I want to draw your attention to the passage of scripture that I read to you this morning and again this evening. Our Lord Jesus in Gethsemane, Mark's Gospel, chapter 14. And they came to a place, it says in verse 32, which was named Gethsemane. And he says to his disciples, sit ye here while I shall pray. Now our Lord Jesus led a very true human life unfolding from day to day, week to week, year to year, the teenagers of which we know practically nothing, the years in his twenties, nothing dramatic or any trauma took place. during those days. We know our Lord increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man. And then we find that there were times in the life of our Lord when there were particular events of crisis and special significance. The baptism of the Lord Jesus, the 40 days when he was tempted in the wilderness. the Sermon on the Mount, the Transfiguration, the Upper Room, the First Lord's Supper, and then this event that took place then, the night before Golgotha. And I want us to reflect for a moment on the great lessons that God offers us in this narrative. It seems to me that on a very practical level, that many of our own personal problems and the problems of our congregations arise because we're not controlled by the example of our Lord. He has left us an example that we should walk in his steps. and we are to let the spirit of Christ in us and the teaching of Christ in his word discipline and inform us in our ambitions and in our sorrows. We are followers of an enfleshed Christ, we are followers of an involved and emotional Christ, a humiliated, a serving Christ, one who wept and sweat drops of blood. And these factors should influence us when we evaluate the experiences on this uncertain earthly pilgrimage of ours that we meet when we come to choose our lifestyle, the things that we approve of, the things that we need to confess to God. And that's why it's so important for us to keep coming back to the Gospels, to read them and let the influence of the life of Jesus Christ impact our lives. And in those narratives, there is no point more astonishing no point more magnificent, more challenging, no point more devastating than this great moment in the Garden of Gethsemane. It's very meaningful as we grasp God, as we wrestle with him and hold on to him. This is God the Son. This is the only God there is. and it has then enormous significance for the nature of Christian living day by day. So, let's this morning look at our Lord's emotional condition. We're told he began to be deeply distressed, verse 33, and to be troubled. And then he speaks and he explains, my soul is overwhelmed. It's full of sorrow, even to death. And so here is Christ and his heart is breaking and he's experiencing the depth of human sorrow, but he's not hiding that fact. He's exegeting it, he's explaining it to the men that he's brought. in order for them to witness how he is. He doesn't go a great way before day and go up alone into a mountain and these things take place there, but he is there and he's brought Peter and James and John to see. And he stands before them and before us not simply as divine, a person characterized by august grandeur and unflappability, Mr. Cool. He doesn't stand before us as a man always in control. But he stands before us in the glory of his humanity, of his human vulnerability, as one exposed to deep psychological distress and trouble that he knows human feelings. In every pang that rends the heart, the man of sorrows had a part. He sympathizes with our grief, and to the sufferer he sends relief. He knows human emotions, not only joy and blessedness and contentment and fulfillment, but he knows them on the dark side. He sweat blood. He cried to God, why? It is not a sin for you to say when grief and tragedy come into your life, why Lord, why? He was capable of the most profound emotions and he wasn't ashamed to show them. He's almost unable to handle it. I don't say he crossed that threshold. I don't say he ever broke. But I'm saying that he's on the verge of that, and that's why he needs to pray, that he's overwhelmed, that the whole situation and the moral is too much for him on a personal, human, emotional level, depending on his wits, depending on his own psyche and his own physical strength. He can't cope. There's nothing more glorious. in the whole Gospel than that great reality. This fact of the emotional life of our Lord, that our Lord has come and he's taken our nature, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. He's taken our psychology and he's tabernacled among us. God has come into our experience. God has walked the valley of the shadow of death. God sharing our pain, sharing our relationships, Our grief. A God who sees two sisters weeping and he weeps with them. God coming into our bondage, into our oppression, into our bereavement, into the agony of death. He tasted death itself. Christ in my valley. And what is more glorious is the fact that when he is in my valley, he reacts as I react. with tears, with distress, with trouble, by confessing, I can't get by without you answering and you hearing me. And he wants his disciples to know that for their whole future as they serve the Lord. You know there are pressures put on God's people to be stoical. A member of my family who lost an unborn child this year told me how distressed she was when someone was urging her in her grief to be more stoical, that she mustn't be self-pitying. She was so upset at that level. To be unemotional. To be always in total control. of our affections and reactions and feelings. And here we have this extraordinary reality of an almost broken Jehovah Jesus, an almost overwhelmed Christ of a Lord who's going through emotional trauma. And it's a mandate for my humanness. It's a mandate for my tears. It's a mandate for my sleeplessness, for my non-stoic reaction to many of the things that God in his providence brings into my life. And from the moment I read Mark 14 and Gethsemane, then I know that it's not subhuman to howl. I remember so well the day after the funeral service of my wife, how I went off for the weekend to spend the weekend with my daughter in Cardiff and I got in the car and I drove then up Llyn Lyman and I saw the empty seat, the empty passenger seat next to me and I thought she'll never sit there again and I howled I think I