Matthew 26

³⁶ Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷ And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. ³⁸ Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” ³⁹ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” ⁴⁰ And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? ⁴¹ Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ⁴² Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” ⁴³ And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. ⁴⁴ So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. ⁴⁵ Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. ⁴⁶ Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”

When I was a boy we would sing old hymns out of the hymnbook. One came to mind as I was considering our text. It came to mind the way old things sometimes come to mind: I had not thought of it in forever but, when I thought of it, it was like I had never really forgotten it. I am speaking of Jennie Evelyn Hussey’s 1921 hymn, “Lead Me To Calvary (King of My Life I Crown Thee Now).” In particular I remember the chorus because it struck me as a boy as somehow curious and poetic. It stayed with me. Here is the first verse and the chorus.

King of my life, I crown Thee now,

Thine shall the glory be:

Lest I forget Thy thorn crowned brow,

Lead me to Calvary.

Lest I forget Gethsemane;

Lest I forget Thine agony;

Lest I forget Thy love for me,

Lead me to Calvary.

Again, that strikes me as an interesting way of putting it, and likely not a way that modern musicians would put it. But there’s something poignant and even a bit haunting about that to me. The hymn’s stated fear is that we would forget three things: Gethsemane, Thine agony, and Thy love for me. And the solution offered to help us not to forget these three things is one thing: Calvary. The cross helps us to remember Gethsemane, Thine agony, and Thy love for me.

Both present at Gethsemane: Thine agony and Thy love for me.

We continue to approach Calvary, but first, the garden. There are three principle players here: the Lord God above all, the Lord Jesus, God with us, and the disciples. Each demonstrate a powerful component of what was happening as Jesus agonized in the garden.

The will of the Father: the cross.

We first see the Father. Jesus calls out to the Father three times in the garden of Gethsemane.

³⁶ Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.”

³⁹ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

⁴² Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

⁴⁴ So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.

As Jesus looks upon the coming horror of the cross, He is driven to prayer. In His moment of greatest crisis, He calls out to God, and He does so repeatedly. The content of the prayers are essentially the same each time, and each prayer has two points: (1) a prayer for deliverance if such deliverance be possible and (2) a complete acceptance of the will of the Father, regardless.

We will consider the first of these components in a moment, but it is the second component that is preeminent: the will of God the Father. “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus was consumed by a total acceptance of the will of God, even if the will of God meant the agonies of the cross.

From our perspective, there is a deafening silence in the text that hangs between the prayers. We see the agonizing prayers of Jesus and then, seemingly, the silence of God. Yet, God truly was not silent. For one thing, Luke’s account of the garden of Gethsemane in Luke 22 reveals something telling that happened between the prayers.

³⁹ And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. ⁴⁰ And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” ⁴¹ And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, ⁴² saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” ⁴³ And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. ⁴⁴ And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. ⁴⁵ And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, ⁴⁶ and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

If you read that closely, you see that the angel appears to encourage Jesus after the first of the three prayers. He is therefore presumably there through the prayers, strengthening Jesus. Furthermore, in Hebrews 5 the writer of Hebrews tells us that God both heard and answered Jesus’ prayer.

⁷ In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. ⁸ Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. ⁹ And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, ¹⁰ being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

This passage is occasionally appealed to as evidence of the fact that Jesus could not have been actually praying for deliverance from the horrors of the cross. For instance, in his First Things article, “What Jesus Prayed for in the Garden,” James R. Rogers makes this argument.

There are a couple of reasons for my skepticism. First is that an early commentator, no less than the author of the book of Hebrews, suggests that the Father answered Jesus’ Gethsemane prayers in the affirmative: “In the days of his flesh, he offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his piety.”

The author of Hebrews must be mistaken if the common take on Jesus’ Gethsemane prayers is correct, and Jesus asked to be spared the cross. After all, the author writes that God “heard” Jesus’ prayer. Yet Jesus went to the cross and in fact died.

