The Book of Mark: Chapter 14

Well, this time we’re in Mark 14. And, just to bring you up to date a little bit, you know the last couple times we met we spoke about obviously Mark 13, the End Times prophecies that the Lord gave to four of the disciples. This is in the last week of His life, and there’s only a couple days left before He goes to the cross and so, we’re getting down to the end of His ministry.

14:1 says:

Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

Now, the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread come right next to each other. On the 14th day of their month, which is roughly equivalent to our month of—it’s about half of March and half of April. It’s in the springtime. 

On the 14th day of that month was Passover, and then the very next day began the Feast of Unleavened Bread which was seven days long. So there was an eight day period there that was part of the so-called Spring Feasts of Israel. 

And then right in the middle of it, was the third feast, the Feast of First Fruits, that took place after Passover and after Unleavened Bread had begun, but before Unleavened Bread had finished. 

In fact, First Fruits was the first day after the Sabbath that followed Passover, so it changed around every year, but because it was always on the first day of the week right after Passover. 

And so, sometimes it was one day of the month, like the 17th, and some other time it might be the 16th, some other time it might be quite a bit later, but it always happened on the first day after the Sabbath that followed the Passover.

Now, the Sabbath was always on a Saturday, so that meant the Feast of First Fruits was always on a Sunday, that was their first day of their week. And of course, the Feast of First Fruits is going to be interesting to us because we know that as being fulfilled in the resurrection. 

The Feast of First Fruits is known to us as Resurrection Morning, which we ought to call it instead of what we normally do call it, which is Easter. 

“Easter” is a pagan word, comes from the Feast of Ishtar, the goddess of fertility. And so, we should call the day the Lord came out of the tomb Resurrection Morning, the name it should have, rather than calling it the name of a pagan goddess, okay? But that’s something we can get into on another day.

Today we’re concerned about Mark 14.

Now verse 3 says:

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

On the Lord’s head.

Verse 4:

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

There was a tradition in Israel that a young woman would save, and save, and save, and save, and save, in order to buy this particular type of perfume. It was something that she would use on the night of her wedding.

And like they said here, it would have cost a year’s wages. Now, I don’t know how much a year’s wages is to you, but personally, I’ve never spent a year’s wages on a bottle of perfume for anybody! But that was something that they did in those days, and she, instead of saving it for her wedding, broke the bottle open and anointed the Lord with it.

Now for that reason, many of us believe that she was acting as a model of the Church when she did that, anointing the one she would be marrying.

Okay, now in the Mark passage it just says it was a woman, and they were in the home of Simon the Leper. Now, let’s turn over to John 12, and we’ll find out more about who these people are, and I think you’ll be interested about that.

John 12, and we’ll read the first few verses. 

John 12:1 says:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived to Bethany,

Now remember, Mark just said that this happened two days before Passover, and so don’t let this confuse you because Jesus arrived at the home six days before Passover. So He had been there several days already, so that clears up that. 

And this was the place, Bethany was the place where Lazarus lived, who Jesus had raised from the dead. Now it turns out that Simon the Leper, that we read about in Mark, is the father of Lazarus.

Now verse 2:

Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. And then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

And so now we know who the woman was, it was Mary, the sister of Martha. Both Mary and Martha were sisters of Lazarus—remember from John, when Mary and Martha called Jesus to come, and He didn’t get there in time they thought, and so Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Mary and Martha were the sisters, Lazarus was their brother, and Simon the Leper was their father, and so that’s how this all ties together.

Okay, back to Mark 14—Oh wait a minute but don’t do that yet! Skip down to verse 4.

Verse 4 says, and we’re in John 12 now, verse 4:

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected,

Now you remember Mark said some of the disciples, but here John says it wasn’t some of them, it was him.

And he said in verse 5:

“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.

Now listen to verse 6:

He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

And so you see, if they sold that perfume and got a year’s wages, and stuck it in the ministry’s money bag, he could take a pretty healthy chunk of that and so that’s what his motivation was for complaining that she used this perfume in this way instead of saving it. So he wasn’t really concerned about the poor.

Now we can go back to Mark 14, and when we do we’re in verse 6:

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Okay, and so the Lord thought this was an appropriate thing; it was an honor to Him obviously. But He is saying that He’s going to be dying soon, and by doing this she has anointed Him for burial, so that was the purpose of what she was doing.

And then in verse 10:

Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 

And this is another indication that he was the one who was indignant about it, and he’s the one the Lord rebuked about it. This might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, this might have been a thing that he decided: Okay, enough is enough. I got to do something to stop this guy.

Verse 11:

They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

Now we know from our Bible studies and from our experience in reading the Bible and knowing something about these things, that the amount of money they gave him was 30 pieces of silver, right? 

Now, did you know why they gave him 30 pieces of silver? Well, in one place, that was an appropriate payment for an animal that had been gored by an ox. And so, because the animal would not be worth anything anymore, if your ox gored someone else’s animal (you know, running him through with his horns) you would owe the man 30 pieces of silver.

But the other reason is because, 400 years earlier, Zechariah said he would, do you know that? Let’s go to the Book of Zechariah, that’s an even better reason than the gored animal, right?

Zechariah 11, this is easy to remember because Zechariah 11:12 and 13 so Zechariah 11, 12, 13.

Verse 12. This is a vision Zechariah is having of two shepherds, and verse 12 says:

I told them, “If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.” So they paid me thirty pieces of silver.

