Have you ever been pushed beyond your breaking point?
Some of you are the kind of people, I'm tempted to say crazy
people, who train for and run marathons.
You start by running 6 miles, 8 miles, 10 miles.
You get up to 12/15/16. Somehow you have this big giant
leap on the day of the race where then you run 26.2 and
whether in the training or in the race itself, you are
constantly pushing through barriers you thought you
couldn't make it through, whether physical, mental,
emotional. You hit a breaking point and
somehow you keep going. That's very admirable.
It's not for me. My idea of running is a very
occasional 5K. That's plenty more of us, more
of the time get pushed past our breaking point.
Not by something you try to do, but by something that happens to
you. Something you didn't want,
something you didn't ask for, something you didn't choose, and
something you would gladly unchoose if you could live long
enough. And it is only a matter of time
before you encounter a trial that pushes you past your
breaking point. What used to get you out of bed
in the morning does not do it anymore.
What used to motivate or encourage you no longer seems to
help. You're coming apart of the
seams. Emotionally, physically, maybe
spiritually, The trial is beyond your strength to endure.
You're being crushed under its weight.
When you get pushed past your breaking point, what do you do?
What can you do? This morning we continue our
series in the Gospel of Mark with Chapter 14, verses 32 to
42. If you don't have a Bible, you
can feel free to raise your hand and someone will bring you one.
And if you don't have a Bible at home, you can read.
Feel free to take that home and read it.
It's a gift from us. Our passage tells us about the
last night of Jesus's earthly life.
In the passage just before this one, which we studied last week,
Jesus confidently predicted his death, and his disciples equally
confidently predicted their undying loyalty to him.
But in our passage, Jesus gets pushed to and beyond his
breaking point, and both his resolve and his disciples
resolve seem to crumble. But there's an absolutely
crucial difference between how Jesus responds to the trial
ordained for him and how his disciples respond to the trial
ordained for them. What is that difference?
Please follow along as I read Mark 1432 to 42.
And they went to a place called Gethsemane.
And he said to his disciples, Sit here while I pray.
And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be
greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, My soul is
very sorrowful, even to death, Remain here and watch.
And going a little farther he fell on the ground, and prayed
that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.
And he said, 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 to Peter, Simon, are you asleep?
Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not
enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak. And 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 taking your rest?
It is enough. The hour has come.
The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.
The first 3 verses of our passage set the scene in the
garden. They show us that Jesus is
greatly disturbed and troubled, and he's going to retreat to
pray. That's verses 32 to 34.
Then there are three cycles of Jesus retreating to pray and
then returning to his disciples. The first one is told in the
most detailed. That's verses 35 to 39.
The other two cycles are told much more briefly.
What's going on here? What Jesus faced in the Garden
of Gethsemane was his greatest trial yet.
It pushed him past his breaking point.
And yet he passed the test. How?
Here's the point of our passage in one sentence.
Submissive prayer is how Jesus passed his greatest test for you
and how you can pass your greatest tests for him.
I'll say that again. Submissive prayer is how Jesus
passed his greatest test for you and how you can pass your
greatest tests for him. In our passage, both Jesus and
his three closest disciples are being tested.
For both Jesus and his disciples, this is a preview of
a still greater test to come. He passes, they fail.
How did Jesus pass his greatest test for you, and how can you
pass your greatest tests for him?
We'll walk through the passage in five parts to answer that
question .1 the test, the test. We see the nature of the test
and its impact on Jesus in verses 32 to 34.
Look again at verse 32. And they went to a place called
Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, sit here while I
pray. This is just after the Last
Supper, same night Jesus and his 11 remaining disciples are on
the Mount of Olives and they go to a garden or an olive Grove
called Gethsemane. John 18 two tells us that Jesus
often went here with his disciples.
Presumably he went there regularly so that he could pray
privately, just as he's going to do now.
And so Jesus leaves the bulk of his disciples behind and retreat
some distance to pray in private.
