What Do You Do When People Abandon You?

1 When Jesus had finished all these words, He said to His disciples, 2 “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be handed over for crucifixion.” 3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people were gathered together in the court of the high priest, named Caiaphas; 4 and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth and kill Him.

55 At that time Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest Me as you would against a robber? Every day I used to sit in the temple teaching and you did not seize Me. 56 But all this has taken place to fulfill the Scriptures of the prophets.” Then all the disciples left Him and fled.

Matthew 26:1-4; 55-56 (NASB)

Matthew 26 is one hectic chapter.

Within this chapter, the plot to kill Jesus intensifies.

Judas formally commenced his bargaining for Jesus’ head with the demonic chief priests whom, I’m-a-guessin’, one and all, really regretted that decision now as they slowly roast in Dante’s Easy Bake Oven.

In Matthew 26 Jesus confronts the little weasel Judas during dinner and then institutes The Lord’s Supper and The New Covenant.

After that momentous occasion, Jesus heads off to The Garden of Gethsemane to pray and fetch strength from the Father for the gruesome death He was about to endure for us chuckleheads. Not only was Jesus about to experience cruel beatings and death but the wrath of God was going to be poured out on Him for our sins.

From that blood-sweating prayer time in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus gets formally arrested and grilled by that twit, Caiaphas after which the Son of God gets spit on and beat up.

It’s times like these you need friends, eh?

That’s a lot of garbage for one man, even the Son of Man, to field.

We’re constantly told to not go through hard times alone and we should lean on close family and friends. That all sounds good and stuff but sometimes your friends suck and your family is nowhere to be found so … what do you do?

Please note: in Matthew 26 Jesus’ handpicked disciples, whom He considered friends (John 15:15), did the following to Him in His greatest hour of need …

1. All twelve of His buddies said they’d never deny Him and that they’d die for Him (Matthew 26:35) and guess what? They denied Him and ran out of there like a chicken with its head cut off (Matthew 26:56)
2. Judas betrayed Him to His killers for thirty stinkin’ pieces of silver. Oh, and by the way, Judas wasn’t some ancillary devil. He was one of The Twelve.
3. When Jesus needed some prayer assistance He cried out for help from His bros three times who were fast asleep and drooling on the ground during the greatest event in world history. Yep, they were napping.
4. Peter, the disciple with the foot-shaped mouth, cussed a blue cloud of denial when queried about being one of Christ’s closest confidants. So much for that Michael W. Smith song about ‘Friends’, eh?
5. Oh, I nearly forgot. Where was the Virgin Mary during all of this?

Jesus, on the night prior to his death, when He’s being abandoned, wrongly accused and set up for execution, doesn’t call the suicide hotline.

He doesn’t start yelling, ‘I want my mama!’

Instead, he has his last meal with his boys and then goes off to pray that God’ll give him strength to receive the substitutionary death penalty placed upon his sinless, sacrificial body for our shady ways. And that, my friends, is something no man I know would ever do.

Also, when Jesus went to jail and he didn’t squeal about it. Oh, and by the way, they abused him in prison and yet he didn’t cry, freak, or scream. That’s dude stuff.

Jesus lost all of his friends. They all fled. There were no Facebook friends to throw Him a lifeline. Poof. They’re all gone and He still plowed on and did what he had to do even though it was the most difficult thing any human being has ever done.

When talking about Jesus’ masculinity one has to stand back and be gobsmacked how He rocked through this intense time just in Matthew 26 all alone.

Think about it: the sins of the whole world were about to be shouldered by Him, together with a humiliating trial and vicious beatings culminating in a hellish execution and He had none of His buddies to back Him for moral support.

He only had the Father.

Which meant that Jesus had everyone He needed, in the Father, to ford through every demon in hell and bridle His reluctant flesh.

Sometimes folks, you’ve got to go at it alone.

And yes, your friends and family will let you down like you will let them down but the Christian will be okay because,‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’ (Psalm 23:1).

Can I get an, ‘Amen’?