Shall we pray?
Give me a sight, O Saviour, of thy
wondrous love to me, the love that brought
thee down to earth to die on Calvary.
Was it the nails, O Saviour, that bound
thee to the tree?
Nay, t'was thine everlasting love, thy love
for me, for me.
O, make me understand it, help me to
take it in, what it meant to thee,
the Holy One, to bear away my sin.
For Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Would you turn with me, please, to the
Gospel of Mark and the fourteenth chapter?
The Gospel of Mark and chapter fourteen, verse
thirty-six.
And he said, Abba, Father, all things are
possible unto thee.
Take away this cup from me.
Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou
wilt.
We shall be considering, my dear friends, this
morning, and again on Wednesday and Thursday and
Friday evenings, some of the events which led
up to the cross.
Like Moses, when he saw the burning bush
and was told to take his shoes from
off his feet, so, in the spiritual sense,
should we, for indeed, we are on holy
ground, as we consider today this verse and
this portion of God's Word.
You will recall that having eaten the Passover
and instituted the Lord's Supper, our Lord Jesus
went with his disciples to the Mount of
Olives, and then, as they went, they sang
a hymn.
And in the thirty-second verse of this
chapter, they came to a place which was
named Gethsemane.
If you have a revised version, you will
notice in the margin, it reads, they came
to an enclosed piece of ground.
I feel that it is so enclosed that
somehow it seems to exclude all of us.
This is a passage of Scripture which is
best read and considered alone on our knees.
Why did our Lord choose Gethsemane?
I can only suggest two reasons that seem
to come to my mind as I prayed
about it.
There was not a blade of grass upon
which he had not knelt in prayer.
This was a sacred place, consecrated by his
constant visits and fellowship and communion with God.
And he chose the place of greatest communion
for the scene of the last battle, the
greatest conflict.
Furthermore, John tells us in the eighteenth chapter
and the second verse of his Gospel that
Judas knew the place.
Our Lord wasn't running away from anybody.
He wasn't trying to hide.
When his hour was come, he was in
a place where Judas knew he could find
him.
And the cheek of our Lord was all
prepared to receive the kiss of a traitor.
He delighted to do the will of God,
even though that will led him to the
obedience of death.
And as we try to follow this morning
some of the experiences in that garden, I
fear that some of us, like Judas, may
not enter into anything of it.
Others, like the eight disciples who were left
just inside the enclosure, will see it at
a distance.
Others, perhaps like the three, will go a
little further and come a little nearer.
But I think that all of us will
be far away from understanding what really happened.
For our Lord Jesus was utterly alone in
Gethsemane.
You will notice, of course, the agony, and
it is about this that I would like
to try to speak to you this morning.
What was the cause of his agony in
the garden?
Notice how it's portrayed to us, verse thirty
-three and four.
He taketh with him Peter and James and
John, and began to be sore amazed.
And to be very heavy, and saith unto
them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.
Surely God's perfect man had perfect courage.
He was always a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief, and yet there was never
a moment in his life when he was
disturbed.
My peace I give unto you, not as
the world giveth.
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let
it be afraid.
His was a life of absolute rest at
all times, except in Gethsemane.
His peace departed.
It was agony, unrest.
You catch the picture of it.
He went forward a little, verse thirty-five,
and fell on the ground and prayed.
Verse thirty-seven, he cometh and findeth them
sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou?
Watch and pray.
Again he went away and prayed, and spake
the same words, and when he returned, he
found them asleep.
And he cometh a third time, and said
unto them, Sleep on now, take your rest.
Back and forward three times to his disciples
to appeal for their prayers.
And Luke, Dr. Luke, who should know, tells
us in his record of this in the
twenty-second chapter and the forty-fourth verse,
his sweat was as great drops of blood
falling down to the ground.
Oh beloved, this couldn't be shrinking from physical
pain.
Many a man, especially a Christian man, has
faced torture with a song in his lips.
Paul and Silas in a Philippian prison did
that.
It couldn't be, it couldn't be the fear
of death.
It couldn't be an attack of Satan.
Our Lord had conquered Satan in the wilderness,
face to face, forty days, forty nights, without
ever a murmur, without ever any trace of
complaint or unrest.
