hear the word of our Lord. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. and there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow. And he said to them, why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation." Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father God, we come to you this morning and we ask for your blessing upon our time in the word. God, we know that hearing your word, there is grace for every trial. God, we pray that you would help us to understand your word. Give us insight and open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, that we might understand and apprehend the truth that you've revealed to us here in your word. Truth which points us to Jesus and helps us to follow him. God, we pray that you would be gracious in your dealings with us and that you would give us grace and that you would cause the word that we consider this morning to be like seed planted in our hearts. We pray that you would water it and cause it to grow up and to bear fruit for eternal life. And we pray all of this in Christ's name, amen. Jesus now leaves the upper room. and he enters Gethsemane. We're not told that specifically in Luke's gospel, but in the other gospel accounts of this, we know that what Luke calls, in verse 40, the place is Gethsemane, the garden of Gethsemane. His hour of trial has come, and we begin to see in this text the agonies grip his soul, which will finally culminate upon the cross. And yet, in the midst of his troubles, Jesus still concerns himself with his disciples. And this is, it ought to be, I think, a great source of encouragement to us to know that always, through all of this, Jesus has in mind his people, the people for whom he died, those who will believe on his name, those who are with him, the disciples who accompany him, but those who will believe on him through their words, as they preach the gospel. Those of us who were here this morning who have faith in Christ, Jesus, His burdens that He bears to Calvary is a burden for His people. And so He concerns Himself with His disciples and with their readiness for what is to come. And so he instructs them to pray. And we find here yet another illustration of the love of Christ for his people, that having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And even in dark Gethsemane, under the heaviest of burdens, he models for them and he seeks to mold them into be men of prayer. And I want you to notice how we're told that it was his custom to pray in verse 39. He came out and he went, as was his custom. And so, for Jesus, this manner of prayer, this is, for many Christians, sadly, this sort of prayer is, many Christians are strangers to this sort of wrestling with God, this sort of earnestness and this devotedness and this discipline in prayer. And I wonder, have you ever wrestled with God in prayer? If you recall, we had a guest preacher for a number of years came, Michael Durham, and he would come and give a series of messages in the fall. And we would spend time in the afternoons together before he preached, and we would pray in the sanctuary. Right here, usually, these front pews, we'd kneel down and pray together. And he would say, you know, we have to pray until we pray. And what he meant by that is sometimes when we pray, think about the times when you pray, And certainly if you're a Christian, your life is filled with prayer. That's normal New Testament Christianity, but most of our times of prayer are before meals, before we read or study the Word, in church when we pray together, or on Wednesday nights we pray for one another. And so often we can pray, we can go through and say our prayers and pray to God in a way that is just, really it's just sort of doing the same old thing in the same old way. It's a very perfunctory exercise in which we make our way through our prayer list, or we say the things that we know we need to say, maybe even the same form of words that we always say when we pray to God, and there seems to be very little engagement of our hearts or our very souls in our prayer to pray earnestly. And yet that's what Jesus models here for his disciples. It was his custom to do this, and his disciples saw this. That was their model, their example. And so Jesus set an example for his disciples of what you do when faced with trials and temptations. You take it to the Lord in prayer, as we sang just a moment ago. There are examples throughout the Bible of this where we're told to pray to God in our troubles, to cry out to the Lord. He hears us, he invites us to pray for him, and Jesus set an example of what you do when you're faced with trials and temptations. And so that there's no confusion, but rather clarity as to God's will for them, for us, in these circumstances, Jesus gives his exhortation in verse 40. He says to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. Well, my question for us is, do we follow the example of our Lord in this? Do we respond with obedience to his exhortation to pray? And if we're lacking in our own prayer habits, could it be that we presume wrongly, we presume that all will be well, that we will not fall into sin? I kind of have that, that's sort of my personality and my persuasion that just completely apart from any evidence, maybe to the contrary, or reason or rationality, I just think everything's gonna turn out, you know. I think that everything, there's a joke that some people are, you know, pre-millennialist and post-millennialist, maybe you have no idea what that means, but that has to do with how people view the timing of Jesus' second coming, and there are other people, maybe I fit in this category, who are pan-millennialist. That means that everything will pan out in the end. And