Would you now take your Bibles and turn to Mark, the 14th chapter. Our reading, our lesson today comes from verses 26 to 42. And I will tell you that after today, we will take a couple of weeks off and begin a series related to Christmas. And then come the new year, we'll pick back up in Mark. Here now as God's people. His Holy Word. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, You will all fall away, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. Peter said to him, Even though they all fall away, I will not. And Jesus said to him, truly I tell you this very night before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. But he said emphatically, if I must die with you, I will not deny you. And they all said the same. And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch. And going a little further, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh. And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. And he came a third time and said to them, Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise. Let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand. May the Lord bless this hearing as well as the reading of His Holy Word. You know, God is so very gracious. He doesn't waste any opportunity to reveal Himself and His will to us in the pages of His written Word. Even as we see the narrative of the last night of our Savior moving forward, still He gives us something that we can learn about Him and about ourselves. At the conclusion of the Passover meal, we see the stage set for Peter's denial. And then we see our Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane laboring under the sorrow of suffering in our place. And finally, we see the reason that we have such a difficult time when we pray and why it is so difficult to pray in a meaningful and deep way. Have we ever been surprised by what comes out of our mouths when we don't intend for it to be that way? I see a lot of looks that say, are you kidding? That's most of the time what I find happening. Have we ever regretted the manner or the content of what we have said to others? Well, of course we have. The nature of being fallen creatures. Have we ever found that our commitment to some things was just not as deep as we thought it was? Or been surprised by what truly motivates us when we are sure that it was something entirely different? Well, that's because our own hearts are indeed, as Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick or wicked, as it says in some translations. Who can understand it? Well, not us. That's a rhetorical question. We can't understand our own hearts. But this is the kind of verse that forces us to look into our own hearts and ask the question that the disciples had asked when Jesus told them that one of them would betray Him. Is it I? Am I the one? I don't trust my heart. Am I the one that is going to end up causing you so much pain, Lord?" This is what this kind of verse does. Peter honestly believed. that he was willing to go to the death for Jesus. We have said that about us many times. I have said it as late as twice in the last week. Which is harder, to live for Christ or die for Christ? Well, think about this. When you reason it out with your logic, if I know that tomorrow I'm going to be alive and Tuesday I'm going to be dead, guess where I'm going to be Tuesday? I believe that I will be in heaven. I'll be so much better off than I am now. Okay? So logically I can think, oh, I'm ready to die for Christ. The hard part is not dying for Christ when God says He will give us everything that we need if that's what He calls us to do. The hard part is living for Christ. The hard part is every day sacrificing what we want to what God wants. To mortifying the flesh, as they say, putting away sin, and then receiving the Word of God in the Spirit of God and seeking to do that which is pleasing to God. That's the hard part. Do that for a couple of decades. and you'll find that you have been through the ringer. You know, Peter was honestly willing to go at that point in time to the death for Jesus, and all the other disciples were with him. So let's don't think that if we were there, we would have done any differently. We wouldn't have. Let me remind us of Psalm 15. Verse 1, followed by verse 4. The question is, O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell in your holy hill? In other words, who is worthy to be one of your people? And the answer, of course, is multitude, but in verse 4 we find these words. He in whose eyes a vile person is despised. We can go along with that. But who honors those who fear the Lord. We can go along with that. Then he says, who swears to his own hurt and does not change. That's where we have the problem, isn't it? Lord, I will follow you to the death until somebody's pointing a gun at my forehead. I will follow you regardless until we're thrown out on the street because we're Christians. So at the front end, the disciples' intention to follow Jesus to the death seems like a very admirable thing, and which, if it became necessary to do, would have proved the disciples to be very godly men. What about us? What about our godliness? Well, let me ask it a different way. Had the disciples done that, and gone to the death with Jesus. Who would have gotten the credit for being such godly men? They wouldn't. But eventually those men, with only one exception, did go to the death for Jesus. And who got the credit? God did. What about our godliness? Is our godliness for our credit? Or for God's credit? I think that is an important question to