Suffering Servant (Part 1 of 2)

When we go through times of hardship or struggle, it's easy for us to wonder if anyone really understands the pain we're feeling.

Today on the weekend edition of Truth for Life, Alistair Begg assures us that there's someone who can empathize with our weaknesses, our hurts, and our trials. He is Jesus, the suffering servant. Now, we're going to read from Mark 14, and we read from verse 32. They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. He took Peter, James, and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, he said to them.

Stay here and keep watch. Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible, the hour might pass from him. Abba, Father, he said, everything is possible for you.

Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. And then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. Now, we can have also, if it's helpful to you, our fingers in Luke chapter 22, which is the parallel passage in Luke's gospel beginning in verse 39. And the reason I say that is because sometimes this morning I'll say something and you'll be looking at Mark and you'll say, but it isn't in there. And then if you go to Luke, you'll find it there and vice versa.

And so as not to be tedious and be constantly saying, I mean, Luke, I mean, Mark, whatever. I'm just going to recognize what an intelligent group this is and that you'll be figuring this out for yourselves. So let us pause and pray. And now we humbly pray, make the book live to me. Oh Lord, show me yourself within your word. Show me myself and show me my savior and make the book live to me for Jesus' sake.

Amen. For many of us, this passage of scripture is familiar territory. It is of interest. I think you will agree that while the gospel writers provide us with no description of the physicality of Jesus, all of that, a veil of silence is cast over purposefully, presumably as a result of the Spirit's work in the lives of the gospel writers. And given that, I think it's all the more interesting that we should be given an insight, as it were, into the chemistry of Christ, into something of the psychological makeup of Jesus.

That while we have no right to say that he looked like this, we have some indication of the kind of thing that he experienced as a man and that which was going on inside of him. Jesus, you will remember, when he was asked concerning prayer, had given a pattern of prayer to those who were his listeners and his followers. And in the course of that prayer, it is common for us to pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Our Father who art in heaven, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And what Jesus encouraged his followers to pray, we now discover him putting into practice. And in this little scenario here, that is, for us in Mark and again, as I say to you in Luke, I want us to try and navigate our way through it by employing three simple verbs, the importance of looking, listening, and learning. Well, first of all, we're going to look. We have these passages in the Bible in order that in the reading of them, we may conjure up in our minds some sense of what is taking place.

It is there for us that we might do so. So let us then look at what we're told. I want to suggest that we look carefully at what we're told, that we don't allow familiarity with this passage to prevent us from seeing what is actually a striking and somewhat incongruous picture, a striking and an incongruous picture. The gospel readers were familiar with Jesus as he had been introduced to them as a rabbi and as a teacher. They had become aware of his ministry as a worker of miracles. They were aware of all that had been said and written concerning him as someone who was a friend of sinners. Now, as these early readers of the gospel take this material and turn to it, many of them will not be ready for the picture that is provided by the gospel writers here, for this is a picture of a distressed Christ. You will notice that Mark tells us that he began to be deeply distressed and troubled.

Indeed, the language as it is written in the Greek is of the most profound significance. The terminology that is used is hardly aptly covered for us by the idea of a deep distress. And you will have noted, if you're familiar with your Bible, that earlier the gospel readers had been made aware that the evening of these events was a cold evening. It was an evening that was cold enough for a fire to have been kindled in the home of the high priest.

For you will remember that it was at that fire that Peter warmed himself and was confronted by the questions of the servant girl in that house. So on an evening that is cold enough for a fire, what is happening here that we find Jesus sweating profusely? And in his experience of deep distress and trouble, it would be surprising if his immediate companions, namely Peter, James, and John, according to verse 33, if they were not made aware of the nature of his condition and if, in a sense of compassion, they did not say to him, Jesus, what is wrong?

Jesus, why are you the way you are? This was a whole new experience for those who had been aware of their lives being marked by fearfulness, by despair, even in the area of their greatest capacity as fishermen, being overwhelmed by the prospect of death on the Sea of Galilee, for them to have had Jesus stand and rebuke the winds and the waves, and for them to look at one another and say, what manner of man is this that even the winds and the waves obey him? For as good Jewish boys they knew from their reading of the Old Testament that only God was in control of the winds and the waves. Therefore, for this Jesus to stand at the stern of their boat and command the seas to silence was nothing other than an indication of the vastness of who he was in all of his proclaimed messiahship. Given all of that, what now is happening to Jesus that he is so deeply distressed? Well, he says and explains to them in verse 34, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Now, I say again to you, look carefully at this.

