(263) Sept 26/2016 – Ironies in the Garden (3)

Monday Meditation
September 26, 2016
From the desk of A.J. Higgins

Ironies in the Garden (3)

“Then the band and the captains and officers of the Jews took Jesus and bound Him”

John 18:12

They came with their weapons that night. The tramping of their feet, hurrying through the garden, broke the stillness of the night scene. They came with weapons to take the Lamb of God. The majesty of His words and perhaps the shock at His self-disclosure stunned them for a moment; but intent on their evil deed, they rushed forward to arrest Him. The unsheathed sword of Peter was refused and the severed ear healed so that there would be no sign of resistance and no remonstrance upon Peter. What a gracious Lord!

There is no need in John’s Gospel for Judas to identify Him. No kiss, no words come from the traitor’s lips. The Lord identifies Himself. He is in total control. “If ye seek Me” is His invitation to them to apprehend Him.

But then John tells us that they “bound Him.” Only John records the binding in the garden. The other writers tell of His being bound while transported between trials (Matt 27:2; Mark 15:1) but John tells us that the first binding was in the garden.

John is the Gospel record where we see the Father and Son moving together to Calvary. The record of the binding of the Lord Jesus reminds us of a father who had to bind his son to an altar; that binding likely occurred within sight of the very same place that saw the binding of Christ. When Abraham bound Isaac on one of the mountains in Moriah, was the Father thinking of a day in the future when His Son would be bound? We think of the grief of Abraham’s heart in binding his son, and rightly so. The ultimate Father must have known a deeper grief, an inexpressible sorrow as He watched His Son bound in a garden and led away by the hands of cruel and merciless men.

They bound Him and yet the scene reveals that apart from His submission, they would never have been able to take Him. Weapons would have been to no avail; numbers meant nothing. The authority of the captains and soldiers was meaningless.

The binding of every other captive was a testimony to the instinct of self-preservation. Binding was necessary to insure they could not escape. But the binding of the Lord Jesus was a testimony to His meekness and submissive attitude; a testimony to His love and mercy. All the sacrifices of old had to be bound with “cords even unto the horns of the altar” (Ps 118:27). He had bound Himself in a past eternity by devotion to His Father’s will. The binding in the garden was but the visible expression of that devotion.

Consider:

1. There are five occasions in the epistles where it is written that “He gave Himself” of a similar construction. Note the purpose in each and for whom He gave Himself.

2. Genesis, the first book in our Bible, has a lot to say about fathers and sons. In most instances, there was sorrow associated with the events in their lives. Look at some and relate them to the Father and His Son.

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