ask. With the possible exception of John, we see all of these through what they said, but not because they were strong in their belief or love for Jesus, but because He preserved them until it was in His time to His glory to bring them home. Let's not be critical of the disciples. for they had been with Jesus for three years. They knew Him face to face. When Peter later writes his epistles and says, I am an eyewitness, he literally was. When he got to heaven, Peter recognized Jesus because he had seen Him before. When we get to heaven, we will have never seen Jesus until that time. That's why Jesus said, blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe through Your Word. So we need to not quite be so critical of the disciples. Instead, let's be thankful for His encouragement that's found in Luke 12, 11 through 12. He said to his disciples, when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. There are lots and lots of people out there who want to tell you exactly how to respond to the unsafe. Here's this program or that program, this method or that method about how to tell others about Jesus. And we certainly advocate telling others about Jesus. But we've never really settled on a program or a method, but rather all of them. I've told you before that I carry in my pocket that which was used to bring me to salvation. And that, of course, not my credit card, No, not my credit card. Let me just do this. There we go. But rather, the wordless book. And it doesn't have a single word in it which intrigues children, but it also intrigues adults. And so all of us have a method, and that's not a bad thing. But what if you're in a situation where you don't find that appropriate? Well, can you share the Gospel? Well, let me tell you how to do that. Okay? So that you are prepared, not because I prepared you, but because the Spirit will give you an understanding of the words to use. I'm just going to give you some idea. And that is, there are three elements to every single testimony. Number one, what I used to be like. Number two, what happened to me. Number three, what am I like now? I used to be this way without God. God, call me now on this way through faith in Christ. Every testimony takes that general direction, but the Spirit gives us the words to say. But I'm not really concerned about the words. I'm not really concerned about the opportunities. I pray that we are aware of them and take advantage of them as the Lord leads. What I'm most concerned about It's not what we say or what we do, but who we are in Christ. Because if we are concerned about who we are in Christ, then when we are sensitive to His Word and to His Spirit within us and to His leading, and we are knowledgeable, and we are growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord, the relationship that we have with Him, then when the opportunity is there and He wants us to speak, we'll pay attention. and be ready to see how the Spirit gives us those words. So let us give thanks for what we find in 2 Timothy 2, verses 11-13. If we have died with Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains. You know, Paul just set old Timothy up with that one. Okay, so he says, if we died with him and crucified with Christ, well then we'll live with him. If we endure under suffering, then we'll reign with him. If we deny him before men, we really are proving that we don't belong to him before the Father. He says that. But then he says something totally different. If we are faithless, and by the way, all of us at some point are faithless, we turn on Jesus. We simply say, no, I really don't know Him, either by silence or by our agreement with that which is against Him. But He remains faithful. I'm so thankful for that verse. He cannot deny Himself, which means that we are united with Christ. What that means is, It's that we are not saved because of our faithfulness. There are many Christians that think that we are saved because of our faithfulness. Look up the word faithfulness in the Scripture, in your concordance, and what you'll find is it is applied most often to God's faithfulness and hardly ever to man's faithfulness. Oh, there are plenty of admonitions to be faithful. But faithfulness is always attributed to God, not to man. For we fall down on the job, but we are not granted a place in heaven because of our faithfulness, but because of Christ's perfect faithfulness imputed to us. We read the words of Jesus in verse 36. He says, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. We hear almost agony in the words of Jesus as He begins now to wrestle with what is about to happen. He's right at the doorstep. It's about to happen. As a matter of fact, at the end of our passage that we will pick up again in January, He says, my betrayer is here. Yet we find him submitting to the will of his heavenly Father. What an example for us to follow. Anything happen to us in the last week that we really didn't like? Beside the fact that we had to get up in the morning and take care of children or go to work or anything. Anything happen that we did not really like? Jesus had that happen to him all the time. And yet his attitude was, if this is your will, Father, that's what I'll do. That's fine with me. What a blessing to us that he perfectly obeyed. This is the very essence of Christian obedience. Not the checking off of some scriptural boxes. That's a good thing, I guess, to have for children. You know, when you're teaching your children to be responsible, you have chores for them. And sometimes it's helpful in their disorganized, hormone-ridden