Verse 33 And He took with him Peter and James and John, and
began to be greatly distressed and troubled.
So we learn more detail. He left 8 disciples further off
and brought the remaining three with him.
Why these three? One reason is that He
deliberately formed them into kind of an inner circle.
He granted these three even deeper, more privileged
revelation of Himself at a couple of times in the Gospel.
It was these three disciples who saw Jesus's glory revealed on
the Mount of Transfiguration. It was these three disciples,
plus Andrew, whom Jesus taught about the destruction of the
temple and his own second coming throughout chapter 13.
So He is going to give them yet one more intimate revelation of
His glory as He allows them to overhear His private prayer to
the Father in His darkest hour yet.
But there's another reason He brings along these three.
There's something these 3 disciples have in common.
Just a few verses ago Peter proclaimed, Even though they all
fall away, I will not. And he said, if I must die with
you, I will not deny you. 4 chapters ago, at the end of
chapter 10, Jesus asked James and John, are you able to drink
the cup that I drink or to be baptized with the baptism with
which I am baptized? And they said to him, we are
able. Peter, James and John are
confident in their ability to suffer with and for Jesus.
They are confident they can handle whatever trials Jesus
lays on them. So Jesus takes them aside to
show them what faithfulness to the cross is going to cost him
and what faithfulness to the cross is going to cost them.
As Matthew Henry puts it, it is fit that they who are most
confident should be first tried, that they may be made sensible
of their folly and weakness. Peter, James, and John singled
themselves out by their confidence.
So Jesus singled them out for testing.
The end of verse 33 tells us that Jesus began to be greatly
distressed and troubled. This is strong language.
Jesus is disturbed, alarmed, astonished, frightened.
He is not emotionally composed. He is not stoically confident
and detached. He's troubled in the very depths
of his heart and soul. In the beginning of verse 34,
Jesus himself tells the three disciples how he's feeling.
My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.
The Greek wording of that phrase, My soul is very
sorrowful, closely matches Psalm 42, five, which Carissa read to
us a little bit ago. Why are you cast down?
Oh, my soul, Jesus soul is cast down.
He has been pushed to and beyond his emotional breaking point.
The question is why? What is it that pushed Jesus
beyond his breaking point? He has confidently predicted his
coming death throughout the Gospel.
Just a little while ago at the Last Supper, he predicted his
death again. He knows Judas is in the process
of betraying him. He knows that's the divine plan.
He's been resolutely marching toward it ever since he set his
face to go to Jerusalem. So what's changed?
Why does he hit a breaking point now?
I think the reason becomes clear in verse 36 when he asks the
Father, remove this cup from me. The cup is God's wrath.
The cup is the judgement of God against all the sins of His
people. The cup is not merely death, but
suffering the wrath of God against sin.
Here, in His agony in the Garden, Jesus begins to have an
anticipation of what the cross is going to feel like.
He begins to sense, to feel, to experience just how horrific his
sacrificial death is going to be.
He begins to feel the weight of what the sin laid on his
shoulders is going to do to him. And it undoes him.
It crushes him. Jesus is distressed not by
anything that has happened, but by what he knows is going to
happen. The Scottish theologian Donald
McLeod to put this point beautifully.
He said what? When Moses saw the glory of God
on Mount Sinai, so terrifying was the sight that he trembled
with fear. But that was God in covenant,
God in grace. What Christ saw in Gethsemane
was God with the sword raised. The wonder of the love of Christ
for his people is not that for their sake he faced death
without fear, but that for their sake he faced it terrified.
Terrified by what he knew and terrified by what he did not
know, He took damnation lovingly.
And so with the weight of of that coming sin bearing
sacrifice beginning to grind him into the ground, Jesus begins to
withdraw, to pray. And he tells his disciples in
verse 34, remain here and watch. When he says watch, he means
that they're to remain spiritually alert through
prayer. They're to stay awake
physically, take that for granted, but they're also to
stay awake spiritually, to be watchful.