You're sensible people. You have Bibles. Our familiarity with this material, especially those of us who have been reared in it, is such that, frankly, I think most of us miss this. Or because it is so distressing to us, we tend to say, I don't want really to handle this. Jesus proclaims to those who are his nearest and dearest, in his experience of distress and trouble, I'm actually overwhelmed. Jesus is overwhelmed.

He says so. All of the pent-up emotion that presumably is represented in his life as he has been moving now over a period of weeks steadfastly towards the cross, all of this. For example, when the disciples come and say, did somebody bring him food? And remember what he said, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. In Mark 8, after the great declaration of Peter concerning his messiahship, he then says, now fellas, I need you to know that I am setting my face steadfastly towards Jerusalem, where I will be handed over to cruel men who will crucify me, and on the third day I will rise again. And at that point, the disciples are recoiling from it and saying, no, Jesus, this must never happen to you. Yes, he said, this is my destiny, and to this I move.

And how they must have marveled that he could walk so straightforwardly towards this great meeting at the cross. Well now, now it's a different picture. Now he shrinks from the cup.

He shrinks from the cup. He knows it to be the will of God. He has repeatedly asserted, affirmed the divine necessity of his suffering. That is not in question. But he is now confronted by the immediacy of the ordeal.

And look at the description of it. Deeply distressed. Deeply troubled.

Overwhelmed to the point of death. Luther, looking at this scene, wrote in his commentary, no man ever feared death like this man. Doesn't that seem wrong? Wouldn't we expect that Luther would have said, nobody like Jesus breezed through death? After all, he was the Messiah.

He was the one who would come out on the far side in the resurrection. No, Luther says, nobody ever feared death like this man feared death. For no one would ever die a death like this man. Says MacLeod, the Scottish theologian, he went to the outer limits of human endurance. So close to the absolute limit that he was almost overwhelmed.

To the limits of human endurance. Now look again. Look at what we have before us in this picture. Jesus, the one who is utterly and entirely without sin. Jesus, the beloved and uniquely precious son of the father is about to be destroyed at the father's hands.

Isn't that right? Isn't that what the prophet said in Isaiah 53? It was the Lord's will to crush him and to cause him to suffer. Doesn't Paul, taking that picture, reflecting on the scene, give to us in Romans 8 these words, he did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. What you have here is the innocent about to suffer at the hands of God. What you have here is the sinless about to bear the wrath of God in himself for sin. What you have here is the prospect of the perfect one being nailed on a cross on a garbage heap outside Jerusalem between two thieves, abused and disabused.

And why? Paul tells us, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Let me just say parenthetically, for those of you who may still not be believers in Christianity, who may not have come to trust in Jesus, I was greatly helped some time ago when I read John Stott's little sentence and this is what he said, I could never believe in God were it not for the cross.

I could never believe in a God who was removed from the pain and overwhelming distress of human suffering. For what we have in this, in this description of the suffering servant is not a reluctant Jesus for he said, nobody takes my life from me. I have the power to lay it down.

I have the power to give it again. It is not that Jesus is reluctantly going to the will of God the father for he goes purposefully and obediently and submissively the way the Christian ought to go. But in his humanity, he inevitably recoils from it because he's a man.

He is a real man. His mother taught him the alphabet. His granny in human terms would have come over and explained to him the noises that a cow makes distinct from the noises that a donkey makes.

His psychological development was the psychological development of humanity within the framework of all that is normal. And so before the events that are about to transpire, he recoils because you see without substitution, the cross of Christ is unintelligible. And I think that's why people disregard it because the way in which many of us talk about it is completely unintelligible because maybe we don't even understand what we're talking about in which case then we can be forgiven as to the dreadful job we're doing of trying to explain it to people who ask us. Because if all we say concerning the cross is concerning something about the manifold love of God and in order to show us how much he loved us, this is what he did to Jesus. The person says, well, there must be a missing piece in this puzzle, is there not?

Well, of course there is. It was the love of God. We were so messed up that Jesus had to die for us. And we were so unbelievably loved in Jesus that he was pleased to die for us. And as he comes to the point of departure, the gospel writers tell us that he was distressed and he was troubled and he explained he was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. The atonement, the death of Jesus on the cross for sinners is not a theory.

