Since we are coming up on Easter in a week or so I thought I would deal with a passage that leads up to the crucifixion and that is Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane found in Matthew chapter 26. I’ll start with verse 36:
Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." 37And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. 38Then He said to them, "My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me." 39And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will." 40And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? 41"Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." 42He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done." 43Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 44And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. 45Then He came to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46"Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!"
I know that most of the time that I have heard sermons on this passage they have usually focused on making me feel guilty for not praying enough but I want to look at it from a different perspective. I want you to see with new eyes the struggle that Jesus had with refusing to do sin. Too often we come to passages like this and are told that Jesus was grieving over the lost, he was sad because people were lost but that is not what this passage is about at all. Jesus was deeply grieved; he was falling on his face in prayer because he didn’t want to do what God had called him to do. He didn’t want to die on the cross, he didn’t want to die to himself, he didn’t want to do what God had called him to. He prays ‘God please if there is another way to get this done let’s do it. Please, I don’t want to do this. I will if I have to but I don’t want to do it.’ And then he resigns himself to praying not my will by yours be done.
He is grieving and struggling over this so much that Luke tells us that an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him.
I want you to understand that this is to be our example when it comes to walking in the commands of God. We don’t have to want to do it. We may not want to walk in obedience but we must pray that God’s will be done in our lives and we must pray until he strengthens us into obedience. The law of God is given to us to humble us. It is given to us to bring us to Christ so that we may rely on him for the strength to be obedient.
It is my prayer that God would stir up in each and every one of you a longing for obedience that will force you to fall upon your face and grieve because you know you can’t do it on your own. If you are delusional enough to think that you can somehow walk the way of obedience on your own strength then you had better be checking your pulse because you must be dead.
In my own life I have begun to accept some more discipline in my life and I have begun to walk and pray in the mornings; in saying that, I want you to understand that I do not do these things with a happy face or with a happy heart. I do not like learning to be disciplined. Lately I have been putting one foot in front of the other with much unhappiness. I walk in silence for the first few minutes because I’m rather aggravated. Why do I have to be disciplined? Why do I have to be spending time praying and walking when I could be asleep like everybody else? That is how my prayer time usually starts. I often times want to just stop and say that’s enough but then I become aware that I am 6 blocks away from home and unless I want to just sit down in the middle of the road the rest of the day I am going to have to keep walking. Every day I have to make a choice when the alarm goes off. Rarely do I just jump out of bed singing a happy song and going out with a smile on my face. I dread dying to myself. I hate dying to myself but that is our call as God’s people. You see one of the costs of being a Christian is dying to yourself, your will, your desires and pleasures and beginning to embrace the ways of God and his word. It’s not fun. It’s not easy but it is necessary if you are going to make it to the finish line.
You see Jesus could have lost the whole thing right here. He could have said no to the cross. He wanted to say no to the cross. He wanted to say no so badly that he sweat drops of blood trying to get God the Father to change his mind. He didn’t just say “oh it’s God’s will” and go on his merry way. He knew what God’s will was and he didn’t want to do it. Here is our example. He didn’t want to do what God had asked but he knew that if he was to finish the race and cross the finish line he was going to have to bow his knee in submission to the will of God the father. He was going to have to learn obedience right here right now. It didn’t make any difference that he had been obedient for 33 years. One sin was all it took to make him just like the first Adam.
I know we don’t like to think this way about Jesus. It is usually at these times that we go into sovereignty of God mode and say Jesus couldn’t have sinned. But if he couldn’t have sinned he couldn’t have been our savior because he wouldn’t be like us. The scripture tells us that we have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses; one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. That sounds like a glorious thing to be tempted and not sin.
But here in Gethsemane we see what that looks like. Here Jesus is being tempted with the worst temptation he has to face. Satan in the wilderness was nothing compared to choosing to die in obedience to the will of God. He is agonizing over whether or not he is going to be obedient. He is having doubts, yes doubts about the will of God. He is grieving over what he must do. He is broken and burying his face in the ground in agony over the choice he has to make. He has to die to himself before he can die for us and here is the pivotal point. An angel is sent to minister to him and yet even after that he struggles so much over this decision, he is in so much agony and praying so fervently; that His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.
