A Prayer in the Garden

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

one in this room probably finds himself or herself in stressful situations every week. And if you don’t, I want to talk to you after the service and find out how you’re doing that, how you’re avoiding stressful stuff in life. Because we all have to deal with it.

For some people, it’s bigger than others. As I look at the things that cause me stress, I realize it could be so much worse. And I know people who have much, is it rude to say bigger problems?

But every week there’s something. This week, one of the things that caused me a lot of stress was I got a letter from our bank, as we do every year, saying, oh, by the way, we miscalculated on your insurance and taxes. We miscalculated, but we’re going to fix it by raising your house at several hundred dollars.

Like, well, that seems fair. Okay, thanks for that. So I get that, and I immediately call Charla.

Not that she’s going to be able, I mean, unless she has money stashed away that I don’t know about, she’s not going to be able to fix this problem right away. But I just needed to talk to somebody and vent about it. That’s a little nice.

I wanted to complain to somebody and have somebody tell me it’s going to be okay. We’re going to figure this out. We’re going to, you know, we’ll deal with this.

It’s going to be all right. And we talked it through, and she was immensely helpful. And we have a plan, and it was just reassuring to be able to talk to her about that.

And she’s usually my go-to, as it should be, in those stressful situations where I will call her, and she does that with me. And thank God that he has wired both of us differently so that we are never freaking out at the same time. One of us is always the calm one about any given situation.

It’s money stuff, I lose it, and she’s calm. One of the kids wakes up sick in the middle of the night, she’s stressed out, and I’m calm. Of course, I’m half asleep, but that helps in being calm.

There was another situation, though, this week that came up where I thought, I just can’t deal with this. And it had nothing to do with the church. Somebody contacted me wanting something.

I said, I just can’t deal with this. This is nuts. I called Charla.

It did not make me feel better. And that’s no slight to her. It was beyond her capability to make it better.

And it happened during the day here while I was in the office. I went up to the second floor to the prayer room. If you don’t know, we have a prayer room on the second floor.

And when they started putting it together, I was puzzled at the idea of needing a specific room to go to and pray. Because I pray a lot just driving down the road. But it’s happened a few times.

there has been something comforting about going into that room that is designated for that purpose and just going in there and pouring my heart out to God. And in the midst of pouring my heart out to God, not only did He give me peace in that situation, but as soon as I got up and looked at my phone again, He had dealt with it. He had fixed it.

And I thought, well, why didn’t I do that first? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with me whining to charla, but in all these situations, Why don’t I talk to God first, and then I can go talk to Charla about how God dealt with it, or how I’m trusting that God’s going to deal with it. You see, Jesus modeled this perfectly for us, that when we are in these circumstances, the first place we should run is to our Father, when all too often it is the, He is our last resort.

He is where we go when everything else has failed. And we’re going to see this morning in Mark chapter 14 that Jesus went through a much more stressful situation than any of us will ever encounter. Jesus went through a situation that demanded more of him than any of us will ever face.

And in preparation for that, he went to his father. And I think he gives us a wonderful example here. And we’re going to look at what he did this morning and how we can learn from his example.

So we’re going to be in Mark chapter 14 this morning, starting in verse 32. If you would turn there with me in your Bible. If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Mark 14, it’ll be on the screen.

I’ve also put it on the back of the bulletin handout for you as well. Mark chapter 14, and once you find it, if you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. Mark 14, starting in verse 32, and we’re going to go through verse, sorry, starting in verse 32 and going through verse 42 this morning.

Then they came to a place which was named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And he took Peter, James, and John with him, and he began to be troubled and deeply distressed. Then he said to them, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.

Stay here and watch. He went a little farther and fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.

Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will. Then he came and found them sleeping and said to Peter, Simon, are you sleeping?

Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Again, he went away and prayed and spoke the same words. And when he returned, he found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy and they did not know what to answer him. Then he came the third time and said to them, are you still sleeping and resting?

It is enough. The hour has come. Behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand, and you may be seated. So just to summarize what’s happening here, Jesus left Jerusalem after the supper, after the Passover supper we know of as the last supper.

He and his disciples, the 11 who were left, because Judas went out to do what Judas was going to do, so the 11 who were left walked Jesus down out of Jerusalem across the Kidron Valley up the side of the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane to go and pray. And Jesus was teaching all the way along the road. The whole time they were walking, He was teaching or He was praying.

And He was doing all of this in preparation for them, to prepare them. He was preparing them for what was about to happen. He was preparing them for what was going to happen after He was crucified and after He had risen.