I think the answer to our reverent inquiry
is in our text.
All things are possible unto thee.
Take away this cup from me, nevertheless not
what I will, but what thou wilt.
And here our Lord in Gethsemane is taking
a cup from his Father's hand.
Not from the Jews, not from Judas, not
the disappointment of sleeping disciples, not even from
the devil.
But he's taking a cup from one whom
he knew was his Father, who had appointed
him this bitter portion, a cup from which
he shrank, a cup which at that moment
God the Father was holding to the lips
of God the Son, that he might drink
it to the last drop.
Something far worse than physical pain, something far
more dreadful than any attack or onslaught of
Satan, something inconceivably awful.
And it came from the Father's hand.
You remember these verses?
All we like sheep have gone astray, we
have turned every one to our own way,
but the Lord hath laid upon him the
iniquity of us all.
It pleased the Lord to bruise him, he
hath put him to grief.
Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from me.
Our precious Savior is about to bear the
curse due to me and to you.
He's going to stand in our place, therefore
before he can ever do that, he must
suffer in our stead.
Could we try and think just for a
moment what that meant to him?
Behold and see if there be any sorrow
like unto his sorrow.
As God, he was perfectly holy, incapable of
sin.
As man, he was spotlessly pure.
Yet, he had to be made a sin
offering, something loathsome.
He had to be taken without the camp
and consumed with the fire of God's judgment
upon sin.
Oh, that he must stand before God in
the position of the sinner.
To be looked upon, if you please, to
be looked upon by the Father as if
he were all the sinners in the world.
As if he had committed all the sin
of all people for all time, for it
was all laid upon him and the judgment
due to it all was poured and focused
and centered and inflicted upon the one spotless
Lamb of God.
And as the Father looks upon the Son,
he sees there all the sin of all
the people upon one, the servant of Jehovah.
To be treated as a sinner, to be
smitten of God as a sinner, though in
him there was no sin.
Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from me.
This was the cup which he drank, to
stand where I should have stood, to pay
the debt to the justice of heaven, due
from me, due from you, which we could
not possibly pay.
It was this that laid him low, the
cause of his agony.
But may I dare, and I pray God,
that I shall not attempt to draw aside
a veil which God has shut.
But may I attempt to show you something
of the character of his agony that day?
Mark uses some tremendous words to describe the
agony of Jesus.
You notice one of them in verse thirty
-three.
He began to be sore amazed.
That's a word that you only find in
Mark's Gospel.
You would find it in the ninth chapter
and the fifteenth verse, where the people were
so amazed as they gazed upon Jesus when
he came down from the Mount of Transfiguration.
You would find it again in the sixteenth
chapter and the fourth and fifth verses, where
the women who went to the empty tomb
were affrighted, as the word is translated there,
affrighted, as the angel spoke to them.
Sore amazed.
It means, literally, absolutely stunned with astonishment.
It means the pain of an unbearable shock.
But our Lord Jesus was the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world.
It was no surprise to him that he
was there, was it?
No.
He had foreseen the agony of the cross
from the very beginning, yes?
Ah, but when it came upon him, it
was infinitely worse than anything he had ever
expected.
The awful experience of having sin in totality,
heaped upon him, the one Lamb of God,
was more terrible than anything he had dreamed.
And the last lesson which our Saviour learned
in the school of obedience was learned in
a sense of absolute amazement.
He was sore amazed.
The next word is, he began to be
very heavy, full of heaviness.
And I understand that word to mean being
completely absorbed in sorrow, to the exclusion of
everything else.
As a man whose mind is staggered by
a sudden blow, have you stood by the
lifeless body of one who for years has
traveled through life with you, and become as
precious to you as life itself, and suddenly
he's gone.
She's gone.
Full of heaviness.
Ah, but that's not a thousandth part of
what this word means to Jesus.
His tears came, my dear friend, listen, it's
terrific.
His tears came not through his eyes but
in blood through his body.
His sweat was as drops of blood falling
upon the ground.
And he has sunk in spirit down to
the very depths.
He was very heavy.
And the next word is, exceeding sorrowful.
And that means hemmed in by sorrow.
You remember the psalmist said, the pains of
hell got hold of me.
All thy waves and thy billows have gone
over me, Psalm 42, 7.
