Discernment and Rob Bell

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Mike asked me this morning to talk about Rob Bell's book, which is called
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Love Wins, and I want to do that, but I also want to take you to a passage of Scripture in order to consider the subject, and so you might be turning there,
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Matthew 26. This book is all the rage, Love Wins by Rob Bell.
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Some of you, most of you I'm sure are aware that this debate has been going on now for at least a couple of months regarding Jesus' teaching on hell and the enormity of God's wrath, and Rob Bell's book,
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Rob is a popular pastor from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who claims to be an evangelical, even though it seems to me he holds no evangelical convictions, and it's pretty clear that he doesn't regard the
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Bible as any kind of authority, and he's questioning whether hell really exists.
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He suggests that if in the final judgment God condemns unbelievers by sending them into everlasting punishment, then
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God isn't truly good. That's his rationale. That's really the gist of his whole argument, and his book has been for several weeks hovering around number one, number two in its category on the
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New York Times bestseller list, so it's having quite an influence. It was the subject a couple of weeks ago, maybe two months ago.
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Darlene and I went to the Gospel Coalition Conference in Chicago, and they devoted a session or two to the discussion of that book and its teaching on hell, and evidently lots of Christians are confused about this issue these days, because Rob Bell's book attacks the reality of hell, the eternality of punishment for the reprobate, the necessity of conscious faith in Christ, the severity of divine wrath, the principle of substitutionary atonement, and the necessity of Christ's death as a payment of sin on our behalf.
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That's pretty much a list of every essential doctrine you could think of, at least in evangelical
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Christianity. Those are all truths that Rob Bell has either explicitly denied or, in most cases, simply questioned.
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That's his approach, not so much to assert anything or deny anything, but simply to raise incessant questions.
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And by enticing people to doubt or to disbelieve those things, he has in effect renounced the heart of Gospel truth and is turning people away from the truth of Christ.
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A few weeks ago on the Grace to You blog, we had a series of articles on the subject by John MacArthur.
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And so I've been thinking a lot about this in recent weeks, and as I've read all these articles and talked about all of this, sat in on the discussions at the
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Gospel Coalition, been thinking about it, and in the midst of that reflection, it occurred to me that Jesus' agony in the garden on the night of His betrayal is one of the most vivid proofs we have that God's wrath is as real and as severe as His righteousness is perfect.
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And so I want to look at that episode this morning. This episode also gives us graphic evidence that the punishment for our sin is unbearable in its infinite horror, and that God's judgment is to be feared in the most real and profound sense of fear, too, holy terror, not merely just some kind of sanitized awe or reverence, but fear.
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And Scripture talks about fear and trembling. If you don't tremble with alarm at the thought of God's wrath, then you haven't contemplated it carefully enough.
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And so that's what I want to look at in this passage. And I want to point out to you that even Jesus, God incarnate, trembled at the thought of His Father's wrath against sin.
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And so this is a perfect passage to study to deal with this subject rather than really just critiquing
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Rob Bell's book. Let's see what Scripture has to say about it. And so I want to take you this morning to Matthew 26, and we're going to look at verses 36 through 44.
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Matthew 26, verses 36 through 44. Here is a passage that is very difficult to absorb.
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I frankly think this is perhaps the most, single most difficult passage in all of the
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Gospels. This is that passage where Jesus is praying in Gethsemane on the eve of the crucifixion, and He pleads with the
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Father to let the cup pass from Him. It's not an easy text to absorb or to explain.
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And this is a passage, actually I'll confess to you, that troubled me for years. I first began to look carefully at this vignette from the life of Christ more than a decade ago.
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It was my great privilege to edit the notes on the synoptic Gospels for the
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MacArthur Study Bible. And I vividly remember working my way through the Matthew notes until I got to this passage.
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In fact, I want to read you a portion of the note John MacArthur wrote on Matthew 26, verse 39.
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It's from the MacArthur Study Bible. In verse 38 is where Jesus tells the disciples, my soul is sorrowful, even unto death.
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Why was Christ's soul in such agony? Here's what John MacArthur says, the next day
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Christ would bear the sins of many and the fullness of divine wrath would fall on Him.