He was even preparing them again for the ministry that they were going to undertake after he left. He’s talking to them about the coming of the Holy Spirit. He’s talking to them about their need to stay together, not geographically together, but stay united in their purpose and in their faith.

He talked about all these things. He warned them that there was coming a day when they were going to face intense persecution to the point that the people, he said, who killed them were going to think they were serving God. People were going to be out to kill them and were going to think they were doing a good thing.

He’s preparing them all this way. And then he comes to the time to pray and he goes to prepare himself. So eight of the disciples, when they get to the Garden of Gethsemane, a place that the Gospels tell us Jesus routinely retreated to pray.

They get to the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus tells eight of the disciples, stay here and pray. He takes Peter, James, and John with him further into the garden and says, I want you to sit watch with me. And then the Bible says he goes about a stone’s throw further from those three and praise himself.

Now, for him to tell them to sit watch, that doesn’t mean I need an audience. I want you to sit here and look at me. It meant to be on the alert.

It meant to be prepared for what was coming. The implication there is that they are supposed to be praying too. But he goes on in, he prays, he speaks to his father about what he’s dealing with.

And this is where we see him go into the garden and agonize in the garden. There’s the description in Luke 22 verses 43 and 44, I believe, that talk about Jesus praying and being in such intense anguish that his sweat was like drops of blood. Now, I’ve been really stressed, but I don’t think I’ve ever been that stressed.

And that’s one of those details in the Gospels that sometimes skeptics will seize on and say, that’s unreasonable to expect us to believe it. But it’s not. It’s rare, but again, the Gospels aren’t saying everybody in Jerusalem sweat blood, they’re saying one guy.

There’s a rare but documented medical condition called hematohidrosis where somebody under intense stress, under intense anxiety, will see the capillaries in their circulatory system break down and begin to leak blood into their sweat glands. It’s been documented. I’ve seen the pictures in medical journals.

It’s a real thing. What Luke says, though, is that Jesus’ sweat became like great drops of blood. So we know there’s a comparison here.

Traditionally, many of us have taken that to mean there was actual blood in his sweat, and I still think that’s what it meant. But there were some in the early church, including Dionysus of Alexandria, who wrote that it was comparing not the color of the sweat, which was tinged with blood, but the size of the drops. Saying that somebody in that intense of anxiety would have sweat so profusely that it would be like huge, it wouldn’t be the little beads of sweat that we sometimes get, it would be huge great drops.

Now, I tend to think there was actual blood, and I think science can corroborate that. But either way, either way, the point, whether you follow Dionysius or whether you follow what we’ve traditionally taught, that it was actually blood, or you think it was just intense sweat, the point is that Jesus was in a level of anxiety and agony and anguish that none of us will ever experience. And what he did in that moment of anxiety, thinking ahead while he was still in the garden to what was going to come within the next 24 hours, he didn’t formulate a plan, He didn’t sit down and try to figure out how he was going to deal with it, how he was going to manage moment by moment.

He went to the Father about it. And that’s what he’s doing when he prays here. Father, let this cup pass.

So he’d finished praying, at least for the moment, and he goes back to his three disciples that are not too far away from him, and what does he find? They’re there asleep. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.

I’ve heard people over the years say, I feel guilty. I try to pray at night, and I fall asleep. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

I can’t give you chapter and verse on that, so take my opinion for what it’s worth, which is not much. But I kind of liken it to a little kid crawling up in their father’s lap, telling him about their day and falling asleep. But this was not the time.

This was not the time for that response. This was the time that Jesus told them, you need to be on guard, you need to be prepared. And they had fallen asleep.

And so he said, you need to pray in verses 37 and 38. And then verse 39 tells us that he went to pray again for a second time. So he prays, the gospels tell us he prayed the same prayer again, not that he had memorized a bunch of words, but he’s praying about the same thing again.

And then he finishes up, he comes back a second time in verse 40, and he finds them asleep. It says, guys, I thought we talked about this. That’s my paraphrase.

But he says, I thought you’re supposed to be watching, supposed to be praying. What are you doing? Get up and pray.

Pray that you don’t fall into temptation. And then he goes and prays for a third time. And this is implied in Mark because he says he came back a third time, but Matthew is the one in chapter 26, verse 44, who tells us he went back a third time.

And he prayed some more, came back this third time, found them asleep again in verses 41 and 42, and says, I’m not going to tell you a third time to pray. It’s time. The wheels are already in motion.

