Our Lord's agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is the apex of his life of sorrow and grief. This is the high point of tortuous suffering. This is the night when he anticipates the drinking of the cup of divine wrath, which will be his. in full at the cross.
Yeah. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Have you ever been confused when you heard someone say that Jesus is fully God and fully man?
Well, you're not alone. It's a reality that can make your head swim. The great preacher Charles Spurgeon explained, Christ is not humanity deified and he's not Godhead humanized. He is God. He is man.
He is all that God is and all that man is as God created man. You got that, right?
Well, one thing is clear. As a man, Jesus suffered, and the clearest example of his suffering is, of course, the cross. But there is an aspect of his suffering before the cross that you may not have thought much about, but one that's critical to understanding what Jesus went through to save sinners like you and me. John MacArthur unpacks that important aspect of Christ's sufferings today as he continues his series, The Divine Drama of Redemption.
So now here is John MacArthur with the lesson. As we come to chapter 14 of Mark in verses 32 to 42, we come to a very familiar account of our Lord's agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. as he wrestles with The reality of the coming cross. Later that Day. This is set on Friday.
In the middle of the night, the very day he was crucified. and died. As we approach verses 32 to 42 in our ongoing study of our Lord's death and resurrection. It might be good for us to remember that the prophet Isaiah gave us a prophecy directly of the Messiah's suffering. In Isaiah chapter 53, that is a great historic prophecy.
The prophet said many things about how that Christ would be wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, and chastised for our peace with God. that he would suffer in our place. But he also said this in Isaiah 53:3. He said the Messiah would be a man of sorrows. and acquainted with grief.
A man of sorrows acquainted with grief. In the 33 years of our Lord's life in this world as God incarnate in human flesh. He had been constantly exposed to the sorrows of life. Very well aware of them, as he was aware of absolutely everything, not only what was visible and what was knowable outside of him, but what he knew because he knew what the heart of man was like, meant that he not only saw people suffer, but he felt their pain. He understood.
The grief and the sorrow that goes along with the fallen world, sin, disease, unbelief, ignorance, rebellion. Rejection, disobedience, suffering, poverty, loss. And certainly death. He saw and felt all of those exigencies of human suffering. even gave temporary relief to them.
Showing his compassion as he Healed people. Cast demons out of them. Raise the dead. fed the hungry crowds. This was a kind of temporary physical reprieve from the sorrows of life.
For the brief three years of his ministry. It was also a preview of his kingdom. He will return to establish an earthly kingdom, and in that kingdom, suffering will be severely mitigated and. diminished.
Sorrow will be diminished with it. Life will be lengthened. Health will be increased. But that will, even at its best, only be a preview of heaven. Where there is no sickness, no sadness, no crying, no tears, and no death.
But our Lord saw it all and felt it all. He was moved with compassion. The New Testament never says he laughed. Never says he was happy. But it does say he was sad.
And it does say. He cried. He experienced sorrow upon sorrow. He experienced the fullness of sorrow in the ways that we would never be able to. We can only.
Feel our own pain. And absorb so much of the pain that is outside us. But he absorbed all the pain that was both outside of people's lives and inside their hearts because he saw it all, and he saw it all in everybody. But as much sorrow as he had, sorrow upon sorrow upon sorrow, grief upon grief, There was no sorrow and there was no grief ever in his life. like the experience recorded in these verses.
It is so severe that he actually sweat. Blood. This is a momentous experience in the life of our Lord. In the middle of the night on that Friday, in which he was to die. Let me read it to you, beginning in verse 32.
They came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, Sit here until I have prayed. And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. And he said to them, My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and watch. And he went a little beyond them and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible.
the hour might pass him by. And he was saying, 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 said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Matthew describes this Mark describes it, Luke describes it, and John describe it. And the full picture is the sum of all those descriptions. Again, This experience of our Lord in sorrow and grief and suffering defies comprehension, defies human understanding, surpasses our ability to grasp. This is sacred ground.
This is a supernatural struggle. This is a private divine conflict. This is the apex of his life of sorrow and grief. This is the high point of tortuous suffering. This is the night when he anticipates the drinking of the cup of divine wrath.
Which will be his In full. at the cross. This is the great, great battle. This is the great battle. And no wonder the struggle was so severe that Jesus.
said my soul is deeply grieved. Two the point of death. That's the overview of what's going on here. Let's go to the text, verse 32. They came, they meaning Jesus and the eleven, Judas having left to go plot the arrest of Jesus, which would come.
A little later. Jesus and the 11. Leave the place where they had the Passover and the Lord's table. Verse 26, it said that at the end of that evening, Thursday night, just around midnight. They sang a hymn and they headed to the Mount of Olives.