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This was the price of the sin He bore and He paid it in full. And I remember that I had to stop when
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I read that and try to take it in. And that truth stuck in my mind and I thought about it for days and to be honest,
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I've never really fully come to grips with everything it means and I doubt
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I will in this life, perhaps not even in eternity. This is a huge idea, that Christ absorbed the full weight of God's wrath against sin.
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Just think about that for a minute and the more seriously you think about it, the more difficult it becomes to absorb.
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Then about a year after that, I returned to the Gospel of Matthew again. I edit a lot of John MacArthur's material.
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We take sermon transcripts and things he's preached and work it into books. And about a year after the
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Study Bible, I came back to the Gospel of Matthew and I was editing John MacArthur's book on the crucifixion titled
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The Murder of Jesus. And he dealt with this passage there and so again I was brought face to face with this passage and forced into what became for me a very profitable in -depth study of the text.
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This is an important passage to understand and it has profound implications for you and for me in our own prayer lives.
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More than any other passage I know, this text helps us see exactly what it was that Christ accomplished on the cross.
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And more than any other passage I know, this one gives us a clear perspective on the humanity of Christ and the implications of His humanness.
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People who wonder if the temptations of Christ were real temptations because He couldn't sin because He was
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God, so were His temptations real? If you wonder that, it will help you to study this passage. If you've ever wondered whether it's literally true that Jesus fully experienced all the feelings of our infirmities, as we're told in Hebrews, you need to lay hold of the agony described in this passage of Scripture.
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Now by now you should have turned to Matthew 26. We'll be dealing with verses 36 -44, but first I want to just quickly review the context for you.
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This is the night of Jesus' betrayal. Earlier this same evening, Jesus had celebrated
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Passover with the disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem. The Gospel of John devotes five chapters, chapters 13 -17.
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I'm going to move this up. The Gospel of John has five chapters giving us a detailed account of what happened that evening in the upper room.
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This whole day, Thursday of Passion Week, is the most thoroughly documented day of Jesus' life.
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The event we're looking at this morning occurred at the end of that fateful day, after the eating of the
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Passover, after Jesus spent that final evening with His disciples, moments before He was arrested.
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John 18 -1 says, He went out with His disciples across the Kidron Valley where there was a garden.
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We know exactly where this was. Matthew 26 .36 says the name of the garden was
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Gethsemane, which literally means oil press. It was a secluded place.
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It is directly opposite the eastern gate of the temple. That's across the Kidron Valley. There was a grove of olive trees there.
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I have visited that very spot and there are still ancient olive trees there to this day, some of them more than 2 ,000 years old.
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So trees there today that would have been there when Jesus was there. This was a garden where Jesus often met to pray with His disciples.
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In fact, His pattern of going there was so predictable that that's how Judas knew exactly when and where to bring the
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Roman troops to arrest Jesus. John 18 -2 tells us this. Judas, who betrayed
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Him, also knew the place for Jesus often met there with His disciples. That's John 18 -2.
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And this particular night, Jesus was drawn to that garden to pray through the most difficult struggle
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He ever waged. He knew He was going to be betrayed. He had already predicted that in the upper room.
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In fact, He had already even identified Judas as the traitor, proving that He was sovereignly in control of everything that was happening to Him.
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None of this came to Jesus by surprise. He knew when He went into that garden that night that He would be arrested before He left.
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In fact, I want you to see how clearly Jesus foresaw what would come to pass.
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Look, for example, at verse 18 here in Matthew 26. Earlier that afternoon, when it was time to prepare for the
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Passover meal, He told them, My time is at hand. The hour of His death had finally arrived.
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In fact, there were several places in the Gospel prior to this where Jesus said, or where the
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Gospel writer tells us, it was not yet His time. Now He says, My time is at hand. The time has arrived.
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Jesus knows it. And when Judas shows up with the soldiers to arrest Him, Jesus knew they were coming.
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John 18 -4 says, Jesus, knowing all that would happen to Him, came forward towards this band of soldiers and said to them,
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Whom do you seek? Of course, He knew who they sought, and He willingly surrendered to them.
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Many times prior to this, He had sovereignly evaded plots and crowds of people who wanted to kill
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Him, and He could have done so now. In fact, Jesus said to Peter on this very occasion, Matthew 26, verses 53 and 54,
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Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and He will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?
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But then, how should the Scriptures be fulfilled? That it must be so. So this was His hour now, and it was the time foreordained by God, and Jesus knew it.
