his will

This is the fifth in our series of Holy Week devotionals.


Today we are looking at Jesus’s time in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yesterday we talked about what Jesus chose to do for his last meal before His death. Today we pick up right after the meal during the final moments before His arrest. In Matthew 26:36-39 it says:

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.’ 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.’

“My soul is deeply grieved.” Have you been there? Maybe not quite to the point Jesus was here. In Luke’s description of these events, He said Jesus was in agony to the point of sweating drops of blood. That is a level of grief that few if any of us ever experience, but we do experience grief. Our souls do ache with grief at times.

So what do we do when that happens? If we follow Jesus’s example, we spend time with the Father. We pour out our grieving souls to Him. We plead with Him. But ultimately we submit ourselves, our will, to Him. We don’t deny our feelings. We don’t deny our hopes and wishes, but we trust that His will, His plan, is better than ours even if we don’t understand it.

The disciples certainly didn’t understand His will in this. Not only did they keep falling asleep when Jesus was asking them to stay alert and pray, but they didn’t understand that He was about to willingly lay down His life because that had been the plan from the very beginning. We read in Matthew chapter 26 verses 49-54:

Immediately Judas went to Jesus and said, ‘Hail, Rabbi!’ and kissed Him. And Jesus said to him, ‘Friend, do what you have come for.’ Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and seized Him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus reached and drew out his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?’

Jesus reminds the disciples of something that He’d been trying to explain to them for quite some time: The Scriptures told of the suffering and death that was ahead of Him. Although the disciples had not been able to wrap their minds around it, this had been God’s plan all along. He had sent His only Son into the world to be the ultimate sacrifice to reconcile us to God once again. Throughout the Old Testament there was Scripture after Scripture giving glimpses of God’s plan. None were clearer than the words of Isaiah 53:

For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.

He allowed Himself to be arrested to fulfill the Scriptures. He was allowing Himself to face what Isaiah described because He was submitting to God’s will. God was willing for Him to suffer and die because of His great love for us. Take some time to think about that and let it really soak in today. God loves you that much.