This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, October 6th, 1985, at the Trinity Baptist Church in
Montville, New Jersey. Now let us turn together to the
passage upon which we meditated a month ago on the occasion of
our gathering to the Supper of the Lord, Matthew's Gospel, Chapter
26, And will you follow, please,
as I read in your hearing verses 36 through 46. Matthew 26, beginning with verse
36. Then cometh Jesus with them unto
a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto his disciples, sit
here while I go yonder and pray." And he took with him Peter and
the two sons of Zebedee, that was James and John, and began
to be sorrowful and sore troubled. Then saith he unto them, My soul
is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Abide here and watch
with me. And he went forward a little
and fell on his face and prayed, saying, My father, if it be possible,
let this cup pass away from me. Nevertheless, not as I will,
but as you will. And he comes unto the disciples
and finds them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, What, could
you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you enter
not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak. Again a second time he went away
and prayed, saying, My father, if this cannot pass away except
I drink it, your will be done. And he came again and found them
sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And he left them again
and went away and prayed a third time, saying again the same words. Then comes he to the disciples
and says to them, Sleep on now and take your rest. Behold, the
hour is at hand. The Son of Man is betrayed into
the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going. Behold, he is at hand. that betrays me. Now let us again
seek the help of God as we seek to understand something of the
mind of God in this sacred and awesome account of the agony
of our Lord in the Gethsemane experience. Let us pray. Surely, our Father, if the manifestation
of Your glory from a burning bush on the backside of a desert,
resulted in a man taking the shoes off his feet because the
face, the place whereon he stood was holy ground, then coming
to behold not a burning bush, but your glory revealed in the
agony and the sweat and the intercession and the sorrow of the Lord Jesus
in Gethsemane brings us to even holier ground. And we therefore
ask for that peculiar ministry of the Spirit so needed when
our natively light and giddy minds encounter such profound
and sobering mysteries. O Lord, give us a mind and a
heart prepared to receive due impressions of the suffering
and the agony of our Lord Jesus on behalf of sinners. Give us
eyes to behold Him in the glory and beauty of His perfect humanity,
and by the transforming power of the Spirit may we be made
like unto Him. Hear our prayer and meet with
us, we plead, in His worthy name. Amen. Now, in our communion meditation
last month, we considered together the central issue in this mysterious
and awesome scene which transpired in a place called Gethsemane,
this place that one author of another generation described
as the shadow of Calvary. And that central issue, as we
saw last month, was the issue of the cup, the whole imagery
of a cup being held before our Lord, the demands of His Father
that He drink that cup, this, I say, is obviously the central
issue of the passage. And in our meditation, I attempted
to give at least a brief and suggestive exposition as to what
constituted that cup. and what our Lord's willingness
to drink of that cup says to us as His people. That cup was
nothing less than the wrath of God unmixed with mercy, prepared
in the cup of His own pure and righteous justice, a cup that
was full as our Lord was to be the substitute of us sinners. and it was the taking into himself
and the exhausting of the wrath of God against the sins of his
people from which our Lord recoiled in a just and righteous recoiling
and yet which nonetheless he embraced in voluntary obedience
to his Father. Now tonight I want us to return
to Gethsemane, the shadow of Calvary, and there to consider
a secondary issue, not the central issue, which is the cup, granted
a secondary issue, but nonetheless a vital and necessary aspect
of our Lord's suffering, and then having done so, to make
some practical applications of this aspect of the passage to
us as the Lord's people. And the fundamental justification
for doing what I am doing is expressly stated by the Apostle
Peter in 1 Peter 2 and verse 21, wherein, calling the people
of God to patience in the midst of suffering, he says, For hereunto
were you called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving
you an example that you should follow His steps. There are certain aspects of
the suffering of our Lord which are completely His own. They are in no way exemplary
