Gethsemane: The Greatest Display of Courage in History (Mark Sermon 80)

One sacred day, God spoke to Moses from the flames of the burning bush. “Take off your shoes, for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” What does this mean? Since God is everywhere, all at once, holy ground means that God was about to be uniquely revealed, revealed in an extraordinary way, and Moses’s knowledge of God was going to be greatly increased by this encounter. “Draw near to listen. Draw near to fall on the ground in fear and wonder in worship and adoration.” If that’s true at the burning bush, then how much more true is it when we come to Gethsemane?

Gethsemane is the greatest display of the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ in the Bible. It contains almost incomprehensible mysteries, but also tremendous opportunities to ponder the excellencies of Christ, His glories, the perfection of His character, His courage, His obedience, His trust in His father, His willingness to suffer for us, His love for us, His reversal of the disobedience of Adam, also His frailty and His weakness, His mortality, His emotions. All of this is on display.

We will spend eternity in heaven, I believe, pondering these themes and others that flow through this account. This morning, we’re going to spend just a little while on them. My desire, my goals with this sermon is first and foremost to exalt Jesus Christ our Savior, based on the words of this account, that we may worship Him with all of our hearts for what He did for us at the cross. Secondly, that we would understand more accurately the humanity of Jesus, His emotions, His submission, His mortality and frailty, His temptations, and yet His sinlessness. Thirdly, that we would understand the power of prayer in facing temptations, in strengthening us to do the will of our Father. Fourthly, to motivate us to trust in Christ’s finished work on the cross, more than ever before. Fifthly, to help us understand the proper use of our own will, that we would learn to imitate Jesus Christ every day in saying, “Not my will, but yours be done,” no matter what the cost. And sixth, to feel intensely personally, if you are a Christian, to feel intensely personally Christ’s love for you. For you.

In Galatians 2:20, Paul gives us permission to do this, to say, “Christ loved me and died for me. He gave Himself for me.” It is right for us as Christians to say both Christ loved me and gave Himself for me, and Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, that multitude greater than anyone could count, from every tribe, language, people, and nation.[Revelation 7]. But in Galatians 2:20, “Jesus loved me and He drank my cup for me.”

Here we’re going to walk through all of these themes, and I don’t know what the Holy Spirit’s going to do in your heart as we walk through, probably a little different than He’ll do in mine. But if those things will be achieved in you, then I will have preached for the glory of God in Christ. Let’s walk first through the facts of Gethsemane.

I. The Facts of Gethsemane

All His life, Jesus lived under the shadow of the cross. B.B. Warfield, the great Presbyterian theologian, said the prospect of His suffering was a perpetual Gethsemane to Him. He said, in Luke 12:50, “I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed” or straitened, like in a straitjacket, “I am until it is completed.” There is clear evidence in the Gospel. This is very important for us to understand. Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen to Him. In Mark 9:31, Jesus said, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and after three days, He will rise.” There’s no doubt about this at all. He said it again and again. As Jesus comes to Gethsemane on that faithful night, the time had come for Him to face the cross straight on, and make a final decision about what He was going to do. The Lord’s supper is over. They have finished the Passover meal. They have sung a hymn. They’ve crossed the Kidron Valley into the garden of Gethsemane. Verse 32, “They went to a place called Gethsemane.” What is Gethsemane? It was a private garden on the Mount of Olives, probably walled off, owned by some rich friend of Jesus, who allowed Jesus and His disciples to frequent the place. It was outside of Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley from the city, away from the maddening crowd of millions of pilgrims that had come from all over the settled world for the Passover feast.

The word Gethsemane itself means “oil press”, probably included a physical press for making olive oil from the harvest of olives on the mount, and the crushing of those olives produced a reddish, viscous, precious fluid, olive oil, to flow into containers for sale or for use. But this also could stand somewhat of a spiritual metaphor for the crushing pressure, spiritual pressure, that Jesus would experience there, so intense that by the end of the time there, His blood was flowing like sweat, like great drops of blood dropping from His face.

Why did Jesus go to Gethsemane? It was a place, a regular place of retirement and prayer, a refuge for Him and His disciples. It was commonly used by Jesus and His disciples. Therefore Judas, who had left by then to betray Him that very night, would know exactly where Jesus was going that night. It was His habit to go there. He made it His habit, because in part He wanted to make it easy for Judas to find Him that night and betray Him. This is evidence, clear evidence of His willingness to lay down His life for us. He was never a victim trapped by external circumstances He didn’t foresee or couldn’t control. It’s not the case. John 10:18, Jesus said, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down freely of my own accord.” It’s vital to understand that.

Jesus comes to Gethsemane for all those reasons, and He gives a command to His disciples, and He separates away from them. Look at verse 32-33, “Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ Then He took Peter, James, and John along with Him.” Luke tells us that Jesus separated from His disciples by a distance of a stone’s throw, maybe 100, 150 feet, but He also took His closest disciples with Him. They were His best friends in the world, His closest friends, and He wanted to be with them at that point, Peter, James, and John. These are the same three, of course, that had viewed Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. It’s amazing that these three saw Him at His most glorious, His most radiantly glorious in the days of His incarnation on Earth, and also would see Him at His most humbled and abased here in the garden of Gethsemane, eyewitnesses of both.