He says, see, my betrayer is at hand. I don’t know if he’s looking down the side of the slope of the mountain and seeing Judas and the guards coming up with torches and pitchforks, but he knew that he knew the time was there for him to be betrayed. So we see the story of Jesus preparing for the very thing that he has come to accomplish, the very thing that he has known throughout his entire ministry that was his purpose here on earth, which was to be betrayed and to be crucified.

As a matter of fact, he knew before he ever stepped out of heaven that his purpose in coming to earth was to be betrayed and to be crucified. And now that moment is finally on him, and the way he deals with that stress is through prayer. Jesus prepared for the cross by turning to his Father.

And that’s a little bit convicting, or a lot bit convicting, to me, that Jesus Christ, God the Son in human flesh, needed to prepare for what God had sent him to do, for what the Father had sent him to do through prayer. What makes me think that I can get by without it? If even Jesus needed to prepare in that way, what makes me think it’s optional for me?

But look at some of the things that are recorded that he prayed here in verse 36, when he’s talking to Jesus. He calls him Abba, Father. And as I’ve studied this passage, not just for this message, but just in my studies of the resurrection in general, I’ve seen a lot of commentators spend a lot of time and spill a lot of ink trying to explain why Mark gives it to us in Aramaic and Greek.

You see there’s a spiritual significance to this word and spiritual significance to this word and and here’s why he includes both and he’s saying all these things about God the Father. I think we’re trying to make it too complicated. Mark has a habit.

See the other gospels just say he prayed Father. Mark has a habit because he’s recording Peter’s recollections, Mark has a habit of giving us things in the Aramaic that were the actual words that were said in Aramaic and then translating it for his Greek audience. And it reminds me, she doesn’t do it so much anymore, but it reminds me of about a year ago when Jojo was watching Dora the Explorer constantly and started speaking better Spanish than Desi Arnaz.

And I would send these videos to my family and tell them, you’ll never believe what Jojo just said, and I would give it to them in Spanish and then have to translate it into English because they don’t speak Spanish. But it kind of loses the effect if I just said, hey, she said it’s not bedtime yet in Spanish, but didn’t actually, you know, I had to tell them what she said. And I’m just pulling that out of thin air because I can’t think of it.

Lucy could tell me how to say it’s not bedtime yet, but I can’t think of it. But there were things like that. So he’s giving us what Jesus said in the Aramaic.

He called God Abba, and he’s telling us that to make it more real, to bring us into the event. And then to his Greek readers who don’t speak Aramaic, he says, that means father. Okay, and he does this all the time.

So I want to be clear on that. We don’t have to dig into here and try to find the meaning of why he did this. He called him Abba.

Mark tells us what it means. It means father. But just the word Abba is an intimate term along the lines of daddy.

It was not completely unprecedented that somebody would call God the Father Abba, but it was a little unusual. It was not the normal practice, but it speaks to the intimacy of their relationship. That word is charged with intimacy. And I think I’ve told you this before.

You know, there are five people that I will allow to call me daddy. Anybody else, it’s just going to weird me out. Okay, we’ve been to the doctor and trying to, you know, give the kids medicine or whatever, and they’ll say, okay, now, Dad, you come around.

I’m not your dad. I know what you’re doing, but it just grates on me, okay? I’m not your dad.

We don’t have that relationship. You can call me, if you can’t remember my name, just call me, hey, person. You know, I would find that less weird.

Some of y’all are just going to call me Dad now just to irritate me. But it was a mark of intimacy. It was a demonstration of the relationship that they had.

And Jesus’ intimacy with his Father was a source of incredible strength to him. The fact that he had this relationship with the Father that he could go to him at any time. And as he was preparing himself to strain the limits of human endurance, Jesus went to the Father and he called on that relationship again.

And this wasn’t just a one-time thing. This was a common occurrence throughout Jesus’ ministry, that he would come away from the crowds. He would come away from the movement and he would get alone with the Father and he would draw strength from that relationship that they had.

And that’s why he called him Abba. And he says to him in verse 36, all things are possible to you or for you. He says, I know you can do anything.

If anybody knew the power of God, it was Jesus because he’s God in human flesh. Think about it this way. The Apostle Paul says that all things were created by and through Jesus.

Jesus Christ was a co-participant in the creation of the universe with the Father. Jesus had first-hand knowledge of the power of the Father. So this is not just in the abstract, where I pray to God and I say, I know you can do anything, I’m not sure if you will here, but I know you can do this, and I know it because I’ve been taught it, I know it because the Bible says it.

