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 blessing of life — 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 that 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 (1) that He will be delivered up by the chief priests, (2) that He would be crucified, (3) that He would be buried, and now He is revealing (4) 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) and 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)