"In the Garden With The Father" - Mark 14:32-42

Well, church body, we are once again privileged to come together under the preaching of the Word of God.

Today, Brian is going to be in Mark chapter 14, verses 32 to 42.

Mark 14:32–42

So if you'd please stand with me if you are able, and I will read it for you.

You just have your Bible open or the screen behind, read along.

This is the Word of God, Mark chapter 14, verses 32 to 42.

Mark 14:32–42

They came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, Sit here until I have prayed.

And he took with him Peter and James and John and began to be very distressed and troubled.

And he said to them, My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.

Remain here and keep watch.

And he went a little beyond them and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible the hour might pass by him.

And he was saying, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.

Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.

And he came and found them sleeping.

And he said, Peter, Simon, excuse me, said to Peter, Simon, why are you asleep?

Could you not keep watch for one hour?

Keep watching and praying that you may not come to temptation.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Again he went away and prayed, saying the same words, and again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him.

And he came the third time and said to them, Are you still sleeping and resting?

It is enough.

The hour has come.

Behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Get up, let us be going.

Behold, the one who betrays me is at hand.

This is the word of God.

May be seated.

Brian, would you please come?

What a privilege it is to continue to go to the Word of the Lord and all the things that we do, from call to worship to prayer, to obviously the preaching of the Word, the praying of the Word.

It is the Word of God that is our true and ultimate authority.

Let's pray in light of it.

Father, we thank you for the privilege of being called here by your goodness, by your grace to worship.

We thank you that you would even allow us to be a people of worship.

We just ask you that as your word is opened and exposed to our hearts and minds, we would ask you that you would transform us in Christ's likeness, that you would save us, that you would change us, convict us, draw us closer, encourage us, thrill us with your truth.

And so lead and guide us all in this time we pray in Christ.

Amen.

Well, in our passage for today, we we're going to see a dramatic shift, if you will, uh as to what is going on in the life of Jesus Christ.

For the past three or so years, uh he has spent a considerable amount of time pouring in to his apostles, teaching them, training them, rebuking them, preparing them for the time when he will be going to the cross and what the implications of this labor of love will be.

And this depicts to us that the time has come, our passage does, that the training is over for the most part.

And so what we see is Jesus takes along his disciples and teaches them by example.

But more importantly, it is a passage that specifically shows us that the hour has come for Jesus.

It's time.

Shows us the earthly life of Jesus is about to come to an end.

Its glorious end.

Today, in our text, which is of course still Friday and what we call Passion Week, Friday for the Jew.

Remember, it begins at sundown on Thursday, and so we what we have here is very late in the evening of that time, and it's after the Lord's table.

And so as we look into the late evening, early morning prayer time in this garden, I would say as we read this text, we have to be stunned at what's going on here.

And what Jesus endured here in this garden.

This is not a rest time for Jesus, a break from the crowds.

This is make or break time for Jesus and for us.

Because this is where the amazing faithfulness is on display from Jesus.

But at the same time, we see immense isolation as Jesus' chosen men fail to do what he commands them to do.

This is a garden that is just outside the city and kind of on the Mount of Olives.

It's a place where Jesus wants to retreat for the purpose of prayer.

And so it's a place of solitude in this late hour where Jesus knows he can go and pray to the Father, and there are not going to be huge crowds nearby.

But he's struggling.

He's struggling at what's to come.

And so he knows he needs his heavenly father.

And as we're going to see today, this is now known as a place in the life of Jesus that is really filled with both suffering and strength.

And that's what I hope we dwell on today.

As Jesus goes before his father in prayer in this garden, he is filled with both grief and strength simultaneously.

This is really his last act as a free man in the earthly sense of things.

This is his last time with his disciples before his betrayal finally comes to fruition.

And this is Jesus' last temptation to conquer as our great mediator, our high priest, our king.

As we break this down today, we're going to have three points.

Three points that will help us hopefully to see what's in this passage.

First, we're going to see the weight of sin and its implications.

And we see that kind of in verses 32 to 34.

Then we'll look at the wonders of prayer in verses 35 to 42.