He went there, Jesus did, He separated Himself so that He could pray. Jesus’ understanding of prayer is infinitely greater than ours, clearly greater than Peter, James, and John’s that night. Jesus knew it was only by prayer that He would be able to get through the cross, so He went there to pray. We see the awesome and the overpowering emotional distress that comes upon Jesus. First of all, it’s stated in the accounts. Verse 33, “He began to be deeply distressed and troubled.” In Matthew 26:37, “He began to be sorrowful and troubled.” It’s not only stated in the accounts, but Jesus says it about Himself. Look at verse 34, “‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ He said to them.”

“Jesus knew it was only by prayer that He would be able to get through the cross, so He went there to pray.”

These overpowering emotions, there are two words, we’re going to save one of the words for later, but He says He’s “sorrowful”. The root word has to do with grief, sadness of an overwhelming nature, usually associated with death. Then “troubles”. It refers to a distracted or anxious state of mind or soul, like someone consumed with anxiety about an impending event. His statement says, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow,” as though He’s surrounded by it. He’s walled in by grief. There’s no escape from it except by His own death, right there in the garden. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, even to the point of death,” He says. I don’t think this was just a phrase or a metaphor. I think it was literally true. I think He was literally close to dying in the garden of Gethsemane.

So the Father has to dispatch an angel to strengthen Him. Luke 22:43, “An angel from Heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him.” What an amazing moment that was. Aa amazing picture of His frailty, the frailty of the Son of God in His humanity. This angel that was dispatched from Heaven, was created by Jesus, and yet at that moment, Jesus is so much weaker than the angel. It says in Luke’s account, Luke 22:44, “And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” This is literally true. We look at that, it’s not just an analogy, but it’s drops of blood. I would think then that what happened was His blood pressure spiked there in the garden of Gethsemane, the internal pressure so great that it seemed like the capillaries just under the skin burst, they couldn’t handle the pressure, and the blood came out of the pores. I mean, not a little, a lot, and it’s flowing down His face and dripping to the ground there in the garden of Gethsemane, great drops of blood. It seems quite likely that, had Jesus not been physically strengthened at that moment, He might’ve died right there in the garden.

Then Jesus prays. Look at verse 35-36, “Going a little farther, He fell to the ground, and 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.” His physical position, He’s on His face, He’s prostrate, totally weak, helpless, submissive to God, as low as He can be. As Joseph Hart put in a 1759 hymn, “Come you sinners, poor and needy. View Him groveling in the garden, low your maker prostrate lies.”

And then the request is, “If it’s possible, Abba Father,” He said, “Everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.” For any parent of a child, this prayer must be the most heartrending you can possibly imagine. “Abba” means “daddy”. He’s reduced to speaking like a little child. I can scarcely imagine what this must have done to His heavenly Father, who’s the most perfect, compassionate being there could ever be, whose heart goes out to those that suffer, but especially His Son, whom He loved with a perfect love, with a love so complete that we can’t even imagine how great that love would be. How much would Jesus’s prayer rip the heart of a loving heavenly Father? “Daddy, you can do anything. If it’s possible, take this cup from me.” What loving father wouldn’t do everything he could to alleviate the suffering, this kind of suffering from a child?

But Jesus is also probing the limits of the sovereignty of God within the scope of His plan, “If it’s possible.” Later, that same evening in Matthew’s account, when Peter draws his sword to rescue Him from the cross, He tells him to put his sword away, and says, “How then would the Scripture be fulfilled that says it must happen in this way?” No, it isn’t possible. Once it is written, once it is written, and God has made His commitment and signed it in the blood of millions of sacrificial animals, over centuries of history, and specific careful promises laid out in the prophets, there was no other way.

What is this cup? How do we understand the cup? In Scripture, the cup in prophetic language frequently represents the judgments of God, the righteous judgments of God on a sinner or on sinful people or sinful nations. It’s a regular pattern, the word “cup”. The most potent example of this word cup is in Revelation 14, “God’s wrath and judgment poured out on the damned.” Revelation 14:10-11, “He too will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest, day or night.” That’s the cup. That’s your cup and my cup set before Jesus there in Gethsemane. It’s Hell. It’s the wrath of God poured out on sinners. Jesus is staring into the cup of the wrath of God, and understandably in His humanity, shrinking back in horror. The wrath of God is terrifying, God is a consuming fire. The wrath of God is His omnipotence focused like a white-hot laser beam on the destruction of His enemies. Jesus is shrinking back from that, from drinking the cup of God’s wrath in our place.

We could also imagine He’s shrinking back from being our sin bearer. We don’t understand the purity of the person of Christ. We’re just so used to sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21 said, “God made Him, Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” It’s like having tons of raw sewage poured on a perfectly pure being, spiritual sewage. In the atonement, then Jesus, the only perfectly holy man that has ever lived, would become sin for us. He would bear the defiling sins of all of His people from every generation of history, all the filth and corruption, all the lust and murder, all the covetousness and greed, all of that poured onto Jesus as our substitute.

Then we see the submission of Jesus. Verse 36, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” This is the centerpiece of this magnificent moment. This is the center of it. “Not what I will, but what you will.” This is the greatest act of submission and courage in the history of the human race. More on this in a moment.

