You have before you the accounts
of the Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane from each of the
Gospels, but if you turn to Mark chapter 14, we'll be spending
most of our time there. Mark 14, 32 to 35. I'll just read those verses for us
all. 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.
And he said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even
to death. Stay here and watch. He went
a little further 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 you will. He then 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 begin. See, my betrayer is at hand." As much as I will over the next
short while and thousands of God's servants for 2000 years
have tried to expound these words and the meaning of this passage.
I trust that the others have felt as inadequate as I am. There
are some things in the scriptures, many things in the scriptures,
which are too big and too deep and too serious for finite minds
to grasp. And my prayer so often is that
God the Holy Spirit would do what he has promised to do in
John 16, 14. He will glorify me, for he will
take of what is mine and declare it to you. And that's my prayer
for myself and all of us this morning, that God the Holy Spirit
would take the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, take His glory
in His sufferings, and He would make it real and living in your
lives. The Lord Jesus has crossed the
brook Kidron, the brook which at this time of the year was
nothing but a bloody sewer and represented the place where all
the blood of the sacrifices flowed. So often we have these pretty
pictures of the things surrounding the death of the Lord Jesus.
No doubt the olive grove was a beautiful garden. No doubt
the moon shone brilliantly that evening. But we need to remember
if God will give us the grace to see what was going on here
spiritually. Because in the garden we are
led by God the Holy Spirit to see the soul suffering of the
Lord Jesus. On the cross And in his trial
and mocking we see his bodily sufferings. In Gethsemane we
see his soul suffering. And we need to pause, place our
hands over our mouth, tread carefully, and ask God to make the spiritual
meaning of this something that lives in our lives. The office
of the priest was to teach and to pray and offer sacrifice. The Lord Jesus in the upper room
had taught. He prayed that amazing prayer
in John 17. And now he sets about making
atonement. He has said, all he had to say
is a prophet. Now he addresses his work as
a priest and the sacrificial part of it. "'Twas here,' says
a poet, "'the Lord of Life appeared and sighed and groaned "'and
prayed and feared. "'For all incarnate God could
bear, with strength enough, and none to spare, bore all incarnate
God could bear, with strength enough and none to bear." Gethsemane
was an olive garden, and the word Gethsemane means olive press. And it's instructed to know how
They pressed olives in those days and they had a huge block
of stone, often a square block of stone, as much as men could
lift. And it was placed over the olives
and the olives were in a receptacle that held them. And the weight
of this huge stone bore down on those olives and crushed them. and out of those crushed olives
flowed the juice of those olives which, when separated with a
little bit of time, produced the olive oil. It's a remarkable
picture of what happened to our Lord Jesus. He came to this garden. In a garden, Adam and Eve lost
paradise. In another garden, in this olive
press, our Lord Himself was crushed. Adam and Eve plunged all of us into a place of cursing. They said, My will, not yours,
be done. And paradise became a desert. The Lord Jesus prayed, Your will,
not mine, be done. And Gethsemane became the gateway
to heaven again. He came to this place. It was
a place where He again shows His absolute sovereignty. In
John 18.2, Judas knew the place. He went to this place, this place
of betrayal, this place of anguish, this place of crushing. He went there willingly, voluntarily,
and with full knowledge. He is Gethsemane's sovereign. And it was a place he went to
often. And how many times must he have
contemplated and prayed and taught in this garden, contemplating
what was going to happen to him this very evening and the next
morning. He says to his apostles, to eight
of them, sit here while I pray." And he takes the three, Peter,
James and John, with him. And he took them a little further
away. Because out of the mouths of
two to three witnesses shall the matter be established. These
three witnesses were the ones that had seen His amazing majesty
on that mountain. They saw Jesus as He really is,
as transcendent, majestic as God. And now these same three
men see Him in the deepest agony of His soul. And again, we need
to be reminded that in our Lord Jesus, there is both absolute
divinity and absolute humanity. And it's a natural desire of
men to have friends around in a time of great distress. Let's read about the soul anguish
of the Lord Jesus. He began to be troubled and deeply
distressed. And he said to them, my soul
is exceedingly sorrowful even to death. The word trouble implies
something that is beyond the natural troubling of a man's
soul. He was deeply distressed. The
words imply that what came upon him at this time was such a fright,
such a shock, that in our modern understandings we talk about
people's hair standing on end. This whole event came upon him
with suddenness, came upon him with trembling and horror. Luke describes it as agony, a
sudden agony came upon the Lord Jesus. And he said, my soul,
my soul is exceedingly sorrowful. My soul is grieved all around. My soul is encompassed with grief. So heavy was the weight of this
distress upon the Lord Jesus, that he really feared that he