The author of Hebrews suggests another reading of Jesus’ prayer, however, a reading in which the Father responds in the affirmative to his prayer, thereby “sav[ing] him from death,” even though Jesus went to the cross and died. The author of Hebrews does not have Jesus asking God the Father to be spared from the cross. Rather the author has Jesus’ prayer to be a request to be resurrected after dying on the cross. And that prayer the Father answers with a dramatic affirmative.[1]

That is a provocative thesis, and, undoubtedly, the question of what exactly is happening in the garden is one that Christians have wrestled with for two thousand years. Even so, it must be pointed out that the fact that God “heard” and answered Jesus’ prayer does not necessarily mean that Jesus was not praying for deliverance from the cross, for alongside praying that the cup might pass, Jesus also prayed for God’s will to be done.

And God heard.

And God’s will was done.

And the will of God was the cross.

Thus, what may appear to us to be the silence of God was in fact an answer. It was a painful answer, as God’s answers can sometimes be, but it was an answer nonetheless.

This is what we must learn: pain should drive us to prayer. Our need should drive us in to the arms of God. I have always marveled at church people fleeing from the Church when things go badly for them. I am speaking of those times when you encounter somebody and say, “How are you? We have not seen you in church in a while,” and they respond, “Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I have been going through a hard time.” What an odd thing to say! Are you hurting? Are you in pain? Are you suffering? Then let us run into the arms of God together. I will remind you that even though they were not good companions, Jesus nonetheless took three disciples with Him when He went in to pray.

And we must learn that God does indeed hear the prayers of His people, even if we feel that He is being silent. He is not. He hears you. He loves you. He will answer.

I am struck by Andrew Peterson’s beautiful song, “The Silence of God.” It resonates deeply with me.

It’s enough to drive a man crazy, it’ll break a man’s faith

It’s enough to make him wonder, if he’s ever been sane

When he’s bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod

And the Heaven’s only answer is the silence of God

It’ll shake a man’s timbers when he loses his heart

When he has to remember what broke him apart

This yoke may be easy but this burden is not

When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob

Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they’ve got

When they tell you all their troubles

Have been nailed up to that cross

Then what about the times when even followers get lost?

‘Cause we all get lost sometimes

There’s a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll

In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold

And He’s kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone

All His friends are sleeping and He’s weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot

What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought

So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God

The aching may remain but the breaking does not

The aching may remain but the breaking does not

In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God

The obedience of the Son: painful acceptance.

We next see Jesus, agonizing in the garden. Our text is saturated with pain.

³⁶ Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷ And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. ³⁸ Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” ³⁹ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

⁴² Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

What are we to make of the agony of Christ. Throughout history, there have been a few answers that simply will not do. Patrick Henry Reardon points out one infamous example.

[W]hen the pagan Celsus, late in the second century, wrote the first formal treatise against the Christian faith, he cited that Gospel scene in order to assault the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity: “Why does he shriek and lament and pray to escape the fear of destruction, speaking thus: ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me’?”[2]

Undoubtedly other enemies of the faith have made the same argument: if Jesus was God then why does He sweat drops of blood and cry out for deliverance in the garden?

Others have simply denied that He was agonizing over the cross at all. For instance, Hilary of Poitiers, the 4^th century bishop of Poitiers, argued that Jesus’ agony had to do with Peter, James, and John, and not the cross.

Having brought with him Peter, James and John, he began to grieve. Before he brought them along with him, he did not feel sad. It was only after they had accompanied him that he grew exceedingly sad. His sadness thus arose not from himself but from those whom he had taken with him…Did he say, My soul is sad because of death? Certainly not. For if death were the reason for his fear, he certainly ought to have said so. But the reason for his fear lies elsewhere.[3]

That is an attempt to sidestep the whole awkward question of Jesus’ agony, but it is profoundly deficient. The natural reading of the text is that Jesus is agonizing over what it about to happen to Him: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…”

We must remember that Jesus was fully God and fully man. He is one person with two natures, divine and human, that are hypostatically bound together in the one person, to use the earlier language of the Church. Thus, Leo the Great, the 5^th century bishop of Rome, argued that each of the two components of the prayers emanated from one of the two natures of Christ.

