We turn back tonight to Luke chapter 22, page 882 in the pew Bibles. And this part of the gospel is often called “The Passion.” That comes from an older meaning of that word which refers to suffering or to enduring through adversity. Now today, “passion” can really refer to any sort of powerful emotion or feeling. It can be used to say things like, “I am passionate about show choir.” Now I’m not, but some people are. And people are passionate about all sorts of things like cars and sports and music. It means you enjoy those things. But that’s not the case with Jesus’ passion. This is the intensification of His suffering that is coming to us in this passage and this is that which will culminate in the agony of His crucifixion and His death. Something I read this week said that it is no exaggeration to say that the rest of the New Testament is basically an extended commentary on what we find here in the passion of Jesus. We heard this morning something of the unthinkableness of Jesus’ suffering and what that means for us.
Tonight we will look again at Jesus’ sufferings and what that means for providing hope for us when we suffer. Suffering can cause us to lose hope, but Jesus shows us that there is both a purpose in suffering and there is an end to suffering one day. And that’s where we find hope even in our own times of adversity. So our outline for tonight will be number one, the beginning of suffering, and then number two, the end of suffering. The beginning of suffering and the end of suffering. Before we read, let’s ask God’s help. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we come before You again tonight really to a passage that sends us to our knees, even as Jesus was sent to His own knees in prayer, we are humbled as we come to a passage like this. We feel as many have felt before that we are treading on holy ground, so we pray that You would help us to come to this passage with reverence and awe, but that You would also teach us hope, to see the victory that Christ has won through His suffering and death. We pray the Spirit would open our hearts, our minds, our ears. Help us to understand. Speak Lord, for Your servants listen. And we pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Luke chapter 22, starting in verse 39:
“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 the 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.’
While he was still speaking, there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus said to him, ‘Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?’ And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, ‘Lord, shall we strike with the sword?’ And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, ‘No more of this!’ And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders, who had come out against him, ‘Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.’
Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house, and Peter was following at a distance. And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, ‘This man also was with him.’ But he denied it, saying, ‘Woman, I do not know him.’ And a little later someone else saw him and said, ‘You also are one of them.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I am not.’ And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, ‘Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I do not know what you are talking about.’ And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.
Now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, ‘Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?’ And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
The Beginning of Suffering
The beginning of suffering. Back in verse 15, Jesus had said to His disciples, “I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.” “Before I suffer.” Jesus had suffered before, of course. He had suffered fatigue and hunger and opposition. He had suffered disrespect and grief and really just the general weight of His calling as it bore down upon Him. He had suffered before, and so in a sense this is nothing new, but this was the beginning of the suffering for Jesus. This was the beginning of the suffering for which Jesus came. This was the suffering that He experienced which was beyond anything that we could ever imagine.
And one of the first things we notice about verses 39 to 65 is that they follow verses 1 to 38. Now I know that’s not a very astute, exegetical observation, but I think it does help us to notice one thing. And what it helps us to see is that the events in the second half of chapter 22 are the unfolding of the predictions that Jesus had made in the first part, in the first half of chapter 22. There’s this clear pattern of prophecy and fulfillment on display in this chapter. And first, we were told about Judas, that Judas went to make a deal with the chief priests and with the officers. He was going to hand Jesus over to them at an opportune time. And Jesus Himself said at the Passover meal with His disciples, verse 21, “Behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table.” And then at the same meal, Jesus told Peter that he would deny Him three times before the day was over. Verse 34, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day until you deny three times that you know me.” Judas and Peter are identified as the ones who are going to turn against Jesus.
And then what do we find in these verses that we just read? Verse 47, “There came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the Twelve, he was leading them and he drew near to Jesus to kiss Him, but Jesus said, ‘Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?’” We find that Judas betrays Jesus in this passage. And then a little further down, Peter, he’s hanging on the periphery as Jesus is arrested and brought to the high priest’s house. And three times he disavows knowing anything or having anything to do with Jesus. And verse 60 says that, “Immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed.” And then he remembered. He remembered what Jesus had said. He has said to him that, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny Me three times.” Both with Judas and with Peter, what Jesus had said would happen, happened.
Now what does that tell us about the sufferings that Jesus endured? It tells us that He knew they were about to happen. And even the part about the chief priests and about the officers, their mockery and their beating, remember what Jesus had said back in Luke chapter 9? He said, “The Son of Man will suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” He knew. Jesus knew this was coming and it was awful. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what it would be like for you to know ahead of time some of the suffering that you were going to face?
