Matthew 26:36-46 A sermon preached By Rev. Todd Bordow
A garden is a place of beauty and peace. Throughout the Bible, gardens represent the wonderful communion and harmony between God and man. In the beginning, the Lord created a garden as the place for fellowship for him and his image bearers. When our father Adam fell, man was kicked out of the garden, thus cast out of fellowship with God.
The Old Testament anticipates the restoration of fellowship between God and man by using the symbol of a restored Garden of Eden. Ezekiel 36:35 says; And they will say, ``This land that was desolate has become like the Garden of Eden.’ The Book of Revelation describes the new heavens and earth as a paradise garden where God and man live in perfect communion.
Between the Garden of Eden and the garden of paradise stands another decisive garden; the Garden of Gethsemane. To restore the damage caused by Adam in the first garden, and to bring man to the garden of paradise, the Son of God needed to endure the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane.
Gethsemane is the garden of testing for our Second Adam, Jesus Christ. As Adam was tested in Eden, Jesus is tested in Gethsemane. Christ will be tested more severely than Adam ever was.
As the Lord Jesus approaches the garden, hours away from his arrest, the apprehension of his imminent sufferings begin to overwhelm him. We can never fully grasp the agony Christ experienced in Gethsemane, but each of the four gospels adds to the picture.
In John, the Lord says, Now my soul is troubled. Luke writes that Jesus was in agony. Mark reports that in the garden, Jesus began to be greatly distressed and troubled. Matthew notes that the Lord began to be sorrowful and troubled, and then records Christ’s own words, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.
In Gethsemane the Father granted the Son a clear apprehension of what lay before him on the cross. As he began to feel the weight of what would soon transpire, he commanded eight of the disciples to remain near the entrance of the garden. He then took three of his closest disciples deeper into the garden for support while he prayed to his Father alone.
As he walks deeper with the three, Christ’s emotions rise to the surface. His closest friends would see fear and sadness on his face like never before.
The Lord asked the three to watch with him, which we should understand as asking them to pray for him in this, his neediest hour. Then Jesus moves further into the trees alone, falls to the ground, and unleashes the full force of his fears to God in prayer.
We see from Christ’s prayer that it was not the apprehension of his physical sufferings that caused him such anguish. Many martyrs have faced torture and death bravely, and even calmly.
What distressed our Lord to the point of death was the apprehension of the cup he was about to receive. In the Old Testament, God’s anger against sin was described as a cup of wrath he would pour out on sinners at Judgment Day.
If you take sin lightly, behold our Lord’s horror as he contemplates falling under God’s judgment. How bitter must the wrath of God against sin be if even the apprehension of it caused our Lord to faint with fear?
Jesus, who in his divine nature had enjoyed full fellowship with his Father throughout eternity, agonized over the prospect of the Father turning away from him on the cross. He who only knew the Father’s love must now experience his justice. Jesus would soon undergo hell for his people, and the apprehension of hell caused him to shudder in aguish.
Here in the garden would be Christ’s greatest test. Not only would the Father grant him a sense of what he would soon undertake, and thus Jesus would be tempted to shrink back, but Satan would now be allowed to direct the full force of his temptations against Jesus.
Would not Satan again offer Christ the whole world if he gave up his quest to die for his people? Would he not tempt Christ with his weakness; you will not be able to bear up when the storm clouds of God’s anger engulfs you; even now you can barely stand considering the prospect of it?
Satan would have tempted Jesus to abandon the cross considering the sinfulness of the world. The people of this world have done nothing but oppose you. They will soon dress you up and ridicule you; they will parade you through the streets of Jerusalem and laugh at you as you hang on a cross. They are not worthy of you; let them remain with me where they belong.
But the fiercest temptation would come after Jesus stopped praying to check on his three disciples. He walked back and found the three disciples asleep.
Imagine in your most desperate hour, when you asked your best friend to stay awake and help you; that he fell asleep not long after asking. The disciples did not have enough concern for Jesus to stay awake and pray for him. The Lord expresses his hurt to them; you cannot even watch with me one hour?
How easy for Satan to say to our Lord, “why should you endure such suffering for those who are so ungrateful? Why should you receive the wrath of God for those who claim do not have enough concern for you to stay awake one hour?” To make matters worse, three times Jesus finds them asleep, even after expressing his urgent need for their support.
