Click or tap book name
Use <control> drag to
scroll
Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
About
Links
Home
"
Navigator
Mark 14:41
Comments
The verse confuses us. ‘Sleep on’: get up. That is not quite what it means. There was not going to be any time to sleep. Judas and those who came to arrest him were approaching, even then. So we read it in these terms: ‘Sleep on now’ – it is enough, you can relax now. I have fought this battle, I have won this battle, this stage. I have still got to go to Calvary, but I have yielded myself to the divine will. my obedience is complete. You can rest from this particular struggle.’ The temple soldiers and the chief priests and Judas were already nearby. Judas had led them there. Christ says, ‘The hour is come’, the hour which he has spoken of on a number of occasions, indicating that he knew the precise time when he would yield himself up in apparent weakness to be arrested, tried, and crucified. It is the greatest hour in the history of the world, the universe. ‘Behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.’ See what is going to happen, what will immediately take place. How can it be that the Son of man, the second person of the Trinity, the incarnate God, the one who will one day judge all mankind, and set up his everlasting kingdom of glory; how can it be that he should submit to being betrayed, arrested, subject to humiliation at the hands of sinners? What an astonishing thing that Christ should submit to this voluntarily and willingly for us! He is betrayed into their power. He who had all power, he who could have dispatched them all in a second puts himself in their hands, the hands of sinners. They represent all humanity. Just as he would represent all his people who would ever go to heaven, his persecutors represent the whole human race that is opposed to him. The disciples were asleep in Gethsemane while the first great event of redemption, soon followed by Calvary, was being played out, while the most profound thing was happening. The consequences of human sin in death were being rolled over the Saviour, and they missed it. What a tragedy! Self-confidence slept through it. That would lead to their disloyalty, and their abandoning of him.
Application
Are we asleep? Not enough regard for the great warfare and the old nature within, not enough prayer? Asleep while souls around us perish? Asleep while people for whom we could have prayed, to whom we should have witnessed are perishing? In the church people are being converted, hearts are being touched. People who were rebellious and hostile are melting and coming to Christ and desiring him, and yet, other people are asleep, barely noticing it, not a word of praise to God. Asleep. The disciples missed his triumphant last words on Calvary's cross.
Questions
Outline
Purpose
Introduction