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And He fully understood what was entailed in His dying for sin. He knew all the pain and agony and taunting and humiliation was coming.
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He would have to bear it. But He nonetheless prepared Himself to submit completely.
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And the passage we're looking at this morning is about that submission. This passage describes how
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Jesus consciously and deliberately submitted Himself to all the horrors of the cross, and it gives us some insight into what that entailed.
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So that despite the agony He felt, and the sense of unbearable dread that tormented
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His mind, Jesus consciously and rationally and willfully surrendered
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His human will to the will of God the Father, and this is the process by which He did that. So let me read the passage.
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Verses 36 -44. Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and He said to His disciples,
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Sit here while I go over there and pray. And taking with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, that would be
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James and John, He began to be sorrowful and troubled. And then He said to them, My soul is very sorrowful even to death.
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Remain here and watch with Me. And going a little farther, He fell on His face and prayed, saying,
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My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.
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And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And He said to Peter, So could you not watch with Me one hour?
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Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
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Again, for the second time He went away and prayed, My Father, if this cannot pass until I drink it, Your will be done.
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And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, He went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.
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Now as I said, the great lesson of this passage is Jesus' submission. You see here in microcosm the whole process that's described for us in Philippians 2, verses 6 through 8, which tells us that Christ, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made
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Himself nothing. Taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form,
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He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And the
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Matthew 26 prayer in Gethsemane gives us a little window into the soul and the mind of Christ, and it reveals what a supreme sacrifice it was for Him to die on our behalf.
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Here we see that Christ was willing to submit Himself to the wrath of a righteous
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God. He was willing to submit Himself to the weakness of human flesh, and He was willing to submit
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Himself to the will of the loving Father. And this morning I want to look at those three aspects of His humiliation because all three are here for us in clear focus in the
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Garden, and I'll reiterate those three points as we go. Again, this is about submission, and number one is
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He was willing to submit Himself to the wrath of a righteous God. This is the point,
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I think, that has the strongest bearing on the arguments and the questions that are coming from people like Rob Bell.
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Is the wrath of God real? Can God really be as fierce as the biblical descriptions of hell portray
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Him? Now before I really began to understand this prayer of Christ, I used to read this passage and wonder about it.
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What exactly is it that Jesus is praying for? Verse 39, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.
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That is, as I said, one of the most remarkable and difficult passages in all of Scripture.
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It is not easy to interpret. But if you look at it biblically, the meaning is clear.
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It's absolutely clear what He is saying. Here's what makes it so difficult. These are some of the questions that come to mind when we read this text.
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What precisely is the cup that Jesus prays to let pass?
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Our normal inclination is to think of it as the pains of crucifixion. We've already seen that Christ knew every detail of what
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He was about to undergo. He understood what a cross entailed by way of pain and suffering and it would have been perfectly natural for Him to want to avoid it, except for one thing.
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This is precisely what Jesus had come into the world to do. John 12, verse 27 describes another prayer that Jesus prayed near the end of His public ministry.
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With a crowd of people standing around who could hear Him praying, He prayed this, Now is my soul troubled, and what shall
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I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I have come to this hour.
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See, dying was the very purpose Jesus had come into the world for. His crucifixion was not an accident.
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He wasn't a martyr. He said this in John 10, verses 17 and 18, For this reason my
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Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.
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I have authority to lay it down, I have authority to take it back up again. This charge I have received from my
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Father. So when He spoke of His death, it was in confident tones.
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It was His plan to do this. The death of Christ was an act of obedience to the
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Father, planned by the Godhead in eternity past, and agreed to by Christ before He ever came to earth.
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This is exactly what we're taught in Hebrews 10, verses 4 -7, where it says, For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin.
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Consequently, the writer of Hebrews says, When Christ came into the world, He said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for Me.
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In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will,
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O God, as it is written to be in the scroll of the book. What the writer of Hebrews is saying there is that animal sacrifices were never sufficient to take away sin.
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That wasn't the ultimate plan of God. Those were symbols that pointed to what God was really going to do.
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And when it came time to do it, the thing He had to do was prepare a human body for Christ. Because He had to be a perfect man who was sacrificed.
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Not a bull, not a goat, not a burnt offering, but the perfect man, a sinless man.
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And so Christ came to do that. In other words, He was incarnated as a man for this very purpose so that He could die.
