The Lord’s Day Morning
September 4, 2011
“While They Were Sleeping”
Luke 22:39-26
The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III
If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 22 as we
continue our way through this gospel together.
We are, this morning, on holy ground as we come upon the Lord Jesus in
the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke,
simply says, that we are on the Mount of Olives.
The other gospels tell us that it’s not only on the Mount of Olives but
in the Garden. The other gospels
give us details that Luke does not give us because he compacts the narrative and
focuses us in on specific things, and at the same time, Luke tells us some
things here that the other gospel writers do not tell us.
Luke alone, for instance, tells us of the angel sent from God to strength
the Lord Jesus in the Garden, and in this way, wants to focus us on the titanic
heart struggle that is going on in our Savior in that Garden.
The other gospels tell us that as Jesus and the disciples got to the
Garden, that eight of the disciples stayed out at the entrance and sort of
served as centuries to protect Jesus and His inner circle and that His three
closest disciples went in with Him and then He drew away just a little bit from
them. The other gospels tell us that
Jesus prayed three times and interacted with His disciples on those occasions,
and Luke focuses in on some specific things, again, compacting that narrative so
that we will learn some great lessons from it.
Now I need to say one other thing about this passage.
It’s also very clear that Luke – and you see this because Luke begins the
passage by Jesus exhorting His disciples to do what?
Stay awake and pray. And He
ends the passage, having noted the disciples had not stayed awake and prayed,
with another exhortation to stay awake and pray, and immediately after exhorting
them to stay awake and pray, He depicts Jesus doing what?
Staying awake and praying. So
it’s very clear that one of the things that Luke wants us to get out of this
passage is a very important principle for the Christian life — to always stay
awake and pray. Now in so doing he
shows us an example of the Lord Jesus Christ doing that.
It’s important for us to remember that in the nineteenth century it was popular,
especially amongst liberal theologians, to summarize the Gospel as “Be like
Jesus” or “Do what Jesus does.” And
that, of course, is not the Gospel.
And Bible-believing, evangelical preachers have, for a hundred years, been
responding to that particular presentation of the Gospel, “Be like Jesus. Do
what Jesus does,” with a response that that’s not the Gospel, and if that is the
Gospel we’re all in trouble because we’re not like Jesus and we don’t do what
Jesus did. And you know what?
There are some things that Jesus did that we can’t do and couldn’t do.
But I’ve noticed in the last ten years, in the midst of that helpful
corrective against a gospel which is no Gospel, that many have decided that
there is to be no example drawn from what Jesus has done in the Bible.
And of course that’s unbiblical in and of itself.
For instance, the passage that Josh read for us from Hebrews chapter 12
clearly calls upon believers to look at Jesus and draw encouragement from His
example.
The same thing is happening in this passage.
They key is this — Jesus is never a mere example.
There are some things that Jesus does that we cannot do, and praise God
that we cannot do them, because the Gospel is not, “Do this and Jesus will save
you,” it is “Jesus has done this to save you.
Jesus has borne in His own body on the tree the weight and punishment of
your sin. You could not have borne
that. You could not have done that.
He has done it for you.” And
the Gospel is not, “You do,” it’s, “You have been done for.”
At the same time, we in the Christian life are called to do things, and
one of the most important things we’re called to do is pray.
And Jesus so kindly gives us an example of that in this passage, and of
course we’re to follow that example, of course we’re to be encouraged by it.
But He is not merely an example to follow.
He is a Savior who has, by His blood, taken our punishment on Himself
that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
So bear that in mind as we read this passage.
The passage is about Jesus and about what He has done that we could not
do, but it also has for us in it an exhortation, an exhortation to pray and
watch. So bear that in mind as we
read God’s Word. Let’s pray before
we read it.
Heavenly Father, as we go into the Garden, into this holy place, we feel like
Moses before the burning bush. We
hear the angels say, “Take off your shoes, for the place where on you are
standing is holy ground.” Lord,
speak to us of deep and true and important things here.
