GETHSEMANE, Part 1: “He was crushed for our iniquities…”
Mark 14:32-38
Introduction: We’ve
been looking at Mark for quite some time, remembering that this Gospel has been
called a “narrative of the passion with an extended introduction.” As we
came to chapter 14, we moved into the climax of the story, the passion of
Christ. We’ve looked at the Gospel so far through the prism of three
questions, which once again come front and center in the purposes of the
writer: 1) Who is Jesus? 2) Why did He come? And 3) What does it mean to follow
Him? (I hope you see those questions as
a discipling tool that can guide you through this gospel, and a way perhaps, to
read it with someone, and talking together about the answers to those
questions, Disciples making disciples!). We’ll come back to this context and the
third question next week, but today as we look at Jesus in Gethsemane, I want
to focus on the first two questions. How do these verses teach us about who He
is and why He came?
Jesus is revealed here, in powerful and dramatic terms, as the God-Man,
the Son of God and Son of Man. He is the Eternal Word who was made flesh. He is
the Last Adam who came to undo the Fall. And that leads us to the second
question, “Why did He come?” Here we see the sinless Son of God, perfect
humanity in union with undiminished deity, face-to-face with what He came to
do. We’ll be reminded again that salvation is a free gift, received by grace
through faith, it is free to us because Jesus paid the price that we could not
pay. We get a glimpse of the cost as we see Jesus praying in the Garden.
Let me preface our look at this passage with this: Jesus is not simply
recoiling from death, or from the torturous suffering He must soon endure, as
horrible as that was. He has said
multiple times and in diverse ways that it had to happen. There was no
avoiding it. It was written. It was the plan established in the council
of the Godhead in eternity past. What does Jesus mean when He prays, if it is
possible, that this “cup” should pass from Him? What was this “cup” that
Jesus was faced with drinking? He
had told the disciples about His impending betrayal, desertion, and death. As
we enter the Garden of Gethsemane
(literally, “The oil press”) we are on Holy Ground. We see the sinless humanity
of Jesus in unity with His Deity, as the Son of God comes face to face with the
unimaginable task that He came to accomplish. Jesus, the God-Man, anticipated
taking our sins, and He steeled himself to satisfy divine justice, by drinking
the cup of the wrath of God so that we could receive the cup of blessing and
life. We are going to look at this scene for two weeks. This week I want to
focus on what this story teaches us about Jesus and the work He came to do.
Next week we’ll return to this passage, and shift our focus to the disciples,
and to us, as we consider again what it means to follow Him.
The BIG Idea: The first Adam brought death and the
curse, the last Adam, Jesus, took the curse for us, so that we could receive
blessing and life.
I. Support: The Encouragement of the brethren can be a source of strength in a time
of crisis. Though the disciples fail, they will be His witnesses (32-34).
32 And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his
disciples, "Sit here while I pray."
33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began
to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34
And he said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain
here and watch."
The Place: Gethsemane,
“the oil press.” The disciples went from the upper room to the Mount of Olives,
and then, in v.32, came to a place called Gethsemane.
From the other Gospels we know this was a place frequented by Jesus and His
disciples, at the base of the Mount of Olives. The name appears to derive from
an Aramaic term meaning “the oil press.” The olives would be harvested and then
the oil crushed from them. Its hard not to see some symbolism in that, when we
consider the language of Isaiah 53:5, “…he
was crushed for our iniquities…”
The Passion: “…greatly distressed and sorrowful… my soul is very sorrowful, even unto
death…” Consider the
description here, both by the narrator of the Gospel (v.33) and Jesus himself
(v.34). In the place of the Olive Press Jesus is being crushed by the weight of
the sins of humanity, as He anticipates satisfying the justice of God on our
behalf.
The
Petition: A request to his disciples, the inner circle, to “remain” and
“watch.” There were at least two other occasions in Mark where Jesus invited a
small group of followers to come a little further, to see and to hear a little
more. In the house of Simon and Andrew, James and John joined them in the room
where Simon’s mother-in-law lay desperately ill. They saw the miracle of
healing that Jesus did, as he took her hand, and she immediately got up and
began to serve them. Peter, James, and John also were invited to go up the
Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus, where they saw Him transformed before
their eyes, and heard the voice of the Father, “This is my beloved Son, hear Him!”
