What a joy to worship together. Good morning. Welcome to BCF. We're so glad you're here. Those in the auditorium, in a fellowship hall, down in the dungeon, and 160 outside, online. What a privilege to celebrate together the wonder that Jesus paid it all. And because of Christ, because of his power, because of his love, because of his resurrection, we are free from sin and beloved, adopted into his family forevermore. If you're new with us or exploring Christianity, a special welcome to you. If you've got any questions, you've got the elder's text number or I'll be here after the service, love to speak with you, but may the Lord bless you as you seek to know him. You know, one of the wonders of being a part of the Christian life is that all of God's children are uniquely and wonderfully made. And it's amazing how we're so different. There are some of you that from your new birth have this amazing ability to share Christ. And the gift of evangelism is obvious as you connect with people and talk about the gospel, just part of who you are. There are others that are more the academic kind. When you came to Christ, boy, your desire is to dig into the scriptures and to find gold nuggets there. Maybe you know some Hebrew and some Greek and you're getting in, and then you want to share the truth of God's word with other people. Some of you are God's servants and it's just beautiful to see the gift of service and your desire to be Jesus' hands and feet and to care for others and to serve in so many practical ways. It's just part of your new nature in Christ. But if we did a survey of all of our BCF family, I suspect one of the areas that all of us might feel some degree of weakness is with regard to prayer. All of us would like to be more consistent, more devoted to prayer, but it just seems like when we have either short or long time set aside for prayer, other things so easily crowd in. And we wonder, what is the place of prayer in our relationship with God? What difference does it make to spend time with Jesus? What good does it really do? How does prayer fit into our relationship with God and our impact as His servants? I hope this morning gives you some solid answers to these questions. My message in a nutshell is this. Prayer is God's path for prevailing power in the Christian life. Prayer is God's path for prevailing power in our spiritual life. Today we look into one of the most sublime and difficult events in Jesus' life. We'll glance into a holy, dark hour of agony as Jesus wrestles with His Father in His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane in His preparation for His march to the cross. As in no other place, we'll see our Lord, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief in a time of such sorrow that he had not known before in all his eternal life. Please turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles to Luke chapter 22, verse 39 through 46. Luke chapter 22, verse 39 through 46. Read along as I read God's holy word. And he came out and proceeded, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives. And the disciples also followed him. When he arrived at the place, he said to them, pray, that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and began to pray, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done. Now an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him and being in agony, he was praying very fervently and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground. When he rose from prayer, he came to his disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow. And he said to them, why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation. Let's pray. Father, how we thank you for this moment of time to pause and to ponder your beloved son in this moment of agony as he wrestled to embrace your perfect will for his life. And we pray as we dig into the scriptures that your Holy Spirit would minister to our hearts, that you would change the posture of our hearts. Our dedication to prayer would flow out of an understanding of our desperate need to be so connected with Christ, that Your will is our will. Your delight, our delight. Teach us for Your glory and for our good, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. This morning, I'd like us to consider first the setting, and then the struggle, and then the strength of prayer. We'll look at the setting, the struggle, and then the strength of prayer. So let's begin by considering the setting here of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. You remember, Jesus had just finished his Passover supper with his disciples. By that era in Jewish history, there were two optional evenings for the Passover. So Jesus and his disciples celebrated on the first evening. that time together. And it was there at that Passover, that evening, that Jesus made a colossal shift. Before that time, the Passover was a feast remembering God's deliverance from Egypt and his carrying them into the promised land. And here Jesus makes this shift and leaves that aside and takes us to a whole new covenant reality, a reality which we now celebrate as the Lord's Supper. And in this celebration, in this new covenant celebration, which I invite all of you every Sunday in room 160, we gather together to remember, to celebrate this remembrance of God's goodness. We celebrate no longer