And then we're going to kind of go back and review over one really important thing for the life of Christ and the life of the Christian.

That is the will of God.

We see the will of God in verse 35 and even in 39.

And so, first we're going to try to understand, I think this helps set the table, if you will, the immense weight sin brings upon the earth and humanity in specific.

The way in which we understand our Lord's struggle in the garden can only be really understood if we look at what happened to him on the cross.

Okay, we're going to look forward to that just a little bit.

Obviously, we're going to speak more about that in coming weeks.

But what we must remember is that on the cross, Jesus would be made sin for us, the Bible says.

He would bear the weight of the curse of the law, which is really enduring the just and righteous wrath of the Father.

And so, with that in mind, may we then understand what is truly going on in Jesus' mind in the garden as he comes before the Father.

You see, what we've got to remember is it's not the coming pain of physical torture, nor the cruelties of his physical death on the cross that is grieving him so much, as the passage says to the point of death.

It's not like us when we're fearing that physical pain, like when I know that I've got that dentist appointment coming, or maybe it's that surgery that's approaching.

That's not what Jesus' suffering is all about in the garden.

It is the knowledge that soon he will bear the full weight of the wrath of his father on behalf of sinful people who could never endure it themselves.

That's the agony of the garden.

That's the agony of the cross and the suffering of Christ that was prophesied so long ago.

You see, this exact thing was prophesied concerning the coming Savior by the prophet Isaiah, back in Isaiah 53, for one example, 700 years or so before Christ ever showed up on the earth.

Isaiah says about the Messiah in that passage, he was despised and forsaken of men.

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem him.

Isaiah goes on to say, Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried.

Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.

But he was pierced through for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

That's why Jesus is grieved in this passage.

Jesus knows that he's about to be made a curse in our place.

He knew what's coming.

This is what he's been saying all along to his disciples, to his apostles, and it's what's been foretold really since the third chapter of the book of Genesis.

But it's not an easy task for him.

He is to bear the incredible heavy weight of sin, something which he had never known in the flesh.

He was to carry our sorrows that sin had brought upon us, and he was about to be without the Father's help in his humanity on the cross.

You understand that?

Quick side note on that.

Jesus was not separated from the Father on the cross.

I know you've probably heard that before.

But if we understand it in the triune God sense of things, that can't happen.

They cannot be separated, even as Jesus becomes the sin bearer, because they're one, eternally one.

It's in his humanity that Jesus is without the Father's help, like it says in Psalm 22:1 when prophesying the cross.

Psalms 22:1

But the Son and the Father cannot be separated since they are one, as one God, as Deuteronomy 6 says, for example.

In fact, as we read of the prophecy in Isaiah 53, 10 to 12, it says the Father is still pleased with his son while he's on the cross.

As a son Jesus willingly obeys and goes to the cross, the father has not lost his pleasure in his son.

Instead, in this great mystery, there's mystery here, and we can't fully comprehend it.

What we see is that the Father pours out his wrath, and the son accepts it as the perfect sacrifice, so the father's pleased.

And as we'll look at in another sermon, when Jesus says that he is forsaken, right, on the cross, you remember those words?

What he is speaking of is the Father's help on the cross.

He's not saying the Father has abandoned me in every way, like they're separated, you know, their eternal relationship is now gone.

No, he's speaking of what has come to him in his humanity.

More on that later.

Stay tuned.

The point is that I'm trying to make here is this is the most difficult task to have ever been done in the history of the world.

In the garden.

The perfect, spotless, sinless, and righteous Son of God on the cross will become sin.

For a time, Jesus knew the hideousness of rebellion.

The rebellion that I acted out.

That you acted out.

That was put on him.

I am culpable for his work on the cross.

And so are you.

And so we got to take from that, for one, that we should never take our sin lightly, right?

If we as Christians, if we're Christians, we should never let it ruin us.

Okay?

I mean, we we can't just go and hide in a corner because we're sinful and just cease to live, but we also can't ignore it and make light of it.

Look at what this passage says that the thought of becoming sin does to Jesus.