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And the Hebrews passage is teaching that His death was the kind of atonement that the blood of bulls and goats could never provide.
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And it was for this very cause that He had come into the world. This was the very thing His body was prepared for.
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And so it's a little hard to imagine that Jesus might be having second thoughts or trying to back out from the cross at this point.
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Because He was afraid of the pains of some nails or whatever. Now notice also that Christ's trauma right here in the garden had taken
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Him to the very brink of death. When He says in verse 38, My soul is sorrowful even unto death,
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He's speaking in literal terms there. He was about to die from the stress of anticipation of what
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He was going to suffer. And Luke 22 verse 44 says, Being in agony,
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He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. And that's a familiar passage, but what it's describing there is unspeakable agony.
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I've heard certain Bible teachers suggest that the cup Jesus prayed for relief from was the threat of a premature death right here in the garden.
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According to that idea, He was praying that the plan of redemption would not be derailed by His dying before He reached the cross.
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And according to them, God answered Jesus' prayer in saying, Yes, you don't have to drink this cup, because the cup
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He was praying to be removed from was a premature death. That solves some problems.
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It's an appealing interpretation when you first hear it, but it seems a bit contrived, doesn't it?
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And it doesn't really seem as you read the whole passage in its context. That's not what Jesus is praying for.
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And in fact, notice what Jesus says in John 18, 11. When the soldiers come to arrest
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Him, Peter takes out his sword. He, remember, whacks off a guy's ear, and Jesus says, Put your sword into its sheath.
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And then He says this to Peter, Shall I not drink the cup the
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Father has given Me to drink? And so it seems the cup did not pass after all.
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After this prayer, Jesus had His answer, and His own words reflect the fact that the answer was,
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You must drink this cup. The cup was something the Father did give Him to drink after all.
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He expressly speaks of the cup the Father has given to Me. And I think there's a clear, biblical explanation of what
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Jesus had in mind when He asked for the cup to pass. It was not the cross in general.
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It was not merely the physical pain or the humiliation or even the fact of His death.
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It was not the horrible thirst. It was not the torture of having nails driven through His body or the disgrace of being spat upon or beaten.
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All of those things were secondary. All of those things were passing, temporal, and relatively insignificant sufferings compared to the cup that prompted this kind of dread in the soul of Jesus Christ.
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In fact, remember that in Matthew 10, 28, Jesus said, Do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.
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Rather, fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. And so if Jesus is telling us,
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Look, don't fear those who threaten to kill you, He Himself was certainly not fearful of what mere men could do to Him.
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But I think, you look at this in context, it's all very clear. What Jesus dreaded most about the cross, the cup, which
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He asks to be delivered from if possible, that's the outpouring of divine wrath
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He was going to have to endure. God's wrath on His head, on His innocent head.
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How do I know that? Well, this terminology is significant. The cup is a well -known
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Old Testament symbol of divine wrath against sin. I'll just read you a few texts that use this terminology.
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And anybody who was very familiar with the Old Testament would have recognized this right away. Isaiah 51, verse 17 says,
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Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the
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Lord the cup of His wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.
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And then Jeremiah 25, verses 15 through 18 says this, Thus the
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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
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I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them.
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So I took the cup from the Lord's hand, this is Jeremiah speaking, and made all the nations to whom the Lord sent me drink it,
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Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, its kings and officials, to make them a desolation and a waste, a hissing and a curse as at this day.
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And then verses 27 and 28 go on to say this, Then you shall say to them, this is
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God again giving Jeremiah instructions, say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Drink, be drunk, and vomit, fall and rise no more because of the sword that I am sending among you.
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And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hands to drink, you shall say to them, Thus says the
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Lord of hosts, You must drink. And so the cup symbolizes a judgment that God forces the wicked to drink.
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They drink until they become drunk and sick and they vomit. The King James Version says they spew and I like that because it's more forceful and it reflects in a graphic way the intensity of this cup of judgment.
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It's as if God says to the sinner, You like sin? Fine, drink your fill and then he makes them keep drinking of their sin and its consequences so that the very thing they sought after becomes the judgment
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God force feeds them and the thing they loved becomes the thing that makes them sick and ultimately destroys them.