minds to have a checklist. And so every time you do something, you check off the box. And every night, mom and dad go back and they erase the box so that the next day they can do it again. And what are you doing but training your children to do what is the responsible thing? And some adults never get past that check-off-the-box mentality. But Christian obedience is not checking off the boxes. It's a willing submission of our own wills to the will of God for us. So what does God want us to do? Well, that, number one, may be an individual thing. I know that this week He does not want me to drive a school bus. On the other hand, he may want you to continue to do what you were doing. I don't know. It's an individualized thing. I know what he wants me to be as I do all these things. And I know what he wants you to be as he calls you to do all these things. But he calls each one of us to do different things. But in doing those things, Who do we seek to please? Are we trying to do our will? And it's okay to have a desire. It's okay to have a will, to do things that you want to do. It's okay. But as soon as he says, I want you to do this, not this that you were planning on, how do we then react to that? That's the question. So the question becomes, am I going to do what I want to do? Not wrong. It's just what I want to do. Or am I going to do what he wants to do? I don't really like football analogies too much, but how many times have you been planning on watching a big football game and been called away to do something different? I was on vacation a couple of decades ago now, I guess. A member calls me up and says, my aunt just died. Can you come back and do the funeral? No, I'm on vacation. Couldn't say that. Sure. Tell me when. Tell me where. I'd be happy to be there. I drove back from the beach. Did the funeral. turn right back around and go back. Not what I wanted to do. That doesn't make me special. I hope it just gives an example. That is what I'm talking about. There are plenty of times when we do the adult thing. We do what we're supposed to do. We do what we know is the right thing to do, even though we don't want to. And when what we are supposed to do is according to the will of God, that's abiding by His Will. If we seek to please God, our Heavenly Father, then we will do what, if we seek to loving, to pleasing, then that means we'll do what He commands. And that's what Jesus was speaking of in John 14, 12 through 15, where He says, truly, truly, and by the way, anytime Jesus uses those words, make your ears pay attention. Okay? It's like when Paul says, this is a trustworthy statement. Pay attention. Okay, so Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I do. He's not talking about the miracles. If He calls you to do miracles, that's great, but that's not what He's talking about. He's talking about the otherness of Jesus' mind. He says, "...and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." And then listen to this, "...if you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. If you love Me..." By the way, anybody want to say that you're a Christian and you don't love Jesus? See, the problem here is He puts our back up against the wall. If you say you're a Christian, you cannot then say you don't love Jesus. So if you're a Christian and you love Jesus, which follows, you will keep my commandments. You want to know why so many Christians don't know anything about the Word of God? They don't want to know what His commandments are. Well, I didn't know. See? Jesus gives us the ultimate example to follow. He took upon Himself in the six hours He was on the cross all the punishment that was due to all of God's people for eternity. Think about that statement. Jesus, when He was on the cross in those six hours, took upon Himself all the punishment that was due to all God's people for eternity. It's phenomenal. His suffering was so much more than physical. It was spiritual as well. And he suffered for each individual child of God throughout all of time. When he made the statement from the cross that it was finished, there was not one single sin that God's people in all of time would ever commit that had not been paid for in full. What a supreme example that He set before us to dwell on, to follow, to contemplate. If our Savior could be so obedient as to go to the cross and suffer and die in answer to the command of His Father, then we can suffer and live, if that is what God calls us to do. Let's consider what Jesus God's Son has done for us by dying for us. and what God the Father has done for us in choosing us to be His and sending us His Son. And then let's consider what the Holy Spirit has done for us in dwelling in our hearts. And then let us consider and seek to be found by Him obedient out of a profound sense of love and thanksgiving. I know Jesus suffered and died for me. And you know, for me, the Father gave up His Son. and sent him to earth to die. And anybody that's had children or grandchildren know how hard that had to have been to give up his son. But the Holy Spirit lives in me. Oh, what great patience. What longsuffering. What absolute constrained gentleness as He makes me daily more and more like His Son Jesus, patiently waiting and watching and enabling me to be more like Him. Hard to imagine. Why is it that we find prayer so difficult? Now, after all the prayers communicating with our loving Heavenly Father, and we want to pray and commune with Him, then why do we find it so hard? Well, Jesus gives us the answer. It's found in verse 38. Watch and pray