to us. He tread the winepress of the
fierceness of the wrath of God alone. He drank the cup alone. But there are obviously, according
to Peter, certain aspects of his suffering which do indeed
form the pattern for his suffering people. So his sufferings were
not only in one sense exclusively his and substitutionary, they
are also exemplary in another aspect to his people. And so
the issue upon which we will focus tonight is the companionship
of the three privileged ones who actually witness this mysterious
scene in closest proximity to our Lord. And there are three
principles or axioms pertaining to human friendship in the family
of God contained in this passage. I'll articulate the principle
or the axiom and then show its roots in this passage. First
of all, it is not sin to desire the consolation and support of
human companionship in our seasons of intense trial. It is not sin
to desire the consolation and support of human companionship
in our seasons of intense trial. And where do we see that in the
passage? In verses 36 to 38. Then comes Jesus with them, that
is, the eleven. Judas has gone out to do his
horrible deed to a place called Gethsemane and he says unto his
disciples, sit here while I go yonder and pray. And he took
with him, of the eleven, he leaves eight behind, and he takes these
three, Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful
and sore troubled. And then he breaks his heart
to them, what he experienced inwardly, and the language is
most graphic and vivid of the intensity of the hour of suffering
and trial that has come upon his soul. And what he is experiencing
inwardly, he now discloses in the intimacy of that peculiar
companionship with these three and says to them, my soul is
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Abide here and watch with
me. Here our Lord is on His way to
Gethsemane to have dealings with His Father. That is clearly stated
in the last part of verse 36. Sit here, He says to the entire
group, while I go yonder and pray. The settled intention of
His heart was to prepare Himself for the coming trial. by intense,
direct engagement of his father in the peculiar privilege of
spiritual intercourse called prayer. He is not going into
the garden with an idolatrous leaning upon human support. He enters the garden determined
to have dealings with his father. whatever strength he will need
for the coming ordeal he is determined to receive out of the context
of communion and fellowship with his Father. But along the way
he takes this inner circle of his three most trusted confidants,
those three who alone were with him on the Mount of Transfiguration
and saw the bursting forth of His glory there in that mountain
scene, and He takes them with Him, and He begins to disclose
His heart, first of all, not to His Father, but to His human
companions. Before He engages His Father,
while on His way to engage His Father, He says unto them, My
soul is exceeding sorrowful. This is no ordinary season of
prayer into which I am now entering. This is no ordinary crisis which
is now driving me to pray. You have again and again in the
seasons of your pilgrimage with me, you have seen me go off to
pray. You came and followed me as recorded
in Mark 135 and found me in the early morning hours out in a
desert place praying. You know from my testimony that
when I forced you into the boat and stayed behind after the feeding
of the five thousand, I went into the mountain to pray. But
Peter, James and John, this is no ordinary season of prayer
which lies before me. I come to this engagement of
my Father with my soul exceeding sorrowful, even unto the very
point of death. And Peter, James and John, As
I engage my father, I ask you to do something with me. Watch
with me. Stand with me in this, my great
hour of intense trial. With no expectation that their
support can be a substitute for the support of his father, with
no expectation that disclosing his heart to them can be a substitute
to the disclosure of his heart to his father yet. He does disclose
his heart to them, and he entreats them to watch with him. Support me. Watch with me with
sympathetic alertness to my hour of trial. that as I leave you
and go yet a few steps further and there engage my Father, give
me the consolation that your hearts are with me, that you
stand in support of me. Here the Son of God is making
it abundantly clear that it is no sin to desire the consolation
and support of human companionship in our seasons of most intense
trial. If the perfect Son of God, fully
supported by the Father in terms of covenantal engagements, the
servant of Jehovah would be upheld by Jehovah Himself. If He felt
the need, fully expressed that need, and left the record of
that expression in Scripture, then surely it is forever settled
that it is no sin to desire that consolation and support of human
