Download Gethsemane - Revealing Yeshua!

Palm Sunday / The Mount of Olives / Gethsemane
Why palm branches? They’re not exactly easy to cut down and wave around!
Why not olive branches – they must have been abundant?
How did the people know that Jesus was going to be coming into Jerusalem? What
were they doing on the road?
Why were there so many people in Jerusalem?
Why did Yeshua choose this day to enter Jerusalem? Why not the day before or after?
Was it a Sunday?
Why did Yeshua pray in the Garden of Gethsemane?
What does Gethsemane mean?
What’s it all got to do with olives?
Olive trees, their fruit and the oil of their fruit have long played an important role in
the life of Israel.
 Olives have been eaten as a staple food and the oil used for cooking
 The oil has been used in lamps for lights Exodus 27:20, Leviticus 24:2 and for
medicine
 Olive oil was used as anointing oil in religious ceremonies Exodus 30:24-25. The
first pressing of virgin oil was used for anointing. The Mount of Olives is often
called the Mount of Anointing. Olive oil and Passover were inextricably linked,
for one day ‘the Anointed One, the Messiah would appear at this season.
 Olive trees are known for their tenacity, they grow in any soil and are virtually
indestructible. While it takes 15 years before the first harvest, the trees live for
100’s of years
 The trees must be regularly pruned and then new growth is seen to spring from
the stumps Isaiah 11:1 ‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from his
roots a Branch will bear fruit’.
 It was an olive leaf that a dove from Noah’s ark brought to Noah Genesis 8:11
‘Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly picked olive leaf
was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth’.
Whatever else succumbed in the flood, the olive tree survived.
 Since the time of Julius Caesar, the olive branch has been one of the universal
emblems of peace.
 Olive trees symbolise faithfulness and steadfastness Psalm 52:8 ‘But I am like a
green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercies of God forever and
ever’.
 Luke 21:37 ‘Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went
out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives’. This fertile Mount
of Olives where Jesus spent so much precious time in the last week of his life, can
surely speak to us to and enrich our lives.
 Paul describes the relationship between Israel and the Church in terms of the
olive tree. The olive tree represents Israel. Christians are simply the wild branches
grafted in among the natural branches to ‘become a partaker with them of the root
and fatness of the olive tree’ Romans 11:17. Both natural branches and engrafted
wild branches only remain by faith Romans 11:18-21. It is through Israel and the
covenant people that God gave us everything that we Christians hold spiritually
dear.
On the first day of the Passover week (Saturday) the Jews selected their sacrificial
lambs. The streets were packed with people who had come to celebrate the feast of
Unleavened Bread celebrating their deliverance from bondage in Egypt, also
marking the beginning of the barley harvest. Tension in the city ran high. The city
became a political hotbed at this time of year. Extra troops were brought in from the
Roman garrison at Caesarea, 45 miles to the west on the Mediterranean coast. The
Romans had already arrested one of the rebels, one of the Zealots, a man called BarAbba / Barabbas.
Everyone was looking for something at Passover.
 The religious Jews were looking for forgiveness from sin.
 The Zealots were looking for the revolutionary who would lead them to freedom.
 The Sadducees were looking for an incident free week so nothing would upset
their balance of power.
 Rome’s representatives were looking for crowd control.
 Every Jew was looking for the Messiah, the anointed one.
Inside the city gates, the market would be a mass of buyers and sellers as families
chose their Passover lambs. The people perhaps discussed the possibility that the man
called Yeshua would bring delivery from their oppressors, the Romans. They needed
a sign of their resistance against the Romans. They had decided on the palm branch
in the tradition of the Maccabees. God had commanded palm branches to be waved on
the Feast of Sukkot / Tabernacles, and ever since Judas Maccabee had re-instituted
the feast after driving out the Greeks, the palm branch had become a symbol of
Jewish freedom. The Sukkot prayer or Psalm 118:25-27 also called ‘the Hosannah’
had taken on an added political dimension. ‘With boughs in hand, join in the festal
procession’
The lamb dealers at the Temple did a brisk business. For Passover, the law required a
lamb raised in Bethlehem, in the fields owned or controlled by the priestly class. The
lamb was literally tied to the altar for 3 days so it could be examined over, as was
Jesus. Only perfect lambs could be used.
Soldiers watching from the towers of the Antonia just north of the Temple would have
seen a procession coming from Bethany, down the Mount of Olives from the east.
They had gathered to witness the high priest and his procession come down the
Mount of Olives with the chosen sacrificial lamb. This innocent, spotless, one-year
old lamb would be sacrificed by the high priest in the temple for the sins of all the
people.
