Matthew 26:36-46 | Divine Love

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Please take your Bible with me as we make our way to Matthew chapter twenty six.

The Lord has prepared us to enter a quiet, dark garden in the middle of the night with the Lord Jesus and his disciples.

Our passage from Matthew's gospel is summarized by two verses from the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 5, verses 7 and 8.

Hebrews 5:7

There, God the Son, while in the days of his flesh, that is during the time of the incarnation, when God took on humanity, he took on all that humanity is, including relating to God the Father through prayer.

It's a difficult concept for us to imagine.

Where God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit existed in all eternity in perfect communication, in perfect love, without any separation, without anything coming between them.

And now all of the sudden one of the three persons of the Godhead takes on flesh and begins to relate to the Father, not through perfect, intimate communication, but through human prayer, including cries and tears generated from impending death.

Even though Jesus is the Son of God, he learned in his humanity to walk with the Father, to trust and obey.

And in that image we see the depth of the love of God within the Trinity and toward us.

If you have your Bible, I encourage you to follow along as I read Matthew chapter 26, beginning in verse 36.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

We'll read through verse 46.

So Matthew 26, 36.

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane.

And he said to his disciples, Sit, sit here while I go over there and pray.

And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, that's James and John, Jesus began to be sorrowful and troubled.

And he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.

Remain here and watch with me.

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.

And he came to his disciples and found them sleeping.

And he said to Peter, So you could not watch with me for one hour?

Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

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

And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy.

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

Then he came to the disciples and said to them, Sleep and take your rest later on.

Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Rise, let us be going.

See, my betrayer is at hand.

Amen.

I want us to feel this passage.

I know it's a hard thing to do on a Sunday morning.

I want us to use our minds, yes, but I want you to feel deep within you what's taking place in this garden.

There are only two or three times that Matthew describes how Jesus felt.

So when this account relates for us Jesus speaking his own agony, that agony is amplified by Matthew's lack of emotional language about Jesus.

We need to grasp the depth of the agony, the pain, and the sorrow that Jesus felt, and to be struck by the disciples' lack of support for their Lord in these moments.

To do that, I'd like you to consider with me three aspects of love that we observe in this account.

The love of the Father for his children, the pitiful love of the children for their Lord, and the love of the Son for the Father.

But first, let's think about the circumstances of this account.

Jesus led the eleven disciples.

Remember, Judas is gone, he's gone to work out his deal with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests to betray Jesus.

He has left the Passover meal.

So it's Jesus and the eleven disciples.

They leave the upper room and they cross out of the city, going through the city walls, down into a little valley, and up the side of a hill where there is a small garden of olive trees just outside the walls of Jerusalem called Gethsemane.

Gethsemane is a word that means oil press, implying that this was a place not only where olives were grown and harvested, but also where they were squeezed under great pressure to produce oil.

The weight of what would take place here bore down on the Lord Jesus as he moved deeper into the grove of trees with Peter and James and John.

In fact, Matthew says that Jesus began to be sorrowful and troubled.

Perhaps we might say that his sense was that this unimaginable burden on his heart and his soul is squashing him.

Again, heightened by Matthew's lack of emotional language.

A sense of sorrow and burden of a pressured, troubled soul begins to crush the Lord Jesus, the Lord of life, as olives are crushed and oppress.

The language is enormous, as we see in verse thirty-eight.

Stay here and watch with me.

It's as though each step further under the olive trees creates greater tension, greater stress, greater pressure until Jesus says, even, even to death.

Now we can use death as human beings in an unhealthy exaggeration.

For example, we might say, I'm so hot, I'm about to die.

Or in about an hour, you're going to say, I'll die if I don't get something to eat.

Maybe your kids are already saying that.

I doubt that very many of us have been so hot that we might actually be on the verge of death.

Or that we really truly might starve to death if we were to wait one more hour to eat.

But we are compulsive complainers and exaggerators who want people to sympathize with our perceived hardship, so we use that kind of language.

But this is Jesus.

Exaggeration is a form of lying.

And God the Son does not lie.

He's not lying when he says that the sorrow and the pressure he felt so colossal, so daunting that its weight is beginning to squeeze the life out of him.

He's telling the truth.

He does not exaggerate the way that we exaggerate.

But Jesus is not complaining.

He could sink into the despair and the darkness of his feelings and give up, but he does not.