Lauren, you know, is not quite that way, and maybe this causes her some consternation whenever there's something that we ought to be worried about, and I said, it's fine, it'll work out. But as Christians, if we just assume, you know what, it's fine. I don't have to wrestle with the Lord in prayer and really be devoted to prayer and with every trial, with every temptation, with every difficulty or important decision that needs to be made, that I need to really spend time on my knees before the Lord seeking His will and His favor, His help, then we are presuming And it is a dangerous presumption that we make. Remember Jesus' words to Peter in verse 31, Simon Simon, he says, Behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat. Do you not think that there are spiritual forces of evil and dark spiritual realities, spiritual warfare, in other words, that threatens your soul? Satan is on the prowl and his demons mean to destroy you if possible. And that's just the devil and we know that we have other enemies of our souls are the world, as it exalts itself in pride against God and His people and would lead us away from God into further disobedience and depravity, there's our own flesh, the remnants of sin. Even if we're believers, there's still indwelling sin that causes us a great deal of trouble. There's not just a danger, there's a great danger that we all face constantly. And it's no less real for it being an invisible and spiritual danger. And yet Jesus prepares Simon already in the passages that came before in verses 31 and following for his own spiritual failure. And really this is, as we're going to see in the scenes that unfold and what follows, that the disciples by and large fall away. Now it's not a complete apostasy, praise God, and owing to Jesus' prayer for them, that God prevents that from taking place. But look at verses 45 and 46. Even within our own passage, When Jesus arose from prayer, he came to his disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow. And he said to them again, he said, why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation. So he's already exhorted them. He set an example. He's given his exhortation for them to be watchful, to be prayerfully dependent upon the Lord in their trials in this great danger that is confronting them. I mean, soldiers will enter the garden shortly. There are dangers, there are spiritual realities, and yet they're asleep at the wheel, and they're unconcerned. They're sorrowful, but rather than their understanding of what's transpiring to lead them to pray to God, they just give in to this despondency, and they fall asleep. What can we learn from the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane that might help us to avoid a fall? I see that as that command to pray that you may not enter into temptation bookends our text, that Jesus' concern is for our prayer and our temptation, and we have in the middle Jesus' prayer set as an example for us. And so let's consider together that, first of all, Jesus himself struggled in prayer. Jesus struggled in prayer. Look at verse 41. He withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed. Now we kneel. I mean I mentioned earlier that when our guest preacher had come we would oftentimes come in the sanctuary and kneel down. We talk about taking a knee, you know, getting on our knees and praying, but so does it strike us in the way that it might have struck those who first read this or heard this in the first century A.D. But kneeling was not the traditional posture for prayer. That was different. It was strange. And the traditional posture for prayer, how a faithful Jew might pray, would be to stand, even to lift their hands as they prayed. And so to kneel down, what this tells us is that Jesus was under a heavy burden. And it's indicative of the frame of his soul, the anguish that he felt in his heart of hearts that he couldn't stand, that he was bowed down with grief. at the prospect of what was to come, and what was to come for him. We see in verse 44 that he was in agony. Agony. That word in the Greek can refer to a gymnastic exercise. It could be used for something, not to use that idea metaphorically. We think about agony as something that we feel. but in ancient Greek culture, agony is also the name or how you might refer to a certain kind of athletic event, such as a wrestling contest. And so when we apply it metaphorically, the idea is that of a great struggle of the mind and of the soul with anguish and similarly strong and painful emotions. So this is a great distress that Jesus was under. You see something of his struggle here. Why he might have knelt down to pray rather than to stand. And his distress was so great that he was sweating profusely. Notice Luke alone records this detail that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. The idea here is some people have tried to make hay out of him having a medical condition where he was actually sweating blood, but that's not what Luke says. He says that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. The idea here is of someone who's been wounded and of the blood that gushes forth from an open wound. So great was his agony and his distress that he was sweating profusely. It was as if he was bleeding from an open wound. Why such distress? And I want you to ask yourself this. Do people ordinarily fear death to such a degree? Some do, perhaps. Some fear death and just really struggle for whatever reason. And probably, well, it's right that they do. If they are that afraid, it's probably good that they are, to be honest. But far more often, people I don't struggle like this in the face of death. I've seen people die, Christian and non-Christian, and known people who