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And you'll also find this imagery of a cup used as judgment in Lamentations 4 .21
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and 22, Ezekiel 23 verses 31 to 34, Habakkuk 2 .16.
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In other words, this is a very common Old Testament symbol. And the meaning of this, again, would be crystal clear to anyone who understood the
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Old Testament Scriptures. When Christ prayed, if possible, that the cup might pass from him, it was the cup of divine judgment he spoke of.
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I don't believe for a moment that Christ feared the earthly pain of crucifixion.
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I don't think he trembled at the prospect of what men could do to him. I don't think there was one ounce of the fear of men in him.
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But he knew that the next day he would bear the sins of many, in the words of Hebrews 9 .28,
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and that the fullness of divine wrath against sin would fall on him. And in some mysterious way that our human minds cannot fathom,
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God the Father would turn his face from Christ the Son and Christ would bear the full brunt of the divine fury against sin.
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Isaiah 53, that familiar passage about the crucifixion, Isaiah 53 verses 10 and 11 says,
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Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief when his soul, speaking of the soul of Christ, when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, the will of the
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Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.
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By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
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And so when Christ hung on the cross, he was bearing the sins of his people.
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2 Corinthians 5 .21 explains the cross in exactly those terms. God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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In other words, on the cross, God imputed our guilt to Christ and then punished him for it.
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That was the price of sin, and that was the price of the sin Christ bore, and he paid it in full.
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Remember the cry of anguish from the cross, Matthew 27 .46, my
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God, my God, Jesus said, why have you forsaken me? That reflects the extreme bitterness of the cup he was given.
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No wonder he sought, if possible, to have the cup pass from him. Now, you might say, well, but didn't
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Jesus already know that there was no way for this cup to pass? Of course he knew that.
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So why does he pray for it here? If Christ already knew that the cross was unavoidable, that the outpouring of divine wrath was unavoidable, why does he pray this prayer in Gethsemane?
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And I can think of several answers to that question, and it moves us to our second point. Not only was
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Christ willing to submit himself to the wrath of God, he was willing to submit himself to the weakness of human flesh.
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And that's point number two, he was willing to submit himself to the weakness of human flesh. When Christ took on human form, he was incarnated into human flesh, he took on himself all of the natural weaknesses of humanity, except for those that are inherently sinful.
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Hebrews 4 .15 says, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
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Every infirmity of human nature, except for sin itself, he shared, meaning he grew hungry, he grew weary, he felt pain, and here in the garden he experienced the deepest kind of sorrow and dread and the troubling of his soul.
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I keep going back to verse 38, my soul is sorrowful even unto death. When you realize that's
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Jesus who is God incarnate praying that, it's absolutely amazing.
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And this prayer is the outpouring of those human feelings. It shows the humanity of Christ as clearly as anything else we have in Scripture.
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Now, it's important to understand this. It's very much like you and me, but not entirely, because you and I have a sinful nature.
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We were born with a bent towards evil. We struggle with lust and covetousness and all kinds of evil desires, and Jesus had none of those evil desires.
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The weaknesses you see on display here are not sinful weaknesses, but normal human desires.
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In fact, there would be something seriously wrong with Christ if he had a masochistic love of suffering.
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There would be something inhuman about Christ if he didn't look forward to the cross with a deep uneasiness and a dread of what was to come.
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This is not craven fear. This is not the sort of fear Jesus said, meant when he said, don't fear those who kill the body.
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This is the same dread and foreboding any of us would feel if we knew we were about to undergo something extremely painful.
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But in Jesus' case, that dread is infinitely magnified because of the nature of what he faced and because he understood full well what was involved in the outpouring of God's wrath.
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Proverbs 19, verse 10 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the
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Holy One is insight. And it's interesting to me, if the fear of the
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Lord is the beginning of wisdom and Christ himself is the embodiment of wisdom, then it's perfectly natural and understandable that he would fear the wrath of God.
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Even in the perfection of his eternal wisdom, he feared God. And you see the most vivid evidence of that in the agony he suffered in the garden.
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Furthermore, because of his knowledge of the Holy One, his own Father, he was superior to any other human who has ever lived in his understanding.
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He knew what was entailed. His fear of God's wrath, therefore, was more perfect and more intense than any holy fear you and I have ever felt.
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Here is living proof that when Scripture calls for the fear of God, it's not merely talking about some antiseptic brand of high church reverence.