He acknowledges instead the reality that God the Father has placed before him, and that reality is beginning to come together and squeeze the life out of him.

And this is an excellent place to consider the Father's eternal love for his children.

I want you to think biblically and theologically with me for a moment.

Why is Jesus here?

Why is Jesus in this garden with his disciples on this night?

Is it just because the Passover meal has filled him up and now he needs to get out and take a little bit of a walk?

What led to this moment?

Why is this taking place?

Is this just filler material in the story of Jesus?

Is it a mere interlude until we get to Judas betraying the Lord Jesus with a kiss?

No, it's much more than that.

Jesus was to be squeezed in that garden of olives because God the Father loves his children.

You've likely heard the verse.

And this is love.

And this is love.

Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.

And what?

And gave his son to be the propitiation, the satisfying atonement for our sins.

God the Son was sent to save his people from their sins because God loves his children.

And it's ascending as old as time.

You remember how the first pages of your Bible recount God's first son, Adam and his wife Eve.

Luke tells us, calls Adam the son of God, the first son of God.

They were placed also in a garden, and in that garden they were expected to trust God, to believe in his word, to trust his love for them, to trust his word as the absolute best thing for them.

And Adam failed to trust God, didn't he?

And came down to facing the pressure of temptation, the desires of the flesh, and listening and trusting in the word of God, Adam couldn't bear up under the weight of sin that so easily entangles.

And he caved.

But then God promised to send a descendant, a seed who would crush the tempter, that serpent, the devil.

And so God gave hope to a sin-cursed world through the promise to send someone.

That promise is specified at the beginning of Matthew's gospel.

The angel told Joseph, don't worry about marrying Mary.

Because Mary's going to bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

That promise, aligned with another prophetic promise, that a virgin would conceive and bear a son, whose name would be God with us.

The Father sent his son, his only son, his beloved son, that he is always loved because he loves his created sons and daughters and intends to save them from their sins.

That is why Jesus is in the garden of the olive press, feeling the extraordinary pressure of satisfying the holy wrath of God against sin.

We cannot read this account without sensing the Father's love for us from eternity past.

He has providentially directed all things to this point in this garden on that dark night, so that God the Son would feel the crushing weight of human sin and the impending divine wrath against it.

That's what Jesus voiced to Peter, James, and John.

I'm distressed.

Even to death.

This is a time in his humanity when the Lord Jesus needed strength, support, and encouragement.

In fact, another of the gospel says that angels came to strengthen him.

He's facing the most challenging time of his humanity, the most arduous crushing ever endured by a human being.

And in response, we see the pitiful love of the children for their Lord.

Jesus goes a little further into the garden by himself.

He prays and he returns after prayer to find even the select three sleeping.

Okay, I get it if the others are sleeping, but Peter, James, and John, you ought to know by now.

They're sleeping.

Jesus is in such dire need of support and prayer that he asked Peter, remember the one who boldly announced that he would never abandon Jesus?

So can you not even watch with me for an hour, Peter?

Is it too much for you to support me in my most dire need for just a little while?

Now the disciples were thrust into their own version of an olive press.

Their testing is coming.

Soon Peter would lop off a man's ear.

And then after that, all of them would run away.

One of them naked.

And while Peter wouldn't would not deny himself for Jesus during these moments, he's about to deny Jesus that very night.

So Jesus is reminding them of their need to rely on prayer for their strength.

He says, Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

Now, temptation can mean tempted to sin, to do something that is wrong, that God would despise, but it can also be a word that refers to a time of testing.

And this context relates to what will happen with Jesus and the disciples' response to that testing.

You see, their love, their faith, their trust is being tested that same night as Jesus' love is being tested and his trust in the Father is being tested.

Jesus knew that his followers, his disciples, needed to approach their time of testing with prayer.

They must be prepared for their spiritual squeezing, if you will.

And prayer is the proper preparation for times of great trial.

Now that they're roused from sleep, Jesus returns to pray again.

And he finds them sleeping again.

So glad I wouldn't do that.

Why is it so hard for them to stay awake and pray?

Have you ever thought about that?

Well, there's there's the there's the easy answer.

This is this has been the this is the end of a long day.

This is the Passover meal day, and so they've been preparing, likely from sunup.

They've been working all day long to get the Passover meal ready.

They've they've eaten the Passover meal together.

Now it's after dark, they've walked out of the city and they've crossed into a nice, quiet, dark garden.

