” John 21:18-22 - “I tell you the truth, when you were young, you were able to do as you liked; you dressed yourself and went wherever you wanted to go. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and others will dress you and take you where you don't want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to let him know by what kind of death he would glorify God. Then Jesus told him, “Follow me.” 20 Peter turned around and saw behind them the disciple Jesus loved—the one who had leaned over to Jesus during supper and asked, “Lord, who will betray you?” 21 Peter asked Jesus, “What about him, Lord?” 22 Jesus replied, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.”

“‘Go into the village over there,’ he said. ‘As soon as you enter it, you will see a donkey tied there, with its colt beside it. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone asks what you are doing, just say, “The Lord needs them,” and he will immediately let you take them.’” (Matthew 21:2–3 NLT) A Sunday school teacher asked her class, “Does anybody know what next Sunday is?” A little six-year-old girl raised her hand and said, “Next Sunday is Palm Sunday.” The teacher said, “Very good. Do you know what the meaning of Palm Sunday is?” The little girl replied, “That is the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and the people laid palm branches at His feet.” The teacher said, “That is exactly right. Does anybody know what the following Sunday is?” The same little girl raised her hand and said, “That is the day that Jesus rose again from the dead. It is Easter Sunday.” “Very good,” the teacher said. The little girl continued, “But if He sees His shadow, He will have to go back into the ground for six weeks.” For the next two and a half weeks leading up to Easter, we’re going to look at the meaning and significance of several different events that took place during the Passion Week—the days from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. And we’re going to start with the arrangements Jesus made for His arrival in Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. Jesus had made the trip to Jerusalem countless times for various festivals and occasions. But His arrival on Palm Sunday was unique. Look at His instructions to His disciples in the passage above. Hundreds of years earlier, the Old Testament prophet Zechariah had written these words: “Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey—riding on a donkey’s colt” (Zechariah 9:9 NLT). Jesus was certainly aware of the prophecy—and so were many people in the crowd that awaited Him in Jerusalem. Prophecies about the Messiah—the King, the Chosen One—loomed large in Jewish life. But always with a political slant. The Jewish people of Jesus’ day were waiting for a Messiah who would lead them in revolt against the Roman Empire. Their baseless expectations often distracted them and kept them from embracing Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of Heaven. So Jesus rarely announced Himself as the Messiah during His public ministry. But that changed on Palm Sunday. When Jesus chose a donkey colt as His means of transportation, He was sending an unmistakable message. He was saying to everyone, “I am the king Zechariah prophesied about. I am the Chosen One, the Son of God. The Messiah has come!” In the culture of the first century AD, a king who entered a city on a donkey came in peace; a king who entered a city on horseback came to conquer. So Jesus was also making it clear that He was not a political threat to Rome. He was, however, a threat to the Jewish religious leaders. He knew they were plotting to kill Him. He knew that in a matter of days, His disciple Judas Iscariot would help them by agreeing to betray Him. So Jesus’ decision to enter Jerusalem on a donkey was also intended to provoke His enemies. He wanted them to follow through on their plans to execute Him so that He could fulfill God’s plan of salvation. Jesus made it clear that He is the Messiah, God’s chosen One to save the world. Everyone who believes in Him will reap the rewards of His saving work—that is, eternal life. Reflection question: How do you know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the world? Discuss Today's Devo in Harvest Discipleship! — Listen to the Greg Laurie Podcast Become a Harvest PartnerSupport the show: https://harvest.org/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An April Fools Prank Goes Awry.By SilverFoxMullet - Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories .Spring break was just that, a break. My leg, actually.When I went home to Ottawa for spring break, I met up with a few of my old high school buds, and we took a day trip to the Quebec side for some skiing at one of the nearby hills, north of Ottawa. Mid afternoon, I hit a patch of ice and went down hard. It was quite a day for falls, as the hills were pretty icy this late in the season. I tried to get up, but my right ankle hurt like a bitch. None of my friends had stopped, as we were all falling a lot today, they just assumed I would get up and follow them."Aw fuck!" I groaned. I lay there in the snow for a few minutes, until someone slid to a stop next to me."Hey, are you all right?" the guy asks."No, I hurt my ankle. Fuck.""Don't move it, I'll find the ski patrol. Hang on." He skied away to get help.30 seconds later another guy stopped. Same question. "Hey are you all right?""I think I sprained my ankle. There was a guy here a minute ago, he said he'd send the ski patrol."The guy turned and looked around, then waved and yelled "Ici! Over here! Vien! Here they are."Two guys in red jackets stopped and asked what's wrong. This other guy said "Good luck!" to me, and skied away, as I recounted the fall and my symptoms. The ski patrol guys were great, they radioed for a stretcher and 20 minutes later they're loading me into an ambulance. The rest of the day was a lot of waiting, x-rays, and paperwork. The local hospital had a seasonal trauma unit for all the ski injuries, and they're used to dealing with the inter-provincial healthcare.I called my Dad, who said he'd fetch me from the hospital, then called my buddies who were still in the chalet'. He told them to go home without me. They commiserated and said they'd drop by my house tomorrow and see how I was doing.I eventually got a cast on my right leg. It spanned from my toes to my mid-thigh. I was issued a pair of crutches, and a whole ream of instructions (in both French and English of course) about what to do and what not to do. My Dad showed up somewhere during this tedious process and reassured me everything would be fine.We got home really late, after stopping at a pharmacy for pain meds, and stopping for takeout, damn I was hungry by then. I was asleep in minutes after I took one of those pills after getting home.Next morning, I had to take another pill, damn leg was throbbing like mad. I had to learn how to negotiate using the toilet with crutches, fuck, that's pain in the arse. Then I had to figure out how to shower. They gave me a shower bag for the cast but I couldn't get the damn thing on by myself. Mom was trying to be motherly (naturally) but I was way too embarrassed to be seen naked in front of her. My Dad was a trooper, he helped me with all the bathroom stuff, and I got my shower OK.I wasn't going to be able to drive for a while, so my folks said they'd drive me back to school in Toronto. I could come home by bus and get my car once I was able to drive. Great."Actually, if I could have my car on campus, one of my buddies could drive me around. None of the other guys have a car." Not that my rattly old car was much of a ride, but it got us from A to B."OK" my Dad says, "Your mother can drive you there, and I'll follow in your car, then we'll drive back together.""Awesome, sounds like a plan!"The rest of the day my parents helped me work out how to deal with the cast and crutches and take care of personal stuff by myself, like getting dressed, showering, shaving (yeah, ever try to balance on one foot to shave? fuckin hell), and using the toilet. My mom went shopping and bought me a bunch of baggy sweat pants, something that would go over my cast.My old friends dropped by with some hard coolers the next day, thinking it would cheer me up; but I had to pass on those due to the meds I was on. They laughed at me and drank it all, themselves. We all had a good laugh about my predicament, and they wished me luck at college. Gonna need it, eh?Then it was time to head back to school. I'd been texting and calling my buddies at school, told them the whole idiot story of my misadventures. They laughed at me big time, and of course they worried about their ride, what was gonna happen to my car? I told them about the arrangements and they were happy that it would still be available.The drive to school was really tedious, seemed to last forever, because it was so fricking uncomfortable to sit there with that stiff cast on. They got me and my stuff into my room in the dorm, and said their good-byes. I was so happy that I was on the first floor! No stairs here but there were stairs all over campus. Sure, there's elevators everywhere but I didn't know where most of them were.First order of business, I gotta pee after that road trip. I used the big accessible stall in the bathroom, that was great. Grab bars, lots of room, it really was made for this kind of thing. Easier than the bathroom at home, that's for sure.I was the butt of a lot of jokes and shit for the first few days, but otherwise it was fine. Down in the dining hall I spotted someone else who'd had a fun spring break. There was a girl with her whole arm in a cast, like from shoulder to wrist, with the elbow bent at 90 degrees. I wondered what happened to her. Skiing too I supposed. My buddies said we'd make a great couple and told me to go ask her out. No way, dudes, not gonna happen. I can't talk to girls, I always get freaked out and clam up.The end of March rolled around, and I still had weeks to go before getting my cast off. There was a party on Saturday night, and I was weaning off the strong meds by now so I could have a few drinks. My floor mates were getting me drinks, too; so I ended up having a few more than I would normally have. I was feeling buzzed by the end of the night.One of the guys suddenly showed up with a wheelchair. "Robbo! we got you some wheels, man!""Where'd you steal that from?" I asked, a little dubious about the idea of them scamming someone's chair."No No, totally not stolen, we got it for you from the Red Cross. It's legit, dude!""All right! Let's check out my new ride then!" I hopped over and settled into the chair. They adjusted the footrest out for me and one of them took my crutches, and they started wheeling me away. "Where we goin?" I asked."It's a surprise." says one of them, and then pull a pillowcase down over my head so I can't see where we're going. When I try to pull the covering off, they stopped me, and then the started grabbing my arms & duct taping them to the chair's armrests. We were outside by now, and I started yelling, until they taped the pillowcase tight against my mouth, to muff my yelling. Now I was getting pissed, but there's not much I could do, except literally ride this out.They laughed and giggled and make goofy jokes as they wheeled me around campus. EventuallyI had no idea where I am, and it suddenly strikes me that it was now April 1st. The alcoholic buzz is wearing off fast under the rush of my adrenaline and anger, and I wondered what kind of demented nightmare game they've come up with.I heard more laughing, girls this time, and they make whispered comments back and forth with the guys. I'm now in a building, but I had no clue where. My chair was pushed around some more, bumping into stuff, and then a body is dumped in my lap, then they yanked the duct tape off the pillowcase and I can again my mouth. The room is pitch black. The giggling and laughing is cut off by the slamming of a door, and everything goes quiet.I think there's a girl in my lap, or a small, really nice smelling guy with long hair. She's quiescent, asleep or passed out, pressed against my chest."Hey. Hey, wake up." I said.No response, she's just sitting there, draped over my lap. She's warm and breathing, so it's not a manikin or something. I wondered if she's okay.I started to shift a bit, can't use my arms because they're taped down, but I try to shake her awake with my rocking shoulders. It didn't work, and now I'm afraid that if I move too much she'll fall off onto the floor."Hey, uh, miss, wake up." louder. She's out of it. I turn my head to the side so I'm not yelling in her ear and holler "Hey, enough crap, let me out of here!" Silence reigns. Well, fuck. Now what?'Now what'. Then the fire alarm starts blaring. It startles the heck out of me, but still isn't enough to wake the girl.  