Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane. And He said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” Taking with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, He began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then He said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful even to death. Remain here and watch with Me.”
Going a little farther, He fell on His face and prayed, saying, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping. Then He said to Peter, “So could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again, for the second time He went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Your will be done.” And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy.
So leaving them again, He went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Now let me just give you a quick reminder, a review of how we’re going with this. I read in the commentary on Revelation, Greg Beal’s commentary on Revelation, the statement that has become our springboard: God’s people exercise kingship; even God’s people exercise kingship in their sufferings, just as Christ did from the cross.
I was intrigued by the idea of Christ reigning as King, actively reigning at the very moment the world thought Him to be defeated. He was reigning. And I wanted to build a series focusing on Christ reigning in this last weekend of His life. Typically we just come to Easter and have a couple of messages, Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, and try to compress everything there. But we really need to spend a little more time with it.
But I want you to see this: Christ is reigning. And so I decided we would explore this and see that Jesus is reigning as King in every aspect of His life, especially in this last weekend. And I wanted to show you five dimensions. At the dinner, which we looked at last week, in the garden; next week during the trials; Palm Sunday; He is reigning from the cross, and on Easter, of course, we will talk about Him reigning even from the tomb.
Last week we saw how He was reigning at the Last Supper, exercising His kingly reign in five dimensions. Today we sit in the Garden of Gethsemane, and it is essentially two distinct areas in the garden. There is the section on temptation and prayer, and then there is a section about Him confronting Judas and the soldiers who have come to take Him away.
Today, let us begin with Christ reigning over temptation in and through prayer. Now there is a little store in New Market that has a little sign out in front on the sidewalk. It says, “The best way to overcome temptation is to give in to it.” And then it tells you who said that. It was a man by the name of Oscar Wilde, a well-known author, writer of several books, and also a prolific homosexual. His position was just to give in and enjoy life.
And of course, we know that we cannot do that. We must resist temptation, and Jesus is resisting temptation. Now, it is very important for us to understand this. We rightly affirm the divinity of Christ. He was and is God come into flesh. But such an acknowledgment immediately provokes the question of how God could be tempted or fearful.
We see Jesus here wrestling. And as you’ll see as we unpack this, He’s going through tremendous anguish about the things that are before Him. How could this be if He is God? The Bible in James 1:13 says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil.” And there are many connotations and many nuances we don’t have time to address this morning, but this is a statement that is usually trotted out to say, “Well, how could Jesus be God? God can’t be tempted, and yet Jesus is being tempted.”
And by the way, not only here in the garden, but at the beginning of the Gospel when He is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. We have those same kind of challenges. And so the question is asked, “How could this be God to be tempted?” Of course, the answer is very well, I shouldn’t say simple, but the simplest answer rises from the affirmation that He is also fully man.
God cannot be tempted by evil, but the man that God becomes can be tempted in this way. And it’s that subtle distinction that we must be aware of when we deal with this kind of subject. Let’s talk a moment about temptation. Christ is a sinless man. Can a sinless man be tempted? Again, the biblical answer is yes.
Adam was a sinless man, and yet he was tempted in the Garden of Eden, and he fails his temptation, unlike Christ. Adam was a sinless man, but he was tempted. Temptation is a matter of rightly exercising our will. What Jesus did was to exercise His will to say no to temptation.
Now here again, we are given a slight insight into the complexities of free will. People protest, “I’ve got free will.” Then if it’s truly free, why do you willfully commit sin unless you’re admitting that you want to do sin? If we had the kind of free will that people say, we would never fail God unless we just aren’t interested in serving God.
So it’s very important to understand. When we talk about temptation, Jesus was a man, fully man, fully God—not half and half, not a hybrid, not part this, part that, but fully God, fully man—a union of the divine and the human. In His humanity, He struggles and faces temptation even as a sinless person.
Now we must ask then, what about fearful? Can God be afraid? Again, this is an issue here in this text. The answer, of course, is yes. Adam, God can’t be afraid, but the man can wrestle with fear. Adam was a sinless man, and yet in some sense he had to know fear.
God says, if you eat of that tree, you will die. Now what is the point of that? To motivate His obedience by the fear of the consequences of disobeying God. Even Adam, God says, “by the way,” He says, “if you eat of that tree, you will die.” Adam must know what death is, or he has no frame of reference to be afraid of dying.