We can barely comprehend the hellish agony our Lord experienced alone in this garden. If he shrinks back from his mission and gives into his fears or Satan’s temptations, we are all lost, and have only the most dreadful future awaiting us.
But our Savior prevailed. Though he cries out, Father, if there is any way for me not to drink this cup, may it be so; though he expresses his complete horror at what his Father had sent him to do, he resigns himself to the will of God; not my will, but thine be done.
The Second Adam uttered the words our first Adam should have uttered. Though the temptation of the serpent was enticing, Adam should have said to God, not my will, but thy will be done.
Our second Adam passed the test and arose victorious. He passively submitted to trusting his Father, and he resisted Satan to the point of death. When Jesus utters, thy will by done, nothing would stop the Son from saving you.
Our weakness and lack of devotion, represented in the three sleeping disciples, did not stop Christ from loving us unto death. Though he was deeply hurt by the disciples, he loved them so much that he even stops twice praying for himself to check on them.
And after rebuking them for their selfishness, he speaks to them compassionately; watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation, for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. He excuses the ingratitude of Peter and the disciples.
Because they possessed renewed hearts, the Lord commends the good desires in them. I know you desire to be more faithful, but the flesh is weak. The "flesh" here does not refer to the physical body as much as simply man this side of heaven, man still not fully sanctified.
So as Satan was tempting Jesus to give up on us, Christ affirms his love for us; a love that motivated him to continue the path of suffering.
You also see Christ’s victory in the calmness in which he speaks at the end of his prayers. The hour is now at hand, the son of Man will now be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going.
Do you see the contrast from the entrance into the garden to the exit? He entered in turmoil, he exits in calm resignation. He entered in distress and fear; he exits in bold confidence. As an answer to his prayers the Father granted Jesus a peace which surpasses understanding.
You are invited into Gethsemane that you may behold the price of your salvation; that you may see your Savior agonize over the wages of your sin would pay if would did not die for you.
You are invited in to see the excellencies of your Saviors’ love for you, for he was thinking of you, Christian, as he withstood the fierce temptations of Satan. He longed for your salvation more than he cared for his own well-being.
You are invited into Gethsemane that you may see the only one worthy to represent you before God. See his perfections in the midst of the fiercest trials. You only stand before God because of your Savior’s perfections.
You are invited into Gethsemane that you may learn an important lesson about yourself. Once Satan realized he could not tempt the perfect one, he devoted his attention to tempting you. As Jesus was experiencing the onslaught of the enemy, he thought of your weakness in withstanding Satan’s temptations.
The Lord warned you from Gethsemane not to trust in your strength or wisdom to remain faithful to God. Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. To enter into temptation is to succumb to it; it is to deny the Lord out of fear, or embarrassment, or selfishness.
If the holy Son of God needed to pray to withstand the fiery darts of the evil one, do you think you can stand apart from prayer? Your prayers will be answered because Jesus your representative withstood the test in Gethsemane; he won the battle and brought you to God.
Satan will tempt you to give up serving God; to give up on God’s people because of their weaknesses. He will tempt you to lie and cheat to get what you want. He will tempt you with sexual immorality. He will tempt you to fear people instead of God. He will tempt you with the love of money.
How will you withstand his temptations? You may be willing, but you are weak. The answer; watch and pray; trust in the Lord and come to him regularly for strength.
You are invited into Gethsemane so you may not take sin lightly. Jesus saw the horror of sin’s consequences and cried out in fear. If anyone does not flee to Jesus Christ for salvation, he will experience the awful wrath of God that made our Lord shudder.
You are invited into Gethsemane so that you would see how much God hates sin; that you would not simply ignore the sin in your life, but you would confess it and ask God for help in not continuing in it.
You are invited into Gethsemane to help you when you are tempted to grumble and complain. When people treat you poorly, when you think life has treated you unfairly, come and behold the agony the holy Son underwent for you; the righteous for the unrighteous. How can you complain; how can you pay back evil for evil, when Jesus paid back your evil with good; even with his own life?