are close to death and have not seen this level of agony. But there are powerful examples in church history of martyrs meeting their death unflinching. So how can Jesus, the head of our faith, struggle with the prospect of death, but those who come after, even many of the apostles and great men and women from church history, you know, face torture and execution, unflinching with such courage and bravery? What accounts for Jesus' struggle? Well, you must know, you must understand that Jesus did not fear a Roman scourging. It was not the prospect of the torture or the execution. This is where I would not recommend any movie about Jesus that would depict him visually like this. I think that can dangerously come close if not actually transgress the second command. But I went to, as many of you probably did, go to see Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. And the emphasis on this is of the severe nature of his physical suffering. That's nothing. I mean, it is maybe helpful for you to get an idea of what he suffered bodily, but that's really quite besides the point. Jesus wasn't afraid of that. As awful as that was, that wasn't what caused him such grief. It wasn't the prospect of torture or execution at the hands of men that bowed his soul with such sorrow. It was the prospect of facing the justice of God as the one who bore the sins of many. The key is Jesus' use of the idea of a cup in verse 42. He says there, Father, if you're willing, remove this cup from me. What is he referring to there? Maybe you know, but if you don't understand where this imagery comes from, turn with me to Psalm chapter 75. Psalm chapter 75, and this is an imagery that we can find in other places also. I'll turn to just a couple of examples of its use. But in Psalm chapter 75, we look at verses 7 and 8. Psalm 75, verses 7 and 8, we read this. It is God who executes judgment. putting down one and lifting up another. So in other words, what you have to fear is not man, what man can do for you to put in the words of Christ. Don't fear those who can kill the body but have no power over the soul. Fear the one who after the body has been put to death can destroy both body and soul. And so it is God, we're told here, who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. Verse 8, For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine well mixed and he pours out from it and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. So this imagery here, very striking visual imagery of God's wrath being something that the wicked are made to drink, all the way, just fully to drink it down to the dregs, and to fully experience God's judicial wrath. If you look at Isaiah chapter 51, we similarly have this language used in verses 17 and 22. Isaiah chapter 51. Now here we're talking about those who have been made to drink from God's cup of wrath. They've been judged, not eternally and spiritually necessarily, but temporally because of their covenant breaking. They have been sent away into exile and they've been judged by God. And Isaiah says in Isaiah 51 verse 17, Wake yourself. Wake yourself. Stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of His wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering In verse 22, thus says your Lord, the Lord, your God, who pleads the cause of his people, behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering, the bowl of my wrath, you shall drink no more. And so it is the cup or the bowl, it can also be translated the cup or the bowl of God's wrath that is in view. thinking about not the pain that he'll experience bodily, but the suffering that he'll experience spiritually, and his soul that worries him, that concerns him. Of all people, Jesus has a more perfect knowledge of what that suffering entails. than any of us. And the reason that you and I don't tremble at the prospect of wrath is for one of two reasons, I believe. One, we don't know our sin and we don't appreciate the holiness of God. So there's many unbelievers who are not afraid of the prospect of death because they've come to believe a lie about what happens at death, that we just are annihilated There's no consciousness. That's it. Our candle is snuffed out and there's nothing else after that. Or that it's just eternal rest. Or that everybody, except for those who are particularly wicked, will go to heaven regardless. That God wouldn't judge us for just any infraction of the Ten Commandments or His law. And so we don't know our sin. We don't understand what a great offense our sin is against a holy God. We don't appreciate the holiness of God if we think that a sin against Him is a light thing or a trivial matter. So that's one thing. Simply put, it's for ignorance of God and ourselves that we can just face death with bravery. But it's all a lie. Or, secondly, the reason why we might not tremble at the prospect of wrath is because we're convinced that Jesus has suffered the wrath of God in our place. That's a good reason to... I don't fear death, and I hope that you don't fear death either. Actually, I fear death more than I fear what comes after. That's the opposite, I believe, of what Christ was experiencing here. I don't think he was afraid of death itself, but what comes in the context of his death, which is to to take the wrath of God for the sins of many, but we, if we're in Christ, have no need to fear the wrath of God because Christ has suffered God's wrath in our place. But either way, this moment in time in which we find Jesus here praying in the garden, it ought to be sobering to us. J.C. Rouse said that this is a passage of scripture which we ought always to approach with peculiar reverence. because we see here something that we don't, no matter what we believe