They're exhausted.

That's the easy answer.

They're just at the end of their energy.

But that's not the way Jesus describes this falling to sleep.

He says in verse 41, watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Jesus identifies this as a spiritual battle, not a physical battle.

Jesus doesn't identify this as, yeah, you're really tired and exhausted after a long day.

No, that's not how he does it.

He indicates, yeah, there's something to that.

The body is saying, I want to sleep.

It's difficult for them to remain awake and to pray with Jesus for the same reason that we find it difficult to stay awake and pray.

Have you ever found yourself falling asleep when you're praying at night?

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Just like Adam and Eve.

Jesus knew the disciples sincerely desired to stay awake and pray.

They were willing.

They've given up their lives for Jesus.

Remember what Peter said?

Jesus, we've left everything for you.

We've left it all behind and we've come and we followed you.

And Jesus says, Yes, I know that.

They had enthusiasm for Jesus.

That's why they're here with him in the garden.

But they lacked the strength of love that remains awake all night with a loved one enduring their greatest life battle.

They lacked the love that trusts the word of the Father instead of the devil's temptations.

My friends, our flesh always fights against what we know to be right.

And so often we fail to pursue what we know to do, and we give in to the desires of the flesh, because that ends up being our greater love.

How surprised should we be that they failed the testing time that was before them?

In just a short time, Jesus is going to say, Listen, get up.

Judas is on his way.

Betrayer's here.

And they're all going to scatter because Scripture says, strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.

Why should we be surprised that that came about?

They spent no time praying for Jesus.

They spent no time strengthening their spirits for what was to come.

They needed to prepare.

They entered a spiritual battle unprepared and defenseless.

And I dare say it sounds just like us.

We go the same way as the disciples when our testing moments come.

Because we've not prepared our souls through time with God.

Now, genuine disciples of all ages love our Lord.

Peter loves the Lord Jesus.

Remember, Jesus will ask him.

Peter, do you love me?

Yeah, yes, Lord, I love you.

Peter, do you love me?

Yes.

Peter, do you love me?

Yes, Lord, you know all things.

You know I love you.

Disciples of all ages love the Lord Jesus.

But we reveal how pitiful our love really is when we give in to the desires of the flesh.

But there is there is one in this account who loved immensely and fought against the flesh successfully.

Jesus is the one in greatest need of spending time in prayer.

Strange statement, isn't it?

Jesus is the one in greatest need of spending time in prayer.

It's a strange statement because we tend to think of the Lord Jesus most often in his deity.

But this passage describes him in his greatest sense of humanity, in his greatest moments of need, when his humanity is pressing in upon him and he's experiencing its weakness and its desires, and he's struggling in that moment to overcome it.

While the disciples slept, Jesus felt as though he was about to die because of the pressure and the stress of what was coming.

So what in all of God's creation could bring such a load of sorrow, pain, and stress upon a person that they would legitimately, truthfully, rightfully be able to say, I'm about to die.

We find the answer to that question in Jesus' prayer to the Father.

We're told that he's on his face in prayer.

That posture is one of supreme submission to the person to whom one is praying.

It's not unusual in Scripture, but it's not necessarily common either.

New Testament Judaism would often pray standing up, often with hands lifted to heaven and eyes lifted to heaven.

But this is the opposite.

Jesus is down on the ground on his face.

So Jesus in his humanity comes before the Father in prayer, submitting himself.

Even though he's equal in personhood, equal in deity, equal in power, equal in authority, he yields to the Father in his humanity.

And in that moment, we see the Son's unmovable love for the Father.

It's unmovable, unshakable.

It's a love so great that it strengthens both spirit and flesh.

My father, if this if this has to be, does it have to be?

Isn't there another isn't there another way?

If it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not as I will.

Jesus knows.

He knows the incredible weight and pain of what is to come.

And his flesh is recoiling at the thought.

The prospect of beatings, yes, of mockings, yes, slander, but even more of becoming sin for us.

Is so atrocious that Jesus asked the Father if by some means, any means, the eternal purpose of God could be changed.

Beloved, never ever feel as though you cannot ask your sovereign God to do the impossible.

Here is the Son of the living God asking the Father to do something that is impossible to do.

Not impossible because God cannot do it, but impossible because the sovereign purpose of God has been determined.

Jesus asks in his humanity.

He knows the Father can do everything.

So in his flesh he cries out and he is heard.