They're to watch out for their own souls and watch over their
own souls. In his hour of greatest need,
Jesus relies fundamentally on God.
That's why he retreats to pray, but he also enlists the help of
his closest followers. Matthew 2638 tells us Jesus said
remain here and watch with me. And verse 34 Jesus tells his
disciples my soul is very sorrowful.
Note the next phrase even to death.
Jesus is saying that his inward sorrow is severe enough to kill
him. The weight of grief he is under
could undo him, not just emotionally, but physically.
One other evidence of that we see in Luke's account, Luke
2244, reports that during his prayer, Jesus sweated out drops
of blood. Jesus is sad enough to die from
it. Have you ever been so sad that
you thought it might kill you? Or an experience right next door
to that. Have you ever been so
overwhelmed with grief that you would have preferred simply to
die rather than to bear whatever was crushing your soul?
I don't necessarily mean that you were suicidal, not wanting
to kill yourself, not intending to kill yourself.
Just that you were so sad that some part of you would have
preferred non existence to having to keep going through
what you were going through. Brother, sister, if you have
ever been that overwhelmed with sorrow, if you are that
overwhelmed with sorrow right now, come join your Savior in
the garden. See what he suffered, See what
he endured. See how he responded.
Jesus has been there, and he passed that test.
Here at his greatest test, Jesus proved faithful.
If you have been sad enough to die, or sad enough that you
wished you were dead, Jesus has suffered sorrow that great and
greater. Jesus has suffered darkness that
deep and deeper. No matter how far down the well
of sadness you find yourself, Jesus has been there and He's
been down deeper. He endured it all for you, and
He endured it all with perfect faithfulness, so that even when
the force of his sorrow threatened to RIP his soul from
his body, He entrusted himself perfectly to God.
Jesus has been there. He went there for you.
He suffered it all for you, and He emerged out the other side
into everlasting life. That's why we can confess that
we can draw near to Him, confident that He's been tempted
in every way as we are, yet without sin, and so He can give
us grace to help in time of need.
He's been through an even more extreme need, and He endured it
faithfully. Therefore, He can help you in
your most extreme need. Jesus knows your suffering
better than you know it yourself.
Jesus loves you more than you love yourself.
Your sorrowing soul is safe in His hands.
No matter how broken your life seems, it is never beyond
Jesus's ability to repair. Jesus can mend more than you
know. Kids in the congregation, what
are you afraid of? Jesus knows what it is to be
scared. Our passage teaches us that he
was terrified and he faced down the wrath of God, the most
terrifying reality in the universe, so that if you trust
in Him, you would have literally nothing to be afraid of.
Jesus was passed what was pushed clear past His breaking point.
Why? So that He can be all you need
when you are pushed past your breaking point.
Whenever God's Providence. Has pushed you clear past what
you can handle. Come to Jesus for help.
Verse 34 ends of the command watch while Jesus goes off and
prays. They have to remain spiritually
alert. Jesus has set an exam for his
disciples. He's given them a test.
Watch is a test for them, and the whole experience is a test
for him. Why does it take place in a
garden? Because Jesus is the second
Adam, the last Adam, the true and better Adam.
Adam failed to obey in a garden. Jesus passed the test of
obedience in this garden. Jesus succeeded where Adam
failed. Next question is how?
Point #2 The submission The submission.
We see Jesus submit to his Father in verses 35 and 36.
Look at verse 35. And going a little farther, He
fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the
hour might pass from him. Jesus retreats a short distance
away from the three disciples to pray.
Note his posture. He fell to the ground.
A normal ancient Jewish prayer posture was either standing with
raised hands or kneeling. Jesus instead falls flat on the
ground. The weight of the cross is
already beginning to crush him. He's so burdened he feels like
he's going to die. What can he do under such
weight? Only one thing.