Make us to stand in hushed silence and stupefaction in the face of the
agonies of our Savior, but teach us things even from this that will do us good
in the testings and the troubles of this life and will bring you glory.
We ask it in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
If you’d look with me at Luke 22 beginning in verse 39, this is the Word of God:
“And He came out and
went, as was His custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed Him.
And when He came to the place, He said to them, ‘Pray that you may not
enter into temptation.’ And He
withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying,
‘Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me.
Nevertheless, not My will, but yours, be done.’
And there appeared to Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him.
And being in agony He prayed more earnestly; and His sweat became like
great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
And when He rose from prayer, He came to His disciples and found them
sleeping for sorrow, and He said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping?
Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.’”
Amen, and thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.
Jesus has left the Upper Room in Jerusalem and walked with His disciples about
fifteen minutes to the Mount of Olives.
He had been doing, we are told in the gospels, He had been doing this
each night during the week. You can
imagine — Jerusalem is packed, there’s no accommodation to be had for lodging
within the city within Passover week.
He and His disciples had been staying out on the Mount of Olives.
The language is used, “They had been lodging on the Mount of Olives.”
Now whether that meant that they were sleeping under the stars on the
hillside and that was their lodging or whether there was a place with a little
bit more comfort, I don’t know, but that’s where they had been staying.
And you need to take this in my friends.
Jesus knows that He is going to be betrayed.
He’s already told His disciples that He is going to be betrayed and He
knows where He is going to be betrayed and He knows that His betrayer knows that
He’s been going back to the Mount of Olives every night that week and where does
He go? He goes right back there.
There is a world of theology in that.
It’s not how we react when we’re scared.
If we’re scared we’re going to find trouble in one place we avoid that
place and we often do not pray.
Jesus does not avoid the place but He does pray.
And so they go to the Garden and Jesus enlists in a great contest, a contest of
heart, which He plays out in prayer with His Heavenly Father.
Luke tells us some rather striking things.
For one thing, Luke tells us that He knelt and prayed.
Now that does not surprise us because Christians have been kneeling for
prayer for two thousand years now, but that was not the common posture of prayer
for Jewish people in Jesus’ day. The
common posture of prayer for Jewish people in Jesus’ day was standing with your
eyes lifted up to heaven and your arms outstretched.
Have you ever wondered why preachers stand up and do that at certain
times of the service? That’s just
the common posture of prayer. You
can find Moses doing it; you can find the prophets doing it.
It’s a common posture of prayer.
In fact, there are some parts of the world today where that’s still the
common posture of prayer. Do you
know how you would get a congregation of Presbyterians to stand in Scotland,
even to this day? All you have to do
is say three words, “Let us pray,” and immediately those Presbyterians will be
off their feet and they’ll be standing as you pray.
And that’s all you have to do in a worship service in Scotland to get
them to stand up. “Let us pray,” and
up they go! And so when Luke tells
you that Jesus is kneeling in prayer he’s telling you something unusual.
This is an unusually strenuous prayer and exercise that Jesus is
undertaking.
THE EXHORTATION JESUS
And I want us to see several things from this passage today because it is a
passage that reminds us how utterly dependent we are on Jesus and on what He has
done for us and on what He does for us.
But I want to begin with an exhortation that He Himself gives twice in
this passage and many other times to His disciples and you’ll see that in verse
41. In verse 41, at the end of verse
40 and in verse 41, He exhorts His disciples to, “pray that they may not enter
into temptation,” and then He proceeds to pray.
And we see from this that Jesus is showing us here what we are to do in
times of trouble and testing. Now
let me say why I say that’s so very clear that Luke wants us to get.
Jesus, first of all, in verse 40 tells the disciples that He wants them
to, “pray that they may not enter into temptation,” and He means by that
especially the testing that they are about endure.
Isn’t it interesting that Jesus Himself is carrying the cares of the
world on His shoulders and He’s still thinking about His disciples’ wellbeing?
