Transcript

The Gospel of Luke. We’re in Luke 22. Turn there with me. Luke 22, we’ll begin in verses 39 and go through verse 46. Luke 22. In just a moment we’ll read verses 39 through verse 46. This was a council meeting of the most important persons and the matter before them was the most important issue of all time. The meeting did not take place in the assembly hall of the United Nations, the meeting did not take place in the legislative chambers of the United States Congress, the meeting did not take place in the posh cathedral of the world’s leading religion, the meeting did not take place in the chambers of the nation’s highest court, no, instead this meeting took place on a small farm, an olive farm about a mile outside of Jerusalem. There were only two participants in this council, this meeting: God the Father and God the Son. The subject being discussed was the completion of the task of redeeming sinners to stand righteous before a holy God.

It is rather interesting to me that when Jesus was born, he was born in a stable, a barn, and a feed trough was his bed. Jesus’ ministry was primarily among the rural country folk out in the outdoor regions of Galilee. When Jesus and the Father met to settle redemption’s plan, they met on an olive farm as he knelt in the dirt among the trees and when Jesus died for the sin of the world, he died outside the gate on an execution hill called Calvary. The mystery and agony of what’s called the garden of Gethsemane are such that next to Calvary it’s the most intense section of Scripture. It’s interesting, Luke does not mention the word Gethsemane. Gethsemane literally means oil press. It was a place within the olive farm called the Mount of Olives so you have this oil press, Gethsemane in an olive farm we call the Mount of Olives.

1 Corinthians 2:10 tells us that only the Spirit of God knows the deep things of God. Here we have the deep things of God, the deep wisdom of God, the deep power of God on display before us. The fullness of time has come and these two members of the Godhead, God the Father and God the Son, are on the brink of consummating the redemption of the church. Now, there is so much here to which we cannot enter into. This is indeed the holiest of ground, however, for his beloved children, he has recorded some of this in sacred Scripture so it’s good for us to understand some things even though so much of what is here is of a higher spiritual plane then we are capable of perceiving. In Exodus 3:5, Moses is spoken to by God out of the burning bush and God says, “Moses, take the sandals off your feet because the place where upon you are standing is holy ground.” And indeed, my friend, as we contemplate this text, we are on the holiest of ground.

Let’s read it together, Luke 22, beginning in verse 39,

39 And He came out and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples also followed Him. 40 When He arrived at the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 41 And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, 42 saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” 43 Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. 44 And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. 45 When He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow, 46 and said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

Three simple points, I. The secluded setting, the little olive farm. Now, the original translators of the Bible were Victorian era Englishmen and they used phrases that we wouldn’t use today. In fact, the word “garden” in Britain means “lawn or yard” in America. If you drive by a house in Britain, they’ll say, “Well, look at his garden.” I look for tomatoes and stuff like that. Well, you’re not going to see any, all you’re going to see is grass. They call a yard a garden and I think that’s sort of what’s happening here. We’ve used these words “garden of Gethsemane” and we’ve really lost the setting; it’s really a little olive farm that has a Gethsemane, an oil press in the farm where they would harvest the olives and press them and produce oil.

Now, before he gets to this point, let’s look at what he has previously been doing. He has already given his disciples his final exhortations before the cross. We saw that recorded in the earlier verses of this chapter. He has already transformed the Passover meal into the Lord’s supper. He has showed them that now the supper points to him; the juice in the cup points to his blood; the bread that is broken points to his body; and the cross of in itself. He has revealed that his betrayer is one who is dipping with him in the bowl, of course that’s Judas. He has taught them a lesson about true greatness in his kingdom, it’s not the way the worldviews true greatness, he said, but the servant is the greatest one. He has promised them because of their faithfulness that they will receive great rewards and esteem and places of authority in a coming kingdom. He has prophesied to Simon Peter that Simon will indeed fail him and deny him three times but that he will restore Simon and then he will be a leader again among his people. And he has transformed their ministry means and provisions from looking to him for miraculous provision and protection to where now they are going to have to think as everybody thinks: they are going to have to work; they’re going to have to get food; they’re going to have to put it back; they’re going to go to the grocery store; they are going to have to carry a sword. All that has taken place.