He was exceeding sorrowful.
Above him, and beneath him, and all around
him, and within him, with sorrow, without one
little ray of relief, not one bit of
light in darkness.
His disciples couldn't help him.
They were all asleep, except one, and he
was on the road to betray him.
And in the presence of his father, amidst
the crushing burden, his spirit cried out and
said, Father, if it be possible, exceeding sorrowful.
And Luke, Dr. Luke, crowns it all with
a word which absorbs all the others when
he says, he was in an agony.
And that means a conflict, a wrestling.
With whom was he wrestling?
Not with his father.
If it be possible, let this cup pass
from me.
Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou
wilt.
The conflict was not with heaven.
Friend, the conflict was with himself.
Jesus had a human will, you know, as
well as a divine will.
Not what I will, but what thou wilt.
He was under no necessity to go to
the cross.
What is of grace is not of necessity.
Oh, but had the cross been declined, salvation
would have been unknown.
The sensitiveness of that spotless human nature shrank
from any contact with sin.
And yet, the love of his heart said,
bear it, stoop beneath the load.
Agony.
The agony of an awful battle in the
soul of the Son of God.
You see, the purity that was his, the
absolute purity that was his, could bear no
connection with sin, and that purity was omnipotent,
almighty, holy God.
The love which was his, which couldn't bear
his people to perish, the love which knew
no limit to its endurance, no fading of
its hope, the love which could outlast anything,
that love was omnipotent, almighty.
And within the bleeding heart of Jesus, the
passion of love and the passion of holiness
and purity, two holy, godly, pure passions fought
a titanic struggle within the bleeding heart of
the Lamb of God.
I don't wonder that his sweat was as
it were great drops of blood.
Ah, I repeat, God forbid, that I should
attempt to gaze or ask you to gaze
within a veil which Jesus and the Lord
of glory have drawn.
The old hymn says, tis to God and
God alone, that his griefs are fully known.
I've gone as far as I can to
suggest to you something of the character of
the suffering of the Lamb of God.
Did he have any comfort in his agony?
Yes.
He sought help in human friendship, but found
none.
What then did he do?
He prayed, says the record, he prayed the
more earnestly.
And he found comfort in the relationship of
a little child that cries, Abba, Father.
Anguish, the like of which the universe has
never known before or since.
And of anguish brought the Lamb of God,
like a chastened child, to appeal to a
father's love.
Unlist, Abba, Father, if it be possible.
It was prayer, persistent, fervent, repeated, constant prayer
which brought him comfort.
Luke says that an angel came to strengthen
him.
And the cup was drunk to its dregs.
And I read the sense of mastery over
it in verses 41 and 42.
Take your sleep.
It's enough.
The hour is come.
The Son of Man is betrayed into the
hands of sinners.
Rise, let us go.
Lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.
The battle has been fought and won.
The greatest crisis has been fought and faced
alone.
Not a friend, not a comforter, Abba, Father.
I dare not seek to put you or
me anywhere within that picture.
But I ask you today, beloved, do you
know anything in your life about a taste
of Gethsemane?
Do you?
You going through a grief, a heartache?
You crying, as Jesus did, Abba, Father.
Then I urge you to imitate your Master
and to cry to him and say to
him, if it be possible.
But not my will, but thine did I.
I would like to take the remainder of
my time this morning in speaking to you
a little bit about the consequences of this
agony of the Master, that we might apply
them to our lives.
There are some precious and solemn implications here.
I think some that strike me very deeply
are, in the first place, the humanity of
Jesus.
Oh yes, he is God, absolutely.
But he is also man.
And as I gaze into the garden, I
know that he can understand completely.
We have not a high priest who cannot
be touched by the feeling of our infirmities,
but was in all points tempted like as
we are yet without sin.
Consider him, that endured such contradiction of sinners
against himself, for ye have not yet resisted
unto blood, striving against sin.
Hebrews 12, 3 and 4.
I think I've said from this pulpit, I
say it again, I've never dared to preach
a sermon from that text, and I don't
think I ever will.
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving
against sin.
He did.
Oh, the humanity of Jesus.
This much I do know.
There's never a pang, never a pain, never
a trouble, never a sorrow, that touches your
life or mine, to which he is a
stranger.
