The Way Home

Viewing time: 23:44. Subject: Role of prayer in facing trials and temptations.

This sermon follows Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane. It unpacks his instruction to “Watch and pray, lest you fall into temptation.” But the thrust of the sermon is the worthiness of Jesus to receive our worship and adoration. (Text below.)

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And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.” (Mark 14:32-42)

I am about to violate a sacrosanct law from the secret rulebook every preacher follows: I am going to make the application before I preach the sermon. But I’m doing it for a reason: On this Communion Sunday, I don’t want to close with the application for us but with the adoration of our Lord Jesus.

So, here is the application. You will soon be hearing about a weekly prayer opportunity at Cal Road. For about eight weeks, we will meet to pray for our church using the Scriptures as our prayer guide. We will be asking for the very things that God desires to give. And we will watch and celebrate when he answers our prayers. I urge you to come to these prayer meetings. If they are not at a time you can attend, start your own prayer meeting and invite some friends to join you. It is not enough for us to learn about prayer. What matters is that we pray. That is the application. Pray! Pray with one another.

Now to our text. Just prior to the events we just read about, Jesus was celebrating Passover with his disciples in the large, upstairs room of a home in Jerusalem’s temple district. He had taken extraordinary precautions to keep the location of his Passover meal secret—even from the disciples. Towards the end of the meal, Jesus looked at Judas and said, “What you do, do quickly.” Judas had been frantically looking for an excuse to leave so that he could alert the authorities to Jesus’ whereabouts. Jesus gave it to him. He got up and went out into the night.

It would not have taken long for Judas to reach the High Priest’s residence and to set things in motion. A posse (for lack of a better word) would need to be assembled. It would take time, perhaps a few hours, before they were outfitted and ready. After receiving their orders, they would be sent out under the command of the High Priest’s personal assistant. A few minutes after that, the house with the upstairs guestroom would be surrounded. Then a lead team would burst through the door and find it … empty.

When the intelligence Judas provided proved unreliable, he was in trouble. According to Matthew’s Gospel, Judas had already taken the authorities’ money, and he had failed to produce results. I suppose he did some fast talking, all the while wracking his brains, trying to think of where Jesus was likely to go.

In Luke’s account we learn that after Judas left the upper room, Jesus instituted the “Lord’s Supper,” and then gave his disciples some final instructions. Before Judas had time to return with the posse, Jesus wrapped up what he was saying, sang a Passover hymn with his disciples (probably the Great Hallel, comprising Psalms 113-118), and left. Just think of Jesus singing these words on the eve of his crucifixion: “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? … The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. … O LORD, save us; O LORD, grant us success … The hymn ends with these words: “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Psalm 118:29)

They left the city, crossed the Kidron, and started up the Mount of Olives. Verse 32 tells us that they stopped at a place called Gethsemane, which is Hebrew for “Olive Press.” John refers to the place as a grove or a garden. A municipal statute barred people from keeping gardens in Jerusalem – fertilizer was banned in the Holy City – and so rich people kept gardens just outside the city gates. One of those rich people seems to have been a friend of Jesus, for this was one of his favorite places to go.

Jesus knew that when Judas found the upper room deserted, this would be one of the places he would think to look. The disciples entered the Garden and Jesus told them to sit and wait – probably near the entrance – while he went on to pray. Then he signaled to Peter, James, and John to follow him, and they walked together into darkness.

Peter, James, and John. They had been among Jesus’s earliest disciples. They were the only disciples with Jesus when he raised the synagogue ruler’s daughter back to life. They were alone with Jesus the Mount of Transfiguration. They had seen his glory in a way no one else had.

Perhaps they thought that this life they were embarking on was all about glory. James and John, expecting the revolution to begin any day, had tried to maneuver their way into the highest cabinet positions in Jesus’s government. Their eyes were set on glory.

And Peter. Peter was always telling Jesus what to do. When Jesus told him to row his boat out into deep water and let down the nets, Peter said, “But Master, we’ve been fishing all night and haven’t caught a thing!” After the miraculous catch of fish, he said to Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man.” Much later, when Jesus first told the disciples that he would suffer and be killed, Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Suffering was not on Peter’s agenda.

