The Closing Scenes Of Anguish In Matthew 3

Message 3: The All-inclusive Death of Christ

Matthew 26:36-44; Matthew 27:33-46, 50, 51; Luke 23:45-46;John 10:17-18; Hebrews 9: 2-4, 7-8, 11-12; Hebrews 10:19-20

We have been dwelling on the last hours of the Lord Jesus’ earthly ministry in Matthew 26 and 27 for one and a half months now.  This slower pace through these two chapters has given us more time to appreciate what the Lord had gone through. The last line of the first stanza of hymn 93 in particular, echoes my feelings regarding these two chapters - ‘and those closing scenes of anguish, to our heart Thyself endear’. It describes my realization of what the Lord Jesus went through was something more than just physical.

The emphasis to most people of what the Lord went through, particularly when He was on the cross, had always been on His physical sufferings. It almost seemed that the gorier the account, the more it will touch them. The Lord's physical suffering was, however, just a small part of it. For us to understand and appreciate His all-inclusive death, we must start from those ‘closing scenes of anguish’ at the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26. 

Many were touched by the aptness of the name ‘Gethsemane’ which means ‘oil press’. In the past, our emphasis was mostly been on the word ‘press’. I believe this has also contributed to our misconception that what the Lord went through was merely something physical, that is His tremendous pain and suffering caused by being ‘pressed’. This time, we should emphasize on the word ‘oil’ instead. The pressure and squeezing was for producing oil which in the Bible signifies the Spirit. The Lord’s experience in Gethsemane was for producing the Spirit.

In those days, oil was produced from olives. Olive is not considered a soft fruit and takes a lot of pressure to extract the oil. Don’t focus on the number of bars (pressure is usually measured in bars) or kilo-bars but focus on the separation of the oil from the rest of the fruit. The important thing here is the separation but not just the 'pressing' of the physical body.

It Began At the Garden of Gethsemane

I want begin with Matthew 26 because it is very meaningful. When the Lord Jesus took His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, He told them to sit while He went over there to pray. Then taking Peter, James and John aside, He began to be deeply distressed and said:

Then saith He unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: abide ye here, and watch with Me (Matt 26:38).

The Lord was under this tremendous pressure and squeezing to produce the oil. What actually was undergoing this was His soul. It was His mind, emotion and will that was undergoing the tremendous pressure for the spirit to be separated from His soul.

We have often sung hymns with expressions like He drank the bitter cup in the Garden of Gethsemane and now we drink the cup of blessing. It seemed as though we sing it without fully realizing what it means. What was the bitter cup? The bitter cup was actually the will of the Father!

And He went forward a little, and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt’. (Matt 26:39)

Don’t say that this cup was the cup of physical suffering because He was not yet subjected to any physical suffering then. But His soul, that is, His mind, emotion and will, were subjected to this tremendous pressure in order that what was from His soul could be separated from His spirit. He prayed ‘if it be possible’ meant that to choose the Father’s will was not so easy.

Sometimes physical suffering is easier to endure than psychological suffering because somehow our body has the ability to cope with tremendous physical punishment. Doctors tell us that adrenalin generated by the body will kick in and eventually the body will shut down. So the duration of the physical suffering becomes only momentary.  It is the pressure on the soul that is the hard part.

The Salvation of the Soul

The Bible reveals to us that our soul is made up of our mind, emotion and will. Our mind is active and figures things out; our emotion inclines, directs and prefers; and our will decides and takes action. Dear brothers and sisters, the last stronghold of the soul is our will. The pressing and squeezing in Gethsemane shows us how this last stronghold was broken. When the Lord asked Peter, James and John to pray with Him, they had no idea what He was going through. I’m afraid the same is true even for many of us who have been Christians for a long time. The Lord prayed the same thing three times because He realized that His soul, being the last stronghold, needed to be broken for the spirit to flow. It was the mental rather than the physical torture the Lord had to endure. 

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matt 26:41)

What did the Lord mean when He told Peter to ‘watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak’? In the Lord’s own experience, it simply meant to stand with His spirit and not with His soul. In other words, if you ‘watch and pray’, you are standing with your spirit. If you don’t, you are standing with your flesh. The flesh the Lord refers to here is not the physical flesh but the flesh that  is represented through the soul, and in particular it's last stronghold, the will.  

The salvation God provided for us is a full salvation. It began with the regeneration of our spirit by receiving a new life when we first believed. Then throughout our lifetime, we will experience the salvation of the soul through the renewing of our mind, the regulation of our emotion, and the exercise of our will. And when the Lord comes again, we will experience the redemption of our body.

Both the regeneration of our spirit and the coming redemption of our body are instantaneous. When someone believes in the Lord Jesus in his heart and opens his mouth to confess Him, instantaneously he is regenerated in his spirit. One day in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, our body will be changed. But the salvation of our soul takes a lifetime.

So these closing scenes of anguish in Gethsemane give us a picture of how the Lord stood with the spirit even though the soul was tenacious and its stronghold hard to break. This is my burden.

