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(upbeat music) - Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. I am Pastor Tom
Holliday, and this week we're beginning a look today at John chapter 18, verses
one and two today. The last several chapters we've been listening together to
Jesus teach us.

He's teaching us about who He is and what He cares about and what's most
important in life. Now, in John 18, we shift gears, and Jesus is going to show us,
show us who He is, show us what is most important in life, in His actions. He's
going to show us everything He's just taught us.

He's just taught His disciples that if you truly love someone, you'll lay down
your life for them, and Jesus is going to lay down His life for us. He's just
taught His disciples, let not your heart be troubled, and Jesus in these
chapters is going to pray for His heart not to be troubled, and it isn't going to
be troubled, even as He goes through the most horrendous circumstances of life.
Jesus has just taught His disciples, you must serve one another, and in these
chapters, John 18 to the end of the book of John, Jesus is going to serve, He's
going to serve us.

Beginning in John 18, we have the arrest, the trial, the crucifixion, the
burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The great thing about being a
believer is you don't have to celebrate Easter just once a year. The great thing
about the resurrection is it's a year-long celebration for believers in Jesus
Christ.

We celebrate it every Sunday, that's why we worship on Sunday, because Jesus was
raised from the dead on a Sunday. And every day, we celebrate the resurrection
because Jesus Christ is alive, He is real in our lives. So as we go through
these next few weeks and look at John chapter 18, 19, 20, these events of
Jesus's death and resurrection, don't look at these as just something that Jesus
did for us a long time ago.

Make it a celebration of what He wants to do in your life today. This is not a
story of something that happened a long time ago. This is the truth about what
God wants to do in your life today.

And there is a goal that I have for us together as we walk together these next
few weeks in looking at what Jesus did for us on the cross and His resurrection.
The goal that I have for you is a real sense of clarity about what happened in
Jesus's life during these last few hours. And that that clarity will bring His
love for you into even sharper focus than ever before.

Clarity about what He did and a sharper focus on His love. Beginning with this
look at John chapter 18, Jesus on trial. In John 18, the writer of the gospel,
John, selects some events to make a point, a point about who Jesus is.

We're going to learn a lot about who Jesus is in this chapter. And in much of what
he tells us, we see a contrast. In fact, contrast is one of the main ideas in
John chapter 18.

John is going to draw for us a real contrast between who Jesus is and who everyone
else is. Show the reality of God in human flesh up against the reality of
humanity and what we tried to do to Him. The trials of Jesus before His
crucifixion numbered six.

There were three Roman trials and three Jewish trials. John doesn't talk about
all of those. He does focus on a few of those trials, a few of those
occurrences.

And they are the ones that help us to see things about who Jesus is. In these
chapters, we're going to see that man does his very worst and God will respond with
his very best. Listen to how it begins in John chapter 18, verses one and two.

When he'd finished praying, let me just break in. That's the high priestly
prayer that we looked at this last week. When Jesus had finished praying this
prayer, Jesus left with His disciples and He crossed the Kidron Valley.

On the other side, there was an olive grove and He and His disciples went into
it. Now, Judas, who had betrayed Him, knew the place because Jesus had often met
there with His disciples. Once again, John sets the scene for us.

He seems to do this every time. This shows us that this is something that
happened in history and not just some story. And he tells us here that they go
to an olive grove.

We know that this is a place called Gethsemane. And we know that that name,
Gethsemane, literally means an oil press, a place where the olives were pressed
so that the oil would come out. And this was a place where Jesus would be
pressed, where He was pressured spiritually like never before in all of human
history for any person in the garden that night.

This garden was probably some place that some wealthy citizen of Jerusalem
owned. There were gardens just outside the city of Jerusalem that were owned by
the wealthy citizens of the city. They didn't have big gardens in Jerusalem for
a couple of reasons.

One, there wasn't enough land. And secondly, the law forbid them from putting
manure or fertilizer on the ground in Jerusalem. So even if you did have a
garden in Jerusalem, you wouldn't grow anything as well.

So all the wealthy citizens would buy these gardens outside of town and they'd
go out there just a few minutes away to relax. And somebody had said that Jesus
could go to relax and to worship, to spend time with His God in Gethsemane. It
was one of His favorite places we read throughout the Gospels.

And here He's at Gethsemane again. I've always wondered who that person is. We
don't know His name, we don't know her name.

But some citizen of Jerusalem had lent to Jesus and His disciples this place
where they could go and worship. We don't know who they were, but they
ministered to Jesus during His hour of greatest need. It's interesting as you
read through the Bible that oftentimes God doesn't tell us the name of some of
the most significant people who did some of the most significant things.

But God knows their name. God knows how they worked through their heart to make
a difference in all of eternity. Jesus and His disciples went to this place
where there was an olive grove.

But to get there, to get to Gethsemane, they had to cross a valley called the
Kidron Valley. As you walked outside the city of Jerusalem, there was this small
valley, more like a little ravine called the Kidron Valley. And to get this
picture, to get to the place of Gethsemane, you had to go down this little
gully, across a little stream of water at the bottom, and go back up, and then
you would be in the garden on the other side.

With that picture in mind, there is a significance to this Kidron Valley that we
see in history. You see, the people in Jerusalem would have known that during
the time of the Passover, something significant would have happened to Jesus and
His disciples as they crossed through the bottom of this valley up to the other
side. At Passover time, and this was Passover time, thousands of lambs were
slaughtered in the temple.

In fact, 10 years after this day, they did a count of how many lambs were
slaughtered in one year. 256,000 lambs were slaughtered during this Passover
season. A lot of lambs, and that's a lot of blood.

Where did all that blood go? Well, it would run through a kind of a tunnel into
this ravine of the Kidron Valley, and it would mix with the water and it would
run down this gully. So as Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world, as Jesus walked down that valley and crossed over that river at the
bottom, He and His disciples would have smelled the blood of the lambs.

They would have seen the water that was red mixed with blood. And for Jesus, it
was a picture of what He was going to do, a picture of His love for us. That He
was going to shed in just a few hours His blood for us, for our forgiveness.

That's the picture as we enter in to John chapter 18. Jesus and His disciples
together going out to a garden to be alone. But pretty soon, very soon, Jesus is
going to be confronted.

He's going to be confronted by some groups who want to destroy Him. He's going
to be confronted by some others who are caught up in this moment and who don't
want to be. He's going to be confronted by those who don't understand who He is.

And God's going to use even those confrontations in His plan. As we prepare our
hearts to hear what God wants to do in our lives this next week, I want to take
a moment right now to pray. And I want to ask you to pray with me that God would
impact your heart personally as we walk through this night with Jesus on the day
before He dies.

Jesus, impact my heart personally as I walk with you. See what you did for us.
Impact my heart significantly as I see your love for me.

In your name, I pray this. Amen. In this chapter, as we turn the page tomorrow,
Jesus on trial, we're going to see Jesus before the Roman army and how He
confronts that moment and shows who He really is.