Only an hour or two earlier, Peter had contradicted Jesus yet again. When the Lord told the disciples, “You will all forsake me,” Peter insisted that, although those guys might forsake him, he never would. When Jesus countered, “Peter, before the night is through you will have denied me three times,” Peter gainsaid him: “I will never deny you. I will never forsake you. I will die with you first.” There was in Peter a pride, a willfulness that had to be broken before he could become the Rock Jesus had named him. After this night, it would be broken.

But I think there was another reason the Lord took these three men. They were dear to him, and he wanted someone to be with him when he faced the hour of his trial. He didn’t want them to fix things for him; he wasn’t looking for answers. He just wanted them to be there.

Sometimes when our friends are in trouble, when they are going through a divorce or diagnosed with a terminal illness, we are afraid to be with them. We think, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t have any answers.” But people aren’t usually looking for answers at such a time; they are looking for love. Jesus didn’t want his friends’ answers; he wanted them.

As they walked further into the Garden, he began, verse 33, “to be greatly distressed and troubled.” The verb translated “greatly distressed” is common in the gospels. It is the word that is used of the shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem when the angels appeared to them (the word the King James translated, “sore afraid”). It is frequently used in the gospels to describe people’s response to Jesus’ miracles. It means to be astounded or confused. The Greek scholar Gerhard Kittle says that the main idea is one of perplexity. Now think of that: the Lord of glory perplexed! That is a word that is never used of him, except here. There is dreadful darkness in the Garden.

That adjective “troubled” is a strong word. The King James translates, “very heavy.” It has the idea of bearing an overwhelming weight of sorrow, of staggering under intense emotional pain. Jesus tells the Three Friends, “My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death.”

They had seen him endure misunderstanding, persecution, bodily assault, political scheming, and physical exhaustion. They watched as he stood peacefully before a gale, calmly awaited the onslaught of a screaming demoniac, and walked confidently through the midst of a bloodthirsty crowd. But they had never seen him like this: deeply distressed and troubled. Overwhelmed with sorrow. As terrible as what followed on Calvary would be, we have the distinct impression that it was here in the garden that the battle was decided. Later that night, in the halls of Caiphas, he would again be Master of the situation. Before the Roman procurator, he stood with incomparable dignity. Nailed to a cross, he responded with grace and forgiveness. It was here – in the Garden – that the attack, the onslaught – came with overwhelming force.

“And going a little farther,” vs. 35, “he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.” The normal posture for prayer was standing, with hands raised to heaven. But Jesus fell to the ground in an agony of soul that we cannot conceive. He had lived his entire life to do the Father’s will. When he was twelve years old, he answered his mother, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49, ESV marginal reading). “For I have come down from heaven,” he said on another occasion, “not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”  “‘My food,’ he told his disciples, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work’.”  The constant temptation he faced was to circumvent the Father’s will. Each of the temptations in the wilderness revolves around this idea: You can save the world, you can convince them you are their Messiah, you can have authority over all the kingdoms of the earth, without becoming obedient unto death.

In the wilderness, empowered by prayer and fasting, and full of the Holy Spirit, Jesus vanquished that temptation. But the devil did not give up: Luke says that he left Jesus until “an opportune time.” This is that time. Jesus came to the Garden to implore heaven, but at his feet the very gates of hell opened before him. He prayed, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me.” The cup from which he shrank was not merely death, but the bearing of humanity’s sin, and the separation from his Father that would entail.

We cannot know the extent of his suffering. We have not, as the author of Hebrews wrote, “resisted temptation to the shedding of blood.” We cannot know what he knew, nor feel what he felt, for we are sinful and our ability to know and to feel has been significantly degraded. Our estrangement from God has deadened powers that were innate to us. Our capacity for both anger and joy has been dulled. Even our capacity for sorrow– by the mercy of God – has been blunted. But Jesus was sinless. He had a larger capacity for feeling than do we. He knew greater joy and – as here – deeper sorrow than we are currently capable of experiencing.

