How to Go Through Gethsemane

The Aramaic expression is special because it is possessive. You can render it, my father, my father.

How significant is this to observe and to model our own Gethsemanes after his? I know you are mine. I know you are not absent.

You are active. You are my father. That may be the greatest statement of faith you'll make these days in your life.

You're my father. What do you do when life's burdens feel unbearable? Gethsemane wasn't just a place of suffering for Jesus. It was where he modeled how to face life's greatest struggles. How did he endure when the weight of the cross pressed heavily upon him? Today, Stephen unpacks Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, revealing timeless lessons for your own moments of pain and uncertainty.

You'll discover the power of intimacy with God and the peace that comes from surrendering to His will. In one of his Old Testament commentaries, Philip Reichen told the true story of a young boy whose little sister needed a blood transfusion. They had been born with the same disease.

The boy had survived two years earlier, the worst of it. The doctor explained that her only chance of survival was to receive a blood transfusion from someone who'd conquered the disease and since the two children shared the same rare blood type, the little boy was the ideal donor. The doctor, along with this boy's parents, eventually sat down with him and asked him if he'd be willing to give his blood to his sister. And his lower lip trembled at first, but then he kind of took a deep breath and he said, for my sister I will. Well they were soon wheeled into the hospital room, the little girls pale and thin, the boy robust and healthy. Neither one of them spoke, but as the process, the transfusion began he looked over at his sister and smiled. When the ordeal was almost over, his voice shaky, somewhat fearful, he broke the silence by asking the doctor, so when am I going to die? Only then did the adults realize he hadn't quite explained everything about the process and they realized that he trembled when he agreed to donate his blood.

He thought the doctor was asking for it all. But the remarkable thing to me, perhaps to you as well, is that out of love he was willing to give it all. We're about to arrive at a scene, beloved, that shows us the love of Christ.

It will reveal this incredible resolve and it's going to be eternally more significant of course. But have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus did not confirm his decision to shed his blood when he arrived at Calvary? He confirmed that decision in Gethsemane where the first Adam, the founder of the human race, failed to do the will of God in a garden. Jesus called in the New Testament the final Adam. He is the fountainhead of a new redeemed race. He will succeed in doing the will of the Father in a garden.

Let's watch it happen. Take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 22. As you're turning, Jesus has now left the upper room. He's heading outside the walled city of Jerusalem with his 11 disciples now. Judas is left already.

They walk down this valley outside the walled city and they cross over the Kidron Creek or brook, then up the hill to one of his favorite spots. Let's pick it up there where we left off in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives and the disciples followed him. Now Jesus, by the way, is heading here because he knows Judas will know exactly where to find him. But he's also going there because this is one of his favorite places to rest and to pray. Gethsemane means oil press.

It was more than likely an olive press or an oil press located among this grove of trees. Now let me tell you ahead of time, this is a mysterious event. We really can't fully appreciate the struggle that's going to take place as we watch Jesus, the man, fully man, fully God, wrestle with the will of the Godhead in this garden. And I want to tell you as well, don't expect to understand everything here. This is mystery.

Just be prepared to take off your shoes. This is holy ground. Verse 40, when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed.

Now Mark's Gospel adds these details. 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.

So get this picture. They arrive at this particular garden, this grove of trees, perhaps fenced off by the owner. Jesus has eight of them sit there. He invites Peter and James and John to enter with him more closely. Even after the Lord invites Peter, James, and John to pray before he leaves to go pray himself, it's interesting the other Gospel accounts inform us that they fall asleep. In fact, Jesus will say to Peter and James and John three times, that's not an ironic number by the way, three times you need to pray. Peter effectively says three times, what I need is sleep. See, Peter isn't going to collapse in the courtyard of a high priest.

He's going to collapse in the garden of Gethsemane. He's under the delusion that Jesus might need to pray, but not me. I've got this handled.

I'm ready. We have the same delusion, don't we, in life at times until God brings us to a point where we realize all we have is prayer. So if you're not praying, it isn't because you don't know how to. It's because you don't think you need to until something happens that reminds you this is your only option and you start praying. Corrie ten Boom used to ask this very convicting question, is prayer your spare tire or your steering wheel? Jesus didn't invite these three men closer into the garden for protection or for companionship but for instruction.

He's going to indirectly teach them how to go through Gethsemane because they're going to, just like you and me. Maybe you're going through it today. Come in here and that's on your mind. You're struggling with the will of God.

You're struggling with God's design for your life, with what God has allowed to come into your life, maybe with what God has not allowed to come into your life, some dreams, some desire. How do you go through Gethsemane? Well, let's watch and learn. I'm going to divide this study into three sections. First I want to observe with you the Lord's intimacy with His Father.

That's critical. I want you to go back to verse 42, just the first word. This is how His prayer begins, Father. Mark records it this way, Abba, Father. Abba is that Aramaic term of endearment.

So don't miss this implication. Even in His lonely distress here, Jesus never loses sight of the truth and His trust, His dependence and that personal communion with His Father. This is an incredible statement of faith. We get into our garden and what do we say?