Following this procession came a man on a donkey. John 12:14 ‘Jesus found a
young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written, ‘Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion;
see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt’.
This fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9,
‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jerusalem;
Behold, your King comes to you:
He is just, and having Salvation.
Lowly, and riding on an ass and on a colt the foal of an ass’.
On both sides of the path people shouted and waved palm branches. The crowd surged
as the long brittle leaves of the palms rattled around them.
‘O Lord, save us. O Lord, grant us success.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of YHWH.
From the house of the YHWH we bless you
YHWH is God and He has made His light shine upon us,
With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar’.
Yeshua’s timing was as always, perfect. The people still did not understand that He
presented Himself in Jerusalem as the ultimate sacrifice. The revolutionaries wanted
Yeshua to turn towards the Antonia to confront the Romans. But He crossed over the
bridge towards the Gate Beautiful and walked into the Temple.
There are many references to this Eastern Gate in the Bible. 1 Chronicles speaks of
the King’s Gate and when Yeshua entered, he showed himself to be king. Ezekiel saw
the glory of the Lord enter the Temple through the gate facing the east. The gate was
walled up in 810 AD to fulfil God’s command / prophecy in Ezekiel. Today the
location is of the Golden or Mercy Gate /also Shushan Gate.
On the second day of the Passover week (Sunday), the pilgrims thronged the road that
wound down the hillside of the Mount of Olives, across the valley and up to the
eastern city gates. At the bottom of the valley, the Kidron brook was dry, but the
rocks were stained with blood that drained down from countless sacrifices being
offered high above in the Temple altar. The wind would carry the scent of burning
flesh as the pilgrims gave their own offerings. An unending wave of sheep swept up
the path that led to the Sheep Gate as the shepherds drove the animals to the market.
The western slope of the Mount of Olives was covered with olive groves. During
autumn and winter the groves would be busy with workers harvesting the olives and
pressing out the oil at the ‘Gethsemane’ or oil press. This comes from the Hebrew
name ‘gat sheman’. So the Garden of Gethsemane is the ‘Garden of the Oil Press’!
The air would be filled with the pungent odour of the fresh oil. Placing the oil press in
the huge dry warm caves of the Judean hillside was sensible. Warmth made the
pressing easier and the oil flowed more quickly. Baskets were used to gather the
olives as they were picked and these were packed high in the cave. A huge stone pillar
needed to be lifted onto the olives. This was turned for the first pressing for the finest
virgin oil – that used for anointing. For the second pressing, the remaining pulp was
placed on baskets. These were stacked in a small vat and topped with a huge stone
pillar. Pressure was then applied by weights. As the stone pressed down on the more
loosely woven baskets of olive pulp, the oil ran through the baskets and into the stone
vat below.
The nights were already cool and pilgrims took shelter in the warmth of the caves, in
the quiet darkness away from the city crowds.
Gethsemane
On the night of his betrayal and arrest, Yeshua went to the olive grove to pray, to
clarify his thoughts, to realise the very essence of his life’s meaning. He only went as
far as Gethsemane at the foot of the Mt of Olives Matthew 26:30.
As He crossed the Kidron Valley, red with the blood of sacrifices, He faced the
enormity of what he was about to do and what it meant to be God’s anointed. His
blood would be the fulfilment for countless sacrifices for all generations to come.
As the thousands of pilgrims were presenting their sacrifices, and as the high priest
prepared to offer up the yearly sacrifice for the sins of the people, Jesus was about to
become the Passover sacrifice, the lamb whose blood would be shed for the sins of the
world.
Matthew 26:36, 38-39, 42, 45-46
Then Yeshua went to a place called Gethsemane. He told them that His soul was
overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death and His friends to stay and keep watch
with Him.
A little further, he fell with His face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is
possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will’.
He went away a second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup
to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done’.
Then He returned to the disciples and said to them, ‘Look, the hour is near, and the
Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go!’
As Yeshua prayed in the garden of the olive press, He bore the weight of what it
meant to be the Lamb of God. Drops of His anointing blood began to seep from Him,
like precious oil being squeezed from olives.
So we can now think of both palms and olives at this time of Pesach.
 Palms represent resistance and rebellion.
 The pressing of the olives speak of submission, humility and subservience. We
should be forever grateful that because Christ was pressed out for us, we will
never have to bear the weight of the penalty of our own sins.
Reference:
1. Sheila Burke, Shalom Ministries