Contemplating Passion Week

Day 4 of our Week of Prayer & Fasting

READING

Luke 22:39-53

THOUGHTS

On the night of His betrayal, before leaving the Upper Room, Jesus and His disciples did one final thing, it says in Matthew 26:30 And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

What a beautiful detail.  Knowing what was about to happen, and observing the scenes of the garden, how amazing it was for Jesus to sing a song of praise to His Father.  

Do we have a song in our darkest moments?  Or is praise absent during our problems?

John’s gospel then records the specific details of Jesus’ location:

Joh 18:1  … He went out with His disciples over the Brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which He and His disciples entered. 

This is said to be a place that Jesus frequented with His disciples.  But for this final night it seems to be all the more relevant.

Consider the fact that human history began in a garden, and when the first Adam sinned against God in this garden, death entered the world. Thousands of years later, Jesus Christ, the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), entered into another garden to accept the cup from His Father’s hand, and death was about to be swallowed up in victory.

This victory came at great cost though, and it’s at this moment we need to get the full picture of what Jesus was going through.  Luke’s gospel records a unique detail:

Luke 22:44 NKJV And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Some have made out this detail to be symbolic, but  Luke, being a physician himself records what is an actual known, extremely rare medical condition. The condition is called Hematidrosis. The sweat glands are surrounded by tiny blood vessels that can constrict and then dilate to the point of rupture, causing blood to effuse into the sweat glands. The cause of hematidrosis is extreme anguish. In the other gospel accounts, we see the level of Jesus’ anguish: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”.

Jesus knew all that awaited Him (John 18:4). He knew the prophetic words of Isaiah spoken seven centuries earlier that He would be beaten so badly that He would be “disfigured beyond that of any man” and “beyond human likeness” (Isaiah 52:14).  Then the crucifixion itself was considered to be the most painful and torturous method of execution ever devised. In fact, so horrific was the pain that a word was designed to help explain it—excruciating, which literally means “from the cross.”

But perhaps there was something else even more terrifying. From His arrest in the garden until the time our Lord stated, “It is finished” (John 19:30), Scripture records only one instance where Jesus “cried out in a loud voice” (Matthew 27:46). As our sinless Savior bore the weight of the world’s sins on His shoulders, and the suffering Servant cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The spiritual pain no doubt greatly exceeded the intense physical pain the Lord endured on our behalf.

This scene in the garden all paints a graphic picture of the great lengths Jesus went to for our restoration as God’s children.

Where were the disciples at this time?  I’ll let you consider that scene.

PRAYER

Can I encourage you to practice praising God in every situation.

Pray for the persecuted church.