if you would open your Bibles
to Mark chapter 14. And we're going to begin reading
at verse 32, Mark chapter 14, beginning at verse 32 and through
the remainder of the chapter. They went to a place called Gethsemane,
and Jesus said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. He took Peter, James, and John
along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow
to the point of death, he said to them. Stay here and keep watch. Going a little farther, he fell
to the ground. And he prayed that if possible,
the hour might pass from him. Abba, Father, he said, everything
is possible for you. Take this cup from me, yet not
what I will but what you will. Then he returned to his disciples
and found them sleeping. Simon, he said to Peter, are
you asleep? Could you not keep watch for
one hour? Watch and pray so that you will
not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing. but the
body is weak." Once more, he went away and prayed
the same thing. When he came back, he again found
them sleeping because their eyes were heavy. They did not know
what to say to him. Returning the third time, he
said to them, are you still sleeping and resting? Enough. The hour
has come. Look, the son of man is betrayed
into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go. Here comes my betrayer. Now the expectations that the
Jews had regarding Messiah were mostly political. They expected that Messiah would
restore Israel to a position of prominence among the nations and give that nation a glorious
place among the nations of the world, even a royal place among
them. But the Lord had told them very
plainly, several times, of what lay ahead of him. Just holding your place here
in Mark, look at Luke chapter 9. Now this, what we're reading
here in Luke chapter 9, it's found in all three of what are
called the Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic means to see together.
And Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record, for the most part, the
same events of our Lord's life. Each one maybe having different
details. Nonetheless, they were the same
events. And we have this situation where the Lord is speaking with
His disciples, and He says, whom do people say that I am? And
then He says, who do you say that I am? And Peter made that
answer, you are the Christ of God. You are the Messiah. And so in verse 21, right on
the heels of this confession made by Peter, And in another
place, the Lord told Peter, flesh and blood didn't reveal that
to you. And what he's saying, Peter, you didn't figure that
out on your own. And nobody would have considered
Jesus to be the Messiah simply by their own perceptions. Christ is not figured out. Christ must be revealed. And so upon this revelation of
who the Lord Jesus Christ is, the Lord, it says in verse 21,
Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. That may seem strange. Why wouldn't
the Lord want them to know? It wasn't time. It wasn't time. And probably if it were widely
declared that he is the Messiah, the people would have taken it
up wrong. And in fact, in one place they did try to come and
by, or they came and tried to take him by force to make him
king. And so if it had been, if he
had, you know, widely published that he was the Messiah, before
all his work was completed, they would have misunderstood what
he meant by that, and may have indeed risen up
in some kind of rebellion against Rome, and brought nothing but
disaster on themselves. Verse 22, and he said, The son
of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders,
chief priests, and teachers of the law, and he must be killed,
and on the third day be raised to life. Now that's pretty plain,
isn't it? Pretty plain. It would seem there would be
no way that they could miss that. But they did. They did. I believe in one of the other
accounts of it, it says once he said that, you know, they
began to be sorrowful, you know, and they couldn't understand
it. But then they later also said, is this when you're going
to restore the kingdom to Israel? They did not understand. what
Messiah, what Christ, would do. Even though they had been taught
personally by Him, they were still, as it were, chained to
those old, how would you put it, the teachings of the rabbis
and such concerning what Messiah would be. And so even though the Lord had
said to them in plain words, you couldn't make it plainer,
he was not going to be generally received. He's going to be rejected
by everybody that was anybody within the Jewish religion. Not
only that, they would kill him. But on the third day, he would
rise again. He told them of the stress that
the prospect of his suffering brought on him. Look over at
John chapter 9, verse 20. Well, I've done this once again. You're all probably getting used
to it by now. I think I might know where it
is. It's not there at John 9 20,
by the way. No. Well, at least you got some
practice finding a verse. But our Lord spoke of how difficult and how distressed
he was over what lay ahead of him. And there's one more place I'm
going to try. Nope, that won't be it. But he said, that he was, in one place he says, I have
a baptism with which I must be baptized. And how much I am bound
up inside of me and distressed until I get it done. Until I
get it done. In another place he says, shall
I pray? Father, deliver me from this
hour? No, it was for this very hour. or for this very purpose
that I came to this hour. But what honor is heaped upon
the Savior that what all the world would view as humiliation,
He accounted to be an honor. He said that He would do what
He was sent to do. And then he said, Father, glorify
your name, and to glorify his name, that is his own name. And the Father said he would. He said, I have glorified it,
and I'll glorify it again. But that our Lord Jesus Christ
would looking ahead to the horrible suffering that he was going to
go through. Suffering you and I can't even
begin to understand. He says, this is why I came. And then his first thought was
that the Father be glorified in it. Would that we had the same attitude
that as we come into times of trouble, we see ahead of us that
which is going to be very distressing and sorrowful. That we could say with the same
heart as our Lord did, Father, glorify yourself. Glorify yourself. What honor should we heap upon
our Savior that as awful as He knew the next day would be, He
doesn't turn back from it, but says that it was the very reason
He came to this hour. Now, our Lord is a mystery to
us. He is God and He is man. He's not part God and part man.