that you may not fall into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. How many of us have said, OK, my head hits a pillow now. I'm going to take five minutes before I fall asleep and pray. Yeah, right. I wake up sometimes in the morning and say, you know, I'm a little early waking up. I think I'm just going to pray a little bit and then the alarm clock goes off. It just doesn't work. Or you want to be in a quiet place and you want to pray and all of a sudden all kinds of thoughts start crowding in about what you got to do or what's happening in the world or what's happening in the church or what's happening next door. And all these things are going on and you can't say, stop, leave my brain, let me just pray. Because the Spirit indeed is willing. The flesh is indeed weak. But our natural selves revolt against the idea. Though we are redeemed and have been forgiven, though we have eternal life and are bound for heaven, still we have our sinful selves on this earth and are constantly in a battle. I've had some people say, well, I'm fighting sin so much in my life, and I've surprised them because I say, good! And they look at me like I've got three eyes. Good! It's good to fight sin, because if you weren't fighting sin, that means the Holy Spirit's not there, you don't have a new nature in Christ, and you're not bothered with it. Those who are not saved are not bothered by their sin. Oh, they recognize that they've done wrong, but they're not bothered by their sin the way Christians are. And so when we find that we're in a battle, that's a good thing. And one of the places that Satan wants to stop us the most, and our own sinful selves want to stop us the most, is in prayer. We read in Galatians 5, 16 and 17, walk by the Spirit. and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do." to do. Now I would jump right from there to Romans 7 where Paul says exactly the same thing. That he himself, toward the end of his ministry, cannot do the things that he wants to do and the very things he wants to do he finds himself doing. The disciples fell asleep three times while Jesus was praying in agony less than a stone's throw away. It had been a stressful night for them. Not to mention for him, but for them. And the next day remained an unknown to them at this point. Don't laugh, we wouldn't have fared any better. Okay? I mean, think of it. They started the day off getting everything ready for the Passover meal. Then they were informed that somebody was going to betray Jesus. Then they went through that solemn first Lord's Supper. And then Jesus leads them out saying He was going to be betrayed and they go to the garden and they're tired. Rather than chastising them as He could have, Jesus seems to be teaching them through their weakness. And He's teaching us as well. The whole of the sanctifying process that is the Christian life, once we've been born again, is seeing the Holy Spirit work in us that spiritual strength that we need to do the things that don't come naturally to us. I want you to understand something very important. Your Christian life is not your first nature. It is your second nature. that God is seeking by His Holy Spirit to work in us to make our Christian existence our first nature. But our second nature keeps coming in there and reasserting itself. And I hope as we mature in the faith, we find that our new nature in Christ is becoming more and more our first nature. By God's design, The inner strength of His people as they prepare to enter heaven is much greater, is much greater than when they first came to salvation. Now, I haven't asked, and I don't suppose, but I suspect that if you've been a believer for a long time, that you see a difference in your way of life, your outlook on life, and your knowledge of Scripture, and your submission to the Word, and your love for the Savior, more so now than you did earlier in your life. That's because the Holy Spirit's growing you. We're still not perfect, though. But hopefully we can see a profound Godward growth that can only be attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit Himself in our inner beings. This is why prayer is so difficult, because it emanates from the inside of a Christian out, instead of an outward act. You can be praying right now, you probably are, Lord, let him think. And that's okay. Did you know that I can only speak so fast, but you can think about 300 times faster than I can speak? Did you know that? Which means that you could be praying that, you could be praying for the situation in the Ukraine or Israel, and you could be thinking about how great it is that so-and-so was picked for whatever cabinet position, and isn't it terrible that Alabama lost a football game last night and still be paying attention to what I'm saying? It's an amazing thing, the human brain. That's okay. But prayer is difficult because it emanates from our new nature on the inside and it says, you need to be wholly involved. Your new self in Christ and your old self resist each other. But that's exactly what God wants for us is to be growing in prayer and dependence on Him. We even recognize, you've heard this phrase, we even recognize those who are far ahead of us in this prayer journey, we call them prayer warriors. Isn't that right? Have you ever heard of that? Sure. If there is anything the church on earth needs more of right now, it's more faithful prayer warriors. Not a thing in the church happens, not a single foot is advanced in the kingdom of God unless it is bathed in faithful prayer. We will never know until we get