SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/28/2024 9:18 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-6
“Supplication”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
26:39-45a
Message of the verses: “Me." 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?”
I have to say that most of today’s SD will be quoted
from John MacArthur’s commentary, as I have explained earlier that there are times
in his commentary where he just writes a lot between the verses that he is
looking at and give great information, so I think it best just to copy what he
writes and share it with those who read these SD’s on my internet blog posts.
“The
fact that Jesus again…came and found them sleeping indicates that the disciples
fell asleep even after He had awakened and admonished them. Their eyes were heavy, and because they would
not seep the Father’s help they found themselves powerless even to stay awake,
much less to offer intercession for or consolation to their Master.
After
He found the disciples sleeping the second time, Jesus left them again, and
went away and prayed a third time. Although
the gospels do not indicate it specifically, it would seem possible that, as
already mentioned, Jesus had three sessions of prayer in response to three
specific waves of Satanic attack, just as in the wilderness. It took three attempts for Satan to exhaust his
malevolent strategy against the Son of God.
Each time Jesus suffered more extreme torment of soul, but each time He
responded with absolute resolution to do the Father’s will. After the third siege, our Lord said the same
thing once more to His heavenly Father, that is, ‘Thy will be done’ (see v.
42).
In these
prayers, as in all His others, Jesus gives His followers a perfect example. Not only do we learn to confront temptation
with prayer but we learn that prayer is not a means of bending God’s will to
our own but of submitting our wills to His.
If Jesus submitted His perfect will to the Father’s, how much more
should we submit our imperfect will to His? True prayer is yielding to what God wants for
and of us, regardless of the cost—even if the cost is death. The nature or character of our praying in the
face of temptation should be to cry out to the Lord for His strength to resist
the impulse to rebel against God’s will, which is what all sin is.
“We
can be sure that the more sincerely we seek to do God’s will, the more severely
Satan will attempt to lure us from it, just as he did with Christ. And like our Lord, our response should be
prayerful, single-minded determination to draw near to God.
“After
the third time of supplication Jesus was the victor and Satan was
vanquished. The enemy of His soul was
defeated, and Christ remained unscathed in perfect harmony with the will of His
Father, calmly and submissively ready to suffer and to die. And in that death He was prepared to take
upon Himself the sins of the world. If
the very Son of God needed to cry out to His heavenly Father in time of
temptation and grief, how much more do we?
That was the lesson He wanted the eleven and all His other disciples
after them, to learn.
“After
the third session of prayer, Jesus came to the disciples and said to them, ‘Are
you still sleeping and taking your rest?’
Even after that two rebukes and heartfelt admonitions from the Lord, the
three men were still sleeping. Their
eyes were still heavy (cf. v. 43) because they were controlled by the natural
rather than by the spiritual. They were
so totally subject to the flesh and its needs that they were indifferent to the
needs of Christ. They were even
indifferent to their own deepest needs, because, just as Jesus had warned a
short while before, they were about to be overwhelmed by fear for their own
lives and by shame of Christ. Yet
instead of following their Master’ example through agonizing in prayer, the
blissfully rested in sleep.
“Jesus
was teaching the disciples that spiritual victory goes to those who are alert
in prayer and who depend on their heavenly Father. The other side of that lesson, and the one
the disciples would learn first, was that self-confidence and unpreparedness
are the way to certain spiritual defeat.”
I
have studied the gospels of both Mark and John, but my study of Matthew has
enlightened me more on what Christ and His disciples went through in learning
than the other two gospels I studied.
5/28/2024 9:47 AM
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