He's God manifest in the flesh. And Paul said this, great is
the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.
And in so doing, Paul was saying, you're not going to understand
this. It's a mystery. It's beyond comprehension. But
we do know this. whether or not we can fit it
into our conception of how God could ever do this, he lived
his life under all the restrictions of humanity. He was tried in
every point, just like you and I are, yet without sin. And as he approached this, He
did not say to himself, well, it's not going to be easy, but
you know, you can put up with anything for three days. I do not believe that our Lord
was distressed because of a crucifixion. That would have been plenty to
be distressed about. That may have been part and parcel
of it. Nonetheless, lots of people were
crucified, and they did not express such
sorrow as we will see our Lord expressing here in a little bit,
such distress of soul. But our Lord says that his suffering
was the very reason he came, and that the purpose of his coming
here could not be accomplished apart from the suffering he would
undergo. Now, if the disciples could be
told so plainly what was going to happen, yet still not understand
and even be surprised when they see what actually does happen,
and be put in complete disarray when the very things the Lord
said would happen come to pass. If they could be so confused
about it, is it not probable that we do
not understand the true import of the things that the Lord has
said will come to pass between His first coming and His second
coming? It's remarkable how insistent
people are in their views of prophecy. And you've got your amillennialists,
premillennialists, postmillennialists, and subdivisions among all of
them. And I mean they can get heated
about it. They will separate from one another about it. But
our Lord gave these disciples a very clear prophecy. The Son of Man is going to suffer at the hands
of the leadership. They will kill Him. And on the
third day, He will rise again. And they missed it completely.
So much so that when it happened exactly as He said it would happen,
they were utterly shocked by it. When He was arrested, all His
disciples forsook Him and fled. We do not read that any of His
disciples asked the Lord's body that they might bury Him. They
had abandoned Him. And come the third day, you think
if they would have remembered what the Lord said and been strong
in the faith, They would have said, well, here's the day He
said He's going to raise from the dead, we better get out there
at that tomb, and let's just stand there and wait for Him
to come out. None of them. Not even the women. Scripture doesn't say whether
they had ever been told this aspect of it, but they went to
the tomb that Sunday morning, fully expecting to find His dead
body there. Now, if they can be so wrong
about that, maybe we should realize we're
not going to fully understand, not only what the situation will
be like when our Lord returns, even the things that He said
would go on, we're just going to have a vague notion of it. Therefore, we should never fight
over it. Even after the resurrection,
He had to explain it all to them. Look over at Luke 24. God admit, I'm getting scared
to tell you all to turn to a verse of Scripture anymore. Kind of
embarrassing to tell you. Well, turn to Luke 24. And then what I wanted is not there. Okay. Verse 25 of Luke 24. They had just told, they didn't
know that this was the Lord Jesus walking with them. He had hidden
His identity from them. And He had asked them why they
looked so downcast, and they kind of related the events of
the last few days. And he says in verse 25, how
foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that
the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ, the Messiah,
have to suffer these things and then enter His glory? Not only had He said that, all
the prophets, that's what they had said. Well, if they are so foolish
and slow of heart to believe, let's not be surprised that we're
much the same way. As the Lord came to the final
hours of his natural life, he went to a place called Gethsemane,
which I understand means the olive press. Indeed, he went
to a place, Mount of Olives, a place where there were a lot
of olive trees. And this was evidently a place where he had
often gone for prayer. And all of them followed him
to that garden. But then he chose three of the
men to go further into the garden with him. And once he had gone
a little farther with them, he said, now you stay here while
I go and pray over there. Now, I've called this message
the inner sanctum. And the reason is, is I believe
that this time spent in the Garden of Gethsemane As we are made
privy to communication between our Lord Jesus and His Heavenly
Father, we find out more about who He is than we can find out
anywhere else. This is not a theology lesson. despise theology, doctrine. I enjoy doing it. I think about
things. I try to, you know, kind of organize
the belief, the doctrines of the scriptures and all of that.