I heard loud commotion in the halls for about 30 seconds, but then suddenly there is silence. Fuck, this is getting serious. What if it's a real fire? No, no way, it's April 1st now, gotta be a prank. I'll just wait for her to wake up, and we'll get out of here. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I began to see faint outlines of what is probably a maintenance closet or storage room.The alarm rings for an annoyingly long time. 15 minutes I guess, I dunno, but it seems interminable. And I need to pee now. When the alarm finally stops the need to pee gets more insistent. I shifted uncomfortably under the weight of my passenger. Her hip is pressed up against my groin, adding to the struggle of my urge to piss.More time passes, and damn, I gotta go bad, now. I'm gonna wet myself, and her too, if I don't get out of here right now. I've tried speaking to her, yelling, shaking her, and then there was another alarm that went on and on. She just isn't gonna wake up. Did those morons drug her or something?I'm desperate now. "Come on, sleeping beauty, wake up!" Sleeping beauty? Yeah, fine, I'll try that before I piss all over her. I think a girl would be slightly less angry about a stolen kiss than wet pants. So I seek her mouth. There was a little light coming in under the door, but suddenly that light went out, and only a faint intermittent light glowed. Oh, crap! That would be the emergency exit lighting. I eventually bumped my faced against her nose, then lowered a bit and kissed her, probably a little too hard for a wakeup smooch, cause I'm dyin' here, gotta pee, gotta pee, gotta pee.She's got nice soft lips, really quite kissable, and I kinda wished she was awake and under different circumstances. I kissed her again, even harder. No response. I try again, this time I let my tongue do the talking, and I push into her mouth. Helluva way to experience my own first ‘tongue-kiss'. Finally, she stirred & turned into the kiss.Surprised, I pull back, and say "Oh thank god you're awake, help me up!"She startled, yelping at me, "Who are you?!""Help me, please, I'm gonna piss my pants! Untie me!"In the dim red glow of an exit sign I finally saw her face. She's kinda cute, not particularly pretty, and she has a cast on her right arm. It's the girl I saw in the dining hall a few times."Hurry!" I pleaded.She struggled off me, and stood. “Where the hell did you take me!” she demanded.I told her that we were both abducted by campus hooligans and locked in some storage room, but I didn't know which building. Then I said; “But I gotta pee right now and my leg is in a cast, and I'm bound to this wheelchair.She felt the tape on my wrists. It's slow going for her to undo the tape with her one weak hand, the way she's pulling at it, she's obviously not left handed.I'm not gonna make it, and I looked around. We're in a janitor's room or something. I spotted a stack of small waste baskets. "Quick, grab one of those buckets and put it between my legs."She's quick on the uptake, I'll give her that, and she grabbed the bucket for me. "Pull my pants down, hurry.""What? No!" she protested."Arrrrggghhh. Please, I'm gonna wet myself." I grind out through my clenched teeth.She reached out with that uncoordinated left hand of hers and fumbles with my sweat pants. I squirmed to lift my hips a bit to help, and the elastic waistband slipped down, exposing my tight briefs."You gotta help. Pull me out, aim for the bucket. Please?"I can see she's not happy with the situation, and she's fighting with her distaste at touching a man, a total stranger at that, in such a bizarre circumstance. But she perseveres, and that delicate hand fishes in my shorts for my cock. She paused momentarily as she made contact, then pulled my cock free. She picked up the empty bucket and aimed my ‘hose' toward the container.I groaned as I let loose. Oh god, finally! The relief was incredible. The poor girl was acting shocked as she dutifully aimed me at the bucket, and she even nudged the bucket a bit closer. I pissed on and on, holy fuck there was so much, and eventually I ran dry.Her disposition is no longer shocked, but instead she appeared to be curious."Oh thank you, you saved me so much embarrassment. You can put me back in there now. Thanks."She hesitated, and timidly tried to one-handedly stuff my cock back through the fly, and after a couple of clumsy tries I'm all set. And of course now my cock was growing fast in her hand, as I no longer had to pee, but there's a wonderful-smelling girl handling that most sensitive part of my anatomy. Something that's never happened before.That last drop of pee evidently got on her hand, and she looked a bit frantic now, "Ew" she says."Just wipe it on my sweats, it's OK." I told her, and she rubbed her hand on my inner thigh. That doesn't help with my ever increasing boner of course.She looked up at me, and her brow wrinkled. "Do you smell smoke?" she asked.It's my turn to be startled, and I looked toward the door. Oh Fuck, there's smoke coming in under the door! That alarm was real! Why wasn't it still going off? "Quick, help me get this tape off!" She started trying to pull up my sweats, but I say "No, leave that, just get me undone!"She started working on the tape on my left arm, and it took a few minutes to get me free. Working together, my right arm is unstuck in less than a minute. "Check the door." I told her as I looked around the room. No other doors, just shelves, a big sink, a floor pan for filling and emptying mop buckets, and stacks of boxes and stuff.She tried the light switch but it doesn't work. Great, my idiot friends probably unscrewed the light bulb. Then she tried the door. "It's locked!" she says."From the outside? Why the fuck would it be set up to lock people in? Sorry. I swear when I get nervous.""Is there really a fire, do you think?""I guess so, there was an alarm that went off when you were out cold.""What do we do?" She started frantically searching her pockets and said; "I can't find my phone!""I didn't even bring mine to the party. No pockets."The smell of smoke got stronger. I wheeled up next to the sink, and ran some water. Grabbing a package of paper towels, I ripped it open and dumped them in the sink. "Here, block up the crack under the door with these!"I handed her wads of soggy paper, and she knelt down to stuff them under the door. The smoke stoped coming in, thank goodness.  But now the room is black. "Now what?" she said.I shrugged, "I guess we wait and hope.""I'm scared." she said in a small voice."Come here, sit on my lap here. Oh, uh, maybe pull up my pants first." She helped me with that and sat on me. I think the gravity of the situation is now hitting her pretty hard, I know it's got me freaked out. She burrowed into my neck and wraps her good arm wraps around me. "We're OK for now." I tell her.I smelled her hair again, as she's crushed against me. Damn that feels nice. Shit, I don't even know her name. "I'm Robert by the way. Robert Green.""Suzanne. Suzanne Shelton.", she informed me."I'd say pleased to meet you Suzanne, but under these circumstances, maybe the sentiment should be I'm ecstatic to meet you. If I was by myself I would have pissed my pants and suffocated."She giggled, my goofy sense of humour somehow helped in this situation. "I'm glad to meet you too, Robert.""So how did you get here?""I don't know, I was at the dorm party and felt dizzy, then you were kissing me." She blushed again."Sorry about that, I tried to wake you for like 20 minutes, but you were really out of it. I finally thought I would try the sleeping beauty trick, and it worked. Did you drink something someone else gave you?""Oh. Shit.” She seemed to recall. “I think so. One of my floor mates gave me a coke. It must have been spiked?  I had to take some of my pain meds for my arm earlier tonight, it was bothering me. I keep trying to do too much with it all the time.""Oh, yeah, you don't want to mix booze or anything with that stuff, I know! Sorry about the pee episode. I really was going to wet my pants in another few seconds. Wet both our pants."She blushed and giggled. "I never saw a guy like that, like your, thing, before.""Wow. Okay, well, I never had a girl touch my co-, um, thing, before.""It changed when I was putting it away. Was that, um, like...'"Yeah, well, when a pretty girl touches me like that, I'm bound to get aroused."Her eyes went wide at that statement. "Oh" she said. She paused a few seconds, then put her head back on my shoulder. There was that scent again. "So. Um, you think I'm pretty?""Well, yeah, of course. You're what I think my grandpa would call 'fetching'"She giggled again. Damn, that sounds nice, and she smells really nice. Little Robert stirred down below. I heard a sharp intake of breath. Uh Oh. She felt that. I may have just ruined what might have been a moment."Am I pretty enough to make you, uh, aroused, then?""Oh, Suzanne, I am so embarrassed. Please, don't be offended, it's just circumstances, you know?"She pulled back again and looked at the door. Still no smoke. Then she looked at me with a sad smile, saying "I didn't think so." Suzanne started to get up, and I realized where our wires had crossed.I put my arms around her and said " Oh, no no. You're very pretty, and definitely arousing."She looked surprised, but settled back down on my lap. "Oh." she said. "Thank you."Just then we heard a muffled sound  of footsteps outside the door. We both yelled, and I grabbed a mop handle and rapped it against the door. The door opened, and a cloud of smoke poured in. A firefighter stood there, looking surprised behind his breathing apparatus. He hollered for help, and we were soon moved briskly from the building.I was parked in my wheelchair next to the ambulance, where Suzanne was sitting on a gurney. We both had been given oxygen and been checked over for injuries. We told campus security about how we came to be there, and they got really grim. I named names, because I could've died there, we both could've died. It was a prank, but it went sideways pretty fast when that fire broke out. Cops came over and Suzanne also named a couple of girls who she thought were in