The Bible begins in a garden and ends in a garden. In between the two gardens is Gethsemane. At Gethsemane the Covenant Mediator restored fellowship between you and God. Where Adam failed, Christ prevailed. Because Christ prevailed in that garden; your place is secure in that heavenly garden, the garden the Bible describes as place with no more testing, no more curse, no more death, and no more tears. Amen
The Old Testament anticipates the restoration of fellowship between God and man by using the symbol of a restored Garden of Eden. Ezekiel 36:35 says; And they will say, ``This land that was desolate has become like the Garden of Eden.’ The Book of Revelation describes the new heavens and earth as a paradise garden where God and man live in perfect communion.
Between the Garden of Eden and the garden of paradise stands another decisive garden; the Garden of Gethsemane. To restore the damage caused by Adam in the first garden, and to bring man to the garden of paradise, the Son of God needed to endure the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane.
Gethsemane is the garden of testing for our Second Adam, Jesus Christ. As Adam was tested in Eden, Jesus is tested in Gethsemane. Christ will be tested more severely than Adam ever was.
As the Lord Jesus approaches the garden, hours away from his arrest, the apprehension of his imminent sufferings begin to overwhelm him. We can never fully grasp the agony Christ experienced in Gethsemane, but each of the four gospels adds to the picture.
In John, the Lord says, Now my soul is troubled. Luke writes that Jesus was in agony. Mark reports that in the garden, Jesus began to be greatly distressed and troubled. Matthew notes that the Lord began to be sorrowful and troubled, and then records Christ’s own words, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.
In Gethsemane the Father granted the Son a clear apprehension of what lay before him on the cross. As he began to feel the weight of what would soon transpire, he commanded eight of the disciples to remain near the entrance of the garden. He then took three of his closest disciples deeper into the garden for support while he prayed to his Father alone.
As he walks deeper with the three, Christ’s emotions rise to the surface. His closest friends would see fear and sadness on his face like never before.
The Lord asked the three to watch with him, which we should understand as asking them to pray for him in this, his neediest hour. Then Jesus moves further into the trees alone, falls to the ground, and unleashes the full force of his fears to God in prayer.
We see from Christ’s prayer that it was not the apprehension of his physical sufferings that caused him such anguish. Many martyrs have faced torture and death bravely, and even calmly.
What distressed our Lord to the point of death was the apprehension of the cup he was about to receive. In the Old Testament, God’s anger against sin was described as a cup of wrath he would pour out on sinners at Judgment Day.
If you take sin lightly, behold our Lord’s horror as he contemplates falling under God’s judgment. How bitter must the wrath of God against sin be if even the apprehension of it caused our Lord to faint with fear?
Jesus, who in his divine nature had enjoyed full fellowship with his Father throughout eternity, agonized over the prospect of the Father turning away from him on the cross. He who only knew the Father’s love must now experience his justice. Jesus would soon undergo hell for his people, and the apprehension of hell caused him to shudder in aguish.
Here in the garden would be Christ’s greatest test. Not only would the Father grant him a sense of what he would soon undertake, and thus Jesus would be tempted to shrink back, but Satan would now be allowed to direct the full force of his temptations against Jesus.
Would not Satan again offer Christ the whole world if he gave up his quest to die for his people? Would he not tempt Christ with his weakness; you will not be able to bear up when the storm clouds of God’s anger engulfs you; even now you can barely stand considering the prospect of it?
Satan would have tempted Jesus to abandon the cross considering the sinfulness of the world. The people of this world have done nothing but oppose you. They will soon dress you up and ridicule you; they will parade you through the streets of Jerusalem and laugh at you as you hang on a cross. They are not worthy of you; let them remain with me where they belong.
But the fiercest temptation would come after Jesus stopped praying to check on his three disciples. He walked back and found the three disciples asleep.
Imagine in your most desperate hour, when you asked your best friend to stay awake and help you; that he fell asleep not long after asking. The disciples did not have enough concern for Jesus to stay awake and pray for him. The Lord expresses his hurt to them; you cannot even watch with me one hour?
How easy for Satan to say to our Lord, “why should you endure such suffering for those who are so ungrateful? Why should you receive the wrath of God for those who claim do not have enough concern for you to stay awake one hour?” To make matters worse, three times Jesus finds them asleep, even after expressing his urgent need for their support.
We can barely comprehend the hellish agony our Lord experienced alone in this garden. If he shrinks back from his mission and gives into his fears or Satan’s temptations, we are all lost, and have only the most dreadful future awaiting us.
