THE KING FACES THE CROSS (Matthew 26)

THE KING FACES THE CROSS (Matthew 26)

H. A. IRONSIDE

MATTHEW 26:6-13 - We know that the woman who brought the alabaster box of ointment and anointed Jesus was Mary. John tells us she anointed His feet. Matthew and Mark mention the anointing of His head. Both of course were true. It was an act of loving devotion. To Mary, Jesus was the King. As He sat or reclined at the table her spikenard filled the room with its fragrance (Song of Solomon 1:12, see also verse 3). To Mary there was nothing too precious for Jesus. She lavished her best upon Him. Mary, who perhaps understood more clearly than any of the rest what was about to take place, had anointed His body for His burial. 

MATTHEW 26:14-16 - Without seeming to recall the prophecy of Zechariah in regard to this very thing, the betrayal of the Shepherd of Israel, they covenanted with Judas for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12). With all their boasted knowledge of the Scriptures they were fulfilling them unwittingly in the bargain to which they agreed. Judas Iscariot had made a covenant with hell, which must at times have caused his guilty conscience to protest sternly against the awful course upon which he had entered.

  MATTHEW 26:18 - “I will keep the Passover at thy house with My disciples.” It was considered a pious thing by the inhabitants of Jerusalem to reserve a guest-chamber, where visitors in the city might observe the feast. Jesus availed Himself of this privilege. Tradition says that it was in the home of John Mark that the last Passover was held by the Saviour and His disciples. 

  The communion (1 Corinthians 10:16) is not in any sense a sacrifice. It commemorates the one perfect Sacrifice offered by our Lord once for all when He gave Himself for us on Calvary. Neither should it be celebrated with any thought of its having saving value or inherent merit. It is the reminder that when we were utterly lost and helpless, Christ died for us to redeem us to God. It is true that the sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15) should ever accompany it as we contemplate the great cost at which we were saved, and rejoice that He who endured such grief and shame for us is now alive forevermore, never again to have to submit to the pain of death. We call Him to mind as the “Author and Finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2), from whence He shall soon return to claim the purchase of His blood. Till then we keep this feast with worshipful hearts, while we look back to the cross and on to the coming glory (1 Corinthians 11:26). 

  MATTHEW 26-30 - “When they had sung an hymn.” Tradition says this was Psalm 135, known to the Jews as the little Hall-El, celebrating Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, or, as others think, Psalms 115 to 118. 

  MATTHEW 26:31 - It was another of Zechariah’s prophecies to which Jesus referred when He told the disciples that all should be stumbled, or scandalized, because of Him that night; for long ago this prophet, speaking by the Spirit of God, had said, I will “smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered” (Zechariah 13:7). These words were about to have a literal fulfillment, though at the moment they all felt it could not be that any of them would forsake Him whom they loved so dearly. But no man can ever sound the depths of evil in his own heart, which grace alone can overcome. 

  The 102nd Psalm has been often designated “The Gethsemane Psalm.” As we read it, we hear the breathings of our Saviour’s heart as He entered into a sense of the loneliness of One forsaken of God and despised by the very men whom He came to save. This was the cup from which His holy, human nature shrank. That He, the perfect One, in whom the Father had ever found His delight (Luke 3:22; 9:35), should be treated as an outcast, because taking the sinner’s place, was unspeakably horrible and appalling. Yet we need to remember that the suffering endured in Gethsemane was not in itself atoning for sin. It was at Golgotha, on the cross of shame, that our sins were laid upon Him, and He endured the full penalty that should have been ours, if God had not intervened in grace and “sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Gethsemane was anticipatory to Calvary, where He drained to the dregs the cup of wormwood and gall which our iniquities had filled 

  MATTHEW 26:36 - “A place called Gethsemane.” The name means “the oil press.” It was a garden of olives, just across the brook Kedron. It was easily reached from the city of Jerusalem. Jesus left eight of His disciples near the entrance, while He went deeper into the grove to pray. 

The utter resignation of Jesus to the Father’s will shines out in all these closing experiences, but particularly in that of Gethsemane. While the horror of becoming the great sin offering, being made sin for us, overwhelmed His human soul and spirit, yet, as we have seen, He was perfectly subject to the divine will, and had no thought of turning aside. There are depths here that our minds can never fathom, but all is perfection on His part. If He could have contemplated all that was involved in the sacrifice of the cross with equanimity, He would not have been the perfect Man that He was. But knowing it all and realizing there was no other way by which He could become the Captain of our salvation (Hebrews 2:10), He faced the ordeal unflinchingly in order that God might be glorified, and sinful men saved from judgment.

  The Meaning of the Cup. It is not simply of death or of physical sufferings that the cup speaks. Jesus did not shrink from these. But it was the fierce indignation of Jehovah against sin, which filled that cup about to be presented by the Father to His holy Son, that caused the bitter agony of soul which so affected His body that the bloody sweat was forced through the pores of His skin.  

 The Cup of Wrath is mentioned in the Old Testament. It is reserved for the wicked (Psalm 11:6); it is a cup of divine indignation against sin (Psalm 75:8); it is a cup of trembling (Isaiah 51:17, 22); it is the cup of Jehovah’s fury (Jeremiah 25:15). All this, and more, was involved in the cup which our Lord had to drink in order that we might have the cup of salvation (Psalm 116:13).

“Death and the curse were in that cup,

O Christ, ‘twas full for Thee;

But Thou hast drained the last dark drop,

‘Tis empty now for me.”

The holiness of Jesus is seen in His shrinking from drinking the cup of judgment, which involved His taking the sinner’s place and bearing the weight of our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5, 6). Because of His infinite purity He could not contemplate with other than horror all that it would mean to be made sin for us—that is, to become the anti-typical sin offering—in order that God might receive to Himself in peace all who should avail themselves of the offer of life through His death, and justification through His condemnation. It is this that explains His agony, which was as much an evidence of the perfection of His Humanity as was His utter submission to the will of His Father. Gethsemane made it evident that He was the unblemished, spotless Lamb whose blood could avail to cleanse from sin and shield from judgment.  

It is noticeable, and an evidence of divine design in Scripture, that while in the three Synoptic Gospels our attention is focused on Christ’s agony in the Garden, there is no mention of this in the Gospel of John, just as in his Gospel there is no word about the transfiguration or the rending of the veil when Jesus died. In the Synoptics, emphasis is placed upon the Humanity of our Lord. In John’s Gospel it is His essential Deity that is before us. The glory is seen shining out there, in every act of His life and in every word that He spoke. All is perfect, for Scripture is given by inspiration of God (2 Timothy 3:16).

In defiance or forgetfulness of their own law, which forbade the trial of any person charged with crime between the hours of sunset and sunrise, those who had arrested Jesus hurried Him to the house of Caiaphas shortly before cock-crowing, answering to our three o’clock after midnight, where a group of the leaders had been waiting in order to pass speedy judgment upon Him.

 There is a difference between apostasy and backsliding. Judas was an apostate. He had never known the reality of the new birth. Though chosen as an apostle he was a devil (John 6:70, 71). For him there was no recovery. But in Peter we see a typical backslider. He was a real child of God who failed through self-confidence and lack of prayerfulness; but was afterwards restored and became a faithful witness for Christ. Apostasy is giving up truth that one formerly professed to believe. Backsliding is spiritual declension from an experience once enjoyed. The difference is immense. To see this distinction clearly will save from much confusion of thought.