But I'm realizing more and more if we want to know God, we're not going to come to know
him. simply by accumulating a mass of Orthodox theology. If you
want to know God, learn Christ. If you want to find out what
God is like, discover what Christ is like. And if you want to learn Christ,
that which is most notable about him. And we should. Paul says
that I may know Christ. Well, he already knew a lot about
him. But you know, knowing about a
person and knowing a person are two different things. And in that kind of knowledge,
the knowledge of one person of another person, it grows over
time. Our Lord said, take my yoke upon
you and learn of me. And essentially, He's saying
like this, if you want to come to know me, walk like I walk. A yoke binds two animals together. And if we want to learn Christ,
We look at the things that He did and we can look at any of
the recorded things that He did and learn something about Him.
But if you want to find out what true godliness is, if you
want to find out what the spiritual life is, you'll find no better
lesson than the lesson that is taught here in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Because here all things come
together to put to test those virtues or characteristics
of what it means to believe God, what it means to love God, what
it means to submit to God. All of it's right here. If you want to know Christ, you
will not find a better lesson about Him than what is revealed. And I'm glad that God inspired
the apostles to write this stuff down. Because you know, none
of these men were with the Lord as He prayed. Remember, the disciples
had already been whittled down to 11, because Judas left. So
he goes to Gethsemane with 11 disciples, and then he tells
eight of them, you stay here. And he takes three more a little
farther, and then he says, you sit here, and I'm going to go
over yonder and pray. Not only this, they fell asleep
while he was praying. So anything they tell us about
this interaction between the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father
had to be revealed to them by the Spirit of God. Unless the
Lord Jesus Himself told them in that time between His resurrection
and His ascension. But they had to be told about
it. But so important a matter was it that all three of the
Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, the Synoptic Gospels, all
three of them recorded this event. At this most critical hour of
our Lord's life, He went to His Father in prayer. I am so embarrassed of myself
when I think about my prayer life. I'm embarrassed to think that
most of the time when I am confronted with a problem, a sticky problem,
one that I can't figure out, I'm going to be honest with you,
I don't even think to pray about it. Usually I don't. I let it sit there and fester
in my mind until it bothers me to no end, because I can't come
to a conclusion. I read of others. Well, I read
of our Lord and say, He'd pray all night. If I can engage in five minutes
of private prayer, That's something. Most of my
praying, believe it or not, and I'm not saying this is evil or
anything, it's, well, our Lord explains why, even here as He
goes to these disciples and they're asleep and He gives them a mild
rebuke about sleeping, couldn't you stay awake and pray with
me even for one hour? And then He said, well, the Spirit's
willing, the flesh is weak. Well, I'd like to pray, Like
I've heard of some people praying. But my mind won't stay on anything
for more than five minutes. It takes work to get it to focus
on something for that long. But our Lord was being confronted
with indescribable suffering. And what does He do? Does he
begin to devise a means by which he might escape it? Does he sit there and go through
some affirmations that someone has written up that supposedly will give him
some comfort? Like, you know, when the devil
shows you how big your problems are, or tells you how big your
problems are, tell Him how big your God is. That wasn't going
to work for the Lord, because it was His God that was going
to be doing the things that He was horrified to think about. As He said, shall I say, Father
save me from this hour? He didn't even have that avenue
open to Him. When I say it wasn't open to
him, it wasn't open to him if he was going to fulfill the work
that was given him to do. He did say to Peter, after Peter
tried to split open the head of one of those that tried to
arrest the Lord, he said, put your sword away. Don't you realize
that if I wanted to, I could call on my father and he'd send
six legions of angels. Now, he could have. Theoretically,
he could have. But if he had done that, what
would have happened? Nothing, so far as the salvation
of God's people is concerned. Nothing, so far as the rescue
of his bride was concerned. He could have said that, and
we couldn't have blamed him if he did say that. and just go
back to heaven, glorified as the perfect man, God in human
flesh, and live out eternity, as it were, in perfection and
joy. We could not have found fault
