Message by Ross Paterson on Good Friday 29 Mar 2013

1. The Cross and the change
it brings
Matt. 26:36-46
rosspaterson

2. The word Gethsemane means crushed olives.
Olives from Jordan
(Wikipedia)
There met together:
His perfect work: His obedience and love
and
Our miserable failure: Our rebellion and sin
The single question is what would be the result of that
meeting?
If, as Paul says, the glory of God has been shown to us
“in the Face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6),
then the portrait in
Gethsemane shows
that Face covered in
tears.

3. Confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers in
Chongqing, China

4. (1) Gethsemane is where your
prayers are not answered
as you’d like them to be.
The depth of Gethsemane: God understands how you
feel, and He has a better
plan in mind.
(2) Gethsemane is
where those closest
to you cannot help.
You go on alone.
(3) Gethsemane is where you feel the full
weight of God’s will. Jesus was “in anguish”
and “His sweat was like drops of blood falling
to the ground” (Luke 22:44 NIV).

5. So that my darkness and sin and The
divine exchange
pit of despair….
….might be replaced by His life
and friendship with the Father

6. Gethsemane
us…
i) He is aware of
our secrets but
does not run
away.
ii) He has answers
to our ‘worst
stuff’
iii) He has a destiny
and a future
for us.

7. Gethsemane shows the way
out of our fallen state:
i) ADMIT sin and
failure
ii) REPENT of it
iii) BE HONEST re. the
pride and
dependence on
self that lay behind
it
Give up that old life

8. “Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two
candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on a town
garbage heap; at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they
had to write His title in Hebrew (the language of the
religious), Latin (the language of the barbarian) and Greek
(the language of the cultured). It was the kind of place
where cynics talked smut, thieves cursed and soldiers
gambled. But it’s where He died, and it’s what He died
about.”
When a debtor presented a bill for payment,
it was customary, after the money had been
handed over, for the creditor to write across
the bill tetelestai – paid in full. This word is
in the perfect tense in the Greek, and so it
means “it has been and will for ever remain
finished”.
C.H. Spurgeon described them as “the
greatest words ever”.

9. The Father’s

10. Acknowledgements…
Some of the pictures used in this Powerpoint presentation are the intellectual
property of Free Bible Images and we acknowledge their source.