Would you take your Bibles with me this morning and turn to Luke 22. We're going to look at one of the most important and most misunderstood stories in the Gospels. It's the story of Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.
We're going to get into some very serious stuff this morning. Some of the most serious stuff that's happened in human history. Are you in Luke 22? Let's read verses 39-46.
39 And he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives; and his disciples also followed him.
40 And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation.
41 And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed,
42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
45 And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow,
46 And said unto them, Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.
Luke 22:39-46
This takes place immediately after their Passover supper, the Last Supper in the upper room. They go out to spend the night in the open air in a place called the Mount of Olives, a place that other passages tell us was the Garden of Gethsemane.
Apparently this is Jesus and the disciples' favorite spot during Passover time. It was a place where olive trees grew and were pressed right outside the city of Jerusalem, and it was a place where they would camp out when the city was overcrowded during the Passover feast.
In fact, this is not even the first time this week that they went to the Garden of Gethsemane. It's already mentioned in previous passages. So Jesus and his disciples go to their favorite spot. And Jesus knew that Judas had already gone to get the chief priests and their guards and come to that exact spot to arrest him that night.
Jesus could have had them go anywhere else, but he chose to go to their favorite spot because that's where Judas would find him. And that's where the events of the crucifixion would kick off.
Now, the word Gethsemane means oil press. It's a place where olives were pressed into olive oil. A place where soft fruit was crushed, and Gethsemane is the place where Jesus would be crushed, where he would be pressed. Jesus isn't at Calvary yet. That's coming very soon. But this is the place where He looks at all that's coming. And He says yes.
As we look at these verses I'm going to give you five points this morning. As we look at the story of Gethsemane we are going to think about:
- The challenge
- The fear
- The cup
- The decision
- and the result
Let's pray and we'll jump right into those five things.
{Prayer}
The first thing we're going to look at this morning is...
1. The challenge
When Jesus got to the Mount of Olives, He turned to His disciples and He told them, pray so you don't enter into temptation. The book of Luke actually shortens this. Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus got on the disciples three different times for falling asleep instead of praying.
This is not the main thing that I want to talk about this morning, but it is here. Jesus is challenging these disciples to pray. Jesus is about to go to His greatest temptation, His greatest trial at Calvary. But the disciples are going to go through a trial as well. Calvary is going to be very, very difficult for them. And they need to pray so that they are not completely overtaken by that temptation. That's what enter into temptation means here. Jesus isn't saying pray so that you can escape this. He's saying pray so that it doesn't overwhelm you.
You're going to go through some trials in this life that are incredibly difficult. And without God's help, without prayer, those trials can completely overwhelm you. But the disciples, they failed this challenge. Jesus starts praying and they start sleeping. And when he's finished praying, he comes back and they're sleeping again. And he reminds them again to pray.
Again, that's not the part of this story that I want to focus on. I just wanted to cover it. The part I want to focus on is what Luke focuses on here, and that is what Jesus was actually doing during this prayer.
There is something very interesting about what Jesus does in Gathsemene. It's almost like, in the Garden of Gethsemane we see a very different Jesus. All through Jesus' life and ministry, He has been utterly fearless. In Matthew 4, when He is confronted for forty days by Satan himself, He responds fearlessly. In Mark 5, when He confronts the howling maniac with thousands of demons in him, He responds fearlessly. When the rulers attack Him and slander Him over and over again, Jesus responded fearlessly. At no point in Jesus' entire life and ministry has He ever seemed at all afraid or out of control.
But here in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is very afraid. So the second thing I want to talk about this morning is...
2. The fear
Up until now, Jesus has been completely unintimidated. But here in the garden, he is exceeding sorrowful unto death. He is praying in absolute agony. He is praying so much, and he's in such agony that his sweat is coming out like drops of blood.
Now, that doesn't mean he was sweating blood. What it means is that he was sweating so much that it was coming out like wounds, like giant drops of blood falling on the ground.
The idea here is that Jesus is just absolutely overwhelmed. He is on the edge of what a human soul can carry. He is being pressed like an olive in Gethsemane.
The Bible tells us he kneels down in prayer. That is unusual. It's normal for us to kneel in prayer, but in Bible times, people prayed standing up. They prayed with their hands up and their eyes open. And they stood up in prayer. That was their custom. Jesus was not kneeling here because he was showing us the proper prayer posture. He was kneeling because he was overwhelmed.
So here is the question: what could possibly make Jesus this afraid? What could possibly bring about this emotional reaction in somebody who's already faced Satan and demons and rulers and angry crowds without any fear whatsoever?
I don't think it was death. Many people have stood and stared down death bravely. I've been by people's bedside while they died and watched them do it with composure. I've read about people being executed with a smile on their face. Many Christian martyrs are recorded as dying in prayer or dying singing a hymn, dying thanking the Lord. Brave until the end. I do not think Jesus was afraid to die.
But Jesus here is in anguish. So much so it's affecting his body. He's afraid of something. What is that something? That brings us to our third point. We've talked about Jesus' challenge and Jesus' fear. Let's talk about...
3. The cup
Look at verse 42 again:
42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
Luke 22:42
This is Jesus' prayer: Remove this cup from me. If it's possible, if you're willing, don't make me drink this cup.
Jesus was not afraid of the cross or the nails or the torture or death. Jesus was afraid of the cup.
Listen, this doesn't mean that there was some cup there in the garden next to Jesus. He's not talking about a physical cup. He's talking about something spiritual here.
