The 3rd Watch!
In all four Gospels in the Bible, we can find mentioned the different “watches/hour” and its various significances; that is, what happened during each watch/hour has been recorded for our learning📝
FYI - The Jewish Daytime hours began with dawn and ended with sundown which began the next day. The hours are seasonal so the length of the daylight hours varied with the season of the year. The Romans began their day at midnight and counted 12 hours to high, 12 noon, and then 12 more hours from noon to the next midnight. We keep the Roman time.
Well, sometime back I had written a post on The 4th Watch and things that happened with Christ and His disciples. This post is about the 3rd Watch and its significance. Let’s see what happened during this Watch.
The Third Watch refers to the time when the cock crows, roughly around midnight to 3am. During this time, Jesus along with three other disciples were in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying. He was praying and knew His time had come to fulfil the perfect will of the Father, to be crucified.
1. While Jesus was praying and preparing Himself, a group of soldiers came to arrest Him, being led by Judas Iscariot. He betrayed Him with a kiss. Seeing this, instead of being with their Master, all of the disciples forsook Jesus and ran away for their lives. Mathew 26:56.
2. Peter who had once said that he was ready to go with Jesus even to prison; ran away as well. He followed Jesus afar off and finally sat among the people gathered there. He sat among people who mocked and scorned others. Ephesians 5:4. Amongst them 2 people recognised Peter at having seen him with Jesus, to which he blatantly denied. He lived a lie - a hypocritical life.
Jesus had already told Peter that before the cock crow, he would deny Him thrice. This happened exactly with Peter; and according to Bible Scholars, everytime the cock crew, Peter used to weep bitterly — thinking about how he betrayed the One who chose him ☹️
Peter and the disciples ran away leaving Jesus all alone because they didn’t have a mind to suffer with the Master. And yet the same Peter, after being filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, exhorts the believers to arm themselves with a mind of suffering. 1 Peter 4:1. The one who ran away from Jesus eventually died as a martyr, upside down.
Therefore, as followers of Christ let’s also arm ourselves with a mind to suffer and be faithful to our Master till the end. Let not the mistakes of the disciples come in our lives. May God help us.
Be blessed 💕