20th May 2023

20th May 2023


Pray (ACts)


Read (Matthew 20v17-19)


Message (Scott Woodburn)


Today's passage contains just three verses and in response I will attempt to keep my devotion deliberately short. That's not to say that these verses are unimportant - quite the opposite. These verses are full of the Gospel and I pray that you will feel their import anew.


Jesus was going up to Jerusalem and He took His disciples aside to tell them again what He was walking towards (v17). In a few words but in full detail, Jesus outlined the treatment that was waiting for Him in the great city. Jesus would be be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, they would condemn Him to death and hand Him over to the Roman authorities who would take their opportunity to mock, flog and crucify the Lord. Even so, on the third day Jesus would rise again from the dead (v19).


I'd imagine that there is nothing new in these verses for the vast majority of you but I do hope that you will see once again the weight of the Gospel. Jesus was walking on a road that would lead to His humiliation and death. His execution would not be quick or painless but brutal, agonising and bloody. Jesus was walking on a road that would lead to nails driven into His body and even as He was dying the passers-by would mock and scorn. Jesus was walking on a road that would see Him descending into the sheer agony of hell, darkness would fall over the land and Christ would cry "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"


Jesus knew all of this was coming, His road would end at Calvary, His journey was marked by agony, His friends would flee, His crown was thorns and yet still He walked.


We deserve none of this and yet even when we hated Christ, He died for us. Consider this truth today and remind yourself that in all of your fears and failures, Christ died for you. You weren't a wee bit bad but totally depraved. You weren't drowning in sin, you were dead in sin. You were separated from Christ without hope and without God in the world.


Nevertheless, still He walked.


Knowing what was to come, still He walked.


Thanks be to God, still He walked.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q51 What is forbidden in the second commandment? The second commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word.
​