On the way, Jesus says, You're all going to fall, you're all going to stumble, you're all going to be scattered, you're all going to end up denying me. And they don't believe it. Verse 31: Peter says, I will die before I will do that. And they all said the same thing. They came then to a place named Gethsemane.
This is a garden. People lived in a crowded city and had their gardens outside the city wall on the hillsides. This is somebody who owned a garden, who had given it to the disciples and to our Lord to use. And not only at this Passover, but John 18:2 says Jesus often resorted there with his disciples.
So it was a place to escape the crowds, a private place, a private garden where they could get away and spend time together. That is why Judas knew where they were. According to Luke 22, 39, Judas who was betraying them knew the place. which means it was a place they went to. frequently enough for him to know they would be there.
Well, they arrive at this garden, and it's named Gethsemane, which means olive press. It's the Mount of Olives. They grow olives there. They do even to this day. And this would be named for the press that was used to get the olive oil.
This is the garden. When they arrived there, he said to his disciples, Sit here until I have prayed. According to the parallel account in Luke, Luke 22:40, he also said this. Pray that you may not enter into temptation. He's just warned them of the danger they're in of falling away, scattering, and denying him.
Pray. That you may not enter into temptation. Use the means of grace. Don't depend on your own strength. Call on the Lord.
The means of grace to overcome iniquity. To be victorious is vigilant prayer. We have a high priest praying for us that our faith fail not. Jesus said that with regard to Peter, I have prayed that your faith fail not. It won't be a total failure, a total collapse.
We have an interceding high priest, but We will lose the battle with temptation along the way if we don't pray and depend on divine strength rather than be overconfident in our own human strength.
So they should have been praying. Because of what was coming, the most dangerous moments in their experience up to this point.
Well, with that as a background, let's look. At the scenes that unfold in these few verses, just briefly. First, we see a transcendent affliction. A transcendent affliction. This is an affliction that comes to Christ.
in this hour that really transcends anything we would know. I'll explain that to you. Verse 33, he took with him Peter, James, and John. They were the leaders. James and John, you know, were the ones who came to Jesus with their mother and said, Can we sit on your right and your left hand?
They had the sense that they were. They were the prime guys. They had the sense that they had the intimate Track. With Jesus. And then there was, of course, Peter, who was the recognized leader as far as everybody was concerned, and not the least of which was Peter.
So they Go along. What is this about?
Well, these are the three main leaders. These are the guys that are going to be the influences on the others, so they need to learn a lesson.
So Jesus says, Come with me, because you have something to learn. And if you learn it, you can teach it to the rest. By the way, they were going to learn a lesson. They were going to learn how important it is to pray so that you will be triumphant in temptation, and they were going to learn it by failing to pray and falling to the temptation.
So they were going to learn the way that we learn the best by failure. They were going to learn out of the disaster of their prayerlessness.
Now let me tell you something. If Christ himself needs to pray, In the face of temptation, how much more do we need to pray? Because he was tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin. He drew on the Father's power and protection. How much more do we need to?
So, in the three go with Jesus to a certain point. On the way, Verse thirty-three says, He began to be very distressed and troubled. Distressed is a very interesting word. It is a compound form of the verb to be amazed. to be amazed and you would ask yourself what could amaze Jesus He is omniscient.
He knows everything. What is going to amaze him? What is going to stun him? What is going to shock him? Is there any experience he's never had?
Is there anything he doesn't know? Answer: Yes. There is an experience he's never had and he's about to have it.
So he is amazed. and astonished at the level of anguish That he's feeling over this. This is something new to him. What was it? What was causing this?
It is the anticipation of experiencing the Father's will. And embracing the role of becoming a A sacrifice for sin. to become the sin-bearer. he is facing something completely alien to himself. He has never known sin.
He has never known the wrath of God. He has never known alienation. And what God was asking him to do. was to embrace sin. As a sin-bearer, not as a sinner.
but as a sin bearer to take the wrath of God. For sin. to receive divine punishment. And the level of divine wrath is Staggering. Because our Lord will embrace eternities of wrath.
Eternities of divine punishment. What do you mean by that? I mean that for every sinner for whom he died, He took. That sinner's eternal wrath. For the millions of sinners for whom he died.
He took a million eternities full of wrath. And he was wholly harmless and undefiled, separate from sinners. And how could this be? That's why the struggle was so immense. And verse 34 says it.
He said to them, My soul is deeply grieved. Peri lupas, literally surrounded by sorrow, surrounded by grief, peri, perimeter, periphery. He's engulfed in this grief. to the point of Death. to the point of death.