and how much we understand, we don't fully appreciate what Christ has done for us. That's true, believer, unbeliever. I'm not sure that we're capable, because if we're in Christ, we'll never experience God's wrath, so we're not capable of even fully appreciating what's going through his mind and heart, what he's processing internally. And if you aren't secure in Christ, if you aren't sure of where you stand with God, I'm missing a page in my notes, so give me a second here. Then you ought to be asking, what does Jesus know about what happens when we die that I don't know? Surely Jesus has got a better perspective as the one who is both God and man, who's never sinned, that surely he has a better intuitive grasp or proper understanding of death and what comes in the context of death and after death than we do. So if Jesus trembles before it, then what does he know that I don't? Unless you're in Christ, that's exactly what you ought to be asking. Unless you possess true saving faith, you should struggle as Jesus did. That's why I said earlier, I think it's for people who don't know where they stand with God, they don't have faith in Christ, and they're afraid, it's as it should be. They ought to tremble. It will not go well for your soul, friend, if you die apart from Christ. You have a never-dying soul that will spend eternity in either the blessed presence of God enjoying the rich life of the age to come and the new heavens and the new earth, wonderful, or you'll suffer an eternity of forsakenness and misery as your sin against an infinite God is matched by an infinite suffering of His wrath. And so first, there is Jesus' struggle in prayer, and there's a lot that we can learn about prayer and about our relationship to God from that struggle. First and foremost is it gives us a perspective when facing our own trials. We may be facing a trial that leads to death, but if we're in Christ, it's not a trial that leads to wrath. Never forget that, and you'll have a perspective on your suffering that is, it makes all the difference. Secondly, we see here Jesus' submission in prayer, verse 42. We read the words of Jesus' prayer. He says in verse 42, Father, if you are willing, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. Now this can be confusing to us if we're thinking about the way the Bible speaks about Jesus and his relationship to the Father. I mean, does Jesus have a separate will from the Father? Well, yes and no, because Jesus is both God and man. And so if we think about Jesus as having, it's one person, the Lord Jesus Christ, not two different figures. One person, but he has two, unlike us, we have one nature, a human nature. Jesus has both a human nature as we do, and a divine nature. So whatever it means for God to be God, and that's kind of difficult for us to get our minds around. Jesus has it fully, and it's completely at one with the Father and the Spirit. In that sense, in His divinity, Jesus' will is identical with God the Father, and there's no conflict. But Jesus, in becoming our mediator, He became a man. He took on a human nature, which means, like us, that Jesus had a human body and a human soul. And a will is one faculty of our soul, along with We can think. We come to an agreement of things in an intellectual sense. We come to know things. We talk about our mind as a part of our soul. We oftentimes associate it with our brain, which is why I do this when I say mind. We have a heart. We have the capacity for thinking. feeling and we have affections which can respond to the things we know appropriately. We have a will that decides to do something here before we actually do anything. So we have a soul. That's the invisible and internal part of who we are in addition to a body. That's what characterizes or comprises a human being. And Jesus, it was the same for Jesus. Jesus had both a divine nature and a human nature. And in his human nature, Jesus was like us. struggling with this idea. You know, he was made to be like us in every way except sin. That means that did he face anxieties? Did he have some of the same concerns that we might have? The same trepidation and fear in response to unsettling or unsure realities? Yes, of course. Jesus was like us in these ways except without sin. Never did it cross the line in any kind of lack of faith or distrust of the Lord. So if we understand it in that way, then we can appreciate what's going on here with Jesus. It's not that in his divine nature he's doubting. the will of the Father. He said before, even recently, in just what we considered last week, he says in verse 37, I tell you that Scripture must be fulfilled, and he was numbered with the transgressors. He knows what he's come to do and what he has to do, but he's struggling with it as we struggle, and yet we find here is ultimately the example he sets for us is it's okay to struggle in prayer. It's okay for you to struggle with prayer. We don't know what God's doing. I talk to many of you and you tell me about your struggles and one of the most difficult things is whenever you struggle with something that you can't make heads or tails, why is God doing this? Why am I going through this trial and temptation? I can believe that God's word says that all things will work for good for those who love him, and are called according to his purpose, but I don't know how they're gonna work for good. I have to take it on blind faith because it sure seems like God is displeased with me and that he means ill for me and not good, not blessing and favor, but cursing and bad fortune and so forth. Well, sometimes that's the way it is. And we're gonna struggle in prayer as we think about these things. But ultimately, Jesus sets an example for us in his