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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
May, 1938
As y ou f a c e l i f e ’s s u n s e t
the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. 44 And he that betrayed him had given them a token, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead him away safely. 45 And as soon *as he was come, he goeth straightway to him, and saith, Master, Master; and kissed him. 46 And they laid their hands on him, and took him. Golden Text: “ Not what I will, but what thou wilt” (Mlt. 14:36). Devotional Reading: Psalm 42:6-11. Ontline and Exposition I. .T he S upreme A mbition (32-36) •. O UR Lord’s distress as He approached the cross cannot be estimated by any human being, because we have noth ing adequate with which to compare it. His sorrow in Gethsemane (vs. 32-34) could not have been aroused by the approaching physical pain of the cross; many have suf fered physically as much, perhaps, as Jesus did when on the cross. His grief was occa sioned, rather, by the shadow of sin as it fell across His pathway—sin of the past and sin of the future, all the sin of all the world, heaped upon the Sinless One who offered to bear it for our sakes. God’s holy wrath against sin was about to descend. The Lord of life was to die. The One who dwelt in the bosom of the Father was, as the voluntary Sin-Bearer, to be forsaken by the Father whose absolute holiness can coun tenance no evil. The Light of the world was to enter the outer darkness. It was the anticipation of the involvments in this en counter with sin that made the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s holy Son, shrink from the ordeal. Our own familiarity with sin and our unfamiliarity with holiness hinder us from having any adequate understanding of what the soul of Jesus experienced in the hour when he was “sore amazed, and began to be very heavy.” U n sp e a k a b le horror plumbed the depths of His feeling, and “ His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Lk. 22:44). The threefold request by the Servant of Jehovah needs careful study (vs. 35, 36). First, He prayed that the hour might pass from Him. The petition could not have been based upon the fear of dying before He went to the cross; that view would deny His personal sinlessness, the Scripture declarations that He should die upon the cross, and His own repeated predictions of the manner of His death. What is meant was perhaps the hour of agony, as He con templated going into the darkness, bearing in His body the hateful thing called sin. Second, He prayed that the tup might be removed. That cup, He knew, was filled by Satan but presented by the Father. Our Lord would not acknowledge that Satan was presenting it. T o Him, it was “the cup which my Father hath given me.” Hence He could appeal to the Father to remove it if that were possible. Third, He prayed, “ Not what I will, but what thou wilt” (v. 36), the supreme ambition, overshadow ing all other desires, that the will of God might be done. He would endure the cross for the joy that was set before Him, the joy of knowing God’s will was fulfilled. In this prayer of Jesus, we may well
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