In Hebrews 9:8, it says:

The Holy Spirit this signifying, that the way into the Holy Place (Holy of Holies, Darby) hath not yet been made manifest, while the first tabernacle is yet standing. (Heb 9:8)

The stronghold, tenaciousness and the resistance of the soul is portrayed by the Lord praying the same thing three times to the Father, ‘if this cannot pass away, except I drink it, Thy will be done’. What the Lord had to endure was mainly for His soul. It wasn’t because He did not have enough to eat or drink. Rather the pressure, the squeezing was to separate His spirit from His soul to let the oil flow through. If we see this, it will make ‘our hearts to Himself endear’.

The Lord Jesus was on the cross for six hours. The first three hours, from 9 a.m. till noon, He suffered the reproaches of unrighteous men. In the past, our emphasis has always been on how much physical sufferings He had to endure and yet these verses only refer to His psychological sufferings from reproaches and mocking. He was not beaten continuously but His soul was abused continuously. He was experiencing the salvation of the soul.

The Salvation of the Soul Expressed Through His ‘Seven Words’

What we see in the Garden of Gethsemane and His six hours on the cross gives us a picture of how we need to experience the salvation of the soul throughout our lifetime.   Regeneration by believing is easy; redemption of the body is easy; all that will happen in an instant. But the transformation of the soul, that is, the salvation of the soul, takes time to breakthrough. That is why the Lord Jesus endured for such a long time. If it was only a matter of going to the cross to be crucified, it can happen very quickly. But it was God’s sovereignty that he had to go through those closing moments of anguish.

The second three hours on the cross from noon until 3 p.m., He was forsaken by God. Many are amazed by how little He said. This time, however, I was impressed by the ‘seven words’ He said. If the Lord did not say anything, we would have no clue of what He was thinking. But because He spoke those ‘seven words’, we can see the state He was in. He said ‘three words’ in the first three hours and ‘four words’ in the last three hours.

During the first three hours, He prayed, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34). Then when one of the criminals at His side said, ‘Lord remember me when you are coming in Your kingdom’. He replied, ‘Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise’ (Luke 23:43). Then when He saw His mother and His disciple, He said, ‘Woman, behold thy son’ and ‘behold, thy mother’ (John 19:26, 27). What do these words show? You may say they showed no bitterness or resentment. More than that, these were the words of someone who experienced the salvation of the soul while being so severely tested.

The Lord spoke the other four ‘words’ during the last three hours on the cross. As God laid the weight of all the sins of the world upon Him, He cried out, ‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me’ (Matthew 27:46). Then He said, ‘I thirst’ (John 19:28) and ‘it is finished’ (John 19:30). Lastly Luke 23:46, ‘And Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit: and having said this, He gave up the ghost’ (Darby ‘expired’). The last of His ‘seven words’ meant that eventually the oil came out from the oil press. These were the words from someone who had experienced the salvation of the soul.

This is not a small thing. If you see this, it will revolutionize your Christian life. This final scene should open up such a new vista for us in our Christian life and I will explain this important point in this way:

 The Final Scene

There are various translations of Matthew 27:50. The KJV translates as ‘Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost’. The Chinese Union version translates as ‘expired’. There are different ways of describing the moment of death. People do not like to use the word ‘die’ or refer to someone as ‘dead’. Instead they may say the heart stopped beating, or medically they say there is no more brain activity, or you may say this one expired. The word ‘expired’ simply means the breath is no more. It comes from ‘ex’ meaning ‘coming out’, and the word ‘breath’. That is, the breath comes out, no more going in. When a person is alive, this person breathes in and out but when he dies, he breathes out and breathes in no more. These expressions refer to mostly the physical aspects, and not the Biblical expression.                       

 In the Bible, both in Greek and Hebrew, the word ‘breath’ and ‘spirit’ and ‘ghost’ are all from the same word. When KJV translates as ‘yielded up the ghost’, it is hard to understand what it means. Matthew 27:50, ‘And Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit’. ‘Yielded up the spirit’ means it has something to do with the breath. This is the reason I like the translation ‘yielded up His spirit’ because this is the Biblical expression.

In Genesis 2:7 when God created Adam, He formed the man (that is his body) out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. This word ‘breath’ is the spirit. So God created a tri-partite man - with body, soul and spirit. Because of the fall, man became flesh while his spirit was deadened. Flesh refers to both his fallen body and soul. When a person becomes a Christian, he is regenerated in his spirit but still has this fallen body and fallen soul. In the future, this body will be redeemed (changed). Today we need to experience the salvation of the soul. We need to have our mind renewed, our emotion regulated, and our will properly directed and exercised. The experience of the salvation of the soul means we need to choose our spirit and not to choose our flesh. This is the struggle we face everyday.

Ready to Yield Up the Spirit

Now, at the moment of death a person may still struggle because the soul is still not saved. For an unbeliever, he is not even regenerated, but for many Christians, the moment of death is not always peaceful. There are some who still struggle at the end but there are others who are very peaceful. The reason is because they are ready. But what does ‘ready’ mean? It means they are ready to deliver up, to yield up, the spirit. 

