#LentenDaily2025 Hymn - King of Kings, Words and Music by Jason Ingram, Brooke Ligertwood & Scott Ligertwood
Before we get into the colors of Lent in today’s devotion, I’d like to introduce the hymn I’ve selected for us to sing together throughout this Lenten season. Creedal in its movement from Jesus’ birth to crucifixion to the birth of the church, I pray it will be a daily reminder of what we are observing during Lent.
King of Kings (Lyric Video) - Hillsong Worship
VERSE 1
In the darkness we were waiting
Without hope without light
Till from heaven You came running
There was mercy in Your eyes
To fulfil the law and prophets
To a virgin came the Word
From a throne of endless glory
To a cradle in the dirt
CHORUS
Praise the Father
Praise the Son
Praise the Spirit three in one
God of glory
Majesty
Praise forever to the King of Kings
VERSE 2
To reveal the kingdom coming
And to reconcile the lost
To redeem the whole creation
You did not despise the cross
For even in Your suffering
You saw to the other side
Knowing this was our salvation
Jesus for our sake You died
VERSE 3
And the morning that You rose
All of heaven held its breath
Till that stone was moved for good
For the Lamb had conquered death
And the dead rose from their tombs
And the angels stood in awe
For the souls of all who’d come
To the Father are restored
VERSE 4
And the Church of Christ was born
Then the Spirit lit the flame
Now this gospel truth of old
Shall not kneel shall not faint
By His blood and in His Name
In His freedom I am free
For the love of Jesus Christ
Who has resurrected me
© 2019 Hillsong Music Publishing
The Color Purple
When you think of the color purple, what images come to mind? Jellybeans? Easter eggs? Superhero or princess capes? The strongest color in the light spectrum, purple is simply pretty. When I see purple pansies, violets or hyacinths blooming, it brings a smile to my face. The color has also come to symbolize wealth, power and royalty because in antiquity purple dye was very expensive…but more on that in a moment.
You will see the use of the color purple throughout the Lenten season, whether in the vestments worn by some churches’ priests, the lovely perennial Lenten Roses that bloom in early spring, or crosses on hillsides and inside churches, draped with purple cloth.
Displayed during Advent and Lenten seasons, the color purple has come to reflect sorrow and suffering; sorrow as the faithful awaited the arrival of the Savior in the birth of Jesus and suffering to mark His 40 days in the desert. Okay, how can purple represent the rich and powerful and the suffering simultaneously? It really doesn’t make sense. True - purple is a paradox, a contradiction of a color. Associated since antiquity with wealth, luxury and spiritual ideals, one might assume that the richly colored dye is derived from a purple flower, or even a root vegetable, but those guesses don’t even come close.
Why Purple?
Before moving to the Washington, DC area from Georgia 15 years ago, we homeschooled our four children. For 13 years this was the educational choice that made sense for our family, as I had Bachelors and Masters degrees in education and Dale traveled extensively for work. It allowed us to create our own schedule and not be bound by a school system’s calendar.
As the children grew, we began taking them on field trips that allowed us to see and touch the places we had read about and studied in our history lessons. The most spectacular of these field trips took us to the ancient civilizations of Israel and Egypt. We hired a private tour guide and former archaeologist to show us the beauty and history of Israel. When we got to Jerusalem, he recommended that we tour the Temple Institute, I think because of our children’s inordinate knowledge of Temple articles of worship.
The Temple Institute was founded and is run by Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. It exists to prepare the holy articles (described in Exodus) for placement when the Dome of the Rock is removed and the Temple is once again restored, so that blood sacrifice can be reinstated correctly. They really know their stuff, and while I am confident that, because of Jesus’ once and for all blood sacrifice, their goals are sincerely misplaced, I have great respect for the amount of research they have done to get every detail of every Temple article correct. From the materials and dimensions of the lampstand to making the high priest’s garments, they have gone to great lengths to be as precise as possible.
While I knew that the high priest’s ephod, breastplate and robe were to be woven in one piece (sleeves for the robe were the only pieces that could be sewn onto the garments), I never really considered how the dyes of rich blue and purple were created, especially in the middle of the wilderness. Through their research, the folks from the Temple Institute discovered that the rich shades of violet and indigo were created from a Mediterranean ancestor of a sea snail known as the Murex Trunculus. Not only that, but more than 9,000 of the sea snails were needed to create just one gram of dye, making it literally worth its weight in gold!
And the process for extracting the dye is fairly gross. (If you are eating your breakfast right now, you might want to wait and continue reading later!) Documented from at least the 16th Century BC in Phoenicia (a name that means purple land), the process was notoriously malodorous and required an impervious smeller and even stronger stomach. It took tens of thousands of rectal glands, squeezed from the calcified coils of the spiny murex sea snails, then dried and boiled, to dye even a single small swatch of fabric. The fibers, long after staining, retained the stench of the snail's excretions. Though purple may have symbolized a higher order, it reeked of a lower odor.
However, unlike other fabric dyes whose luster faded rapidly, this purple hue only intensified with exposure to weathering and wear. Because the priests were forbidden to wash their priestly garments even when splattered with the blood of sacrifice work, imagine how rich and deep the purple became as the priest’s clothing aged and was passed down through generations of the priesthood.
A Purple Cloak
Fast forward to Good Friday. Jesus has been falsely accused and condemned to death by the Jewish Sanhedrin. He has been questioned by Pilate, given over to the Roman soldiers to be beaten and scourged. Let’s pick up the story in Matthew 27:27-31:
“And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.”
A Perfect Paradox
The symbolism here is breathtaking: Jesus, the One who created the sea snail from which the rich and costly purple dye would be extracted; Jesus, the One who instructed Moses on how the priestly garments should be made; Jesus, the Son of God who left his home in heaven to come to earth and become like us, his beloved; This same Jesus was the One who willingly allowed his enemies to beat and bloody him mercilessly, and then to mock him by placing a royal purple robe around his neck. His blood poured out for us all, staining the beautiful cloak - transforming it into his priestly garment.
Jesus is our King, our High Priest, our Perfect Sacrifice. This is why the color purple is a perfect paradox.
Big Picture Questions for Today:
Which piece of information regarding the color purple from today’s lesson was new to you? Most enlightening?
How do you see the color purple as the perfect paradox?
Pray from 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