And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the handsome price at which they price me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter.

Now, this is an incredibly precise prophecy, because not only is the 30 pieces of silver mentioned in advance, but also that the money was going to go to a potter, but it was going to be given through the house of the Lord. 

And you remember after the Lord was taken, and Judas felt remorse for what he had done, he went back to the temple and tried to give the money back and he said, “I’ve done a terrible thing. I’ve betrayed an innocent man.” And they said, “What is that to us? That’s your problem.”

And so he threw the money at their feet in the temple and ran out. They took the money and said, “We can’t put this in the treasury because it is blood money.” 

It’s been contaminated, so they couldn’t use it for anything, but they could give it to somebody in exchange for something. And so, they bought a field from a man who made his living as a potter, and they used the field to bury the indigent—the people who were vagrants, and didn’t have homes and things, or strangers who died while they were in Jerusalem. 

It was the duty of the priests, if somebody from out of the country or out of town or somebody just traveling through happened to pass away while they were there, it was the duty of the priests to bury them. 

And so, they kept a field for that purpose and this field happened to be bought from a man who made his living as a potter. Now, is that a remarkable prophecy? What are the odds that that could have been done by coincidence? 

First of all, you got to arrange this 400 years in advance and then you got to arrange for the Lord’s enemies to fulfill the prophecy for you, because it was the priests, right? And it was Judas the betrayer who fulfilled this prophecy. 

And so anybody who tells you it’s just a coincidence that these things all happened doesn’t know anything about what the Bible says. If you just took—there are over 300 of these kinds of prophecies, by the way—if you took just a handful of them and tried to calculate the likelihood that these could happen by chance you’d discover it can’t be done. 

There’s no possibility that even one of these could have happened by accident, by chance. There’s no possibility that the Lord could have manipulated events to arrange for these things to happen to make it appear that He was fulfilling prophecy, it can’t happen. It is statistically impossible for this to happen.

This is why the study of prophecy is such an important study in the Bible because it proves to you that God is who He says He is, because He tells you the end from the beginning, and only God can do that. Nobody else. There’s no other holy book anywhere, so-called holy book anywhere, that validates itself the way this one does, through prophecy.

The Lord has a 4,000 year record before the New Testament came along of saying He is going to do something and then doing it, and He did it to prove to Israel and to us that He is who He claims to be.

In fact, in one place in Isaiah, He challenges all the other gods, He says, “You want to be God? Here, there’s only two things you have to do. This is a two question test, this is all you have to do if you want to be God. First, you have to tell us everything that’s happened since the dawn of history.”

Well, I suppose if you studied for long enough you could come up with that answer, but that’s only the first question. 

The second question is now (if you get that question right now here’s the second one), “Now, you have to tell us everything that is going to happen until the end of history.”

That’s where He gets them, and then He says to Israel, “Don’t worry, there’s nobody that can do this. Nobody but Me.”

And this is what sets the Bible apart from all the other so-called holy writings, and that is it is self validating. You can, with a history book in one hand, and the Bible in the other, you can prove that God is who He claims to be, you can prove it. Nobody takes the time to do that, but you can. It can be done.

All right so, by the way, that’s why in many towns, when we were growing up—when I was growing up, you guys are way behind as far as growing up is concerned! [laughing] And people who know me would correct me, they would say, “You’ve never grown up Jack, you’re just getting older!” And so let’s put it that way.

When I was younger, in our little town like there was in many towns, there was a cemetery called the Potter’s Field, right? I don’t know if you know if that’s where that name came from, but it came from this incident.

So, Judas is watching for an opportunity to hand the Lord over for the 30 pieces of silver. 

All right now we’re down to verse 12:

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”

We got to stop here now, because Mark has said something here that is self-contradictory, but you need to understand the tradition of the day to help clarify this. And then we will go and show you how each of the Gospels agrees as to what particular day Mark was talking about.

First of all, he said it was on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, the key word there is “customary” because that’s not how it began.

Passover was, like I said earlier, the 14th of their month. Unleavened Bread began on the 15th the next day. So they are two separate holidays, one began the day after the other. 

But by the Lord’s time, they sort of molded them together and the name Passover kind of got pushed down, and the whole eight days came to be known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

And in fact, in the Lord’s time, it was more customary to call Passover, Preparation Day because it was the day they prepared for the big feast that they would have the next day. You see, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is a holy day on which no work was permitted, and yet it’s one of the big feasts in Israel. 

And so, all the preparation for that feast had to be done the previous day, and then it would be ready. And that’s why the previous day, which is Passover as we know it, came to be known as Preparation Day because that’s the day on which they prepared for the big feast. 

You see, Passover was not a day in which no work was permitted, and so you could work on that day, even though it was a feast day. It’s the next day, Unleavened Bread, where no work was permitted.

Now this is extremely important to us, as we’ll see. But first of all we got to clear this up. Why did Mark say what he said? Well, first of all we know it was customary for this to happen, to call the whole eight day period the Feast of Unleavened Bread because the high point of it was this feast on the 15th. 

But then, in the very same sentence he says, “when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb.” Well, when did they sacrifice the Passover lamb? On Passover. And so it wasn’t the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, technically, it was Passover.

Now let’s go back to Exodus 12, and we’ll get this all figured out because what I’m going to show you is that there’s only one day. There’s only one day in that last week of the Lord’s life when Jesus could have been crucified. There’s only one day that it could have happened, and it was not Friday. And it was not Wednesday. What a smart man this is, he said it must have been Thursday! 