The unwritten response is, Son, this is the only way.

Son, this is the only way.

The disciples gave in to the desires of the flesh.

The Son of God took the flesh's desires to heaven's throne room and said, Father, is there any other way than drinking this cup?

Son, the cup is the only way.

Now we might think of the Lord's cup as full of blessings.

Kind of like Psalm 23, verse 5, my cup runs over.

Psalms 23:5

But most of the Bible indicates that drinking the Lord's cup meant you were swallowing judgment, wrath, and death.

Just give you a couple of examples here.

Psalm 11.

Let him rain coals on the wicked.

Fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.

Sounds comfortable.

Imagine drinking fire and sulfur in a scorching wind and live coals.

That's God's judgment.

Or Jeremiah chapter 25, verse 15.

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.

They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them.

Most often throughout all of Scripture, a cup from God is not something you want.

It's something that would make you recoil in horror and in fear.

This is the cup that the Father says in an unwritten way, Son, this is the only way.

The cup Jesus was to drink is the cup of God's wrath and God's judgment.

It's the container of God's anger, of his retribution, and his curse against sin.

You see, the eternal plan promised to Eve was fulfilled by sending the Son, Jesus, who would save his people from their sins.

But how can people be saved from their sins?

The only way people can be saved from their sins is if the wrath of the Holy God towards sinners is appeased, is satisfied, is atoned for.

And all of that is in the cup that Jesus is about to drink.

Here is an eternity past.

All come down to a dark night in a garden where olives are not being squeezed, but God the Son is being squeezed.

Jesus prayerfully ponders that truth in the garden.

God's eternal purpose and plan called for God the Son to enter time and space, to live a life of perfect humanity, trusting the Father, obeying the Father, and being the ideal Adam.

And then at the proper time, drinking the full cup of God's gathered wrath against the sin of God's people.

I think it's really difficult to grasp the breadth of that truth and to feel it as deeply as we need to.

Maybe it will help if we think through it with a human illustration.

But keep in mind that human illustrations really don't do justice to divine truths.

Imagine, imagine that you have the most perfect relationship with your father that could ever be.

Of course, that would mean that you're perfect, that you've never disobeyed your father.

It would mean that your father has never disciplined you because you've never disobeyed.

But in that ideal image of perfection and love and trust, you have talked together about how other children, all children, in fact, have disobeyed their fathers.

Some in small ways and some in terrible ways.

And all of that disobedience and that sin offends you and your father because of your perfect relationship.

And so you conclude in your discussions that the only way to satisfy your sense of what is right and your father's sense of what is right is to punish all of that wrongdoing, all of the disobedience.

And then you decide that you, the perfect son with the perfect loving father, you will take all of the punishment for all of those people.

You decide that on the appointed day, your father, the one you love and trust without hindrance, will punish you for the disobedience of the kid across the street.

Okay, he's irritating anyway.

We can put up with that.

Then he's going to punish you for all of the disobedience of the neighborhood kids.

Then all the kids in in town.

And all the all the disobedient people in the county, and then the state, and then the country, and you get the picture.

All of that punishment for something that you didn't do.

It's horrendous.

But most of all, the worst thing ever is that it interrupts this perfect loving relationship that you have with your father that has been fully, fully surrounded with love and trust and perfection.

And all of a sudden, what comes into that is punishment.

His anger at the sins of others is now directed at you.

You face the wrath, you bear the iniquity of others, you take the punishment that others have earned.

And the one delivering the punishment is your father, whom you love.

Nothing like this has ever come between the two of you.

Human illustrations can never suffice for the divine.

But I hope that picture helps you get a grasp of what's happening here in this garden.

Only you and I are the children across the street.

And Jesus is considering bearing the punishment for my sin.

The Father will punish his son, his only son, the Son He loves for my sin.

And he knows that it will bring immense pain and anguish, and he knows it will be the most significant intrusion into that father-son relationship that could ever be possible.

But he loves the Father so much that Jesus would ask in his humanity, Father, is there another way?

Surely any any other way would.

Creation would be his dominion forever, and we would be left slaves of sin, Satan, and unrighteousness for eternity.

We would live our lives attempting to please ourselves rather than serving the God who made us, ultimately dying hopeless and enduring eternity, bearing the wrath of God against our sins.

In his perfect, sinless flesh, Jesus understands that the Father's will may be something other than his feelings.

