Tonight we inch closer to the cross with Jesus. We move from Jesus’ serving of the Lord’s Supper for the first time to His sharing that before the night was over all of the eleven apostles that would not betray Him would end up denying Him. Those words from Jesus led to what we have to see as an argument. Peter could not believe what Jesus was saying because it was not what He expected or desired and so, rather than hearing Jesus he immediately responded by rejecting what Jesus had said. This was not the first time Peter had responded this way, it was also not the first time that Jesus had to rebuke Peter for believing in his own emotions more than Jesus’ words. We will also briefly see that Peter’s response to Jesus was not a private or personal issue but it created the same reaction within the rest of the group, unbelief spreads rapidly and has to be cared for quickly before it takes hold. From this argument or disagreement Jesus went to Gethsemane, the place where the Father’s will and our salvation was secured, the place where Jesus’ human nature fully submitted to the divine purpose for which He was sent. In Gethsemane we learn the intimate and sometimes painful posture of prayer; we see how prayer, while a constant companion is often the final place of preparation, empowerment and submission and we see how prayerlessness, even for the most reasonable of reasons, can lead us to a lack of faith in the most crucial of moments. Everything is now accelerated in the final steps that Jesus is taking toward the cross, in the narrative we are only hours away from Jesus’ death, every word is now precious, every action is calculated; these are Jesus’ last hours on this side of the cross, He is filled with emotion, He is moved with compassion and He is being tested and tried like never before. He is doing more than teaching us, He is now firmly under the weight of what it will mean to become sin and to bear His Father’s wrath. These are the heaviest moments in Jesus’ life, He spends them in prayer, He longs to spend them with friends and in the end He chooses to give these moments to His Father, trusting that in all that He will endure He will endure none of it alone.