Let’s find out, see if he’s right or not.

Exodus 12:1:

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 

Now, understand that up until that time, the first month of the year had been in the fall in the month they call Tishri which goes from the middle of September to the middle of October on our calendar. 

And in fact, the so-called Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, is still on the first day of Tishri in the fall, it’s in September. The Jewish new year is in September. And their calendar year starts then, their civil year starts then. And back in those days, things went on agricultural cycles and so the new cycle of planting started then. And so their year started in September, what we would call September.

But in Exodus the Lord said, “I want you to switch that.” And if you notice, He’s asking them to switch it around by six months so that the year would start in the spring instead of in the fall. 

So now what you’ll find in Israel even today, is you’ll find the religious year starting on the first day of Nisan which is the month of March-April, half March and half April, and that’s when the religious year starts. The civil year starts in September like it always had.

But the Lord said, “Here I want you to switch this, I want the first month to be in the spring.”

And He happened to say this to Moses in the month of Nisan which is the spring month.

Then He says in verse 3:

Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.

And so on the 10th day of the month they were to take a lamb out of the flock. Take one, one for each household.

And then He goes into the regulation there, if your household is too small share it with somebody else, but it turns out it was one lamb for every about ten people, and that’s what He wanted. 

The lamb must be without defect. And it can be either a sheep or a goat, didn’t matter as long as it’s a one year old lamb without defect. That means it had to be completely healthy, no blemishes anywhere, no unusual features about them.

Then in verse 6 it says:

Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month,

Now, note the word “until” the 14th day of the month. That means through the end of the 13th day because at the end of the 13th day, the 14th day would be started and that’s when you stopped taking care of them. Because on the 14th day you were going to slaughter that lamb and they were going to paint the lamb’s blood on the doorpost and lintels of their houses to protect them when the destroying angel came through that night. Okay, so the end of the 13th. 

Another anomaly, or unusual fact about the Israeli calendar, is that the day begins at sundown. It doesn’t begin at midnight like our day does,;their day begins at sundown and that’s right from Genesis 1 when God said it was evening and then it was morning, day one. 

And so, the evening comes before the morning in the Jewish calendar. The day starts at sundown, and so the end of the 13th would have been late afternoon. And that’s when they were to slaughter the lamb, and then after sundown when the new day started, the 14th, then they had the first Passover meal.

So for them, the 14th day of the month was really, in our way of thinking, the evening of the 13th. It was the end of the 13th but their 14th had already begun. Now I don’t want to confuse you too much with this but it’s important that you know these things.

Okay, so then Jesus was going to eat the Passover lamb on the 14th day of the month, and that’s why He is having the people prepare for it. 

Now, the only thing that we can figure here when he says, “on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread,” (remember Mark is a Gospel written to Gentiles) and so the only thing we can imagine from this is he must have been using Gentile time. Because if he’s telling them this on the morning of Passover, it would be too late because the day started the night before. And if he was telling them the previous day, it would be too early because they weren’t done taking care of Him yet. 

And so, this had to be a reckoning in Gentile time, taking into account that the people who were going to read his Gospel would be Gentiles and they would be thinking the day runs until midnight.

Now let me prove that to you, because you remember, I told you that during the Lord’s time, the name “Passover” had sort of faded from popularity, and the 14th day of the month was more popularly known as Preparation Day. It was Passover on the calendar, it was the 14th day of their month, but they thought of it as Preparation Day, the day they prepared for the big feast coming up the next day.

All right, now let’s find out what day the Lord was crucified on, shall we? All four Gospels tell you this, and they all four give you the same answer. Let’s start with the first one.

Matthew 27:62, it’s right at the end. Matthew has us back into the day, because in Matthew 27:45, it talks about the Lord’s death. Then down to verse 57 it talks about Joseph of Arimathea coming to get the body.

And then verse 62 says:

The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day.

And so what did the chief priests do? They came on the next day, the day after Jesus died, and what did they call it? Matthew said, “the day after Preparation Day.” So that means the Lord died on Preparation Day. 

Okay now we go back to Mar,k and Mark is going to correct his own error here. Because if you go to Mark 15:42, you have the death of Jesus starting in verse 33 and then in verse 42 Mark says:

It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.

And so, before sundown on Preparation Day, Joseph of Arimathea went and asked Pilate for permission to take the body of Jesus. Jesus was already dead, it was not yet the end of Preparation Day, okay? That’s the Mark version.

In Luke 24:54, let’s back up because there isn’t any 24:54, let me just take a wild guess and try 23:54, and there we are. 

Here again the crucifixion starts in 23:26, the Lord dies beginning in 23:44 and then we see again in verse 52 when Joseph of Arimathea went to ask for Jesus’s body.

And then 54 says:

It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.

So that’s three so far who have said Preparation Day. 

Now we’ll go to John 19:31, and what do you think he’s going to say? The crucifixion starts in John 19:17, the death of Jesus is discussed starting in 19:28. 

And in 19:31 it says:

Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath.

Note the word “special.” The next day was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, it was a special Sabbath.

All right. Now if you want to really get the full picture of this, you’ll have to go to the website and there’s an article there that says “Solving the Three Day Three Night Mystery” and it goes through in detail in printed form so you can see what’s being said and you won’t have to visualize what I’m about to describe to you. 