And it’s a consideration we must be aware of. A sinless man who is Christ, a sinless man which is Adam, both can suffer temptation, both can deal with fear. Jesus is fully man. Now get this, children. Man was created for life, not death. Some people may be braver and show a greater indifference to death, but nobody wants to die.
This is the human condition. And because Jesus is fully human, He has that same drive to live. This is not someone who’s looking to be a martyr. He will be a martyr in His faithfulness to God, but He is human, and therefore He has this natural aversion to death.
Now you might say, “Pastor, what about people commit suicide?” What about mercy killings and euthanasia? Don’t those people want to die? I would argue that they do not want to die. Again, this is very involved, complex, and don’t have time for a full orb discussion.
But in many of those instances, it’s not somebody who wants to die. They don’t want to die in this horrible fashion. That’s the distinction between it. It isn’t they’re in a hurry to die, but they’ve been diagnosed. The diagnosis says, “this is what’s going to happen.” You’re going to lose this. You’re going to lose this. You’re going to have this pain.
You’re going to lose your mind. Whatever you think. And it’s that which they are trying to avoid. If there was a cure, they would take advantage of the cure and go on living. And by the way, even in countries—and we’re not quite there yet—but even in countries where they have doctor-assisted suicide, the people have to submit to some kind of psychological counseling to make sure that their condition really isn’t curable and really isn’t their, you know, mentally competent to make that kind of decision.
No one wants to die. We want to avoid the horror of death. And this is the situation. Leon Morris says, the death Jesus faced was a horrible death, and he experienced the natural human shrinking, the natural human aversion from undergoing such an ordeal.
Now listen to this. The fear of Christ in the face of death takes nothing away from His divinity and thoroughly validates what the church has always said about Him. He is fully man. He had to taste death for every man. And tasting death for every man means all the dimensions, not just the act of dying.
Ho-hum, I’m going to die. No problem. He experiences everything that you and I will experience in our consideration of death. But then we have to add another connotation, don’t we? And that is that the death he was going to die, he would be bearing the cup of God’s wrath.
It isn’t just death in general, which we will all face, but a specific kind of death. Listen again to verse 39. Going a little farther, He fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” If it’s possible, I also would call your attention to the desperation that’s shown in this scene.
I do not diminish because the other Gospels will make mention of Him kneeling. But here He is prostrate on the ground. He’s flat on His face, crying out to God. We have these nice little pictures, you know, Jesus at the rock in the garden. Very calm, sedate, praying. It’s not the way it was.
His heart is breaking. He’s stretched himself out on the ground. He’s crying, “Dear God, if it’s possible.” Why? Because he’s a coward? No. Because he isn’t God? No. Because he’s a normal, he is a real man. I won’t say normal. A real person who doesn’t want death.
And now he has added to that the reality that he is dying and bearing the sin. Make this cup pass from me. In biblical terminology, the cup is a metaphor for both blessing and judgment. The blessing was seen last week at the supper, the new covenant in My blood. And also, Psalm 23: “my cup runs over with blessings.”
But the Bible also talks about the cup as a metaphor of God’s judgment. Psalm 11:6, let him rain coals on the wicked. Fire and sulfur and a scorching wind will be the portion of their cup. Psalm 75:8, “In the hand of the Lord is a cup, and He pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it from the dregs.” Down to the dregs.
Isaiah 51:17, “Wake yourself, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord, the cup of His wrath.” Jesus is bearing the wrath of God for you and me. The judgment we deserve for our sins, He is bearing. Donald Hagner in the Word Biblical Commentary says that what Christ faces here is the prospect of dying as the bearer of sin and thus as one who experiences the consequent wrath of God.
Even if you could argue that Jesus wasn’t afraid of dying per se, He is very much disturbed by the horror of bearing human sin. The next time you and I think our sin, no big deal. You know, why do you get all upset? Why do preachers do that? Why do Christians think of all these things are so bad?
It just doesn’t sound bad to me. When you get a picture of Christ’s suffering and understand that He is suffering because He’s bearing our sin, it will put a different spin on your perception of good and evil. The things we justify, dismiss, downplay cannot be done so if we really understand Scripture.