Again, verse 34, his soul is grieved at the point of death.

The King James translation says that he is amazed.

What amazes Jesus in the garden?

It's definitely not his guys.

Okay?

It's the sinfulness of man.

Sin is nothing to take lightly.

In our passage, we see Jesus is just agonizing because he's contemplating what's to come.

Again, it's not mainly over the agony over the lashings or the crown of thorns or even the nails in his body that's about to be cut to that's about to come.

It is the agony over the sinfulness of man and the right and good punishment that will soon come upon him, thereby incurring the wrath of the Father that comes to him as the sin-bearer.

That movie that many of you have seen The Passion of the Christ that came out many years ago, uh it depicts overly well the suffering of Christ in his physical body, but totally misses the actual suffering of Christ.

The Father's wrath.

And so I just want to encourage us as we read through this, as Jesus is agonizing, what is our countenance in regards to sin?

Do we excuse it as a mistake or character flaw?

Do we rationalize it by comparing it to others or things in this world?

Or do we read the Bible's definition of sin, embrace our willful defiance of the laws of the Lord, the same willful defiance that Jesus is struggling with here and is going to endure on the cross?

I know it's not a comfortable teaching, right?

I know it's hard to hear that we are responsible for the death of the Savior.

And the reason he's absolutely in agony in this passage, but he is truly agonizing over sin, your sin, my sin.

And he's about to atone for it.

Rebellion against God or sinning against the Lord is a rejection of his lordship in our lives.

When we sin, we're saying to God, we reject you.

We reject your authority.

I'm the authority, I'm the final authority, I say so.

That's what sin is.

It's pride.

Same thing that Adam and Eve did in the garden, and it's what we do day in and day out.

Jesus is contemplating this here, and it's absolutely agonizing to him as it amazes him and how vile and treacherous sin is.

Do we agonize over our sin this way?

Does it cause you to fall to your knees and thank Jesus for living the life that we could never live?

Does it cause you to beg him to help you to live that righteous life?

As Joe mentioned, the kids were learning about how to be holy, that biblical command.

Does it cause you to look upon the Savior with even more adoration for the grace that comes from the atoning work on the cross?

Is that your attitude towards sin?

If it isn't, I just ask you now to beg God that you would be struck by the awfulness of your sin.

And at the same time, never just to sit there, but at the same time to be struck at the beauty of his sinless life and the atoning work that he accomplished, as it magnifies his grace and mercy to your life.

Because we serve a mighty and gracious God.

And we see what it costs him to pour out that grace as we survey his struggle here in the garden.

This garden doesn't depict the actual act of sacrifice on the cross, as we'll see soon in Mark.

But it does give us what that act was about to cost.

It gives us a truth that says Jesus is grieved to the point of death, even to the point of death, as he thought about my sin.

Personalize it.

The sin of so many was an immense weight to bear.

What we find in reality is the sin of one is too much for any normal human, right?

We can't bear that.

We can't stand under that.

We'd all be crushed under the weight of our own sin in the end.

Yet Jesus, the God man, endured the sins of thousands and thousands, tens of thousands.

And so the garden is a place of suffering.

It's a place of suffering as he contemplated this work to be done.

And so we say, what a beautiful and terrifying description of a place that was meant for peace.

So what does he do?

What is Jesus' response to agony?

What should our response be in agonizing trials in life?

Well, I think you know the answer to that.

Go to the Father, right?

We go to the Father in prayer.

We cry out to our great God.

Which, of course, brings us to the second point.

So, in the context in our passage, we see Jesus and his guys are heading to the garden.

Jesus knows that the hour is very close for the cross to come.

He feels deeply grieved at what is coming, and he feels desperately needy to pray.

He has one place to turn.

Verse 33 says he took Peter, James, and John with him to do this.

Remember, these are the same three that he took with him on other occasions, like when he went with Jairus into that room and healed his daughter while the others stayed behind.

They're the ones who went to the top of the mount as he's transfigured before their eyes.

And so is the rest of the disciples.

They kind of stay near the entrance of the garden, if you will.

Jesus and these three head further in.

