Good Friday - The Dust and The Blood
Good Friday - The Dust and the Blood
In Luke 22 verse 44 it reads in the Passion Translation, “He (Jesus) prayed more passionately like one being sacrificed.”
This account is describing when Jesus begins to pray with such agony that His sweat turns to blood. It is hard to imagine the enormous agonizing pain that He was enduring. Yet with these drops of blood and sweat the remission of sin had already begun.
We are told that Jesus habitually came to this garden to pray. Although we know exactly what He prayed for on this night of intense pressing, I couldn’t help but think about what else He must have prayed in this very place. Our natural, physical, place of prayer becomes a very special and intimate place of communion. Repeatedly, Jesus came to this place and joined His heart in intimate union with the Father. How many hours of communion had He spent there? There, Jesus heard the Father’s voice. He felt His comfort. He shared His heart and petitions with the Father in this very Garden.
The soil held history. The place became a consecrated place of communion. A place where love was shared by Father, Son, and Spirit. All of those intimate moments; all those little and large surrenders along the way had led Him again to this Garden of communion to be pressed with the ultimate pressing. Now, in this hour, He would experience His greatest surrender. The surrender that would subdue the soul’s will for all eternity. As Jesus prayed for the Father’s perfect will to be completed; dropping on to that soil was His all-powerful, saving, blood. Slowly dripping with souls’ agony and being absorbed into the dust.
There was another garden of communion in the beginning. In that garden Yahweh formed a man out of dust, soil, and molded him. He breathed into him the breath of Life and he became a living soul-the first Adam. Yet that first Adam, made from dust, committed his disobedient act by a tree. As he ate its fruit, he surrendered to his own will, bringing death and condemnation to us all.
It is a striking contrast to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Now, the Last Adam, Jesus, also made in humanity’s image and likeness is kneeling by a tree in the garden. Yet this time, He refuses to take the same path as the First Adam. No fruit to eat. Instead, Jesus surrenders in obedience. A surrender so arduous and agonizing He begins to sweat blood. Those drops of precious holy blood soak into the dust of this Garden declaring that victory is coming to overturn the curse that entered by the man made from dust in the beginning. Saving blood dripping for a will totally surrendered.
Yes, the first battle of the war to overthrow the curse and kingdom of darkness had been won. The final battle was just before Him, on a cross between two thieves. Praise the Lord!! He wins that one too!