Are you still there? God, are you my Father? Do you really care? We know that's our battle and Jesus says here right away, Father. This Aramaic expression is special because it is possessive. You can render it my Father, my Father.

How significant is this? To observe and to model our own Gethsemanes after His, I know you are mine. I know you are not absent.

You are active. You are my Father. That might be the greatest statement of faith you'll make these days in your life. So in this opening word, we see the Lord's intimacy with His Father.

Secondly, I want you to observe the Lord's honesty in the struggle. Verse 42 again, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. In an unvarnished understanding, take it away. If you can, take it away. If there's another way around, please take this cup away.

Now let's think about this. Jesus refers to everything that's going to be taking place in these next few hours and He sort of sums it all up with this expression, the cup. Well, for starters, this is prophetic fulfillment. In Isaiah 51, the cup represents that which contains the wrath of God and He knows He's going to experience that. In Jeremiah, the cup holds the wine of God's wrath, Jeremiah 25. The prophets referred to evil nations like Edom and Babylonia drinking the cup due to their sin. No wonder Mark records in his account that Jesus says, my soul is very sorrowful even to death.

I could die right now just thinking about it. This cup includes the pain of betrayal and the abandonment of friends. This cup includes mixed into it the indignity of being sold for 30 pieces of silver.

That was the price of a disabled slave. It's mixed with the rejection of his own people, Israel, over whom he had already wept bitter tears. It's mixed not only with a rejection but the offensive painful chanting that he's going to hear where they're going to cry out to Pilate, we have no king but Caesar.

He's not our king. This cup is mixed with the distress overbearing our sin. He's the perfect sinless lamb. He's about to die covered with our sin. This cup is mixed with the physical horrors of the cross, the cruelest way that I as we'll study in the future, this cup is mixed with coming separation from the Godhead, the loss of fellowship and intimacy which he has known from eternity past. He's never been without it.

This cup is mixed with all of that and a million more sorrows that we could never even imagine. He will die for us. He will die instead of us. He will die as us, saturated with our sin. He will become sin for us who knew no sin. 2 Corinthians 5, 21.

We need to rethink this. The fact that Jesus is honestly struggling here proves His humanity. He isn't an actor. He's not a robot. He's not turning a page on a script going, okay, cry here, weep here, feel bad here. He's fully man in this mystery of incarnation, yet fully God.

He recoils from sin. That's true. That would be like you wearing a brand new white dress, being compelled to wade through a muddy swamp.

Is there a way around it? I got to go through it? The hesitation of Jesus is proof of His godly purity. There'd be something wrong with Him if He didn't flinch, didn't draw back, didn't recoil. So He agonizes as He stands on the threshold of being covered with the mud and the slime of our sin. Mark's gospel informs us of this. Going a little farther, that is into the garden, He fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. Mark uses the imperfect verb tense to indicate that His falling and His praying is continual.

It is constant. In other words, He fell to the ground and prayed. Then He got up and He went a little farther and He fell down and He prayed. Then He picked Himself up and He staggered. If He steps, then He fell down and He prayed. Hebrews 5 adds to this scene where it says that Jesus prayed with loud crying, loud crying and tears.

So look at Him here. He's struggling with the plan of salvation that He and His Father and the Spirit designed. But now as a man, He's agonizing over it. He's falling and crying and praying and staggering and getting up and falling and praying and crying. No wonder Luke adds here in verse 43, And there appeared to Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him. It wasn't time to die. And He is humanly pressed to a point no human perhaps could survive.

The pressure is so great. In fact, Luke the medical doctor is the only gospel writer to add this verse, verse 44. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Luke uses the word like, which suggests that the Lord's sweat was so heavy it fell like clots of blood.

It's quite possible, however, that Dr. Luke is trying to describe what the medical community today would call hematidrosis, the bursting of capillaries underneath the surface of the skin and the clotting blood mixing with the sweat of a person under incredible duress, pressure and stress and it emerges on the skin and it drips off. Little wonder that an angel is dispatched. He's feeling the weight of this like we cannot imagine. This is where we see Jesus, a human being in all of his honest struggle, making up his mind to endure. So the first Adam sinned and was given the curse to work by the sweat of his brow. The second Adam, by the sweat of his brow, has decided to remove the curse. Finally we can observe here, number three, the Lord's humility in His surrender. Jesus ends his prayer back in verse 42 by saying, Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done. Have you ever thought about the fact, beloved, that your eternal salvation hinges on this moment and that word? Nevertheless.

You ought to circle it. Nevertheless. Father, I don't want to drink this cup. I don't want this horror. I don't want the separation.

I don't want the saturation with sin. I don't want it. Nevertheless. Hallelujah.

He said, nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done. And let me tell you something, that's going to give entirely new meaning to this cup. Nevertheless is going to transform this cup from agony to ultimate victory, His and Yours.

Yours and mine. You know, it occurred to me as I was studying that we use the word cup for a number of reasons. Somebody might say, well, that's not my cup of tea and there's no tea around.

