“Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” (John 18:36)
The arrest and trial of Jesus was a mis-trial. There were no witnesses and there were convictions upheld. Having entered in to the Kidron valley (Kidron means darkness), Jesus was arrested, beaten, whipped until the flesh on His back was torn away, struck in the head and crowned with sharp thorns piercing the skull.
It was the greatest hour of darkness for Jesus. And yet, Jesus never falters. Why? Because Jesus knew His Father and having a right understanding of God is what sustained Him.
A misunderstanding of God leads to an inappropriate response to everything else in your life.
In John 18-19 there is a battle going on for dominion. Everyone claims to know what will happen next (foreknowledge) and everyone is running around trying to control and bend the circumstances to their will (Sovereignty). Everyone except Jesus.
Jesus is the only on who never loses His head, and it was His Darkest hour.
The Jews are trying to avoid a confrontation with Rome or else they are trying to protect their religious racket from exposure. They want Jesus dead because He is a threat to their livelihood. Peter comes against 600 plus armed Roman Soldiers with a sword, thinking he can altar the divine plan.
Nobody knows what is going on, but everyone thinks they know and they are all busting their guts to guide the events of history in the direction they think things should go.
In all of this, Jesus keeps His cool. The fact is, He is the one with the absolute power through out His arrest and trial. He opens His mouth, and 600 rugged individualists fall to the ground. How does that happen? In the face of a moody battalion, this one man commands that the Disciples be set free. And they are.
How likely is all of that? He reminds Pilate that the authority to crucify is not in Pilates hands but in His hands.
Jesus was able to do this because He really was in control and He knew the outcome. He knew that despite the darkness, God was not yet done.
Jesus was not shocked or surprised or caught off guard. In order to fully trust God with their lives, the Disciples needed to see this and so do we.
Everything God gets done, He gets done through the cross, including teaching us to trust. Like the Disciples, we don’t know the details of our future and we can barely interpret our present circumstances or suffering.
In order to be sustained we do not need a right understanding of our circumstance. We need to know God.
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