SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/26/2024 7:26 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-4
“Supplication”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 26:39-45a
Message of the verses: “39 And
He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying,
"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I
will, but as You will." 40 And He came to the disciples and found them
sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with
Me for one hour? 41 “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into
temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." 42 He went away
again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cannot pass
away unless I drink it, Your will be done." 43 Again He came and found
them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 44 And He left them again, and went
away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. 45 Then He came
to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting?”
The
following is something that I find very interesting, and it has to do with who
Jesus Christ really is as He is 100% God and 100% human and so Jesus knew that
His disciples would be sleeping when He
returned to them He found them sleeping.
The point I am trying to make is that even though Jesus found them
sleeping because of His deity He knew that they would be sleeping, but because
of His humanness it still hurt Him that they could not stay awake to watch and
pray with him in the last hours of His life.
When
one goes back and looks at what is called the “transfiguration” found in Luke
9:28, and 32 they will see that the disciples were also sleeping at the moment
to. Now they were sleeping at the moment of the greatest spiritual conflict in
the history of the world. These three
were oblivious to the agony and need of their Lord. However despite His warnings of their
abandonment and of Peter’s denial, they felt no need to be alert, much less to
seek God’s strength and protection.
MacArthur writes (How we can thank the Lord for the gift of the Holy
Spirit, who continually prays for us!
See Rom. 8:26-27.)” “26 In the
same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as
we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too
deep for words; 27 and He who searches
the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the
saints according to the will of God.”
MacArthur explains the following: “It was probably after midnight, and the need
for sleep at that hour was natural.
Jesus and the disciples had had a long and eventful day, and the they
had just finished a large meal and walked perhaps a mile or so from the upper
room to the Mount of Olives. But even
the disciples’ limited and confused perception of His imminent ordeal and of
their desertion of Him that He had predicted should have motivated and
engerized them enough to stay awake with Him at this obviously grave time.
“In
fairness, it should be noted that sleep is often a means of escape, and the
disciples may have slept more out of frustration, confusion, and depression
than apathy. They could not bring
themselves to face the truth that their dear friend and Lord, the promised
Messiah of Israel, not only would suffer mockery and pain at the hands of
wicked men but would even be put to death by them. As a physician, Luke perhaps was especially
diagnostic in viewing their emotional state, and he reports that, as we might
expect, they were ‘sleeping from sorrow’ (22:45).
“But even that reason did not excuse their lack of
vigilance. They did not fully believe
Jesus’ predictions of His death and of their desertion primarily because they
did not want to believe them. Had they
accepted Jesus’ word at face value, their minds and emotions would have been
far too exercised to allow sleep.
“The
startling events and controversies of the last few days—the institution of the
Lord’s Super, Jesus’ repeated predictions of His suffering and death, the
prediction of their fleeing in the time of trial, and the obvious anguish He
now experienced—should have provided more than sufficient motivation and energy
to keep them awake. But it did not. Had they sought the Father’s help in prayer
as Jesus did and as He exhorted them to do, they not only would have stayed
awake but would have been given the spiritual strength and courage they so
desperately needed.”
With
that we will, Lord willing pick up more in the next SD. This is a very long section in MacArthur’s
commentary as he has much to say about these verses.
5/26/2024 7:54 AM
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