Then the Bible says he now retreats out of the city of Jerusalem proper where they have a wall, of course, around the city, to this olive farm called the Mount of Olives. It’s got a little oil press in it. That’s what the word Gethsemane means, again. It was a secluded place. The Bible says this was his custom. He would go there every evening after teaching in the city all day long and I think verse 39 is significant. I’m going to spend a little time here. Verse 39 says this was his custom. It certainly was his custom during these days of ministering in Jerusalem. He’d leave the city and go to a secluded place in the evening for a little R & R, if you will, in relaxation with his disciples. But it was even his custom before that. The Gospels record 11 times that Jesus would retreat away from the public ministry to a secluded place to be refueled and refreshed. In fact, much of Jesus’ most important ministry occurred in his retreat setting when he would teach his disciples in a more intense and thorough manner. It was in a retreat setting, a secluded setting where he prayed and identified the 12 apostles. I know for our own ministry here, a lot of what we built on literally for 30 years, God didn’t give that to me sitting in an office answering phones but getting away with God and saying, “God, what does a biblical church look like?” And we’ve devised our purpose statements and our strategy statements and our distinctives and we have functioned on them ever since. A lot of important work happens in a minister’s life, in Jesus’ life when he secludes himself away from the busyness of public ministry.

I think there’s a real point of application here. For Jesus to obey his Father and to fulfill his Father’s will, he had to retreat from public ministry on a regular basis. He even taught this to his disciples. After sending them out to minister, they would come back to Jesus and in Mark 6:31 and 32 he says to these disciples, “‘Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.’ And they went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves.” So very early on, Jesus teaches his disciples what he practiced himself, minister hard but get away some and refresh yourself and particularly realign yourself with God’s will because you’re going to be pressed and pressured by the people to do 1001 ministry things that aren’t God’s will.

Now, unfortunately in Baptist and evangelical life and I’m saying this not so much for Grace Life Shoals because you’re very mature in this area, but for the many pastors and church leaders who often listen to our sermons and watch our broadcast: in common church conventional wisdom today, there is the thought that the minister must stay among the people all that he possibly can. He must be available to them every time there’s a need and that’s the way he proves that he loves Jesus and he loves the people.

I was counseling with a pastor just in the last couple of weeks, a solid young man. I really like this fellow. He’s been in his church eight years. He has been trying to reform them to biblical health. He’s been through some very difficult seasons and I asked him and I do this all the time to these guys, I know what they’re going through, I said, “Now look, when do you get some down time? When do you get away?” And he very excitedly told me, “I get two weeks a year. I get one week for conventions or conferences then I get a week of vacation.” I said, “Oh, my brother. That is not even in the ballpark to being enough time to refresh and refuel. You’re not going to make it to 35 years. I know that because I’ve been in it 35 years if you don’t learn to do different.” But bless his heart, his men need to learn that. This guy is faithful and hard-working. Why his deacons are not lined up to say, “Brother, here’s $2,000, get out of town for two weeks. Just consider it our blessing. We are grateful we have a Bible believing, Bible preaching, Bible reforming pastor.” They are rare, by the way.

But that’s the conventional wisdom. Getting away to be refreshed is just a common theme in Jesus’ life. He taught the disciples this. You know, Brother John O. Sims who comes and ministers to us very regularly and he is always a blessing to us, almost without exception when Brother John is coming, he’ll say, “Pastor, if it’s okay, I’ll just stay at that deer camp and drive into town and preach for y’all in the evenings.” What Brother John is saying is, “I’m just refreshed by being away and I preach better.” That’s what Jesus was doing.

I probably wasn’t three or four years into my pastorate approximately 25 or so years ago when we had a pastor from Louisiana come and preach for us in a meeting and then a year or two later a pastor from Tennessee, east Tennessee. These were older men and both of them discerned that God had given me, us, a pretty large ministry and even a large responsibility outside of the ministry and both of them said the same thing to me in essence, they said, “Pastor, find you a place on the lake, find you a place in the woods, and weekly if you can, get away for at least a day and a night with your family. Just retreat away from it if you’re going to make it long-term.” Now, I have to be honest, that wasn’t my style in the early days and I didn’t say anything to those fellows; they were quite a bit older than me, but I thought they were a little bit less than spiritual and dedicated to Jesus. I have changed my persuasion. I’m convinced today they were more like Jesus than I was in my thinking.

