According to the apostle Paul, Real life means knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. It means living in a faith-relationship with the Son of God. This is what Paul means when he writes: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh (or, in the body), I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

John begins the story of the resurrection with Mary Magdalene arriving at the tomb while it was still dark. Upon seeing the stone rolled away from the tomb, she immediately ran to tell Peter and John. Mary did not look in the tomb. We don’t know what she thought except that something was wrong and she went to get help.

The day Jesus rode into Jerusalem—the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday, He was met with a variety of reactions. One of the more noticeable things about John’s account of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem is how different people react differently to Jesus than others.

The most important feature of Jesus’ role as shepherd is that He lays down his life for the sheep. Of course, His intention is to live and protect them. But Jesus cares so much for the sheep that he is willing to come between his flock and danger. He is willing to die for them.

The connection between Zechariah 13.7 and the death of Jesus Christ lies in this: in both cases God does something unexpected. Sometimes God does the unexpected to help us see His love through a different lens.

Zechariah 13 ends with God refining His people as silver and testing them like gold. The aim of this refining and testing is so they will call upon His name and He will answer them.

Here is as clear a picture of the death of Jesus as you will find in the OT. Pause and linger over this text. The death of Jesus Christ is both the fulfillment of OT prophecy and the starting point of the new covenant of salvation by grace through faith.

The God who made heaven and earth, also made us in His image and likeness. He breathed His Spirit into us and designed us to rely on Him to lead us through every circumstance we encounter. Come what may, we can trust Him to help us through. We can trust His leadership because everything that happens to us has already happened to Him.

Reading Zechariah 11 is like reading a book or watching a movie in which your favorite character keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. Despite being warned by God not to repeat the mistakes made by their ancestors Zechariah's generation will repeat the mistakes of their ancestors. Sometimes God lets us make a series of mistakes so we will turn to Him to make things right.

In many ways the generation addressed by Zechariah is not all that different from the generation addressed by Moses. They have the form of religion but not its substance. And even though they consider themselves to have descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they likely have little to no idea of what it means to be in a covenant relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.