Pray. That's all Jesus can do.
And when you're past your breaking point, all you can do
is pray. When it seems like there's
nothing you can do, prayer is the one thing you must do.
Jesus asks that if it is possible, the hour might pass
from him. Note that even in this request,
he's submissive. He says if possible, if it's
God's will, if there's any way in keeping with God's will, he
prays that he will not face down what he is facing down right now
by asking that the hour might pass from him.
He's asking if there is any way in which God the Father will
permit him to escape the cross. And then we get the request in
his own words, repeated in verse 36.
And he said, ABBA, Father, all things are possible for you.
Remove this cup from me, yet. Not what I will, but what you
will. Note that Jesus begins by
acknowledging God's infinite power.
All things are possible for him. So again, Jesus is not asserting
His will over God's. Instead, he's asking if there is
any other way for the plan of salvation to be fulfilled
besides his going to the cross. That's why he speaks of the cup.
This cup in the Old Testament cup can have happy connotations
of celebration, joy, blessing. It can describe the measure of
joy and prosperity that God assigns to a person.
But it also frequently refers to God's wrath poured out in
judgement, a cup that makes people stagger.
Jesus is about to raise this cup to his lips, and he can already
anticipate how infinitely bitter it is going to taste.
So he asks if there's any way for him not to have to drink it.
Note that Jesus isn't giving up on being his people's savior.
He's not trying to contradict God's plan of salvation.
He's not saying big mistake here, let's call the whole thing
off. Instead, he's asking if there's
any other way for the same end to be achieved by different
means. What's the answer?
No, there is no other way. That's what God's silence
throughout the passage is going to show.
That's what Jesus rising to meet his hour in verse 41 is going to
show. If sinners are ever going to be
saved, the only way is through the sin bearing self sacrifice
of the Son of God. God did not have to decide to
save any of us. God would have been perfectly
just to condemn every human being to an eternity of torment
as judgement in hell. God is perfectly righteous, and
as much as our hearts resisted, as much as our minds rejected,
the penalty for our sin is infinite.
The punishment for our sin is infinite.
What we deserve from God is only to be rejected by Him,
condemned, punished, separated. God was under no obligation to
save anyone, and yet from all eternity, He freely chose to.
He freely purposed to because He's infinite in mercy.
He's rich in mercy. Given that God freely decided to
save an innumerable company of people from every tribe, tongue
and nation, how could that take place?
Was it kind of like there's a range of options here and you
could sort of go for, you know, like you're buying a car.
There's kind of like the, you know, there's the deluxe option
with all the fanciest technology and seats that warm and
whatever. And there's the kind of like
bottom dollar option, you know, where the door still opens and
shuts manually like it used to when I was a kid?
Is there a range of options laid out here that God could have
just picked and choose from to save people?
What our passage is teaching is that only the Incarnate Son of
God bearing the weight of God's wrath on the cross as a
substitute for His people, as a sacrifice for his people, only
Him giving his life in place of ours, only Him suffering the
death we deserved, only Him suffering the wrath we deserved.
That's it. That's the only way to be saved.
That's the only way God himself could accomplish your salvation.
Jesus himself received that news as the silent answer to his
prayer. Only one way to be saved.
So if someone says to you, aren't all religions basically
the same? Aren't they all trying to go to
the same place in the end? Gethsemane says there's only one
way. There's only one way to be
saved. There's only one God like this.
There's only one fully accurate diagnosis of our problem, that
it's our sin incurring God's wrath.
That is the most fundamental issue we all need to deal with.
And who is a God like this? Even if you say you believe in
one God, OK, And maybe it's shared in common with these
other religions. Who is the God who himself comes
to earth to bear the weight of his people's sin?
Who is the God who ordains his own self substitution for the
purpose of self sacrifice, so that all who trust in him would
be saved free and clear forever? No other religion claims that.