Now, I’m going to get old one day and you’re going to send me to the retirement home and you’re going to get some young, vigorous, energetic, visionary pastor and if he messes this thing up, I swear I’ll come out of that nursing home and get him. But he’s going to come in here and some of you guys today, now listen to your pastor, you’re in your 30s and 40s now, when you get in your 50s and 60s, you’re going to have to make sure you do as good a job as taking care of your preaching pastor as the men in this church have taken care of me. If you want a man to be faithful, Spirit-filled, refreshed, visionary, vigorous and challenging you with God’s truth and loving you with God’s truth, you’ve got to take care of him. Jesus knew this principle. The apostles followed this principle. I mean, they must have gotten it very well because Jesus ascends to heaven and the Spirit falls on Pentecost, they are preaching to the people, lots of people are getting saved and a great and urgent need arises in the church, some of the widows are not being fed their food so immediately they bring the problem to preachers. Do you know what the preachers immediately did? They said, “Nope. We don’t do that. Get some godly deacons,” don’t use the word deacons but I’m convinced these were the first deacons, “Get some godly, spiritual men to oversee this. We’re going to separate ourselves to prepare and preach and teach the word of God.” They got it. They got it. That is a key principle and it’s so clear.

Brother Jackie Shelton was a dear friend of mine. He pastored in Moulton, Alabama. And Jackie probably had a lot of good and godly men who helped him in the ministry but when Jackie retired, he would visit with us pretty often here at Grace Life Church and the last time I talked to Jackie, I think he was three or four rows back over here, and I went down to talk to him before the service and I knew he had had a lot of health issues and we all who knew Jackie knew why he had the health issues and I said, “Brother, it’s good to see you here.” And he said, “Brother Jeff, you know, I’ve had some health problems.” He kind of tongue in cheek said this but I knew it was the truth, he said, “It’s some of the deacons I’ve had to put up with that has caused my health problems.” I’m going to tell you something, that’s not true of this church at all. You take care of your men. So there are going to be some deacons answer at the judgment seat of Christ. If you’ve got a man who is doing his best to faithfully preach you the word of God, if you don’t take care of him, there’s going to be a great accountability at the judgment for you.

Jesus takes these men each evening, retreats away from the busyness of public ministry. I don’t know what they had been doing as they go to this little olive farm: I don’t know if the land owner gave them permission, if they rented the place, I don’t know how it worked but it was clearly an effort. It’s about a mile away. It would have been easier just to stay in town but the need for refueling was so important. So here Jesus on the cusp of the pinnacle of his ministry goes to a rural retreat type setting, a little olive farm a mile outside of Jerusalem, now listen, if you don’t get anything else in this sermon get this because here’s what Jesus was doing. You know, the people were pressing on him, “Be this kind of Messiah. Be this kind of Savior. Serve this need. Serve that need. Fix this. Fixed that. Heal this. Heal that. Bless this. Bless that.” And then his disciples with their presupposed subjective viewpoint, “Jesus, you ought to be like this. Oh, Jesus, you can’t go to the cross.” Just constantly, Jesus had to get away, get alone with his Father and make sure he was aligned with the Father’s will, not the people’s will for his life. And that’s one of the key issues. One of the real blessings of my life is having my study at home where I’m away from all the busy administration of church life. I do enough of that but in the study, it’s just me and God. I’m not worried about what somebody is thinking, what somebody is doing. “God, what do you want and what do you say?” So Jesus pulls away from the masses to make sure he’s hearing God the Father because, quite honestly, in Jesus’ mind no one else mattered but the will of God the Father. You have to mature as a church and mature in the ministry to realize that when you please God, you’re helping men the most no matter what men say when you’re pleasing God.