Now as Jesus felt the weight of the mission that He alone could fulfill,
begin to come down on him, in His perfect humanity, without sin, without doubt,
He asks these three men, perhaps those He was closest to on earth, to “remain” and to “watch.” Did He know they would fall asleep? I think He did, just as
surely as He knew they would all desert Him. But if that is true, why did He
call them apart? He was still teaching them, and they would be His witnesses.
You remember His counsel to them as they descended the Mount of
Transfiguration? We read in Mark 9:9-10,
9 And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no
one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 So they kept the matter to
themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean.
At a later time they would be
witnesses to what happened on the mountain. And likewise, at a later time, they
would bear witness to painful struggle, the hour of darkness that descended on
Jesus in Gethsemane. So, now the One who was without sin, who came to undo the
Fall and make it possible for sinful humans to be reconciled to Holy God, faced
the moment of testing. Another man, without sin, at least at the start, faced a
time of testing in a Garden. *The first Adam brought death and the curse, the
last Adam, Jesus, took the curse for us, so that we could receive blessing and
life.
II. Struggle: The horror of what lay before Him was such that the sinless Son recoiled
from it, asking the Father if it had to be
(35-36a).
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…
Let’s not try to explain away what is
being described here. And we dare not take lightly the struggle that is going
on. This was not just a time alone, praying to the Father. You can’t miss the
struggle, the passion, of what is happening. He “fell on the ground and prayed…” Jesus, the Son, exceedingly
sorrowful, even unto death, distressed and sorrowful, is on His face, crying
out to the Father. Luke the physician, in His account, tells us that as He
prayed, He sweat great drops of blood. I’ve read that under extreme duress that
this has been reported, hematidrosis.
He endured that for us.
Have you been with people in moments of such intense grief and pain that
they just cry out. Know that we have a high priest who really can sympathize
with us in our weakness, in those most distressing and overwhelming moments of
life. He understands. But what drove Jesus to such sorrow, crying out like this
to the Father? Was it the prospect of death? He had told his disciples,
multiple times that He would soon die. And also promised that He would be
raised. As tortuous as His scourging and crucifixion would be, I think there is
much more going on here. H.A. Ironside got it right when he said,
“It was in anticipation of drinking
the cup of wrath which our sins had filled that He prayed in agony that if it
were possible that hour, and the cup, might pass from Him. His holy soul shrank
from the awfulness of being made sin upon the tree. It was not death, but the
divine anger against sin, the imputation to Him of all our iniquities that
filled His soul with horror. There was no conflict of wills. He was in all
things submissive as He prayed, “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto
Thee; take this cup from Me: nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou
wilt.”
He prayed specifically in v.36, “Abba, Father… all things are possible for
you, remove this cup from me…” To what is Jesus referring? The word “cup” is used in three general ways
in the Bible. 1) Of a literal cup, as a glass of wine on the Passover table as
we saw earlier in the chapter. 2) It is also used metaphorically as a symbol of
the blessing of God, as in Psalm 23, “…my
cup is over-flowing…”, and then finally, 3) in the sense of judgement of
sin, the cup of the wrath of God… Consider a couple of references…
Psalm 75:8 - 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 - 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.
More than a dozen times the
Scriptures use this picture of the cup of God’s wrath (So also Jer 25:15,17,28,
49:12; etc.). Ezekiel 23:33 refers to “…a cup of horror and desolation…” It is
the wicked who are to drink this cup of wrath in judgment for their sins. This
usage of the “cup” would seem to fit with Jesus’ revulsion, His recoiling from
what lay before Him, His shock, and “sorrow
unto death…” He was sinless! And so, He prays, “If it is possible, take this cup from me!” Jesus has been telling
his disciples for some time what would happen, what had to happen, during this
Passover trip to Jerusalem. It is clear this is not merely the “cup” of
suffering and death. It is that, but remember why He came: to satisfy divine
justice, to be our substitute, our sin-bearer.
