The first Holy week came as a surprise. Jesus had been hiding out- at this point in his ministry he was a wanted man -the religious establishment hated him and the plots to take his life were swirling and everyone knew it-but now something had changed-on this day Jesus was not hiding from anyone-on this day he was letting the world know the time had come-we call this day Palm Sunday.  (Palm pix)

Why Palm Sunday? You saw our kids waving palm branches just like it tells us in the Bible-but what did those branches mean? They were a symbol of the Jewish nation of Israel-we might equate them to flags today-this was a celebration of the hero who had come to liberate God’s people-but they had no idea from what or how he would do it!

We know the rest of the story-we have 2000 years of perspective and maybe decades of Holy weeks we can remember-but once again as we come to this week, I would encourage you to hear the story with fresh ears. See it un-fold in your mind’s eye and know that this Jesus we worship is worthy of praise-and today we’ll know why! He got praise then and we should give him praise now-b/c we know our hero has come too, this is your sermon in a sentence:

Let’s celebrate Jesus for all the right reasons. We’ll explore 3 for today…