Verse 39 says as Jesus was going to the little olive farm, the disciples followed him. Nothing in the Bible is incidental. These faithful men, other than Judas, of course, they followed him into battle and like in this setting, they’re following him into rest and retreat. Now, it could be that up until this evening there’s been a lighter spirit to their gathering out on the olive farm, maybe singing hymns, sharing a meal, perhaps laughing together. Sometimes we see Jesus so spiritual we forget being just a real human is spiritual. That’s why I try not to use the words Gethsemane and garden because it’s just a simple little dirt olive farm outside of town. They have no idea though on this evening as they go to their secluded setting of the significance of what’s going to happen that night.

Let’s go to that, II. The holy council is meeting with the Father. Verse 40 of our text, “When He arrived at the place, He said to them, ‘Pray that you may not enter into temptation.'” So they reached the farm, Luke records it’s about a 30 minute walk. As they arrive at the little olive farm, he tells them that, “You guys pray you’ll not enter into temptation.” Here on this little farm just a nowhere place out in the country will be wrought out and established the preeminent climactic work of the Godhead of redeeming the church. Here the divine battle plan will be made and it will be done through prayer.

It’s ironic, isn’t it, that Gethsemane is consecrated by Christ’s prayer and soon Gethsemane or this little olive farm will be desecrated by Judas’ betrayal. Gethsemane is a place of mysterious agonies. Interestingly, it was a garden that the first Adam fought battle in and failed and lost paradise for himself and mankind and now we have a second garden, if you will, and a second Adam, Jesus Christ. He will battle here and he will win and he will regain paradise for himself and for his children. But actually it’s not the old paradise restored, it’s a brand-new greater, more glorious paradise than even Adam and Eve had. Christ will win the battle but there’s going to be a great cost. Now, in the first garden, the garden of Eden, there’s no mention of a Gethsemane, an olive press, but there’s a mention of an olive press by the other Gospel writers, at least, in this setting. It brings us to mind Isaiah 63:3 where prophetic of Jesus it says, “I have trodden the winepress alone.” In other words, the grapes are swollen, the grapes of God’s wrath are swollen to bursting and only Jesus is qualified to press on the grapes with his feet. That’s the way they pressed the juice out of the fruit and let the flood of God’s wrath release upon the earth. Christ alone has authority to administer wrath upon men and Christ alone has the qualification to bear the wrath due upon his children and redeem them.

They have just gotten to the farm, they have retreated from the city ministry for the day. As he enters the farm, verse 40 says, he tells these guys, “Pray that you will not enter into temptation.” Perhaps at that point they realize, “Hey, this ain’t like the other evenings. This is more intense. Our Lord is more occupied. Pray that you’ll not enter into temptation.” A couple of thoughts there. First, we need to remind ourselves that being tempted and entering into temptation are two different things. All men are tempted but we do not have to enter into temptation. Secondly, when God’s will about the most important things is at stake, that’s when we must pray the most and that’s when temptation to compromise and sin will be the greatest. So these disciples accompanying Jesus are going into a severe, severe trial with him. They are going to be tempted severely from several angles over the next several hours. They’re going to be tempted to avoid the cross and basically that’s what Peter was doing when they come with these soldiers to arrest Jesus and Peter takes out the sword and attempts to cut the guy’s head off and misses and cuts his ear off instead. That was Peter with his human understanding not understanding that, yes, it’s God’s will at this point for Christ to be delivered over and ultimately be crucified. And they are going to be tempted in all these ways. A little bit later as Jesus is being crucified and everybody is turning against Christ and the little slave girl looks at Peter and says, “Hey, you’re one of his followers,” and he denies the Lord three times. Temptations of such a severe nature so Jesus says, “Pray. Pray.” When crisis comes, we often look at it from the normal and logical viewpoint and we should unless God shows us something different, but in those crisis and difficult seasons, we must seek God because God sees differently than we see. So he tells these men, “Pray.”