Jesus goes a step further, Jesus has witnessed it and experienced it. He says, all things are possible for you. And in this moment, this is one of these things that I can’t fully explain, but the God of the universe took on human flesh and became a man without ceasing to be God, and yet during his time here does not seem to use all of his attributes of being God.

And if you think about that too long and hard, it’ll give you a headache. But Jesus allowed himself to experience human weakness up to and including the death on the cross. And so here we have a moment of Jesus allowing himself to rely on his Father’s strength and on his Father’s ability to carry out his plan.

He knew better than anyone what the Father was capable of. And here he is putting himself entirely into the Father’s hands. And he says, take this cup away from me.

And this statement has frequently been understood as Jesus asking for a plan B. Father, if there’s a plan B, if there’s a way that I can fulfill your will but not have to go through the cross, can we do that? And skeptics will seize on that and say, well, that doesn’t sound like he was willing to go.

That sounds like he was forced into this. And my answer has always been, but he came back and said, nevertheless, not my will but your will be done. Jesus was willing.

But I think I may have had it wrong. I think a lot of us may have had it wrong. Those of you who have been with us on our Sunday night study where we go deeper into the text we looked at Sunday morning, have heard me talk about Dr.

Arnold Fruchtenbaum, who was an Orthodox Jew who came to trust Jesus as the Messiah and has written a series of commentaries. He talks about this issue and how it just doesn’t make sense that Jesus would be saying, if there’s another plan. Jesus knows there’s not another plan.

Jesus knows there’s not another way other than the cross or else that would have been the plan. If there was another way, then the cross was a horrible mistake. And so what he suggests is because in the Jewish culture they looked at a cup as being symbolic of God’s wrath.

Not every cup that you would drink out of, but they would talk about the cup of God’s wrath. It’s referred to in the Old Testament prophets. And so Dr.

Fruchtenbaum suggests, and I think this is probably right, that Jesus is talking about the separation he’s about to experience from the Father. You know, in the moment when Jesus takes responsibility for my sin and for yours, And he cries out to the Father, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it’s because in that moment, for the first time in all of eternity, God the Son and God the Father experienced a break in their fellowship because a holy God is offended by the presence of sin.

And the Father turned his face away so the Son could endure the wrath of God poured out on our sins. And so for him asking for the cup to go away is not Jesus asking to avoid the cross. It’s Jesus dreading the separation from his Father.

Now, you study that out for yourselves and see what you think, but to me, that seems to be a much better explanation, that it’s not Jesus’ unwillingness to suffer, it’s Jesus’ aversion toward the separation from his Father. And he says, nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will. So he did not only submit to his Father’s will, he actively sought for the Father’s will to be carried out.

We know how that works. We know there’s a difference there between submitting to something and actively trying to make it happen. I am almost finished with our taxes for this year.

I have never waited this long. It’s always done around February 1st. And I just haven’t wanted to do it this year. I file my taxes because it’s the law, not because I like it.

Right? Okay. I’m submitting to it, but I am not actively, you know, if Congress got together and said, you know, we’re going to do away with that income tax.

I’m not going to be beating, I’m not going to be raising an insurrection at the Capitol and saying, no, we must pay, you know. So if you do that, you understand the difference between submitting and advancing something. We submit to the speed limit.

most of us, it doesn’t mean we like it. But here Jesus was doing both. He was not only submitting to the Father’s will, but He was actively trying to see it carried out.

Because He’s saying, even at the risk of this separation from the Father, He’s saying, whatever your will is, is what needs to be done. And so He’s had this conversation with the Father, and I spent much longer on explaining it than I intended to. But we see from this that Jesus commands His, the way He was talking to His disciples about their need to pray.

And the example he set by praying himself, both of those things, they stress the significance of prayer for us. In addition to everything else we learn here about the relationship between Jesus and the Father, about what he was about to experience on the cross, in addition to all of that, it paints a picture for us of what prayer should be to us. Because Jesus in this time of incredible stress and agony turned to the Father in prayer.

And from this we learn that we should pray. We should pray in times of distress. Don’t go to God as the last resort.

Jesus went to pray because he told his disciples in verse 34, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death. Which is to say, my heart is so broken and overwhelmed that I could die. And that’s not him being dramatic.

You know, if it was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for us. If it was necessary for Jesus, it’s necessary for us. I’m not saying that you and I follow everything he did, I’m not looking to get nailed to a cross.

But I think he sets a tremendous example here of the need to turn to the Father in times of distress. We should pray for the strength to be obedient. In verse 36, when he prayed, nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.

