Mark’s Gospel tells us that on the night of Jesus’ betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, He and His disciples had gathered together in an upper room and there He broke a loaf of bread and passed it around to his disciples so that each could take a small portion of bread, then He took a cup of wine and gave thanks and passed it around also to his disciples and each one took a small sip or two. When they had finished eating and drinking, He told them, “The bread represents my body which is given for you and the cup represents the blood of the new covenant which is shed for many.” Then He said, “I assure you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you in the Kingdom of God.” And then both Matthew and Mark tells us that they all “sang a hymn before they went out to the Mount of Olives.”
I wonder, if you and I were there on the day that Jesus had his last supper with his disciples and we could suggest which hymn we would sing, which one would we choose? Would it be “Amazing Grace”? “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now I’m found, Was blind, but now I see.” I was but nine years old when I asked Jesus into my heart. I remember the Sunday that after the preacher had finished his message, I told my Daddy, “Daddy, I want to be saved, take me to the preacher so I can be saved,” so he took me down front to see the preacher and there I asked Jesus into my heart. I was only nine years old so I didn’t have much time to be a great sinner, but it still took the grace of God to save my soul. You see, none of us deserve God’s gift of salvation, all of us deserve the punishment of our sins, but by God’s magnificent grace, He offers us forgiveness and the eternal salvation of our soul.
If not “Amazing Grace”, would it be “The Way of the Cross Leads Home”? “I must needs go home by the way of the cross, There’s no other way but this; I shall never get sight of the gates of light, If the way of the cross I miss. The way of the cross leads home, The way of the cross leads home; It is sweet to know as I onward go, The way of the cross leads home.” People try all kinds of ways to get into heaven, they live a “good” life, they live by a “good philosophy”, they even join a church and give to the poor, but Jesus told us in the Gospel of John, John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Only by asking Jesus to come into our heart and asking for His forgiveness of our many sins can we enter into the kingdom of heaven. The prophet of old tells us that even our righteousness, our very best, is nothing but filthy rags before God! Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