The first petition [“Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…”] arises from weakness, the second [“…nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”] from strength: He desired the former based on our nature and chose the latter based on his own.[4]

Church, it is no sin to agonize at the prospect of a grueling, brutal death. More than that, it is no sin for the Lamb of God to sweat drops of blood at the prospect of taking onto Himself the fullness of the horendous sinfulness of man!

Why does Jesus agonize? Because of the cup He is about to drink. This, after all, was the language He used:

³⁹ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

⁴² Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

⁴⁴ So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.

That is very interesting. That is also very telling. Jesus agonizes over the cup. What is this cup? To be sure, it is a reference to suffering. Yet, we also find this image of a cup used throughout the Old Testament to refer to the judgment and wrath of God. Consider the terrifying image of the cup:

Psalm 60

¹ O God, you have rejected us, broken our defenses; you have been angry; oh, restore us. ² You have made the land to quake; you have torn it open; repair its breaches, for it totters. ³ You have made your people see hard things; you have given us wine to drink that made us stagger.

Psalm 75

⁷ but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. ⁸ For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

Isaiah 51

¹⁷ Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering. ¹⁸ There is none to guide her among all the sons she has borne; there is none to take her by the hand among all the sons she has brought up. ¹⁹ These two things have happened to you—who will console you?—devastation and destruction, famine and sword; who will comfort you? ²⁰ Your sons have fainted; they lie at the head of every street like an antelope in a net; they are full of the wrath of the Lord, the rebuke of your God. ²¹ Therefore hear this, you who are afflicted, who are drunk, but not with wine: ²² Thus says your Lord, the Lord, your God who pleads the cause of his people: “Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more; ²³ and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors, who have said to you, ‘Bow down, that we may pass over’; and you have made your back like the ground and like the street for them to pass over.”

Jeremiah 25

¹⁵ Thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. ¹⁶ They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them.” ¹⁷ So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand, and made all the nations to whom the Lord sent me drink it: ¹⁸ Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, its kings and officials, to make them a desolation and a waste, a hissing and a curse, as at this day; ¹⁹ Pharaoh king of Egypt, his servants, his officials, all his people, ²⁰ and all the mixed tribes among them; all the kings of the land of Uz and all the kings of the land of the Philistines (Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod); ²¹ Edom, Moab, and the sons of Ammon; ²² all the kings of Tyre, all the kings of Sidon, and the kings of the coastland across the sea; ²³ Dedan, Tema, Buz, and all who cut the corners of their hair; ²⁴ all the kings of Arabia and all the kings of the mixed tribes who dwell in the desert; ²⁵ all the kings of Zimri, all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of Media; ²⁶ all the kings of the north, far and near, one after another, and all the kingdoms of the world that are on the face of the earth. And after them the king of Babylon shall drink. ²⁷ “Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, be drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more, because of the sword that I am sending among you.’ ²⁸ “And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: You must drink! ²⁹ For behold, I begin to work disaster at the city that is called by my name, and shall you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, declares the Lord of hosts.’

Jeremiah 49

¹² For thus says the Lord: “If those who did not deserve to drink the cup must drink it, will you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, but you must drink. ¹³ For I have sworn by myself, declares the Lord, that Bozrah shall become a horror, a taunt, a waste, and a curse, and all her cities shall be perpetual wastes.”

Oh Church! Do you hear? Do you see?

Imagine a giant cup. And imagine that for each individual sin we commit the righteous wrath and judgment of God falls like a single drop into that cup. And imagine that each drop is eternal. Then imagine what that cup must look like after the drops of the wrath of God have accumulated for of all the sins of every person ever committed everywhere in the world throughout all of human history have been collected in that cup.