Another point of application I’d like to make here is the suggestion that churches have Gethsemane events in their history. Now, I want to be very careful here. I’m not taking anything away from the one and only unique Gethsemane event that our Lord faced but what I mean by this is that when Jesus met with his Father to settle the path to redemption, that was a critical moment that would change the future forever and I think churches come to critical moments when it’s going to change the church forever. One of our men was telling me that he was talking with a man in a large and respected church and this man in this large and respected church is on the pastor search committee and one of the things you do if you’re on a pastor search committee is you go sneaking to other churches and listen to preachers and try to steal them from the other churches. That’s just the way it works, I guess. And this particular man had gone to this church to hear this pastor that is high on their list and the day he went to that church to hear that pastor, that pastor had an Elvis impersonator as a part of the Sunday morning worship service to which our church member said to him, “When you sat there and saw the man have an Elvis impersonator in your Sunday morning worship service, surely you decided he’s not the man.” And the other man said, “Well, we’re just not so sure. He’s pretty high on the list.” That’s a Gethsemane event right there. You get a man in your pulpit that would use the ridiculousness of an Elvis impersonator to try to help people like Jesus better, you’ve set the course of your church in worldliness, in faddishness and in carnality for the foreseeable future. Mark my words, there will not be an Elvis impersonator in this pulpit. We are going to do our best to impersonate Jesus Christ and follow his Spirit and no one else’s.

Now, folks, let’s be balanced. Churches can hang out and do some fun stuff, okay, but not in an effort to get people to come to church. My goodness. Those are Gethsemane type events. If you cross some lines and you get people coming, I mean, most Baptists are unregenerate and if you give them the world in the church, they are going to take it. Jesus withdraws because he knows in his humanity all this press and pressure to be the kind of worldly Messiah they want is there but he is 100 percent committed, “I will shut every other voice out. I’m getting away and alone with my Father to see what he wants.” That’s what he’s doing. You say, “Well, he knows what the Father wants.” Well, to a degree. What we don’t know is when he took on himself the limitations of humanity, how much he limited his omniscience and his understanding of the Father’s ultimate will. I don’t know. I’m not saying he was in the dark about the cross. We know that’s not true, but in your attempt to honor the deity of Christ, don’t remove the pure humanity of Christ.

Jesus tells these guys, “You need to pray. Pray you will not enter into temptation.” And we need to remind ourselves that while temptation never stops in this life, sometimes a season is just so intense, there is so much riding on the outcome and, of course, nothing in the history of time and eternity was more critical than the hours just ahead for Jesus and these disciples. You see, if Jesus failed, then all fails and these men are part of his overall plan. He says, “Pray. Pray with me that you not enter into temptation.” Verse 41, the Bible says, “And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw away.” Now, again, this may have been different from the other evenings when they left the city and came to their farm retreat. I don’t know. He perhaps every evening went away first alone to pray but it seems to indicate this was unusual. A stone’s throw away that he separated himself, what 40 or 50 yards away? Jesus goes, he’s by himself and everything about this evening just seems very different. He is separating even from these most intimate of friends because the gravity of what is at hand is so great itself and isn’t it true, sometimes the weight of things is just such that even our closest and most trusted family members and friends cannot be borne. We just have to be alone with God. The Bible says he went this 40 or 50 yards away and he knelt down. This pictures the heavy burden. He prayed to commune with his heavenly Father and find out what really mattered to him.

As he prays, the text says in verse 42, he refers to God as his Father. Just so much here. Make yourself think on it. Thirty minute walk down dirt, dusty roads, come to the little rural olive farm, tells the fellows, “You guys, pray you don’t enter into temptation,” and he removes himself about 40 or 50 yards away and he drops on his knees and he says, “Father.” It’s powerful. Father. What we do know is no matter the setting or the circumstance, Jesus fully trusted his Father. That’s a lesson for us. Are you struggling? Are you hurting? Are you grieving? Trust your Father, your heavenly Father.

Then he says in verse 42, that famous line, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me.” It’s as if Jesus is saying, “Father, if this is the way, the only way to fulfill your will, if that is so, then whatever your will is, that’s going to be my will.” But indeed, this was a cup of anguish, first of all, suffering and dying because dying was such a foreign thing to Jesus Christ. He was a sinless being. Dying and sin were so radically contradictory to his nature. “Father, is this really what we are going to do?” Someone said his sinless soul was the purest water in a crystal vase.