There was a study done a few years ago by a German psychologist named Gerd Gigerenzer – that’s a fun name to say! Gerd Gigerenzer. He did a study, and in this study he asked some of the participants if they would want to know for certain if particular negative events were about to happen to them. And so he asked them, he said, “Would you want to know today when your spouse will die? Would you want to know today how your spouse will die? Would you want to know today the timing and the cause even of your own death?” And overwhelmingly, the large majority of the people, 90% of the people who responded to this study said that they would not want to know about upcoming suffering. Some of the reports that were telling the detail of this study, they said, basically, we don’t like spoilers. We don’t like spoilers in our movies, in our TV shows. We don’t really want spoilers in our lives as well, for good things or for bad things really. There’s a lot that we don’t know. That is one of the most dependable things about life, isn’t it – the uncertainty of life. It’s the unknown. Proverbs 27, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” James chapter 4, “You do not know what tomorrow will bring.” There is so much that we do not know, and that can seem really difficult, can’t it? But it’s not, because sometimes knowing would be just too much. It would be just too much for us.
But Jesus knew, and we’re told about how much that knowledge was a weight and a burden upon Him as He felt and experienced the suffering in this passage. Verse 44 says, “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Now on the one hand, we don’t really know what’s going on there. We don’t know exactly what it means for Jesus’ sweat to be like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. There are some who propose that Jesus may have been suffering from a condition, a rare condition called hematohidrosis. Hematohidrosis is something where the sweat actually becomes blood. But others think that what’s going on here is that Jesus’ sweat, that it was so profuse that it was pouring down to the ground as if He had been cut and blood was pouring out. Now which of those things, we don’t really know, we don’t exactly know what was going on in Jesus’ physical reaction, but we know that He did suffer an extreme physical reaction to His agony.
What we do know is something of what He prayed. And we’re told in verse 42 that Jesus prayed, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me, nevertheless, not My will but Yours be done.” That’s what Jesus prayed. And that really gets at the heart of Jesus’ struggle, doesn’t it? I think we can think about Jesus’ suffering, His agony, in somewhat concentric circles. The concentric circles of those who were responsible for His suffering. There was on that outer circle the Roman authorities and the Roman guards. We’re not told about them in this passage but they’re coming. Those are the Gentiles who are inflicting pain and punishment on Jesus. But then a little bit closer to Him, we have the chief priests and the officers of the temple and the elders. These are the ones who came out against Jesus as against a robber with swords and clubs. They’re the ones who are inflicting upon Jesus the beating and the mockery in this passage. And who are they? They are His own people, the Jewish people, and they did not receive Him. They rejected Him. “He came to His own and His own did not receive Him.”
Then the circle gets a little closer, doesn’t it? There’s Judas and Peter, and really Peter is even closer than Judas. But with them, it’s personal. These are His disciples. And you can feel it. You can feel the way, you can feel the personal emotions that are there just in the way that Judas betrays Jesus. How does he do it? He betrays Him with a kiss. It’s an action of friendship, of love, and affection as he comes toward Jesus. And you can feel it in the question that Jesus asks Judas. He says, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” And you can feel it in the way that Peter strongly denies any association with Jesus three times. And in his denials, he doesn’t even mention Jesus’ name. And then you have that verse, verse 61, the rooster crowed. And then what happened? The Lord turned and He looked at Peter.
These are powerfully emotional scenes. There is a deep sadness that comes with Judas’ betrayal and with Peter’s denial. But you know what? None of it compares to Jesus’ prayer in verse 42 when He says, “Father, Father, remove this cup from Me.” This is as close as it gets. This is Jesus the Son and His relationship with God the Father. And in this passage, He has withdrawn from everyone else so that He can spend time alone with God in prayer. And what He faces is a cup. It’s the cup that we find in various places in the Old Testament. It’s the cup of God’s wrath. Psalm 75 says, “It is God who executes judgment, 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.” And that’s what Jesus is about to endure on the cross. And He is going to receive it from the Father. Listen to this description. “When Jesus pleads, ‘Remove this cup from Me,’ we realize that His anguish grows principally from the prospect of feeling the full weight of His Father’s anger against sin all on Himself. And what makes Jesus’ ordeal especially poignant is that He, alone among human kind, does not deserve God’s wrath and yet He chooses to surrender to it so that sinners instead can receive forgiveness.” That’s what’s going on here in Jesus’ prayer.