Three times he prayed. A man whose wife was dying once told me that he prayed for her once and never did so again. To keep praying, he said, would demonstrate a lack of trust. But our Lord asked three times. Who could accuse him of lacking trust? The apostle Paul, too; he wrote, “Three times I asked the Lord to take this from me.” It seems that the biblical approach is to keep praying until God answers.

You may think, “But God did not answer. Jesus went to the cross despite his prayers.” But he was answered. Listen to what the author of Hebrews wrote about this scene: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.”

Did you catch that? He was heard. But the author of Hebrews goes right on to say, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”  He was heard, but still he suffered. He was answered, but the answer was … no.

We somehow get the idea that prayer is only answered when we get what we want, when we escape hard times. But God heard Jesus, and he didn’t escape. Luke writes that an angel came to him and comforted – or, better, strengthened – him. God’s answer was strength to do the Father’s will. When Jesus rose from the ground that third time, peace had been restored. He was in control once more. Calm, strong, ready, not because he would escape suffering, but because he had won through temptation and would submit to his Father’s will.

Look back to verse 37. After his first struggle in prayer, Jesus returned to find his friends sleeping. He said to Simon, verse 38, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Watching and praying are not a last resort for those who have already fallen into temptation, but a protective measure to keep them from falling.

If we are to win through our trials, we must pray before the crisis arrives, as it surely will. Before the crisis arrived, Jesus prayed. We find the same thing in the wilderness. We read that he fasted and prayed for forty days and was then tempted by the devil. We get the wrong idea and think the devil took advantage of Jesus after he had fasted for forty days because he was vulnerable. On the contrary, he was fit, equipped, and mighty in Spirit because he had prayed. In the prayer he taught us to pray, we say, “Lead us not into temptation,” but if we wait to pray until temptation is upon us, we will be saying, “Lead us out of temptation” (or worse, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”)

Jesus’ trial did not wait for him to come to it; it came to him. Verse 42: “Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer.” Just so, your trials will find you. If they find you tomorrow, will they find you prepared? Will you, in the words of an older generation of preachers, be “prayed up?” Jesus had long before faced the issue of whose will he would obey. The author of Hebrews tells us that he came into the world saying, “I have come to do your will, O God.”

If you wait until you are already in the fires of trial to pray, it will be too late. To complain that God didn’t help you after you have already fallen into temptation is like complaining your seatbelt didn’t work, even though you waited until after the accident to put it on. Don’t wait to settle the issue of obedience until after the trial has arrived.

Jesus warned Peter that he would fall into temptation if he remained prayer-less. But Jesus, though tempted with a force we cannot comprehend, did not fall into temptation. He entered it on his guard and triumphed over it because he prayed; his entire life was an ongoing conversation with his Father.

St. Paul says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.” This is true because the essence of temptation is not tied to some particular sin – lust or stealing or blasphemy or coveting. Temptation comes in a myriad of forms but, whatever its form, its essential nature is to try to satisfy our deep needs and real desires in ways that are inconsistent with God’s character and will. The very heart of temptation – from Eve until today – is always, “God’s will, or mine?” For Jesus in the garden, the temptation was not, “Man’s salvation or my comfort.” The question was not, “Can not he for whom all things are possible do this some other way?” The question was “Will I do it God’s way?” He conquered the quintessential temptation with the prayer, “Father, not my will, but your will be done.” It is a terrible thing – I hope it is not true of any of us – to be in the habit of saying to God, “Not your will, but my will be done.”

You have already heard the application: pray! If our Lord triumphed through prayer, can we triumph without it? I will give no further application, but rather an invitation to join me in adoring the Son of God.

Our Master stood the test. He did not fail. For us and for our salvation, he endured the anguish and remained faithful. Temptation that would have swept us away like a flood, could not move him. The tidal wave of temptation struck the Rock of ages and he disappeared beneath it. But when it receded three days later, he rose from the wreck and ruin unbroken and unbreakable. The Captain of our salvation has triumphed! He is the holy one and true, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the faithful and true witness. He is the Lion of Judah and the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. The man of sorrows has become the joy of all the earth. Fix your gaze on the author and perfecter of our faith who for us and our salvation came down from heaven … to be lifted up on a cross. Worship and adore our great God and savior Jesus Christ. Amen.