might die, even to death. And he goes a little further,
and he fell on the ground. His physical pain and his physical
position was a reflection of what was happening to his soul. He fell on the ground in pain,
in anguish, as he was crushed in this olive press. And he prayed
Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from
me. Nevertheless, not I will, but
you will, but what you will." This soul anguish had come upon
him with an enormous weight of severity. This hour that he came
into this world for was now crushing down upon God incarnate. As I said earlier, I don't know
that except by God the Spirit moving our hearts can we understand
what's going on here. For the Lord Jesus to feel the
weight of this cup. The cup in the scriptures in
many, many places refers to the cup of God's holy, righteous
wrath against sin. Awake! Awake! Stand up, O Jerusalem! You who
have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury, you
have drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling, and drained it
out. You can read more about it in
Psalm 75.8. Jeremiah and Ezekiel have extended
passages in Jeremiah 25.15-38 and Ezekiel 23. The cup is God's
holy righteous wrath, His furious wrath against sin. As J.C. Ryle says, it was the
sense of the unutterable weight of our sins and transgressions
which was then specially laid on him. He says, Thy rebuke,
your reproach, has broken my heart. And as Luke says to us,
the Holy Spirit says that his sweat became like great drops
of blood falling to the ground. His heart was crushed within
him. On a night that was so cold that
the men in Kayatha's palace had to light fires to keep themselves
warm. Such is the weight of the pain
of the Lord Jesus, that he was sweating, and such was the weight
of that upon his heart, that he was sweating great drops of
blood. You have some articles about
it in your bulletin. I just thought I might read the
one from Charles Spurgeon. Being in agony, he prayed more
earnestly, and his sweat were as it were great drops of blood
falling to the ground. See the excellence and the completeness
of the Atonement of Christ. how black I am, how filthy, how
loathsome in the sight of God. I feel myself only fit to be
cast into the lowest hell, and I wonder that God has not long
ago cast me there. But I go to Gethsemane, I peer
under those gnarled olive trees, and I see my Saviour. Yes, I
see him wallowing on the ground in anguish, and here such groans
come from him as never came from human breasts before. I look
to the ground, look upon the ground and see it red with his
blood, while his face is smeared with gory sweat. and I say to
myself, my God, my Saviour, why do you suffer so? I hear him
reply, I am suffering for your sin. Now I can understand how
Jehovah can spare me, because he smote his son in my stead. sinner as I am, I stand before
the burning throne of the severity of God, and I am not afraid of
it. Can you scorch me, O consuming
fire, when you have not only scorched but utterly consumed
my substitute? All hell was distilled into that
cup of which Jesus Christ was made to drink. The woe that broke
over the Saviour's spirit, the great and fathomless ocean of
inexpressible anguish which dashed over the Saviour's soul when
He died, was inconceivable. Our Lord's main suffering lay
in His soul. His soul sufferings were the
soul of His sufferings. His position as a sin-bearer
and the desertion by his father engrossed his contemplations.
The bloody sweat of Jesus came from an utter faintness and prostration
of souls. He was in an awful soul-swoon
and suffered inward death, whose accompaniment was not watery
tears from the eyes, but a weeping of blood from the entire man. He could say with David, the
pains of hell got hold upon me. All God's waves and billows went
over him. Above him, beneath him, around
him and within, all was anguish. The great message of this book
is the message of substitution. The great message of substitution
is the Lord Jesus suffering what we have earned for ourselves. Our sin did this to the Lord
Jesus. My sin, your sin, did this to
Jesus. And unless Jesus had suffered
this for us, we must have suffered this for eternity. That is the reality of the Gospel. We treat our sins as light things. We call them mistakes, slip-ups,
as someone told us a couple of years ago. The occasional slip-up
was what he described the sin in his life. Occasional slip-ups
do not do this to the Son of God. They're not occasional slip-ups. They're huge, monstrous sins
against the holy, holy God. If you want to see sin in its
true light, says our friend Mr. Hawker, this is the mirror. If you want to see what your
sin is like, you need to be in the garden with the Lord Jesus
on that night. Isaiah 53 describes what happened. Surely He has borne our griefs,
and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten
by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions,
and He was bruised. The Hebrew word means crushed. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. So the Lord Jesus
in the garden suffered the soul anguish. On the cross He again
suffered soul anguish. But in the garden, he had an
angel come and minister to him. In the garden, according to Hebrews
5, he had his prayers heard from heaven. On the cross, God forsook
him. In the garden he offered up prayers
and supplications with vehement cries and tears to Him who was
able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his
godly fear. That doesn't lessen the anguish
that the Lord Jesus was suffering. It just heightens it that God
heard him. angels ministered to him, and
yet so heavy was the weight, so awful was the wrath of God
against sin, so awful was the curse that he had to be, that