deliverance from Egypt, but now deliverance from sin. and from the power of sin that once held us enslaved. And now, Jesus carrying us in the promise of eternal life with Him in His Father's house forevermore. And so Jesus has now made this shift on that night, and as they wrap up the meal, the disciples sang a hymn from the Psalms, and then he moved purposely down from that upper room, across the Kidron Valley, and up the other hill, the Mount of Olives. He moved on a very tight schedule. His appointed hour was approaching, and he headed for a place that was well-known to all of his disciples. You may remember when arranging for the Last Supper, Jesus did this in a secretive fashion. He didn't want even the twelve to know where they would meet, lest Judas disturb that special time by his entrusting the Son of God And so, you remember, Jesus told only two disciples to find a man carrying a water jug, follow that man, he'll take you to the place, prepare for us there. And so in that secret place, Jesus celebrates the Last Supper with his disciples. But now Jesus goes to a location that everybody knew. And you remember, as Judas left that evening meal, Jesus said to him, what you do, do quickly. And so the clock was ticking. He had to be arrested that night to be tried in the darkness and into the early morning. He would be sentenced to death and driven like a bloody beast up Calvary's Hill. Midday Friday, they would nail him to the old rugged cross. So crushed and beaten beyond recognition, he would die in but a few hours. As the perfect Lamb of God, he died the same time that the other Passover lambs were being slain outside Jerusalem. He had to be buried before nightfall on Friday afternoon. You see, he needed to be dead and in the tomb part of the day Friday, all of Saturday, to be able to rise again on the third day as he promised to his disciples. He conquered death sin and hell, and he rose again, which is why now, both here and across the globe, Jesus followers, those who love Jesus, gather to celebrate the wonder, the power, the victory of the resurrection. Jesus and his men quietly entered that garden. Matthew 26, 36 says, the garden was called Gethsemane. He left eight of his disciples near the entrance of the garden and continued in with Peter, James, and John. Listen to what he told those three men. Matthew 26, 38. My heart is deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and keep watch with me. Then Luke tells us, he went about his stone's throw away, knelt down to pray. There are some battles in the Christian life that must be fought alone. Even though he longed for Peter, James, and John to be near, to be in some sense with him in the struggle, this fight he had to face alone with his father. We've all had moments like that in our spiritual journeys. I'm glad that many aspects of our Christian life are meant to be shared face-to-face or shoulder-to-shoulder, but there are struggles, battles, elements in our Christian lives that we must face alone. And this is one of those moments for Jesus. He knelt down to pray. At that time, the standard posture for prayer was to be standing. But because of the burden that Jesus was under, he knelt down. Mark tells us later on that because of the weight, he actually fell on his face and was there on the ground. but Christ there kneeling was declaring his weakness, his humility, his submission. I suggest if it's not your custom, that you develop the custom of regularly kneeling before the Lord. These are such good things to remember as we spend time with God. there in these final hours before Jesus' greatest earthly battle, He struggled. But before He went to pray, notice His words to His disciples. Pray that you may not enter into temptation. This is the setting for Jesus' struggle. And these are His words. And so, even as He spoke to those disciples, we need to heed Jesus' words pray that we might not enter into temptation. This here we see is the struggle of prayer, the struggle of prayer. This command from God highlights several realities. First, Jesus makes a direct connection between our battle with temptation and our practice of prayer. The fact is that temptation for the Christian is a given. It is an unavoidable element of being a child of God. We've got to expect temptation and to prepare preemptively for the fight. So powerful prayer begins with expectation. As a young Christian, I remember chatting with one of our student leaders in our campus ministry. We were talking about some of our struggles and he mentioned glibly, you know, I only sin when I'm tempted. And I didn't know how to respond to that comment, but somehow it didn't sit right. And yet here we see Jesus answer to that very struggle that all of us face. He says, pray. that you may not enter into temptation. That brother was repeatedly falling into patterns of sin because he didn't prepare preemptively for the attack that temptation would have on him. He didn't pray ahead of time, preparing his heart to be steadfast and strong in the midst of the battle that is sure to come. Matthew captures a few more of Jesus' words where he said, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Mind you, Jesus didn't give us this caveat in order to excuse the weakness of our flesh and a practice of sin, but rather that we would be aware of our necessity to pray. Hebrews 12, 12, God tells