Then we have the admonishment of the sleeping disciples, verse 37-38, “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.‘” Matthew tells us Jesus said this to all three of them, but Mark focuses specifically on Peter. By contrast with Jesus, we have the weakness and the unbelief, really, of the disciples exposed here. Jesus specifically warns them of falling into temptation, not merely being tempted, but being ensnared and overcome by it. That’s what it means to fall into temptation. He tells them that the remedy is to watch and pray.

He also marvels at their weakness that they’re not able to watch and pray with Him for even one hour. Peter in particular should have been getting ready for the most intense spiritual struggle of his life, but instead he’s giving in to the weakness of the flesh. That famous expression, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” That was Peter. Amazing also, isn’t it, the shepherd heart of Jesus, to break off His intense prayer to His father, which He knew better than any of us, how much He needed, breaks that off to go back and check on His disciples, make sure they’re praying, make sure they’re getting ready for what they’re about to face, to reason with them, to pray, and watch and pray.

Then in verse 39, we have Jesus’ second prayer, “Once more, He went away and prayed the same thing.” Matthew gives a little more detail. “My father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” It’s an evolution of the conversation that He’s having with His father on this issue of the cup. Then He goes back, and we have the disciples’ second failure, verse 40, “When He came back, He again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to Him.” Luke tells us in Luke 22:45, “When He rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, He found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.”

Then we have Jesus’ final prayer. It’s assumed in Mark and openly stated in Matthew 26:44, “So He left them and went away once more, and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.” Finally the end of the account, verses 41-43, “Returning the third time, He said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go. Here comes my betrayer.’ Just as He was speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priest, the teacher of the law, and the elders.” Jesus has effectively faced His final temptation there in the garden and conquered it, and now He rises from His moment of greatest weakness, and goes forth mightily to conquer sin and death with unflinching courage.

II. The Mysteries of Gethesemane

Those are the facts of Gethsemane. Now let’s talk about the mysteries of Gethsemane. A. W. Tozer said, “If you’ve never faced mystery in your study of God, I doubt whether you’ve ever heard a single word from God at all.” We will not plumb the depths of Gethsemane here. The issue has to do with Jesus’ incarnation, the theological mystery of the incarnation. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is perhaps the most profound mystery in the Bible. How can Jesus be both fully God and fully man? Many over the centuries have questioned this, and sought to deny one or the other. Dualistic philosophies and theologies like the Gnostics early on, and the Docetists, deny the humanity of Christ, saying He only seemed to be human. Gethsemane is a powerful antidote to this heresy. Jesus’ humanity is on full display here, especially in His weakness, His frailty, His wavering, His fear, shrinking back, and to some mysterious degree, His limited knowledge. The fact that Jesus in His incarnation can learn things. We’ll get to more of that in a moment.

Jesus’s emotional life is real and full and perfect. He fully displays the reality of His title, Man of Sorrows. How then can Christ be both omnipotent deity and this weak humanity? How do we understand and explain His stunning fear of death? Lots of people face death more courageously, overtly courageously than this. It’s not that rare a story. Soldiers that are willing just to die, so that others may live. That actually is not all that rare. Socrates famously took the cup of hemlock, knowing it was his own death in that cup, unflinchingly drank it to the bottom and died. But Jesus seems different, just a quantum level difference. Martin Luther said, “No man ever feared death like this man.”

How can we understand this? How can the infinite creator of all things visible and invisible need help from an angel? How can He need strengthening? How can He shrink back like this from death? So, clearly the answers to all these questions is a mystery, but it shows clearly the humanity of Christ.

We get to verse 33, and here I want to show you something that, unless you have the KJV, you won’t see. The King James Version is the only version that translates the Greek word in the simplest way, the most direct way. “Now, when Christ entered Gethsemane, He knew exactly what was going to happen to Him factually.” Factually. He knew He would most certainly die on the cross as a ransom for sinners. But apparently, it seems, there was a dimension of knowing that was withheld from Him by His father until this moment.

Why do I say that? There’s a shocking word in the KJV translation of verse 33, which accurately translates. It’s not a mistranslation, it’s a good translation. “And He taketh with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy.” Sore amazed. The word “amazed” stops us in our tracks. The word “sore” just means extremely, like overwhelmed with amazement. So in some mysterious way, Jesus was amazed at Gethsemane. The same word is used of a crowd reaction to Jesus’s ministry, or to the apostles healing of the lame beggar in Acts 3. It is frequently translated in those places, “astonished.” It implies some sense of wonder or surprise. Something is hitting Jesus here that He didn’t see coming, and hence He is sore amazed.

How does that apply to Jesus at Gethsemane? I believe that when Jesus began to pray, the Father revealed to Him in an immeasurably more vivid way, to His soul, to His mind and His soul, what it would actually be like to drink the cup of His wrath on the cross as our substitute. Drinking the cup of God’s wrath poured full strength on Him. The revelation occurred within Jesus’s mind and soul, and knocked Him to the ground.

This kind of showing or display language was essential to Jesus’ role and His daily ministry, actually. In John 5:20, Jesus said, “The Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does. Yes, to your amazement, He will show Him even greater things than these.” More in general in the Scripture, this is a regular pattern, that the prophets were shown spiritual visions and realities in the spiritual realm. They had visions and dimensions like Ezekiel, of wheels within wheels and all that. This is prophetic vision. This is common, actually. But Jesus says He openly got His marching orders from the Father daily. He doesn’t say any word except what the Father has told Him to say. He doesn’t do anything except what the Father is doing. The Father shows the Son what He’s doing. What did He show Him in Gethsemane? He showed Him the cup. “Father, what are we doing next?” “Well, today I’m going to kill you. Kill you for the sins of the world. That’s what we’re doing next, and this is what it’ll be like.” It’s akin to the difference between seeing an old black and white photo of the Grand Canyon and seeing like an IMAX movie or a virtual reality helicopter tour through the ravine itself. It’s just a whole different level of impression made to the mind.

