SLEEPING WELL THESE DAYS?
Matt 26:17-27:36
How do you think that you will sleep this next Friday night?
Most of us will probably sleep well?
Few of you may have difficulty sleeping because of physical or emotional conditions. But on the most part we will probably have a average to good night’s rest.
Thinking back over the text,
What if you were one of Jesus’ disciples on that Friday night?
For instance Matthew and John, who were Jesus’ personal disciples and wrote personal accounts, and were close enough to Jesus in the Garden to hear Him agonize over His dilemma. Falling to the ground.
But tonight there was sweat as of great drops of blood perspiring from His body.
What kind of emotion would this stir up within you? Obviously not much, for you see, they slept through most of it. But the night was young.
(How many people are sleeping today as the Holy Spirit agonizes, making convulsive efforts, to reach them for Christ?)
If your Master, teacher, and leader was fearful and weeping in front of you how would you feel? Wouldn’t you feel helpless and hopeless?
They didn’t sleep well that Friday night.
What if you were Judas?
Realizing the full extent of your sin, and realizing after your betrayal that it was too late to reverse it, and having to watch the brutality being placed upon Jesus in whom you betrayed? He didn’t think that his sin would bring such great consequence upon himself. It isolated him from any companionship. Now both priest and the disciples hated him because of the kind of person sin had turned him in to. The thirty pieces of silver now meant nothing to him. His sin left him totally lost. He killed himself.
(Sin will take you farther than you ever wanted to go, keep you longer than you ever wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever wanted to pay.)
What if you were Peter, on this Friday night?
He witnessed Jesus’ experience in the garden as well. He cut off the servant of the high priest’s ear. (Brave, but obviously a show.)
As soon as they apprehended Jesus he fled with all the other disciples, (Afraid, following from a far off.)
He would not allow himself to be associated with Jesus. He denied Him three times. (Coward)
He wept bitterly over his denial. But that changed nothing. His weeping could not release Jesus.
What keeps you from openly serving Christ?
He did not sleep well that Friday night.
What if you were Pilot, on this Friday night?
After refusing to go with his gut feeling about Jesus and refusing to take the council of his wife after she’d had a dream about Christ. Fearful of loosing his position and willing to please the crowd he allowed his soldiers to beat and crucify Jesus.
He did not sleep well that Friday night.
What if you were God on that Friday night.
Watching those that you had created and loved rip your only begotten Son into pieces, and then spit on Him, mock Him, and then have to turn your back on Him, as His Son took our sins upon Himself and then allow Himself to be crucified and die on an old rugged cross for you and I.
What if you were Jesus on that Friday night?
Knowing that He was going to be delivered into the cruel hands of sinners and be so abused that he wasn’t even able to be recognized, and then to suffer shame at the hands of mean men and then to have nails driven through His hands and feet and to be hung on a cross on Mount Calvary to die.
There was no sleep for Jesus that Friday night.
So, how are you going to sleep this Friday night, realizing that it was man’s sins that hung Jesus on the cross? Yes, yours also.
Will you sleep well because you have received Christ as your Savior and have accepted Him as Lord of your life, or will you toss and turn because you realize that you have resisted His wooing, sold yourself to the world, you’ve denied and betrayed Him.
Good Friday will never be as bad for us as it was for the disciples and certainly not as bad as it was for Jesus.
But if you do not accept what God did in providing His Son to be the atonement for your sins, and accepting Him as your personal savior, then what Christ and His disciples went through on that Friday night will be a cakewalk compared to an eternity in Hell without God.
Please invite Jesus into your heart this Easter season, as we pray.
