NOVEMBER 19 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#32 “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40)

 

NOVEMBER 19  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#32 

“What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?” 

 (Matthew 26:40)

LIVING FOR JESUS - Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Lord as I start another day in Your Word I praise you for 

being Obedient to the Father and for willingly facing death on the cross

 for my sake, for shedding Your Precious Blood for the remission 

of my sin ——— You ARE the Son of God and lived the Perfect Sinless

 Life but exchanged that Divine Perfection for my pardon!?! 

Lord Jesus teach me to be a willing servant of the Most High God

 and to be a good steward of the blessings that He pours out daily

 along with the greatest of all blessings — GRACE. 

Lord I deserve death for my many iniquities and shortcomings 

so as I start this day I give Thanks for Grace with one breath and 

plead for Mercy with the next!   AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus has made His Purpose clear with His announcement that

 He was to “be delivered up to be crucified” and when next He was

 anointed with oil, He explained the oil was for “My burial”!  It should

 have been clear to the disciples that Jesus was to be the Passover Lamb

 and fulfill the prophecies of the Messiah but they were blinded by the

 world as each generation is blinded by the deceitful world in which we live. 

Matthew records that Judas Iscariot had conspired with the chief

 priests to betray Jesus and “from that time [Judas] sought opportunity

 to betray Him.” (Matthew 26:17) None of His disciples had yet 

understood that Jesus was to be the Passover Lamb even though Jesus

 had plainly told them He was to die in Jerusalem at the Passover. 

Jesus however was being obedient to God’s Plan and He continued

 to Teach His disciples by living the perfect example. “Now on the

 first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the disciples 

came to Jesus, saying to Him, ‘Where do You want us to prepare 

for You to eat the Passover?’” (Matthew 26:17) 

Jesus continues Teaching as He instructs His disciples on the preparation

 of His Last Passover and He tells them to “go to a certain man” and

 tell the man, “The Teacher says, ‘My time is at hand; I will keep 

the Passover at your house with My disciples’” (Matthew 26:18) 

So again Jesus is telling His disciples that the Event that Jesus

 became flesh for was about to occur and Jesus makes it clear 

that it is the Passover that is His Purpose. 

The “disciples did as Jesus had directed them” and as Jesus sat

 down with the twelve and began eating the Passover, Jesus again

 made a statement that the disciples and Judas Iscariot especially

 should have understood that Jesus was saying that He knew 

everything that was going to happen when Jesus made this statement

 while sitting at His Last Passover Supper with His disciples,

 “Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.” (Matthew 26:21) 

Jesus demonstrates with this statement that He has knowledge of the

 future events for He listed this sequence of Divine Events when Jesus

said (T1) that He will be delivered up by the chief priests, 

(T2) that He would be crucified, 

(T3) that He would be buried, and now He is revealing

 (T4) that it is one of His own disciples that is going to betray Him. 

Instead of marveling at the fact that Jesus knows everything that is

 going to happen and give God the Glory for using His Only Begotten Son

 for the Plan of Salvation, the disciples did exactly what we all do in

 our worldly selfishness as they each asked, “Lord, is it I?” (Matthew 26:22). 

Jesus answered as He always answered by referring to the Scriptures

 as He answered His disciples,

 “The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him,

 but woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.” 

(Matthew 26:24) 

Jesus is being sacrificed on the cross because 

it is the Father’s Plan of Salvation 

and not because of one man’s betrayal of the Truth of Jesus 

nor is Jesus being crucified because Satan had convinced Judas to sell

 his soul for 30 pieces of silver! Jesus demonstrates by His every action that

 GOD HAS A PLAN 

and that 

SALVATION WILL COME THROUGH THE SACRIFICE 

OF THE LAMB THAT GOD HIMSELF HAS PROVIDED!!! 

Every action of the world is the other side of that coin in that everything

 that the world has done to persecute Jesus has all contributed to the

 completion of GOD’S PLAN even though they had acted 

“unintentionally” and with evil intent! 

The world gives Satan much more credit than deserved and we fail to see

 in our daily lives that we are guilty of betraying Jesus in our own way

 because we do not see God’s Plan in our lives — Jesus expressed the

 importance of believing in God’s Plan as He said,

 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word 

and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life,

 and shall not come into judgement, 

but has passed from death into life.” (John 5:24) 

Therefore as we study the events that unfold at this Historic Passover,

 let us PRAISE GOD that He has provided GRACE for a lost and dying

 world and each generation “betrays” God’s Only Begotten Son 

but receives MERCY instead of JUDGEMENT because we believe that

 “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, 

that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

 (John 3:16)

NOVEMBER 18 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#32 “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40)

 

NOVEMBER 18  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#32

 “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?”  (Matthew 26:40)

LIVING FOR JESUS - Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Blessed be the Name of Jesus, Name above all names,

 Lord of all lords, the Prince of Peace, the Son in whom the Father is well

 pleased and who the Father admonishes us: “Listen to Him”!!! 

