Mark 14:32-42
Mark 14:32–42 (ESV):
32 And they went to a place called Gethsemane.
Gethsemane was the name of the garden just across a small ravine called the Kidron valley, on the bottom slope of the Mount of Olives.
It was an olive grove.
Interestingly, a ‘gethsemane’ was the name for an olive press. It was a circular stone basin where they would put the olives, and then they would roll another heavy circular stone around in circles to crush the olives and the pits to produce oil.
So the garden of Gethsemane was the place where olives were crushed.
And it is in the Garden of Gethsemane where the stage would be set for the Son of God to be crushed.
Jesus chose to be crushed for you.
Isaiah 53:5 (ESV): 5 …he was crushed for our iniquities…
There was nothing obligating Jesus to be crushed on our behalf other than His love for us and His obedience to the Father’s will.
This is reflected in his prayer here in the garden. It’s reflected in His peaceable arrest. It’s reflected in His refusal to plead His case when interrogated. And it is reflected ultimately in allowing Himself to be mocked, beaten, unjustly mistreated, and eventually strung up on that cross.
All of this was driven by His love for you.
For the joy set before Him He endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2).
How does that make you feel? To know that your Savior endured the worst possible crushing for you? What does that do for your sense of self worth? What does that do for your sense of purpose? What does that do for your gratitude, your humility, your contentment, your sense of security?
Here they are in the garden. The garden of crushing.
Just a stone’s throw away from the temple mount. A temple where sacrifices have been made for hundreds of years. A temple that represents the presence of God on earth. A temple that was intended to foreshadow a coming Messiah who would deliver God’s people.
He is on the slope where just days prior He would have ridden down into Jerusalem triumphantly, as people cried out, “Hosanna!” and heralded Him as their deliverer.
He is just a short walk away from that secret upper room where He shared the Passover meal with his disciples. A meal that was traditionally celebrating God’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, but that Jesus redefined to be about His own sacrificial death.
This is the setting for the garden of crushing.
And He knows that in a matter of hours, it would all converge on a nearby hill, where He would be crucified as a criminal to pay for sins He never committed.
And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”
What do we turn to in our moment of crushing? Maybe for some of us, we turn to substances. Or food. Or to sexual exploits. Or to other comfort activities, or other forms of escape. For Jesus, it was prayer. In a moment we’re going to look at the prayer Jesus prayed during the darkest night of His soul.
He also reached out to His friends.
33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled.
This was His inner circle.
We’ve seen Jesus spend exclusive time with these three.
Mount of transfiguration
When He raised Jairus’ daughter
And now here in His most desperate moment.
34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.”
That’s His request. Simple: just be here with me. That’s what hurting people need most, isn’t it? Not for us to fix their problems… just for us to be there with them.
Luke 22:44 records that Jesus was so overcome with grief that His sweat was falling to the ground “like drops of blood”.
It’s possible that Luke meant to convey a simile, and that Jesus was just sweating so profusely that His sweat was pouring out the way you’d expect blood to pour out of a wound.
There is a medical condition called hematidrosis in which, under extreme anguish, people’s blood vessels around their sweat glands can rupture, resulting in sweating blood.
Either way, the point is the same: Jesus was under such anguish… He was so crushed by the weight of what God the Father was requiring of Him, that it was nearly unbearable.
Why is Jesus so distraught over His death?
It seems the only logical answer is because he knew that He wasn’t just going to die; He was going to absorb the wrath of God towards all of humanity’s sin––past, present and future.
It’s terrifying enough to think of answering to God for our own sins… but think of how horrific it would be to answer to God for everyone else’s sins! The knowledge of that impending reality is what crushed down on Jesus here. This knowledge was so terrible that it nearly killed Jesus right here in the garden. (‘my soul is very sorrowful even unto death’ vs. 34)
The Bible says the wages of sin is death.
Ever since humanity fell into sin, wrath has been stored up against us. And in order for that wrath to be turned away from us, it had to be poured out on another. On a Substitute.
In the Old Testament, animals were sacrificed as placeholders… but they would never be adequate.
Ultimately, there is only one who could be the perfect substitute for all of us. Only one who could die in our place and bear our punishment.
In Mark 10:45 it says Jesus came “to give his life as a ransom for many”.
1 John 4:10 (ESV): 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 2:2 (ESV): 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
Romans 5:8–9 (ESV): 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
Isaiah 53:4–6 (ESV): 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
1 Peter 3:18 (ESV): 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,
Jesus came to take the full force of God’s wrath for us. And my point is, the knowledge of the fact that this was about to happen was nearly unbearable for Him in the garden.
So what does He do? He prays.
What we see next is truly remarkable. By God’s grace, He has given us a window into the content of Jesus’ prayer.
Have you ever wondered how to pray in moments of crushing agony? Moments of fear?
How ‘bout in moments when you know what you should do, but the prospect of actually doing it feels terrifying?
Look no further than Jesus’ own prayer.
35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 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.”
Let’s consider each phrase here carefully.
35 And going a little farther,
It’s good to have friends with you in moments of pain and fear. But there comes a point when we must get before God alone.
Luke 5:16 Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed
There is simply no substitute for solitude with God. Jesus modeled it. We need it.