So, what is the cup? Why is that significant? Why use that language?
In the Old Testament there is a recurring use of the cup speaking of God's wrath and judgment against sin. Let me just show you a couple examples:
In Isaiah 51, Isaiah is speaking about God's judgment on Jerusalem and listen to how he does it.
17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.
Isaiah 51:17
Verse 22:
22 Thus saith thy Lord the LORD, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again:
Isaiah 51:22
In Jeremiah, God is talking about His judgment of the nations and again He uses the cup metaphor.
15 For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.
16 And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them.
Jeremiah 25:15-16
Those are just a few of many examples we could look at where a cup represents God's judgment.
Picture some witch's brew, some steaming cauldron, some disgusting smoking putrid cup that no one would want to drink.
Jesus was going to drink the cup of God's wrath not for His own sin (He had none) but for the sins of mankind.
What was in that cup? Every evil and vile thing that mankind has ever done. Every time a mom murdered her children. Every time a group of angry thugs raped an innocent child. Every act of racist hatred ignorantly thrown at another. Every human trafficking. Every time a parent failed to show the love of God. Every sexual deviance. Every time mankind chose to worship some demonic idol instead of God. Every disgusting thing mankind has ever done was in that cup.
I think Jesus shrank back from that cup because He is Holy. I think His holy self was revulsed by the sins of mankind and the thought of taking on that sinfulness was terrifying and disgusting to Him.
But it wasn't just sin in the cup, it was God's judgment for that sin, God's full-bore judgment that that sin deserves. All the just and holy wrath of God, all the hell you and I deserve — all of that was in that cup.
That, and not death, was enough to make Jesus Christ shrink away in horror, to sweat like drops of blood.
Because at the cross, Jesus would be made sin for us.
21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
2 Corinthians 5:21
At the cross, He would bear the wages of our sin:
23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 6:23
At the cross, He would propitiate the wrath of God for us.
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
1 John 2:2
That is what Jesus was afraid of. The cup of God's judgment that Jesus was about to drink for you and for me.
So look at His prayer again:
42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
Luke 22:42
In that prayer we see Jesus' request, and His request was simple: Father, if there is any way I don't have to do this, if there is any way you can take this cup from me, please do.
But also in that prayer was a decision. "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done."
So we've talked about the challenge and the fear and the cup. Let's talk fourth about...
4. The decision
Jesus prayed that God would find a way to make this pass from Him, but resigned Himself to do the Father's will regardless.
You know, in another garden, another sinless man named Adam faced a temptation and failed, saying "Not thy will, but mine be done," and that cast the whole world into sin and judgment. Here in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus, the next sinless man, would say "not my will, but thine be done," freeing mankind from sin and judgment.
Many people look at this story and they think Jesus just prayed over and over again, "Let this cup pass from me." But I don't think that was what the Lord did at all. I think Jesus resigned after the first prayer to do God's will, and then prayed for strength to do it.
Luke talks about an angel coming to help Jesus in prayer. I think that angel was helping Jesus with strength to drink the cup. God the Father's answer was, "I won't take this cup from you, but I will send you help to drink it."
Church, Jesus drank that cup at Calvary. He drank all of it for us. But He decided to drink that cup under the press of Gethsemane.
So we've talked about the challenge, the fear, the cup and the decision this morning. There is one more thing I want us to think about and that is...
5. The result
Because of Jesus' decision here in the Garden He would go to the cross the next day. And on that Cross God would pour out the wrath for our sin on Jesus. Jesus drank the whole cup of God's wrath dry. He drank it to the dregs. He absorbed what we deserved.
And here is what that means for us, if you are in Christ, there is no wrath left for you. There is no judgment left for you. Jesus has taken that judgment.
As Romans 8:1 says:
1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Romans 8:1
Jesus bore the punishment for our sins so that we don't have to. Jesus was abandoned by God the Father so that nothing can seperate us from His love.
That is the gospel. So when we look at what Jesus did at Gathsemene - it's not some sad scene for us to admire - it's a gospel invitation. Jesus drank the cup for you. The cup of God's wrath is empty.
It leaves you with a decision: you can turn to Jesus, you can put your faith in Him, you can believe and trust in what He did for you at that cross and have an empty cup or you can refuse and insist on drinking God's wrath for your sins yourself.
As we close today, I want you to think about this: You were in that brew. Think of the things you are most embarrassed by, the sins you would be ashamed if other people knew. Jesus knew, and He drank it anyway. Think of the many, many thousands of times you haven't measured up, when you were less than you should be - Jesus knew and He drank it anyway. Think of the times you chased and idol instead of trusting God - that was in that brew. Think of all the times you stubbornly chose your will over God's will - that was in that brew. Think of all the unkind things you've said or thought to say to your spouse, your siblings, your parents, your children - that was in the that brew. You were in that cup. And Jesus drank it for you.
Church, Jesus drank that cup at Calvary. He drank it to the dregs. He decided to drink it here, under the press, when every holy instinct in Him shrank back from it.
If you are in Christ, that cup is empty. There is no wrath left in it for you. When you feel like God is about to crush you for what you’ve done, that is a feeling. Your Savior already absorbed it. Don’t pick up a cup He already drained.
If you are not His, the cup is still full. This is not a sad story to admire. It is an invitation. He drank it for you. You can turn to Him, trust what He did at that cross, and walk out of here with an empty cup — or you can refuse, and one day drink God’s wrath for your own sin yourself.
He looked at all that was coming. And He said yes. What will you say?