No other religion offers that. Only Jesus praying in the garden
and submitting to his Father's will, not my will, but yours, be
done. Not only that, but only Jesus
bore the wrath, drained the cup, submitted to death, and then
emerged out of death out the other side three days later
victorious. No other religion gives you
that. Only Jesus rose from the dead in
the middle of history to prove the truth of all He said, to
prove the worth of his sacrifice and offer you eternal life if
you will turn from sin and trust in Him.
Because Jesus drained the cup of wrath for you, by faith, you can
drink the cup of rejoicing with Him forever.
Because Jesus submitted to death for you by faith, you can have
eternal life with Him forever. Because Jesus suffered hell for
you by faith, the joys of heaven can be yours forever.
In Gethsemane, Christ suffered God's abandonment in an
anticipation of what he'd suffer on the cross.
What he faced in that garden is what you'll never face if you
trust in Him, because He faced it for you.
Not how Jesus addresses God in prayer as ABBA Father.
ABBA is the Aramaic word for Father.
It's a respectful form of address, but it's also uniquely
intimate. It was not a typical way for 1st
century Jews to pray. It's not that nobody prayed like
that, but it was distinctive of Jesus to pray like this so
often. Not a normal way for Jews to
pray, but it is how all who trust in Christ get to pray by
offering himself force on the cross.
Jesus made his Father our Father in Romans 815.
In Galatians 46, Paul preserves these exact words of Jesus, ABBA
Father as the prayer. Every Christian gets to pray.
Every Christian has intimate access to God in prayer.
Every Christian has the guarantee that God will hear and
answer our prayers. Why?
Because of the obedient sacrifice of Christ.
Because Christ submitted himself to God the Father in prayer.
Look again at the end of verse 36.
Yet not what I will, but what you will, not my will, but yours
be done. Jesus is God the Son Incarnate.
He remains truly God even after becoming truly human.
He possesses both the divine nature and a human nature.
This means he has both a divine will and a human will.
The human will naturally desires life.
Life is our natural good, our most basic good.
It is the good without which you don't have any other goods.
Even if part of you is so sad you wish you were dead, it's
because you would actually find that preferable to what you're
going through right now. To be a human being is to desire
and seek and preserve your own life.
Unless there's something higher, deeper, better you're willing to
put even above life itself, it's natural to preserve your own
life. It's supernatural to be willing
to lay down your life for the sake of some higher, greater
good. That's essentially what's going
on in Jesus prayer. As a human being, he sinlessly
fears death. He sinlessly shrinks from the
prospect of suffering God's wrath as a human being.
He naturally sinlessly asks to be spared from death.
And yet he also obediently submits that desire to something
higher. He submits his desire to live to
his desire to please the Father and fulfil the divine plan of
salvation. He submits his desire to live to
his desire to obey the Father. He submits his desire to live to
his desire to save you. When he says not what I will,
but what you will, he's saying if this is the only way that he
can save you, he'll do it. And it is, and he did.
It's also important to note that while God denied Jesus's request
that the cup would pass from him, there is a sense in which
he answered Jesus prayer. He did return an answer.
Jesus request was denied so that you and I would be saved.
Because he was denied life. We received it.
There's the answer. And yet also Jesus prayer was
answered both with the implicit divine instruction that he must
and will endure the cross, and by the fact that God raised him
from the dead afterward. Because Jesus's request was
denied. Blessings than anything you
could ever ask for are stored up for you in heaven.
And the new creation, God's know, was for the sake of an
infinitely greater yes. So in prayer, when you pray, ask
God for what you know is good. Ask God for what your heart
desires. Ask Him for natural and
spiritual blessings. And then trust that whenever he
says no, it's for the sake of an infinitely greater yes.