with the Savior had He done that. But it would have left you and
me without hope, without God, without Christ in this world. Rather than seeking an escape,
He went to His Father. And what does this say about
our Lord and His Father? He trusted His Father completely. He will submit His request to
no one else. He'll seek help from no one else. He will take from His Father's
hand whatever the Father deems to give Him. You know, our Lord said, except
ye be converted and become his children, you will in no wise
enter the kingdom of God. And here we find the king of
that kingdom expressing the character of a child who completely trusts
his father. Is our Lord not an example to
us in everything? He's an example to us of faith.
You say, my faith is weak. It probably is. His wasn't. Aren't you glad? Aren't you glad? I know the Scriptures say we
are justified by faith, but some take that up as demeaning, that
it's actually our faith that justifies us, our faith that
is actually the power that saves us. Well, I cannot by faith get myself
one foot off the ground. I don't think my faith will get
me to heaven. But I'll tell you whose faith will. The faith of
our Lord Jesus Christ. It will. You say, well, the Lord,
He wasn't a believer. Yes, He was. The book of Hebrews
puts this Old Testament quotation into the mouth of the Lord. I
will put my trust in Him. You say, that doesn't make any
sense. It doesn't have to. As I said, our Lord's a mystery. And just be willing to accept.
Say, how can God have faith? Because faith is for those who
do not see. And certainly, He saw. He didn't
see any more than you and I see. He believed what His Father told
Him. And that's what you and I do.
It's just He does it perfectly. We don't. He went to His Father. But here we're made privy to
this scene. We're allowed to see our Lord
Jesus in the most intimate relationship with His Father. Oh, His prayer was worded this way,
Abba, Father. We know that Abba, it's an Aramaic
word. Aramaic was a whole lot like
Hebrew, but not exactly like Hebrew. And evidently, if I understand
things correctly, in Israel at that time, Aramaic was the dominant
language, not Hebrew. Everybody knew Hebrew because
they had to learn it, you know, as they were being taught the
scriptures, because the scriptures were written in Hebrew. But Aramaic
is what most of them knew. And the reason for that is Aramaic
was what was spoken when they were in the captivity. and they just kept speaking it.
But that word, Abba, now since he says, Abba, Father, we realize that Abba does not
mean simply Father. Now that's the core of its meaning.
But you know, words have meanings and they have connotations. And
the closest that we can come to in English to gain the meaning
of that word would be dad or even daddy. Because it does not merely...
You can call a person a father simply because he happens to
be the male involved in you coming into existence. There is such
thing as good and bad fathers. And unfortunately, there are
many who've been raised by fathers who, well, they're unworthy. They're unworthy of the title
of dad or daddy. because they did not have love
and care towards their children. Their children could not look
to them with this complete trust and affection. But our Lord, when He called
on Father, remember He told us to pray, Our Father, who art
in heaven, and here He shows us What kind of father this is,
Abba. And it shows us that we can relate
to Him with all the confidence and trust that a young child
can have towards a loving father. In fact, Paul wrote that we've been given the spirit
of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Lord says, I go to my Father
and your Father. And in the sense our Lord was
speaking of the fatherhood of God at that point, hang on to
your seats, but this is hard to believe. He is as much our
Father as He is Father to our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sense
in which our Lord was using the word at that point. we may look to the Heavenly Father
with all the affection and trust, the childlike simplicity of faith
that our Lord looked to the Father with. Now in verse 34, we're back in
Mark 14. He begins to speak of his deep
distress. He says to those three disciples,
my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. He said
to them, stay here and keep watch. The Lord's life as a human was
very real. He did not live above the experiences
of humanity. He did not see death, real death. any differently than you and
I do. The events of this day were not
any easier for Him than they would have been for anyone else. And we cannot know, and I think
that we'll never fully know, the heavy weight of soul suffering
that our Lord was enduring at this moment. I have had some
sorrows, but I must confess, with Mark
Twain, who said something to the effect, he said, I have worried about many things,
a few of which actually happened. Oh, we're sorrowful. There's
some things legitimate to be sorrowful about. Ecclesiastes
says there's a time to laugh, but there's a time to cry too.
