"All to Fulfill Scripture"

 

"Matthew 26:55-56: In that hour Jesus said to the multitudes, Have you come out, as against a robber, with swords and clubs to take Me? I sat daily with you, teaching in the temple, and you did not seize Me. But all this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled.

Our Savior was guided throughout this miserable experience by one principle--to fulfill the Scripture. God's Word states that the Scriptures cannot be broken. We can legislate, and even today I heard on the Christian radio an excerpt from the Inaugural speech that challenged what God thinks is sin.

Although Jesus had just rebuked Peter for disrupting God's plan of having Jesus betrayed and arrested, He nevertheless challenges the multitudes with their hypocrisy in coming to arrest him with swords and clubs. Jesus had led no insurrection and had never been involved in any sort of subversive activity against the government or the Jewish Sanhedrin.

On the contrary, Jesus had been found each day teaching in the Temple. All were welcome to hear Him, and what He would have said would only have been honoring to the proper position of the Temple itself. After all, the Temple was to be the place where God would dwell. This Third Temple--started by Herod the Great but still in the process of being built--was to be the place where God would dwell. The multitude that came for Jesus that night had missed out on the import of Jesus teaching in the Temple. God was dwelling in the Temple for a brief time--and they all missed iot.

What a sad addendum to this verse is found in the words: Then the disciples forsook Him and fled. The Scripture here is Zechariah 13:7: "Strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered." This Scripture was fulfilled here in Matthew 26 as the disciples all run at the sight of Jesus being arrested.

Would we have run? Many throughout the church age have stood strong for the Lord Jesus, but they had the indwelling Holy Spirit to strengthen them. The disciples had not as yet had that experience, but nevertheless it is truly amazing that after three years of being with God in the flesh they all ran. Perhaps we run every time someone opens the door for a discussion on the things of God, and we do not speak up.