Oh that we would struggle so diligently with sin. The writer of Hebrews says in Chapter 12: For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 4You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; 5and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him; 6For those whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. 7It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
We get a glimpse in the garden of Gethsemane what Godly discipline looks like and feels like. And at the same time perhaps we can get an understanding of why the first Adam refused to submit to the growing up process. IT HURTS.
Here is Jesus who is without sin: A man who has managed to make it 33 years without sinning and two days before he dies he has to learn to submit himself to the father in an ultimate, knock down drag out that will determine all of history.
If Jesus had to struggle this much against sin why should we expect our struggle with sin to be any better? I gripe and moan about having to be disciplined and all I have to do is get up and pray every morning; I just have to get up and go to work every day; I just have to give up my Novocains and face the world as it really is. I don’t have to worry about going to the cross. In the midst of all these things I haven’t sweat drops of blood trying to do what’s right and die to myself. Nine times out of ten I don’t even given it much thought. I just end up doing what is the easiest at the time. Apart from the grace of God dying to myself would never cross my mind.
Left to myself I would not be disciplined. Apart from the grace of God I would not get up in the mornings to walk and pray. I made it fifty years without doing it why start now? Because God is giving me the grace to become disciplined. He is showing his love for me by causing me to stop being undisciplined. He’s been doing it for years but it seems so mundane that it’s easy to forget that it is the grace of God at work. He has over the course of my life transformed me from a slacker who wanted to be poor and let the government pay his way into a man who goes to work every day. Maybe that’s not a big deal for you but it’s a big deal for me. There is a part of me that would rather be homeless than disciplined and there was a time when that struggle was much stronger than it is now. There is a part of me that would like nothing more than to be high once again so that I don’t have to feel the pain of everyday life. But that is a million times weaker than it used to be. And I am thankful for that outpouring of grace.
The grace of God poured out upon my life has slowly, very, very slowly transformed me from being undisciplined to being more disciplined but I’ve got a long way to go. I am a blessed man to be able to see the blessings of walking on the path of life unfold in my life. You see that is a part of the promises of God: humble yourself before God and do his will and he will bless you beyond measure. That is exactly what happened to Jesus. We see him here struggling to not give in to temptation. Struggling so much that he sweats drops of blood. When he gets done praying he knows what has to be done and he’s made up his mind to do it. So he goes and gets the disciples wakes them up and says, “guys it’s time to go. The one who is going to betray me is here. And then Judas shows up with the roman soldiers. In the midst of prayer he yielded his heart to the father, he submitted his will to the will of God. He said God do whatever you need to do with me. It’s ok. I trust you. And then he got up to face the struggle: He went to his death because he knew that was what God required of him and he trusted God to keep his covenant promises of blessing for obedience.
You see in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 28: 1"Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2"All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the LORD your God. That statement is followed by a list of blessings and one of those blessings is that The LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you only will be above, and you will not be underneath, if you listen to the commandments of the LORD your God, which I charge you today, to observe and do them carefully, 14and do not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today, to the right or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
You see this is what Jesus was doing in the garden praying; He was trying with all his might to observe the command of God carefully; he was sweating drops of blood in a struggle to not turn aside from any of the words God had commanded him to do.
By the grace of God he was successful and we are told the result of that obedience in Philippians chapter two starting with verse 8: He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 12So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. 14Do all things without grumbling or disputing; 15so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, 16holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.
I have a lot to learn about not grumbling or disputing in my struggle against sin but at least I am struggling. That’s a move in the right direction. I am learning to do that more and more because I understand that obedience is not only accompanied by the blessing of God but obedience is the sign to myself, to those around me, and to God that I am not running the race in vain, that I am not wasting my time. I’m trying to run the good race because I want to cross the finish line and hear God the father say: “well done my good and faithful servant.” I’m proud of you son. You did a good job. Enter into my joy. I long for that day. I long for those words to enter my ears. And because of that promised joy I press on with hope in my heart because I know without a doubt that God keeps his promises. It is my prayer that you all would find that same hope in the goodness of God and his faithfulness to keep his promises.
Let’s pray.
Oh Father. Thank you for your goodness towards us. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to humble ourselves before you and walk in your will instead of ours. Teach us to be like Jesus and fight the good fight against the things that call out to each one of us to get off the path of life. Cause our feet to walk faithfully in your ways. Grow us up until we look and act like Jesus in every area of life. In his power and authority we ask these things. Amen.
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