TH E KING ’S BUSINESS
733
repentance by the gentle rebuke of Jesus (vs. 6-9). He hurries away to Jesus’ mur derous enemies to strike a bargain for the betrayal of his Lord. Oh! how beautiful Mary appears spending her all to anoint her Saviour for His burial: how foul Judas ap pears selling the same Saviour for a few paltry coins. But for covetousness Judas might have become as fair as Mary. Let us then “beware and take heed of covetous ness.” . Our Lord had looked forward to this last supper with His disciples with anticipation and longing (Luke 22:15). He could not eat it at the regular time; for He, the true Paschal Lamb, would be sacrificed on the cross at the very hour the lambs were being slain at the temple (Luke 22:15, 16). So He kept an anticipatory- celebration the night before. It was a blessed privilege to prepare for the Saviour this last feast that He enjoyed on earth. The directions given were peculiar. It is another illustration of our Lord’s way of guiding His disciples a step at a time (cf. Matt. 21:1-7), and so testing and developing their faith. It is also an illustration of His supernatural knowledge: He knew just whom His disci ples would meet, just what the man accosted would do, just what the result of their mis sion w'ould be: and so it is with all the mis sions upon which He sends us. The wisest thing for us to do is simply to await His bidding and leave the results with Him. The two disciples sent, Peter and John (Luke 22:8), proved that they were disci ples indeed by doing exactly as they were bidden (Matt. 26:19), and, as will always be the case, “found (it) as He had said unto them.” Friday, August 20. ■Mq,rk 14:12-16.
filled His soul with anguish (John 13:21). The perfidy of Judas was one of the bitter est ingredients in the cup that Jesus drank (Ps. 41:9; 55:12-14). Jesus loved Judas: He gave Him opportunity after opportu nity for repentance. He only let him go when He must and then with a great heart ache. Judas married to his worldly ambi tion, disappointed in the carnal hopes that had first drawn him to Jesus, faith and self ish loyalty turned into greed and hate, con science stifled, spurned the love that sought to save him, and the Apostle became a thief and murderer, and so may we if we love the world rather than Jesus (James 4:4). Each one of the disciples got a glimpse of the latent evil possibilities of his own heart, and one by one said, “Is it I?” (“Can it be I?”) We all do well to recog nize that there is a Judas lurking in the heart of each of us, but the grace of God is sufficient. Though the perfidy of Judas v/as predicted long before Judas was born that in no wise lessened his guilt or punish ment (v. 21). There was no constraint upon him except the constraint of the will that chooses to let Satan in rather than let Jesus in. It is better never to have lived than to have lived basely (v. 21). These terrific words of our Lord show how base less are the hopes some entertain of a uni versal restoration and salvation. Sunday, August 22. Mark 14:22-26. The breaking of the bread was not sig nificant of the breaking of the body of Christ on the cross (cf. John 19:36; 1 Cor. 11:23, see R. V.). It was simply signifi cant of the distribution of His body among those who would feed upon Him, It is by faith that we feed upon Him (John 6:54, 57), but that faith alone is true faith that actually feeds upon Christ, i. e., appro priating to itself the life and strength that there are in Him. There can be no cove nant between a holy God and sinful man except on the ground of shed blood (cf. Heb. 9:18-23). The blood is the life and life must be poured out wherever there is
Saturday, August 21. Mark 14:17-21.
A fact of which Jesus had been aware for a long time (John 6:70, 71) came before Him suddenly at this time in the feast and
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker