Gethsemane

I was thinking about this study and excited.

This is the very first time for me to be to have the opportunity to be preaching on Easter that's up and coming.

And if you don't know about Easter, it's like the Super Bowl for Christians.

Like it's the big deal.

So I am so excited about this and the series, and I got thinking about what do we what do we promote and how do we do this and how do I go about this?

So I went into scripture, of course, and it took us to the way of the cross.

And uh you can study different people do sometimes the stations of the cross, the places leading up to it, and um just some beautiful pictures that I cannot wait for us to jump through.

Um but anyhow, let's dig in Matthew chapter 26, and uh in verse 36, you're gonna see where Jesus mentions the word Gethsemane.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

And in Gethsemane, it was a place, I think we've got a map.

If you guys will pull it while I'm talking about it.

Uh Gethsemane was a place that was sort of a common route for Jesus and between Bethany and I come in and out.

We'll try this.

We'll turn this off.

Hello?

Here we go.

Now I can control this a little bit better.

I don't know what's going on.

But anyhow, so it was a common place that he would travel, and the name of Gethsemane means the olive press.

An olive press was something that would separate um liquid from solid with olives, and Jesus would go to this beautiful place, sort of uh to get away, and you're gonna see here Jesus goes to this place for a moment of prayer and uh to get away from things as they're building in what's about to come.

So uh in John 14, 6, we see this.

This is the name for our youth ministry, the one-way students.

This is where it comes from.

And it says, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the Father but through me.

And it's that but through me moment that's about to happen for him.

And as he's going into that, he leaves the Last Supper with the disciples, which, by the way, for the fourth time he's explained what's going to happen, and then he gives them a face-to-face visual of the bread and the cup, and he's sharing with them what's going to happen.

And they're still sort of not really understanding what's going to happen.

And so Jesus retires to this place in Gethsemane.

It's an important place in Scripture for us to understand.

Let's pray, Father.

I ask that you would open our hearts to this moment, this heavy, deep, weighty moment in the walk that Jesus took to the cross.

And God, I pray that you would help us to feel those feelings and understand how it impacts our life.

And God, I pray that your spirit this morning would walk with us through this, Lord.

I pray for every person here, Lord, that Lord, that they would hear exactly the words that you want for them.

And God, open our hearts to be receptive to what and how we need to respond.

We love you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So the first point this morning is this there was silence in the solitude at Gethsemane.

There is, I think, a good solitude and a bad solitude, right?

Some of you hear the word solitude and you go, I that sounds right for me.

Some of y'all with children.

And uh, some of you are like, that sounds like a good book and a date with me.

Solitude doesn't sound so bad.

Um, so maybe the word better here might be isolation.

Um, when you hear that word, we hear sort of like aloneness.

And here's something interesting about Jesus, about our God.

God is self-sufficient, meaning he doesn't need anything, has no required needs to be met that anyone can do for him.

He is in and of himself sufficient, yet he created us for community with himself and others.

God didn't need us, but he's decided not to be alone.

Heather uh takes a trip usually in the summertime to Texas to go see family and spend some time out there.

And I've got a week ahead of me that's alone.

And when she goes, I start to make my plans of all the things I'm going to accomplish and the task I'm gonna get done, and you know how I'm gonna plan the next 12 sermons, and and I and I make this list, and after about three days of coming home to the empty house and having a conversation like, how was your day, Rick?

Well, you were there.

Uh I get pretty bored of that, and and I can't stand that aloneness.

Now, listen, I'll go read and I'll go to the gym.

But I love people, and I want to be around people, and I don't like that loneliness.

But I want you to understand in this moment of silence, Jesus feels the weight of loneliness.

It says in John 14, 6 that he was the way, not a way.

He was the only way.

And so letter A is this this morning: the way to the cross is paved in solitude.

I want you to understand this.

In aloneness, it could only be this one way for a solution.

1 Peter 2 24 says, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we having died to sins might live by whose stripes you were healed.

The way was through the cross.

And the way that we'll be talking through this series is through the cross.

And isn't it interesting to you that for decades people have taken this symbol and we celebrate this symbol of the cross?

We take the cross and we put it on a necklace.

We take the cross and we tattoo it on our arms.

We take the cross, which is a device meant for human torture.

Right?

I've yet to meet one person with a necklace with an electric chair hanging off of it.

I haven't met them.

So there has to be something about this cross.

Jesus' act on the cross has paved the way for the greatest celebration in history.

Paul said this about the cross.

He said, I will boast in one thing: the cross alone.

That's my only boast.

In Acts 4 12, it says this that there's no salvation under any other name but the name of Jesus and what he did on the cross.

And so we get from this act on the cross a foundational principle for our Christian doctrine.

If you say you're a Christian today, then you believe in soteriology.

That's a big word, right?

Soteriology is this, it's the study of salvation as affected by Jesus Christ in Christianity.

And so our we get doctrine from this cross.

And in our Christianity, we differ.

And so when you look at a Muslim and their belief system, they say that they believe in the scales.

The scales means I gotta live 51% good every day to one day make it to heaven.

I gotta, my good has to outweigh my bad to make it to heaven.

Oh my soul, we'd be in trouble.

And so the Buddhists have to follow the middle way to nirvana.

And in their belief system, you can be reincarnated, and when you're no longer reincarnated, then you make it to the highest level.

But one of the levels of reincarnation can be hell.

And many, many ways adhere to a works-based salvation.

And so we have to understand our soteriology.

What is salvation to us?

In fact, the criteria for a cult is this.

If you want to find out if somebody's involved in something a little weird, something, this is what you need to know.

What do they believe about Jesus?

Who he was, what he did, what do they believe about this book, and what do they believe about the means for salvation?

We believe that the cross was the only way of salvation.

So look at with me in Matthew chapter 26, and I want you to see from verse 36 down to 44 the text we're going to be staying in this morning.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

What it says here.

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to the disciples, sit here while I go and pray over there.

And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.

Don't miss these important words.

Then he said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.

Stay here and watch with me.

He went a little further, fellow on his face, he prayed.

He said, Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

Then he came to the disciples and he found them sleeping.

He said, Peter, could you not watch with me one hour?

Watch and pray lest you enter temptation.

The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak.

A second time he went away and he prayed.

He said, My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done.

And he came and found them again asleep.

So he left them and went away a third time, saying to them, He came to the disciples and said, Are you still sleeping and resting?

I want you to see this this morning.

Let it be, the way to the cross is paved without support.

He said, Pray here, and Jesus withdrew.

He said, Sit here and pray while I go.

But verse 40, 42, and 44, when he came back to find his disciples, they were sleeping.

Listen, I want you to understand that where Jesus was going, nobody could go as far as he was about to go.

And he took the eleven disciples.

And this is interesting because usually it was Jesus' pattern to go away in complete solitude without anyone up to the mountain alone for prayer.

Any other place in Scripture.

But here he tells the disciples, Come with me and pray with me.

And then he takes, he goes a little further and he leaves the eight, and he asks the closest three is what people say, or commentators say the inner three, Peter, James, and John.

Many believe that he felt a closer camaraderie with them, and he deviated from his typical praying, and he said, Come closer.

And he just went, they say, a stone's throw away from them.

But he said, Watch and pray.

Now feel the weight of the moment here.

These inner three, they've seen Jesus raise the dead, they've seen the miraculous that Jesus has done.

And in this moment of supreme trial, his friends slept.

They were weary and they slept.

Now, don't miss the markers of Jesus' humanity in this situation.

He wanted his friends' prayers.

And he felt disappointed that his friends weren't praying for him.

Now listen, CCW, you can't do everything, but when people are going through difficulty, let me tell you what you can do.

You can reach out and you can pray.

And when trials come, you can walk through it with somebody.

I have had life struggles.

Raise your hand if you've had life struggles.

Aren't you glad when you go through a life struggle that you got somebody that's got your back during your struggles?

That you got a friend, no matter how messed up or what you've done, they go, I'm your friend.

And they've got your back.

And so Jesus is going through this and it shows his disappointment, really shows his humanity.

And this is another sort of theological term, but I want you to hear it and understand it so we know our doctrine.

There's this term called kinosis, which is in Philippians 2, where Jesus, it says he emptied himself of his glory.

He emptied himself of his divinity.

And so when he emptied himself of that, he came to earth to follow the route of the cross.

Now, this here, Jesus had the power to flip the switch at any moment.

He had the power to do this.

But listen to this statement.

He could have, but he wouldn't.

Hear that.

He possessed what I'm saying, the ability within his nature, and he even said it to the disciples at one point.

He said, at any time, if I wanted to talk to my father and cast down a legion of angels, I could.

But this is the will of God.

And he said, I could, he could, but he wouldn't.

It was in his nature and submission to the Father's will that he prohibited himself.

And I think sometimes we look at Jesus and his death to the cross as if a superhero went to the cross.

A superhero goes to the cross and he takes all of this, and it's not that big a deal because they're a superhero.

He's Jesus.

But I need you to know he felt all of the emotion of humanity, the way that you and I feel, because he decided to empty himself of that divinity and the physicality he felt.

And the stressors is what we see here in the garden.

Jesus is stressed about the situation.

And that's point number two this morning.

I want us to look at the significance of the stress of the situation.

So the significance of the stress.

I know this, church, and maybe you can amen to this.

Stress is real.

Depression is real.

Mental health struggles are real.

Anxiety is real.

And what I know about all of those things, the stresses and the innate stuff that goes on cause real physical things.

Your blood pressure goes up, and all that stuff happens, and you become physically in pain.

And so we have stress.

In fact, this is what I want you to do.

I want you to look at your neighbor and I want you to say, breathe.

If they breathe, then I want you to know this.

They're a person with stress.

If they didn't breathe, well, their stress just ended.

We've got a mental health picture.

I want you guys to put that up here on the screen for me this morning, and it shares some statistics.

And I want you to understand that stress is a reality.

And the numbers, they've continued to trend in the wrong direction since the pandemic.

Okay?

Talk about depressing.

Anybody here at just be real admit, were you depressed through pandemic?

I mean, listen, we weren't, I found out right then and there we were not made for solitude.

Okay?

We were two weeks in and we were just getting baddied with the kids and all of it, and Heather's like, we gotta do something.

And so she's like, let's make some peanut butter pies.

Heather made 50 peanut butter pies so we could go to church members and just have a drive and just go see.

We didn't see people, but we saw their house.

And we're like, that's where they dwell.

That's where our people are.

And we went with gloves and all of it and put stuff down at front porches.

Some of you probably got a pie from us.

And it was like, we're out in humanity.

We couldn't maybe even see one.

One day, about a month in, our friends came by.

Jason and Renee came by driving, and they were at the edge of the driveway, and we stood 15 feet away, and we spoke to them for 45 minutes, and it was the best time we had had up to that point.

It was so stressful.

I tell you what, I will wear a spacesuit before I stay away from people again.

I'm not gonna do it.

It was so stressful.

And this is what I know Satan church seeks to bring mental warfare.

He wants to get in here and he whispers things in the quiet, in the tiredness, and the irritability of your life, and he just wants to get in and he's subtly attacks with little deceptions.

He'll help you to believe something about somebody that's not true or that you haven't taken to somebody, and he'll whisper things, and he'll get you agitated at the workplace, and he'll get you agitated, and he'll start speaking things, and and he'll tell you just to isolate from people, just get away from all them people, and and you'll start to have doubts.

And he says, get away from believers, and and and he'll tempt you to sleep in on your Bible time, and just what you really need is just sleep, and he'll get you thinking wrong.

And I know this church, mental stress is real, and I know this Jesus faced it.

Jesus rode to the cross.

Listen to me, hear me, was inundated with mental stress.

Look at verse 37 in Matthew 26 again.

Says, and he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.

That takes us to letter A under point two this morning.

This the way to the cross is paved in sin, sorrow.

Jesus had to carry the weight of sin, sorrow, and the weight of sin is heavy, church.

Um I was working for the moving company way back, um, we went to this particular customer's house, and people have their things that they love more than anything else.

Well, this particular customer said, My gun safe.

All our Alabamians are like, Yeah, yeah, my gun safe is my baby, is what he said.

He's like, I don't care about nothing else.

Like his wife's in the background, I don't care about nothing else.

But the gun safe is important.

We're like, okay, okay, got it.

And we had like a special piece of equipment, and he talked about this gun safe a couple of times through the day.

And finally, last thing we're gonna do is this gun safe.

And we got this real heavy piece of equipment.

I don't know how to explain it to you, but the the dolly that picks this thing up itself weighs almost a hundred pounds.

So we get it all tied in, and we're gonna go through the backyard, and I'm going up the steps in the backyard, which are stone steps, and it's on me, right?

It's on me.

And as I'm going up the stone steps, the stone steps break.

The edge of the step, I get it up and it breaks, and I fall, and the gun safe then falls on me, and the equipment has dug into my shin, and I'm there in pain, and the customers, he's like, My safe! And I'm like, I'm me about to die.

The safe had this teeny little scratch, and I'm about to die, and the weight of that thing, and it took them, it took my crew, it took everybody to get it off me.

And this guy was irate about his scratch.

I'm like, I almost died, bro.

It was heavy.

I thought about the gravity of the punishment of sin.

And Romans 6 23 says, the wages of sin is death.

In Genesis 3, we had a perfect utopia, a garden of perfectness, and and we chose in that moment to sin, and a perfect place took on the weight of sin sorrow, and it became disease.

The garden became a cancerous place, and and in this moment, death became a reality.

And at this moment in Gethsemane, Jesus is feeling the weight.

There's a picture of Ralphie.

I want you all to see Ralphie.

You know this movie.

Uh, this this movie strikes me, this this part of the movie, the Christmas story.

There's a moment where Ralphie gets into the fight with the big bully, right?

Y'all remember this?

And some people laugh over this.

But this moment kind of strikes me different.

At the end of his fight, where he's worn out this kid, he gets up in his mom's there, and Ralphie bursts into tears.

And I think about that.

Any of y'all that have ever been in the agitation or aggravation of a fight, maybe you didn't really want to, he's in that moment and he starts to cry, and his mom's saying, It's okay.

But what I notice in that picture is this that the weight of the situation got to his heart, and he burst into tears because of the weight.

And Paul said, This church in Hebrews 12, lay aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset us.

It's like chains and shackles in this race of life.

And Jesus was grieved because of sin.

Sin separated you and me from a holy God.

That separation was weighty, and Jesus would later shout from the cross in a moment of the fullness of that weight, and he would say, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And so Jesus didn't desire that separation, but Jesus left heaven and left God's presence.

But I know this as you watch.

His life on the way to the cross, even though he left the glory of heaven, he stayed in constant communion with the Father.

But there was an upcoming moment where there was going to be no communion.

There was going to be a separation.

And sin's loftiest payment, church, is that God cannot be touched by sin.

And so the sorrow of sin is this great gulf, a divide that Jesus was coming to to pay for you and I's payment.

Well, it wasn't only sin sorrow, but letter be this morning.

There was the way to the cross is paved in soul sorrow.

Look at verse 38.

He said he's deeply distressed.

Now listen to these words, hear them.

Then he said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.

Stay here and watch with me.

He said, even to death.

David said in the Psalms, My soul has been sore vexed.

And I know this from studying scripture.

Depression is riddled throughout the Bible.

This kind of weight is riddled.

David cried over the loss of his sons.

Elijah went to the cave after the great victory with the prophets of Baal.

He ran because Jezebel sent him a nasty letter.

And he got up there and he said, It'd be better if I just died than go through this.

Jonah said, I'd rather be dead than reach the Ninevehes.

Job's wife said, Why don't you just curse God and die?

And Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet because he was all the time weeping because nobody was receiving the message.

And so I know, church, that you go through stresses.

And I know there's people in this room that have heaviness.

I want you to see this picture of the home stress scale.

If you guys have that picture up there, okay.

The home stress scale, it says this there's a ranking, and I'm not saying all of this is totally accurate, but it's a scale you can use.

And in this ranking system, number one is the death of a spouse.

Number two and three is divorce or separation in a marriage.

Number four is imprisonment.

Number five is death of others that are close to you.

Six is when you go through a personal injury.

Seven, how about this?

A good thing, a wedding is number seven on the stressor list.

Anybody planning a wedding, loss of a job, change of work, moving.

All these things are life stressors.

So I know that you go through stress.

And I know that there's people right now that you're dealing with some level of stress in your life.

And let me tread lightly as we hit this verse, verse 38, but I want to bring the reality of what I think Scripture says.

Jesus was at least feeling in the realm of suicidal.

Verse 38 says, to the point of death.

He's in despair, he's feeling the blues of the burden of sin and the reality of separation from his father, and overwhelmed in this moment.

It feels heavy, and he says, My soul hurts to the point of death.

And how do I how you say, Pastor, how else do I know and believe that's true?

Because in Hebrews it calls him a high priest, and it says, He was tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin.

He was tempted just like he in his full humanity, he felt the things that we feel without sin.

And so he felt it.

He was fully human, and his soul within him was vexed.

Now, church, I want to say something here.

That I believe, I believe suicidal thoughts are real.

And if you're feeling overwhelmed to that severity, I want you to hear from a pastor's heart that thought that comes from Satan is a permanent thought, and your problem is a temporary problem that I believe can be fixed.

And I believe in the hope that's in this word.

And so I know that maybe you're feeling in some type of despair, but what I want to say to you is I think and believe that it can be better, and so keep holding on.

And if you need to, please get help and don't be embarrassed that you need help.

If we went through this list, there's people on all levels of stress, and I want you to know it's okay to get help.

Jesus was going through this feeling, this grieving in the garden.

And in Luke, I want you to look.

Turn over to Luke.

Luke describes a moment here in Luke chapter 22.

Luke 22 · chapter mention

Luke is a doctor, so it's important to know your writers, your authors.

Well, Luke goes in and he describes a little bit of the differences in this moment.

Luke 22, look at 43, or look at verse 44.

So Jesus is there and he's just praying and grieving, and he's in this moment.

And verse 44, it says, listen to these words.

And being in agony, this is not light.

This is not some soul moment.

It's not a moment.

He's not on some part of a hill, a roller coaster.

It's agony, and it says he prayed even more.

He knew the right thing to do.

And then his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

This is an extremely rare condition called hematodrosis.

And in this moment, hematodrosis starts to happen because he's just groaning over the sin, groaning over the separation, groaning at the weight.

He is so stressed, the capillaries in his forehead burst.

Weeping, groaning, praying.

And I got to thinking, how did it get to that depth?

Because I thought about me and I thought, I don't know about you, but there are times for me when me is enough.

You ever get fed up with yourself?

Like, you know what I'm saying?

Like, me is enough to be dealing with my sin, my stuff, and I'll do something, I'll be like, how?

I can't even believe that I treated someone like that.

Was that even me?

And I'll get angry and prideful, and and I'll be like, what even happened?

That's not who I am.

And it's just enough work sometimes, church.

I don't know about you.

I know y'all are good.

You're good Christian folks, I know.

But for me, it's a lot of work just to deal with and keep me in check.

But hear this.

Jesus wasn't about to carry the weight of just the twelve.

He's not carrying just the weight of people who would become Christians, not just the weight of sin for those that were alive at the time, not just the 7.7 billion alive today, but the weight of a hundred billion humans in history.

And that sin, and that only one answer is on his back, and I can't even in words describe, but it's inexplicable weight.

Stressed, heavy.

And so that takes us to point number three this morning is this the singularity of the solution.

I love this time of year for some of the songs that we get to hear and get reminded.

The other day in my study, I was reminded of uh a great, great song that usually hear this time of year called In Christ Alone.

Look at your neighbor and say, Christ alone.

It says these words, My hope is found.

What heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled, when striving cease, my comforter, my all in all.

Here in the love of Christ I stand.

Now hear this part, because we're going to hit this for a moment.

Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God satisfied.

For every sin on him was laid.

Here in the death of Christ I live.

Letter A this morning, as you're looking there, the way to the cross is pictured by a cup.

Verse 39 says this.

He went a little further and fell on his face and he prayed, and he said, Oh, my father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

This cup.

There's a story told about a very poor woman that a pastor came to visit, got to her door, and she said, I know who you are, and I know that you know that I'm a very poor, and I sit in the back of your church, and she said, Well, come on in, you probably won't come in.

But he looked at her and said, Ma'am, I would like to come in.

And he said, I'm due for supper soon, but I'll stay a moment.

And as he walked through the door, the house was just full of filth.

Sink was full of unclean dishes.

And he looked over, there was an old piece of bacon sitting on the side of the counter that was molded.

And she went over and pulled out from her dishes a slimy old dirty cup.

She went over to some tea that had been probably brewed a few days before, and she began to pour it into the slimy cup.

And she looked at him and said, Do you take milk, Pastor?

And he said, Yes, I do.

And she said, Well, I don't have enough money, I don't have any milk.

And she said, How about sugar?

And before he could answer, she said, I don't have any sugar either.

I'm poor and I don't have it.

And with her dirty fingernails, she grabbed the cup and she passed it over to him.

And he looked at that rotten cup for a moment.

And he hesitated because he smelled the smell.

And she looked at him and she said, Drink it.

She said, drink it.

I want you to understand, church, that in this moment, Jesus said, if there's some other way, and God said, You have to drink it.

He said, You have to drink it.

I want you to turn your Bibles to Isaiah 53 for a moment.

This is what was prophesied, what would happen.

I want you to see these words.

Isaiah 53, starting in verse 5, it says, But he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

Verse 6, all we have like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Verse 7, he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.

He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and a sheep before its shears is silent.

So he opened not his mouth.

And I want you to go down to verse 10 and 11.

I always have heard those scriptures right there, but verse 10 and 11, I was looking at it this week and I've not heard it in connection as often.

And it says, yet it pleased, listen to this, it pleased.

I struggle with this.

It pleased the Lord to bruise him.

He has put him to grief.

When you make his soul, we're talking about the stress of his soul, his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

And so God's wrath in this cup, it was the will of God that there be a sacrifice that be crushed.

And look at the words it shared.

These aren't pretty words.

It says despised, rejected, grief, carried in sorrow, stricken, smitten by God, pierced and crushed.

Yet it was God's will.

Out of the anguish of his soul, God's wrath would be satisfied.

And this is what I know.

Since punishment is death, but the punishment has to fit the crime, and the crime was great.

God's wrath needed to be satisfied.

And I need you to understand this about God's wrath, because a lot of people will argue about our maniacal, bloodthirsty God, and I want you to understand something.

This isn't so.

We have a holy, righteous, just judge.

He's not evil, but just.

Let me try to explain.

My dad worked in bus ministry, and I got drugged into bus ministry for a lot of years.

And uh one particular Sunday, a boy in bus ministry that rode the bus took my pencil that I won in kids' church.

And he took my pencil and he looked at me and he went, snap, and broke my pencil.

The inhumanity.

I turned around and I punched him in his face.

And on the ride home, my dad said, Rick, you can't just go around punching the bus kids in the face.

And I said, Dad, he broke my pencil.

As if to say, This is justice.

Break somebody's pencil.

Evil.

Since the Garden of Eden, God has watched every single person sin.

And God hates sin.

Sin violates his law and it separates us from him.

And so he has a big full cup of wrath towards it.

Not you.

His wrath against that cup is white hot.

But I want you to understand, CCW, on the other side of that wrath, Scripture says he is slow to anger and wrath.

On the other side of that cup is a scarlet thread of mercy and grace.

Now I have stood before a judge.

Why?

That's none of your business.

But I stood before a judge.

And all I wanted in that moment was mercy.

Right?

This boy needed justice by getting punched in his face for breaking my pencil.

But when I'm in trouble, oh, but I deserve mercy.

All that we can look at in justice is skewed by ourselves.

All we can say is, when I do wrong, I need mercy because I really ain't that bad a person.

I don't normally do things like that.

And when somebody does us wrong, we say, all we need is justice.

And so I thank God that justice and mercy is not about me, but about his measurement of what it is.

And so he says this yes, where sin abounds, that's heavy.

But grace did much more abound.

The way to the cross.

So we don't have to stay in it.

It takes us to letter B this morning.

The way to the cross is prepared only, only, only church in Christ.

Verse 39, it says he went a little farther and fell on his face and he prayed, saying, Father, if it's possible, let it pass.

Not my will, but yours be done.

He came back, 42.

Now there's a slight difference in what he says in verse 39.

He says, If this cup can pass, verse 42, again a second time he went and prayed, and saying, Oh my father, if this cup, listen, cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done.

He goes a third time and he offers himself up.

They didn't come and pull him away because they had some strong guard.

Jesus walked into the hands of the betrayers, walking his way to the cross.

But in this moment, verse 3942, it says, He fell on his face and he says before God, and I it just wrestles in my mind how this conversation goes because of the humanity of God and him leaving God's divinity and all of who he is in this moment.

And he says, Oh my God, can it pass?

Is there another means?

And he's sweating, and great drops of blood are coming from his face, and he says, Abba, it's so much to bear.

Can we rid sin some other way than I drink this cup?

And I believe he desperately wants us to be saved, and he says, But is there another cup?

