Jesus is now just hours away from His appointed time. All the prophecies that had to be fulfilled are fulfilled. All is in place. Judas Iscariot has made his pact with the Pharisees and the Chief Priests. The time is at hand.
Tuesday Afternoon
The disciples are wondering just where they are going where they are going to observe the Passover supper. Thus, they ask Jesus where they are going to do it.
Jesus answers by giving instructions for them to go to a certain man in the city of Jerusalem that has an upper room that they will be able to use. The preparations are made.
Tuesday Night, the Beginning of a New Day, Wednesday
According to the Jewish method of the calculation of days, Wednesday begins at Sundown. (For our calculation purposes we will use 6:00 PM.) This is the Preparation Day. The lamb is killed and prepared to be eaten.
Now comes a fact that is often misconstrued. When the evening was come and the time to observe the Passover, the Scriptures indicate that when Jesus arrives, He sits (reclines) at a table with the twelve. Many would take this as only the twelve are present at the supper, but this is not the case. The majority, if not all, of the disciples are present but Jesus and the twelve are at a table by themselves.
Remember, this upper room is quite large. Why would Jesus select this large upper room if only He and the twelve were present? The answer is, of course, He would not have. It was needful for the room to be large because the number of disciples stood at about 120. This is according to the Book of Acts, which is only a few days after the Passover event. There is no reason to think that Jesus would exclude all the disciples except for the apostles.
Let us pause here for a moment and look at something that is, many times, overlooked or ignored. The participants of the supper did not sit at the tables such as we do today. They reclined on couches where the head of the couch faced the table, leaning on their left arm and eating with the right hand. An immensely popular painting erroneously depicts Jesus and the Apostles sitting at a table. No doubt many believe this depiction is true. Much of Medieval art does not reflect the facts as they really were because of the influence of the Catholic Church.
As the Passover Supper progresses, Jesus reveals again that one of the twelve is going to betray Him. They all began to say, “Lord, is it I?” Jesus’ reply is that it is he who dipped the sop with Him in the dish. He makes this statement because it was one of those twelve that were at the same table with Him. When Judas asks, Jesus’ reply is, “Thou has said.”
As the supper continues, Jesus takes the elements of the Passover Supper and institutes His supper, the Lord’s Supper. First, He takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and then gives it to the disciples saying, “Take, eat, this is my body.”
Whey they had finished that, He took the cup, gave hanks for it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.”
After the supper was finished, they sung a hymn, and went out to the Mount of Olives. Jesus tells them that they are all going to be offended because of Him.
They will all forsake Him at the last moment, the moment of His arrest. Peter very emphatically states that he never will forsake Him. Jesus gently tells him that before the rooster crows in the early morning, Peter will deny Him three times.
The Garden of Gethsemane
When they come to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John, and leaves the remainder. He takes the three and goes further into the garden and tells them to wait, watch, and pray. He goes yet further into the garden, falls to the ground, and begins to pray. What follows is another misinterpreted and misunderstood verses in the Bible. He prays for the Father to remove “this cup” from Him, but whatever the Father’s will for Him is, He will follow it. Many will teach that He is asking the Fathe to remove the coming crucifixion from Him.
This is a false teaching. Jesus came into the world for the very purpose that was awaiting Him. It was prophesied. It was determined in eternity before time. It was His destiny. What then was the object of His prayer? “This Cup” was a profoundly serious malady that had come upon Him because of the stress of the coming events. Luke is the only one that writes that His sweat was as great drops of blood. Jesus was literally sweating blood because of the great stress He was under.
The following is a quote from https://www.gotquestions.org/sweat-blood-
The night before Jesus Christ was crucified, He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke, a physician, recorded that Jesus’ sweat was like drops of blood: “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke
22:44). Some consider Luke’s description as mere simile—Jesus’ sweat fell to the ground in large, heavy drops, the way that blood drips from an open wound. However, there exists a medical condition that produces the symptoms described and explains Luke’s mention of blood.