Submit to Him. Declare your desires, then
submit your desires, make your requests, and then submit your
request to God's will. Entrust your burdens, your
wants, your desperate yearnings to Him, and then trust that your
deepest and truest desires will all one day be more than
satisfied in the new creation. What can you do when you're
pushed past your breaking point? Spiritually speaking, the one
thing you can do is the one thing Jesus did Submit to God in
prayer. When you submit to God in
prayer, you learn by experience to patiently accept whatever God
sends You. Learn to approve what God
ordains you. Learn to bear up under sorrow
because you know God is the one sending it.
You learn to stay afloat when all God's Breakers and waves
crash over you, because you know God is the one sending them.
You learn to sit still, to quiet your heart, to wait for God.
You learn to long for God more than you long for anything else
that God may or may not give you.
Whenever sorrow pushes you past your breaking point, pray until
you can say from the bottom of your heart, yet not what I will,
but what you will. That is how Jesus passed His
greatest test yet, and He did it all for you.
And that is how you can pass whatever tests the Lord ordains
for you. It's the only way.
Which is why when Jesus returns to his disciples, he gives them
.3 the warning, the warning, verses 37 and 38.
As I mentioned, our passage has three cycles of Jesus retreating
to pray and then returning to his disciples.
We've just seen the first retreat.
Here's the first return. Start with verse 37.
And he came and found them sleeping.
And he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep?
Could you not watch one hour? Jesus pauses his prayer and
returns to his disciples. Because he is motivated by care
for their souls. He comes to them with sharp
words, but all those sharp words are motivated by love.
Even in his hour of greatest weakness and need, Jesus is
going to show his disciples how they can get the spiritual
strength they so desperately need.
Simon begins by questioning Peter.
Simon, are you asleep? This is like God asking Adam in
the Garden of Eden. Adam, where are you?
God knows, but he wants Adam to answer for it.
Jesus knows and He wants Peter to answer for it.
He knows Peter has failed. Jesus question is not for the
sake of his own information. Jesus question is meant to
reveal Peter to Peter. So Jesus here rebukes Peter for
falling asleep, but he's also addressing the other two.
The imperatives Jesus going to issue in verse 38 are both in
the plural. He's talking to all three and so
he exhorts them. Watch and pray that you may not
enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak. That phrase at the end there
gives a reason for why the disciples need to watch and
pray. It's because they are a mess of
contradictions. Some spiritual part of them
wants to obey Jesus and be like Jesus and be present for Jesus
in his hour of greatest need. But another part of them is
weak, not just physically weak. Jesus is not just warning them
that if you eat a big dinner, you're going to be tired
afterward and drowsy. It goes much deeper.
He's he's Speaking of both physical and spiritual weakness.
And so often our physical weaknesses prey on and exploit
spiritual weakness, and vice versa.
We can't neatly separate the spiritual and physical in us.
Both aspects are weak. Both are prone to failure.
The better you know yourself, the better you will know your
own weakness. The better you know yourself,
the better you will understand just how little it takes to push
you past your breaking point. So what's the solution for a
willing spirit but weak flesh? Where can you get the strength
you need? Only from God and only in
prayer. Prayer is how human weakness.
Turns into divine strength. Prayer is how God pours his
omnipotence into your feeble flesh.
The only adequate solution for your weakness is God's strength,
and the only way to get that strength is through prayer.
So Jesus says, watch and pray that you may not enter into
temptation. What temptation?
Well, of course Jesus teaching is true in general.
This is one of the key dynamics of the Christian life.
Being watchful in prayer is how we refuse to let temptation suck
us in and take us captive. But Jesus also has something
specific in mind. In the last passage we studied
last week at the Last Supper, Jesus has just predicted his
death and their desertion. When he is put on trial and then
crucified, his disciples are going to flee from him in an
attempt to save their own hides. Jesus is going to suffer the end
time judgement in his own person.
When he does, it's as if the end time tribulation is going to
come looking for his disciples, hunting them down 1 by 1.