companionship in our seasons of most intense trial. You see, God did not make us
to be heroic little islands of independence in this life. God
did not make us for that. Adam, in his unfalling state,
was the one of whom God said, It is not good for the man to
be alone. I will make not an idol to replace
me, but a helper answering to his needs, that he may serve
me all the more effectively. And though sin has ruptured and
tragically fragmented human relationships, Grace restores relationships
in Christ, but grace does not make war with humanity, only
with sin. Therefore, when you face periods
of intense trial and you set your heart to have serious one-to-one
dealings with God your Father about those trials, you must
not take upon yourself false guilt If in entering upon those
trials there is almost a reflexive reaching out for your Peter,
James and John to watch with you in your hour of trial. at
times even to disclose your heart to them, that they may know something
of the measure and magnitude and importance of the dealings
you propose to have with God, that you open your heart to them
before you even pour it out before God. If that is sin, then our
Lord sinned, for that is precisely what He did. We learn the great
lesson by the example of our Lord, that it is not sin. So to desire the consolation,
the support, may I say it, the mystic support, I can't explain
it, of knowing that there are sympathetic minds and hearts
watching with us while we wrestle through things that only we can
and must wrestle through with God. But then there is a second
principle in the passage, and it is this. It is no sin to feel
disappointment when human companionship fails us in our seasons of intense
trial. It is no sin to feel disappointment
when human companionship fails us in our seasons of intense
trial. Look at verse 40. And he comes
unto the disciples and finds them sleeping and says unto them,
and here is the language of disappointment, What? Could you not watch with
me? They're the key words. He said,
Watch with me, your Lord and Master, who has called you, succored
you, shown you the Father. who is about to go to the place
of execution on your behalf. Watch with me." And now he comes
back and expresses his disappointment. What could you not watch with
me one hour? And then, hoping that perhaps
his mild reproof and expression of disappointment would somehow
cause them to shake off the dullness of sleep after he goes off to
pray again. Verse 43 says, He came again. He came again. He came again
to see if indeed they were there watching with Him. entering in
as much as they could as creatures, as much as they could with their
presently limited understanding to this awful baptism of agony. He comes back again, and he finds
them sleeping. And he left them again, and one
can only imagine the sense of heaviness with which he left
them. Peter, James, and John, the privileged three, My intimate
confidants, the ones to whom I have made special revelation,
they have gone to sleep on me again. Verse 45. He comes to
his disciples and says to them, sleep on now, take your rest.
If sleep is more important than entering in sympathetically to
my agony, then sleep Because I've wrestled the issue through
with my father, the hour is at hand. The Son of Man is betrayed
into the hands of sinners arise. Let us be going. It is not reading
something into the scriptures to say that no matter what other
significance is to be found in the words, these are words of
expressed disappointment. Now, if disappointment When human
companionship fails us, both felt and expressed his sin, then
on the eve of being offered up as the Lamb of God, the Lamb
was tainted with sin and unfit to be offered. He did no sin,
even when he felt the disappointment, when he expressed the disappointment. He who was holy, harmless, undefiled,
and separate from sinners was not separate from true humanity. And in the experience of true
humanity, disappointment is a very real experience, and the more
intimate the friendship, the more keen is the disappointment
felt in the hour of trial when our friends upon whom we have
leaned for consolation and support, let us down. You see, God does
not call us to be stoics, to act as though disappointment
and grief and pain never touch us. No, when we have leaned upon
what we thought were trusted friends and they disappoint us,
then we understand the proverb. Confidence in an unfaithful man
in a time of trouble is like a broken tooth. and like a foot
out of joint. Our Lord experienced that reality,
and He expressed the felt pain of that disappointment, and therefore,
if He is our example in suffering, we learn that it is no sin for
us. on the one hand, to seek the
consolation and support of human companionship in our hours of
intense trial, and then to feel and to express disappointment