Hematidrosis is a rare, but very real, medical condition that causes one’s sweat to contain blood. The sweat glands are surrounded by tiny blood vessels that can constrict and then dilate to the point of rupture, causing blood to effuse into the sweat glands. The cause of hematidrosis is extreme anguish. In the other gospel accounts, we see the level of Jesus’
anguish: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”
(Matthew 26:38; cf. Mark 14 14:34).
The intense anguish and sorrow Jesus felt was certainly understandable.
Being God, Christ knew “all that was going to happen to Him” (John 18:4).
He knew in painstaking detail the events that were to follow soon after He was betrayed by one of His very own disciples. He knew He was able to undergo several trials where all of the witnesses against Him would lie. He knew that many who had hailed Him as the messiah only days earlier would not be screaming for His crucifixion (Luke 23:23). He knew He would be flogged nearly to the point of death before they pounded the metal spikes into His flesh. He knew the prophetic words of Isaiah spoken seven centuries earlier that He would be beaten so badly that He would be “disfigured beyond that of any man” and “beyond human likeness”
(Isaiah 52:14). Certainly, these things factored into His great anguish and sorrow, causing Him to sweat drops of blood. Yet there was more.
Crucifixion was considered to be the most painful and torturous method of execution ever devised and was used on the most despised and wicked people. In fact, so horrific was the pain that a word was designed to help explain it—excruciating, which literally means “from the cross.” From His arrest in the garden until the time our Lord stated, “It is finished” (John 19:30), Scripture records only one instance where Jesus “cried out in a loud voice” (Matthew 27:46). As our sinless Savior bore the weight of the world’s sins on His shoulders, His Father must have looked away, as His
“eyes are too pure to look on evil” (Habakkuk 1:13), causing the suffering Servant to cry out “Eloi, Eloi, lama abachtani?” –“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46). The spiritual pain the Lord endured on our behalf.
At the beginning of creation, human history began in a garden (Genesis 2:8), and when the first Adam sinned against God in this garden, death entered the world (Genesis 3:6). Thousands of years later, Jesus Christ, the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), entered into another garden to accept the cup from His Father’s hand (Matthew 26:42; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:49), and death was about to be swallowed up in victory. Although God’s plan was designed before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-5), we must never forget that its execution came at a great cost. Ultimately, then, we are the ones responsible for the blood that dripped from our Savior as He prayed in the garden. And we are the reason Jesus’ soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Indeed, these bloodied sweat drops came at a great cost; let us never forget that.
Hematidrosis is a life-threatening condition that might have killed Jesus before He ever got to the cross. He knew this was not the way He was to die, but whatever God the Father’s will would be, He would submit to it.
Three times Jesus returns to the three and finds them asleep all three times. The third time, however, would be the last. The multitude, led by Judas, is in the garden ready to arrest Jesus. Peter, ever the one to take the lead in something, pulled a sword and cut off the ear of the servant of the High Priest. Peter was probably trying to cut off his head but only got his ear. Jesus tells Peter to put up the sword and He then heals the servant’s ear. After that, all of the disciples fled, thus fulfilling Jesus’ words that they would all be offended by Him that night.
Before the High Priest
Jesus is taken before the High Priest. Assembled with him are the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes. They were already assembled when the multitude arrives with Jesus. This tells me that it was all pre-arranged, as well as the outcome of the kangaroo court. Witnesses are present, but they are not in agreement. In a valid court, this would have caused a mistrial, but they were not concerned about being the right. They were only concerned about finding Jesus guilty of anything that they could to have Him put to death.
Peter, rather than running away like the rest, followed the multitude afar off. He was beneath the palace while Jesus’ illegal trial was being conducted. He was warming himself beside the fire that had been built when a maid of the High Priest approached him and proclaimed him to be part of the followers of Jesus. He denied it and moved away onto the porch. A rooster crowed, it being close to morning. The maid, a second time, said that he was part of the disciples. Again,
the second time, Peter denied it. Soon others began to say that he was part of them which followed Jesus because he was a Galilean; his speech betrayed him, they said. Peter, the third time denied the accusation, this time cursing. A second time the rooster crowed, and Peter remembered what Jesus had said. The gospel writers say that Peter went out and wept bitterly.
