Group Bible Study

  Roman soldiers were not known to be fearful about anything, and they certainly were not known to fall on the ground quickly. They were ready for anything as they approached the garden. Imagine the scene. When they said they were looking for Jesus, the Lord replied uttering the divine name in Greek, the name of God, "I AM" ( egō eimi ). Some of you have the words,  I am he  in the text, but the word “He” is absent from the original Greek and added by the translators to make the statement easier to understand in English. Again and again, in the Gospels, we have seen Jesus adding the name of God to different aspects of His character. I am the Gate; I am the Good Shepherd, I am the Light of the World, I am the Way, etc. When He said those words, this was a display of raw spiritual power before these soldiers. Jesus was letting the soldiers know that He was willingly giving Himself into their hands. What a picture it must have been, hundreds of men terrified of ...

47 While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him,  48 but Jesus asked him, "Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?"  49 When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?"  50 And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.  51 But Jesus answered, "No more of this!" And he touched the man's ear and healed him.  52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs?  53 Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns" (Luke 22:47-53).   Judas knew the place where Jesus often slept through the night, so he brought a detachment of Roman sold...

We are continuing to meditate on the cup that Jesus had to drink in the Garden of Gethsemane (See yesterday's thoughts below). A second thing seen as a cup Christ had to drink was more than humiliation at the hands of evil men and more than being crucified, it was to put on and be fully clothed in our sin as God’s sacrificial lamb.   We struggle to be holy when our natural tendency, our default nature, is toward sin. It was entirely different, though, for our Lord Jesus. He had never known sin. He has always been Holy. He was born of a virgin and by the Holy Spirit. Christ was not conceived in the usual way, and, therefore, did not take on a sinful nature. He remained free from sin all His life so that he would die as an innocent Lamb for us and as us. The apostle Peter had been around Him for more than three years, yet he said about Christ:  “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth”  (1 Peter 2:22). As a Holy being, Christ's struggle...

We are continuing our meditation of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, just a few hours before His crucifixion. He said something very intriguing:    Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father,  if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39).   It is possible that Jesus was speaking of the cup of wrath given to Him to drink by the Father.  You and I deserved this cup of wrath. Isaiah the prophet wrote about the wrath of God pictured as a cup that had to be drunk:   Awake, awake! Rise up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the  cup of his wrath, you who have drained to its dregs the goblet that makes men stagger (Isaiah 51:17; also read Jeremiah 25:15-17).   We deserved spiritual death because of the sins and choices that we have made in our lives. In the Garden of Eden, God told Adam that when you eat of the fruit on the t...

When Jesus and the disciples arrived in Gethsemane, Christ went from them a stone’s throw distance and Luke tells us that He fell to His knees to pray (v. 41). Matthew tells us that at times His posture was one of lying down with His face to the ground in impassioned prayer:  37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled.  38 Then he said to them, "My soul is  overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death . Stay here and keep watch with me."  39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father,  if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:37-39). The phrase, “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” is quite a descriptive phrase and leaves us wondering what was going on inside His soul. Whatever it was that He was going through, Jesus described it as being so overwhelming as to bring Him close ...

We are continuing our meditation of the conversation at the Last Passover supper of Jesus and His disciples the night before Christ was crucified (Scroll down for previous meditations). Jesus gave a shocking prophetic word to Simon, also called Peter:   31 "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.  32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.  And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."  33 But he replied, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death."  34 Jesus answered, "I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me" (Luke 22:31-34).   We suggested yesterday that Peter might have been the one that caused the dispute at the table about who was the greatest among them. It is possible this was caused by Judas seating himself in the place of honor beside Jesus. The Lord calls Peter by the name that he used to be known as—Simon. Peter was be...

We are continuing our meditation on the last Passover meal that Jesus had with His disciples before His crucifixion. They are all reclining around the table when an argument began among the disciples:    24 Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.  25 Jesus said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.  26 But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.  27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.  28 You are those who have stood by me in my trials.  29 And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me,  30 so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve trib...