resignation to the will of the Father. He acknowledges that, yes, he has a will. It's a human will. He'd like there to be another way. If humanly speaking, if there's another way, he's thinking, you know, can we do that, God? But ultimately, not my will, but your will be done. So there's this resignation, this submission, this full dependence upon the will of God. And finally, I think that there's a resting in it, which is glorious for the believer who says, you know, I don't have to know what God's doing. that I know that God is good, He loves me as His own because I have faith in Christ, I am assured of this, I can rest in the will of God for my life. He'll take care of me. He's my God. And so Jesus, he submits himself to God in prayer. And if you perhaps recognize in this prayer, I think there's an allusion here to the Lord's Prayer. He's already taught his disciples how to pray, and he's taught them to pray for their needs, to make intercession, but ultimately to pray according to the will of God. He's sort of putting his money where his mouth is. He's showing them that these things are real whenever the going gets tough. Jesus is showing that and setting an example here of someone who submits to the will of God. Thirdly, we see Jesus' strength from prayer. I wonder if the disciples had been awake if they wouldn't have been strengthened by this. Might they have seen the angel? I don't know. It is sometimes true that, say, with Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, or Saul, that there are certain things that he hears that others don't. Is it possible the angel appeared only to Christ, and that even if they had been awake, they might not have been strengthened as he was? I don't know. They didn't know, and they'll never know because they weren't awake. They weren't praying. But as Jesus depended in prayerful dependence upon God, as he bore his soul, as he sought the Lord and the Father and prayed for help, God met him in his trial and his agony and gave him strength. And he was not delivered from his trial. It's of key importance that you see here that Rarely does God deliver us from our trials entirely. Far more often he does, as he did for Christ, strengthen us for the trial. And so in verse 33, there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. Strengthen him, but the trials continue as we continue reading in Luke's gospel. And so too, if we will be instant in prayer and earnest in prayer, we can expect God to provide for the needs of our soul. And God can, we love to have healing, to have the financial resources, to have a resolution to some interpersonal conflict. There are very real, tangible, earthly answers to prayers that we would like, but as believers we need to be open to the fact that God may not give us those answers but he may give us help that is hard to quantify really, spiritual help, things like spiritual fortitude, comfort, a sense of peace, zeal for God and love for him above all things, courage and boldness and resoluteness, stuff that we may be struggling with. We may feel ourselves to be spiritually weak We may fear the coming of temptation because we just know we're going to give in to it and that we're going to fall because of how weak we are. But God may, in answer to our prayers, fortify us against that temptation and give us this timely help. And these kinds of helps and more may be granted to us that we might not enter the doors which temptation opens to us. And so the question is, To all of us, why are we sleeping? Jesus asked them this question here in verse 46. Why are you sleeping? In regards to our prayer life, maybe we're praying, but we're not praying, if you catch my meaning. We're not praying earnestly. We're not praying constantly. Certainly if this is praying, maybe we say, I've never prayed, or I don't pray like this very often. Why are we, spiritually speaking, why are we apathetic? and slow of heart to believe and to depend. Why are we spiritually lethargic? Why aren't you sleeping? And Jesus commands us to arise and pray that you may not enter into temptation. Let's go to him in prayer now. Father God, we thank you for your word. which reveals the example of Christ, the person of Christ to us. What an encouragement. We thank you for the clear commands that we have in scripture, commands that are for our good, that if we will keep your commands that, God, things will go well for us. We'll receive answers to prayer in accordance with your will. Your will for us is always to do good for us, to do good to us. But first and foremost, it is an eternal good and not a temporal good, not an earthly good, but a heavenly one. So make us content with the answers that you give. We pray that you'd help us to be of this mind, to rise from our spiritual slumber and pray, to seek your face. God, that we might be men and women of prayer, that this might be our custom as it was the custom of Christ. God, we pray that you'd help to give us a proper appreciation for the realities of life and death, sin and judgment. If there is a man, a woman, or a child in this room who does not yet have such a strong conviction, is not troubled in their souls, who is outside of Christ. We pray that you'd bring, by your spirit, that you would bring a great unsettling and a great conviction to their hearts that they might look to Christ and be saved through faith in him. God, we pray that also you would give us a proper appreciation for everything that Christ has done for us and for our salvation. They would have a sense of the agonies that he faced in Gethsemane. and all the way into the cross, that we might love him all the more and rejoice in him and in our salvation that's ours in Christ. And we pray all of this in his name. Amen.