He knows that in the testing and the trouble and the trial that He is
going to undertake in the next few days, in the new few hours, that they too are
going to undergo a testing and a trial, and He knows that when the Sanhedrin’s
main opponent is out of the way, Him, Jesus, they’re still going to be coming
after His disciples. And He wants
them to be prepared for the tests, the trouble, the trial that they’re going to
go through, and so He exhorts them to pray.
And then He Himself gives them an example of it, that as He faces His great
test, He prays. And then when they
fail to do it, He exhorts them again at the end of the passage.
It’s clear that one thing that Luke wants us to get out of this whole
scene is how we as believers are to respond in time of trouble.
And of course there’s nothing original to that thought to this passage.
In both the Old Testament and the New, there is a regular pattern of
believers going to the Lord in prayer in times of trouble.
So for instance, in Psalm 50 verse 15, the Lord tells us, “Call upon Me
in time of trouble and I will deliver you.”
In Isaiah 48:13, “I am oppressed, O Lord; undertake for me.”
In James 5:13, James says, “Is any of you afflicted?
Let him pray.” This pattern
holds for the people of God. In
times of trouble, let us pray. And
yet so often when we are in deep trouble there are things that prevent us from
going to God in prayer.
I want to say to you that one of the few urgings that you should never ever
resist in life is the urge to pray.
There are many urges that need to be resisted but not that one.
You may be sure that when you are prompted to pray it is either of the
Holy Spirit’s doing that you have been prompted to pray or that He is pleased
with it that you have been prompted to pray.
And you ought never ever resist that urging, never ever resist that
prompting. But when you are
discouraged from praying by arguments in your head and your heart as to why you
ought not to pray, you may also assume that that discouragement comes from the
evil one who does not want you to pray in time of trouble. And here is Jesus
saying to His disciples, “In the face of your testing, in the face of the trial
to come, in the face of your trouble, in the face of the temptation, pray!
That’s how you are ready to meet it.”
And so we learn from this passage that in times of trouble the Lord would
have us pray and He shows it from His own example.
THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS
And not only does He exhort us to pray here, He even tells us how we ought to
pray. Jesus shows us how to pray,
what to pray, in times of trouble in this passage.
Look again with me to verse 32.
Notice that Jesus prays, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup
from Me.” Now I want to pause right
there and say Jesus had been appointed before the foundation of the world to
drink that cup. He knew what the
Father’s will for Him to do was, and yet He prays to the Father, “If it is
possible, remove this cup from Me.”
I want to say to you my friends, there is no hopeless petition that you cannot
bring to your Heavenly Father. If
God will hear that petition from His Son, there is no petition, however hopeless
you may think it is, that you cannot bring before your Heavenly Father.
But then, look at the next part of the prayer, “Nevertheless, not My will but
Your will be done.” Every prayer
that the believer offers in time of trouble or at any other time is to be in the
spirit of the desire that God’s will would be done.
Jesus has modeled for us how to pray.
Of course, He taught the disciples this months and months before when
they said, “Lord, we’re so struck by the way You pray.
You talk to God like You know Him.
Your prayers are filled with Scripture.
Tell us how we pray. Please,
teach us.” And Jesus, you remember,
as a part of that prayer said, “Pray, ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in
heaven.’” And here, Jesus practices
what He had preached. And He teaches
us that we are always to pray, “Your will be done.”
You know one of the things that may surprise you is that, very often in the
course of a quarter century of ministry, Brister Ware has been praying with
people in situations of trouble where there is someone who is sick, there is
someone who is dying, there is someone in a very difficult position, and he has
had people say, “I want you to pray that my husband will be healed.”
“I want you to pray that my wife will be healed.”
“I want you to pray that this will be changed or that will be done.”
And they will also say to him, “And do not pray, ‘Your will be done.’”
He’s literally been told, “Do not pray…” because it’s basically the
charge is, “That’s your escape hatch.
If you pray that, you don’t have enough faith.
I want to pray that God would do this.
We’re not going to pray any of this, “Your will be done” stuff.
Now let me just say publically, Brister will always pray, “Your will be
done” because his Savior told him to do that.
Okay? I just want you to know
that. It’s never inappropriate for a
believer to pray, “Your will be done,” and there is no force in this universe
who can tell a believer that he or she can’t pray, “Your will be done.”
