Betrayal and Arrest

Betrayal and Arrest

Betrayal and Arrest
Matt. 26:36

36 Then [tote] cometh [erchomai] Jesus [Iesous] with [meta] them [autos] unto [eis] a place [chorion] called [lego] Gethsemane [Gethsemane] , and [kai] saith [lego] unto the disciples [mathetes] , Sit ye [kathizo] here [autou] , while [heos] [hou] I go [aperchomai] and pray [proseuchomai] yonder [ekei] . KJV-Interlinear

36 Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, 'Sit here while I go over there and pray.' NASB

It isn't enough to simply hear of Christ, or even to just read about Him. You have to commit your life, your mind, your thinking to the subject of Christianity, and thus consider your own life as it applies to or relates to Christ.

If you go into a vineyard (and most of us don't go to the vineyard, we go to the grocery store), but anyway, if you grasp a cluster of grapes and hold them in your hand, you are not blessed with the richness of the wine that 'might' come from them. That wine comes only from the treading of the grapes in a press and then is proved by the passing of time.

This is the application of Gods Word to your life on a day to day basis, even on a moment to moment basis. You have to listen, learn, understand, and this most people can do easily, but then there is the application to ones life of Gods Word, and that requires acceptance of the principles He teaches throughout the scriptures. This is the biggest single barrier to blessing and reason for failure in peoples lives. The wine press of life be the press great or small usually sends them running to their own more comfortable ideas of living.

People know the issues, but they also have their own desires, and when Gods word conflicts with the way they want life to be, then they reject God and accept their own compromises, their own defined rules of life. Failures then enter into their lives.

This is the picture of the apostles. They have been told just two days earlier that this Passover, Christ will be made to succumb to death. Jesus told them on several occasions, of which you should be aware if you have been paying attention during this past month or so of our study of Matthew and John, that He will be leaving them in death, going to the Father, returning, and then leaving again for an extended period of time. That length of time was not revealed, of course.

Growing up with the feasts and especially the Passover, the apostles were very much aware of its significance, but like so many of that day, the sacrifice of the Messiah was rejected or ignored, and the promise of the Kingdom was looked to, but not so much as a deliverance of the people, but more for a bragging right to be thrown in the face of the Romans, of gentiles, of anyone else who might be considered as 'outsiders.' 'Nanner, nanner. Gods going to get you. Gods going to get you.' Sort of attitude. And of course it will be the elders, the priests, the scribes, and such who see themselves as being propelled into great positions of authority. Positions they receive from God, no less. 'So, there!'

Now if I could draw a picture of a tongue sticking out then that would just about complete the picture here.

But of course this is an illusion, not a reality. The elders thought they were doing God a favor by getting rid of a trouble maker, and that idea was carefully wrapped in 'what God would prefer.' What they really wanted was to preserve their way of life, their status in society, the lucrative concessions they received in the Temple, and such.

The apostles suffered a similar illusion. They rejected the sacrifice notion. They knew this was an important evening, yet they would go to sleep as they would on any other occasion. They did not stay up and pray to God for a successful outcome of His plan of salvation, but were convinced of their impending role in the Kingdom which they thought sure was on the horizon.

Now lets look at some other things that most people miss when they are reading the Bible. First, there are the unknown people who supported Christ. There is the owner of the donkey, the owner of the upper room for the last supper, those who prepared the meal, the owner of the garden where we find ourselves at the moment These people are not named, yet they participated in one of the most significant sequences of events in history.

Mary rubbed oil on Jesus, even in front of a clueless group who would call themselves apostles.

Now we have Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, which stands for 'olive press.' In the next few verses we will see and study the pressures upon Him, as only a press machine can be identified with. But that is jumping ahead a little bit.

He is in the garden. He is not on the Cross. Most feel that the Cross is where much of the pressure came from, but no so. So why now, in the garden? Why? Perhaps because the Cross is just hours away? Perhaps He is starting to get worried about the Cross? Perhaps because the fear and the magnitude of the Cross was just getting too close and therefore He was getting overwhelmed with it all?

No. None of these. Jesus Christ is God. He knew full well the purpose for which He was born. He knew full well the details and history of the angelic conflict. He knows of Satan's attack on God and humanity. He knows of the attitude of the people in the world, from the elders of Judea to the apostles.

So what of the next verse couple of verses where He begins to become grieved? Well we have to wait until the next couple of lessons for that.

Jesus tells the apostles to wait as He walks a little bit away from them, to pray. Why. If they were interested at all, they would go with Him no matter what, but they are not interested, not to the point that they saw this night as any different than any other night.

Jesus uses a different word for pray. The usual word is 'euchomai' which means to pray in the typical sense, to have a conversation, to ask for or to petition for things as a matter of due course in ones thinking process. But now He uses the word 'proseuchomai' which is a fervent, direct to the Father prayer when things are at their all time lowest for one in life.

This is the type of prayer ones prays to God when everything in life has fallen apart and you have lost all hope of anything in life helping you out, save God alone. This is an intense prayer, up close and very personal, between yourself, and God. The pressure is on you, the intensity of the world and your problems are smothering you with great anguish, great anxiety, great emotional distress. This is the connotation of the word 'proseuchomai.'

Like many believers throughout history, the apostles foolishly mistook their good intentions for their spiritual strength, therefore they felt no desperation about their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, nor did they see a need for prayer. After all this was God whom they were with.

That is where we will leave the apostles and Christ until tomorrow's lesson, but I'll tease you with one little question. When Jesus began His ministry after leaving John the Baptist, He went into the desert for forty days and then was tempted by Satan, three times. Now we are at the end of His ministry, is Satan tempting Him (Jesus) now, and if so, how do we know?

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