And Jesus says to them, hey, remain in this certain spot and keep watch.

I'm going to go on ahead a little further, and I'm going to go pray, and I'm going to agonize over what's to come with the Father.

He feels the immense weight of the cross that is coming, it's afflicting his soul, and he has but one response to this agony, and that is to pray.

There's so much for us to learn and apply in response to this passage as we see what Jesus does.

I mean, one is obviously prayer is vital to the Christian, huh?

If it is vital to the life of the God, man, to the Messiah, how much more vital is it for us to go to the Father in prayer?

We're to be continually going to the Lord in prayer as 1 Thessalonians 5.17 tells us.

We're to go to Him in praise and adoration as King, as judge.

We are to go to Him in thankfulness for what He's done on our behalf through the gospel.

We're to pray to Him and ask for our daily provisions.

We're to pray to Him for strength, to pray to Him and ask that we would be protected from the schemes of the evil one and protected from falling into temptation.

And that's exactly what we see here from the lips of Jesus.

In this prayer time, Jesus is agonizing about what's to come, and he goes to the Father for strength.

And he says, he goes to God and he says, Abba, Father.

It's a statement of intimacy with the Father.

He's pleading with the Father.

In this prayer time, Jesus is living out what he had been teaching the apostles all along.

Remember back in the Lord's Prayer, he says, Pray like this.

And then goes on to tell them they are to pray that they wouldn't fall into temptation and be overcome.

And so he's saying, Don't lean on your own strength, instead lean on God, or else you will be overcome.

He tells them the whole time that he's been with him, call out to the Father.

Cry out to him.

He will provide strength, protection.

That's why we address our prayers to the Father.

That's what Jesus told us to do.

Remember last time in Mark, Peter and the others tried to rely on their own strength, and it ends up absolutely failing them.

Jesus is showing us here what it looks like to be dependent on the Father for all things, and he's Jesus.

You see, if we really want to be those people that cling to the Lord's grace in our lives, We seek to overcome sin.

If we want to be victorious in any way, in some way, in the midst of temptation, it's going to come through humble, dependent, and vigorous prayer and obedience.

We cannot forget to pray or excuse ourselves from prayer, especially when we're in the midst of temptation.

Dear Christian, I can't emphasize this enough.

Jesus is agonizing.

Luke tells us he's sweating drops of blood in this agony, as he's thinking of the sin that he's about to endure.

And not even Jesus rests in his own strength.

He knows where to go, he knows where to find strength, and we are to do the same.

Think about when the world seems to be falling down around us.

When we are struggling and agonizing what is coming down the road in our lives.

When we are tempted to follow through on that thing that is tempting us to sin, we are to go to him.

Fall on our knees, just as Jesus did, if you can, before the Father.

Beg him to help you.

Of course, his answer may not come in the exact way that you would hope, probably won't, actually.

But it will always be for the best.

Because God answers prayers in regards to his sovereignty, not our sovereignty, because we don't have that.

He always answers in what way he deems best for you.

And if he says it's best, guess what?

It is.

If you're suffering in any way in your life right now, your first and only response is to go to the God of the universe.

That if you're a Christian, you get to call him Abba, Father.

That title represents this wonderful closeness, an intimate relationship.

I would refrain from using the term daddy, like you may have heard, but simply in its closeness and relational intimacy.

For example, no matter what our world or maybe I should say our country, music, culture will tell you, we're not all God's children.

All humans are made in the image of God, but not all get to call him Abba Father.

That's reserved for those followers of Christ.

Therefore, there is this absolute wonderful relational closeness.

That's the beauty of the term Abba.

I mean, think of it, it's like saying, Abba Father, I come to you knowing you're strong and I am not.

I come to you recognizing I'm desperately needy for your strength.

I cannot do this on my own.

I'm desperate, I'm needy, I'm yours, I'm no longer my own.

I come and ask and proclaim not my will but yours, O Lord.

Now that's prayer.

That's confident Christian prayer.

Let us be that kind of fervent and dependent prayers.

Let us never be found sleeping, whether literally or figuratively, when we should be actively and rigorously petitioning our great God.