I’ve been trying to get my head around this this week, and thought of
that scene when Isaiah got a vision of God on the throne of heaven. In that
scene in Isaiah 6 the man of God gets a glimpse of the holiness and glory of
God, “woe unto me, for I am undone, for I
am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips…” Isaiah
was a sinner, and in the light God’s holiness the filth and the guilt of His
sin was unbearable: “Woe unto me! I am
undone!” Think about this: Jesus took Isaiah’s sin, and the sins of a
billion Isaiahs, past, present and future, (regular people, sinners like you
and me) in his own body… He did not sin, but the Lord has laid on Him the
iniquity of us all… and with the sin He willingly drank the cup of divine
wrath… Somehow, he began to sense the horror of divine judgment, the wrath of
God against sin. J.C. Ryle in his commentary on Mark said it well,
Let us mark, in the first place, how
keenly our Lord felt the burden of a world's sin. It is written that He began
to be filled with horror and deep distress. He told them, "My soul is
crushed with grief to the point of death," and that "he fell on the
ground, and prayed, that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from
him." There is only one reasonable explanation of these expressions. It
was no mere fear of the physical suffering of death, which drew them from our
Lord's lips. It was a sense of the enormous load of human guilt, which began at
that time to press upon Him in a peculiar way. It was a sense of the
unutterable weight of our sins and transgressions which were then specially
laid upon Him. He was being "made a curse for us." He was bearing our
griefs and carrying our sorrows according to the covenant He came on earth to
fulfill. He was being "made sin for us who Himself knew no sin." His
holy nature felt acutely the hideous burden laid upon Him. These were the
reasons of His extraordinary sorrow.
III. Submission: Knowing the cost, Jesus submitted to the Father’s will,
taking the curse so that we could receive blessing (36b).
“…Yet not what I will, but what you will."
Someone said that “In every war, there is a turning point that
changes the course of history. And in the battle for our hearts and souls, I
believe the most important battle was fought in Gethsemane. Jesus was yet to be
crucified, but I believe the real battle took place that night in the Garden.” Jesus wrestled that night. Thank God for the second part of v.36…
This is a crushing burden, it is killing me, Abba, Papa, is it possible to take
away this cup? NEVERTHELESS, not my will, but your will be done! The first
Adam, in another Garden, had a choice. He knew the Father’s will, and instead
of obedience, he chose to follow Eve in rebellion. As a consequence, all
creation fell under the curse. Every human born after him, was by birth and by
choice a sinner. Paul said to the Ephesians “We were by nature children of wrath…” That doesn’t mean angry
children. It means we were under the righteous wrath of God, destined for
judgment.
Jesus came to undo the fall, to make it possible for sinners to be
reconciled with God. He was without sin. Yet “The Lord laid on Him, the
iniquity of us all…” So He has “…borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed Him smitten of God and afflicted… But He was pierced for our
transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities, upon Him was the
chastisement that brought us peace…” (Isa 53:4,5). Incredibly, 53:10 says,
“…it was the will of the Lord to crush Him…” He did for us what we could
not do for ourselves. And so, God spared not the Son, but delivered Him up for
us all.
What is God saying to me in this passage? The first Adam brought death and the
curse, the last Adam, Jesus, took the curse for us, so that we could receive
blessing and life.
What would God have me to do in response to this passage? Think of what Jesus did for us. He
bore our sins, He was made a curse for us, so that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!
1) The price has been paid, and the cost was more than we can grasp.
This is how God showed His love among us… The wages of sin is death…
eternal separation from God… but, because of Jesus, the free gift of God is
eternal life. It is received by faith, “believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and you will be saved.” Will you trust Him?
2) Gospel-centered living: If you have received the gift of life through
faith in Jesus, that reality can’t be just a small part of your life that you enjoy
on Sunday, or on some special occasions. You are part of a New Creation, and
it changes everything! Life is an adventure when you realize every day. Every
moment, you are in His Presence, He knows you, and He has shown you His love.
Because of Him we can rejoice always, because of Him we have peace that passes
understanding. Because of Him, our Hope is sure. We belong to Jesus, and we
live in the grip of His Grace! AMEN.
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