Gethsemane

The mount of Olives was called that for a reason. It was mostly Olive trees, and John’s gospel tells us they entered a garden to pray. This wasn’t a vegetable garden, but a grove of olive trees. The word Gethsemane is Hebrew for olive oil press. This is where the oil was made that would anoint a messiah for His ministry. But to make it, you had to press it out of the olives. So the olives in a barrel had huge pressure applied to them with a system of beams, pulleys and weights. And the oil would run down.

Jesus is distressed and heavily pressed down in Gethsemane, the oil press. So pressed that out of His body is squeezed drops of blood. And it is the punishment for your sin and mine that pressed Him. He was anticipating His Father’s wrath for your sin and for mine. The pressure was on. And He asked to have the pressure taken away. But only if it was His Father’s will. And the Father’s justice required that innocent blood for our sin. Just as the olive farmer went to a lot of work to press the olives to get the precious oil, so our loving Savior went through a lot of pain and torture to give up His precious blood. This is love. To shield us from the Angel of death with His own blood, pressed out of Him onto the ground and smeared on the cross on Golgotha.

One more thing about the olive press. This press was usually in a cave, underground, to achieve a cooler temperature for the olives. Passover was not the season for olive harvest and pressing, so the press, usually in a cave, would be rented out to feast goers to sleep in at night, as the city would be packed and booked to the hilt. Since Jesus’ group was going out to Olive mountain every night during the week (Luke 21:37), it seems he was probably sleeping in a cave with an olive press. Jesus was born in a cave, or maybe under a house with the animals, a short way from Jerusalem, and now finds Himself underground in a cave a short way from Jerusalem at the end of His earthly ministry. The reason He came to that first cave in Bethlehem was for these next few hours. There was no room in Bethlehem’s inn for the son of David, and now during Passover there is no room in Jerusalem for the King of the Jews. He must camp in a cave on the mountainside.

But He waits patiently outside the city for His hour to come. At His birth, God spares Him from Herod seeking to kill Him. Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt. But this time, Jesus does not flee. The same priests and scholars who collaborated with Herod and told Him where to find the baby, maybe even the same high priest, Annas, the same priests and scholars now find out from Judas where the man is, and deliver Him up to Pilate.