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It's telling us the fear of the Lord should be true fear, causing holy terror, righteous dread, sanctified trembling.
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That's what you see in Christ. And it's an appropriate response for any man or woman thinking about facing
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God in his righteousness. And incidentally, nowhere does the
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Bible ever declare that Jesus' deity makes him something more than a man or something other than human.
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Scripture never allows the divine nature of Christ to overshadow or diminish his human nature.
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And his divine nature doesn't nullify any of the characteristics of his humanity. On the contrary, everything
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Scripture says about Christ's role as our Savior, our intercessor, and our high priest, everything it says about that depends on the fact that he is fully and completely a man.
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1 Timothy 2, verse 5, makes it as clear as it can possibly be. There is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man
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Christ Jesus. And Hebrews 2 .17 also underscores the essential truth of Jesus' humanity.
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He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, the writer of Hebrews says, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
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So, in other words, Jesus was not merely playing at being human. He was human in the fullest sense.
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He took on all of our infirmities except for sin. And at this moment in the garden, his humanity manifested itself as clearly as at any other time in his ministry.
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He was struggling with many of the same things you and I struggle with daily. Horror at the prospect of what
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God wanted him to do. Consternation over the anticipation of what that would cost him.
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And a very real desire to avoid it if there was any way possible. Those desires, which are normal human desires, they're not sinful ones.
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Those desires had to be consciously, deliberately surrendered to the will of God.
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And the desires themselves are not sinful, but they would have been sinful if he insisted on fulfilling those human preferences at the expense of the
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Father's will. Jesus knew that. And his entire life was lived with this sort of premeditated voluntary submission to the
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Father's will. He said, he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.
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John 8 .29. My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
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John 4 .34. I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge.
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And my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me. John 5 .30. And John 6 .38.
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For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me. So what you have in this prayer is an honest expression of the human feelings of Christ.
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He sincerely dreaded the prospect of the Father's wrath, and he wished naturally to avoid it if there was any way possible.
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Now still, someone might ask, well, why does he pray this particular prayer in the garden? He had already agreed to do the
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Father's will. Surely he knew this was unavoidable. Weren't these issues that he had settled in his own heart ages before?
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And in a way, the answer is yes. But now, facing the prospect of what would happen, he felt the burden in a way he had never felt it before.
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All the weight of human sorrow and human apprehensions, all the human emotions were welling up in him as he stood on the threshold of taking up his cross.
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This is real passion. I also think there's a second reason he prayed this prayer.
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Of course he knew there was no possible way to avoid the outpouring of God's wrath. I'm certain there was no real question in Jesus' mind about whether these things were avoidable, and I think he was praying this prayer for Peter's sake.
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Let me explain what I mean. There's an amazing statement in the prayer Jesus prays at the raising of Lazarus.
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Just before Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave, he prayed aloud, and his prayer on that occasion is recorded for us in John 11, verses 41 and 42.
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And here's what he said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.
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A few minutes ago I read you John 12, verses 27 and 28, where Jesus says,
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Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I've come to this hour.
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Father, glorify your name. And scripture says that immediately after Jesus said that, a voice came from heaven.
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God answered him audibly, saying, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.
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And then Jesus says this about that voice from heaven, John 12, verse 30. He says to the people,
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This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. And frequently you see
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Jesus praying aloud for the sake of people who are listening, and I believe this prayer in the garden is just like that.
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He was praying aloud primarily for Peter's sake and for the sake of the other apostles. Notice verse 37.
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Jesus had specifically taken Peter, James, and John with him deep into the garden.
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They were right there with him. He asked them to wait nearby close enough that they could hear what he was praying, and to stay awake and watch with him.
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According to Luke 22, 31, Jesus knew, of course, that Satan had solicited permission to sift
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Peter like wheat, and so Jesus' prayer is a model for Peter.
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Peter could have learned a lot from listening to Jesus' prayer, but look what happened.
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Matthew 26, 40. They fell asleep, and Jesus had to awaken them and urge them to stay awake with him.
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He says to Peter, So could you not watch with me one hour? And now look at what he says to Peter, verse 41.
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Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, and Peter had already expressed the willingness of his spirit in a boast he made that turned out to be something he couldn't live up to.
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The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. The flesh is weak. Jesus knew that from first -hand experience.