Then imagine that cup, filled to the brim with the righteous wrath of a holy God because of your sins and my sins and the sins of the entire world is set before the spotless, sinless, perfect, holy, obedient, beautiful Lamb of God, Jesus. And Jesus, looking at you and at me (the ones whose sins led to the filling of the cup with the judgment of God), takes the cup of wrath and drinks it until it is empty.

That is what happened on the cross! That is the cup that was set before the Lord Jesus! That is the cup over which He had anguish but before which He stood in absolute obedience to the will of God.

“Let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Our hearts break at the amazing beauty of the grace of God in Christ!

Jeff Peabody, in his poem “Gethsemane,” writes:

Gethsemane means “olive press.”

A place where the fruit of the tree is crushed and squeezed

and the unbearable pressure releases the oil inside.

And as the will of the Father

met the will of the Son,

the unbearable pressure

crushing and squeezing him,

the thorns of our wasteland digging ever deeper,

the sweat of our curse pooling on his skin,

he made his choice and cried,

“Not my will, but yours be done.”

And the oil of the Spirit flowed freely.[5]

Praise God! Praise God for the obedience of the anguished Son!

The fickleness of the disciples: sleeping through their salvation.

Yet, even here, in the theater of such astounding grace, we see one of the more pitiful and absurd demonstrations of human fickleness and frailty and sin.

³⁶ Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷ And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. ³⁸ Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” ³⁹ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” ⁴⁰ And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? ⁴¹ Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ⁴² Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” ⁴³ And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. ⁴⁴ So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. ⁴⁵ Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. ⁴⁶ Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”

The disciples sleep.

While Jesus weeps drops of blood…the disciples sleep.

A.T. Robertson observes that “the hour was late and the strain had been severe, but Jesus pleaded for a bit of human sympathy as he wrestled with his Father. It did not seem too much to ask.”[6]

No, it does not seem too much to ask.

Craig Keener offers some other interesting background that helps us understand this scene.

It was customary to stay awake late on the Passover night and to speak of God’s redemption. They should have been able to stay awake to keep watch…According to a Jewish teacher, if anyone in the Passover group fell asleep (not merely dozed), the group was thereby dissolved.[7]

Ironically, the group will indeed soon be dissolved as the Son is arrested and His disciples scattered. But they should have been dissolved at the absurd weakness of the disciples. They were not, though, for it is precisely for weak and lost and fickle humanity, like the disciples…like us…that Jesus has come.

I ask you, are you so sure that you would have stayed awake? Would I have? I daresay we know what it is to sleep through our own salvation.

There is further irony here. Stanley Hauerwas has pointed out that, “In the boat Jesus slept even though the boat was threatened by the chaos of a storm…In the garden, when the chaos of the world threatens the kingdom, the disciples sleep, indicating that they have not yet learned what is the true danger.”[8]

We are alert for the lesser things and asleep for the greater things.

Behold the folly of mankind.

Even so…Jesus remains obedient to the Father.

There is a lot happening here in the garden, but nothing as important as this: the Son remains obedient to the Father.

The Son does not abandon His calling.

The Son wrestles, but He does not quit.

The Son bends, but He does not break.

The Son weeps, but they are tears of submission to the will of the Father.

Again, we praise God for the obedience of the Son, for the obedience of the Son is humanity’s only hope.

Come to the Lamb who drank the cup in your place.

Come to the Lamb and He will give you life.

 

[1] https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/03/what-jesus-prayed-for-in-the-garden

[2] https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=19-03-020-f

[3] Manlio Simonetti, ed. Matthew. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. New Testament, Vol.Ib (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p.254.

[4] Manlio Simonetti, ed., p.256.

[5] https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/04/gethsemane

[6] A.T. Robertson, Matthew-Mark. Word Pictures in the New Testament. Vol.I (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1930), p.212.

[7] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p.121.

[8] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006), p.222-223.