When it's time to cry, we shouldn't act like it's the un-Christian
thing to do to cry. That we should be so much in
submission to what the Lord has willed that we don't even feel
the sorrow of it. Brethren, it's not a trial if
it doesn't hurt. It's not. But I've had some sorrows, some
serious ones. Most of mine, that is the That
kind of soul-crushing sorrow is not about things in this world.
It all goes on in my head, but that doesn't mean it's not real
sorrow. It feels like the bona fide thing. I've been sorrowful
enough to think that life really wasn't
worth living if this is the way it's going to be. But I have never had sorrow like
our Lord was experiencing right here. I've never been so sorrowful. I've been sorrowful enough to
wish I'd die. But I never was sorrowful enough
to think that my sorrow itself was going to bring me to death.
Our Lord said, I am so burdened and in such great distress, it
might kill me. His great distress is revealed
in the way that He prayed. It is written that He went a
little farther away from those three disciples, and He fell
on the ground with His face to the ground. I don't know whether people draw
these pictures or paint these pictures of Christ, and I think
you all didn't read your Bible well. And there's one, you know,
of Jesus, and it's called Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane,
and there he is in his nice robe, and he's knelt down next to a
rock, and there's a light shining on him from heaven, you know,
and he's got a halo on his head, his face is clean. He was face down in the dirt. He could not so much as stand. Have you ever prayed like that? To be honest with you, I can
only think of one time that my prayer and the posture of my
prayer was not driven by me thinking about how I ought to do it. Our Lord, I don't think he said,
well, to make my point, maybe I ought to grovel in the dirt. No, that was just, that's how
he felt. I am in the dust. I'm as low
as a person can get. And yet, face down, falling to
the ground, face down, he prays, Abba, Father. Furthermore, the great distress
that he was under as he prayed is revealed when it is written
that he sweat, as it were, great drops of blood. there is a medical condition
known as hematidrosis in which when a person is under such stress
that the capillaries around the sweat glands break. And you know when you're under
stress, you're sweating, and the blood mixes with the sweat. I don't know if that's what the
Lord suffered. I've read things where medical professionals try to
describe in medical terms what our Lord experienced. It's plausible
that that's what our Lord experienced. It certainly makes sense. If
anybody ever had a right or a good cause to experience that particular
problem, it was our Lord. I've never had anything that
would have come close to that. For all my fears, both real and
imagined, I have never been in a condition that would even come close to
describing this. Now, why am I pointing out all
of this? Well, what was our Lord's Prayer? Abba, Father, all things
are possible with you. If we would just remember that
about our Heavenly Father. There's nothing he can't do.
There are things he won't do because they're against his character.
There are things he won't do for us because as good as we
might think they are, They wouldn't be good for us. But there is nothing that our
Heavenly Father can't do. And our Lord said, all things
are possible to you. If there's a way for this cup
to pass from me, accept that I drink it. Is there another way this can
be done? And the cup that he was talking
about was a cup of divine wrath. He said, is there another way
that this can be accomplished without me drinking this cup?
And then he said this, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be
done. And never was there a clearer
picture of the character of our Lord Jesus Christ than when He
said, not my will, but your will be done. You say, I want to be
like Jesus. Are you ready for that? Can you say in all things, Father,
now here's what I want. My child is sick. It's bad. Doctors don't hold out any hope.
