The Weight of the World!

I have been watching a series of DVD's a friend loaned me a couple of weeks ago. It was produced by Focus on the Family. The speaker on the series in Ray Vander Laan. He is leading a group of visitors through the Holy Lands, sharing with them stories from the Bible while at or near the scenes of the stories.

In the segment I watched tonight, I learned some things I had never heard before and was impressed at the application of the information. The group was in Capernaum, the city Jesus used as his base of operations during His years of ministry. They were gathered around an olive press. Vander Laan began his discourse by telling the group that the Hebrew word for an olive press is gethsemane. He then told about the way the olives were first ground by a mill stone to crack them. From there they were placed under a large pillar of stone, the weight of which pressed the oil from the olive.

Vander Laan then went to the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before his crucifixion. He related Jesus to the olive, placed beneath the great weight that pressed him so, to the point that His sweat was as drops of blood.

The personal application is that I was the great weight on Jesus that night, my sinfulness, and yours is what put Him in such distress. And yet the weight of the world did not dissuade Him from the task at hand, surrendering His life as payment for my sins.

Subscribe to Family Fun & Faith