if they fail us in that hour of intense trial. But then thirdly
and finally, and here is the message to our hearts, I trust,
it is never an excuse or necessary occasion to sin when human companionship
fails us in our seasons of intense trial. It is no excuse or necessary
occasion to sin when human companionship fails us in our seasons of intense
trial. Though he said to the disciples,
watch with me, and then, verse 39, went on to have direct dealings
with his father, verse 40 says, when he came to the disciples
and found them sleeping, felt the disappointment and expressed
it, he did not then say, what's the use? This is the very group
for which I'm travailing before the cup. and they have no more
appreciation for me than to fall asleep. Why bother?" And get
up and leave the garden. No. His disappointment in them
did not become the occasion of sin in him. He did not turn aside
from the will of God because his God-given friends failed
him. And likewise, when he came back
and the second time, verse 42, found them sleeping, After praying,
he comes back and he prays the same thing. If this cup cannot
pass away except I drink it, thy will be done. He came again
and found them sleeping. He left them again and prayed
a third time, notice, saying the same words. Now with his
heart even more heavy, not merely with the sight of the cup, But
with the sting of disappointment in his spirit, Peter, James,
and John could not watch but even one hour. I have not asked
them to drink the cup with me. That I must drink alone. I have
not asked them to share in the baptism of suffering that is
exclusively mine, only to stand alongside of me and support me
in my felt weakness. But their disappointing performance,
our Lord did not construe as an excuse or a necessary occasion
to sin. Rather, he determined to do the
will of God, even if he had to do it unsupported by human companionship. Not my will, but thine, be done. And there's a lovely stroke in
Luke's account. It's as though God says, If the
human companions fail you, I'll send heavenly ones who are eager
to support you. And Luke 22, 43 says, And the
angels of God came and strengthened him. If the creatures are so dull
as not to appreciate the privilege, I'll send angels who do. And
it says the angels of God came and they strengthened, they ministered
to him. But you see, he did not use the
occasion of disappointment in his friends to disobey his father,
nor, notice secondly, he did not use the occasion of disappointment
in his friends to sin against his friends. In the midst of
his disappointment, and this to me is amazing, he focuses
not upon his sense of loss, He expresses it at the end of verse
40. Could you not watch with me one
hour? But then he turns from his own
disappointment to their well-being in verse 41. Watch and pray that
you enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing
in you, but the flesh is weak in you. Disappointed in them,
He still is concerned for them. And not only concerned for them,
when He went back with His heart suffused with disappointment,
He embraces with renewed determination to suffer everything He must
suffer in order to redeem them. You talk about love. That's love. that in the face of felt disappointment,
there is determination to lay down his life for the very ones
who disappointed him. Not to strike out at them, but
to endure hell for them. And he refused to turn aside
from that resolute determination to do his father's will. Well, obviously, the application
is clear to us. If friends, intimate, trusted
friends, fail us in the hour of crisis and intense trial,
my friend, let that never be the occasion of your disobeying
God. For God would say, when have
I failed you? When have I disappointed you?
When have you leaned upon me and found me a broken tooth and
a foot out of joint? Do you see what a horrible thing
it is to turn against God on account of what his creatures
do to us? What a horrible thing. It would
be like a wife turning against her husband because the neighbor's
husband insulted her. Totally irrational. And though
the creatures bitterly disappointed our Lord, he found nothing disappointment
in his father. And therefore, the third time
he prayed after two confrontations of disappointment, the same words,
not my will, but thine, he done. We, like our Lord, need to manifest
compassion to failing friends, knowing our own weakness. Knowing that there are times
we have been the Peter, the James, and the John, and whether out
of ignorance and insensitivity to the need of our brothers and
sisters, or whether out of a state of spiritual coldness in which
our hearts simply could not empathize with theirs, we have disappointed
them. What is most desperately needed
in those situations is to remember He that is without sin among
you, let him be the first to sin against the brother or sister