So if after I’m finished you’re confused and need follow up, go to the website and search for the article “Solving the Three Day Three Night Mystery.” But essentially here’s what that will tell you. 

It will say that about a 150 years ago or so ago, a man named Robert Anderson who was the head of the investigative division of Scotland Yard and a born again believer, contracted with the London Royal Observatory to give him the dates of all of the full moons in history as they would have appeared to Israel, because he wanted to get the exact dates of some of these events.

And so they went through the plotting. You can plot the stars. In those days, you could only plot the stars backwards out of history and by plotting the stars, you could tell anything that happened on any particular date where anything about the stars or the moon were mentioned. And since Israel has a lunar calendar that’s based on phases of the moon, it made this very important to know what the particular phases of the moon are when these things are happening because all of Israel’s important days come on different phases of the moon. 

Passover happens on a full moon, and many of the holy days do. Rosh Hashanah in the fall happens on a new moon when there’s just a sliver. And so all of this starts with phases of the moon.

And so Robert Anderson contracted with the London Royal Observatory and they traced back through history to find out when these things actually happened. And to make a long story short, Anderson discovered two things. 

The first thing he discovered is that when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey on what we call Psalm Sunday, He was fulfilling a prophecy from Daniel 9:24-27 to the very day. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the very day that Daniel said He would, 483 years to the day after the decree was given to restore Jerusalem. It had been destroyed during the Babylonian captivity.

Four-hundred-eighty-three years to the day after that decree was signed, Jesus rode into Jerusalem as the Messiah of Israel. It was the 10th day of Nisan on their calendar, on our calendar it was April 6th, 31 A.D., but on their calendar it was the 10th day of Nisan. I’m going to stick with their calendar year so you can see.

Now remember from Exodus, the 10th day of Nisan is the day that the Israelites selected the Passover lamb. And so that first Psalm Sunday Jesus, on the only day in His entire ministry that He permitted Himself to be called the Messiah, was on the day that they were selecting the Passover lambs. That was the 10th day of the month, it was the first day of the week, it was a Sunday.

Then we read in Exodus that they were supposed to inspect these lambs for three more days until the 14th, in other words through the end of the 13th, right? And so to fulfill that prophecy, they had to question Jesus unmercifully for three days to find any blemish if they could, any fault in anything that He said. 

And of course, they couldn’t and we read a couple of chapters ago that they finally, after they had asked Him the last question, they finally said nobody dared ask Him more questions. That was it, it was done. Well then He asked them one and that really messed things up. 

But anyway they had to do this on the 11th and the 12th and the 13th; three days. And then the 14th was Passover, the day that the lamb was sacrificed. And on the 14th Jesus was crucified. And then on the 17th day, which was the following Sunday, it happened to be the first day after the Sabbath that followed Passover, and so it was the Feast of First Fruits, which we know as Resurrection Morning.

Now, if you’ll do the math and if you’ll sit down and calculate this, you’ll discover that if Jesus rode into town on Psalm Sunday and they spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday inspecting Him for defects, and on Thursday to fulfill the prophecy of the Passover lamb, He was crucified and that’s what all four Gospels tell us. It was Preparation Day, He was crucified on Thursday and then He rose again the following Sunday.

That’s the only day of the week in which it could happen and fulfill all of the different prophecies He had to fulfill.

And so, on that Preparation Day, the day we’re reading about here, and what we’re going to see is on that day at the very beginning of the day Jesus and His disciples ate the Passover meal. That’s the meal we know as the Last Supper. 

And they sang a hymn ,and went out to the Garden of Gethsemane and there He was arrested. It’s still Passover, Passover has just begun. He endured six trials before sunrise and was pronounced guilty finally by the Romans, guilty of treason and sentenced to death. 

He was immediately taken to the courtyard of the Fortress Antonia where He was interrogated by flogging, 39 lashes. He lived through that, which many people don’t. And so they strapped a cross to His back and marched Him up to Golgotha. And by 9:00 that morning He was hanging on the cross. He hung on the cross from 9:00 until noon and then suddenly the sky went dark, there was a huge earthquake, and in the middle of the day it was dark as night.

The veil in the temple tore open from top to bottom, it was 40-feet tall and as much as eight inches thick. It was a tapestry it wasn’t just a little gauze thing. And it tore spontaneously, torn from top to bottom and flew open, signifying that the way to the Throne of God was now open to us.

At 3:00 that afternoon He died. Joseph of Arimathea came and they got Him and they took Him down and they put Him into the tomb before sunset.

The next day was the 15th. It was a Friday, and it was the special Sabbath that both Luke and John talk about, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The day after that was a Saturday, it was the Sabbath. Again, no work was permitted. And so for those two days the women could not come to the tomb and prepare His body for burial because no work was permitted on those two days.

The next day, the 17th, was the first day of the week. It was the day of the Feast of First Fruits, but it was not a holiday where work was prohibited, and so the priests were in the fields harvesting the first fruits of the spring grains and bringing them to the temple to be dedicated. 

At the same time, Mary and some of the other women went to the tomb because now they could finally prepare it for burial, which they did by anointing it, wrapping it with gauze, and stuffing pound after pound after pound of aromatic spices within the folds of the cloth, so that this aroma from the spices would mask the smell of the decomposition of the body. When they got the tomb it was empty, and shortly thereafter Mary saw the Lord, the first one. 

