Please Take It Away, Papa

Mark 14:32-42

14:36, “ABBA FATHER” HE SAID, “EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE FOR YOU. TAKE THIS CUP FROM ME. YET NOT WHAT I WILL, BUT WHAT YOU WILL.”

Jesus had his Father’s full attention because nothing so seizes a father’s attention like hearing his child cry out, “Papa!” That’s a rough equivalent of the extraordinary intimacy and urgency implied by the words, “Abba, Father.” His son was in distress, and the Father could fix it. Everything is possible for him. Everything. He could have canceled the mission to the cross; he could have done it, he really could. Jesus was prostrate, pleading, “Please take it away, Papa.”

Gethsemane was the place. Gethsemane means, “olive oil press,” after the device by which olives are crushed under the weight of a big stone, their oil flowing into a receptacle, the way Jesus’ sweat fell like drops of blood to the ground (see Luke 22:44). Jesus was being crushed by the weight of his Father’s will for him. Jesus was to carry the load of our sins and sorrows.

Three times Jesus asked if he might be excused from his assignment. But three times he added, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” As hard as it was, his Father’s will became Jesus’ will too. Sometimes the only way for a cup to pass is to drink it to the dregs. Fully confident of God’s power (“everything is possible for you”) and love (“Abba, Father”). Jesus willingly submitted to his wisdom.

Thus, in his submission Jesus was never more powerful. His death on the cross looked like weakness, but it was in reality God’s mighty strength to save. By the world’s standards, a premature and ignominious death looked silly, but it was in reality God’s profound wisdom (see 1 Corinthians 1:18-25). Because of this, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (see Philippians 2:10-11). What about you? The most powerful words you can ever say to God are the same as Jesus. “Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Playwright Janet Irene Thomas

Founder/CEO

Bible Stories Theatre of

Fine & Performing Arts

www.biblestoriestheatre.org

info@biblestoriestheatre.org

FAMILY ORDER

SPARING THE ROD

Jeremiah 31:16-17

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁶ This is what the Lord says:

“Restrain your voice from weeping
    and your eyes from tears,
for your work will be rewarded,”
declares the Lord.
    “They will return from the land of the enemy.
¹⁷ So there is hope for your descendants,”
declares the Lord.
    “Your children will return to their own land.

Corrective Discipline for the Rebellious – Discipline is the other side of teaching. A child with a teachable spirit will still need thorough explanation, much patience, opportunity to try and experiment, including the right to fail and to learn by failure. A child, however, who is caught up in willful disobedience (Prov.29:15), rebellion (1 Sam. 15:23), or stubborn foolishness foolishness (Prov. 22:15), closes off effective teaching and disrupts the harmony of the family. God’s answer to this is firm and loving discipline.

The Bible makes a clear distinction between discipline and physical abuse. Discipline may be painful but not injurious. We are never to inflict harm on a child (Prov. 23:13), but at times pain may be a part of effective correction. God describes Himself as a strict disciplinarian. Although He always disciplines us out of love and for our own benefit, His correction may cause us pain (Heb. 12:5-11). Likewise, God requires that parents properly correct their children. Even a child’s eternal destiny can hinge upon the godly discipline provided by parents (Prov. 23:14).

Playwright Janet Irene Thomas

Founder/CEO

Bible Stories Theatre of

Fine & Performing Arts

www.biblestoriestheatre.org

info@biblestoriestheatre.org

A GREAT MIND and a GREATER GOD

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.....For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man strength.

WHEN A MAN who had been very unhappy in marriage immediately remarried after the death of his wife, Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer and man of letters, described his act as "the triumph of hope over experience."

Johnson was easily amused or inflamed by his own and others’ foibles, and he could express either sentiment with elegance, biting wit and devastating sarcasm.  He was greatly to be feared as an opponent in an argument.  Once when insulted, he replied, "A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse, and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other a horse still."  After an evening of conversation marked by spirited debate and repartee, Johnson remarked to Boswell, his biographer, that the conversation had been good. Boswell agreed, and said, "Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons."

But Johnson’s sharpest jabs were directed at those skeptics who ridiculed the Christian faith he so cherished. The 18^th century, like the 20^th was a time when intellectuals and aesthetes treated the faith with contempt.  Joseph Butler said it was "an agreed point among people of discernment," that the faith was worthy only "as a principle subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for so long having interrupted the pleasures of the world." Of these skeptics, Johnson wrote, "Truth…is a cow, which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull."

But the man with the proud and formidable intellect before people was a child before God. His great mind was humble before a greater God.

Johnson’s prayers reveal a man with a deep, even tortured sense of his own sinfulness. Trust in God’s mercy did not come easily to Johnson, but it came, and he seemed never to be less than grateful and humbled that it did.  

                                    SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784)

Submitted by:

Playwright Janet Irene Thomas

Founder/CEO

Bible Stories Theatre of

Fine & Performing Arts

www.biblestoriestheatre.org

info@biblestoriestheatre.org.