This is the Baimah podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host Brent Billings. Today we examine the triumphant entry and Jesus' confrontation of religious corruption on all sides.

And in a beautiful stroke of coincidence or providence, maybe we'll leave that up to the listener to the side.

Oh man, we are releasing this episode on the 4th of July. Oh man, I am so nervous about whatever stroke of genius or providence is.

I'm going to try not to alienate and make mad every single listener that we have. But we'll give us some very relevant, timely things for those listening in real time to consider on this day.

Spoiler alert, the triumphant entry is a political maneuver on Jesus' part. Yes it is. And it may give us some things to consider today. May it may.

We're not going to trample all over it. We're not going to suggest that we don't have many things to be thankful for today.

Before we do. We're going to live in a wonderful place. We'll thoughts of freedom. Let me just say that up front. But although we do have some international listeners.

We do. We do. Absolutely. So they can just chuckle at us and I'm sure enjoy this on a whole nother level. I listened to a podcast that is one American guy and one British guy.

They were talking about this at some point. And he's like, well, what do British people think about in a penist day? Like we don't think about it at all. We don't care.

Yeah, I would imagine that's probably the case. All right. Well, before you start reading Brent, I'm going to do some groundwork this time.

Do this a little differently. I'm going to set some context. And I've got some notes. I'll I had a lot of we got a lot of ground covered today.

We're not sure how far we're going to get a lot of text, a lot of context, a lot of everything. Yeah. So I'm going to be in and out of reading. So if it sounds like I'm in an out of readings because I am.

But here we go. Matthew 21 opens with the record of the triumphant entry. We're familiar with the image of the story. We often reenact different elements of it during our Palm Sunday celebrations.

We know the picture of Jesus making the entrance on a donkey while people wave palm branches and shout and shout, Hosanna or Hoshina in the Hebrew.

But a little historical context is going to go a long way. Jesus enters Jerusalem on the week of Passover. It is possible.

When you look at the timeline, he may have entered Jerusalem on lamb selection day, Brent Billings. That is a day when all the families would go and choose their lamb for the Passover sacrifice.

And if he did, that is just a stunning as he comes in triumphant entry that he's coming in on that same day when the lamb is chosen. We don't know. That doesn't tell us that. Just it's possible. Who knows?

Maybe they would have pointed that out if that were the case. I don't know. But it's a possibility.

But this week of Passover is significant because the tension of that region of Palestine in the Roman world.

This particular region was always one of the tensest areas that the Romans had to control. It was the home of the only group of people who refused to worship the emperor.

This band of rebels was stubborn, stiff-necked, and naive. Of course, we're talking about the Jewish people. So if you remember, here at the great, here at the great was always, well, in Rome's eyes, he was great because

he could rule this Jewish people and keep political stability in this small little piece of real estate. And the Roman Empire is vast. The Roman Empire stretched all the way from Spain, all the way to the boundaries of India at some points in there and the northern part of the African continent.

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