But our Savior prevailed. Though he cries out, Father, if there is any way for me not to drink this cup, may it be so; though he expresses his complete horror at what his Father had sent him to do, he resigns himself to the will of God; not my will, but thine be done.
The Second Adam uttered the words our first Adam should have uttered. Though the temptation of the serpent was enticing, Adam should have said to God, not my will, but thy will be done.
Our second Adam passed the test and arose victorious. He passively submitted to trusting his Father, and he resisted Satan to the point of death. When Jesus utters, thy will by done, nothing would stop the Son from saving you.
Our weakness and lack of devotion, represented in the three sleeping disciples, did not stop Christ from loving us unto death. Though he was deeply hurt by the disciples, he loved them so much that he even stops twice praying for himself to check on them.
And after rebuking them for their selfishness, he speaks to them compassionately; watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation, for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. He excuses the ingratitude of Peter and the disciples.
Because they possessed renewed hearts, the Lord commends the good desires in them. I know you desire to be more faithful, but the flesh is weak. The "flesh" here does not refer to the physical body as much as simply man this side of heaven, man still not fully sanctified.
So as Satan was tempting Jesus to give up on us, Christ affirms his love for us; a love that motivated him to continue the path of suffering.
You also see Christ’s victory in the calmness in which he speaks at the end of his prayers. The hour is now at hand, the son of Man will now be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going.
Do you see the contrast from the entrance into the garden to the exit? He entered in turmoil, he exits in calm resignation. He entered in distress and fear; he exits in bold confidence. As an answer to his prayers the Father granted Jesus a peace which surpasses understanding.
You are invited into Gethsemane that you may behold the price of your salvation; that you may see your Savior agonize over the wages of your sin would pay if would did not die for you.
You are invited in to see the excellencies of your Saviors’ love for you, for he was thinking of you, Christian, as he withstood the fierce temptations of Satan. He longed for your salvation more than he cared for his own well-being.
You are invited into Gethsemane that you may see the only one worthy to represent you before God. See his perfections in the midst of the fiercest trials. You only stand before God because of your Savior’s perfections.
You are invited into Gethsemane that you may learn an important lesson about yourself. Once Satan realized he could not tempt the perfect one, he devoted his attention to tempting you. As Jesus was experiencing the onslaught of the enemy, he thought of your weakness in withstanding Satan’s temptations.
The Lord warned you from Gethsemane not to trust in your strength or wisdom to remain faithful to God. Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. To enter into temptation is to succumb to it; it is to deny the Lord out of fear, or embarrassment, or selfishness.
If the holy Son of God needed to pray to withstand the fiery darts of the evil one, do you think you can stand apart from prayer? Your prayers will be answered because Jesus your representative withstood the test in Gethsemane; he won the battle and brought you to God.
Satan will tempt you to give up serving God; to give up on God’s people because of their weaknesses. He will tempt you to lie and cheat to get what you want. He will tempt you with sexual immorality. He will tempt you to fear people instead of God. He will tempt you with the love of money.
How will you withstand his temptations? You may be willing, but you are weak. The answer; watch and pray; trust in the Lord and come to him regularly for strength.
You are invited into Gethsemane so you may not take sin lightly. Jesus saw the horror of sin’s consequences and cried out in fear. If anyone does not flee to Jesus Christ for salvation, he will experience the awful wrath of God that made our Lord shudder.
You are invited into Gethsemane so that you would see how much God hates sin; that you would not simply ignore the sin in your life, but you would confess it and ask God for help in not continuing in it.
You are invited into Gethsemane to help you when you are tempted to grumble and complain. When people treat you poorly, when you think life has treated you unfairly, come and behold the agony the holy Son underwent for you; the righteous for the unrighteous. How can you complain; how can you pay back evil for evil, when Jesus paid back your evil with good; even with his own life?
The Bible begins in a garden and ends in a garden. In between the two gardens is Gethsemane. At Gethsemane the Covenant Mediator restored fellowship between you and God. Where Adam failed, Christ prevailed. Because Christ prevailed in that garden; your place is secure in that heavenly garden, the garden the Bible describes as place with no more testing, no more curse, no more death, and no more tears. Amen
posted by River Oaks Presbyterian at 2:05 PM
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