Our Only Help

Series on Luke

VI The Invincibility of the Kingdom

C Tears

Text:22:39-46

Introduction

Enter with me now the Holy of Holies. This is not a field of study for the intellect. It is a sanctuary for our faith. Here we enter the ark like Noah and God shuts the door behind us. We do not debate the ventilation. We’re just glad He shut the door. There is a person who has gone before us into the garden. He is the God man. One person with the natures divine and human. He Himself is a mystery, how much more this solitary moment? But he is a man, fully man. His divine and human natures are not confused, not changed, not converted. Though He is God, many in history will debate whether he is truly divine, but what is before us first in this text is that he is truly human.

I Christ the Man

He has gone to the same place where he always went and the description of the event is in our text, Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” Judas will know where to find Him. He is not running away. His resolve has not lessened. With desire He has desired to eat the last passover and now with that same desire He commences his passion. When the mother of James and John asked that He permit her sons to sit one on the right and the other on your left in His kingdom, He said are you able to drink the cup that i am about to drink? At the last supper He said this cup is the new covenant in my blood. When Simon Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Malchus, Jesus said to Peter put away your sword, the cup which the father has given me shall i not drink it? He has not changed in his determination and even when he prays he submits totally to the will of God, to the plan, the word, the counsel, the decree. But He is a man and He must shrink with horror not only from the physical destruction of the cross but from the unknown. He will now move from being the object of the Father’s infinite delight to being the object of the Father’s infinite wrath. He must be a man to do it but as a man he cannot do it. He must have a thousand fears, unnumbered terrors, incalculable dread, mortal panic, so mortal that if the angel does not come and strengthen Him He dies. As God He needs no angel. As a man he perishes without the help. Perfect loves casts out fear and He is perfect love but we miss the whole point here if we do not see that the normal rules don’t apply. The clock strikes 12 only once on a single day. Gethsemane strikes only once in the history of the world. This is the one moment, the one man, the one deed that has no parallel. God needs no helps, no props, no supports, but the man Christ Jesus does, and now they are all gone. This, more than anything else, demonstrates his full humanity.

II Christ the Mediator

Because He is man he is mediator. Paul writes in I Timothy 2:5, There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Note that! The man Christ Jesus is the mediator because he is the “man” Christ Jesus, and because He is a perfect man. He alone resisted temptation and became victorious over sin. He alone could offer the matchless sacrifice for sin because He was a lamb without blemish and spot, holy, harmless and undefiled. He alone could rise bodily from the grave because death could not hold him. Death has no power over a perfect man. The sanctions of the law cannot operate where the law has not been broken. He is the only savior, and the author of Hebrews reminds us of another high priestly function of the man Christ Jesus. not only did He offer Himself for our sins, but as our great high priest he prays for us and the significance of those prayers must not be discounted. So we read in Hebrews 2:17 and 18, For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted, and in Hebrews 4:14-16 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. What you are viewing here is not only the man but the man Christ Jesus who is the mediator. Here is the battle that gives birth to the victory. Here is the struggle from which the Savior emerges. Not, I repeat not, simply because the divine Son of God fulfills his purpose, but because the man Christ Jesus is obedient unto death. He has done what Adam did not do and He did it at the cost of His life. Obedience for Adam meant nothing but life, but obedience for the last Adam means death.

III Christ the Master

According to Luke’s account Christ has separated himself fifty or sixty feet from His disciples. The other evangelists tell us that, Peter, James and John were somewhat closer but still at a distance. Christ has separated himself from them because where He goes they cannot follow. Yet he also reveals himself to them. The savior must have been visible to them even though removed a stone’s throw. The trees are not that close together and many of the trees there are exceedingly ancient their roots reaching back to the time of Christ Himself. The garden was not much different when I personally viewed it in 1982, and you could see far across it. What Christ reveals is the terrible struggle in prayer. He comes three times to the closest group and asks why they have fallen asleep. could you not watch with me even this brief time? Here in Luke at the beginning he says pray so that you enter not into temptation. What He is actually saying to them is pray in order to avoid temptation. If you are praying you will not be tempted. At the end, after finding them sleeping, He says it again, and Luke the physician, with his keen insight into the psychosomatic behavior of the disciples, says the reason they slept was that they were exhausted from sorrow. The trials of this life exhaust us because of our anxieties. Jesus is amazed that his disciples are not praying. Do you think He is amazed today? Although they are tired, it is not mere physical exhaustion, it is spiritual depression caused by not believing God. The word translated sorrow is the exact same word used by Paul in II Corinthians 7:9 and 10, Yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. Here he speaks of worldly sorrow which laments the trials of life and leads (worries us) to death as opposed to godly sorrow which produces repentance that leads to salvation. Which kind of sorrow do you think made the disciples sleep? Furthermore, when Paul catalogs his sufferings in II Corinthians 4:8 and 9 he makes clear that in disappointment, difficulty, discouragement, danger and death he finds life, perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. In II Corinthians 6 he describes himself as sorrowful yet always rejoicing. All the normal values relating to life and suffering are reversed. In fact the opposite word to sorrow, joy, is used four times as much in the New Testament. Have you ever met somebody facing the loss of a job or a broken relationship that was in a real depression and you couldn’t get them out of it. You couldn’t get their eyes off the disappointment? This is our worst failing, and this is our greatest temptation. This is Israel in the wilderness murmuring. This is the disciples in the garden and the Master says, could you not watch with me one brief hour. The Master has spoken, and only believing prayer will deliver us, nothing else. We should be motivated to this end by the example of Jesus in the garden and also by the knowledge that our sympathetic high priest ever lives to make intercession for us.