That’s what our Savior taught!
That’s what our Savior did!
The key to understanding this whole passage, is what’s going on in the Garden,
is Jesus’ struggle to yield a willing sacrifice to God.
He was called to do God’s will and the very thought of what was going to
be cost to Him to do that terrified Him, but He wanted His sacrifice to be
willing. And so the very crux of
this passage is the prayer, “Your will be done.”
You know it is possible that there are unbelievers in our midst who think of
believers as simpletons who never ever struggle with doubt because we pray in
times of trouble and we look to God for help in times of trouble and you think
that we really don’t know anything about doubt.
You’re the one in your unbelief that understands the struggles of doubt.
But I want to say to you, believers know struggles with doubt so deep and
dark that you couldn’t even comprehend them, but we also know peace and
assurance that is more complex and more certain than you could possibly grasp,
and it has to do precisely with this petition that Jesus is lifting up, “Your
will be done.” So Jesus shows us how
to pray in times of trouble.
THE AGONY OF JESUS
But then, if you’ll look especially at verses 42 and 44, we come to the crux of
this whole passage. Jesus, in
praying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me,” and then if
you’ll look at verse 44, “And being in agony He prayed more earnestly; and His
sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
Jesus takes us here into the inner sanctum of His own agony.
And by the way, this is the only place in the New Testament of which we
find spoken the agony of Jesus. This
is it. He takes us into the inner
sanctum of that agony and He shows us what causes that agony.
And it is not merely the excruciating physical suffering that He is going
to face the next day. And how do we
know that? We know that because of
the language that He uses. He says,
“Father, take this cup from Me.”
Now the idea of a cup has definite content associated with it repeatedly in the
Old Testament. Let me just give you
three examples. In Psalm 11 verse 6,
the psalmist speaks of the fire and the sulfur and the scorching wind that is
poured out of the cup of the Lord’s judgment.
In Ezekiel 23:33, Ezekiel tells us of the horror and the desolation that
is stored up in the cup of God’s judgment.
In Isaiah 51:17, Isaiah speaks of the cup of God’s wrath which He will
pour out to the dregs. And Jesus,
here, understands that cup and its contents like no human being and no angel,
elect or fallen, understands. He
understands the contents of that cup and He understands that He is about to
drink it. And it leads Him, Luke
tells us, to agony, sheer agony; an agony that you cannot understand.
I want to pause right now and I want to say that because you’re so kind to open
your hearts and lives to me that some of you have found yourselves in situations
in life that are filled with agony.
And that’s real. And you feel alone
in those things and there is a real aloneness about many of those things – that
you’re alone in the world going through those places. Well I want you to
understand that Jesus is here in an agony that none of us in this room
understand, and He is alone in a way that none of us can understand.
He’s even alone in the sense that His inner circle of disciples — Peter,
James, and John, who’ve been taken in to stay with Him to pray — are asleep.
And while they were sleeping, He is experiencing this excruciating agony
of soul as He contemplates bearing the wrath of God and drinking to the dregs
the cup of the wrath of God. So
don’t ever think your Savior doesn’t understand your agony and your aloneness in
it. No, it’s actually the other way
around. You don’t understand His
agony and His aloneness in it. And
this is one reason why Luke is showing us the Garden of Gethsemane.
But do you understand that the great
struggle that is going on here is that the sacrifice of atonement that is going
to be offered tomorrow has to be a willing sacrifice.
And the Savior is fighting in His heart, not only to say, “Father, I do
what You have sent Me to do,” but “Father, I yield My will to Your will, so that
what I do, I do because I want to do Your will.”
And is that not the great battle with sin that we all face?
In sin, we are tempted to think that the thing that will give us
satisfaction is the thing that God has told us not to do.
And Satan tells us the only way to get your satisfaction is to do your
will, not His. And the great battle
of sin is to realize, “No, no, no, no, it’s what God has told me that seems so
hard to do – Lord, I can’t forgive her; Lord, I can’t love him; Lord, I can’t go
on in this circumstance, even though You tell me to, even though You tell me to,
even though You tell me to.” The great battle is what?