When we think about suffering, real suffering, it can be overwhelming to us. We almost don’t even want to think about it all the way. I was reading a book called Suffering in the Heart of God by a writer named Diane Langberg. And she began one of her chapters with some statistics on suffering. She says one in four women and one in three men in our pews have been sexually abused. That one in three experience domestic violence. She goes on to tell other statistics of things that are almost too awful to mention. And she says, “Our children are being bullied, our streets are not safe, our families are losing loved ones to war, suicide and disease. And all of these exist among the people of God just as they exist in the world at large.” That’s sin. That’s the suffering that is caused by sin, the effects of sin in a fallen world, and it is unrelenting and it is overwhelming. And what we find here is that Jesus came to take the penalty for that sin and He came to drink the cup of God’s wrath that that sin requires. He came to drink it down to the dregs, to drink it empty. He says, “Not My will but Your will be done.”
If we recoil against suffering, if we recoil against the effects of sin that we see in our lives and in the world around us, how much more does Jesus recoil from the thought of taking the wrath that sin deserves? How much more when Jesus submits willingly to take the righteous anger of God against sin? You see the way that His disciples try to stand up in defense against Him. He says, “Enough of that.” He is going willingly to take the cup that God has prepared for Him. It’s more than we can comprehend. There are really no words to describe what Jesus is facing here in the Garden of Gethsemane. It’s overwhelming to think about. This is Jesus’ passion. This is His suffering. He says it is the hour; the hour has come. This is the power of darkness. It has reached its climax and its opposition to Jesus and He is on His way to the cross to experience the wrath of God. It’s awful.
The End of Suffering
But there’s good news in it, and the good news is that the beginning of Jesus’ suffering – if we could put it that way – leads to the end of suffering. And we can see something in this passage about the end of suffering. And I think we can use that word in two different ways. There is the end of suffering in the sense that there is a purpose, or the purpose of suffering. We could also say the end of suffering in that there is the conclusion to suffering. Let’s think first about the purpose. There’s a lot we don’t know about the purpose of suffering, isn’t there? There’s mystery. There’s mystery in that God is not the author of sin. He is not responsible for sin in any way, and yet at the same time, nothing happens outside the will of God. God’s providence is such that He works all things together for good. Good things and bad things work together for good for those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose. But what we can say from these verses, in that Jesus’ suffering was prepared beforehand for Him, we can say that God ordains suffering.
And that’s hard to understand. That’s a problem for us. C.S. Lewis says that it’s a problem only if God is all powerful and good. If God weren’t all powerful and good, then suffering would just be. It would be left to random chance. But because God is all powerful and He is good, we are left with the problem of suffering. And we can’t work all that out. But what we can say is that if God ordains suffering, then our suffering is never out of control. It’s not unchecked chaos, but God is sovereign even in our trials. He is sovereign even in our adversity. And if that is true, then our suffering even has a purpose. The Puritan Thomas Case published a discourse on suffering in 1652. And in it, he lists twenty-one lessons, twenty-one lessons that God usually teaches His people in a suffering condition. Now we’re not going to do all twenty-one of those lessons tonight, but what we can say is that God has lessons to teach us in our suffering. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t like the phrase, “It is what it is.” It never just “is what it is.” God has a purpose in everything. He has a purpose in our suffering and we need to be attentive, we need to be open to learn, to listen and to be instructed to what God is trying to teach us when we go through difficult times in our lives.
And we can say something about the purpose of Jesus’ own suffering in this passage and what is to come. Jesus, in His suffering, He was being made like us so that He could take our place, so that He could be our substitute on the cross, so that He could take the wrath that we deserve. Jesus is being made like us. That’s what the writer of Hebrews said. Jesus was “made like His brothers in every respect so that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest to make propitiation for the sins of His people.” Hebrews 5:8, “Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered.” That’s the purpose of Jesus’ suffering – it is that He is demonstrating what Billy talked to the children about. That He was obedient to the point of death. He was obedient to the will of God. His suffering was so that He could take our place in the judgment of God and that He could be sympathetic to us in our own weaknesses.
I saw a t-shirt this week from a little boy. The little boy was wearing a t-shirt, probably 8 or 9 years old, and it said, “Practice Radical Empathy.” That sounded a little intimidating to me! I’m not sure exactly what that means to practice radical empathy. But when we look at this passage and we think about what Jesus did, there’s something radical about how He identifies with us and He knows our sufferings and He is able to sympathize with us. “We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
So that’s Jesus being made like us, but in a similar way we also are made like Jesus in our sufferings. There’s a fellowship in the sufferings of Christ. Listen to what Paul writes in Philippians chapter 3. He talks about how everything that had been loss for him, it was for the sake of Christ. He said, “So that he may share in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible he may attain to the resurrection from the dead. We identify with Jesus in His sufferings knowing that we will also identify with Him, we will share with Him in His victory, in His resurrection. So even in our darkest days there is some expectation and hope of resurrection life because of what Christ has endured and accomplished already.