on it too. Now we were finally cleared to go."Can I walk you back to the dorms?" I asked.She laughed, "Don't you mean wheel me? You can't walk.""Can too, if I had my crutches. My idiot friends left me with this chair.""Okay, then, let's go." She beamed.Off we went. She couldn't push me with just one hand, and I was crap at navigating that chair, but we eventually got back to the residence. We chatted amiably along the way, getting to know each other. She was really easy to talk to, unlike most girls I've tried to talk to. Maybe that was it, I wasn't chatting her up.She was 18, a biology major, living in in the next dorm over. I told her I was in second year Computer Science, in the nearby dorm, so I had a single room.I told her how I broke my leg, skiing near Gatineau, and the really long day I had as a result. "How did you break your arm?""Skating. I'm usually a good skater but sometimes you just fall wrong. I spent most of that same day in the ER, just like you. It's really hard to get dressed and shower and stuff with this thing.""I know, believe me, I know all about it."We were both so fired up on adrenaline after our ordeal there was no way we could sleep. "Would you like to, uh, come over to my room, for a bit? After all this, I'm not tired, and I'd be bored doing just nothing. We could talk for a while." Oh, nice, I thought, smooth man, very smooth. NOT.She blushed, and it must've been a good one, to be visible in the dim light along the sidewalk. "I, uh, yeah. Yes. Yes I will." she stated with a bravado she didn't appear to have.I smiled up at her. "I promise to behave, Okay?""What if I don't want you to behave?" she smirked."Then you're going to have to make your wishes known, in no uncertain terms. I don't do the pushy guy thing very well.""I want to go to your room with you," she declared.To be continued.By SilverFoxMullet for Literotica

An April Fools Prank Goes Awry.By SilverFoxMullet - Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories .Spring break was just that, a break. My leg, actually.When I went home to Ottawa for spring break, I met up with a few of my old high school buds, and we took a day trip to the Quebec side for some skiing at one of the nearby hills, north of Ottawa. Mid afternoon, I hit a patch of ice and went down hard. It was quite a day for falls, as the hills were pretty icy this late in the season. I tried to get up, but my right ankle hurt like a bitch. None of my friends had stopped, as we were all falling a lot today, they just assumed I would get up and follow them."Aw fuck!" I groaned. I lay there in the snow for a few minutes, until someone slid to a stop next to me."Hey, are you all right?" the guy asks."No, I hurt my ankle. Fuck.""Don't move it, I'll find the ski patrol. Hang on." He skied away to get help.30 seconds later another guy stopped. Same question. "Hey are you all right?""I think I sprained my ankle. There was a guy here a minute ago, he said he'd send the ski patrol."The guy turned and looked around, then waved and yelled "Ici! Over here! Vien! Here they are."Two guys in red jackets stopped and asked what's wrong. This other guy said "Good luck!" to me, and skied away, as I recounted the fall and my symptoms. The ski patrol guys were great, they radioed for a stretcher and 20 minutes later they're loading me into an ambulance. The rest of the day was a lot of waiting, x-rays, and paperwork. The local hospital had a seasonal trauma unit for all the ski injuries, and they're used to dealing with the inter-provincial healthcare.I called my Dad, who said he'd fetch me from the hospital, then called my buddies who were still in the chalet'. He told them to go home without me. They commiserated and said they'd drop by my house tomorrow and see how I was doing.I eventually got a cast on my right leg. It spanned from my toes to my mid-thigh. I was issued a pair of crutches, and a whole ream of instructions (in both French and English of course) about what to do and what not to do. My Dad showed up somewhere during this tedious process and reassured me everything would be fine.We got home really late, after stopping at a pharmacy for pain meds, and stopping for takeout, damn I was hungry by then. I was asleep in minutes after I took one of those pills after getting home.Next morning, I had to take another pill, damn leg was throbbing like mad. I had to learn how to negotiate using the toilet with crutches, fuck, that's pain in the arse. Then I had to figure out how to shower. They gave me a shower bag for the cast but I couldn't get the damn thing on by myself. Mom was trying to be motherly (naturally) but I was way too embarrassed to be seen naked in front of her. My Dad was a trooper, he helped me with all the bathroom stuff, and I got my shower OK.I wasn't going to be able to drive for a while, so my folks said they'd drive me back to school in Toronto. I could come home by bus and get my car once I was able to drive. Great."Actually, if I could have my car on campus, one of my buddies could drive me around. None of the other guys have a car." Not that my rattly old car was much of a ride, but it got us from A to B."OK" my Dad says, "Your mother can drive you there, and I'll follow in your car, then we'll drive back together.""Awesome, sounds like a plan!"The rest of the day my parents helped me work out how to deal with the cast and crutches and take care of personal stuff by myself, like getting dressed, showering, shaving (yeah, ever try to balance on one foot to shave? fuckin hell), and using the toilet. My mom went shopping and bought me a bunch of baggy sweat pants, something that would go over my cast.My old friends dropped by with some hard coolers the next day, thinking it would cheer me up; but I had to pass on those due to the meds I was on. They laughed at me and drank it all, themselves. We all had a good laugh about my predicament, and they wished me luck at college. Gonna need it, eh?Then it was time to head back to school. I'd been texting and calling my buddies at school, told them the whole idiot story of my misadventures. They laughed at me big time, and of course they worried about their ride, what was gonna happen to my car? I told them about the arrangements and they were happy that it would still be available.The drive to school was really tedious, seemed to last forever, because it was so fricking uncomfortable to sit there with that stiff cast on. They got me and my stuff into my room in the dorm, and said their good-byes. I was so happy that I was on the first floor! No stairs here but there were stairs all over campus. Sure, there's elevators everywhere but I didn't know where most of them were.First order of business, I gotta pee after that road trip. I used the big accessible stall in the bathroom, that was great. Grab bars, lots of room, it really was made for this kind of thing. Easier than the bathroom at home, that's for sure.I was the butt of a lot of jokes and shit for the first few days, but otherwise it was fine. Down in the dining hall I spotted someone else who'd had a fun spring break. There was a girl with her whole arm in a cast, like from shoulder to wrist, with the elbow bent at 90 degrees. I wondered what happened to her. Skiing too I supposed. My buddies said we'd make a great couple and told me to go ask her out. No way, dudes, not gonna happen. I can't talk to girls, I always get freaked out and clam up.The end of March rolled around, and I still had weeks to go before getting my cast off. There was a party on Saturday night, and I was weaning off the strong meds by now so I could have a few drinks. My floor mates were getting me drinks, too; so I ended up having a few more than I would normally have. I was feeling buzzed by the end of the night.One of the guys suddenly showed up with a wheelchair. "Robbo! we got you some wheels, man!""Where'd you steal that from?" I asked, a little dubious about the idea of them scamming someone's chair."No No, totally not stolen, we got it for you from the Red Cross. It's legit, dude!""All right! Let's check out my new ride then!" I hopped over and settled into the chair. They adjusted the footrest out for me and one of them took my crutches, and they started wheeling me away. "Where we goin?" I asked."It's a surprise." says one of them, and then pull a pillowcase down over my head so I can't see where we're going. When I try to pull the covering off, they stopped me, and then the started grabbing my arms & duct taping them to the chair's armrests. We were outside by now, and I started yelling, until they taped the pillowcase tight against my mouth, to muff my yelling. Now I was getting pissed, but there's not much I could do, except literally ride this out.They laughed and giggled and make goofy jokes as they wheeled me around campus. EventuallyI had no idea where I am, and it suddenly strikes me that it was now April 1st. The alcoholic buzz is wearing off fast under the rush of my adrenaline and anger, and I wondered what kind of demented nightmare game they've come up with.I heard more laughing, girls this time, and they make whispered comments back and forth with the guys. I'm now in a building, but I had no clue where. My chair was pushed around some more, bumping into stuff, and then a body is dumped in my lap, then they yanked the duct tape off the pillowcase and I can again my mouth. The room is pitch black. The giggling and laughing is cut off by the slamming of a door, and everything goes quiet.I think there's a girl in my lap, or a small, really nice smelling guy with long hair. She's quiescent, asleep or passed out, pressed against my chest."Hey. Hey, wake up." I said.No response, she's just sitting there, draped over my lap. She's warm and breathing, so it's not a manikin or something. I wondered if she's okay.I started to shift a bit, can't use my arms because they're taped down, but I try to shake her awake with my rocking shoulders. It didn't work, and now I'm afraid that if I move too much she'll fall off onto the floor."Hey, uh, miss, wake up." louder. She's out of it. I turn my head to the side so I'm not yelling in her ear and holler "Hey, enough crap, let me out of here!" Silence reigns. Well, fuck. Now what?'Now what'. Then the fire alarm starts blaring. It startles the heck out of me, but still isn't enough to wake the girl.  I heard loud commotion in the halls for about 30 seconds, but then suddenly there is silence. Fuck, this is getting serious. What if it's a real fire? No, no way, it's April 1st now, gotta be a prank. I'll just wait for her to wake up, and we'll get out of here. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I began to see faint outlines of what is probably a maintenance closet or storage room.The alarm rings for an annoyingly long time. 15 minutes I guess, I dunno, but it seems interminable. And I need to pee now. When the alarm finally stops the need to pee gets more insistent. I shifted uncomfortably under the weight of my passenger. Her hip is pressed up against my groin, adding to the struggle of my urge to piss.More time passes, and damn, I gotta go bad, now. I'm gonna wet myself, and her too, if I don't get out of here right now. I've tried speaking to her, yelling, shaking her, and then there was another alarm that went on and on. She just isn't gonna wake up. Did those morons drug her or something?I'm desperate now. "Come on, sleeping beauty, wake up!" Sleeping beauty? Yeah, fine, I'll try that before I piss all over her. I think a girl would be slightly less angry about a stolen kiss than wet pants. So I seek her mouth. There was a little light coming in under the door, but suddenly that light went out, and only a faint intermittent light glowed. Oh, crap! That would be the emergency exit lighting. I eventually bumped my faced against her nose, then lowered a bit and kissed her, probably a little too hard for a wakeup smooch, cause I'm dyin' here, gotta pee, gotta pee, gotta pee.She's got nice soft lips, really quite kissable, and I kinda wished she was awake and under different circumstances. I kissed her again, even harder. No response. I try again, this time I let my tongue do the talking, and I push into her mouth. Helluva way to experience my own first ‘tongue-kiss'. Finally, she stirred & turned into the kiss.Surprised, I pull back, and say "Oh thank god you're awake, help me up!"She startled, yelping at me, "Who are you?!""Help me, please, I'm gonna piss my pants! Untie me!"In the dim red glow of an exit sign I finally saw her face. She's kinda cute, not particularly pretty, and she has a cast on her right arm. It's the girl I saw in the dining hall a few times."Hurry!" I pleaded.She struggled off me, and stood. “Where the hell did you take me!” she demanded.I told her that we were both abducted by campus hooligans and locked in some storage room, but I didn't know which building. Then I said; “But I gotta pee right now and my leg is in a cast, and I'm bound to this wheelchair.She felt the tape on my wrists. It's slow going for her to undo the tape with her one weak hand, the way she's pulling at it, she's obviously not left handed.I'm not gonna make it, and I looked around. We're in a janitor's room or something. I spotted a stack of small waste baskets. "Quick, grab one of those buckets and put it between my legs."She's quick on the uptake, I'll give her that, and she grabbed the bucket for me. "Pull my pants down, hurry.""What? No!" she protested."Arrrrggghhh. Please, I'm gonna wet myself." I grind out through my clenched teeth.She reached out with that uncoordinated left hand of hers and fumbles with my sweat pants. I squirmed to lift my hips a bit to help, and the elastic waistband slipped down, exposing my tight briefs."You gotta help. Pull me out, aim for the bucket. Please?"I can see she's not happy with the situation, and she's fighting with her distaste at touching a man, a total stranger at that, in such a bizarre circumstance. But she perseveres, and that delicate hand fishes in my shorts for my cock. She paused momentarily as she made contact, then pulled my cock free. She picked up the empty bucket and aimed my ‘hose' toward the container.I groaned as I let loose. Oh god, finally! The relief was incredible. The poor girl was acting shocked as she dutifully aimed me at the bucket, and she even nudged the bucket a bit closer. I pissed on and on, holy fuck there was so much, and eventually I ran dry.Her disposition is no longer shocked, but instead she appeared to be curious."Oh thank you, you saved me so much embarrassment. You can put me back in there now. Thanks."She hesitated, and timidly tried to one-handedly stuff my cock back through the fly, and after a couple of clumsy tries I'm all set. And of course now my cock was growing fast in her hand, as I no longer had to pee, but there's a wonderful-smelling girl handling that most sensitive part of my anatomy. Something that's never happened before.That last drop of pee evidently got on her hand, and she looked a bit frantic now, "Ew" she says."Just wipe it on my sweats, it's OK." I told her, and she rubbed her hand on my inner thigh. That doesn't help with my ever increasing boner of course.She looked up at me, and her brow wrinkled. "Do you smell smoke?" she asked.It's my turn to be startled, and I looked toward the door. Oh Fuck, there's smoke coming in under the door! That alarm was real! Why wasn't it still going off? "Quick, help me get this tape off!" She started trying to pull up my sweats, but I say "No, leave that, just get me undone!"She started working on the tape on my left arm, and it took a few minutes to get me free. Working together, my right arm is unstuck in less than a minute. "Check the door." I told her as I looked around the room. No other doors, just shelves, a big sink, a floor pan for filling and emptying mop buckets, and stacks of boxes and stuff.She tried the light switch but it doesn't work. Great, my idiot friends probably unscrewed the light bulb. Then she tried the door. "It's locked!" she says."From the outside? Why the fuck would it be set up to lock people in? Sorry. I swear when I get nervous.""Is there really a fire, do you think?""I guess so, there was an alarm that went off when you were out cold.""What do we do?" She started frantically searching her pockets and said; "I can't find my phone!""I didn't even bring mine to the party. No pockets."The smell of smoke got stronger. I wheeled up next to the sink, and ran some water. Grabbing a package of paper towels, I ripped it open and dumped them in the sink. "Here, block up the crack under the door with these!"I handed her wads of soggy paper, and she knelt down to stuff them under the door. The smoke stoped coming in, thank goodness.  But now the room is black. "Now what?" she said.I shrugged, "I guess we wait and hope.""I'm scared." she said in a small voice."Come here, sit on my lap here. Oh, uh, maybe pull up my pants first." She helped me with that and sat on me. I think the gravity of the situation is now hitting her pretty hard, I know it's got me freaked out. She burrowed into my neck and wraps her good arm wraps around me. "We're OK for now." I tell her.I smelled her hair again, as she's crushed against me. Damn that feels nice. Shit, I don't even know her name. "I'm Robert by the way. Robert Green.""Suzanne. Suzanne Shelton.", she informed me."I'd say pleased to meet you Suzanne, but under these circumstances, maybe the sentiment should be I'm ecstatic to meet you. If I was by myself I would have pissed my pants and suffocated."She giggled, my goofy sense of humour somehow helped in this situation. "I'm glad to meet you too, Robert.""So how did you get here?""I don't know, I was at the dorm party and felt dizzy, then you were kissing me." She blushed again."Sorry about that, I tried to wake you for like 20 minutes, but you were really out of it. I finally thought I would try the sleeping beauty trick, and it worked. Did you drink something someone else gave you?""Oh. Shit.” She seemed to recall. “I think so. One of my floor mates gave me a coke. It must have been spiked?  I had to take some of my pain meds for my arm earlier tonight, it was bothering me. I keep trying to do too much with it all the time.""Oh, yeah, you don't want to mix booze or anything with that stuff, I know! Sorry about the pee episode. I really was going to wet my pants in another few seconds. Wet both our pants."She blushed and giggled. "I never saw a guy like that, like your, thing, before.""Wow. Okay, well, I never had a girl touch my co-, um, thing, before.""It changed when I was putting it away. Was that, um, like...'"Yeah, well, when a pretty girl touches me like that, I'm bound to get aroused."Her eyes went wide at that statement. "Oh" she said. She paused a few seconds, then put her head back on my shoulder. There was that scent again. "So. Um, you think I'm pretty?""Well, yeah, of course. You're what I think my grandpa would call 'fetching'"She giggled again. Damn, that sounds nice, and she smells really nice. Little Robert stirred down below. I heard a sharp intake of breath. Uh Oh. She felt that. I may have just ruined what might have been a moment."Am I pretty enough to make you, uh, aroused, then?""Oh, Suzanne, I am so embarrassed. Please, don't be offended, it's just circumstances, you know?"She pulled back again and looked at the door. Still no smoke. Then she looked at me with a sad smile, saying "I didn't think so." Suzanne started to get up, and I realized where our wires had crossed.I put my arms around her and said " Oh, no no. You're very pretty, and definitely arousing."She looked surprised, but settled back down on my lap. "Oh." she said. "Thank you."Just then we heard a muffled sound  of footsteps outside the door. We both yelled, and I grabbed a mop handle and rapped it against the door. The door opened, and a cloud of smoke poured in. A firefighter stood there, looking surprised behind his breathing apparatus. He hollered for help, and we were soon moved briskly from the building.I was parked in my wheelchair next to the ambulance, where Suzanne was sitting on a gurney. We both had been given oxygen and been checked over for injuries. We told campus security about how we came to be there, and they got really grim. I named names, because I could've died there, we both could've died. It was a prank, but it went sideways pretty fast when that fire broke out. Cops came over and Suzanne also named a couple of girls who she thought were in on it too. Now we were finally cleared to go."Can I walk you back to the dorms?" I asked.She laughed, "Don't you mean wheel me? You can't walk.""Can too, if I had my crutches. My idiot friends left me with this chair.""Okay, then, let's go." She beamed.Off we went. She couldn't push me with just one hand, and I was crap at navigating that chair, but we eventually got back to the residence. We chatted amiably along the way, getting to know each other. She was really easy to talk to, unlike most girls I've tried to talk to. Maybe that was it, I wasn't chatting her up.She was 18, a biology major, living in in the next dorm over. I told her I was in second year Computer Science, in the nearby dorm, so I had a single room.I told her how I broke my leg, skiing near Gatineau, and the really long day I had as a result. "How did you break your arm?""Skating. I'm usually a good skater but sometimes you just fall wrong. I spent most of that same day in the ER, just like you. It's really hard to get dressed and shower and stuff with this thing.""I know, believe me, I know all about it."We were both so fired up on adrenaline after our ordeal there was no way we could sleep. "Would you like to, uh, come over to my room, for a bit? After all this, I'm not tired, and I'd be bored doing just nothing. We could talk for a while." Oh, nice, I thought, smooth man, very smooth. NOT.She blushed, and it must've been a good one, to be visible in the dim light along the sidewalk. "I, uh, yeah. Yes. Yes I will." she stated with a bravado she didn't appear to have.I smiled up at her. "I promise to behave, Okay?""What if I don't want you to behave?" she smirked."Then you're going to have to make your wishes known, in no uncertain terms. I don't do the pushy guy thing very well.""I want to go to your room with you," she declared.To be continued.By SilverFoxMullet for Literotica

Matthew 21:1-11 ESV The Triumphal Entry21 Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,' and he will send them at once.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,5 “Say to the daughter of Zion,‘Behold, your king is coming to you,    humble, and mounted on a donkey,    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'”6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. 8 Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” 10 And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” 11 And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.” For more information about Redeemer Church Lubbock visit our website at redeemerlubbock.org.