Oh, I beg of you that you would
not only today lift up your heart and
know that he is God, but lay hold
of him as a brother who is born
for adversity, and he will bear you through
anything, absolutely anything.
But then I also find myself amazed as
I think of the horror of sin.
Sin must be a dreadful thing if it
crushed Jesus like this.
Oh, that men would really know what sin
is, and what the wrath of God against
sin involves.
Oh, for a Holy Spirit conviction against sin.
Oh, that your heart and mine today may
see the horror of it, the loathsome of
it.
I don't believe that anybody ever comes to
Jesus for salvation who hasn't stood before the
Lamb of God and seen himself a rebel,
an enemy, lost, undone, doomed, condemned, and his
only hope to fly quickly for refuge to
the bleeding side of the Lamb of God.
I'm not sure that that is in our
preaching these days very much.
It's snap decisions we want in order to
be successful.
God save us.
Oh, that I might have, you might have,
my dear listener, such a conviction of sin
that you see yourself this morning if you're
not in Christ so hopelessly lost that you
dare not leave this meeting, this building, or
finish this service without running to the fountain
that's yet open for sin and uncleanness.
But then I think, too, my heart is
gripped with the completeness of his cross, his
atonement, how black and sinful I am, we
all are.
God knows what only fit for the lowest
hell, and I marvel that God hasn't sent
me to it long ago.
I'd have got what I deserved if he
did.
But then I go to Gethsemane, and I
see Jesus wallowing on the ground in blood
and anguish.
And I hear his groans and cries, and
I see his sweat, his bloody sweat.
And I hear him say, Father, not my
will but thine be done.
And then I understand, bless his name, how
God in heaven can spare me.
He has smitten his Son in my stead.
Can he demand payment twice?
Can he scorch and consume me?
For our God is a consuming fire.
Can he do that when he's already consumed
the burnt offering?
And Jesus, oh no, I see justice satisfied.
I see the law of God honoured.
I see my guilty soul set free.
I see that the fire of the justice
of heaven has just burnt itself out into
ashes upon Jesus, my substitute.
And I see that the law, the holy
law of God, has exhausted its every demand
upon the person of the one who was
made a curse for me, that I might
be made the righteousness of God in him.
I see the completeness of his obedience and
sacrifice.
But oh, brother and sister, if I see
anything in Gethsemane that chills my soul with
horror, I see the awful consequences of rejecting
what God did for me there.
I see more clearly than ever the terror
of the punishment that must fall upon those
who reject his atonement.
I do not find I recognize theological problems,
but I do not find any problem.
In the light of what I've been saying
to you this morning, I do not find
any problem about believing in the eternal conscious
punishment of the Christ-rejecting soul.
If sin did this to Jesus, what in
God's name is it going to do to
the man who rejects him?
What happened to Jesus thereafter, in the next
few hours, is exactly a picture of what
will happen to someone listening to my voice
who may be rejecting Christ.
For sin, like Judas, betrayed him with a
kiss, as it has betrayed you with a
kiss.
And it's hounded you off to judgment, and
one day there'll be a resurrection morning, and
you will stand not before the judgment of
Pilate, but before the judgment of a holy
God.
And you will be speechless as Jesus was
before Pilate, and you will be condemned.
And the cry that came, crucify him, will
be altered in that day, and the cry
that will come from the throne will be,
Depart, ye cursed!
God will say that to the Christ-rejecting
soul.
And in your agony of rejection, you will
cry, as Jesus cried, I thirst!
But there will be no provision except the
gall of bitterness for all eternity.
You have despised my Saviour, and sin that
made my Saviour suffer agony will one day
make the Christ-rejecting soul suffer agony too,
if you die rejecting the mercy of God.
O beloved, grant today that the tears, the
groans, the bloody sweat of Gethsemane may warn
you before it's too late to get right
with God, to repent and believe the gospel,
and to receive the living Christ into your
heart.
For he paid it all for you.
Bearing shame and scoffing rude in my place,
condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his
blood, hallelujah, he's my Saviour.
O God, may we lift our hearts to
thee, and may be tear-stained faces to
thee, as we think of what it meant
to thee to bear away our sin.