When the Lord died, He cried out with a loud voice and yielded up the spirit. Don’t say He yielded up the ghost. In John 10:17-18, He said, ‘I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again’. This shows it was the Lord’s initiative and no one took it away from Him. Dear brothers and sisters, this should also be our Christian attitude. The Lord measures our days and we should not be afraid when the end comes. People are not willing to let go because they feel they are not ready. But like the Lord Jesus, if you are ready, ‘yield up the spirit’. This is the most positive, meaningful and encouraging description of the final scene.

From Gethsemane to the cross, the Lord Jesus went through this experience where His soul was put through its final testing and salvation. Matthew 27:51, ‘the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom’ was a confirmation of this. Luke 23:45-46 mirrors Matthew 27:50-51. In Matthew, the Lord Jesus cried with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit, and behold the veil in the temple was torn into two from top to bottom. In Luke, the veil of the temple was torn, Jesus cried with a loud voice said, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit, and He expired. Which happened first? I believe they happened at the same time and one act explains the other.

By the time the Lord yielded up His spirit to the Father, His soul was fully saved! Separated and no longer tangled up with the spirit, He could yield up His spirit. That was symbolized by the separation of the veil. The impenetrability of the soul into the spirit was removed once for all! What He went through in that agonizingly long and slow process was to describe the lifelong salvation of the soul. Brothers and sisters, don’t be discouraged! Remember, the Lord Jesus went through all this in order for Him to be able to say, ‘into Thy hands I commend My spirit’. 

In Exodus, God revealed to Moses how the tabernacle should be built. There was firstly, the outer court in which were the brazen altar and the laver. Then coming in through the first veil into the Holy Place, there was the table of showbread, the golden lampstand and the golden incense altar, very close to the second veil. (In Hebrews 9 it was mentioned that it was after the second veil). And after the second veil was the ark of the covenant. The point is the second veil separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies and the way into the Holy of Holies ‘hath not yet been made manifest, while the first tabernacle is yet standing’. Only the high priest could enter in for a short time once a year with the blood for his sins and the sins of the people. This signified the impenetrability between the Holy place and the Holy of Holies.

Now, the three sections of the tabernacle correspond to the three parts of man. The outer court corresponds to our body, the Holy Place corresponds to our soul, and the Holy of Holies corresponds to our spirit. It was God’s intention that we have free access to the Holy of Holies but the way was not manifested when the first tabernacle still had its standing.

The Stronghold is Finally Broken

It was for that last scene, that final moment, that the Lord Jesus came, passed through those scenes of anguish at Gethsemane and offered Himself on the cross for six hours. It was so that He could say, ‘Father, into Your hand I commend My spirit’. At the same time the veil was torn. The tearing of the veil signified He offered Himself once for all, accomplished eternal redemption and there is no more separation between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. The tenacious stronghold in the soul was finally broken!

Hebrews 10:19-20, ‘Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place (‘Holy of Holies’, Darby) by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh’. We need to appreciate the word ‘boldness’ because it is a tremendous release. Before this, the thick veil was impenetrable but now God had taken the initiative to tear it down, signified by being torn from top to bottom. God did it because the Lord Jesus experienced the salvation of His soul fully.

The Lord had to go through it Himself to set the example for us. When He prayed three times in the Garden of Gethsemane, it was a demonstration of the exercise of His will to choose the Father’s will. He came back again and again because He was hoping Peter, James and John would also watch and pray, but they did not. The writer of Hebrews also reminds us to have boldness to enter the Holy of Holies by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way He dedicated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh. These scenes of the Lord’s last moments have been a tremendous encouragement to me.  

In the latter stage of my life which I call it my ‘fourth season of life’, I feel we don’t need to be afraid of facing it. I particularly want to encourage the older saints, don’t be afraid but we should be ready. And when the time comes, we all should be able to say, ‘Father, into Your hand I commend my spirit’. There should be no regrets. Regrets come from holding on to the soul. No matter what your age is, don’t hold on to the soul. We need to be able to yield up the spirit when the time comes. I want to emphasize - this is the most encouraging, most meaningful and most scriptural way of describing our last scene.

So we can go on joyfully everyday entering with boldness by the new and living way into the Holy of Holies. Although our soul may be a tenacious stronghold, yet the oil will come forth. I’m not saying that you are going to face your Gethsemane tomorrow, but everyday while going through our pressure situations, we have the view that oil will come forth. We have often said we want to be like the wise virgins to have oil in our vessels to meet the Bridegroom as in Mathewt 25. I believe that if we go through our Gethsemane everyday realizing what will come forth is the oil, it will prepare us to finish our earthly journey the same way. To me, this is the real application of the all-inclusive death of Christ. It is to help us experience the salvation of the soul daily. May the Lord be gracious to us as we face the coming week.