who disappoints him. I say these are three very vital
principles of human relationships and friendships embodied, embedded
in the Gethsemane passage. You say, Pastor, that seems to
be true, but What application does that have in a special way
to our coming to the Lord's table? And my answer to that is very
simple. It's a two-fold answer. And the
first is this. Here we come to remember our
sinless Savior with joy. And doesn't it make you appreciate
His sinlessness all the more to know that though He operated
on the basis of a true and real functioning humanity that needed
human support, looked at times for human support, and found
unfaithfulness in those whom he leaned upon, he never sinned. There was never a twinge of bitterness
or rancor or desire to retaliate by drawing back. And therefore,
when we come to the table of remembrance to remember him in
his death all that we may admire Him in what the full extent of
His sinfulness means. It was the sinlessness of incarnate
deity, yes, but the sinlessness of true and full-orbed humanity. And all that we may admire and
worship Him as we come to His table We take the bread and the
cup and we remember Him, who in that full order of humanity
never sinned, that we might have a spotless Lamb of God to bear
away our sins. And then there is a second application
as we come to the table. We do not come to the table as
several hundred individuals There is a sense in which we come as
individuals, yes, but we come as the body of Christ. And it's in some of the communion
passages, 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 in particular, in which the
corporateness of this feast of remembrance is underscored. And
dear people, there is no such thing. as a saving attachment
to Christ that leaves you unattached from His church, His body, the
whole notion that there can be atomistic spiritual experience
is totally foreign to the Scripture. To be joined to Christ is, according
to 1 Corinthians 12, by the Spirit who unites us to Christ. We are
incorporated into the one body and made to drink of the one
Spirit. And what better place than when
sitting here together, shoulder to shoulder, row upon row, to
renew our vows of determination to be true friends to one another? You see, Jesus died to deliver
us from the very sins that make us unfaithful friends in time
of trouble. He died to deliver us from the
preoccupation with self that makes us impervious to the signals
that our brothers and sisters are sending out, saying, watch
with me. I'm passing through no ordinary
trial. Stand with me. I must have dealings
with God. Yes, I must wrestle through with
God. I cannot make the phone and a
meeting together over a cup of tea a substitute for the closet
and wrestling with God. No. That would be to make an
idol of your friendship. But oh, my Peter, my James, my
John, watch with me while I go to have dealings with my father.
Oh, how we need to pray that God will deal with our insensitivity
when our friends say, Many times, in ways that we could hear if
only we have sensitive ears, my soul is exceeding sorrowful. I am facing no ordinary trial. Watch with me, and we don't hear
the signals. All because of our preoccupation
with self, or perhaps, if not preoccupation with self, We've
allowed attitudes to be built up in our hearts to our brethren
that indispose us to empathize with them. We cannot weep with
those who weep when there is an unweeping heart towards a
brother. We cannot rejoice with those
who rejoice when there is a heart that is distanced by suspicion,
by ill will, by judgmental attitudes. No, such a heart will never empathize. It will, by its sin, be blocked
off from that ability. Dear people of God, Christ died
not only to bring us to the Father, but to bring us to one another.
He died to make of the twain one new man in Christ. And it never ceases to amaze
me, and I'm sure it will not embarrass my brother if I say
this in closing, how it is that in personal experience I can
meet people of a totally different culture, different language,
all kinds of differences, and in half an hour having expressed
openness and oneness and bond of love, then some will allow
me to have with them over years. When as best I know my heart
before God, I go out to them with equal measures of Christian
affection, all the signals I know how to send out that I long to
embrace. But you can't embrace a heart
that will not be embraced. How do you explain that? Ten
years since my brother and I have seen one another, and yet when
we saw each other, where I met him at the bank the other morning,
it's like it was only three days. We embraced, and our hearts felt
that bond. How do you explain that? It's the chemistry of personality.
I don't buy that. The chemistry of personality
will determine varying levels of greater intimacy. That's true.