Not only the suffering and dying was in this cup that he was to drink but the primary anguish was the burden of the world’s sin and the separation from his heavenly Father. What a torment and an anguish was this Father’s plan to place upon him the sins of the world. 2 Corinthians 5:21 reminds us, “He made Him,” that’s Jesus, “who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” And again, Galatians 3:13 reminds us, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us.” I believe that was the pinnacle aspect. “Father, if you’re willing, is there a way we can remove this cup?” You see, you can’t grasp that because you’re not sinless. You don’t get it. I don’t get it. The wrenching torment of this holy one’s soul to know he’ll become the filth of the world. “Father, is there a way?” This is the holy council: God the Father, God the Son, on this little olive farm about a mile outside of Jerusalem. Jesus kneels in the dirt among the olive trees and there the council of the Godhead conducts their business.

A couple of thoughts about the cup. In this day, the analogy of a cup could mean the cup of execution. It was not uncommon in those days to make a convicted criminal drink a poison for his execution. More likely the cup just meant one’s portion. Each one at the table, they didn’t have a lot to drink sometimes. You would get your cup, your portion, so Jesus is saying, “Father, is this my portion? Is this what you have appointed for me?” And the Father’s answer was, “Yes. I have prepared this cup for you.” This wasn’t an accident. This isn’t “Jesus, we’ve got to do it. This is just what it has come to.” No, divine wisdom ordained this before the foundation of the world. “Yes, I have appointed this for you. It’s the cup of God, the cup of God’s wrath that is against sinners and I’m asking you, Son, to drink it for them.” To which Jesus replies, the last part of verse 42, “yet not My will, but Yours be done.” At that moment, temptation ended for Jesus, obedience began. He never sinned, he was being tempted. He never entered into temptation. At that moment, temptation ended, obedience began.

As a true human, of course, he would have preferred a different course. Not a different course from redeeming the church from her sins but one that did not require physical agony, suffering, death, becoming sin, enduring wrath and then that painful separation from his heavenly Father which he had never known. You and I can’t even come close in contemplation of what he and the Father had known in intimacy for all eternity. But the Father’s will, the Father’s plan was that the sacrifice of Jesus was necessary, even more, foreordained. Jesus and Jesus alone could understand the severity of what’s to come upon him as he’s going to become the sin-bearer for sinners. Yet even in his full understanding, you can’t get it, I can’t get it, we can’t enter into it but he could fully get it. Yet in his full understanding, he shrinks not back but yields fully to the Father’s will.

Verse 43 tells us in the horror and agony of this experience, “an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him.” Hebrews tells us “for a little while he was made lower than the angels,” outside of their ministering realm but the Father sends this ministering angel to strengthen him. What is the purpose? We could assume perhaps that this angel assured him of the Father’s love and a reminder that there’s glory on the other side of the cross. God knows when to send you an angel. You’ve probably entertained many unawares. God knows when to send you an angel.

Verse 44, “And being in agony,” we have Luke now giving us this modifier, if you will, this further expression of what he experienced in agony, “being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” We know there’s a mysterious intensity to Christ’s anguish. Again, we can’t comprehend it. It’s even disturbing to my soul to contemplate God the Son agonizing in prayer before God the Father. Hebrews 5:7 gives us an amplification of what happened. It said, “In the days of His flesh,” referring to Jesus, “He offered up both prayers and supplications,” note this, now this is Jesus, “with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.” I don’t know, perhaps even 40 and 50 yards away, the apostles could hear Jesus groaning and yearning and crying loudly before the Father. What a scene. Sweat drops of blood comes out of his pores, literally the Greek means clots. His blood would come out of his pores and clot up and fall to the ground. Such riveting anguish of soul comes out of his pores in the form of these clots of blood. Someone said that what Jesus was experiencing was shuddering human nature and an indomitable will struggling together. Human nature, shuddering human nature over the horror of what was before him but the unrelenting will to please the Father. Brothers and sisters, courage is not the absence of fear, courage is doing what’s right despite the fear.

That’s Jesus. Fully human. Breaking him in a thousand pieces but 100 percent committed to the Father’s will. What was facing Jesus was so utterly repulsive that only that it was the Father’s will led him to taste it. His humanity acknowledges how deeply he would have desired to avoid it yet there was never a reluctance to obedience only the expression of the horror and anguish of the coming event. One thing we do get here as we see the Son of God who is the only one who could grasp what was coming, we get a glimpse of the vileness of our sinful souls. So vile and wicked and offensive is sin that Jesus cries in agony and sweats blood clots thinking he has to taste of it. My, what wretches we are before a holy God.

Verse 45, “When He rose from prayer.” Do you know what I feel like saying right there? It is finished. It is finished. He has gone to the Father, “Father, is this it?” “Son, this is it.” Boom. “What my Father says, that I will do.” It is finished. He is going on to the cross. Not that he would not have, just the drama and the narrative of what he’s going through in that journey there. The Father’s will is settled and the Son’s determination to perform his Father’s will is just as settled.

III. And we will not be long at all here, verse 45, “He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow.” I think it’s obvious that he would likely have looked for some comfort in the fellowship of these faithful men and he didn’t find any. I have no idea nor does anyone else what the phrase, “sleeping from sorrow” means. It could mean just in the moments as they heard Jesus wrestling before the Father, that it was so exhausting, especially after a day of ministry, they were just asleep.

Verse 46, “and He said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping?'” They are so weak. They are so, so weak. “Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” So I gave you III. We are weak but he is strong. We are weak but he is strong. I mean, can you comprehend in your mind a greater failure than sleeping when your Lord is wrestling with the event of dying for your own sin and you’re sleeping? These are the best of the best. These are his chosen apostles. Spurgeon calls them the elect out of the elect. God elects his church and then he elected apostles out of his church to lead in the founding of his church and so very weak. So that’s a lesson of application for all of us. We are too weak to understand and we are too weak to stand. It’s all Jesus, isn’t it? It’s all Jesus.

Oh, how weak, weak sinners we are and to you, weak, weak sinner, run in faith to the mighty welcoming Christ. Did you hear me? He’s the mighty, welcoming Christ and there’s only one kind of person he welcomes, weak, weak sinners. He will welcome you. “How can he do that, pastor?” He’s that magnanimous. He is that stupendous. He is that wonderful. Run to him weak, weak sinner. Run to him in faith. He is the only hope you have and he is faithful and mighty to save. You can’t fail more than these men failed and he kept them all the way to glory and he will save and keep you if you’ll turn to him.

This has been an unusual week of study for me. Unusual. I tweeted out this morning that striving to preach the word in the power of the Spirit squeezes the juice out of every molecule of my being. You just can’t take that lightly. You can’t take this lightly. Oh, but I close, I was just thinking, hallelujah, what a Savior. What a Savior. Listen to me, my friend, you have a great Savior. You have a great Savior. You can’t even sin your way out of his grasp. You can’t even sleep yourself out of his good favor. What a Savior. What a Savior. What a Savior. What a Savior.

Let’s just sit in prayer for just a moment.

Father, we are so cold, we are so callused, we are so indifferent. We confess afresh we cannot enter in. We cannot enter in. This was work that you and your Son had to do alone, God forbid we even get close to it but the work was performed, the cross was obtained, the suffering was received, the wrath was endured, justice was secured for the children and we praise you. Lord, we do not shrink back in any way from declaring to the ends of this earth our full and only hope is this crucified, buried and risen Savior. He is our hope and, oh, dear sinner, sinner like Jeff Noblit, sitting here before me today, you must, I command you by the authority of Christ, you must turn to him. You must not turn to your baptism. You must not turn to your sinner’s prayer. You must not turn to walking an aisle or taking the Lord’s supper or cleaning up your life morally or ethically. You must, you must even this moment, turn to Christ and say, “O Christ, save me. O Christ, take me,” and he will. If you will come weak, if you will come dependent, if you will come confessing, he will take you. Come, you sinners, seek his grace whose wrath you cannot bear. Flee to the shelter of the cross and find salvation there. O God, save those and do that work only you can do and glorify your name. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.