He had never said yes, To alienation from his father. He'd never said yes. To guilt. He'd never said yes to sin-bearing. He'd never said yes to punishment.
It almost killed him. That Luke 22, 43 says, God sent an angel. to strengthen him. A mighty angel came to save him. When he came to the point of death.
How severe was it? Luke 22, 44 says, The struggle was so immense, the stress on his physical form was so great, that he began to sweat drops of blood. There's a clinical name for that. hematodrosis. What happens is under immense stress The capillaries Gorge.
inflate and explode. And the blood comes out, the sweat. glance. This is the maximum point of human stress. And the anguish was so profound that an angel had to save his life, he might have bled to death from the sheer struggle.
and stress. Of it. Remain here, he says in verse thirty four, and keep watch. And he left the three further into the garden. And he went a little beyond them, verse 35.
He went a little beyond them. And Luke 22, verse 41 says he went a stone's throw, as far as you could throw a rock. And he fell to the ground. And he began to pray. that if it were possible The hour Might Pass him by.
The hour The hour of the power. of the darkness. all the suffering leading up to and including His cross. We're not holy, so we can't relate to this.
Some people say, well, wait a minute, doesn't this show weakness on Jesus' part? Doesn't this show reluctance to obey? His father look. If he didn't react like this we would wonder whether he was holy. Right.
This is this is the only possible response of of a holy person to the thought of bearing sin and guilt and judgment. This is the most acceptable, normal, expected response. We don't have a perfect hatred for sin. He did. Everything in his being was repulsed by the thought.
of iniquity. His plea is absolutely consistent with his nature as God. He is too pure to look on things that are sinful. Can't even behold them, Habakkuk 1.13 says. No wonder.
came almost to the point of death. blood loss so severe that an angel had to come and rescue him in some way. His words are even given here. This is his actual prayer, and that takes us to a second point: a passionate supplication or passionate. Petition, he was saying Abba, Father, Abba meaning papa, daddy.
It's a term of familiarity. No Jew would ever even call God Father, let alone call him Abba. But our Lord calls on the affectionate, intimate. personal name of God as if pleading for that intimate love to rescue him. All things are possible for you, he says.
All things are possible for you. Theoretically, that is true. That is an absolute fact. All things are possible for God. There is nothing that God doesn't have the power to do, and the privilege to do, and the prerogative to do.
That is true theoretically.
However, it's not true actually. God couldn't allow him to miss the cross. When he says, all things are possible for you, remove this cup from me. That is a problem. If he doesn't go to the cross, then we have some big problems.
Satan wins. Heaven is empty. Hell is full. The Bible isn't true. The promises of God are lies.
There is no salvation.
Well, theoretically, God can do anything He wants, but God has already put Himself on record that salvation will come through blood sacrifice. Without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sins. God can't go back on his word, and while God can do anything he wants to do, one thing he doesn't want to do, Is do what he says he would never do, or not do what he said he would do. That is, he's never inconsistent with his promises. The request nonetheless is clear.
We know what's on Jesus' heart. Remove this cup from me. Cup is a symbol from the Old Testament of divine wrath, the cup of wrath. You see that in Psalm 11, Psalm 75, Isaiah 51, Jeremiah 25, Jeremiah 49, Lamentations chapter 4, other places. Let this cup of wrath pass from me.
Remove it. He's beginning to think about it. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? Here he is saying, what am I supposed to say, Father, save me from this hour?
But for this purpose I came to this hour. He knew that. He said, Am I going to say that? And guess what? He did say that.
in the throes of the horrors of that Save me from this hour. Remove this cup from me. But then comes his triumphant resolution. Yet not what I will, but what you will. Not what I will, but what you will.
In the end, that's what he always said. He said over and over, I only do what the Father tells me, shows me, desires of me, and what I see the Father do, I follow only His direction. It's because, as he said when he was 12 years old, I must be about my father's business.
Well In the horrors of that agonizing struggle. He starts to think about the disciples. Amazing. And that takes us to a third scene here. We see affectionate exhortation.
Verse 37, He came and found them sleeping. Goes back to the three, Peter, James, and John. He said to Peter, Simon, They always called him his old name when he acted like his old self. Are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?
Luke actually adds something very helpful for us. They were asleep. Luke adds for sorrow. For sorrow. Things were not going the way they wanted them to go.
Where was the kingdom? Where was all the glory they anticipated? And now there's a betrayer among them who's gone off to do his dirty deed. And Luke adds: they went to sleep for sorrow. Sleep is a tranquilizer, isn't it?
Do you ever go to sleep when you just want to escape?
Sorrow will put you to sleep. And their sorrows were exceedingly heavy. heavy sorrows. But our Lord gives him a warning in verse 38: keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation. Don't you understand the danger you are in?