It's not a mathematical equation. It's a flesh and blood reality. And there was nothing in Christ's humanity to blunt his emotions or to anesthetize his sensitivity. Did you hear that? There was nothing in Christ's humanity to blunt his emotions or anesthetize his sensitivity. Have you ever pondered what was going on when they offered him a branch with a sponge on the end of it and it was wine mingled with gall? It was an anesthetic potion and it says in the scriptures, and they offered him wine mingled with gall, but he refused to drink it. He refused to drink it.

Why? In order that he might experience suffering in all of its unmitigated dimensions. He suffered at a level that no one has ever suffered.

He endured everything for the sake of his own. What an amazing thing it is and what a stupidity it is that 21st century western Christianity offers itself to the world as a panacea for all ills, as the best grades at university, as the most significant job, as the cutest girls, as the high school quarterback boys. We are the people who've got it all together you see. Why not come and join us? And then these interested agnostics begin to read their Bibles and say, how did you get here from here? What is this fellowship of suffering that the Apostle Paul was on? What was he talking about when he said, I want to know Christ? We stop, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.

That will be enough for us. Finish the verse right there. There is no power of his resurrection except as it is experienced in the fellowship of his sufferings. It is only through his sufferings in Calvary that there is the reality of the resurrection. And the same, my friends, is true for you and me. And every attempt to deny that is known by our own hearts as fraudulent, is condemned by the Scriptures clearly, and every well-thinking, cynical, agnostic friend that I have says, you're full of absolute bunk. And you know what? If I were to suggest that that was the essence of Christianity, they would be absolutely right. Now let me just say, parenthetically, that some of you are staring at me.

Staring at me. Because you're saying to yourselves, this cannot be. This cannot possibly be. Some of you are stumbling over my words.

And I know why it is. Because you, like me, are very concerned to safeguard the divinity of Christ. Any notion of a weakened divinity is abhorrent to us because we know that it is contrary to the Bible.

Right? And liberal theology throughout the ages has always been weak on the divinity of Jesus. Fundamentalism, conservatism, evangelicalism has distanced itself from that danger.

But I want to suggest to you, flirts with the opposite danger. Not now of a diminished divinity, but a diminished humanity. So now we have a less than human Jesus because we are so concerned to make sure that we have an absolutely divine Jesus. Now we are not to be surprised by that because the early centuries fought through all these issues. And late in the fourth and fifth century, the church had to deal with a man called Apollinarius.

And you can Google him. I don't know what Apollinarius would think about it. But anyway, if you Google him, you will find out that Apollinarius was a problem in the late fourth and fifth century because he was diminishing the humanity of Jesus. And so the councils got together and affirmed, just as in Christ, there was complete and perfect Godhead, so there was complete and perfect manhood. Nothing that was necessary to humanness was lacking in him.

Look for yourselves. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg is teaching about Jesus Christ, the suffering servant. This comes from a series called To Know Christ, and you can download the nine messages in this series for free or purchase the series on CDs at our cost. Simply go to truthforlife.org and search for the title To Know Christ. Have you ever stopped to think about how Christianity spread in the early days? How did people learn about Jesus, the suffering servant?

Today we have radio and the web, USB drives, mobile apps, smart speakers, and more. But in days gone by, the church movement spread like wildfire before any of these amazing technologies were invented. With that in mind, we want to recommend to you a book written by pastor and blogger Tim Challies. The book is called Epic, an around the world journey through Christian history. Epic takes us back into history, helps us see how Christianity spread through the centuries. Tim shows us 33 artifacts that played a role in the history of the church. Tim globe trotted more than 180,000 miles to collect photographs and to learn about the history of each of these items. He writes about items as old as a statue of Caesar Augustus and things as new as the YouVersion Bible app. The book includes dozens of colorful pictures and detailed descriptions for each one. The objects are not only intriguing, but they confirm God's faithfulness to his people through the generations. Find out how you can request your copy of the book Epic and see a sample of the book when you go online at truthforlife.org. Today we were only able to begin Alistair's study in Mark chapter 4. I'm Bob Lapine, hoping you can join us again next weekend as Alistair continues his message about Jesus, the suffering servant. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.