The Lord had Peter, James, and John, and among Peter, James,
and John, he had John. But, my dear brothers and sisters,
in the body of Christ, there must be at least a modicum of
what Scripture means when it says, Love one another with a
pure and unfeigned love from the heart, fervently, fervently. Let me ask you a simple question
tonight. The question, Tevye, asked his
wife, do you love me? Now I'm asking that not as a
private individual, but you imagine every brother and sister in this
church standing before you now looking you straight in the eye
and saying to you, do you love me? Can you look I represent
every brother and sister in this place. Can you look me in the
eye in the presence of God and say, my brother, my sister, I
love you. I'm prepared to make your burdens
my burden. Because Christ died to free me
from crass self-centeredness and individualism and picky unism
that's prepared to take every foible and fault and magnify
it into a wall of separation for Christ's sake and by His
grace and blood and spirit. I love you. Can you say that?
disposed to be able to. In fact, God says you are sacramentally
to express it every time you see your brothers and sisters
greet one another with a holy kiss. In other words, make sure
that the love is so real that even an embrace would not be
a lie or mockery. We who are married We can kid
ourselves that everything's alright with our wives until we go to
hold their hand when we pray with them. That's why I always
advise couples, when you pray with your wife, hold her hand.
I can't give you chapter and verse, but it works. Because if there's any burr,
you feel unclean and hypocritical when you go to take her hand,
don't you? And often going to take her hand becomes the very
plug that pulls out the issue that needs to get dealt with.
I think that's why Paul said, greet one another with a holy
kiss. He didn't just say, love one another. He did say that.
But he said, let your love be so genuine that you feel comfortable
expressing it tangibly. I didn't write that in the Bible.
God the Holy Ghost did. Now, could you, with unfeigned
love, I'm your brother and sister now, representative brother and
sister. And I say to you, not only do you love me, but can
you embrace me? without it being hypocrisy and
sham? You feel uncomfortable with that
question, do you? If so, you better have dealings with God,
my friend. And you better have dealings with God before you
come to this table. Because Jesus died so to work
in you and in me that you could answer an unfeigned yes to those
questions. That's why he drank the cup in
Gethsemane. that there would be a community
on earth with all of the things that could keep them at swords'
points and at distance from one another, who by their unfeigned
love and intimate unity expressed in willingness to bear one another's
burdens, weep with those who weep, would be a living monument
of the power of the grace that flows down from Calvary with
its tap roots in the principled obedience of Gethsemane. Oh,
may God write upon our hearts, then, this secondary message
of the shadow of Calvary. And may, by His grace, we become
not only more appreciative of the Lord Jesus in His sinlessness,
but more fervent and real in the genuineness of our love for
one another, for Christ's sake. Let us pray. The prayer that originally followed
the message has been deleted, and in its place we are going
to give several thoughts that were shared by Pastor Nichols
immediately following the conclusion of the message by Pastor Martin
when we gathered to the Lord's table. We felt that the thoughts
were significant enough to be included in the message. Pastor
Nichols pointed out in what he called a postscript to the message
that there were several sides to this whole matter of communication
between those who enter into more intimate friendships and
companionships. And the points that he made were
these. First of all, that Jesus took the initiative to take the
disciples with him in his hour of need. In other words, our
Lord made it very plain that he was prepared to seek human
companionship. He did not wait around hoping
that the disciples would come to him and then bemoan the fact
that he was friendless in the hour of his need. Rather, he
took the initiative in establishing that companionship and likewise
so must we. The second point that Pastor
Nichols made was that Jesus then communicated with those who became
his more intimate companions and confidants. Once more, the
Lord Jesus did not expect the disciples to be able to read
his mind, but he spoke to them. He took the initiative to communicate
with them in general. And then, in the third place,
the text makes it abundantly clear that in the time of his
specific need and trial, Jesus specifically expressed the nature
of that trial to those who were his more intimate companions
and friends. Based then upon those observations,
Pastor Nichols exhorted us as the people of God not to expect
that we shall know the benefits of human companionship and also
some of the disappointments that come from it if we are unwilling
to do those things which our Lord Jesus obviously did and
as were underscored in the brief comments made by Pastor Nichols. Once again, we simply underscore
the fact that we felt that these thoughts were so significant
in the whole area of concern that formed the focal point of
the sermon, that in our attempts to be like our Lord Jesus by
the strength and power of the Holy Spirit, that these dimensions
of the chemistry of companionship ought also to enter into our
thinking and into our actions as well as those that were opened
up and highlighted in the exposition.