Keep alert. And praying, that's an old lesson. Lead us not into temptation again. Matthew 6, Luke 11. Watch and pray.
Be on the alert. Use the means of grace. You better depend on divine power. power. But what is the point of this?
The point is this, and this is such a profound thing to understand, in the middle of the most consummate agony of his entire existence as an eternal being. He is concerned about These guys.
Now that's the kind of high priest you need, right? sympathetic Merciful, compassionate. High priest.
So, just in case you wondered whether in the busyness of Jesus' activities in life, He forgets you. Don't wonder any more. No matter how intense the struggle is, he has you. his heart. My name, said the song we sang, is graven on his hands.
My name is written. on his heart and he ever lives to make intercession for us. Beautiful. Again, he went away. And he prayed, saying the same words.
What words? Back in verse 36. Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but you will. Three times he poured out his heart.
saying, remove this cup from me. And it's reminiscent of Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 going before the Lord three times to ask that the thorn in the flesh be removed, right? And finally saying no. That's it. Third time he came and said to them, Are you still sleeping and resting?
Wow. His prayer was only interrupted because of his compassion. This is our great high priest who cares for us.
So we see the affliction, the petition, the exhortation. There's a final. Consideration. Coming in the last couple of verses, let's just call it triumphant submission. He yields to the will of the Father in each of those three cycles of prayer.
But he finally comes out triumphant. The last temptation is over. He is resolved triumphantly, majestically, unhesitatingly to do what his father has asked him to do. He's going to go to the cross. Verse 41 in the middle it says, He says, It's enough?
It is enough. Temptation over. Struggle finished. Prayer done. Answer clear.
The hour has come. He says, behold, or better, look. Actually, I think he said, look. The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. What did he mean by that?
They were up on the slope of the Mount of Olives. There was an entourage coming, made up of the leaders of the Sanhedrin of Israel, and assorted other dignitaries and followers. Of Judaistic religion. There were the temple police who were the ones who policed the crowds in the temple on behalf of the temple operation. And then there was a cohort of Romans, which could be as many as 600 soldiers.
There could have been a thousand people coming up the hill with torches. He sees it. John 18 records what happened. He went right at them. Let's be going.
Behold, the one who betrays me is at hand. I can now see Judas. coming up the hill. Jesus doesn't go the other way. He confronts them.
He says to them, according to John 18, who do you seek? They say, Jesus of Nazareth. He says, I am He. And they all fell down flat on the ground, all of them. As many as a thousand of them, hit the dirt.
just by the sound of his voice when he said, I am he. They crawled back up again. He said it a second time. He is triumphant. He is majestic.
But the disciples, not so. They're going to flee for their lives. Unprepared, prayerless. and unprepared.
So in triumphant resolve He goes to face his betrayer. Goes to face the religious enemies of Judaism and the Roman soldiers and all the rest of the crowd. What was it? that caused Jesus to come out with that triumphant submission. Why would he say, I'll go to death?
Why would he do that? Why would he accept this? from God. The answer comes in Hebrews chapter 5. In verse 7.
Where the writer of Hebrews looks back at this event. And he says this, in the days of his flesh, In the days that Christ was on earth, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying. and tears, okay? That was at The garden Listen to this. To the one.
Able. to save him from death. And he was heard. Because of his holiness. What does that mean?
He entrusted himself to God. who was able to save him from death. and would do so because he was holy. In other words, Jesus trusted the promise of Resurrection. It was our Lord's trust.
In the Father's promise of resurrection, Psalm 16. and the Father's power of resurrection. that enabled him to accept this. from his father go to the cross and look past it. to his own resurrection.
You're listening to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. Today, John continued to pull back the curtain on the divine drama of redemption.
Well, friend, there's nothing more fascinating, nothing more enriching or more wonderful than to study the person and work of Jesus Christ. And to help you along in your study of our Savior, I want to recommend John's book called The Jesus Answer Book. It can help you pinpoint answers to the questions you have about who Jesus is and why he came to earth. to order your copy of the Jesus Answer Book? Get in touch today.
Call us at 800-55 GRACE or you can order from our website gty.org. The Jesus Answer Book costs $10 and shipping is free. This really is a great reference tool. It answers questions about Christ's deity, his teaching, why he had to suffer on the cross, and much more. To get a copy of the Jesus Answer Book, call 855 Grace or go to our website gty.org.
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Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to U television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378, or you can watch anytime at gty.org. And then be here next week when John MacArthur continues his study, The Divine Drama of Redemption, with a look at history's greatest traitor and what you should learn from his sad story. It's another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time. On Monday's grace to you.