When Jesus undergoes his final Test, his disciples will be
tested like they've never been tested before, and they will
fail. But here in verse 38, Jesus is
teaching them ahead of time. This is how you can pass the
coming test. This is how you can endure the
coming trial. This is how you can escape from
the coming temptation. He's showing them the way to the
life raft. He's showing them the means by
which God is ready and willing and able to deliver them from
their temptation. But they have to make use of
those means. Prayer is how you enter the
lifeboat that delivers you from the shipwreck of temptation.
In the garden, Jesus prays and perseveres.
If the disciples do what Jesus did, they will have spiritual
strength to endure. But he prays and they sleep.
He endures, they fail and flee. Watch and pray that you may not
enter into temptation. One of the great effects of
prayer is that it changes you in the very moment.
If you're weak, pray until you get new strength.
If you're discouraged, pray until God shines some ray of
encouragement into your soul. Try praying through a Psalm.
You might find that the darkness a Psalm often begins with
resonates with where you're at right now.
Keep reading through the Psalm. Keep praying through the Psalm
until the hope that arises in the Psalm resonates with your
soul just as much. If you're doubting, pray until
God strengthens your faith. If you're overwhelmed with
sorrow, pray until God lifts at least some of the weight from
your soul and replaces it with a sense of His presence and His
peace. Watch and pray that you may not
enter into temptation if you are in a prosperous, relatively easy
season. You need to solidify habits of
private prayer now. You need to make private prayer
a load bearing part of your life now.
You need a solid structure of private prayer in place so that
you can keep at it when God unexpectedly adds some 20 ton
trial. Pray now.
You're going to need to pray later.
Why should you devote yourself to private prayer?
To confess your sin, to receive God's strength and place of your
weakness, to pour out your soul to your loving Heavenly Father
whose ear is always open to you, and to have communion with the
God who loves you and who is saving you.
The more spiritually mature you are, the more spending time with
God alone will be like spending time with a close friend.
Do you yearn to be with God through meditating on His word
and praying? Do you want to be with Him like
you want to be with an intimate friend who you don't get to see
enough? Ellen Lakshmi Gora was born in
India in 1853. After her mother died when she
was an infant, she was adopted by English missionaries.
She was raised in England, and when she was an adult, she
returned to India as a Christian missionary.
She wrote many poems that got used later as hymns.
One of them is a poem about communion with God, which she
titled My Refuge. It's become known as a hymn with
the title In the Secret of His Presence.
Sandra McCracken recorded a beautiful version of it 20 years
ago that holds up well. Here's the first verse in
Mccracken's version in the Secret of His Presence.
How my soul delights to hide. Oh, how precious are the lessons
which I learned at Jesus side. Earthly cares forever vex me
while my trials lay me low. But when Satan comes to tempt me
to that secret place I go. How can you endure when God
pushes you past your breaking point?
Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.
Go to the secret place with your savior.
Stay there, wait there. Jesus prayed 3 times.
You can manage that too. Keep praying even when it seems
like God isn't listening .4 The silence, the silence.
That's what we see in verses 39 to 40.
These two final points will be brief because Mark's narrative
moves much more quickly after. As I've mentioned, the first 3
verses set the scene. We have these three cycles of
Jesus retreating and returning. Here's the second one.
Mark goes much more quickly here.
And in this second cycle of retreat and return, the dominant
note is silence, verses 39 and 40.
And 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.
In terms of what Jesus did. All we know is that he prayed
the same thing, made the same request.
He apparently received no immediate answer the first time,
so he tried again. Prayer #2 Still no answer in the
face of the desperate request of God the Son.
Heaven remains silent. And then Jesus returns to the
disciples and finds them sleeping again.
They're failure #2 and note that they're also silent.
They did not know what to answer Him.
They have no good reason for their failure.
No excuse to offer. This is precisely what Jesus
warned him against back at the end of chapter 13 when he's
talking about his personal return.
Verses 35 and 36 Jesus says therefore stay awake, for you do
not know when the master of the house will come in the evening
or at midnight, or when the rooster crows are in the
morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.