But also think about those places in the New Testament, places that talk about the role of suffering in producing Christ-like character. We will rejoice in our sufferings knowing that “suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope.” James chapter 1, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” That’s what Jesus talks about when He talks about the vine and the branches, that those who bear fruit, He prunes that it may bear more fruit. Pruning is not a fun process, and yet God does it so that His people may bear more fruit, may be fruitful, faithful to Him. Suffering conforms us into the image of Christ and makes us fit for heaven.
And suffering also prepares us to pray. We see that in this passage, don’t we? What do we find Jesus doing as He goes to meet His trial? He prays. And what does Jesus say to His disciples as they enter into this trial with Him? Pray. “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Now how did they do with that? Not very well. They fell asleep. And that’s comforting in its own way, and maybe we can relate to that, can’t we? But isn’t it something we all need to learn? To pray when we’re in a hostile environment. To pray when we are aware of our weakness and our vulnerability. To pray when we are not aware of our weakness and our vulnerability. To pray when we are experiencing discouragement and fear. To pray that we may not enter into temptation. I wonder if you have seen it before. There may be people you know who have experienced hard trials. They have gone through an adversity of some sort, and you would think that those things would provide some sort of perspective or maybe even some humility, and yet the opposite happened. And instead of perspective and humility, it seems as if the suffering became a license for them to self-indulge and to go all-in on the pleasures of the world, almost as if their suffering was an excuse or as if they were making up for their hard times by enjoying as much as they can. Maybe you’ve seen that. Because suffering can also be a time of temptation. And that should drive us to our knees in prayer because suffering shows us our frailty and it shows us how much we need God’s help. So pray that you may not enter into temptation. Pray that you may persevere. Persevere with faith and with faithfulness to the Lord. Persevere in hope to the time when there will be no more suffering.
And that’s the last thing that we can see here – not only the purpose of suffering but the conclusion of suffering. When Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath and when He rose in victory over the grave, what did He do? He defeated sin and death and He secured the eventual end of all suffering. There will come a day when death shall be no more. “There will come a day when neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for those former things will have passed away.” We read in Revelation that “God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.” There will come a day where there will be no more suffering. But it’s more than that. It’s more than that. There will come a day when there will be fullness of joy and comfort and peace and love and beauty and the blessing of God. It’s what we call glory. “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
You know, we are oftentimes shocked, heartbroken by the reminders and the images of suffering around the world. If any of you have been traveling in the last week, maybe you stopped at a rest stop and seen signs or reminders, indications of human trafficking. And it’s heartbreaking even just to read about it and think about what is going on around us as we travel for leisure. We see images of war in Ukraine and lives devastated by that. We see the stories and the images of the earthquake in Syria and Turkey and it’s heartbreaking. We can’t even imagine what that would be like to be trapped in those circumstances and to lose our lives in that way. But I received an email, or Billy Dempsey sent an email out to some of us this week about a story of a pastor and his wife in Antioch in Turkey. And the pastor and his wife were both killed in the earthquake and they left behind an eight-year-old son, an orphan now. And the email was someone had shared the prayer that this little boy had prayed at his parents’ funeral. This is what he prayed:
“Thank You, Lord, for taking my parents from this wicked world, from this world that is getting worse every day, to Your paradise. They are safe today. They are in the best place today by Your side. We will suffer, we will grieve, but soon we will rejoice. I thank You, Heavenly Father, that one day I will be able to see them again. You are a good God. I know how much You love them. You took them so they wouldn’t suffer. I thank You. Glorify Your name. Amen.”
That’s remarkable. And that’s called hope in suffering. And that kind of hope only comes because Jesus suffered. And not only did Jesus suffer, but He defeated all suffering and sin and death. So He redeems His people. He redeems all of His creation from sin, from the effects of sin, and from all sorts of suffering. And that’s where we rest, like this little boy, for our hope. We praise God it. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You for these passages, these places in Jesus’ life where we are brought face to face with suffering of unimaginable kinds. We can’t ignore it. We can’t overlook it. We can’t move past it and numb it in our own ways. We thank You for spotlighting that for us. And help us to see Your hand in our own suffering. Help us to be attentive and aware of the sufferings of others to be able to sympathize and show compassion to those who are in times of trial and affliction. But help us to have hope. Help us to live with hope, that hope would shine forth even in times of suffering. We don’t know when suffering might come. Would You help even this time of studying Your Word to prepare us in some way to face suffering with hope, with faith, with faithfulness, and bring glory and praise to Your name. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.