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At this precise moment, he was battling the infirmities of his own flesh. Again, not sinful infirmities, but normal human passions which, if not subjugated to the divine will, can lead us into sin.
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And Peter sinned because he slept. It's not a sin to sleep, but at this moment,
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Christ had given him work to do. He was supposed to be awake and watching and praying with Christ.
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Peter's fatigue, which is not sinful in and of itself, but that fatigue needed to be submitted to the will of God.
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Peter's spirit, which we know was willing, failed.
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Look back at verse 33. Peter had promised Christ that even if everyone else abandoned him, he would never fall away, but he did fall asleep.
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Christ warned him about what was about to happen, but Peter was overconfident. Ultimately, he failed because of the weakness of his flesh.
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And I'm convinced that if he had followed Christ's example here in the garden, if he had prayed for the strength to endure, if he had submitted his will to the
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Father's will, if he had yielded his passions to the will of God, then he never would have failed.
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And this is my third point this morning. We see in this prayer of Christ that he was willing to submit himself to the will of a loving
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Father. That's point number three. He was willing to submit himself to the will of a loving Father. Look at verse 39 again.
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And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.
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And verse 42, again, for the second time he went away and prayed, My Father, if this cannot pass until I drink it, your will be done.
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Now, we know that Christ did drink the full cup of God's wrath.
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And someone might ask, well, does that mean that God didn't answer this prayer from Jesus? No, God answered his prayer.
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Well, does it mean he didn't give him what he asked for? Look again. What did
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Christ ask for? Look at the request here. Christ prays, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
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And then he adds a qualifier at the end, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.
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That's the operative phrase of Jesus' prayer. That's his prayer request.
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Verse 42, your will be done. That's what he's praying for. And God answered that request with an emphatic yes.
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Christ's prayer was not for the cup to pass at any cost. He asked to be relieved of the cup only if there was some other way to accomplish the plan of God.
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And God's response to this prayer proves definitively that there was no possible way to achieve the redemption of sinners short of the sacrifice of God's own
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Son. And that answers, in my view, the big question that Rob Bell raises in his book.
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God did not send Christ to die frivolously. If there had been another way, if it were possible for forgiveness to come in any other way other than the shedding of Christ's blood,
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God would have done it. But there was no other way, and that's why the cup did not pass from Christ.
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Now again, I'm confident that Christ knew that when he prayed the prayer. The whole question was worked out in the eternal counsel of God before the foundation of the world, long before Christ ever came to earth.
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He knew that if he was going to be the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world, then that meant he must endure the wrath of God in the process.
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But that brings up another reason why I think Christ prayed this prayer. I've given you two already.
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First, it was a true expression of his human passions. It reflected a real dread and a sincere horror at the thought of what the cross would mean for him.
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Second, it was an important lesson for Peter and the other apostles, and not to mention you and me.
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This is a pattern we should all follow in our prayers. The underlying request in every prayer we pray should be exactly the same thing
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Jesus prayed for, your will be done. But here's a third reason I think he prayed this.
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I think he prayed it because this unfolds for us the mystery of what took place in eternity past between the members of the
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Godhead. As they discussed the redemption of fallen humanity and made the plan to redeem the elect, they covenanted between themselves that Christ would die to pay the price.
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Titus 1 hints at this. In Titus 1, Paul opens that epistle to Titus with these words, listen
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Titus 1 .1, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life which
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God who never lies promised before the ages began.
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Now, think about this. If God promised eternal life before time and creation even began, to whom did he make that promise?
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The answer is crystal clear. This describes a covenant that the father made with the son to redeem the elect.
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Now, obviously we can't fully know the mind of God, 1 Corinthians 2 .16, who has understood the mind of the
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Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. Scripture gives us enough of the mind of Christ so that we can peer into the mystery of it and learn from Christ's wisdom.
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Again, this prayer in the garden gives us a window into the relationship between father and son.
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And here we can understand in terms of human passions the exchange that took place between the father and the son before time began.
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In eternity past, as abhorrent as it must have been to think about the son dying and the father pouring out his wrath on his son, the son willingly, deliberately submitted himself to the father's will and the path to the cross was set.
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And that's why Peter says in Acts 2 .23 that the crucifixion happened, in Peter's words, according to the deliberate plan and foreknowledge of God.