As Christ began to pray, God turned up the intensity in Christ’s mind of what it would actually be like to drink the cup of His wrath, to absorb the lightning of His indignation, to go through Hell in our place as our substitute, and it knocked Him to the ground, it increased His blood pressure so it spiked, He starts bleeding out of His pores. Why did He do it? Why did the Father do this? I think He did it, I believe, to give Christ the ability to make a more informed choice of whether He would do it or not, whether He would go through with their plan. He refrained from doing it earlier, because look what happened to Him. I mean, the human body can only stand so much strain. It would’ve been too great for Him to bear. I think, in effect, some infinitely mysterious conversation went on between the Father and the Son. The Father shows the Son the cup, and then the Father says, “Son, this is what the cup of my wrath will be like for you to drink.” Jesus answered, “Father, is it possible for me to save my people without drinking that terrifying cup?” The Father. “Son, no. There is no other way. Will you do it anyway?” And now comes what I’ve called the most heroic moment in human history. “If it is not possible to save my people any other way than drinking that cup, may your will be done.” If you ever don’t feel loved by God, think about that moment. Think about that. That’s your cup He drank, mine too.

At that moment, Christ put His own will completely under the will of the Father. At that moment, as I said, He overturned the wretched choice made by the first Adam, that he had made in the Garden of Eden. All the wretched choices that the sons and daughters of Adam have made since by their willful sinning, that’s yours and mine, all the bad choices we have made, He overturned all of that. Here, Christ showed the proper use of human will, and that is to do the will of God. So, bow your head and worship all generations of Christians. This is the most perfect act of obedience ever.

We also have the mystery of Jesus’ prayer. Is His will somehow different than the Father’s? Are they at cross-purposes? Some have wondered if the wrestling Jesus displayed in Gethsemane, “If it is possible, take this cup from me,” was indicative that His will was somehow against the cross, as though He’s battling within Himself, as though He and the Father disagreed about this. In general, we just as Christians have to treat Gethsemane like holy ground, and limit your speculation, and don’t go too far. Jesus has said plainly in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” No doubt about that. He wasn’t against the Father’s will. He loved the Father’s will. Isaiah 53:10 says, “It was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer. And though the Lord makes His life a guilt offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His days. The will of the Lord will prosper in His hand.” It’s so beautiful. It’s like the Father wrote a magnificent concerto, and Jesus the soloist played it to perfection. He made it beautiful. The will of the Lord prospers. No, they’re not at cross-purposes, not at all. It just shows that the cost to Jesus, and indeed to the Father, was infinitely high, and the Father was willing to pay it. He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up to this for us all.

III. The Glories of Gethsemane

Finally, the glories of Gethsemane. We’ve said, the free will of Jesus, properly on display. Jesus went to the cross of His own free will. He was not coerced, He was not forced. Therefore, for those that talk often about free will, this is free will. This is what free will looks like. He had no sin nature holding Him back, no corruption. He was free, and He used it perfectly to do the will of God. That’s what it’s for. That’s what free will is for, to do the will of God. Because the Father has a will, too. Our will is patterned after the fact that the Father has a will. Jesus taught us that the best use of human will is to find its joy and its delight and its fruitfulness in the will of God. He taught us that.

From this moment in time on, Jesus will only be able to escape the cross by a direct application of His supernatural power, His wonder-working power, to get out of it. Physical forces will come on Him at the end of this account and seize Him, and the only way He’ll be able to get out of it is by using His power. And He could do it, but He was not going to do it. This is His last moment of freedom, and He gave it up willingly.

Therefore, we need to understand the significance of this choice theologically, Romans 3:26. Some have blasphemously, I don’t even want to say these words, but blasphemously called the idea of substitutionary atonement Heavenly child abuse, as the Father’s crushing His son in some way. Rather, in Gethsemane we have God the Father revealing to the Son as much as He possibly could do, what it would be like to drink the cup, and asking Jesus to make a choice, and He did. Therefore, it was of His own free will that He did it. “Not my will, but yours be done.” This removes any charge of injustice against the Father concerning substitutionary atonement. Romans 3:25, “God put Jesus forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.” Propitiation is the one who removes the wrath of God by drinking the cup. Romans 3:26, “He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” It is a perfect display of justice, not injustice. Why? Because in part of this transaction that we’ve been describing here. The willingness of Jesus to do it removes any charge of injustice.

We see also the obedience of Jesus versus the disobedience of Adam. I’ve mentioned it, but the clear parallel is set up in Romans 5:19, “Just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous.” That’s staggering. You know what that means? By Jesus’s obedience, He makes you righteous, if you’re a Christian. What that means is He makes you obedient, positionally obedient. You are seen by God in Christ at the moment of your conversion to be as obedient as Jesus. How about that? That is our imputed righteousness. It’s staggering. This is the righteousness given to you as a gift. God sees you as obedient as Jesus was there in Gethsemane, as a gift.