To say, “Lord, it’s Your will.
I know it’s Your will, but it’s my will too!
I want to do what You tell me to do!”
And this is the battle that Jesus is fighting in the Garden — to give
Himself willingly into the Lord’s will which will involve His crushing, and He
knows it, and He knows it better than any of us in this room will ever know it,
even after a billion years in glory.
He knows what this will cost Him and He wants to want to do it for you.
And while He’s doing it, there was not a single solitary soul in the
world praying with Him and for Him.
You know there’s a passage at the end of 2 Timothy in chapter 4 where Paul
mentions that when he finally got before the Roman proconsul to be judged that
no one stood with him. And I was preaching on that passage a couple of years ago
and Sinclair Ferguson just asked me what I was preaching on, on a particular
occasion. I told him it was that
passage and he said to me — took the words right out of my mouth before I could
say them myself — he said, “You know, that’s one of the saddest passages in all
of the Scripture. Paul should not
have been alone in that moment.” And
then he said, “But you know, in that he was just like his Savior.”
And he was. The Savior was
doing this for you. He was fighting
this battle of heart to offer a willing sacrifice, and no one was praying with
Him.
THE TENDERNESS OF JESUS
And then there’s one last thing and you see it in verses 45 and 46.
When Jesus gets up from this great battle and the battle is won, He walks
back out to His disciples and He finds them sleeping.
Now Luke is actually very kind to them.
Luke tells us they were “sleeping for sorrow.”
I understand that. Have you
ever been so tired, so overborne, so burdened, that the only escape that you’ve
had from the weariness of soul was sleep?
That’s where the disciples were.
And Luke tells us they were “sleeping for sorrow.” And the Lord Jesus
does not come with some ripping rebuke, He says, “Brothers, get up, wake up,
rise and pray!” And once again for
the second time He says, “because of the temptation that you’re about to face.”
You know, there’s no, “Couldn’t you have just hung with Me in prayer?!
I’m trying to save your souls here!
Couldn’t you just hang with Me with a few petitions?!”
It’s, “Brothers, I’m concerned about the testing that you’re going to
face. Wake up; pray!”
And you know what Luke is displaying for us in technicolor?
He’s displaying the weakness of the disciples and our weakness, and the
tenderness of the Savior and the fact that even when He gives the exhortation,
“Stay awake and pray,” and by the way, by the way — do you remember what He told
the disciples in Luke 21:36? Take a
look at it. It’s at the end of His
preparation of them for the trials that they are going to face in the end.
And here’s His practical conclusion — Luke 21:36.
“So, stay awake at all times and pray.”
And here we are in the Garden and what are they doing?
They are sleeping and they are not praying.
But Jesus is not sleeping and He is praying.
Dear Christian friend, who trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ, who rests on Him
alone for salvation as He is offered in the Gospel, even when you fail to heed
the Lord’s exhortation to stay awake and pray, He does not fail you.
He stays awake and prays when you do not, and that makes for you an
eternal difference. “He who watches
over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps.”
And your Savior ever watches over you, and that is why nothing can pluck
you from His hand, and that is why the Gospel is not about your doing, it is
that you have been done for by Jesus.
Let’s pray.
Our Lord, we need to dwell in Gethsemane for a while and marvel that the loving
Father did not place His Son in Eden, but in the agony of this place that we
might enter into a Garden better than Eden with Him for eternity.
O Lord, let us revel in how great He is – He is inestimately great.
And how loving He is – He is incalculably loving.
And how constant He is for us in the Gospel – let us look to Him, the
author and finisher of our faith, and run the race with endurance.
We pray it in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Would you take your bulletin and turn with me to the worship guide?
We’ll sing, “Go to Dark Gethsemane” and then we’ll wait for the segue and
sing, “Much We Talk of Jesus’ Blood.”
Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, receive this blessing from God that you have
through the loving and sweating and groaning and dying of your Savior.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus
the Messiah. Amen.