Read Mark 11:1-11 and Psalm 118:25-29.

1.  Imagine you were with Jesus on the day He entered Jerusalem.  Using Scripture as your guide, what would it have looked like?  What would it have sounded like?  . . . felt like? . . . been like?

2.  Hosanna is the Hebrew word that means Pray. Save us.?  How can this one word mean both those things at once? 

3.  The crowds shouted “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”  How do you feel blessed?  How do we share with others the good news that Easter is a day of blessing?

​

Read 1 Kings 8:27-30, 40-43, Isaiah 56:6-7 and Mark 11:15-17.

4. On Sunday, Pastor Don admitted that he often overlooks the important role that prayer played in the life of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Do you feel the same way?  Even today, millions of people go to Jerusalem to pray.  Why was prayer in the Temple so important?

5.  Why do you think Jesus overturned the tables in the temple courts?

6.  It seems that the most devout and most zealous Jews of this time seemed to desire separation from unclean people.  Why was it so important for Jesus to make room for the unclean in the Temple?

7.  How do we make room for outsiders in our church?  In our lives?

​

Read John 2:19, Matthew 28:19-20, and Mark 11:12-14 and 20-26.

8. How is the fig tree a metaphor for the Temple?  How is the church a part of Jesus’ plans for a new temple?

9.  What are Jesus’ plans for the church?

​

Charles Spurgeon once wrote, “If the church is to be what it ought to be for the purposes of God, we must train it in the holy art of prayer.”

10.  What did Spurgeon mean?  Why is prayer so important for the church?