04/17/2025
THURSDAY
The day before Jesus would die.
The precious Messiah bends down to wash His disciple's feet then takes the bread and the cup of Passover with the men in the upper room... knowing, full well, He would soon be their perfect Lamb.
The Lamb.
The Perfect Lamb... soon it would be His blood spilling out for all of us.
Huddled in those last moments together, Jesus tells the disciples that one of them would soon betray him; and they each ask, "Is it I?".
Judas slips away to sell the Messiah for 30 pieces of silver.
It was night.
Jesus tells those who remain that He would soon depart; and where He is going, they cannot come. He gives them the new commandment to, "love one another as I have loved you."
Peter insists he would "lay down his life" for Jesus. Yet, Jesus knows it will be He who will soon lay down His life for all and tells Peter he would, "deny Him three times before the rooster crows".
Jesus then reassures them, "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me." and tells them He is going to prepare a place for them.
Surely, they were all confused. Where was He going? Why couldn't they come? Yet, only Thomas, speaks up to say, "Lord, we do not know where you are going."
Jesus then gives them the answer...
..powerful words for them,
..life and death words for us all,
.. the weight-of-eternity words for EACH of us to ponder.
Jesus says, "I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
It wasn't merely where Jesus was going that prevented them from coming.
Without the washing of His blood...
only HIS BLOOD...
the BLOOD OF THE PERFECT LAMB...
without THAT,
they were dead men walking...
We are ALL dead men walking... dead in our sin, unable to be near a perfect God in Heaven.
Jesus came to be our way...to die so we might live.
The ONLY way.
Jesus then goes to the garden to pray, praying with such intensity, He cries tears of blood.
BLOOD.
He pleads with the Father... if there be any other way... any other way....
But for the ONLY time since time began...God, the Father, does not answer His Son.
Because there is NO OTHER WAY!
And there, in the Garden of Gethsemane, the horrific separation begins...the Father is silent... and this, far more than the beatings, the jeering and the piercing nails, prompted the Son to ask, "If there be ANY OTHER WAY."
But there is NO other way.
And so, Jesus, who could have walked away, walks toward the Cross.
Alone.
The Only Way.
And if there were any other way... then God would be cruel.
But there is NO OTHER WAY.
The riches of Father’s love for us is far greater than we can fathom.
God sent His Son to die for us when we were "His enemies".
We weren't just lost, or confused, or mistaken. We were the enemies of the Holy God (Rom 5:10).
And enemies can't ever try hard enough, to be good enough, to earn what the Messiah would do.
Absurd, really, to think our good works could satisfy the wrath of a Holy God.
No, the Perfect Lamb would willingly walk to the Cross to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.
The Father turns His face away.
The Savior is alone.
The Perfect Lamb.
The only WAY...
He came to make our way.
Jesus, who could have walked away, willingly walks toward the Cross....the only way.
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