Okay, so that was Resurrection Morning, the Feast of First Fruits; the day after the Sabbath that follows Passover.

So, how do we get three days and three nights? Jesus went on the cross on the morning of the 14th. He was dead by that afternoon, so He died on the 14th. That’s day one. 

Now listen carefully. At sunset the day ended, and the next day began. But the evening precedes the morning, and so it was Friday, but it was evening. That was night one. So Thursday was day one; after sunset it became Friday and it became night one.

Friday morning became the day —day two. At sunset on Friday it became Saturday, night two. And then the next morning was Saturday morning, day three. And at sunset it became Sunday, night three.

The next morning, the women came and the tomb was empty. three days, three nights. Fulfilled the prophecy of the Passover lamb; fulfilled the requirements of time. It makes Thursday the only day of the week in which the Lord could have been crucified. So remember that. 

If you’re from a Catholic background forgive me, but Good Friday is a tradition—and the tradition comes, by the way, from the fact that both Luke and John say the day after the crucifixion was a Sabbath. But it wasn’t the regular weekly Sabbath, it was the special Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 

And because we’re all Gentiles we don’t follow these kinds of things and so an assumption was made that has stuck with us for 2,000 years that the Lord was crucified the day before the Sabbath, so therefore it must have been a Friday. But it wasn’t, it was a Thursday. There were two Sabbaths in that week.

Now if you want to follow that through more carefully and read it and research it and check out the verses and everything, go to the website, come up with the article “Solving the Three Day Three Night Mystery” and there you’ll have it. 

If it doesn’t matter to you then you’re way ahead of the game, because there’s no point in getting all mired down in these things unless you have some kind of an unusual interest in them. I happen to, but that doesn’t mean you need to! And it doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate Good Friday anymore, just remember that it was the day before when it really happened and Friday is just when traditionally. It’s just like celebrating Christmas in December, that’s not when His birthday was, His birthday was in September. But tradition says December, and so there you are.

All right so now we’re all the way down to Mark 14:12, aren’t we? And this is a long chapter so we got to be here until midnight! 

Okay so then, verse 13. Remember they asked Him, “Where do you want us to go to celebrate the Passover?”

Verse 13:

So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”

Now that doesn’t sound like much of a sign, except in those days men didn’t carry water jars, women did. And so seeing a man carrying a water jar would be an unusual sight, and so that was the tip off for that. 

And now we know they came to celebrate Passover in the upper room. In Jerusalem, it was a tradition—in fact, some people say it was mandatory—that anyone who built a house in Jerusalem had to build an extra room in it to help the pilgrims who would visit on Passover to have a place to celebrate. 

Because you see, Jerusalem was normally a town of about 50,000 people but during the Passover it expanded to about at least five times that size. In fact, I forget whether it’s Josephus or one of the other historians who estimates that in the year the Lord was crucified over 100,000 Passover lambs were sacrificed on that day. And so if there was one lamb for every ten, 100,000 lambs would mean about a million people celebrated the Passover in and around Jerusalem on the weekend that the Lord was crucified.

Verse 16:

The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them.

Surprise surprise!

So they prepared the Passover.

When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”

They were saddened, and one by one they said to him, “Surely you don’t mean me?”

“It is one of the Twelve,” he replied, “one who dips bread into the bowl with me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

And of course, in John’s rendition of this it turns out that Judas was the one who dipped his bread into the bowl the same time the Lord did, and so that’s how he was discovered, and then Judas left immediately.

Verse 22:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”

Because He broke the bread, some have added into this phrase, “This is My body broken for you.”

That’s incorrect. It was not allowed for a single bone to be broken, and that’s in Psalm-something—let me see if I can remember it. I’m thinking it’s 34 but I’ve got a couple different numbers in my head, and let’s see if any of them are right. Yes, Psalm 34:19:

A righteous man may have many troubles,

    but the Lord delivers him from them all;

he protects all his bones,

    not one of them will be broken.

On the day that the Lord was crucified, you know the priests came to Pilate and said, “Look we got this holiday coming up at sunset and you got these three guys hanging on crosses. We can’t have people hanging on crosses during the holiday. Hasten their deaths. Make sure they die before sunset.”

And so Pilate sent a soldier out to break the legs of the prisoners hanging there on the cross. When you’re hanging on a cross you die from asphyxiation, and the only way you can breath is by pressing down with your legs to take some of the weight off your chest so you can take a breath. It’s very painful to do so, so they only do it when it’s absolutely essential, but if your legs are broken you can’t even do it then. And what happens, your lungs fill up with carbon dioxide and you asphyxiated, that’s how you died. It’s a very slow and very painful death.

And so, remember when the soldiers got there they broke the legs of the other two prisoners but they saw Jesus was already dead so they didn’t break His legs fulfilling the prophecy, none of His bones were broken.

So the correct thing to say is, “This is My body which is given for you.” Not “which is broken.” It’s just a little thing, but the bread is broken, but the body was never broken.

23:

Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.

“This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. “I tell you the truth, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

There’s a ton of stuff going on here. The most complete account of what the Lord actually said on that night is contained in 1 Corinthians. Paul actually wrote it, and you can go there and see it. I think it’s in chapter 11, 1 Corinthians 11. And that’s the version that’s normally used in Communion.

In 11:24 He said:

And when he had given thanks, he broke the bread and said, “This is my body, which is for you;

Which is okay.

Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Okay, so that tells you, first of all, this is a tradition for the Church, this ends at the end of the Church Age. I should say it ends when the Lord returns because He says: “Do this in remembrance of Me until I come.”

After He comes we don’t do it anymore because we’re not only looking backward to the cross when we celebrate Communion, we’re looking forward to the crown. Okay, remember that? Back to the cross that saved us, forward to the crown that’s our reward. And once that happens then it is my understanding that this won’t happen anymore, we won’t do this anymore. There’s one of the traditions.

Another one is in verse 25 He says:

“I tell you the truth, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

Turn to John 19 again. John 19:28:

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

And so He said in one place, “I’m not going to drink wine anymore until I drink it anew with you in the kingdom.” But then John says the last thing He did before He died was have a sip of wine, that meant the kingdom had come. He had done what He needed to do. The Scripture, John said, had been fulfilled. He said, “It is finished.” when He took a sip of wine, and so that signifies that the kingdom had begun. Phase one, the so-called mystery phase of the kingdom had come.

The mystery phase is the phase of the Church on Earth, the invisible body of believers that come from all walks of life, from all denominations, from no denomination, who have in common the fact that they’ve been born again, they’ve given their lives to the Lord.

We are the kingdom in its mystery phase now. The kingdom in its revealed phase will take place when the Lord returns and establishes a literal kingdom on Earth, that’s phase two of the kingdom. We call that phase the Millennium. 

You’ll read commentaries from people saying, “Well the kingdom’s already come.” And you’ll read other commentaries saying, “No it’s not, it won’t come until the Lord returns.”

Well, they’re both right. The kingdom has already come and it will come when the Lord returns. This is phase one, the mystery phase. Coming next is phase two, the actual, physical phase.

I’ll give you one more, we’re probably not going to finish this chapter anyway so might as well abandon all hope. [laughing] So I’ll give you one more.

According to Jewish tradition, the Passover meal is centered around four cups of wine. Each one of those cups represents one of the promises that God gave to Moses in the wilderness. You’ll have to go to Exodus 6 to see that.

I may have burst some bubbles here when I said Easter is not Resurrection Morning and Christmas is not the Lord’s birthday, but here I will make Communion much more meaningful to you than it has been in the past, and so I’m making up for it now okay?

Okay Exodus 6 says:

“Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.

When the Jews celebrate Passover, they drink four cups of wine ceremonially.

The first cup is in remembrance of the first promise, I will bring you out. They call this the Cup of Sanctification, or the Cup of Bringing Out. Sanctification means to separate.
Secondly, I will free you from being slaves to them. That was the second cup.
Third, I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. That’s the third cup.
And fourth, I will take you as My people and I will be your God. The fourth cup.

The first cup is sanctification: I will bring you out from under the yoke, I will set you apart from them I will sanctify you. 

The second cup is blessing or deliverance: I will free you from being slaves.

The third cup is the cup of redemption: I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

And the fourth cup is the cup of acceptance: I will take you as My own people and I will be your God.

If you study the accounts of the Lord’s supper and you compare them to the Passover, you’ll find out that when the Lord after the meal took the cup and the bread, He was in the portion of Passover that’s built around the third cup, the cup of redemption. 

And so when He said, “This is My body given for you.” That was the bread; this was done after the dinner was over. And then when He said, “This is the new covenant of My blood.” This was the cup of redemption, the third cup. And then He said, “I’m not going to drink wine until I drink with you anew in the kingdom.”

And so, from a Jewish point of view, He stopped the Passover celebration at the third cup. But then in John 19:30 when He says, “I’m thirsty.” John 19:28 is where it starts. 

When He says, “I am thirsty,” knowing that all was completed and so the Scripture could be fulfilled, He said, “I am thirsty.” And what did they do? They gave Him some wine in a sponge, and He drank it.

Now there is a tradition especially among messianic believers that in doing so, He was drinking the fourth cup of the Passover. And if that’s the case, what He was saying to us is, “I will take you as my people and I will be your God.” And then He died. 

Now the next time you take Communion I want you to think about that because that cup of acceptance that He drank just before He died, was done for us. It was a confirmation to us that what He had done, and what He had just finished doing, had been done so that He could take us as His people, and so that He could be our God.

This is why knowing the Old Testament as well as the New is so important. You get so much more out of things when you know both parts of the book. That you see God’s promises that He would redeem His people beginning in Genesis and going straight through in every book of the Bible until finally it becomes fulfilled in the Gospels. 

Gentile Christians, in the first couple 100 years after the cross, when the Church got blended into the Roman Empire I should say, the Lord told the disciples, “Take the Church into the world.” 

But what happened instead is the world came into the Church and ruined it. And one of the biggest things they did to ruin it, is that the Gentile leaders of the day divorced themselves from their Jewish heritage. And in the process they threw away 4,000 years of experience with God 

And so for many of them, even today, there are huge numbers of Christians who don’t believe that the Old Testament has the same authority as the New. There are so many. I’m talking about trained theologians who will try to tell you that the Old Testament is a bunch of fables and folktales about a nation that didn’t exist for a long time and has no right existing today. 

They don’t believe it’s inspired, they only pay attention to the New. And that’s why they miss everything that’s going on around them, especially as it pertains to Israel. 