The dawn soon came. The council decided that Jesus would be taken to Pilate.
The Jewish people had many freedoms under the Roman rule, but they could not put anyone to death, even if a person were condemned to die. Pilate was the one who had that power. So, they decide to take Jesus to see Pilate. When He comes before Pilate, He is accused of many things (which are not recorded in the Scriptures). He refuses to answer any of the charges. Pilate marvels at His silence.
Pilate asks Him if He indeed is the King of the Jews, to which Jesus replies, “Thou sayest it.”
Pilate had a custom that he followed at this time of the year. He would release any prisoner that the Jews wanted. Knowing that the chief priest and their cohorts wanted to kill Jesus but had no proof that He should be guilty of death, and Pilate’s own examination also found nothing to warrant a death sentence, he asks the crowd what he should do with Him. The answer came back loud and clear,
“Crucify Him.” Pilate once again asks the same question, but he gets the same answer back, “Crucify Him.” He brings forth Barabbas, a thief and an insurrectionist who was well known for his crimes. Pilate thinks the Jews would surely release Jesus rather than Barabbas because he had conspired against the Romans. The answer was still the same.
When Pilate heard that Jesus was from Galilee, he sent Him to Herod because that was his jurisdiction. Herod just happened to be in Jerusalem at that time.
Herod was glad to see Jesus but was extremely disappointed when Jesus would not answer any question put to Him. He then sends Him back to Pilate.
When Jesus is returned to Pilate, Pilate is trying in some way to release Jesus because he can find no reason that Jesus should be put to death. He gives the Roman soldiers free access to Jesus for them to torture. Jesus is taken by the soldiers into the Praetorium. There the soldiers beat Him, put a purple robe on Him, mocked Him, made fun of Him, and then scourged Him.
The Roman scourging often killed the prisoner before he would ever reach the place of his execution. The following is a quotation from the website
https://www.jesus-story.net/scourging/.
Scourging was a brutal punishment, but it was standard practice before a crucifixion. The whip, the flagellum, had several thongs, each one of which had pieces of bone or metal attached. It made a bloody pulp of a man’s body.
The person to be whipped was stripped of his clothing, tied to a post or pillar, and beaten until his flesh hung in shreds.
There was no maximum number of strokes: the whipping could go on as long as the soldier administering it wished. Men frequently collapsed and died as the result of a flogging. The Jewish historian Josephus says with some pride that he had whipped rebels in Galilee until their entrails showed….
After the soldiers had flogged Jesus, they engaged in some brutal horseplay with their helpless prisoner.
One accusation against Jesus was that he called himself ‘King of the Jews’, so they set about playing out a grotesque charade in which Jesus was a royal king – of sorts….
John writes that the soldiers platted a crown of thorns and placed it on His head to the point that it pierced the scalp. We continue with the quotation cited above.
Once they had crowned their ‘king’ they draped a cloak around his shoulders, probably the dark red chlamys worn by army officers. This would have been easy for the soldiers to obtain. Purple cloth was extremely expensive, and not likely to have been available to ordinary soldiers.
John’s gospel says the soldiers ‘came at’ Jesus. They probably pretended, in a grotesque comedy, that he was a king, and they were courtiers coming forward to do obeisance – ‘Hail’ was a normal form of greeting, but it was also used when speaking to royalty, as in ‘Hail, Caesar’.
No doubt there was a great deal of cruel laughter at the expense of their victim, as they hit him with reed canes, mocking his helplessness….
Once they are finished, Jesus is returned to Pilate. Pilate’s wife had sent him a message saying that he should have nothing to do with Jesus. However, Pilate is now in a fix. If he releases Jesus, he risks an uprising of the Jews, which he thoroughly does not want. If he lets Jesus to be crucified, he is sending an innocent Man to His death. He calls for a basin of water. He washes his hand and states that he is innocent of the shedding the blood of this Man.
Conclusion to Chapter 11
All of this has been terrible, horrific, and hard to believe, yet the worst is yet to come. It has been an all-night affair. Now He is to be led away to be crucified. It is daytime, in the morning, on Wednesday.