What is that act of obedience? It’s His willingness to die on the cross. Philippians 2:8, “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Then Hebrews 5:8-9, “Although He was a son, He learned obedience.” What a staggering phrase that is. “He learned obedience from what He suffered, and once made perfect or qualified, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.” Wow. Adam used his free will to rebel against God, and we all died in that. The second Adam, Jesus, uses His free will to make a right choice, and we all live and are seen righteous in that. That’s our salvation.

“Adam used his free will to rebel against God, and we all died in that. The second Adam, Jesus, uses His free will to make a right choice, and we all live and are seen righteous in that. That’s our salvation.”

Finally, we see the perfect love of Jesus, first for God, and then for His people. In Gethsemane, we see Jesus loving God and us sinners more than He loved Himself. It was the revulsion of the thing that caused Him to shrink back, but it was love, first and foremost love for God, and secondly love for us, that caused Him to deny Himself, first vertically, John 14:31, “The world must learn that I love the Father, and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me to do.” Think about that. “The world must know and learn that I love my Father, and they’ll know that when they see me go to the cross.”

Secondly, love for us. John 15:13-14, “Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. You are my friends.” We see that courage of Jesus, that love that drives out fear. Many people have willingly laid down their lives to save others. It occasionally happens, very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. So, the Congressional Medal of Honor is given to people that were willing to lay down their lives in the battlefield. It happens. But nothing ever in history has been like this incredible moment of courage.

IV. Applications of Gethsemane

Come to Christ. Trust in Jesus. There is a cup of wrath, of righteous, just wrath, poured out from God on sinners. Either Jesus will drink that cup in your place, or you’ll drink it for all eternity. Those are the choices. There’s no other option. You can be in denial that there is such a cup, but there is a cup of God’s wrath against sin. Jesus is offering in the gospel to drink yours for you. Trust in Him, repent of sin, turn away from wickedness, and turn to Christ in faith, and let Him save you. If you’re already a Christian, worship Christ for what He did for you. Thank Him for what He did for you. I don’t know how you’re made up. I cry basically at one thing, for the most part. It’s always the same. It’s Christ’s love for me as a sinner. It just melts me. I melt every time, and this melts me. This text probably melts me more than any other text. I almost can’t talk about it in everyday life without choking up. I never stop thinking about this, my savior drinking my cup.

I want to take and sharpen this and apply it on the matter of Christian contentment. When I was studying Christian contentment, I wrote one statement that people who have read the book that I wrote said is the most convicting in the whole book, and that is this: “Has Christ crucified and resurrected done enough for you to be happy today? Or does He have to be a little more?” Let’s take it in the language of Gethsemane. Is it enough for Jesus to drink your cup and that’s it, so you don’t have to drink it and you’ll spend the eternity in Heaven? Or does He have to do some more beyond that?

I’m not minimizing the things you would pray for. For the healing of somebody that you love and you want to see them heal. I’m not minimizing that. I’m just asking you to put it in perspective, Him drinking your cup for you is the greatest act of love and gift that could ever be. Keep in mind, Romans 8 said He did not spare His own son. God’s not holding anything back because He’s stingy. He has given the greatest thing He could ever give, His beloved, His perfect son, shattered on the cross. It should be enough, it should be enough for you to be happy.

What about obedience? What about free will? This is how you should use your free will the rest of your lives. What do you say? Just choose to say to God, no matter how difficult it is, “Not my will but yours be done.”

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for this infinitely deep text. We’ll never be able to finish it, to plumb the depths of it, to understand it. I pray that you would take its lessons and burn them into our hearts. Help us to be overwhelmed with thankfulness, with gratitude. Help us to be overwhelmed with love for Jesus. Help us to want to imitate Him and to use our wills the way He used His. Help us to understand that, oh Lord. And God, I pray that no-one that’s here today would leave this place still under the wrath of God, but they would just simply transfer that, the sin and the wrath, onto Jesus by faith, by simple faith, and trust in Him that they would know the full and perfect forgiveness of God. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

One sacred day, God spoke to Moses from the flames of a burning bush,

“Take off your shoes, for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.”

What does this mean? Since God is everywhere all at once, “sacred ground” means that God was about to be revealed in an extraordinary way, and Moses’s knowledge of God was going to be greatly increased by this encounter. Draw near to listen, draw near to fall on the ground in fear and wonder, worship and adoration.

Friends, if that was true at the burning bush, how much more true is it when we come to Gethsemane? Gethsemane is the greatest display of the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ in the Bible. It contains almost incomprehensible mysteries… but also tremendous opportunities to ponder the excellencies of Christ, his glories… the perfection of his character: his courage, his obedience, his trust in his Father, his willingness to suffer for us, his love for us, his reversal of the disobedience of Adam, his frailty and weakness, his mortality, his emotions…

We will spend eternity pondering these themes and others that flow from this account. This morning, we will spend a scant 40 minutes on them.

My goals:

1)    To exalt Christ our Savior based on this account… that we may worship him with all our hearts for what he did at the cross for us

2)    To understand more accurately the humanity of Jesus… his emotions, his submission, his mortality and frailty, his temptations,… and yet, his sinlessness

3)    To understand the power of prayer in facing temptations, in strengthening us to do the will of the Father

4)    To motivate us to trust in Christ’s finished work on the cross more than ever before.