the Lord Jesus was crushed under the weight of it like those olives,
and blood was forced out of him, out of the paws of his body by
the weight of the wrath of God against the sin. He says that the cup cannot be
taken away in Matthew's account unless he drinks it. His agonies
in Gethsemane are the beginning of that drinking, and His triumph
in Gethsemane is the strength which He has and uses to endure
the next maybe 15 hours before He dies. See, our Lord shows
us again that if we're going to have peace in this world,
we're going to survive the trials of this world, we say, as he
does, not what I will, but what you will. Three times he prayed it, not
what I will, but what you will. He's a great example. of God's
children, just trusting their Heavenly Father. If He is your
Heavenly Father, He will do you no harm, and waiting for His
will to be done will do you enormous good. We bear, to the extent
that He gives us grace, we bear what He sends to us. And we desire
what His purposes are. And if His will is pain for us,
we wait for Him to bring the healing. Because He is the God
of comfort. He knows how much pain we can
cope with. He knows why. and He wants us
to trust Him and not trust ourselves. And again we are reminded as
we saw last week that salvation is God's work. Salvation is His
and His alone. These boastful apostles just
minutes before were boasting about how they would die for
him. Just look at the things he asks them to do. Stay and
watch. Stay and watch. Watch and pray,
verse 38, lest you enter into temptation. It's all he asks
of them. These men who said they would
die for him, they see him in his agony. They see him groaning
and they see the blood. They are asked to do the simplest
things and they cannot do them. It's a great picture of how weak and fickle We are at our best,
the best of God's saints. We sleep when we should watch
and pray. And here these apostles missed
out on communion with the Lord Jesus in His hour of greatest
human need. As we read in Isaiah, last week. He treads the winepress alone,
and there was no one, no one to help. I have trodden the winepress
alone, and from the peoples no one was with me. It's just a reminder that our
salvation is so perfectly and purely His work. He's the one who goes and bears
the wrath of God. He's the one who goes and bears
this pain all on His own. and what a wonderful thing it
is for us that it is all His work and His alone. He found them asleep again, verse
40, and they didn't know what to answer Him. They were as lost
for words in His deepest distress as they were when they saw Him
in His greatest glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. And
just like Abraham was put into a deep sleep in Genesis 15, and
the covenant was cut, those animals were slaughtered and cut in half. And God cut the covenant. God made the covenant. And Abraham, like God's children
today, is just the beneficiary of grace. He's not someone who's
earned a reward. He was asleep. These men were
asleep. We were dead in our transgressions
and sins, but God made us alive. He came a third time. Are you
still sleeping and resting? As he wrestles with his soul
anguish, they are resting and sleeping. The other great word
in the scriptures, isn't it? There are two great words of
the Gospel. One is substitution and the other
one is satisfaction. And for some reason, that the
Holy Spirit doesn't tell us. For some reason He utters words
in the garden which are similar to the words on the cross. It
is enough. For this time, for this moment,
He has suffered enough. His soul is troubled enough. The hour has come. His obedience is enough for our
salvation. His bloodshed is enough for us. His grace is enough. And He is enough. God cannot, God cannot in justice
and holiness punish us and punish His Son for our sins. It's a great comfort to us that
the Lord Jesus bore that anguish of soul, bore the weight of that,
was crushed, but comes and says to us, it
is enough. There is now no condemnation. There is now no accusation. There is now no separation. God and his people in Christ
Jesus are one. You see, God's children suffered
with him. in His work of grace in the lives
of His people, He comes to us and we are crushed. We meet with
His holiness. We meet with His sovereignty. We meet with His glory. And like Paul on the road to
Damascus, we are thrown off our proud horses. and we are left
in the dust, crushed and wounded and needing to be led, needing
to be led to the Gospel, to be saved. God's children are wounded
children like their Saviour is wounded, but God's children are
restored by the Gospel, as our Saviour was restored by His resurrection. You see, that cup that Jerusalem
was to drink to the dregs, that cup that everyone outside of
the Lord Jesus will drink forever, That cup was drunk by our Saviour,
and there is not a drop of wrath left in it. Isaiah 51, 22 says,
Thus says your Lord, Thee, Lord, and your God. who pleads the cause of his people. See, I have taken out of your
hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of my fury,
and you shall no longer drink it." God's children drink at
another fountain. a fountain of life, a fountain
of grace, a fountain of mercy, but a fountain that was drawn
from Immanuel's side as he was wounded, that fountain filled
with blood, that fountain that's opened for us. He was crushed
so that we will never be crushed. He was deeply distressed that
when we meet God we won't be deeply distressed. He was exceedingly
sorrowful so that we will never be exceedingly sorrowful. And
he does it all on his own. And he does it all for the love
of his bride. and he does it all for the glory
of his father's holiness, the honor of his father's law, and
for the glory of his name.