I mean, I don't want that. We have the cup as a memorial at communion and we take that with gratitude and joy, don't we? I found it interesting and decided to do a little research by the help of Google and typed in cup in so many sporting events. The winner's trophy is a cup. In tennis, you got the Davis Cup. In horse racing, the Breeders Cup. In car racing, the NASCAR Cup Series. In hockey, the Stanley Cup. In cricket, the Cricket World Cup.

In football or what we call soccer, the FIFA World Cup. Then people coming up to me after the first service. Oh, you forgot this one. You forgot this one. I had a Canadian come up to me and say, you know, you forgot the Grey Cup. That's the Canadian football championship.

I've never heard of that. Any Canadians in here? All right, sir. Oh, back there. Three of you.

Let's quota for our church, okay? I'm kidding. We had the President's Cup. That's golf. We had the Writers' Cup. The Solheim Cup.

The Ladies' Cup. I mean, even I was at my desk, you know, just sort of rattling off these that I found and I said out loud, well, what do you know? I just looked at the screen. What do you know? There's a World Rugby Cup.

And with that, my Siri awakened and said South Africa defeated New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup 12 to 11 in 2023. I had no idea she was listening to me work on my sermon. She's obviously not saved.

It's not working yet. I'm going to keep at it maybe a little harder. Well, think about this. Jesus experiences this cup which is agony, but it is also over his opponent's victory. Satan, sin, the grave, death. So this cup of abandonment makes possible our cup of acceptance. This cup of rejection makes possible our cup of redemption. His cup of pain is translated into our cup of praise. This is the Savior's cup of victory. How do you go through Gethsemane today, the one you might be facing where God has perhaps fenced you in?

Let me give you some reminders first. Remember that friends can be reassuring, but they should never replace your heavenly Father. For Jesus, His closest friends fell asleep. And keep in mind there are stones thrown away from Him wailing, crying, I'm going to go to sleep. Maybe you've discovered that friends may understand to a certain degree, but you're alone in Gethsemane apart from your Father.

So often we tell everybody else our troubles and not Him. And beloved, our greatest need is Him. Secondly, remember that praying is designed to align our will to God's will, not shape His will after ours. We already learned as we watched the Lord teach His disciples how to pray, He didn't teach us to pray that our will would be done in heaven, but that His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. Third, remember that intimacy with God might not eliminate suffering, don't be surprised by that, but it will demand fresh surrender where you say, Father, I don't want this cup, this is not what I was expecting, but if there's no option, if there's no way around, I shall go through. Nevertheless, not my will but Yours.

So when you come to that great hour of need and desperation or maybe temptation, when you need to unload your burdens and your desires, your frustrations, your sorrows, when you sort of feel the ground underneath you giving way, Gethsemane is the place to go. In his book, Philip Yancey tells the story of family friends named the Woodson's. The Woodson's had two children, Peggy and Joey, both born with cystic fibrosis. Peggy and Joey stayed skinny no matter how much food they ate. They coughed constantly in labor debris. Twice a day their mother, Meg, had to pound on their chest to clear the mucus. They would spend several weeks every year at the local hospital. Both of them grew up knowing they wouldn't live very long.

Joey was this bright, happy, all-American boy, but he died at the age of 12. Peggy defied the odds. She lived longer. She survived several health crises in high school, yet lived to go on to college. She seemed to grow stronger, not weaker. Their hopes all rose that she would have that miracle of healing.

But that miracle didn't happen. Yancey writes, the last time Peggy was in the hospital and things were not going well, she said to her mother, hey, Mom, you remember that quotation? Well, she was referring to a quotation her pastor had used from William Barkley.

And the quotation was, endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory. She said, Mom, that's what I want to do. Her commitment to Christ was evident once the president of her college even came to visit her in the hospital asking what he could pray about. And she was too weak to talk, but she nodded to her mother, and her mother knew she was referring to that quote. And so the mother said that quote to the president, that her hard time would be turned into glory.

She died a few weeks later at the age of 23, but she did indeed leave a testimony to the glory of God. That is how you go through Gethsemane. And in the meantime, as you're going through it, you have this renewed intimacy with the Father. You have this realistic honesty in the struggle. The gospels didn't sugarcoat it. But you have this fresh humility in the surrender to his will, where you learn to say, nevertheless, that's how we go through Gethsemane. When life presses you down, let Gethsemane teach you to pray. Intimacy with God turns suffering into surrender and sorrow into strength.

That was Stephen Davey, and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Today's message is called How to Go Through Gethsemane. Are you looking for more ways to grow in your faith? Visit wisdomonline.org. There you'll have access to Stephen's entire Bible teaching library, which includes hundreds of sermons from four decades of ministry. And if you're studying a specific book of the Bible, Stephen's sermons are organized by book, allowing you to easily find what you need. It's all free and available anytime at wisdomonline.org. Start exploring today. Join us back here next time to continue through the Gospel of Luke on Wisdom for the Heart. You