BS6J- JESUS COVERS OUR FUTURE
It was in the Garden of Gethsemane -- after Jesus ate a last meal with his disciples -- that the full weight of what was about to happen came upon Jesus. He asked his dear friends to stay with him in prayer while he went off alone to talk with his father.
Matthew 26:36-38
He had been born to die -- for the sins of all mankind--- but now the very human Jesus was wondering if there was any other way. What did He ask His Father?
Matthew 26:39
He prayed this with a stress so intense that Luke the doctor records that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood – a condition today called hematidrosis.
Luke 22:44
Jesus went back to his disciples and found them all sleeping instead of “watching in prayer” with him. The sorrowful Jesus rebuked them gently and then had a warning for them.
Matthew 26:40-41
Two more times Jesus went a distance away from the disciples so that He could pray. What did He say this time?
Matthew 26:42-44
When the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, he was betrayed with a kiss by one of his own disciples—Judas--and then……ALL of the disciples fled. Jesus would go through with his mission alone.
Matthew 26:45-56
Throughout the night Jesus would stand through four trials. The Roman Governor Pilate would finally declare Him innocent but still have him flogged and handed over to die.
Luke 23:20-22
Flogging was 40 lashes with a flagellum. This was a whip whose leather cords were loaded with shards of jagged bone and metal tied into it, and like most victims, it ripped Christ’s flesh to shreds. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, they wove for him a crown of thorns and stuck it deep into his throbbing head.
John 19:1-2
The 40 pound cross beam was then loaded onto Christ’s shoulders while he stumbled up a hill outside of Jerusalem called Golgotha or Calvary – meaning “place of the skull”.
John 19:17
Only his disciple John would make it back to be in the crowd along with his mother and a few other women friends while he was dying. Jesus, always thinking of others first, made an arrangement for his mother.
John 19:25-27
Jesus would be crucified between 2 violent thieves on their own crosses.
Luke 23:32-33
One thief would curse Jesus along with the others watching.
Luke 23:39
But in a moment of revelation the other thief would turn to Christ and plead for the life of his soul.
Luke 23:40-42
What encouragement it must have been to hear Jesus say to him:
Luke 23:43
Those two thieves on either side of Jesus represent all of us today. We are either on the side of rejecting him or we are on the side of recognizing who He is and aligning our life with his.
The day Jesus died was a day that no one would forget. People couldn’t stop talking about the amazing things that happened. Many would write accounts of it – including Christ’s disciple Matthew.
Matthew 27:45-54
Next Study: BS6K - The Day Christ Died