But when you know both parts of the book you get the perspective, you understand what happened and you’ll also understand why. And then you aren’t fooled by some of these false doctrines that fly around here, some of these new things that the Lord is supposedly doing. You know that that isn’t consistent with what the Book says. It’s one Book you know; it may have 66 parts, and may have been written by 40 or so different people, but it’s one Book. And it’s consistent from beginning to end.

Verse 26:

When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

And again traditionally at the end of the Passover, the hymn that is sung comes from Psalm 118, we sing part of it in worship sometimes:

This is the day the Lord hath made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.

It starts off a few verses earlier than that and the actual words of it are:

The stone the builders rejected,
has become the capstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day the Lord has made;
let us rejoice today and be glad in it

That’s the hymn that they would sing, Psalm 118:26, traditionally after the Passover. 

Now understand this, they’re just finishing up the Passover meal, they’re going out on their way to the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane and they sing this hymn:

This is the day the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Now think of this. This was the day that Jesus would be soon arrested, beaten, tried, convicted, beaten again, and then executed. All within the 24-hour period just beginning. And yet He led His disciples in singing:

This is the day the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Why? Because this was the day that He was going to pay the price for you. 

And what does the writer to Hebrews say? For the joy set before Him He endured the cross. 

Well, the joy set before Him is you. That’s the price it took to get you you see, and He paid it. He paid it voluntarily, He paid it willingly because to Him, you’re worth it. Think about that.

Verse 27:

“You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written:

“‘I will strike the shepherd,

    and the sheep will be scattered.’

This is a prophecy from Zechariah 13:7.

But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

And of course the last chapter of John tells us all about that.

Peter declared, “Even if all fall away, I will not.”

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times.”

But Peter insisted emphatically, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the others said the same.

Be careful what you swear to because you may just have to eat your words shortly after.

Verse 32:

They went to a place called Gethsemane,

Right across from the temple on the east side, just going up the hill to the Mount of Olives, right as you cross the Kidron Valley. You come down the hill from the temple, you go across a little brook called the Brook Kidron (it’s no longer there, it’s underground now) as you start up the hill on the other side you’re going up to the summit of the Mount of Olives. At the bottom of the hill and running about a third of the way up, is this beautiful olive grove. 

In fact, you know an olive tree never dies; you can’t kill them. You can set a fire to them, you can blow them up, you can chop them down, you can do whatever you want, they will come back. And some of those olive trees that are there today were there on this night when Jesus walked through there. 

It was a beautiful place—it still is,—and it was one of His favorite places He went there often when He was in Jerusalem. 

So they went there:

and Jesus said to his disciples: “Sit here while I pray.”

This, by the way, is how Judas knew where to find Him because He always went there. 

He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Now, this is sometimes called the unanswered prayer, which to me, is ridiculous. But notice what He says, “Everything is possible for you.” Is that true? Yes. Everything is possible for God. 

And so could God have released Him from His obligation? Yes. And then Jesus said, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

And that was the hard part because you see, it was God’s will that His Son die for us so that we could live with Him; that was God’s will. And although God can do anything, this is one of those cases where we understand He can’t do everything, because He couldn’t make it possible for you to live with Him, unless He sent His son to die for you, okay? 

So while He could do one—He could let His son out of the obligation, but He couldn’t do both. He couldn’t save you, so He had to make a choice. 

Does He let His own Son die in order to gain you, or does He release Him from the obligation and let you die? What a choice, huh? And of course we all know what He did, He chose life for you. And that means the Lord had to die. This was not an unanswered prayer, this prayer was answered in the fact that Jesus says, “Not what I will, but what you will.”

You see, without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, and so in order for your sins to be washed away, somebody had to pay the price.

Now as it turns out, if Jesus hadn’t died for you, no one could have. Not even you could redeem yourself from the penalty of the law. It took God’s own Son to accomplish that. That was His will and the Lord bowed to that and gave His life, so that you wouldn’t have to give yours.

Verse 37:

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Simon,” he said to Peter, “are you asleep? Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him.

Returning the third time, he said to them, “Are you still sleeping? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

Just as he was speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders.

Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.” Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him. The men seized Jesus and arrested him. Then one of those standing near drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

“Am I leading a rebellion,” said Jesus, “that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.” Then everyone deserted him and fled.

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.

By tradition, that fellow was Mark. He was writing about himself there. He was just a young boy at the time, and he’s writing now 30 years later so he’s a grown man. But he found a way to get himself into the story there [laughs] and so, that was him. That’s just tradition.

Okay, a couple of things here, and then we’ll finish up for the night. 

We go over to Luke—first I want to go to John 18, then we’ll come back to Luke. And these are just a couple of extra pieces of information that help you see what was going on here.

John 18 and we’ll start on verse 2.

John 18:2:

Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas came to the grove, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.

Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”

“Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.

“I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?”

“Jesus of Nazareth,” they said.

Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.” This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.

The interesting part about this one is in the Greek, the word “he” does not exist in the original language. 

When they said they’re seeking Jesus of Nazareth what He replied was, “I am.” And of course that’s the name of God, and that’s what knocked them over.

And so you can cross the “he” out of there if you have one in your Bible. And understand that that was the force, it was the force of God’s name that knocked them over. 

He didn’t get captured. He surrendered, okay? Willing. 

Okay, I told you we’d go back to Luke, and it’s in 22. And in Luke 22:49 we read:

When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.

Now listen to this. Verse 51:

But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.

