Gods Sabbath

C HAPTER 20

Christ Shows The Way

A prayerful / careful reading of Matthew 26:36–27:50 togeth er with The Desire of Ages , chapter 74 can help to deepen the un derstanding of this chapter. S evere as the test in the wilderness was, it was not so terrible as the pressure exerted upon Christ in Gethsemane. There, because of the load of sin which was being placed upon Him, He felt an awful sense of isolation from His Father. He was power fully tempted to feel that He had been abandoned, and that the only One to whom He could look for solutions to His crushing problem was Himself. Perceiving the extent of the opportunity offered him, Satan worked with all his highly developed skill and cunning to convince Christ that He must surrender His life long submission to His Father’s will and undertake the planning of His future Himself. We tend to think that our submission to God’s will would be much easier if we could see the full outworking of His perfect and holy purposes at the time the plans are given to us. But in His mercy God gives us only as much as we can bear each day, and we need to trust His wisdom in this. We often wish we could hear Him audibly speaking to us; and see or feel His close pres ence. Under such conditions, Satan’s temptations would be

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