This anguish of Christ is why we read in Luke 22:42, being in agony, He prayed more earnestly and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. This is not a sedate person, very politely, using the right kind of language, saying, “Oh God, I hope that you could do something about this.” The person straining, I read one commentary and I can’t remember which one it was, but it said that there’s a degree of stress that you can be under that the capillaries under your skin will burst with blood pressure and so forth, pushing out and then the blood mingling in your sweat glands.
He’s in that kind of anguish because of the judgment of God that is going to be placed upon Him for our sins. He is a real, genuine human being facing the horror of death and the judgment of God. This also explains His horror in Luke, in John chapter 12: Jesus says, “Now is my soul troubled.”
And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour but for this purpose have I come to this hour. Father, glorify Your name. Please note that word troubled. Now, I’m not saying you measure your life the way I measure mine. I’m just trying to illustrate great stuff here, okay?
A lot of times people say, “How was your week?” Well, it was a little difficult. I had some trouble. Car broke down. Got a doctor bill I wasn’t expecting. You know, stuff like that. We use that word troubled. And I’m not saying it’s wrong to say that.
I’m not trying to diminish legitimacy. I want you to see it’s deeper than that. I had a little bit of grief this week. I had a little trouble this week. And we kind of use the term and we don’t realize that when we come then to the Scripture, we read troubled and we think it just means trivial problems that all of us experience.
But that’s not the word here. Now here’s another one of those moments where I have to tell you, we should not be afraid to exploring the nuances and the richness of the Greek and Hebrew words behind our English text because the English doesn’t always bring out the fullness of it.
D.A. Carson says that this verb troubled is a strong verb and it signifies revulsion and horror. Again, we do not get the picture of someone going to martyrdom. Hallelujah! I get to die for God. We see a person who facing the reality of their death is being revulsed by it. It’s horror.
Craig Blomberg agrees that troubled is too weak a translation in our English versions. There’s more going on than just a little bit of discomfort. He points out that the Phillips version renders it, “now my soul in terrible distress and misery.” The Weymouth translation renders it, “now my soul is crushed with anguish.”
It isn’t just, well, I’ve got a little difficulty here this week. It’s important to see this. And it’s important to see it because Christ is reigning over that anguish. It does not defeat Him.
Listen, the temptation without sin, He reigns over the temptation. He reigns over the fear without despair. Yes, He is a real person travailing with real anguish about a real death, bearing the wrath of God, but it does not defeat Him. Notice the second time here in Matthew, the first time He says, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.”
The second time He says, “Father, if this cannot pass, let Your will be done.” He conquers, He reigns over those things. Now in His reigning over this fear, over this anguish through submission to His Father. He is reigning through submission to His Father.
And this empowers Him. This empowers Him to reign over passion and animosity. Now let me give you a little word of caution here. And I struggle with this. Animosity, that’s typically a human term. It’s not one we think of with respect to God. And so I want you to understand I’m using it primarily from a human perspective just now.
He reigns over passion. He does not let what is happening to Him dictate who He will be. He is reigning over His passion. Listen to these two passages from the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 25:28, “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” Do you know what one of the fruits of the Spirit is? Self-control.
Now my children, I try to be as gracious as I can. I try to be honest. And I know we’re all guilty of it. But the Christian’s goal should really be to arrive at a place where we don’t say, “well, I just couldn’t help myself.” That’s just the way I am. This is just me.
And justify behaviors that are incorrect and inappropriate that are abusive to others. Jesus as you will see does not abuse others even though He’s in this time of anguish. He is very in control. And the Bible says the same Spirit that empowered Him is in us and therefore should be encouraging us to self-control.
Proverbs 16:32, “He who rules his city is better than the mighty one who takes the city.” We have seen this, haven’t we? Haven’t we seen this so many times in our culture where the superstar suddenly is embarrassed by character that we didn’t see before?
His self-control failed. Now you might ask, where does animosity arise? And I would say without going too far into it His disciples’ inability to persevere in prayer.
Put the pictures together, please. Just a few moments ago in the chronology of the Bible, an hour maybe two hours ago, Peter’s saying, “I’ll never deny you, Lord.” And two hours later, he can’t even stay awake and pray. How hypocritical we are to boast in one moment about how much we love God and in the next faithful to do what He calls us to do.