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And that's why Acts 4 .27 and 28 says that of the crucifixion that Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the
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Gentiles and the people of Israel, all of them acted together in the crucifixion in the words of Scripture to do whatever
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God's hand and His plan predestined to take place. This was the plan of God from the beginning and in this prayer we see a picture of how
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Christ willingly accepted His part, which leaves one question still unanswered.
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Why does Jesus seem to contrast His will with the Father's will?
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He prays in verse 39, nevertheless, not as I will but as you will. Does this imply some conflict between the persons of the
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Godhead? Is Christ's will different from the will of the Father? And it's not as easy a question as it might seem at face value because it's true that the members of the
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Godhead do have separate distinguishable wills. That's one of the attributes of personality.
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Each person in the Godhead has a unique will and yet, Scripture tells us, there is always perfect harmony between the members of the
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Godhead so that Christ's will is never at odds with the Father's will. It's distinguishable but it's never in conflict.
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It's never different in that sense. And the will of the Spirit is never out of step with the
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Father and the Son. They are always in perfect union, in perfect harmony. And that's part of what
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Jesus meant when He said in John 10 .30, I and the Father are one. They are one in substance.
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They are united in their wills. He was not saying that they're one in the same person but He was emphatically denying that there is any difference or disagreement in character, will or purpose between the
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Heavenly Father and His only begotten Son. So when Christ here prays, nevertheless, not as I will but as you will, we're not to think that there's any disparity between the will of the
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Father and the will of the Son. But instead, what you see here is the Son consciously, deliberately, voluntarily subjugating all of His natural human desires and passions to the perfect will of the
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Father which is in perfect harmony with His divine will. Remember that string of verses
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I read earlier about how the Son committed Himself to doing the Father's will? Let me read a few of them again.
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My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work, John 4 .34. I can do nothing on my own.
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As I hear, I judge and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will but the will of Him who sent me,
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John 5 .30. John 8 .29, He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone.
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I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. And so this prayer in the garden, nevertheless, not as I will but as you will, graphically reveals how
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Christ in His humanity voluntarily surrendered His will to the will of the
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Father in all things precisely so that there would be no conflict between the divine will and His humanity which is a great practical lesson for us, isn't it?
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Think of this. Christ had no sinful appetites. He had no desires that were perverted by sin.
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He had no inclination to do wrong ever. And yet if He had to submit
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His appetites and His passions and His normal desires to the will of God with such deliberate, purposeful dedication, how much more should we, with our inclination to sin, how much more should we concentrate on surrendering our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength to God?
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All of our infirmities, all our desires, all our appetites, our very wills must be consciously submitted to the will of God if we expect to be able to live our lives here on earth to the glory of God.
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Christ had to do it and He had no sinful inclinations. Now, let's be honest with one another.
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We are, even with our best efforts and our most diligent praying, we can't live our lives perfectly to the glory of God.
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We're too sinful. We are too weak. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, as Jesus said.
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But this episode in the life of Christ isn't recorded merely to give us an example to follow.
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It does give us a good example, but if that's all we get from it, we would be left without hope because it's an example we can't follow to perfection.
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And if this passage has any message at all, it's a message of blessed hope for fallen sinners.
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And this is the best, most encouraging truth at the heart of our text. It reminds us what a high price
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Christ paid for our redemption. All that He feared, all that He ultimately suffered,
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He did to redeem us from our sins. He paid in full a price that you and I could never pay.
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If we suffered in hell for all eternity, we would still not be able to pay the price of sin.
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So Jesus paid the price on our behalf. And then He rose from the dead signifying that God was pleased and the wrath of God fully satisfied by the price
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He paid so that all who trust Him find salvation in Him.
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No matter how deep your guilt, no matter how dark the stain of your sin, Christ gives eternal life freely as a gift to all who lay hold of Him by faith.
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That's a simple truth, the gospel. And it's the only way of salvation from our sins.
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But the promise of Scripture is straightforward. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is
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Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Saved from the consequences of sin, saved from the very wrath that caused such dread in Jesus.
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Let's pray. Lord, we are so profoundly grateful when we read this passage and realize the enormity of divine wrath, the righteous wrath
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You have against sin. Knowing that Christ bore that, absorbed it, and conquered death for us, we give
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You glory and pray that our lives would be lived to His glory. And in His name we pray.