Jesus returns three different times to the apostles.

And what are they up to?

They're sleeping.

Mark says that they were told by Jesus to keep watch.

Luke tells us that he also said to be praying, but they can't even do that.

They fall asleep every time Jesus walks away to pray.

Let us learn from this.

Let us beg God that we would not fall asleep in the face of temptation.

That we would be aware and alert of what can lead us away from the Lord and His grace.

Let us pray that we would continually be in prayer and on guard in our lives of faith.

Oh, the folly of sleeping in this life when we should be on alert to the dangers that lurk around us and in us.

So, what is it that Jesus is continually praying about as this night and his final hours come to a close?

What does he go to the Father and say over and over?

What does he say multiple times?

What's his prayer life like?

Our third point.

He simply says, Not my will but yours.

This is huge.

Why does he say that?

Maybe at first we think, well, aren't him and the Father on the same page?

Doesn't Jesus want to go through this?

Doesn't he know what the ultimate purpose is in him coming to the earth?

Why is he asking that the cup would be passed from him?

In Isaiah, we see that the language of the wrath of God being poured out like a cup is used there.

In Isaiah 51, 17, it says, Rouse yourself, rouse yourself.

It says, Arise, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the Lord's hand the cup of his anger, the chalice of reeling.

You have drained of the dregs.

It's a great passage.

That's basically repeated here by Jesus to depict the same wrath that he knew is coming.

And so we ask, knowing the Father's plan, even though it is awful, why would he ask that this cup be removed?

Why would he pray that way?

Jesus felt deep in his human nature the pain and agony of the coming sin.

It was real to him.

And although he's fully God, he is also truly and fully human.

We cannot discount either of his two natures in what we call the hypostatic union.

And with that in mind, I think we can gain insight into this prayer petition from Jesus without convoluting the answer or the nature of our mighty God who came in the flesh.

You see, if we don't understand nor believe that Jesus is both 100% divine and 100% human, then this request in the garden of first asking the cup to be passed from him kind of makes no sense.

But if we cling to the fact that Jesus is fully God, fully man, we can make sense of this prayer life.

The humanity of Christ, the human will, is always in submission to the divine will.

This is why we see him yield his will to the divine will of the Father.

He says, Not my will, but thine.

If you go King James.

He's asking that the cup may be taken from him.

What that reveals to us is his human nature of realizing and reflecting on what's coming.

God, you can do all things.

And yet, not wanting the human side of things to cloud out the ultimate and sovereign will of the Father, the divine will, he says, Not that will, though, but yours.

I'm so thankful that Jesus did not respond to temptation the same way Adam did.

Jesus is being tormented in the garden about what's to come.

The devil's no doubt seeking to destroy Christ and have him flee from him in this moment.

But Jesus says, Not my will, but the Father's.

Adam fell head first into the first temptation that came along.

Adam fell in the garden and brought all of humanity with him by yielding to temptation and disobeying God.

But in this garden, the better garden, the garden of Gethsemane, true suffering comes for the God man.

Way more temptation than was ever known by Adam.

And the better Adam conquers it by never yielding to his temptations, but instead to the will of the Father.

There's no mistaking Adam's fall in the garden and Jesus' victory in this one.

Do you realize what would be in store for all of us if Jesus had gone the way of the first Adam?

If he wouldn't have said, Not my will, but yours, we'd all be doomed for an eternity.

We'd all be separated from God.

If the human side of Christ didn't submit to the ultimate divine will of God.

The power of submission is so good.

Submission for the Christians.

What's life is all about?

Our lives are meant to submit to the will of God, the Lordship of Christ, the word of life, the word of truth, the Father's will.

He's agonizing in the garden.

And he just is going to simply receive whatever the Father has in store for him.

Jesus shows us that his life is a life that is fully consecrated to his Father.

He has the Father's perspective always on the forefront of his mind in every way.

He loves what God loves.

He enjoys what God enjoys.

He wants nothing that God does not approve of.

He receives whatever God gives him with thankfulness.

Guess where we're going with that?