He who loves me will keep my commandment. He will do what I’ve said. Perhaps imperfectly but there is an upward trend that He’s on and the disciples do this. And we know from other passages, I don’t have all these before me today but from other passages, we know Jesus gets frustrated with the disciples.
He says, “How long am I going to be with you, faithless generation? Why can’t you get this again and again?” And it would be very easy for Him in this moment of despair to have that same kind of reaction to them. And He doesn’t. He says, “couldn’t you pray with me?”
And then He goes back to praying. And He makes other acknowledgments to them. Now we need to read verse 47-56 of Matthew 26 because this is where the betrayal comes in. Verse 47, while He was still speaking, Judas came one of the twelve and with Him a great crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and the elders of the people.
Now the betrayer had given them a sign saying, “the one I will kiss is the man.” Seize him. And he came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi.” And He kissed Him. And Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.”
Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized Him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew out his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.
Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so?
I want you to notice the Lord’s control over the elements of Judas’ betrayal. We touched on this last week. We said the betrayal begins at the supper. It ends here in the garden with the arrest of Jesus.
I want you to notice the lack of bitterness at Judas’ betrayal. The lack of bitterness at Judus’ betrayal. He says, “Friend.” Friend. He looks at Judas. After Judas has kissed him, the Judas kiss of betrayal he says “friend”. Do what you’ve come to do.
Now it is, we should not again with respect to Jesus’ humanity but also his divinity, we must not suppose that Jesus is indifferent to Judas’ plight in this act of betrayal. We know, we have seen, we have studied before, and we know God can know without fail what will transpire and still be grieved when it transpires.
This is something we must get a grip on. Many people go to Genesis, God was sorry He made sin, and therefore assume that God didn’t know man was going to sin. Christ was ordained to die before God created man in the garden. Jesus is experiencing real genuine sorrow at Judas’ betrayal.
Psalm 41:9 says, “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.” Listen to Psalm 55. It is not an enemy who taunts me then I could bear it. It is not an adversary who deals insolently then I could hide from him.
But you my equal my companion my familiar friend we used to take sweet counsel together within God’s house. We walked to in the throng going to the house of God for worship. These passages are not just cold indifferent passages. They describe a genuine real relationship between Christ and Judas as God and human being. He loves this man even though he knows he will betray him.
By the way, it wasn’t a surprise. All the way back in John chapter 6 Jesus looks at the disciples and says, “Have I not chosen you twelve and one of you is the devil?” He always knew Judas was the one who was going to betray Him. He chose him with that knowledge of the betrayal.
Yet he still grieves over this betrayal. He suffers the heartache of it. And yet, he calls Judas friend. The second thing is that he empowers. He gives Judas permission to do what he’s doing. Listen to the text again.
Verse 50, “Friend do what you came to do.” Ligon Duncan says this Jesus said something absolutely mind-boggling. He basically gives Judas and this mob permission to arrest him. Friend, He says do what you have come to do.
Jesus is showing his sovereignty over these circumstances. His character resolution and his majesty are brought forth into bold relief against the backdrop of this betrayal. Jesus is reigning in this moment even as there is the tension of what’s happening.
Now how does he do this? Again, it is his trust in God’s ordained purpose. Children I have emphasized this recently and I must emphasize it again today. You and I have got to believe God’s in control or we’ll lose our minds in the culture and time in which we live.
There are 500,000 things pressing against us daily to try to discourage us and embitter us and to take us down and we must be strong. And how do we do that? By knowing God is in control. I can’t connect all the dots by the way.
I’ve shared with you the little illustration about the dots connect the dots and we can’t connect them and even if we can’t connect the dots there is a picture there. You may not be able to solve the New York Times crossword puzzle but it is solvable. Amen? And God’s plans have a purpose and a reality even if we can’t connect the dots or figure it out, and we have to believe that.
This is what Jesus is doing. He says to them listen again verse 53 “do you think I could not appeal to my father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” But how then should the scripture be fulfilled that it must be so? He is fully aware of God’s control and he’s putting his trust in that.
Notice how the shift has happened in the early part of the chapter. He’s in anguish and bitterness and there comes a moment of peace. There comes a moment of peace where now he’s able to stand up and face it and face what is happening. This is what we see in this story.