howled twice on that journey. And I have a mandate because here is my weeping saviour. Here is the man Christ Jesus. Here is the archetypal man. Here is the model man. Here is God's great definition of a man, what Luther called the real man, the proper man, he said, the authentic human being, the pattern man. And he is overwhelmed and he is sorrowful. and he is troubled. And from that moment on, I know when I'm disturbed, when my heart is breaking, my God understands because my God has come into the valley. He's been troubled. And I know that God in Christ, in the midst of the throne of God, as he looks at our human struggles and observes our pain, that he's touched with a feeling of our infirmities in every palm that rends the heart the man of sorrows had apart. He sympathises with our grief and to the sufferer sends relief. He hasn't forgotten for a moment Gethsemane and all memory cells that die in the mind of Jesus Christ. He remembers the weight of the cross and his weakness and collapsing under it. He remembers the pain of the nails in his hands and feet. He remembers the bloody sweat there in Gethsemane when he was not simply the unmoved mover, the impassive observer, not just that, but when the spotlight came on him and he was in utter distress. And when we are overwhelmed, our souls are overwhelmed, we must We must think of what is happening now at the right hand of God, where there is the great saviour, our great high priest, Jesus Christ, and he's exalted and lifted up. And he ever lives to intercede for us. And he's praying and he's saying, Father, there's that woman in Hilsham, and she is so distressed. Lord, comfort her. There's that man and he's broken hearted and he wants to be brave for the sake of his children. Oh Lord, do comfort and keep him and help him at this time. And that's what he's doing now. He's whispering our worthless names in the ears of his father in Tavern. He's saying, I know what that man is going through because I went through it. I know what that teenager is experiencing. Maybe he lost his father when he was a teenager because Joseph doesn't seem to appear during the ministry of our Lord. And he loved his father and honoured him. He was a good father, a righteous man. And he sympathises with the teenagers. I see the reports on the news of policemen that are killed and a young bride losing her husband. I pray that she'll come to know this saviour and that she'll be strengthened and comforted by a sympathising God. Now, let me go on to the next thing I want to say to you. I want to ask why. Why is it that our Lord was so overwhelmed? This Colossus, this one who speaks and the winds and waves obey him, this one who commands the devil and he flees from him, this one who has power over disease and over death itself, whose earthly career is so masterful, what is it that brings him to this point that he's overwhelmed? And I don't think it is his ignorance of what lies the next day. I don't think that is the reason for it. We can be We've gone to a doctor and the doctor's examined us and done tests and then he calls us and he says, I'd like you to come back. There's just one or two things I want to check and immediately we're apprehensive. We don't know what's wrong. How serious is it? Why does he want to see me again? We're apprehensive before the operation. We don't know how it's going to be. We've never been to a hospital before, perhaps. The mysteriousness of the future troubles us. But our Lord wasn't troubled with that. He wasn't ignorant of what lay before him. Our Lord knew his trouble was the consequence of his knowledge. not of his ignorance. He knew only too well that the very central reality of our religion, the Apostle Paul said, he was determined not to know anything but it. I was determined to know this, he says. And that's what troubled our Lord Jesus Christ. It was going to bring not Gethsemane but Golgotha and the cross and what Calvary meant. And he knew He knew that in him, in his soul, and in his body, he was going to experience what all those Old Testament sacrifices in their millions were pointing forward to. He knew tomorrow he would become the Paschal Lamb whose blood would be shed. He would become the sin offering to whom sin is imputed. He would become the Holocaust who would be consumed by the majestic rectitude of a sin-hating God, by the glorious wrath of the Righteous One, in whom is no darkness at all. That holiness would consume him. He knew that tomorrow he would be the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. It would be for him the fulfillment of, and it pleased the Lord to bruise him. bruising Him, putting Him to shame. The sword of the Lord awaken and smiting the man who is God's fellow. We glory in the cross, we preach the cross, and the cross is explicable and intelligible only when we bear in mind that the sorrow of Gethsemane The distress and pain was a consequence of our Lord's mind being focused on why the Father had sent Him into the world, why He had accepted the mission, why this would be the climax of all His redeeming work. And He was overwhelmed the night before. He was troubled because of the physical reality of the cross. He had a body God had prepared for him. God didn't prepare it with any immunity to pain. There was no built-in analgesic, no built-in painkiller that God gave to his son that would reduce the sensitivity to the torture of the nails. He was a true human being. He had a true human central nervous system. and a true sensitivity to physiology. He knew his body was going to be lacerated, his body was going to be whipped and wounded and nailed. I know we are told that we must be careful about giving details about what crucifixion was, and I respect that very much. And it's not underlined in the New Testament because there is no need for Matthew, Mark and Luke and John to underline what crucifixion was because their readers knew it when they turned a corner on a road and there were crossroads and they saw a cross and a body hanging there. They knew the horror of that only too well. So I am saying to you we mustn't forget that Calvary and the cross wasn't conducted in the realm of ideas. It didn't take place in the realm of theology or of speculation or doctrine. It was in human history. It was flesh and blood. It was filth and gall and bodies and execution. And our