us, therefore, lift up your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Do you hear? God's call to us is to get things together, to pick straight paths for our feet, that rather than falling into sin and temptation, we would experience His strength and go from strength to strength in increasing victory in our joyful submission to the will of God, in our battle against the old sinful passions. to punctuate our need for prayer. Jesus steps away and engages in prayer himself. Here, he would face one of the greatest trials that he would ever endure in his eternal life. He knew what was about to take place and he struggled. How did Jesus prepare for this greatest of conflict? Jesus set himself aside to pray. And in the same way, When we're faced with conflict and struggle, how much more do we need to set aside time to seek the Lord, to seek His strength in prayer? Jesus was aware of the struggle. He was aware of what awaited Him. the abuse, the scorn, the pain, the isolation. When he would become sin on our behalf, he knew the moment had come when Isaiah's prophecy would be fulfilled. He would be pierced through for our transgressions. He'd be crushed for our iniquity. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him. And by his scourging, we would be healed. Satan tempted Jesus to avoid such pain, to follow the rest of humanity and to put self above his father's will. He suggested Jesus simply take a shortcut to seek his own glory rather than the command he had from his father. The deceiver once again would try to convince the perfect man that he would be better off not fulfilling the father's mission to which he had been sent. And so, in that garden, Jesus faces a galactic prayer struggle. As the last Adam, he would need to decide whether to prioritize self or to submit to the will of his Father. In the first garden, you remember, Adam chose to give up life and to become subject to death. Jesus had to embrace death in order to restore us to life. The first Adam offered up union with God in order to stay connected with his wife. Jesus would offer up union with God so that we might be reunited with him forever. When first Adam rebelled against the Lord in hope of selfish gain, Jesus had to submit to his Father's will and take the cruel penalty for our rebellion. Adam ignorantly left the light and entered into darkness. Jesus knowingly, purposefully left the light that he might vanquish the darkness that had kept all of humanity in chains since the beginning of human history. Now, this is a mystery because at one level, Jesus' struggle was very different from our own. You remember He is forever holy, holy, holy God. So it's reasonable for Him to struggle to embrace our filthy sin. We've become so accustomed to our sin, it's a struggle to accept God's holiness. Jesus always lived in joyful submission under the authority of his Father. He struggled with the thought of taking on the vileness of all rebellion. We've lived in rebellion all our lives. So we struggle to submit to the Father's goodwill. Jesus breathed the pure air of heaven's delight, so he struggled to inhale the stench of death and the rottenness of our willful rebellion. We've spent our lives swimming in this cesspool of a world, and so we find the pure air of God's goodness like trying to breathe at 15,000 feet. Although Jesus struggled in his own way, it was not thereby less painful. Listen to what Hebrews 5, 7 tells us about this very moment. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplication with loud cries and tears. Loud cries and tears. He was brokenhearted just considering this horrible transaction. Again, Mark reminds us he was grieved to the point of death. Luke tells us Jesus knelt, but again, Mark comments, he fell with that weight on his face to the ground. Matthew recounts how he got up and went back to his disciples and stirred them from sleep and asked if they might wait with him in prayer. Jesus woke them and hoped that they would be with him. And yet, as he returned to prayer, they returned to sleep. Their lack of engagement only intensified his sense of loneliness. He was reminded on top of bearing the guilt, filth, and shame of our sin, he would endure that alone. He soon remembered Psalm 22, which he later cried from the cross. He was left alone by his closest friends, but soon to be left alone by his own father. He would cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He would endure the ultimate loneliness. His father would turn his back on him and Jesus would experience the full weight of hell and damnation. In this tragic mystery, the son drank the cup of God's wrath to the very bottom. It was the only way that we might be free from eternal destruction. These are mysteries we can never grasp. And yet, how sad that we, too, like those disciples, when called to pray, how many times have I fallen asleep, or my mind wandered off, rather than being with Christ in prayer? And so, there is Christ on His feet, prostrate beneath an olive tree in the garden. His prayer battle was literally crushing him. The pain and anguish were draining out his life. I suspect that Jesus would have died right there of a broken heart, but an angel came to strengthen him. Curiously, we only see angels in very few moments in Jesus' life. They were present around the mystery of the incarnation. Then you remember after 