Day 201 Hosanna!

                                                                                       (Ethiopian pilgrim celebrates Palm Sunday. flikr)

At the start of the annual Jewish Spring Feast of Passover, Pesach, a huge procession of people would move from the villages of Bethpage and Bethany, behind the Mount of Olives, to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

During the march, the people waved palm fronds and willow branches, sang and chanted cycles of Psalms, maybe 113 through 118, and in between they shouted, "Hosanna!"

In the hearts of Jews then and today, there are painful echoes of their cries for freedom from slavery to the Egyptians. The shout of "Hosanna!" before Christ's death and resurrection was an immense cry of intercession: "Come, O Lord, and save us! Come Messiah! Come Anointed One! Heal, save, and deliver us! Redeem us, we pray!”

Pesach literally means "the lamb." During this feast, every Hebrew family in Egypt chose an unblemished lamb, prepared it, and ate it on the night of the Passover with enough neighbors invited in that there were no leftovers. They sprinkled some of the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their houses, and that night the angel of death "passed over" them. Their obedience spared them from judgment and death, and it was also a witness to the Egyptians who watched and went out with them.

In Jesus' time, an unblemished Pesach lamb was also selected to be sacrificed for the sins of the whole nation. This lamb was led to slaughter in the huge Passover procession. Today, Christians know that Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua Ha Mashiach, was the Lamb of God. Christ completed the feast of Passover that pictured His coming and the blood atonement his life and death made.

In Hebrew, Yeshua means "Salvation" and Ha Mashiach means "the Anointed One." Jesus, Yeshua, Lamb of God, Messiah. Hosanna!

Jesus Christ, Yeshua Ha Mashiach, completed  not only the Passover prophesy, but all seven Jewish feasts—the Spring Feasts and the Fall Feasts that God commanded Israel to observe. These feasts pictured God's complete plan for redeeming humanity and ultimately, the whole creation. Hosanna!

Hosanna! We praise you Lord Jesus, Yeshua, Lamb of God! Lord of lords, King of kings, only great Ruler, reigning now and forever! Hosanna! Yet we intercede—Come Messiah! Visit and revive your inheritance in our current times. Visit your kinsmen Jesus, the Jewish and the Arab peoples; visit and reveal yourself as Messiah to all unreached people, all "ethnos." Fulfill your word! Heal, save, deliver! Thy Kingdom come! Please establish, replenish, prosper, and restore Shalom to all peoples, to all of creation, to the ends of the earth! Today I offer and surrender myself. Use me, use us, O Lord Jesus. O King, glorify yourself! Amen.