Lord knew that that would happen to him the next day. And then, of course, there was another reason why he was deeply troubled, and that was the social reality of what lay before him. I've been listening, as we all have, to the news, and we have interviews with people who've had to be in lockdown and haven't seen their children, haven't seen their parents for months. and no one is allowed into the house to see them and they feel terribly lonely day and night. Our Lord was social. Our Lord was gregarious. He lived with his half-brothers and sisters and mother and father, shared a bedroom with the boys. and worked with them and grew in favor with men. The people of Nazareth said, oh, you've got such a lovely boy, Mary. And he was helpful and kind. And his humanness was perfect. And his humanness was modeled on the triuneness and pluralness of God. So that there was that dimension always. He couldn't be the Lone Ranger. Why did he choose 12? We're told to be with him. He wanted their company. He wanted their questions and their teachability and to see their growth in graciousness and their love for him. And he knew that in a few hours they would all leave him. They'd all run away like startled rabbits. And then he would go to Calvary, to desolation. He's going to be forsaken and denied. He loved Peter. He loved John. Even, bear with me, Judas. They were all going to forsake him. They were all going to flee. And he could feel the pain of that, of everyone deserting him. The grief of that. So his physical, his social agony, and then of course there's his spiritual reality. It is the spiritual pain. It was going to be Satan's hour. It was going to be the power of darkness. It was going to be the time when God was going to forsake him. That desolation, you know John's Gospel, how it begins, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. That's how it begins. His eternal deity, Father and Son, there'd never been a time, never, from the beginning, the Father and Son were together. And then when he came into the world in his developing humanity as he grew in favour with God and understood more then as the man Christ Jesus and God always there. To appropriate at the beginning of the day, be with me now, Lord, today. Keep me safe, help me to honour Thee, deliver me from temptation, keep me from the evil one, And then at the end of the day, thank you, Heavenly Father, that you've been with me all day. And then that, as a boy, as a young man, as a fully grown man, always God to speak to, always God to react with, God to worship, God there in every crisis, in the wilderness, in the full frontal accusations of Satan, and God there with him. And now, the loss of God. The one reality he'd never known before, the loss of God. It was uncharted territory, and he knew that he'd be walking through the valley by himself, that he would be in a wilderness where no man dwelt, in a land where you cried to God, and God didn't answer, and God didn't tell you why. the loss of the face of God, the loss of the sense of the love of God, the loss of the sense of the comforts that God gives to us, the sense of help. He was going to be without God. You remember Abram, how he goes and he takes Isaac. And the great stress in that narrative, you know it, both of them went together. we're told, and they were there together. The Father and the Son are there together. And that's the way it had been with God the Father and God the Son. In Bethlehem, together. In Nazareth, together. Galilee, together. Upper Room, together. But on Mount Calvary, God not there. And he cries, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And that was just hours away, the loss of God, and he finds it overwhelming, and he's amazed. There's an eeriness, another otherworldliness about that reality. So how shall I turn this then? Well, let me turn it in this way. There are people in Hailsham, there may be people in this congregation this morning who are indifferent, who have peace of mind about death, who are facing the same possibility, the loss of God, and it troubled Jesus. It amazed Jesus, it almost crushed Jesus. But you don't seem to be concerned that you're going to lose God, the God who has blessed you all the days of your life. Let me tell you, wake up, listen, Make sure you have God now with you. That as Jesus was with God, you should be with God as your Lord, your teacher, your great high priest. Or let me turn it in this way. Sometimes as Christians, we engage in actions which we know are wrong, which will lead to the loss of God. And does that terrify us, the loss of God? that we are moving on to the terrible reality of losing God. And Jesus was troubled and overwhelmed. Or let me turn it this way. There are times when God's providence is unthinkable. It's eerie, makes our hair stand on end. Jacob said at Bethel, this is a dreadful place. It's a place full of dread. And there are things that happen to us and we can hardly manage them. So big with the mysteriousness of God. Not common, not regular, but make a place in your theological world for this, that one day you'll be in a situation, something like, Christ, I think there's no calvary for a Christian, but there's something like Gethsemane, overwhelmed and broken before God. The heavenly unmanageability of the providences The smiling face of our father is hidden. And when you see people that are overwhelmed, and just, when you think it's months since your husband died, and you still miss him, and you still weep when you talk about him, don't be too critical. Don't judge them too harshly. You don't know what they're going through. how God is dealing with them. So that's what I... I'm finished. That's what I've spoken to you about this morning, about the emotional condition of our Lord in the garden. I tried to say it's the charter for Christian feeling. It's the charter for Christian emotion. It's the charter for our feeling so vulnerable at times. It's the right of a man of God to be overwhelmed with sorrow, to be distressed and troubled. And there are moments in our lives when we'll experience that or when those we love the most go through it. And that's why Christ said, come with me, come and be with me and watch. and watch and pray for me. And let's be those sorts of Christian counsellors. Let the strong among us patiently bear the burdens of the weak. Amen.