Sarah interviews Stella Harris, certified intimacy educator, sex coach, and author. Stella gives the 4-1-1 on how to ACTUALLY listen, hear, and be a safer person when it comes to communication, especially about some of the scarier stuff - sex, relationships, and kink. Stella's tools will help you put language to what you want and share it. Stella Harris is the author of two books, Tongue Tied: Untangling Communication in Sex, Kink, and Relationships, and The Ultimate Guide to Threesomes. You can find Sarah on instagram @psychandthecitybk & @psychandthecity.bsky.socialand Stella at www.stellaharris.net@stellaharriserotica on Instagramor @stellaharris.bsky.social

Room and Bored: Part 5 Dale's schedule filled up with women's requests.. Based on a post by Krosis, in 5 parts. Listen to the ►  Podcast at Steamy Stories. At college, Melanie reminded Dale of their date that weekend. He nodded, he was originally going to cancel, but now that Nancy and Dale had -- was 'broken up' the correct term? -- well, whatever it was, it was done, so he figured he'd take the pretty platinum blonde to the movie and try to get on with his life. Just before he left the campus, though, he got a picture message from an unknown number. Confused, he opened it to see a photo of him taking Nancy from behind in their kitchen. The pic was a bit grainy, obviously taken from outside the house, but both their faces could easily be identified. A text then arrived from the same number: *My place, 6pm -- Helena*   That morning, Helena woke at 8 AM sharp. She had no choice in the matter, her parents had drilled it into her for most of her life so that she wouldn't be late for school, and even now, when she was no longer attending any house of learning, her body still habitually woke her up at that time. "Ugh, " She got up, stretched her lithe body, and pulled on some sweatpants and a tight t-shirt over a bra and undies. As she headed toward her bedroom door, she glanced out her window and stopped short. Dale's house across the street had its front windows open, and, she squinted, was that, ? She rushed down the hallway to the second floor's front balcony and threw it open. Sure enough, that was Nancy bent over the kitchen counter, getting fucked by, "Dale?" Helena pulled out her phone and zoomed the camera in. Not good enough! She cast about, saw her Dad's bird watching binoculars, and grabbed them. She pressed her camera lens to one of the eye holes of the binos and lined up the shot. There! She snapped several pics before she saw Dale thrust deep and cry out as he filled the voluptuous housewife with his cum. Shaking, Helena went back inside to decide what to do about this revelation. Obviously if Nancy's husband saw these pics, then her marriage would be over, and Dale would probably get the shit kicked out of him. Helena didn't like the thought of that, but she didn't care about Nancy's marriage; she barely knew the woman. She got a text from her Mom: *Won't be home tonight, try not to fuck the whole neighborhood while we're out, slut* Helena's parents hadn't come home the previous night either. She was pretty certain that they were over at a swinger couple's house, and it seemed that they had hit it off. Her mother was always ribbing Helena about her high sex drive, but the young woman had actually been a virgin until she had tricked a blindfolded Dale into sex almost 2 weeks ago, and even that had been an accident. Thinking about Dale's long cock slipping inside her and filling her with his sizable load made her nipples hard. It had been a frequent masturbatory inspiration since. She needed more, and with these pics she knew she could get more, she just had to be bold, like her mother. 'Like mother, like daughter,' she heard her mother's voice in her head. "Yeah," she agreed. Dale finds himself at the beck and call of demanding women. Things were strained between Dale and Nancy after he got home from school, not only because she had broken off their burgeoning romance, but also due to his concern about Helena's text that contained picture evidence of him and his married landlady having sex. What did Helena want from him? he wondered. After dinner, he headed over to Helena's house at 6 PM, as ordered. The strawberry blonde answered the door, as usual, with a menacing grin on her pretty face. She was wearing a tight t-shirt and sweatpants today. "Right on time, slave." Dale stared at her. Slave? "Get in here." He stepped in and she closed and locked the door behind him. "Oh, now that you're here, I don't know what to make you do first." "What are your plans for that pic?" he asked her. "Nuttin'," she replied, "as long as you do what I say, obvs." "And if I don't do what you say?" She sighed. "It gets sent to Nancy's husband, and terrible things happen. You ready to stop talking now?" "Nancy's a good person, Helena; she doesn't deserve this." She stepped forward, the top of her head coming only as high as his chin. Dale hadn't realized how short she actually was. "She's a cheating whore, and her husband deserves to know, don't you think?" He bit his tongue and scowled, realizing that yelling wouldn't help the situation. She turned back away from him. "Okay, so the pics are saved to my cloud, and I even printed 'em out, in case you're good enough at computers to hack my account." Dale sighed, Helena had prepared well. "What do you want me to do?" She bounced, her B-cups bobbling about in her shirt. "Ooh, I was hoping I'd be inspired when you got here, but now, too many options, and I can't decide on any! Oh, I know, " She pulled out her phone and started typing. "I joined a View dit group for masters and slaves earlier today, so I'll ask them what I should have you do. Hmm, " Blip! Blip! Blip! Her eyes lit up and she laughed, "Ha, awesome! C'mon up to Mom's room." He followed her up the ornate staircase to Trish's bedroom. "Sit on the bed." She rummaged through her mother's wardrobes and grabbed some things. "Wait here, " She went into the adjoining bathroom and closed the door. A few minutes later, she came out, still wearing the t-shirt, but now she had garters with dark, thigh-high nylon stockings on instead of her sweatpants. She dropped her phone onto the side table, climbed onto the bed, and nibbled her lower lip, reminding Dale of her mother. Sitting at the head of the bed, she spread her legs and he could see that she also had some lacy black panties on. She extended one long, slim leg. "Suck on my toes." He blinked. She had been wearing Chucks when he came in, so her feet were probably sweaty. She frowned and reached for her phone. "How disappointing." Dale grabbed her dainty, stocking-covered foot and shoved the toes into his mouth, grimacing as he started to suck on them. "Mmm, " she sighed, smiled, and started typing again. A few minutes later, she said, "Dang, this person really likes nylons. Do you like my legs, Dale? You can stop sucking." He let go of her toes. Despite the degradation of the act, his cock was getting hard. "Yes, you have gorgeous legs, Helena." "Just like my Mom's?" He considered. "Hers are gorgeous too." She was watching him very closely now. "Which do you prefer?" He didn't know how he should answer. "Be honest, I won't get mad." "Your mom's are more toned; she works hard to keep in shape. You're naturally slim, so you don't need to work out. Sorry, I think toned is better than slim." "Hmm, I see, take out your cock." "Uh, " "Now!" Dale got off the bed, pulled down his jeans and underwear, and stood there. At Helena's direction, he sat back on the bed before her. Then she moved her feet down and took his cock between them. "Umm, " It was awkward, but she was determined. Soon, she was able to stroke up and down his rising erection between her stockinged feet, the nylon catching at the skin of his shaft as it rasped up and down. Dale had never felt anything like it before. "Why, are you doing this?" he gasped. "Because I want to. Why else?" She moved one foot so the arch of her foot pressed against his shaft and her toes grasped at the head of his cock while her other foot continued to stroke. He was having trouble controlling his breathing. "Fuck, I'm gonna, " "Yeah? So cool!" She moved her feet upon him faster until he grunted and shot his cum onto the bottom of her nylon-covered foot. She kept stroking him, but it soon became overwhelmingly sensitive and he backed off, looking embarrassed. She waved him away. "Okay, you can go, but make sure you're ready for when I call." He pulled on his clothes and went home. Helena pulled off the dripping stocking and sucked the foot of it into her mouth as she frigged her clit. Tasting Dale's sperm again, she quickly came, thrilling at the thought of what she did, and what she'd do to him next time.   Dale got a call from his parents as he walked through the front door. "Hey, Mom! Yeah, just got home from my job." He looked over and saw Nancy sitting on the couch, watching TV. He went into the kitchen to fix himself a snack. "Umm hmm, umm hmm, yeah, she's taking care of me." Nancy glanced over and saw Dale looking at her as he said that. She blushed but kept watching her show. "Yep, I'm making a new life here, Mom. Yeah, love you too, say hi to Dad!" New life, Nancy's hand caressed her midsection, thinking about the huge load of sperm Dale had pumped into her that very morning. She had been careless, allowing the young man to plunder her vulnerable insides with his no doubt potent sperm as her body entered its fertile time of the month. She could feel her pussy moistening at the memory, but she had broken it off with him for good this time. She had called her husband, and he would be coming home early at her insistence. She heard Dale head downstairs to his suite and sighed. He still had Trish across the street to satisfy his urges, so he'd survive just fine.   *Got a treat for you today! Cum over at 7pm* That had been from Trish the next day. Both the Milfy blonde and her daughter were ordering him around now. Helena opened the door for him, wearing only short-shorts and a sports bra today, with her strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her skin shone, and he thought that she might have been exercising. "Her bedroom, come to mine after." She gave him a wink. "Trish?" He opened the master bedroom door to find the leggy blonde laying on her bed, completely naked, and she brought a friend! "Um, " "Close the door, Dale. This is Marietta, and she's been looking forward to making your acquaintance after I told her about all the fun we've been having." "Uh, hi." Dale couldn't believe how much this pretty, older Latina lady looked like a darker-skinned version of Nancy, with large tits, a curvy body, and dark, shoulder-length curls instead of Nancy's auburn tresses. She was likewise naked, her legs wide, with Trish's face between them. "I've been getting her ready for you," Trish said as she got up and strode over to him. Then she kissed him hard and he tasted the other woman's juices on her lips. "We want several loads from you tonight, Dale, so get undressed." She sat back down on the bed and waited. He quickly disrobed and climbed onto the bed, uncertain. Trish's treat for him was a threesome! "How do you want to do this?" Trish asked Marietta. The newcomer shrugged, uncertain, she seemed shy as well, covering her large tits as best she could with her arms. "Hmm, okay, Dale, lay down." He did, and Trish situated her pussy above his face while he felt Marietta climb astride his hips, the women facing each other. Dale speared his tongue between Trish's pussy lips. "Umm! Good boy, Dale, come on, Mari, get on that cock." Dale felt the other woman grasp his hard member, direct it to her pussy, and then start to press down upon it. "Fuck, he's big," she groaned. Dale felt a bit proud at that. He grabbed Trish's hips and pulled her down onto his tongue. "Uhh, you're getting better at that, Dale," Trish moaned as he also licked at her clit before dipping his tongue inside again. Marietta had gotten half of his cock inside her, and it seemed like she was struggling. "Let me, " Trish said, and she leaned forward. Dale couldn't see what she did, but the other woman groaned and slipped further down his cock as her pussy loosened up. After she pulled up a bit and pressed down again a few more times, he was all the way inside her. "Got it, all, " she moaned. Dale could feel her pussy trembling around his shaft. "You want that cum? You have to earn it, Mari, move that ass, " Trish ordered her friend. Dale felt Trish shift as she pushed Marietta back, causing the newcomer to arch her spine as she continued to ride him. This new angle caused the head of his cock to rub along her G-spot, and he heard her gasping as his member pleasured her insides. After a few minutes, Trish whispered to her friend, "Oh, he's gonna fill you up with that hot cum soon, I can tell. Won't that feel good, babe, all that sperm inside you?" Marietta whimpered, and Trish took one of the woman's prominent nipples into her mouth. Dale couldn't hear or see any of this, though. He felt Marietta's pussy grip him tighter, and he pushed two fingers into Trish's pussy as he continued to lick at her clit. He was indeed getting close, the two women overwhelming his senses. He felt Trish lean forward more, her fingers flicked at Marietta's clit on the down-strokes, but on the upstrokes she caressed the base of Dale's cock. That was it for him, he grunted into Trish's pussy as his balls gave up their cargo and shot his orgasm up his lengthy shaft and deep inside Marietta's sultry pussy. Upon feeling Dale's cock throb, followed by a wet, warm pressure deep inside her, Marietta came. "Oh! Ah! Aie!" "Yes!" Trish sat up and pulled her friend into a hot, tonguey kiss as her boytoy inseminated the woman. "Umm, " Finally, both of them rolled off of Dale and they all lay there, panting. After a few minutes, Trish engulfed his cock with her mouth and sucked all of his and Marietta's combined juices from it. Pretty soon, his member rose to near full size again. "Ah, youth, " Trish commented, and climbed astride him. She was able to take all of him inside her juicy pussy without issue, and began to slam herself down upon him, quickly approaching her own release. She glanced to the side, saw Marietta playing with her own clit as she watched Trish and Dale fucking, and came. "Oh-oh! Yes, " Trish played with her own nipples as pleasure washed over and through her. When Trish's orgasm was done, she dismounted. "Get over there and fuck Marietta again, stud." Marietta looked at Dale with wide eyes. "Trish, I'm not sure I can, oomph!" Dale had leapt upon the voluptuous woman and slipped his hard cock back inside her spermy pussy. He thrust into her quickly, wanting to achieve his second release of the night. If he blurred his eyes, he could almost believe that he was having sex with Nancy again. He felt Trish come up behind him and wrap her arms around his chest while pressing her pelvis to his ass. "Hm, like this, it's almost like I'm fucking her," she breathed into his ear. "This is so damn hot." Dale could only agree. "You've probably already impregnated her, but let's make doubly sure, hmm?" "What?" Dale slowed down but Trish moved one arm down around his hips so she could keep thrusting from behind, which pushed his hips forward. "Trish, " "I'm sorry for not letting you know beforehand, Dale, but I didn't know what you'd do if you knew. Marietta's a single professional, and she wants a baby, so I offered your, stud services, " She nibbled on his ear. "C'mon, you can't tell me that you aren't turned on by this." She continued to thrust from behind, but Dale wasn't fighting back, only letting his hips be pushed and pulled by her as his cock sluiced into the body of the fertile woman below him. He acknowledged that it was indeed hot, shooting his cum inside this voluptuous lady. Trish had been practically training his brain for this moment, urging him to play 'knock me up' every time they had sex. Had her method been purposeful, or a happy coincidence? He couldn't think on that very well, as he was approaching his second orgasm of the night. "Oh, please, " Marietta stared into his eyes, her need written plainly on her face as she pushed her rounded hips up at him. Finally, Dale let go, thrusting faster into the sexy woman until he felt another cum rising from his loins. "Uh, umm, Uh!" "Yes, " both women moaned as he thrust deeply inside Marietta and fired another load of baby juice deep inside her. "Umm!" Marietta moaned as she furiously played with her clit and came again. Dale felt her pussy suckling on his cock, urging more of his potent sperm to penetrate her fertile insides. He fell upon Marietta, his energy gone. Trish let go, and the Latina enveloped him with her arms and legs, brought his face to hers, and kissed him passionately. "Thank you, Dale. Oh, " He felt a small orgasmic aftershock squeeze his cock. When he recovered enough, he redressed. "I, uh, gotta go, " "Thank you, Dale," Trish said, "you'll get an extra-special treat next time for being such a good boy." "I, may not survive, " he moaned. He looked back at Marietta. "Err, nice to meet you, " he said lamely. She waved as he stumbled out of the master bedroom. He was going to head home and sleep forever, Helena's bedroom door opened and her finger beckoned. "Oh shit, " The extra-long conclusion. "Helena, " "Hist!" The slim strawberry blonde silenced Dale with a wave of her arm before ushering him into her bedroom and closing the door behind him. "I said you were mine after Mom was done with you." He sat on her bed. "I'm wasted. Those women, " He stopped. Helena dropped the robe she had been wearing, revealing the same garters and hose from the previous day, but now she was also wearing a dark, sheer bustier that propped up her B-cup tits and deepened her cleavage. ", whoa." The eighteen-year-old blushed for a moment as Dale stared at her outfit, but then took a breath. "So, get those pants off." He unfastened his jeans. "Sure, but nothing's gonna happen; I've been wrung dry." "We'll see about that. Also, whisper if you have to say anything." She gave a pointed look toward the air vent near the ceiling. "The walls have ears." He glanced at the vent and then sat back on her bed. As expected, his penis was limp and lifeless. Helena climbed onto the bed with him. "You don't like how I look?" She seemed offended. "You're gorgeous, totally sexy," Dale replied, "but holy shit those women got two loads out of me, back-to-back. I may not be able to cum again for days." "Lay back." He did so, sighing, and Helena moved her nylon-covered feet to his penis again. However, unlike last time, it just didn't respond to the manipulations of her dainty tootsies. She finally gave up. "Damnit," she swore under her breath, "Mom just can't let me enjoy myself." She moved up the bed and lay back on a pillow, huffing in frustration. Dale lay down beside her. "How do you mean?" "She keeps telling me how much I'm like her, a goddamn cumslut, useless for anything but sex, and now I can't even get that going because she drained you like a fucking vampire." "She said all that?" "Shush!" She waved her hand at the air vent. He moved closer so he could whisper. "So the ice princess and dominatrix acts are because of what your mom says? You don't have to listen to her. Did you blackmail me because you thought I wouldn't be interested in you otherwise?" She looked into his eyes as they lay there. "Well, yeah. When we met, I treated you like shit I found on the bottom of my shoe." He considered for a moment. "Tell me something you like, a hobby or pastime." She thought for a moment. "I like anime." "Me too! Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, " "Assassination Classroom?" "Yeah! See, we have something in common. And that's just one thing, I'm sure we have others, but you never bothered to find out." He peered out the window into the night. "Why were you looking at Nancy's house so early in the morning, when you caught us, doing that?" She looked embarrassed. "I always look out there when I wake up. Sometimes I see you heading to school." "You've been watching me?" She flushed. "Yeah, and when you're doing stuff with Mom, " "You've been spying, too." Dale marveled at this, both Nancy and Helena had spied on him doing sex stuff. How many other women were so, sex driven? he wondered. Helena nibbled her lower lip, thinking of the sexy sounds that had come through the air vent from her mother's room for the last hour. She began to rub her thighs together. "I don't get out much." Dale closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "Jesus, you're a hot girl that likes anime and sex, you could honestly have any guy you wanted just by showing interest in them, and instead you blackmailed me." "Soo, you do want to go out with me?" He looked at her confused but hopeful look. "If you had asked yesterday, I'd have said yes, well, I guess not while I'm 'servicing' your mother, " "I wouldn't make you stop, that's hot, and I'm not jealous," she informed him, "but why yesterday?" "Because that was before you blackmailed me!" "Oh."   "Dale?" He started awake, confused. Where was he? Oh, right, on Helena's bed. She was still in the garters and bustier, so he figured that he'd only been out for a moment. He looked at his phone, it was 9 PM, so he'd been napping there for the last hour. "Were you just watching me sleep?" he asked her. "You looked like you needed to rest, so I went on my phone for a bit," she replied. "I was hoping a nap might help Mr. Pokey down there." He considered his penis, but it still seemed devoid of energy. "Hm, probably not." "What if I, ?" She took it in hand and started pulling at it. After a minute of that, she sighed and took it into her mouth. "Ahh, " he moaned. The warm, inverse pressure felt good, but his cock still remained lifeless. After another minute she gave up. "Damnit! This is so frustrating. How about, ?" She pulled down on her bustier so that her B-cup boobies popped out, each topped with a pink pencil eraser nipple. Dale felt a twinge down below, and licked his lips as he gazed at her luscious tits. "Yeah?" Helena looked hopeful. "Maybe, ?" She moved forward to press a nipple into his mouth, and Dale began to suckle on it. "Ooh, that feels, wow, " she moaned. She climbed astride him so that he would have better access to her tits, which then caused her panty-covered pussy to settle onto his mostly still-soft penis. "Hmm, ." she moaned in pleasure and frustration. "Are those my stockings and garters?" They froze and turned to the door. Trish was there in her shorty robe, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed as she beheld her 18-year-old daughter rubbing herself on her 19-year-old boy-toy. "Mom! I, uh, " Helena scrambled off of Dale, but that only revealed his half-naked form. "Dale, go home and we'll talk later. Helena, my dear, we are going to have a discussion right now." He grabbed his pants and bounded past Trish and out of the room. Helena's bedroom door slammed behind him.   Friday after school, Dale just hung out in his basement suite. Nancy hadn't invited him up for dinner for the previous couple nights, and he was pretty sure that was no longer an option with her; they were now just landlady and renter, which was even less than what they had been when he moved in. *You up for that extra special treat?* Trish messaged him. Despite cumming twice in rapid succession the previous night with her and Marietta, Dale felt his cock perk up at that text. Still, he wasn't sure what he'd be walking into, after what happened between Trish and Helena. Instead of heading upstairs to leave, which could have caused him to run into Nancy, he instead left by his outside suite door. Trish opened the door for him, wearing her sheer shorty robe that showcased her glorious gams. "No Helena?" he asked, confused. "She's around," she said mysteriously. Dale paused for a moment, thinking. "Can I just quickly, ?" He headed toward the lower floor washroom. "Yeah, come on up to my bedroom when you're ready." When Dale walked into Trish's bedroom a few minutes later, he stopped short. Helena was tied, one extremity per post of Trish's four-poster bed, face down and naked, grunting and yelling into the ball gag that secured her mouth. Dale just stared. "I, uh, " Trish lightly slapped her daughter's ass, causing the girl to rage. "I was able to get out of her that she blackmailed you, though not what with. That was about it, though. Did you fuck her, Dale?" He just stood there, taking in the bizarre sight. "No, she just rubbed one out of me with her feet." Trish looked at her daughter, surprised and a little impressed. "Feet? Huh. Well, I've informed Little Miss Sunshine here that if she uses whatever she's been holding over you, she'll be on the street sucking whatever disease-ridden dicks she can find for cash. I won't support this kind of behavior under my roof." She slapped Helena's tight ass again, eliciting another grunt of outrage from the girl. Dale stayed standing in the bedroom doorway. "So what's going on here?" Trish came forward. "Your extra special treat! You're going to take her anal virginity." Helena screamed into the gag. "And how does Helena feel about that?" Trish harrumphed and crossed her arms. "I don't give a fuck. This girl needs to be taken down a peg, and you have the big peg to do it with." She reached for Dale's zipper. He stepped back, pulled out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and put it away. "So that conversation where you were telling me that you wanted me to anally rape the daughter you forcibly tied to your bed has been uploaded to the cloud." Trish stepped back, shocked. "Dale, !" "Untie her, now." He had never seen Trish cowed before. She quickly did as commanded, freeing Helena, who then rushed over to hug Dale, tears streaming down her face. Trish sat on the bed. "Now what?" Dale gave Helena a squeeze. "Now we talk."   Dale had actually taken Psychology as his college minor (not that anyone ever asked). They sat on the bed and he let Helena rage at her mother about how she had put her down and called her a slut ever since her daughter had grown tits. After some pointed questioning, Dale was able to get out of Trish that she, herself, had been a sexually charged young woman, and had gotten pregnant the very first time she had sex, at 18. She had been stupid, but lucky in that Stephen had taken responsibility and married her. She had seen her daughter taking after herself and didn't want her making the same mistake. Along the way, though, things changed from protective to abusive, she admitted, but she didn't know how to change course. "Right here, this is where you change course," Dale told them. "Blackmail, anal rape? This is rock bottom, so there's nowhere to go but up, right?" "I'm sorry, baby, I love you," Trish sobbed, tears mucking up her mascara as she held out her hands to her daughter. Helena, still holding on to Dale's arm, tightened her grip. He turned to her, "If you think this is salvageable, at least take her hand." She did after a moment, and Trish gave her a hopeful smile. After some more discussion, Dale felt that they had done as much as they could for the day. He got Trish to promise that they'd seek out a family counselor. "I think it's pretty much a given that I won't be coming around again, as handyman or otherwise." Trish nodded. "I'm sorry, Dale, I betrayed your trust with Marietta and misjudged your character with Helena. I hope you'll forgive me." Without comment, he gave her a hug. Then he hugged Helena and went home.   "Hey, hey, Dale!" Dale stopped short as he habitually entered the house through the front door. Michael, Nancy's husband, home almost a week early, was in the kitchen grabbing a bag of chips. "You're back!" Dale stated, stunned. "Yep! Front, too," the older man winked at Dale. Dale sighed. For a guy who didn't have any kids, Michael sure loved dad jokes. "Well, welcome back. I gotta, " Dale pointed to the basement suite door and headed there. "Sure, sure, thanks for taking care of Nancy while I was away, champ." "You're welcome," Dale grumped, and headed down into his cave.   On Saturday, Melanie rolled up in her old Toyota Corolla to pick up Dale for their date. As he got into the passenger side, he noted that she was wearing a white knee-length skirt and a blue blouse under a long, furry coat. "I hope that's not real fur," he joked as she drove. "Definitely not!" Dale offered to pay for the movie, but Melanie refused. "I asked You out," she said indignantly. "Besides, how am I going to get you at my mercy in the back seat of my car if you don't owe me?" She gave him a silly grin to show that she was kidding. Dale frowned. If their genders had been reversed and he had said that, he'd probably have gotten a swift kick in the nards! He laughed uncomfortably. The movie was awesome, as were most Marvel movies. They shared a popcorn, and their hands touched frequently as they pulled the buttery snack from the bucket. When it was gone, they just continued to hold hands. "Wait until after the credits," he told her. "Well Duh!" she responded. After the post-credits scene, they reluctantly disengaged and headed back to her car. Instead of taking Dale home, though, Melanie pulled into an industrial area and parked in a darkened corner of a cul-de-sac. "Did you know that I've had a crush on you for a while?" she asked as she turned the car off. "Yeah? Oomph!" Melanie had unbuckled and rushed her face to his, catching him off guard. As the platinum blonde's tongue slipped into his mouth, though, his libido beast, unfulfilled for the last couple of nights, awoke, and he kissed her back passionately. After a while, first base moved to second, and Dale felt up Melanie's C-cups through her blouse. She redoubled her kissing and, emboldened, Dale suggested that they move into the back seat. "I dunno, oh, " she moaned as Dale found one of her nipples through her bra. "Um, okay." They removed their