And so, here you have someone from the group that came to arrest him, the high priest’s own servant which meant his representative. His ear was cut off with a sword and Jesus reached out and voila! He had a new ear.

John 18:10, we find out who the culprit is:

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)

Now you know it was Peter who went after the high priest’s servant. You understand that they are standing there with this detachment of soldiers. Some are from the temple guard some are from the Roman army, they are trained soldiers and they’re armed. 

Peter alone was ready to take them on. Remember that because next time we get together, and we look at subsequent events of the evening, you’re going to see where Peter’s courage was so obvious here; it was totally absent a little later that evening.

But I want to close this with Matthew’s version of this, and we’re going to look at Matthew 26:51. 

We’ll start in the middle of 50. It says:

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

Okay now listen to what the Lord said:

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

There you see what the Lord’s own reaction to His prayer was. He said, “Yes, I know that if I asked Him to, My Father would send me twelve legions of angels.”

A legion in the Roman army was about 6,000 soldiers. So Jesus had at His command 72,000 angel warriors. Probably sufficient to take out the Roman army wouldn’t you think?

If one, the night before Sennacherib was going to attack Jerusalem, one angel warrior went through the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 people while they were asleep. If one angel could do that what could 72,000 angels have done in protecting the Lord from this? 

But then the second question, the second part of it was, but then how would the Scriptures be fulfilled? “How would I be able to do what I was sent to do if I declined at this point?” 

How would the Scriptures be fulfilled? Of course the Scripture He’s talking about is:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

That’s one of the Scriptures out of several hundred that I could tell you about.

Okay, so now you see that the Lord was in command here, He was calling the shots. He chose to let them have their way, He chose not to resist, He chose to be taken. Knowing what was coming, knowing all that was coming ahead, He chose to do this because He was focused on what that would accomplish.

I could go into lots of stuff here. I used to be a management consultant and I studied motivation and the sources of motivation a lot, and there are really two kinds of people in the world, there are people who are task-oriented and there are people who are results-oriented. 

And the task-oriented people look at what they have to do and they have lists and lists of things that they have to do. They don’t know why but they just have to do them.

The result-oriented people look at what they want to accomplish, and they have a very small list of things they want to accomplish and it doesn’t matter what they have to do, they’re focused on what they want to accomplish. 

And that’s the way the Lord was here. It didn’t matter what He had to do, He was focused on what He wanted to accomplish. What He wanted to accomplish is your redemption, and He was going to do whatever it took to accomplish your redemption.

And so like I said, I may have burst your bubble a little bit about Easter and Christmas, but I think I’ve made Communion a much more meaningful experience for you. I think the next time you partake of the Lord’s Supper you should remember the things we talked about here tonight, and I think you’ll find it’s a much more meaningful experience for you. 

He gave His body for you as a ransom; for you. And then He shed His blood for your redemption. He was focused through all of this on what He wanted to accomplish. And what He wanted to accomplish, what He has wanted to accomplish since the beginning of time, is the redemption of His people. It took His life to do it but He gave it, it was the only way.

People who say there are many roads to salvation are wrong. People say you can earn your own salvation are wrong. People who say you can work to keep your own salvation are wrong. He did the whole job that night and during the next day. He completed it in that 24-hour period He accomplished what you could never accomplish.

And when you add to it or try to add to it by your own works, all you’re doing is devaluing what He has done. In a sense, if you’re doing works to try and keep yourself saved, what you are saying is that His death has no more value than the death of all the bulls and goats and sheep that died before Him. You’re saying He was nothing more than a sacrificial animal who started a job that you have to finish.

You see what an insult it is to Him when you do that? Unless you are willing to let His words it is finished be true in your life then you are not recognizing the magnitude of what He did for you, and you’re thinking it was just another thing that somebody started that you now have to take up and finish. What an insult that is to Him when you think about it.

The Lord said, there are two roads that people are on, on the way to salvation. One is a wide one, there’s lots of people on it and there’s a big broad gate there. There’s another one, there’s a narrow one. there’s not very many people on it and there’s a little bitty gate for that one and not very many people find it. 

And a lot of people turn that around 180 degrees and they say, the wide one is the one where people think they can do whatever they want and still be saved, and the narrow one is the people that tow the mark and really keep themselves focused on staying saved and they’re the ones, the very few, that find this gate.

But that’s exactly the reverse of what it is. The wide road is filled with people from all kinds of religions who are trying to earn their own way to salvation. And there’s a whole lot of religions in that group, isn’t there?

Every religion you can think of, and many of them call themselves Christians, have rules and regulations and things you do to earn your own salvation, earn your way to paradise. And there’s a whole bunch of people on that.

And then over here there’s this little narrow road with a little gate and there’s only a few people on that one, and very few people find their way. But that’s the road on which is written: Grace. 

Because grace is what got you saved and grace is what keeps you saved. You can’t do anything to add to that, and everything you try to do just takes away from it. You either stand on the completed work of Christ or you’re going to fall.

Let’s have a prayer. 

Father, thank You for this night and thank You for all You’ve done for us. Thank You for saving us to the uttermost. Thank You that You said so clearly with Your last words, “It is finished.” The work was done and we are to rest in that, having faith in the completed work at the cross. 

Help us remember this when we’re tempted to try and get in there and make things better, when we’re tempted to try and do things for ourselves that You’ve already done for us. Help us to remember this, and to rest in faith that the work is finished.

Thank You, in Jesus’s Name.

Amen.