Today’s passage: Mark 14:26-52
Helpful thoughts:
- When Jesus informed the disciples they would scatter, He quoted Zechariah 13:7. The rest of Zechariah 13 speaks of the day when the remnant are purified and committed to the Lord. The scattering was temporary. The end result of the striking of the Shepherd was the purification of God’s people.
- God the Father chose to bring glory to Himself (And the Son) through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.
- Jesus chose to obey the Father’s will.
- Judas utilized the greeting of a close trusted friend in order to betray Jesus.
- It is believed verses 51-52 refer to Mark, the writer of this gospel. The point of including these verses would be to show evidence of his eye-witness account, in addition to Peter’s.
Questions to consider:
- What can we learn from verse 36? What is the heart of Jesus Christ? Why did He go to the cross?
- Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath to the very bottom. What does this statement mean in correlation with His prayer in this passage? How might we compare that to Jesus’ claim from the cross, “It is finished?”
- In what way could the phrase, “The spirit (Our inner man) indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” be discouraging? How does the statement fit with Christ’s encouragement to watch and pray in order to have victory over temptation?