You can do anything. You can spare them. But not what I want. You do what
you want. Lord, I'm sick. The doctor's given me about a
month to live. I'll be honest, Lord, I'm not
really ready to go. I expected more life. I don't want to leave
my wife and my children right now. However, you do what you think's right
and best, not what I think is good. Oh, the submission of our Lord.
He made Himself of no reputation, took upon Himself the likeness
of a servant, and being found in the likeness of sinful flesh,
He submitted Himself to death, even the death of the cross.
Do you want to be like Christ? Learn submission. I'll take that as an amen. Learn submission. Well, I didn't know that, but
that was what it was going to be about. That's what being like
Christ is about. Submission. And here's the thing. He prayed
this three times. Let that serve to us as an example. It's okay to pray for the same
thing over and over again. So long as it's a burden on your
heart, bring that burden to the Lord, to the Heavenly Father,
and lay it before Him. And if the next day it's a burden
again, lay it before Him again. Keep laying it before Him until
He answers you and you're reconciled to the answer. And our Lord became
reconciled to the answer. He prayed three times and evidently
the answer of the Father was, nope, the only way for this cup
of wrath to pass is for you to drink it. And it's interesting. Our Lord got up. He went to His
disciples and He says, the hour is at hand. The one who betrays
Me is near. And you look through the rest
of that night and day and on into the crucifixion, our Lord
did not spiritually buckle. Yes, He fell under the weight
of the cross, but that's because of all that He had already endured
in the beating of His flesh, probably lost so much blood already,
He didn't have it within His body to carry that. But He never
refused, He never turned His face away from those that smite
Him. He did not offer a defense of
Himself. He resolutely walked the path
that His Father laid out for Him. What should we do in response
to that? The first thing is this. Worship Him. Well, we honor people, and people
are, you know, within just the narrow context of human endeavor,
there's people worthy of honor. But none are worthy of honor
like our Lord. He looked into the very face
of hell and said, if that's where I must go, Father, I will go. It says that in heaven they worship
him. Worthy is the lamb that was slain
to receive honor. Power, riches, strength, glory,
blessing, everything. The standard Greek word for worship, proskaino, I think it's pronounced. It's a mixture of the word toward
and the word dog. And the way that dogs will often,
you know, they get down in the front, you know, their backside
still stuck up in the air, but when they come up to their master
they'll get down like that. They even do that within the
pack when the alpha male is around. Oh, that we would learn to bow
like that, be like a submissive dog in the presence of its master. And who's our master? The Lord
Jesus Christ. We worship Him. Secondly, what
else should we do? Trust Him. If He could trust
His Father when there was so much at stake, and I say at stake,
He was trusting His Father even though His Father was going to
send Him into wrath. We trust Him to not send us into
wrath. And if our Lord can trust His
Father, even if His Father points out a path that passes through
divine wrath, how much more should we be able to trust our Father
who has said, you have not been appointed to suffer wrath? Say,
yes, but it looks like I can lose everything. Okay, lose it. Do you think your Father doesn't
know? Do you think your Father doesn't care? Trust Him. You may not understand
what He's doing, but He does. Trust Him. Thirdly, follow Him. And this is very similar to simply
trusting Him. Follow Him. Set your face so resolutely toward
the Father and toward Christ himself and all those
things which are in Christ, that nothing in heaven, earth, or
hell, or the collection of all those things in heaven, earth,
or hell, will stop you from pursuing Christ. You and I as Americans, we've
not lost much anything following after Christ, have we? If we
told people we were Christians, there's a good many people would
pat us on the back. Well, good for you. Of course,
once we tell them what we believe, they may not be so interested
in patting us on the back. But brethren, you think of it. If our Lord could trust His Father,
He could follow His Father's will, then we can follow Him
anywhere. He is the shepherd, we are the
sheep, and He's the good shepherd who lays down His life for the
sheep, and you can be sure He will never lead us anywhere that
will prove to us to be in eternal danger. As our brother read from
Romans 8, God works all things together for the good of Him
that loves Him, for them who are called according to His purpose. God will lead his people into
some terrifying places. But we don't have to be afraid. Why? Because our Father is with
us. Our Savior is with us.