Now listen Jesus demonstrates his trust. He is reigning against the flesh, against all the things that the human would scream out. He’s reigning over that in two dimensions. First, he restrains his disciples with the above admonition. Peter stop acting like an idiot. That’s not what he says but if you read the other gospels perhaps John Jesus Peter impetuous Peter a bombastic Peter boastful Peter zaps out his sword and slices off the servant’s ear.
That’s the first act of sovereignty. Jesus calmly says put your sword away son. That’s not the answer. The answer is God’s plan, not yours. Number two, and again, Matthew doesn’t say this but in the other gospel perhaps John, Jesus bends over picks up the ear that just got sliced off and puts it back on the head.
He heals this person. Oh he does not no no He does not say well that’s what you get buddy you know he’s not always the best example of my followers but forgive him and he I hope you’ll feel better later. He picks up the ear and he puts it back on the head and he heals it.
And there’s no cause then for this kind of idea. He is reigning, he is demonstrating his sovereignty. And then thirdly in John’s gospel which I will read to you Jesus prevents their taking him right away. It’s another example of him reigning.
Okay you’ve got to put all these texts together but listen to what he says in John 18. I’ve got two slides here so Judas having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees went to the garden with lanterns and torches and weapons.
Then Jesus knowing all that would happen to him, He’s not surprised. He’s not in the dark. He knows what’s happening. He came forward and said “Whom do you seek?” And then they said we seek Jesus of Nazareth. And he said to them I am he. And Judas who betrayed Him was standing with them.
When Jesus said to them I am, they drew back and fell to the ground. Now this is one of the most involved complex difficult passages in all of the Bible primarily because of people’s hesitancy to believe in the miraculous when Jesus says what does it mean? They drew back and fell to the ground. What does that mean?
What are we supposed to draw from that? What’s the significance of it? Now some commentators say that this was an act of feigned worship. That he says I am not I am he. He’s calling himself as he did in John 8, as it says in the Old Testament, “I am that I am.” He’s using that term.
Well that would have meant something to the Pharisees. It would have been a blasphemous thing part of the reason why they’re trying to arrest Him is because they think He’s a blasphemer for claiming to be equal with God. The idea that these people when he says that are going to back up and fall to the ground or even take a prostrate position in feigned submission and worship just doesn’t fit the context.
Why would they do that? The soldiers and by the way the fact that Judas must reveal Christ by a kiss means some of these people don’t even recognize who this guy is. All they know is they were told to go arrest this criminal. They themselves are not going to bow down before a criminal, they’re cold-hearted soldiers.
They’re not going to do this so what are we left with? What’s going on in this picture? A third consideration was that some commentator said well it gave them a momentary pause. They stepped back and thought maybe we’ve misjudged this man. That doesn’t fit the scenario either.
Then there’s the fourth one and this one is subject to abuse but one commentator said that it was an example of in the Latin the mysterium tremendum the mystery of the presence of God. That when you’re and by the way in this commentary it said this was something that wasn’t common even to the Jews.
But if you look at your Bible over in the book of Hebrews, it’s talking about Moses on Mount Sinai, and Moses says I tremble exceedingly in the presence of God. When you go over to the book of Daniel and he’s having these encounters with these heavenly beings, He says I had no strength in me. I was like a dead man.
When you read John chapter Revelation chapter 1 verse 7, I turned to look at the one who spoke to me and I fell at His feet like a dead man. It’s this kind of connotation that some commentators say that’s what’s happening here. Jesus has demonstrated you can’t take me until I’m ready to go.
And that is an act of his reigning children. Now I’m not going to try to figure out who’s right or wrong in that debate. I have my opinion. You have your opinion. But here’s what I can tell you, that regardless it demonstrates what Jesus has already said in John chapter 10.
I lay my life down that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own accord even at this moment of His arrest after the anguish of the emotional battle that He’s been through facing death realizing the judgment that he’s going to bear for the sins of humankind, even with all that at the moment again to carry him away it is clear that you’re not forcing me into this I’m in control in this situation.
And you’ll see it again next week at trial most notably when Jesus looks at Pilate and says you could have no power over Me at all unless it had been given to you by somebody else. He is reigning even when the world thinks he is defeated. Amen?
Father God thank You for this word.