Words of Grace – April 20, 2017

After Jesus and his disciples had eaten the bread and drank of the cup at the Last Supper, they sang a hymn, and then they went together to the Mount of Olives.  It was there that Jesus told them about what was going to happen on that very night.

Because of him, he warned them, they would all be scattered.  Then he quoted to them what Zechariah had prophesied:  “Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.”

Jesus, the good shepherd, would “give his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).  He had said, “I lay down my life for the sheep” (v. 15).

When the Roman soldiers, led by Judas, found Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, “They laid hands on him, and took him” (Matthew 26:50).  He could have prayed to his Father, and his Father could have delivered him by sending “more than twelve legions of angels” (v. 53).

But Jesus did not pray to be delivered from death on the cross.  He had prayed earlier to his Father, “Thy will be done” (v. 42).  It was the will of God that “the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be” (v. 54). As Ray Overholt reminds us:

“He could have called ten thousand angels to destroy the world and set Him free.  He could have called ten thousand angles, But He died alone, for you and me.”