I don’t think Jesus was at risk of not following the Father’s will, but I think this was a reaffirmation of the Father’s will. Sometimes we mess up because we’re not asking the Father to help us be obedient. We need to be willing to obey him, but we also need to realize that a lot of times that’s way too hard in our own strength.

And so those times when we feel like we’re about to falter, we’re about to give into temptation, maybe like the disciples were about to, we have that option of going to the Father and saying, I need help here to be obedient. I want to do your will. Whatever your will is, help me to do that.

Let your will be done. We should pray to resist temptation. There’s some overlap between that and the last one.

But he says, watch and pray lest you enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Satan knows he can get us when the flesh is weak, when we’re tired, when we’re sad, when we’re stressed out, when we’re hungry.

We’re weak. I don’t think it’s by accident that Satan went after Jesus after 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. I had kind of an attitude with Charlie yesterday and had to come back in and apologize and say it doesn’t, it is not an excuse, but I will say I’m not feeling well.

I’ve been working outside all day and I haven’t had any water and I’ve been breathing dust and I just feel like garbage. And it made me more apt to be cranky. Satan knows he can get us when we’re in a weakened state.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Jesus, knowing that, told the disciples, go and pray lest you fall into temptation. And I think ultimately we should pray to remain in close fellowship with God, just like Jesus did all throughout his ministry and just like he did here at the end, calling out to Abba, Father.

More than anything, I see here Jesus just calling on his Father to know that he’s not alone going forward into the trials, into the crucifixion, into everything he’s about to experience. It’s just to reaffirm that touch with the Father. If you have a relationship with somebody and you never talk to them, what happens to that relationship?

Kind of drifts a little bit. If my wife and I never spoke, well, it’d be a really uncomfortable experience. But we wouldn’t grow closer that way, you and I need to remain in close fellowship with the Father.

If you’re a believer, you need to remain in close fellowship with the Father. You need to maintain the closeness of that walk, and part of that is turning to Him in prayer. And we need to understand, too, just more so than just looking at the example, we need to understand that Jesus is the reason why we can turn to the Father.

It’s not that we’re just so good and God’s just so accepting of us as we are. The whole reason for him going to the cross is that we were not good enough to approach the Father. He had to pay for our sins.

And if you and I want to have a relationship with the Father, if you and I want to have fellowship with God, the only way to have it is through Jesus Christ. When we’re invited to come into the presence of the Father, when we’re invited to bring him our prayers, when we’re invited to come close to him, it’s only because Jesus has made that possible. That’s why the Apostle Paul said, he talks about it twice in the book of Ephesians, and it’s talked about elsewhere. but I think these are two of the best places it talks about it.

It says, And he came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through him, that’s through Jesus, we have access by one Spirit to the Father. He says in Ephesians 2, 17 and 18 that it’s Jesus who gives us access to the Father through the Spirit.

And then he says in chapter 3, In Christ we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in him. And so elsewhere, when he talks about us coming boldly before the throne of grace, when he talks about us casting all our cares upon him, the only reason we are able to do that, the only reason we are invited into this relationship where we can turn to the Father as our Abba is because Jesus paid for it, is because Jesus did go and shortly after this take responsibility for our sins and experience that cup of God’s wrath and experience separation and pay for our sins in his blood and give up his very life, taking all the condemnation that we deserve so that we could go free. Jesus is the reason why we can turn to the Father too.

Jesus is the reason why we can pray and have our prayers heard and answered. And if you’ve never experienced that relationship with Jesus Christ, it’s very simple. It’s as simple as understanding that each of us have sinned.

We’ve all disobeyed God. That’s what sin is. We’ve all disobeyed God in some way.

And because God is holy, God cannot just let that sin go. He can’t be okay with it. That sin had to be punished.

It had to be paid for. You say, well, that’s harsh. That’s so mean.

Listen, if somebody’s out committing crimes, if somebody’s out killing people and hurting children and knocking over banks, if the judge just let that go, would we be okay with that? No, we usually say lock them up at the very least. God, as an infinitely holy judge, has to impose a penalty. But the good news for us is that Jesus Christ paid that penalty at the cross so that that sin could be paid for, so that our slate could be wiped clean, so that we could be forgiven and have that relationship with the Father.

And then he rose again from the dead three days later to prove it. And this morning, all that’s necessary for you to do is to believe that and ask God to forgive you because of what Jesus Christ did, and he’ll do it. And with that forgiveness that Christ purchased, you are then invited in.

You’re adopted into the family of God. not as merely a servant, but as a son or a daughter, who can cry out to Him, Abba, and know that He hears you.

Powered by atecplugins.com