40 days of fasting and a face-to-face, head-on battle with the evil one, after that conflict, an angel came to strengthen him. But here, in the midst of his prayer battle, here at this moment, an angel is sent from heaven to strengthen him. The angel didn't wait until the battle was over. Jesus would have been dead if not for that supernatural touch. And with that strength, Jesus prayed more fervently. Always the physician. Luke notes that as Jesus continued, his sweat became like drops of blood falling upon the ground. This is a rare physical condition called hematidrosis, which under the most extreme pain and stress, the capillaries in the forehead dilate so much that they actually burst. And then the blood pours forth, mingled with the sweat. Jesus there, sweating blood as he wrestled to embrace the will of his father, to bear our sin, to take our place. There, Jesus drenched in his own sweat, in his own blood, in agony. Let me add a sidebar here. One of the many ways that the Bible affirms its veracity is by how very frank and understated it is. The disciples, who sure could have wanted to look better than to be there sleeping as Jesus is wrestling with his father alone, are there, recorded. And speaking of Jesus, Luke says that he was in agony. That word agonia refers to the final pains of death. This is the only time that word occurs in all the New Testament. It is only here that God mentions a man struggling with deathly pain. Only as Jesus prays in the garden, fighting a moral battle, a mortal battle, to embrace the Father's will and to be crushed in our place. Talk about understated. So remarkable. is this picture. And when we see remarkable things in the word of God, don't think it's because of exaggeration or hyperbole. God simply states the truth. And the truth is here. Jesus was being crushed under the weight of the contemplation of bearing God's wrath and being separated from his father. at the door of death. And yet the father did not allow his son there to die in the garden because he had an appointment with death that would be fulfilled on the following day. The author of Hebrews hints at Jesus' prayer when he calls us to a deeper sense of obedience. In Hebrews 12, for God says, for you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. We all talk about wanting to be more like Jesus, but to do so means we need to learn to hate our sin like Jesus. When we get a sense of the pain and the payment He made to adopt us into His family, we'll desire to please Him in deeper ways. When we see that even God's Son needed to pray in order to align His will with the Father's, we'll have a greater awareness of our need to pray, to overcome the pull of the world, our own bent inclinations, and the deceiving voice of the evil one. Jesus shows us that prayer is the path to prevailing power in our Christian life. So we've seen the setting, the struggle. Now look at God's strength through prayer. Again, supremely understated. Note how Luke makes his transition. He says, when he rose from prayer, The battle was over. His human heart was tuned with the Father's perfect will, no matter the cost, no matter the pain, the shame, the grief, or the loss. Jesus has set his face to embrace the cross, to endure the wrath, to drink the cup to the bottom for our sake. Paul says, for the joy set before Him, for the joy of pleasing His Father, and for the joy of having you as His child and as His brother forevermore. Jesus endured in prayer, and He broke through. And as the perfect teacher, He wasn't remiss to remind His disciples again of the lesson they should have learned with Him there in the garden. And yet this class session was just about over. So he rises them and tells them again, why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation. What just happened? Some theologians say that this demonstrates Jesus can't be divine because divinity could never oppose God's will as Jesus did there in the garden. but we affirm just the contrary. His struggle reveals three things. First, it proves our desperate need to wrestle with God in prayer in order to break through to the power of the cross. Second, it shows Jesus' abhorrence of embracing the sin that we so lightly live in. And thirdly, it reminds us of his broken hearted agony, that Jesus hated the thought of being separated from his union of love that he'd enjoyed with the father from time before time into eternity, a union that we leave and Adam left for a piece of fruit. Jesus prayed through to release. Your prayer for God's holy power will bring a similar breakthrough. This sort of breakthrough enables us to live in the power of the cross, to live in union with Christ in both his death to sin and his resurrection to newness of life. You see, prayer is as much about God changing us as it is about us seeking God to change the situation around us. It is as much about molding us to embody God's nature as it is about us seeking God to mold our circumstances or the world around us to His will or to our own. How many American believers are wringing their hands because if there ever was a time this land honored the creator, those days seem long past. There are believers who are angry and pull away from their neighbors who deny God, rather than in prayer seeking God's power to engage and to be the friend of sinners like Jesus was, oh, Christian, there are many who need you to be their friend, to show them the power of the cross. How often we ask God for our will to be done, and when He doesn't respond, we suspect either He's powerless, or He's off on vacation, or He doesn't really care about us. Instead, Jesus invites us to watch and pray so that we'll find strength and faith to trust in Him whatever the circumstances that His sovereign will provides. Remember how Jesus taught us to pray. He taught us to begin with praise, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. He taught us to pray for his will, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He taught us to pray for our needs. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts. But you remember what He also taught us to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Did you hear that? Why? Oh, why? Would Jesus instruct us to include that sort of prayer in our daily requests? It's because Jesus wants your life to be an ever-increasing demonstration of His power in your weakness, of His light in your darkness, of His other-centered affection rather than your selfish inclination. This is the power of the cross. This is why Jesus wrestled, bled, and died. He is not opposed to us struggling to the point of shedding blood in our striving against sin. Luke voices Jesus' prayer, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done. The other evangelists remind us that Jesus prayed this over and over. Two parts to this prayer, a simple request and a willingness to embrace the Father's will, whatever that would be. Here we see the path to power in prayer is our wrestling with God until His will becomes our will, until we reach that point of humility and submission, or we can pray, Lord, not my will, but Your will be done. Let's go a bit deeper here. Many believers understand prayer as basically asking or telling God what we want so that He will answer according to our will. But Jesus' prayer demonstrates the very opposite. He shares His heart's desire with humility and struggles until... He comes to the place that His will is conformed to the Father's. It was through this struggling prayer that His heart moved from a hesitation, an ambivalence, a resistance, until He could heartily embrace His Father's will and do what He had come to do. Now, there are many things that get in the way of this sort of prayer. And thus, how often we lack the power that Jesus promises. But be mindful, if we fail to pray, if we fail to take advantage of the means of grace that God has provided, don't be surprised when you lack power in your struggle against sin. Don't be surprised if your walk with God is cold and dry, like hay. You know, an Olympic athlete may desire to compete in the Olympics, and yet if she doesn't train, she doesn't receive good coaching, if all that she eats is junk food, the likelihood of being an Olympian is terribly small. So why would we think it would be any different in our own spiritual lives? The Apostle Paul makes it clear that gospel is not a matter of words, but of power. The Gospel is God's power for salvation, not only about deliverance from the eternal consequence of our sin, but also deliverance from sin's dominion today, and victory, release from the guilt and shame, the loneliness and pain that once ruled in our lives. Maybe you've been a long time around Christianity, but perhaps you've not experienced prayer. Perhaps you've been in this church or another church and you wonder, where's the power? Could be that you've not yet been saved. Because in order to be saved, we need to come to the place in our own lives where we're actually willing to say, Lord, not my will, but your will be done. Perhaps it is that because you haven't trusted Christ, the Holy Spirit has not entered your life. And so there's no power. You see, when we believe in Christ and place our trust in Him, the Holy Spirit comes and indwells us and becomes that power source that enables us to live a new life, a life in the power of the cross. It is He who grants victory over besetting sin and delivers us, that we, rather than seeking to simply appease God, it is our delight to please God. A couple of final applications to grow in prayer. It may be ideal that you meet with other Christians and learn from others this dynamic of prayer. BCF has a morning prayer time from eight to nine daily through the week. You'd be welcome to join. The men have prayer the second and fourth Saturday of the month in the morning. Get together, have a little breakfast and pray. Men are invited. And we're currently going through, as we heard the announcement, the Mission Nexus devotional. They're out at the welcome desk. Take one of those and join us in prayer and asking God to conform us to His desire to be Christ's ambassadors near and far. For more information, contact the office or the text number for the elders. But the Lord wants us to be people of prayer, to be people of power. And he has shown us here in the garden that prayer is God's path for prevailing power in the spiritual life. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. for your word. We thank you for the privilege we have to cast our cares upon you to pray. And Lord, we'd ask that we would become people who demonstrate the power of the cross by our life of constant dependence with you through prayer. We ask you with thanksgiving in Jesus name. Amen.