Brothers and sisters.

May we have the mind of Christ in this same way.

Let us all ask that God would transform our thought patterns to be according to his will instead of the patterns of this world.

I know, sometimes we all feel like we may not know the will of God in our lives.

Jesus knew that it was God's will that he go through with this, and Jesus wanted nothing else in his life than to do the will of the Father in heaven.

If we are living lives that are concerned with the same things that God is concerned about, or that we are living lives that are in accordance with his word, then we are living lives that are in line with his will.

Isn't that good to know?

And that's what matters.

If you agree with God in what sin is and what righteousness is on the other side, and we seek to live out that kind of truth in our lives, if we live out our calling in the gospel, if you will, we're living in the will of God.

You see, there doesn't have to be a voice from heaven to tell you what the will of God is for your life.

It doesn't have to be writing on the walls to know whether or not God is, you know, we're within God's will.

In fact, I would say those are probably not the Holy Spirit, that's a different spirit.

We have his word and his spirit that illuminates that word to us.

If we live in light of that, then we are within his will.

And he will lead us in accordance to that.

For some of us, that may mean moving to Asia.

For some, to the Middle East.

But for most, it means that we are to live out our faith in front of our neighbors with our church family, right where we're at.

In either case, we are living out God's word by the help of the Spirit, as we're within God's will as we walk by faith.

Hear this.

Jesus says, Not my will, but yours.

How about you?

When your soul is deeply grieved by your own sin, do you say, not my will, but yours, O Lord?

When that diagnosis comes your way, do you say, not my will, but yours?

When that person close to you is dying, do you say, not my will, but yours, O Lord?

When you're comfortable with where you're at in life and it seems as though the Lord may be changing things for you, do you just say, Not my will, but yours, O Lord?

Whatever you would have for me.

When that loved one is caught up in the world and you're just praying fervently for their soul, do you end that prayer with not my will but yours, O Lord?

When you lose your job, your house, your money, your car, your vacation plans, your normalcy in life, your favorite tradition, your friendship, your ability to sleep well, your body's falling apart, your hobby, whatever it is, do you lay it down at the feet of your Savior and say, with confident trust and bold-hearted courage, not my will but yours, O Lord.

Whatever it is.

I don't want my will for my life.

That's Christ's likeness.

I can't handle anything without following you.

I know that I will sin my way through my own will.

I know that you're good and you are gracious.

I know that only by your will does anything ever good come to me in my family, in my church family.

I don't want what the world has to offer.

I don't want to live according to the patterns of this world.

I want what you love.

I don't want what the world loves.

I want your desires to be my desires.

I want your blessing in my life, whatever that is.

Not my will but yours.

It doesn't matter if it's poverty or plenty, if it's health or affliction, I trust you, oh God.

I trust your will.

I am I am yours.

I want your will to rule and reign me over me in every aspect of my life.

Not my will.

Oh, if Christians would live that way.

Is that how you speak to the Lord in prayer?

Whether times are tough and lean, or whether they're good and comfortable.

Our comfort is not what this life is about.

And in the ultimate expression of that, Jesus shows us how to pray.

He shows us what it looks like.

I want to end this time here with a thought.

The victory that Jesus gains here in the garden over temptation is not easy, obviously.

Salvation's no easy work.

And this is something you've probably heard before, but you see, God created all things, the Bible says, right?

Sun, moon, stars, trees, oceans, mountains, his image bearers.

He did that with what?

Breath of his mouth, his word.

He created all things with the breath of his mouth.

In a word, he commanded things into existence.

The amazing complexities of the human cell, the placement of the earth precisely on its axis, the unimaginable depths of this universe.

All with a word.

But when it came to take what it takes to rescue a people, to save people from the pit of hell, it took so much more.

Does that not reveal to us?

The devastation of sin?

To redeem a people for himself, to cancel their sin, to snatch a race of people, as Peter speaks of in 1 Peter 2 9, from the grip of the evil one.

Now that took a great cost.