5)    To help us understand the proper use of the will… to imitate Christ every day in saying, “Not my will but yours be done.”

Here we will plumb the depths of the EMOTIONS of Jesus at paying the cost for our salvation… the emotional life of Jesus as a fully human being is clearly on display here

Here we will understand the pressure, the almost incalculable pressure that weighed on him

I. The Facts of Gethsemane
A. All His Life, Jesus Lived Under the Shadow of the Cross

1. B.B. Warfield: “The prospect of his suffering was a perpetual Gethsemane to him.”

Luke 12:50  I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!

2. Clear evidence in the Gospels… Jesus knew EXACTLY what was going to happen to him

Mark 9:31 “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

Now, as Jesus comes to Gethsemane on that fateful night, the time had come to face the cross straight on and make a final decision about what he will do

B. The Lord’s Supper is Over…

They have finished the Passover meal, sung a hymn, and had crossed the Kidron Valley into the Garden of Gethsemane

Mark 14:32 They went to a place called Gethsemane

C. What Was “Gethsemane”?

1. A private garden on the Mt. of Olives, probably walled off, owned  by some rich friend of Jesus

2. He allowed Jesus and his disciples to frequent the place; it was outside Jerusalem, away from the maddening crush the crowds

3. The word itself means “oil press”; it probably included a press for making olive oil from the harvest of Olives on the mount

The crushing of the olives allowed the reddish, viscous, and precious olive oil to flow into containers for use or sale

4. This becomes a metaphor also for the crushing SPIRITUAL PRESSURE that Jesus would experience… so intense that by the end of the time his blood was flowing like great drops of blood

D. Why Did Jesus Go to Gethsemane?

1. It was a place of refuge and retirement and quiet prayer

2. It was commonly used by Jesus and his disciples… therefore, Judas, who had left to betray him, would know exactly where to bring the soldiers to arrest him… Jesus wanted to be predictable for Judas so he could betray him more easily

3. This was evidence of his willingness to lay down his life for us

4. He was never a victim, trapped in circumstances he couldn’t escape

John 10:18  No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself

E. Jesus’ Command to His Disciples and His Separation of them

Mark 14:32-33  Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”  33 He took Peter, James and John along with him

1. Luke tells us Jesus separated from his disciples by a distance of a stone’s throw… maybe 100 feet away; but he also took his closest disciples with him, simply because he wanted them near

2. Peter, James, and John… the same three who had accompanied him to the summit of the MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION… amazing that these same three saw Jesus at his most glorious,  shining radiantly in glory on the Mount… but they would also see him at his most humiliated … groveling on the ground, begging God to remove the cup, close to death

F. Prayer

1. Jesus has one desire at this moment… to pray to his Father

2. Only prayer would get him through the cross

G. The Awesome Emotional Distress of Jesus

Stated in the ACCOUNTS:

Mark 14:33  he began to be deeply distressed and troubled.

Matthew 26:37  he began to be sorrowful and troubled.

Stated plainly also by Jesus:

Mark 14:34 “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them.

1. The overpowering EMOTIONS: two of the words (we’ll save one for later)

a. “sorrowful”: root word has to do with grief, sadness of an overwhelming nature, usually associated with death

b. “troubled”: word usually refers to a distracted, anxious state… like someone consumed with anxiety over an impending event

c. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow”

As though Jesus were SURROUNDED by grief, walled in with grief, no escape from it except death

d.  “to the point of death”

i) Jesus was actually close to death

Luke 22:43  An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.

What an amazing picture is this of the FRAILTY of the Son of God in his humanity… the angel was created by Jesus, and yet Jesus is so much weaker than the angel.

Luke 22:44  And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

The internal pressure was SO GREAT that, it seems, the capillaries under the skin of his face were bursting, and blood was flowing down his face… GREAT DROPS of blood

It seems quite likely that, had Jesus not been physically strengthened at that moment, he might have died right there in the Garden.

H. Jesus’ Prayer Itself

Mark 14:35-36  Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

1. Physical position: falling on his face, prostrate… totally weak, helpless, submissive to God, lowly

[“Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy”; Joseph Hart, 1759]

View him groveling in the garden;

Lo! your Maker prostrate lies

2. The request: IF IT IS POSSIBLE

Mark 14:36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.

a. For any parent of a child, this prayer is the most heart wrenching you can possibly imagine

b. “Abba” = “Daddy”… he’s reduced to speaking like a child

c. I can scarcely imagine what this must have done to the heavenly Father, who loved this perfect Son so completely we cannot even imagine how great that love would be

How much would Jesus’ prayer rip the heart of the heavenly Father?!