coats as they moved into the larger space of the back seat and made out some more. Dale was able to move his hands under Melanie's blouse to unsnap her bra, and soon he was palming her warm tits directly. They weren't as large as Nancy's, or even Trish's, but they were nice. "Hmm, " she moaned into his mouth. As they continued the make-out session, Melanie naturally lay back across the seats. Dale took advantage of the change of position by moving between her legs, and soon they were dry humping. As the teen couple thrust their covered loins together, her skirt slipped up further and further, and soon he was rubbing his jeans-covered crotch against her panty-covered pussy. Melanie was breathing heavily and thrusting her pelvis at him, her eyes closed as she was overwhelmed by the sensations. Dale reached down and unzipped his jeans, needing to be inside her. He took his turgid member in hand, used the head to move the gusset of her panties aside, "Dale." , and started to press it into her sex, "Dale! Stop!" , he could feel her wet pussy lips, opening to welcome him, Then he was on the floor of the car, his cheek stinging. "What the hell, Dale?" Melanie yelled. "I told you to stop!" His head was muzzy, both from his bubbling hormones and the slap. He replayed the last few seconds in his head. She Had told him to stop, and he had just been focused on getting his cock wet! He tucked his shrinking member back into his pants and sat back up on the seat, but opposite her. "I'm so sorry, Melanie, I thought you wanted me." Melanie had closed her legs and pulled her skirt back down, and was now looking at him with apprehension. "I did, I do, but, well, number one, you weren't listening, number two, I'm a virgin, and number three, you need to use a condom!" Dale blinked. With all the sex he'd had over the last few weeks, none of it had been with a condom, he hadn't even considered buying any for this date. Also, "You're a virgin?" Here he was, about to deflower Melanie in the back of an old Corolla. He felt like shit. She looked embarrassed. "Well, yeah, remember I was the fat girl with glasses in high school? Nobody asked me out, not even to prom. Then, after the weight loss and eye surgery, I moved here for college, and there you were, I mean, I've had offers from other guys recently, and even a girl, but I kept waiting for you to ask me out." His mind was racing, putting together the pieces that had contributed to his raging, one-track-mind libido over the last few weeks. He considered his date, looking so vulnerable. "Melanie, I wouldn't blame you if you just took me home, but will you listen to my story? It may explain things." She watched him for a while, thinking. Then she nodded. "But we're getting our coats back on, 'cause it's getting cold in here." Bundled back up, Dale told her everything about Nancy, Trish, and even Helena. He explained how Trish's seduction technique and frequent sexual demands, combined with his on-again, off-again 'relationship' with Nancy and Helena's master-slave blackmail must have warped his mind a bit, causing him to focus on the fucking instead of on making sure that Melanie was okay with what they were doing. He also apologized again. She looked at him, wide-eyed. "That was all true? You're not just making up stories, like in class?" He nodded. She pondered what he had said. "All right, I'll forgive you, but I'm going to need something from you, let's call it a trust exercise." Confused, he responded, "Okay, " She nibbled her lower lip. "That story was really fucking hot, and I need to cum. You said Trish taught you how to use your tongue, so, " She pulled down her panties and spread her legs for him, showing off her trimmed blonde muff. ", get in there, and if you make me feel good, I'll make you feel good after. No intercourse, though." Dale was likewise still horny from the making out, as well as from recounting his story. He dove between Melanie's legs and did his absolute best, giving her a screaming orgasm within a couple of minutes. Then she asked him to lay back, and she unfastened his jeans to pull his stiff cock out. "Holy shit! No wonder you've been getting laid so much! Oh!" She engulfed the head with her mouth and he moaned. She inexpertly licked and stroked him to orgasm. While he did warn her that he was going to cum, the sheer volume took her by surprise, and it spilled out as she choked trying to swallow it all, causing it to splatter back onto his crotch and drip down her chin. She licked it all up, marveling at how tasty it was.   Dale and Melanie took their relationship slowly, sticking with blowjobs and pussy eating when they got too wound up. He gave Nancy his notice and moved out the next month for campus housing that was closer to his new girlfriend. A few weeks later, Nancy and Michael rekindled their relationship after she informed him that she was finally pregnant. Michael figured that he had knocked his wife up just before he left for his extended work trip, and she didn't correct him, having started her last period a little after he left. The man stopped being depressed about his low sperm count and returned to his former attentive self, though he still orgasmed way too quickly for her liking.   "Mom?" Helena shuffled into her mother's bedroom. Trish put down her book. "Yes, Helena?" "I think I'm pregnant." Trish scrutinized her daughter and sighed. She had noticed the girl gaining some weight, most notably in her boobs, but hadn't said anything. "How many periods have you missed?" "A couple. I figured you can miss one sometimes, right? But then this month's didn't come either, and it's been another few weeks." Trish frowned. "Dale said you two didn't have sex. Did he lie?" "Umm, no, " The strawberry blonde looked very guilty. "But it's his?" Helena nodded. 'You conniving little bitch,' Trish thought but didn't say. They were working on their relationship with the help of a family therapist, as Dale had suggested. She considered her former boy-toy, now gone for weeks. He had succeeded in impregnating her friend Marietta, and now Helena as well. Trish also had a sneaking suspicion about Nancy also getting pregnant right after her husband left on an extended work trip. I'm the only woman he didn't knock up, she realized, feeling a little left out. "What're we gonna do, Mom?" Helena's pregnancy was already past the number of weeks their state allowed for abortion, so it seemed that Trish was going to be a Gilf in under a year! She sighed. Like mother, like daughter, she told herself again.   Eventually Dale and Melanie did have sex, though he made sure that it was in a properly romantic setting, and she wore garters and stockings, as he had requested. He wore a condom, as she had requested. He started a new game of Dragon Era for them to play together, this time as a female Elf Wizard. While Melanie's role playing choices weren't as interesting as Nancy's, she still occasionally surprised him. After Dale's English professor crushed his dreams and told him, quite frankly, that the young man's writing skills weren't sufficiently amazing to make a living at it, he switched majors to Psychology. He kept writing in his spare time, though, as he enjoyed it, you may have red some of his erotic stories online. By Krosis, for Literotica.  

Matthew 21:1–9 The Triumphal Entry [1] Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, [2] saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. [3] If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,' and he will send them at once.” [4] This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, [5] “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'” [6] The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. [7] They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. [8] Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. [9] And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (ESV)

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AT LEAST I'M NOT A TRAIN WRECK MAYBE BUT ARE YOU DE-RAILING GOD'S PLAN FOR YOU BY SETTLING FOR MEDIOCRITY? WAY WORSE PEOPLE THAN ME AT LEAST I'M NOT CHEATING ON MY WIFE BUT ARE YOU INTENTIONAL ABOUT SERVING AND DATING HER? LUST AND PORN AT LEAST I'M NOT A FLABBY OVERWEIGHT PANSY BUT ARE YOU A STRONG CAPABLE DEFENDER AND PROTECTOR? TRAINING:  IS OBESE YOUR STANDARD? AT LEAST I'M NOT AN ATHEIST  JUSTIFY PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY  BUT ARE YOU OPPOSING EVIL MASQUERADING AS CONFORMITY? AT LEAST I'M NOT AN ABSENT FATHER BUT ARE YOU AN ENGAGED FATHER BUT ARE YOU LEADING BY SERVING THOSE WHOM YOU STEWARD?

We are back for Episode 2 in our "Month of Miracles" Series!This week, Susan is joined by (as she calls him) her "favorite guest ever," Dr. Steve Goss, to relay the miraculous story of the birth of their grandson, Whit.Extra Resources:The Song Steve mentioned is Steven Curtis Chapman's "Do It Again." Watch it here: Steven Curtis Chapman YouTubeTo hear more about Susan Hazard's Story:A Miracle of Grace - Part 1A Miracle of Grace - Part 2

This week, I speak with Dawn Damon, who is an Ordained Minister, Conference Speaker, Coach, Podcaster, and Author of 6 award-winning books, including “When a Woman You Love Was Abused, published by Kregel Publications, and“The Freedom Challenge: 60 Days to Untie the Cords that Bind You, Redemption Press,” and her most recent, Selah Award finalist…“The Making of a BraveHearted Woman: Courage, Confidence, and Vision in Midlife.” Dawn is the founder and CEO The BraveHearted Woman, and BraveHearted YOUniveristy, a coaching enterprise designed to awaken the God-given vision of women and equip them to live an extraordinary life.  Dawn and her husband, Paul Damon, reside in the Rockford, MI, area and have a full family of 5 children, 12 grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. We look at her childhood up to the present to find the beautiful thread of God in her life. You won't want to miss this inspiring episode!www.braveheartedwoman.com*Theme Music "Blessed Time" by Ketsa