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus … my Lord and my Salvation, may all that I do

 be a Glory to You and Honor Your Great Name, the only Name which 

can be called upon by a sinner for salvation and the only Name 

to bestow Mercy and Grace on the humble and contrite heart that repents

 and seeks the Peace that can only be found by following Your Ways

 and entering the Narrow Gate!   AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus announced that

 “…the Son of Man will be delivered up…” (Matthew 26:2) 

anointed with “…fragrant oil…for [His] burial…(Matthew 26:12) 

and then Matthew documents how Jesus was betrayed:

 “Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests

 and said, ‘What are you willing to give me if I deliver Him to you?’ 

And they counted out to [Judas] thirty pieces of silver.” 

(Matthew 12:14-15) 

There is a Deep Lesson on the Sovereignty of God in these two verses

 that is a very revealing insight to both God and mankind! 

This Deep Insight in Matthew 12:14-15 is always overlooked as is 

the same insight found in Job 1:8 and Job 2:3 in which God initiates

 a conversation with Satan. “Then the LORD said to Satan…” (Job 1:8)

 and again, “Then the LORD said to Satan…” (Job 2:3) and our first 

worldly question is:

 

“What is God doing talking to the devil?” 

When we read the passage in Matthew 12:14-15 — we mistakenly give 

the devil credit again as our worldly misguided wisdom tells us that Judas

 Iscariot is possessed by the devil and it is the devil 

making Judas betray Jesus!  

The Deep Truth of God in both these passages is simply this: 

 GOD IS IN CONTROL!!! 

In the book of Job we tend to look at the “suffering” of Job 

and in the passage in Matthew where Judas accepts 30 pieces of silver

 we focus on the suffering of Jesus on the cross because of the “betrayal”

 but in both instances we miss the Sovereignty of God and we never consider that

 the Suffering of Job and the Betrayal of Jesus was Planned by God —

“before the foundation of the earth” (see Revelation 13:8 and 1 Peter 1:20) —

 with the Ultimate Purpose found in John 3:16 —

 these are not random attacks by the devil, they are scripted 

responses to the plan of God to bring Salvation to mankind!!! 

Satan was approached by God and asked to consider Job, 

and through Job’s suffering we see that there was nothing Satan could do

 to Job that God could not make good in Job’s life 

and we see in the Crucifixion that there is nothing the world can do

 to the living that God cannot turn into His Glory. 

Satan took his best shot at the Cross and convinced the world to crucify 

the very Son of God but God proved His Sovereignty by raising Jesus

 the third day and Jesus revealed the cross was the culmination

 of God’s Plan when Jesus declared from the cross 

“It is Finished!!!”  

Yet, though Jesus was betrayed by His own, beaten beyond

 recognition, crucified, dead and buried,

 the Power of God and His Supreme Sovereignty over 

Life and Death was demonstrated on the Third Day when God 

Resurrected His Only Begotten Son in victory over the best

 that Satan and the evil world could come up with!!! 

God has ALWAYS HAD A PLAN FOR THE GOOD OF MAN 

and Satan is powerless ——— the TRUTH OF GOD is that 

Satan cannot do anything without God’s approval!  

Satan cannot thwart God’s Plan of Salvation because the devil knew that 

he was totally defeated when he heard Jesus cry from the cross

 “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which Matthew translates as 

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46) 

Can you imagine Satan at Golgotha first giving high fives to his demons

 when God’s Son, hanging on the cross, shedding His last drop of blood

 was asking from that cross 

why the Father had forsaken His Only Begotten Son?!?!  

That scene of the jubilation of Satan is what the world makes us see,

 as we see the suffering of Job at the hand of Satan, and as we 

see Christ dying a cruel death because Satan deceived Judas into 

betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver ——— 

BUT GOD HAS A PLAN ——— 

and when one looks at GOD’S PLAN through the eyes of GOD’S GRACE 

and is not blinded by the lies of Satan and the deception of worldly desires 

we can see that God is in CONTROL and that everything is

 GOING ACCORDING TO GOD’S PLAN!!! 

I can imagine that Satan was in the midst of a high fives when God 

let Satan see the TRUTH that God had planned for Judas to betray 

Jesus who was INNOCENT and that 

JESUS WOULD SHED HIS INNOCENT BLOOD 

AS AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE FOR THE REMISSION OF SIN 

and now that God had gone so far as to abandon Jesus on the cross to accomplish

 HIS PLAN OF SALVATION 

It becomes obvious that Satan knew that 

JESUS WAS THE VICTOR AND NOT THE VICTIM!!! 

God had already demonstrated the POWER of LIFE OVER DEATH 

and at that moment Satan KNEW that what Jesus had stated on 

several occasions leading up to the cross would become a reality 

and in only THREE DAYS God would RESURRECT HIS SON 

from the GRAVE AND DEATH_——— AND IT WAS ALL PLANNED!!! 

“What about you — do you believe God is that powerful?”