“Daddy, you can do anything. Please take this cup from me.”

d. Jesus is probing the limits of God’s sovereignty… what is POSSIBLE

e. Later Jesus makes it clear that there is NO OTHER WAY:

Matthew 26:53-54  … how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

f. So, once “It is written,” and God has made his commitment, and signed it in the blood of millions of sacrificial animals, and thousands of years of promises spoken to his people through the prophets, there is no other way

3. What is the CUP?

a. In scripture, the CUP frequently represents God’s wrath and judgment, as is spoken of the DAMNED in Revelation 14

Revelation 14:10-11   he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night

4. Jesus is staring into the cup of God’s wrath and is understandably shrinking back from it in horror

5. The wrath of God is TERRIFYING… God is a CONSUMING FIRE… the wrath of God is his omnipotence focused like a white-hot laser beam for the destruction of his enemies

6. So, Jesus is shrinking back from drinking the cup of God’s wrath in our place

7. We could also imagine he’s shrinking back from the defilement of being our sin bearer, like having ten tons of raw sewage poured on him

8. In the atonement, Jesus, the only perfectly holy man that has ever lived would “become sin” for us… he would BEAR the defiling sins of all his people from every generation of history… all the filth and corruption, lust and murder, covetousness and greed… poured onto Jesus as our substitute

I. The Submission of Jesus

Mark 14:36  Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

1. This is the centerpiece of this magnificent moment

2. This is the greatest act of submission and courage in the history of the human race

3. More on this in a moment

J. The Admonishment of the Sleeping Disciples

Mark 14:37-38 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? 38Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

[Matthew says Jesus said this to all of them, but Mark focuses on Peter]

1. By contrast with Jesus, the weakness of the disciples is exposed

2. Jesus warns of “falling into temptation”… not merely being tempted, but being ensnared and overcome by temptation

3. He says the remedy is to WATCH AND PRAY

4. He marvels that they were not able to keep watch with him for ONE HOUR

5. Peter should have been getting ready for the most intense spiritual struggle of his life; but instead, he is giving in to the weakness of the flesh

6. Jesus’ statement is timeless and famous: better known in the KJV:

the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Amazing also the Shepherd’s heart of Jesus… breaking off his prayer with the Father to warn his disciples and protect them from sin

K. Jesus’ Second Prayer

Mark 14:39 Once more he went away and prayed the same thing.

Matthew gives more insight:

Matthew 26:42 “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

L. The Disciples’ Second Failure

Mark 14:40 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him.

Luke 22:45  When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.

M. Jesus’ Final Prayer (assumed in Mark, but stated in Matthew)

Matthew 26:44  So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.

N. The End of the Account: Jesus’ Arrest is at Hand

Mark 14:41-43  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. 42 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”  43 Just as he was speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders.

Jesus has effectively faced his final temptation and conquered it. Now he rises from his moment of greatest weakness and goes forth mightily to conquer sin and death with unflinching courage.

Ok, these are the facts of Gethsemane

II. The Mysteries of Gethsemane
A.W. Tozer: If you have never faced mystery in your study of God, I doubt whether you have ever heard a single word from God at all.

A. The Mystery of Jesus’ Incarnation: Weakness, Yet Deity

1. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is perhaps the most profound mystery in the Bible

2. How can Jesus be fully God and fully man?

3. Many have questioned this and sought to deny one or the other

4. Dualistic philosophies and theologies (like the gnostics and the docetists) have denied the humanity of Christ… saying he only SEEMED to be human

5. Gethsemane is a powerful antidote to this heresy; Jesus’ humanity is on full display here, especially in his WEAKNESS, his frailty, his wavering, fear, shrinking back

6. Jesus’ emotional life is real and full and perfect… he fully displays the reality of the title “MAN OF SORROWS”

7. How then can Christ be omnipotent deity, and yet so weak?

8. Many soldiers, like the Romans, faced death with far more courage than Jesus seems to here

Socrates took the cup of hemlock and drained it without flinching

Martin Luther: “No man ever feared death like this man.”

9. How can the infinite Creator of all things, visible and invisible, need help from an angel? How can the omnipotent God need STRENGTHENING?

10. Clearly the answer to these questions is a mystery… but it shows so clearly the humanity of Christ

B. The Mystery of Jesus’ Amazement: Why Does Mark 14:33 Say Jesus was Amazed?

When Christ entered Gethsemane, he knew exactly what was going to happen FACTUALLY—he would most certainly die on the cross as a ransom for sinners. But apparently there was still a dimension of “knowing” that was withheld from him by his loving heavenly Father.

There is a shocking word in Mark’s gospel, which the KJV accurately translates: And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy. (Mark 14:33, KJV) The word “amazed” stops us in our tracks!  In some sense Christ was amazed at the cross in Gethsemane. The same word is used of crowd reaction to Jesus’ ministry (Mark 9:15) or to the Apostles’ healing of the lame beggar (Acts 3:11). … It is translated in those places “astonished,” and it implies some sense of wonder, as if seeing something they’d never seen before.

But how does that apply to Jesus in Gethsemane?

I believe when Christ began to pray, God revealed to him in an immeasurably more vivid way what it would be like to die on the cross as a substitute for his people, drinking the cup of God’s wrath poured full strength for him. The revelation occurred within Christ himself, within his mind, and it shocked him.

This kind of “showing” from the Father to the Son was essential to Jesus knowing what the Father wanted him to do:

John 5:20  For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.

Supernatural spiritual vision is essential to a prophet’s role… God often showed his prophets visions of the future. Though the text doesn’t say the Father showed the cup to his Son, it would explain Jesus’ AMAZEMENT.

So yes, Jesus knew FACTUALLY what it would be like to die on the cross for our sins… but the Father wanted to show him what it would actually be like.

It was akin to the difference between seeing an old black and white photo of the Grand Canyon and seeing a virtual reality display of a helicopter ride through the Grand Canyon. The impression on the soul is much livelier, causing a much more intense reaction. As Christ began to pray, God turned up the intensity in Christ’s mind of what it would be like to drink the cup of his wrath, to absorb the lightning bolt of his indignation, to go through hell in our place, as our substitute. And it literally knocked Jesus to the ground and so increased the pressure in his body that blood began to flow from his sweat pores and fell in great drops to the ground (Luke 22:44).

