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The Cross He Bore - Satan's Hour
- 04/01/09
- 4
This is the fourth day of our thirteen days spent reading The Cross He Bore by Frederick Leahy. Today’s text is from Luke 22:53: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.”
In this chapter Leahy looks to the sovereignty of God and his foreknowledge of all that would come. “This hour was predestined, and because predestined it was prophesied: prophecy depends on predestination.” And so all that happened to Christ this night was done so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.
For many months now, our church has been studying the gospel of John. One theme that repeats itself in that gospel is Jesus’ statement that his hour had not yet come. Leahy says, “John makes it clear from the very beginning that there was an appointed hour for the Saviour and before that time he could not be harmed.” What jumped out at me in today’s reading is this: Christ’s hour was also Satan’s hour.
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Initially the plans of his enemies would succeed, not just because they came to him under cover of darkness, but essentially because in this hour Satan and his forces were permitted by God to subject Christ to further suffering and humiliation. God reserved this hour for Satan. In all of time this hour was especially his. The darkness of which Christ spoke was the darkness of evil and of the prince of darkness. In this dread hour Satan had free rein. In the case of Job God set a limit to Satan’s activity. In the experience of Christ there were no limits to Satan’s onslaught. He was free to do his worst, and he did.
Gethsemane and Calvary marked high noon in the world’s long day, and God’s permission was absolute as Satan mustered his legions for the decisive encounter. The first Adam had been easy prey. How would he fare with this Adam? As Satan entered the battlefield he did so fully conscious of the Word of God: “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Did he recall his cynical contempt for God’s Word earlier when he asked, “Did God actually say…?” (Gen. 3:1). Or did he fear the sentence passed in Eden? Doubtless he did. But the hour was fixed. It was decreed by God. When tempting Christ in the wilderness, Satan had done his utmost to deflect him from this hour, to take some other road than the way of the cross, but all in vain. Now the battle had commenced in earnest. Nothing could stop it. This is your hour, Satan!
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (4)
“But the hour was fixed. It was decreed by God. When tempting Christ in the wilderness, Satan had done his utmost to deflect him from this hour, to take some other road other than the way of the cross, but all in vain.”
Praise God Almighty, All knowing, and All merciful. Jesus did this for you. For me, the worst of sinners.
I understand now why you reviewed this book as you did, and statements I’ve read from others about what a great book this is. You have to read it to believe it… it’s not like other books.
“The struggle in Gethsemane had been fierce. Soon the struggle would be fiercer still.
‘That old serpent, called the devil and Satan’ had uncoiled and had bared his fangs, poised to strike again and again with all the venom of which he was capable.
Trampling on serpents is a most painful experience, especially for the heel.”
As I was reading yesterday, I was wondering where that Great Bastard Satan (as Jonathan Edwards liked to call him) was?
Here is Spurgeon’s answer: ” I cannot conceive that the pangs of Gethsemane were occasioned by any extraordinary attack from Satan. It is possible that Satan was there, and that his presence may have darkened the shade, but he was not the most prominent cause of that hour of darkness. Thus much is quite clear, that our Lord at the commencement of his ministry engaged in a very severe duel with the prince of darkness, and yet we do not read concerning that temptation in the wilderness a single syllable as to his soul’s being exceeding sorrowful, neither do we find that he “was sore amazed and was very heavy,” nor is there a solitary hint at anything approaching to bloody sweat. When the Lord of angels condescended to stand foot to foot with the prince of the power of the air, he had no such dread of him as to utter strong cries and tears and fall prostrate on the ground with threefold appeals to the Great Father. Comparatively speaking, to put his foot on the old serpent was an easy task for Christ, and did but cost him a bruised heel, but this Gethsemane agony wounded his very soul even unto death.”
With the kiss of Judas, Satan has been let off the leash to do his bidding. Gethsemane was horrific, but things are about to get much worse.