Jesus is teaching that He himself will return personally
at a time none of us know, so we as Christians need to stay awake
at all times. The only way to do that is
through persistent prayer. Jesus return to his disciples in
the garden is a preview of his final return.
He found them asleep. Will he find you asleep?
If he does, there will be no excuse.
You can offer him in that hour. If you're not a believer in
Jesus, what reasons would you give for not believing in Him?
Are you confident those are really reasons, or are they more
like excuses? When you start to realize the
poverty of your excuses, you're a huge step closer to receiving
the riches of Christ. So the disciples failed Jesus
again. What should you do when you fail
Jesus? Repent.
Confess your sins. Receive his forgiveness again.
Trust in the fullness of his sacrifice in prayer.
Seek from Him the strength He supplies for renewed obedience
in prayer. Seek a fresh resolve to obey Him
no matter what it costs you. Which brings us to the last two
verses. Our final points .5.
The resolve. The resolve.
In verses 41 to 42, we see that as a result of His submissive
prayer, Jesus rises to meet his fate with perfect renewed
resolve. Look at those two verses 41 and
42. And he came the third time and
said to them, Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?
It is enough. The hour has come.
The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.
Notice that this implies a third cycle of retreating to pray and
return, but Mark doesn't explicitly mention the prayer.
Jesus prays again, but they're not.
There's no answer. Or rather, Jesus knows the
answer. The answer is that the cross is
the only way to save his people. The answer is that he must drink
the cup. His circumstances haven't
changed. His path ahead hasn't changed.
But he has. He now rises from prayer,
resolved to meet his fate and fulfill his mission, as Calvin
put it. By these words, he declares that
after having prayed, he was furnished with new strength.
When Jesus says it is enough, he's saying that the time
allotted for the disciples test is over.
Time's up. Pencils down.
Pass your blue books to the front.
Whatever is in that packet is what you will be graded on.
What grade will the disciples get A zero?
An F? They failed to pray and so they
failed Jesus, which also means they're going to fail the test.
It's coming, but not Jesus. Jesus sees his betrayer coming
and rises to meet him. Jesus sees his betrayer coming
and tells the disciples to get up with him.
I'm going, you come with me. Jesus is resolved.
Note that in verse 35 Jesus asks that the hour pass from him, and
here in verse 41 he says the hour has come.
The hour came and the man came who could meet the hour?
The only man who could meet the hour came, and part of what
enabled him to meet the hour was that prayer he just prayed.
Jesus didn't receive from God the answer he sought, but he did
receive the strength he needed. Jesus will now endure being
handed over to death. He will be delivered into the
hands of sinners, and he will become sin for us.
He will become a curse for us. He will take God's judgement on
himself and exhaust it. Jesus prayed until he was
resolved to submit to all that God ordained for him.
So you pray until you're resolved to submit to all that
God ordains for you more often than any of us would like.
What God ordains is that you be pushed beyond your limits.
God knows where your breaking point is.
He knows that better than you do.
And in his mysterious sovereign wisdom, he decides where and
when and how to push you over that line.
He knows what it'll take to break you, and in His wisdom
there are times when He ordains that you be broken.
But the breaking you have to endure is very different from
the breaking that Christ endured on the cross in the garden.
And on the cross, Christ was broken by divine wrath.
It was the weight of divine judgement that threatened to
break his soul and that would break his body.
But what breaks you if you're in Christ?
It's only God's design to sanctify you.
It's only God's intent to conform you to the character of
Christ. It's only God's purpose to
prepare for you an eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison. What is God doing you doing when
He pushes you past your breaking point?
He's teaching you to submit to Him in prayer.
He's teaching you to be able to say from the bottom of your soul
what air my God ordains is right.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you
for your grace. We praise you for the wisdom of
your plan of salvation. We praise you for enabling your
Son to endure drinking the cup for us.
We pray in Jesus name, Amen.