The Father did this, I believe, to give Christ the ability to make a more informed choice as to whether or not he would go through with their plan. He refrained from doing it sooner, because the level of suffering would have been too great for his human body to bear for any great length of time.

In effect, an infinitely mysterious conversation went like this:

God said, “Son… this is what the CUP OF MY WRATH looks like.”

Jesus answered: “Father, IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO SAVE MY PEOPLE WITHOUT DRINKING that terrifying cup?”

God: “Son, no… there is NO OTHER WAY… WILL YOU DO IT ANYWAY?”

Now comes the most heroic moment in human history: “IF IT IS NOT POSSIBLE, MAY YOUR WILL BE DONE.”

At this moment, Christ put his own will completely under the will of his Father. At this moment, he overturned the wretched choice Adam made in the Garden of Eden, and all the wretched choices God’s people have made in their willful sinning since Adam’s first sin. Here Christ showed the proper use of human will: to do the will of the Father.

Bow your head in worship, all generations of Christians! This is the single most courageous decision any human being has ever made!

C. The Mystery of Jesus’ Prayer: Is His Will Different Than God’s?

1. Some have wondered if the wrestling Jesus displayed in Gethsemane, “If it is possible, take this cup away from me” was indicative that his will was somehow against the Cross… as though he and the Father disagreed about this

2. The mystery of Gethsemane is to treat it like the Holy Ground it is… Jesus’ will and that of the Father as perfectly one…

John 10:30 I and the Father are one.

3. He wasn’t against the Father’s will; rather he delighted in it

Isaiah 53:10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

4. I’ve often felt before that Isaiah 53:10 implies that the Father wrote the sheet music and Jesus played the piece perfectly, with great joy and delight… he made the music the Father had written FLOURISH and PROSPER

5. It’s just that Gethsemane shows the COST of the will of the Lord… it was INFINITELY DIFFICULT

III. The Glories of Gethsemane
A. The Free Will of Jesus Properly On Display

1. Jesus went to the cross of his own free will

2. He was not coerced… he was not forced against his will

3. Here we have the pinnacle example of human choice, of free will

4. He had no sin nature holding him back, no corruption

5. His will was free… and he used it PERFECTLY… namely, to do the will of his Father

6. Because, the Father has a will too… and Jesus taught us that the best use of human will is to find its perfect consummation in the will of God

7. From this point on, Jesus would only be able to escape death on a cross by using supernatural power to kill the soldiers who were arresting him… this he would not do; this was Jesus’ last moment of natural freedom, and he gave Himself up

B. The Choice of Jesus and Romans 3:26

1. Some have blasphemously called the idea of substitutionary atonement “heavenly child abuse”… God the Father beating his cowering Son

2. Rather, in Gethsemane, we have God the Father revealing to the Son as fully as e couldHe he could have ahead of time, what the cross and the atonement would be like… dying under his wrath

3. He gave Jesus the choice, and Jesus made it: NOT MY WILL BUT YOURS BE DONE

4. This removes the charge of injustice against the Father concerning the Son:

Romans 3:25 God put [Jesus] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

The one who would remove his wrath by his sacrificial death.

Romans 3:26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

5. One might think that the cross is a display of INJUSTICE… because Jesus was innocent

6. BUT because Jesus went willingly to the cross, it was not unjust for the Father to transfer our guilt to him

C. The Obedience of Jesus vs. the Disobedience of Adam

1. There is a clear parallel between Christ and Adam set up for us in Romans 5:19

Romans 5:19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

2. This is the perfect act of obedience by which we are SAVED

Philippians 2:8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death– even death on a cross!

Hebrews 5:8-9  Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered  9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him

3. Adam used his free will to sin, to disobey, to turn away from God

4. Jesus made his choice in Gethsemane to submit perfectly to the will of God

D. The Perfect Love of Jesus… First for God, then for His People

1. In Gethsemane, we see Jesus loving God and us sinners more than he loved Himself

2. It was revulsion of the thing itself that caused Jesus to shrink back

3. But it was LOVE… first and foremost, love for God; secondly, love for us, that caused him to deny Himself

[love for God] John 14:31 … the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

[love for us] John 15:13-14  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends

E. The Courage of Jesus: Perfect Love Drove Out Fear

1. Human history is filled with tales of courage

2. Many people have willingly laid down their lives to save others

Romans 5:7  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.

3. The United States Government gives out the Congressional Medal of Honor as the highest award for members of its armed services… for conspicuous acts of courage on the battlefield… it specifically singles out the virtue of COURAGE UNDER FIRE to save the lives of others

4. But in all the annals of human achievement, I believe the courage of Jesus Christ in Gethsemane and at Calvary is the greatest

IV. The Application of Gethsemane
A. Come to Christ

B. Worship Christ for His Courage, Submission, and Love

C. Christian Contentment:

“Has Christ, crucified and resurrected, done enough for you to be happy today, or does he need to do a little more?”

D. America a Nation of Choiceaholics… Beware of Idolizing Human Choice

Jesus shows us what choice is for… doing the will of God.

E. Imitate Jesus’ Pattern for the Rest of Your Life

Jesus fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”