This is parallel to Adam and Eve in that garden so long ago.

Under such pressure, will Jesus give in to the desires of the flesh?

After returning to pray a second time, Jesus in his humanity understands there's no other way than God's eternal atoning plan.

If God the Son did not drink that cup of God's wrath, we would be lost to sin.

Now wrap your minds around verse forty-two.

My father, since this cup of wrath can't be satisfied unless I drink it.

Even the sinless Son of Man understood that what God says is always best, is always trustworthy, and loving the Father through obedience displays that trust.

So whereas Adam gave in to the flesh, this son of God loved the Father.

One author has written at one of the supreme moments of personal pain in the history of the world, Jesus says, yet not what I will, but what you will.

He's not even saying to God, I think you're wrong, but I'm gonna let you win this one.

No, he's saying, I trust you no matter how I feel.

I know that your desires are ultimately my desires, so do what we both know must be done.

After praying that way, Jesus returns to the three disciples and he finds them sleeping again.

So he goes back to pray again, praying the same way, displaying his love for the Father by submitting to the will of the Father to drink the cup of divine wrath for you and me.

And then the end begins.

My friends, Christian, non-Christian, almost Christian, struggling with the flesh, Christian, come to the garden and observe the love of God.

The pitiful love of God's children is just a sidelight in this account.

Because we're all children of Adam.

But Matthew draws our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to feel the love of God on display.

And that love of God is first a perfect love within the Trinity, such that the Son of God can trust the Father's love for him under the greatest distress and temptation that you and I might know.

He says, I love the Father, and therefore my love for you is also unchanged.

Beloved, never forget that he loved the Father and He loved us, knowing how pitiful our love for Him is.

In that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Puritan Puritan pastor Richard Baxter rightly asked, Is it a small thing in your eyes to be loved by God?

To be the son, the spouse, the love, the delight of the King of glory.

Is it a small thing in your eyes?

Christian, believe this and think about it.

You will be eternally embraced in the arms of the love which was from everlasting and will extend to everlasting, of the love which brought the Son of God's love from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, and from the cross to the grave, and from the grave to glory.

That love which in its humanity was weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, buffeted, spat upon, crucified, pierced, which fasted, prayed, taught, healed, wept, sweated, bled, and died, that love will eternally embrace you.

The lesson of Richard Baxter is, why would you not embrace that love?

As a non-Christian, yes, this is the one who bore the cup for you.

But as a Christian, why would you not then say, that is the one that I want to embrace, that is the one I want to follow, that is the one I want to leave everything behind and follow him.

No wonder another Puritan pastor said, the greatest sorrow and burden you can lay upon the Father, the greatest unkindness that you can do to him is to not believe that he loves you.

Ouch.

Because right here in this garden, the love of God is on display.

Sometime around the second century, so hundred and fifty or so years after this event, someone wrote a letter, an epistle, as an apology, as a defense for Christianity.

Here's what they wrote.

When our iniquity had come to its full height, and it was clear beyond all mistaking that retribution in the form of punishment and death must be looked for, the hour finally arrived in which God had determined to make known from then onwards his loving kindness and his power.

How surpassing is the love and tenderness of God.

In that hour, instead of hating us and rejecting us and remembering our wickedness against us, he showed how long-suffering he is, for he himself took on the burden of the iniquities that we had.

And he gave his own son as a ransom for us, the holy one for the wicked, the sinless for the sinners, the just for the unjust, the incorruptible one for the corrupt ones, the immortal for the mortal.

For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than his righteousness?

Answer, nothing.

By what other one was it possible that we, the lawless and ungodly, have been made holy but by the only Son of God?

Oh, sweet exchange! Oh, unsearchable working, oh benefits surpassing all expectation, that the wickedness of many should be hidden in the single righteous one, and that the righteousness of one should justify the many transgressors.

Lord Jesus, we come and we express to you our love.

Oh, it's unimaginable.

We cannot describe what you've done for us.

But we come and we bow before you, confessing our weakness, giving in to the flesh and not loving you as you have loved us.

But we confess to you as well our trust that you have loved us first, that you have given yourself to consume that cup of wrath so that we might be freed to love you and the Father and the Spirit forever.

A love of God that will not let us go.

May you draw our hearts heavenward, that we might not only reach out to embrace you and your love forever, but confess it to all who would hear.

For it's in your name and for your praise that we say these things.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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