Church, when your children hurt, parents, I mean, tell me, is there ever a time where you have not prayed and said, God, I'll take it, just let me have it?

Am I right?

My kids get a cough, my kids get sick, if they've had to go to the hospital and say, God, I'll take it.

I don't want them to deal with this.

I don't want them to be in pain.

Oh, God.

And I believe Jesus wanted to save them.

But his stress for the hundred billion humans of the sin and the separation was so great, he began for the first time to question God's will.

Everything he told the disciples up to this point was, I will go and I'm about my father's business.

And he gets to this point and he says, This is your will, but if if there's some other version, if there's some other way.

I want you to look at Luke 22, what happens?

What a beautiful moment.

Jesus with the sweat drops of blood, everything falling to the ground in verse 43.

Look at what it says in verse 43, then, or 42, 43, then an angel appeared to him from heaven, strengthening him.

Look at the love and the relationship of the Father and Son.

The Father sees Jesus in this moment, and he sends him an angel from heaven.

I wish we were privy to what this conversation or moment was like, but an angel comes from heaven to strengthen Jesus.

Listen, CCW.

You cannot go through your heaviest burdens alone.

Let me say it again.

You cannot go through your heaviest burdens alone.

You're not created for isolation.

That is why we even need church, the body.

Galatians 6 2 says, bear ye one another's burdens.

All of this can come and go.

We can worship, I can preach, I can preach a good sermon, bad sermon.

But you know what you can't replicate?

Somebody else bear burdening with you and walking through trials of life with you.

That can't happen anywhere but within the body of Christ.

And so that's what we're about.

And Jesus is here in this moment, and the Father sensed his burden and sent him something to lift that burden and help him.

This is why Jesus felt disappointed with the disciples.

Even perfect Jesus wanted burning bearing.

And so I wish I wish I knew what the conversation was like with the angel.

And this isn't scripture, so don't leave saying that the pastor said this is the conversation.

But in my mind, maybe the conversation sounded like this.

Jesus the Father says to tell you, He loves you.

He knows that you can do it.

And nothing in history could bring him glory like the moment that's going to happen soon.

And maybe the angel pointed, you saw the map from Gethsemane, about a hundred to two hundred yards down was the temple.

Maybe he pointed to the temple and reminded Jesus, there in that temple, you know what there is?

There's a curtain, a veil in the middle of the temple.

And when you get on that cross, you know what that curtain does?

It separates people from Abba.

All these people are separated because of this.

And when you get on that cross, let me tell you, when you drink this cup, you're gonna obliterate the curtain that separates people from your daddy, and they'll be able to get to your daddy.

And I know you badly want them to get there.

And Jesus said, Whoo, angel, now you're preaching.

And Jesus' biggest fight, let me tell you, church, it wasn't just about the torture instrument.

In Gethsemane, he faced the cup of wrath.

And he said this important line.

Father, not my will.

Church, do you struggle with this?

Come on.

Father, not my will.

Oh, I don't feel like going.

Father, not my will.

Father, I don't feel like being nice.

Oh, not my will.

Father, I am stressed.

And I deserve to be angry.

Not my will.

And he opened his mouth, church, and he said, I'll drink.

All of their cup.

All of it.

So how do we make this practical and wrap up?

This is what I know.

Jesus was going through real mental anguish.

He was depressed.

Church, the weight of sin is depressing.

Hear me, please.

If you've fallen away from his presence, if you've fallen away in some manner, I want you to hear me today.

You can release it.

You can be done with it today.

And Jesus bore it for you.

There's all kinds of stressor, but God's plan is not for you to live in that stress.

And we get so worried and we get so fearsome and we get so in that place.

And God says, I'm not giving you a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.

And he says, I don't want you to be that way.

Why?

Because your enemy is like a roaring lion.

And before that, he says, So be sober-minded, be vigilant.

He said, Cast down every evil thought that exalts itself against me.

Throw it away.

Jesus spends all of Matthew 6 saying, I've clothed the flowers, I've given raiment to the fields, my eye is on the sparrow.

So don't be living in stress.

Philippians 4 6 says, Don't be anxious for anything, but with everything in prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God.

With the background that his son paid for it all.

You don't have to live in it.

You don't have to stay there.

I want you to bow your heads this morning, close your eyes.