Friday, April 10th, 2020

Hi, Church of the Grove.

My name is Chelsea Moody, and we are on day five of the Holy Week Devotional.

I'm going to get to walk you through the last day in the life of Jesus here on earth, but I really want us to focus on the number three.

As I was diving deeper into the word, getting ready for this devotional, the number three just continued to stick out to me.

I knew that it had to symbolize something, and what I came up with was pretty incredible.

We're going to start in Luke 22, where Jesus is arrested in the garden.

Now the guards come in the middle of the night to arrest Jesus and take him to the temple, but they have to wait for daybreak for the religious leaders to gather.

So they hang out, start a fire, and just kind of talk amongst themselves.

This is where we see the first three, and that is where Peter denies Jesus three times.

We're going to start in Luke 22 at verse 56.

A servant girl noticed him in the firelight and began staring at him.

Finally she said, This man was one of Jesus' followers, but Peter denied it.

Woman, he said, I don't even know him.

After a while, someone else looked at him and said, You must be one of them.

No man, I'm not, Peter retorted.

About an hour later, someone else insisted.

This must be one of them, because he was a Galilean too.

But Peter said, Man, I do not know what you're talking about.

And immediately while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed.

At that moment the Lord turned and looked at Peter, and suddenly the Lord's words flashed through Peter's mind.

Before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know me.

And Peter left the courtyard weeping bitterly.

Now the next day the religious leaders got together and they asked Jesus multiple questions, one of them being, Are you the Messiah?

Jesus' reply was, You say that I am.

Now with that, the religious leader said, That's it, he's guilty.

Take him to Pilate for his conviction.

Pilate was the Roman governor at the time, and so the guards took Jesus then to Pilate in order to have him convicted.

Pilate did the same thing as the religious leaders and asked him multiple questions.

However, Pilate did not find that Jesus was guilty.

Jesus said, Since he's a Galilean, he needs to go to King Herod in order for his to get for in order for him to get convicted.

King Herod happened to be in Jerusalem at the time.

And so the guards then took Jesus to King Herod.

King Herod did the same thing as he asked Jesus multiple questions, and all of them came up to be King Herod did not believe that Jesus was guilty.

So again, King Herod said, Take him to Pilate.

Now this is three times that someone has said, I do not believe that Jesus is guilty.

And we're going to see another number three in Luke 23, and we're going to start in verse 22, where Pilate finally says, For the third time he demanded, Why?

What crime has he committed?

I have found no reason to sentence him to death.

So I will have him flogged, and then I will release him.

But the mob shouted louder and louder, demanding that Jesus be crucified, and their voices prevailed.

So Pilate sentenced Jesus to die as they demanded.

Now we know from here, Jesus carries his cross on his back all the way up to the hill of Galgotha.

On top of the hill, we see three crosses.

Jesus in the middle, a criminal to his left, and a criminal to his right.

Now we know the things that they do to Jesus on this hill.

We know the brutality of what happens, the beatings, the laughing, the um unimaginable things that happen to Jesus.

But what we see is another three.

The very last hours of Jesus' life is at around noon on the hilltop.

We're gonna be in, we're gonna be in Luke 23, and we're gonna start in verses um 44.

By this time it was about noon, and darkness fell across the whole land until three o'clock.

Again, that's three hours of whole darkness in the land during Jesus's last hours.

The light from the sun was gone, and suddenly the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn down the middle.

Then Jesus shouted, Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands.

And with those words, he breathed his last breath.

Now we know that Jesus was then put in a tomb, and a miracle happens in three days.

So there is another three.

When I looked up the three and what it symbolizes, it says, Three represents divine holiness, I'm sorry, divine wholeness, completion, fulfillment, and perfection.

Jesus' death was the stamp of completion to sin, and it was the fulfillment of God's promise and perfection to us.

Jesus' death was that he died on the cross for our sins to take those sins from us.

And we know that in three days, something of a miracle happens in order for us to have all of eternity with Jesus.

The number three just continued to stand out to me, and I thought it was so perfect that we hear of the fulfillment and the divine wholeness of God's gift to us.

I hope you join us tonight for our Good Friday service starting at seven o'clock.

You can watch it on Facebook, but the best way for you to have for you to watch is through church at the Grove.com.

I hope that you have a blessed Easter with your family and know that we are praying for you and that we can't wait to be together again.