It required the infinite, matchless Son of God coming to the earth, laying aside his heavenly garments, taking the form of a bondservant, humbling himself to humiliations, to torture, and even, as Philippians 2 says, humbling himself even unto death, even death on a cross, it took him receiving my sin so that I could receive the declaration of righteousness.

Our salvation costs an infinite amount of bloody sweat, if you will.

It cost all of creation, its maker.

And the garden represents the victory that has been won for that salvation.

The cross is the public display of the victory, but it is in the garden where he first gained the victory by not shying away from the will of the Father in the midst of temptation to be led by his human will.

Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, he says.

We see that happening with the apostles, don't we?

Thank God we don't see the weak flesh winning out in Jesus.

For him, we see a complete and utter dependence on the will of the Father that comes through fervent prayer and a perspective that is God-centered.

It's in the garden with the Father.

That's where Jesus gained the needed strength to endure what is soon to come.

Jesus entered that garden suffering from a knowledge of what was to come and the temptation that came to his flesh in that hour, but he left that garden strengthened and ready to face the horrors of the judgment for my sin.

Why?

Because of his prayer life.

Because of his dedication to the will of God.

Think of it, Jesus' original prayer that the cup would pass him by wasn't answered in that way at all, was it?

Yet Jesus left that garden strengthened and in whole-hearted agreement with the will of the Father that was just about to pass, no hesitations.

And we know that to be true, that Jesus came out of this time in the garden encouraged and strengthened by the Father during these hours, because of what Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 7 tells us.

Hebrews 5 · chapter mention

It says, 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.

Because of the holiness of Jesus Christ, he will be saved from eternal death, he will be resurrected.

I mean, he's in prayer in the garden, sweating drops of blood for the agony of the thought of feeling the weight of the eternity of sin.

He knows that he's soon to experience maybe millions of eternities of wrath that were meant for sinful people as their sin bearer, and he comes out of that time ready to go, ready to face suffering willingly, because he knows that the Father will save him from eternal death in light of his holy perfections.

He doesn't die as a sinner, he dies as a sin bearer.

He bore our grease, was crushed for our iniquities.

And in the garden, knowing this is coming, he just rested in the Father's will and he conquered those temptations.

That was such a heavy burden.

Do you realize the importance of the time in the garden?

Do you realize that without his victory over the temptations of ultimate suffering that's coming, we would be eternally damned.

Many thoughts should come floating into our minds when we think about that.

But one of those that I want to land on here is a word that we're all familiar with as Christians.

As we think of what Jesus is doing in the garden in our passage, as we think of what's coming, we should think of this word.

And this word is grace.

By the grace of God, we are saved.

And since Jesus willingly went through what was soon to come, we can now say that his grace is sufficient for us.

We can now say that we are saved by his grace.

My sin is great, my sins they are many.

But his mercy is more.

Our sin caused Jesus deep and painful agony.

But he conquered temptation.

And through the power of his father, he went on to conquer sin and death.

Now that is meaningful grace.

That is grace that we can cling to and hold to.

That is truly matchless grace.

That's not grace, that's just a buzzword like people use it today.

This kind of grace redeemed me from what I deserved, the pit of hell, and assigned me a place I do not deserve in heaven.

Grace greater than all my sin.

May our lives be lived out in this kind of fervent prayer.

May we live lives that are in subjection to the will of the Father in every way.

May we live confident and assured lives in the presence of the Savior, dependent upon his power, his sacrifice, his victory, and his grace.

And may we say, day after day, through prayer, through all of responses and anything that's going on in life, may we always say, Oh Lord, not my will, but yours.

I trust you.

I worship you.

You are worthy.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your word to us.

We thank you for the grace that comes through the work of your Son Jesus.

We thank you that even before the foundations of the world you decided this was to be the plan to save us who would repent and believe in this room.

To save thousands upon thousands of people who do not deserve it.

You are full of grace, full of mercy, full of love and compassion.

We honor you and glorify you in this time.

And as we continue in worship, Father, may we sing of our wonderful, merciful Savior with hearts that are bent on worship.

Overwhelmed by grace, overjoyed at the eternal privilege we have of knowing Christ.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.