Thursday, April 9th, 2020

Hey Church of the Grove, my name is Jonah Faulkner, and I'm so thankful that y'all are joining in for our fourth day of devotions for our holy week.

And my prayer is that through this week God has spoken to you through his word as well as through the teachings of the leaders in our church.

And I'm thankful and privileged to be able to share this devotion with y'all today.

And today we're going to be in the passage of Luke 22, verses 7 through 46.

Luke 22:7–46

And while I'm not going to address every verse in this passage, I do encourage y'all on your own to read through God's Word.

God's Word is powerful.

It has the ability to speak to anybody.

So I pray that y'all spend time in God's Word and be diligent in that.

But I am going to talk about a couple of different passages today.

The first one I want to talk about is verses 14 through 20.

And ultimately, this is the institution of the Lord's Supper, or as we know it, communion.

This is where Jesus introduces the idea of communion to his disciples and even foretells about the crucifixion that is coming and how as we as believers can participate and remember what he has done for us.

So I'm going to read through this real quick.

Verse 14, Luke 22, verse 14 says, And when the hour came he reclined at the table, and the apostles with him, and he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffered.

Luke 22:14

For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this and divide it among yourselves.

For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you.

Do this and remember it to me.

And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup is poured out for you.

It is the new covenant in my blood.

Um so this this passage is is so beautiful of Jesus simply sharing and even inviting the disciples to remember what he is about to do do for them and ultimately for all of mankind in the following day.

But but communion is something that that is really special for me because it is a practical application and invitation for us to remember and share in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And I think it calls for us to reflect on these on these two sayings, which is in verse 19, he says, This is my body which is given for you.

So reflecting on this saying, This is my body which is given to you and for you.

This is Jesus saying, Here, here I am, I'm going to give myself for you.

I'm going to give up my body to be beaten and crucified for you.

And then in verse 20, he says, This cup is poured out for you, which is the new covenant in my blood.

And this is Jesus saying, I've I've come to fulfill the law that that was before you.

And it is no longer the old covenant, but the new covenant.

And this new covenant is the idea that there is grace and salvation in our faith through Jesus Christ, and no longer through through fulfilling the law, but simply by putting our faith in Jesus Christ.

This is where the idea of by grace you have been saved through faith.

This is where this idea comes from, is the fact that Jesus has has poured out his own blood to establish the new covenant.

And as we prepare even to participate in communion Friday night during our Good Friday service, this is a passage that we can reflect on and understand the importance of communion, that it is about us remembering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, of him breaking his body and spilling his blood for our our salvation, and so that we would be able to spend eternity with our Heavenly Father.

So communion is a beautiful thing.

It's one of my favorite things to do, and one of my favorite privileges as a Christian and a believer to be able to participate and remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And the next next passage that I want to talk about today is Luke 22, verses 39 through 46.

Luke 22:39–46

And this is where Jesus goes up to the Mount of Olives and eventually to the Garden of Gethsemane and praise to our Heavenly Father.

So I'm going to read this real quick.

And verse 39 says, And he came out and went, as as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him.

And when he came to the place, he said to them, Pray that you may not enter into temptation.

And he withdrew from them about a stone's sorrow and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.

Never nevertheless not my will, but yours be done.

And there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him, and being in agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow.

And he said to them, Why are you sleeping?

Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

So when looking at this passage, it is so important to look at the context of what's going on.

In this passage, as it's in the accounts of Matthew and Mark as well, in this passage, Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, but it is it is the night of his his arrest.

Literally in the next verse in verse 47, which Chelsea will talk about tomorrow, that's where the crowd comes and and the guards come to arrest Jesus.

So it is, I mean, this is the last, the last night that Jesus has with his disciples.

And we have to understand that Jesus, in his ultimate foreknowledge, as being fully divine, being fully God in the flesh, he knew exactly what was coming the next day.

He knew exactly the pain he was going through.

He knew exactly the amount of wrath that God was going to unleash in him.

Jesus knew exactly what was coming in his crucifixion.

But in his last moments before his arrest, what does he do?

He goes to the garden and he prays.

He spends time with his heavenly father and he says these famous words.

We have to understand what this means that Jesus before his crucifixion can say, because it because he is perfect and without sin, he can say, Father, I pray that this cup pass from me, but nevertheless, it's not my will, but is it is yours alone.

And when we read verses like this, we have to remember passages like Ephesians 5.1 where it says, be imitators of God, or or in this case, be imitators of Christ.

And this is where we have to understand what Christ did.

The first thing we can take out is Jesus submitted to the will of the Father.

That is, I believe, that is our most important duty of being Christians on this earth is to submit to the will of the Father with this in mind that we know that the Father's will is meant for the good of his people.

And it's kind of crazy to think that even Jesus in this, knowing he knew that the Father's will was what's best, but he also knew what he is about to endure.

So Jesus, even though he knew he was about to go through the most gruesome death in history, he knew it was for the good of the people.

And when we think about that, in this instance, it would be hard to say what good can come from the death that Jesus was about to endure.

But we know, as Christians looking back on this, that that the crucifixion of Jesus ultimately brought life through his resurrection.

And we can see the good that came from the crucifixion of Christ, but that would not have happened if Jesus did not submit to the will of the Father and being submissive to knowing that that ultimately God is sovereign, He is in control, and what He does is for our own good.

Ecclesiastes says, For your ways are higher than our ways, and your thoughts higher than our thoughts.

God's ways are way higher than ours, his thoughts are way higher than ours, and and what he is doing is for our good.

And Jesus, better than anybody, knew that.

So I think it's it's really important to recognize the submission that Jesus had.

And next, we can see the simple application that that in times of in times of trouble, in times of of probably what Jesus was feeling, you know, fear and and and ultimately, you know, knowing that he was about to die the next day, Jesus still went and prayed.

So in times of, in times of crisis, in times where where we know that that ultimately pain is ahead or or anything like that, we should be imitators of Christ and and hit our knees and pray to our Heavenly Father, ultimately recognizing that that's where our comfort is, that's where our peace is, that's where our life is.

So looking at at this this situation that Jesus is put in is is way more extreme than the situation that we are in right now with with this virus going on.

And and this is my question to you during this this virus and this crisis when it feels like our lives are turned upside down, what what are you running to?

In times of crisis, what do you run to?

Do you run to the Father and and hit your knees in prayer and and and spend time in his word, ultimately submitting to the will of God?

Or do you run around in in panic trying to take things into your own hands?

And I think we can learn from this passage from Jesus Himself, the man that was sent from God and is the only person to ever walk the earth that knew what it was like to be in the presence of the Father.

He is the one that sat in prayer and submitted um to the Father's will.

So my my charge and and my application for you today is for you to be imitators of Christ, and that in the midst of this crisis, we would be submissive to the God's to God's will, that we would trust in him, trust that he is faithful, and ultimately trust that what he does is for the good of his people, and we should also in this time of crisis be in prayer.

We we should be pouring out our hearts to God, be pouring out our concerns, our anxiety.

Philippians 4 6, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.

Hit your knees in prayer during this time of crisis and be imitators of Christ.

Thank you once again for tuning in for day four of our holy week devotionals.

Um, I hope you all have a blessed day, and that throughout the rest of this week, God's word would be at work in your heart.