to heaven how much effect faithful Christians praying accomplished. What? Prayer is given in our passage today as the answer to resisting temptation. Jesus said that. And so it is. So let's seek to move in the direction of resisting temptation through prayer and becoming more and more people of prayer. I want us to be people of the word. Yes. But I also want prayer. By the way, it's not prayer that changes things. It's the object of our prayer that changes things. And it's God that changes people of prayer. And only those who are in Christ can truly pray. For God gives ear to their prayers. They are his children, redeemed by his son, Jesus. Whom do we talk to the most? I talk to my spouse the most. Good. How does that stack up to how much we talk to God? Do we talk to ourselves? Do we talk to our co-workers? Why don't we seek to make our most prolific conversational partner God Himself? He dwells in our hearts. He is always with us. He is always ready to listen. And He always perfectly understands our trials and our triumphs. Makes sense, doesn't it? You know, the only thing that stands in the way of us doing that is remembering to do it and then doing it. I like the Nike approach. do it. As we read in Proverbs 18, 24, a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. This, of course, is God himself. Some of you have brothers that you love and you're close to, and that's wonderful, and so do I. And I like to think that I can go to my brothers, by the way, my brother-in-law, who's sitting And I can be honest with them and open with them and I can call them any time during the day. Aren't you glad I don't do that, Mike? And I can be honest enough to say I've been wrong and honest enough to say I need your help. Well, if I can say that with my earthly brothers and my brother-in-law, can't I then say it with my God? That's what we need to do. If you want to be a prayer warrior, practice. But you have to do it intentionally and you have to practice every day. So let's in review learn the lessons that we have been taught in the Mount of Olives and this passage in Mark. We need to seek to know our own hearts and live accordingly. Let's trust in His promises more than we trust in our feelings. You know, about 6 o'clock in the morning, I just don't feel like going out the front door to drive a school bus. I'm sorry. Got good kids and, you know, fortunately it's less of a stressful thing than it has been in the past, but I still don't like getting up in the morning. I'm not a morning person. Amen, okay? But we need to do what we're called to do. We need to live our lives in total dependence on Him and not depend on the way we feel because He is faithful. and he will teach us something by that. Let's seek to be found obedient to God and to his leading, not because we check off boxes. Folks, if that's the method that you want to gauge yourself, fine. But there comes a point where we need to have as a second nature, something that we don't even think about, that we do the right thing because it's the right thing because God gave it to us. And when asked why do we do that, say, because God commands it and I love Him enough to do what He says. Who's loved us more than God? Who's loved us more than God? Can we ignore His desires for us if He has loved us more than anybody else? Can we pay no attention to His commands? Well, let's grow in our love for Him and then in our desire to obey Him. But finally, let us all become prayer warriors. Let's all practice prayer. Let's all work at it. Do you pray for me? I'm praying for you. Do you pray for one another? That's what it means to be in a family, doesn't it? I bet you pray for your children and for your grandchildren, perhaps even for your parents if they're still here. The family that we have in this room will last into eternity. It's worth some time. And as we are in His Word, we will get the answers from His Holy Spirit as to what we are to do. If we indeed make up the house of the Lord, as He says, and His house is a house of prayer, should we not then be a people of prayer? Yes. I know that when good news strikes or bad news strikes, The first thing we want to do is pick up the phone and call somebody and say, oh, this is terrible. This has happened. And I appreciate that. But while we're dialing on the phone, we need to be praying, Lord, you know what's going on. I know some of you may not remember 9-11. I do. And that morning, I got at least three phone calls from folks that said, can you believe what's happening? Why would God let this happen? God must have been taken by surprise. He wasn't taken by surprise at all. He ordained it. Is God cruel? No. But He does have a plan and He is in control. Therefore, let's practice the prayer of submission. May the Lord remind us of these things as the week progresses. And as we are reminded of them, let us give profound and deep-seated thanks to the God who has loved us and who has saved us into eternity by the sacrifice of his son Jesus for us. Let's pray together, shall we? Father, thank you that you are indeed ours, that you have given us new life, that you have saved us, though we don't deserve it. Father, we pray that as we go into this week and as a nation give thanks to you, that you would be pleased to find true worshipers, that you would find a thankful people, that you would indeed know that we are thankful to our God for our salvation and for all that has flowed from that. For we know that is the greatest gift and we thank you for it. Be with us now, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.