…he fell on the ground
God is not so much looking at the posture of our bodies in prayer as He is the posture of our hearts… nevertheless, there are times when it is completely appropriate to fall on the ground before the Lord.
…and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.
Jesus prays here with brutal honesty. He cries out to the Father with a lament.
We don’t need to dress up our prayers. God can handle our honest heart cry.
36 And he said, “Abba, Father,
In Jesus’ moment of distress He declared His closeness with God.
It says in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6 that we as believers are given the spirit that cries out to God as our “Abba”... a term of intimacy that a child would use to address their daddy.
Nothing in Jewish literature suggests that rabbis would ever presume that level of intimacy with God. This is a new development with Jesus, and it’s a blessing He gives us as His followers. God is no longer distant from us. He’s close and intimate.
all things are possible for you.
When we pray, we need to acknowledge God’s sovereignty. God is not challenged by our challenges. God is not limited by our limitations. God does not break a sweat trying to figure things out or bring things to pass. He effortlessly reigns from on high. And He can do anything.
Jesus acknowledges this.
And then comes the request:
Remove this cup from me.
Throughout scripture, the “cup” is a metaphor of the wrath and judgment of God.
Psalm 75:8 (ESV): 8 For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.
Isaiah 51:17 (ESV): 17 Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.
Jeremiah 25:15–16 (ESV): 15 Thus the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 16 They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them.”
So in this case, what’s Jesus asking?
“If there’s any other way… If there’s any way to accomplish your mission, Father, without having to drink the cup of your wrath…”
It’s not wrong to pray for a way out of suffering. It’s not sinful to ask our heavenly Father for a way out of our pain, our fear, our difficulty. Jesus did it.
We can ask God for anything. He welcomes it.
But in the end, we must follow it with this attitude:
Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
At the end of the day, Jesus’ will to obey the Father was the strongest governing force in His life. It eclipsed His will of self-preservation, His will for comfort, His will to avoid suffering. When push came to shove, He was willing to lose it all if necessary in order to be in God’s will. And He did.
This is where all desperate prayer must land. There must be resignation to God’s will. Surrender. God knows best. Even when we can’t see around the corner, and we have no idea why He’s leading us through pain or hardship, we can trust that “all things work together for good for those who love Him”.
Hard as it may be sometimes, we can trust God with outcomes.
Also notice this:
Jesus had to deal with the crushing weight of our sin in theory before He dealt with it in reality.
He had to resolve there in the Garden of crushing that He would submit to God’s will before He would follow through with the actual crushing on the cross.
What about us? Have we resolved in the quiet place to surrender completely to God’s will for our lives, come what may? If we haven’t pre-decided to surrender to Jesus in all things, it’s not likely that we actually will.
37 And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? 38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
He’s not talking about the Holy Spirit. He’s talking about our spirit… our inner self. He’s saying, ‘look, you will want to do what’s right, but your flesh will hold you back’.
This paradigm still holds true in our lives today.
We desire to glorify God with our lives.
But there is another desire working against us: the desire of our flesh.
Paul describes this inner battle in Romans 7, “the things I want to do I can’t seem to do; the things I don’t want to do I keep on doing… Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
In this case, the disciples wanted to stay awake and alert in Jesus’ time of greatest need… but their desire for sleep was too great. Their eyelids were just too heavy.
39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him.
That’s kind of funny, isn’t it? Have you ever tried to answer a question the moment you wake up?
41 And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?
Repetition in the Bible is used for emphasis. What is being emphasized here? Three times they’ve proven something about disciples of Jesus… and it’s true for all of us… we fail Him.
It’s a little ironic that just in the last chapter Jesus was telling them they needed to stay awake and alert for His second coming… and now Here, they can’t even literally stay awake while He goes off a few feet away from them to pray.
When we see failing disciples, what does it remind us? It reminds us why Jesus came in the first place. To save sinners. To save failures. To save those of us who fall asleep on the job.
It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”
There is obviously a lot we could take away from this. Plenty of application for how to pray, how to submit to the will of God in all things… All of that is important.
But the point of all of this is not just that Jesus modeled obedience for us. The point is not just that Jesus set an example for us to follow.
Jesus didn’t just come to show us how to live; He came to live and die in our place.
We don’t trust in our ability to obey God’s will… we trust in the fact that Jesus already obeyed God’s will perfectly on our behalf.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we got into this mess of sin and death because one man (the first man) failed to submit to God’s will in a garden.
And God provided a way out of this mess by sending His own son to perfectly submit to His will in a garden.
It just further reminds us that Jesus came as the second Adam.
He came to right the wrongs of our first representative and to be for us the perfect representative.
In the first garden, after Adam fell into sin, God promised that there would come a deliverer who would crush Satan.
Here in the second Garden the snake crusher has arrived. And he undoes all
“The Bible is the story of two gardens: Eden and Gethsemane. In the first, Adam took a fall. In the second, Jesus took a stand. In the first, God sought Adam. In the second, Jesus sought God. In Eden, Adam hid from God. In Gethsemane, Jesus emerged from the tomb. In Eden, Satan led Adam to a tree that led to his death. From Gethsemane, Jesus went to a tree that led to our life.”
-Max Lucado
The ultimate question becomes not, ‘are you submitting to God’s will’, but rather, ‘are you trusting in the One who did’?