Let's turn to Mark's Gospel and chapter 14 and the passage I read to you. In verse 35, Mark 14, 35, Jesus went forward a little and fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass from him. He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible. Unto thee take away this cup from me, nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. He had a very accessible life, didn't he? He lived with a mother and father and was raised and then he had these half-brothers and sisters and he worked with his father and they made doors and window frames and fences and he delivered them to the people of Nazareth and grew in favor with them. His life unfolded from day to day and many of those days were just ordinary days. His teenagers, we know nothing about them. The days of his twenties, we know nothing about them. It must have been just very ordinary, beautiful days. No particular drama or trauma. He grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. And then there were moments of crisis. And there were moments of great spiritual significance, weren't there? His baptism, his sermon on the mount, his temptations in the wilderness, the raising of Lazarus, the feeding of 5,000, the upper room, the first Lord's supper. And then this event that you are all so familiar with in the Garden of Gethsemane. And I want to reflect for a moment on the great lessons that God offers in this narrative. Because it seems to me that even at the most pragmatic level, a number of the problems we have as Christian congregations and our relationships to one another are caused by our lack of understanding the person of Jesus Christ, his character, his behavior, the model he has left us. You know, Peter says, he's left us a model. that we should walk in his steps. The good King Wenceslas says to the page, as he's stumbling through the snow, put your steps where mine have been through the snow. And Jesus wants us to be like him. We are followers of an enfleshed Jesus. We're followers of an involved Jesus in weddings and feasts and funerals. with friends and speaking to other people about the gospel. An emotional Jesus, a humiliated Jesus, a serving, a despised Jesus, a Jesus who cried, a Jesus who sweat blood. And all those facts are enormously important when we come to evaluate our own lives and discover some weaknesses, some absences, or thank God for some of the strengths that we didn't realize that God had given us as God is shaping us and forming us and helping us as we come to choose our lifestyle. What are the things that move us that we love? We can laugh at and we can groan and say, woe is me. that all those things are formed because here is the example of Jesus Christ and we want to follow him. So we have to go back constantly to Matthew's gospel and Mark's and Luke's and John's and see Jesus under pressure and how he's handling it, how he's responding. And in all those narratives, there's nothing more astonishing, nothing more magnificent, nothing more challenging Nothing more devastating than what I read to you tonight of Our Lord in Gethsemane. It's of enormous meaningfulness for what it is to live as a Christian in this life that goes by like a weaver's shuttle. Tonight I want us to consider then, firstly, the Lord praying. That's my first point, the Lord praying. Going a little further, He fell to the ground and prayed, we are told. He prayed, and we are told, three times that He prayed. Now, why is that worth us considering? It seems to us so obvious. Well, surely for this thing, the very fact itself that he prayed. That he prayed. You know what prayer is? Prayer is impotence grasping at omnipotence. And here is God the Son praying. Christ in the reality of his human impotence reaching out towards omnipotence. His praying is the single greatest indication of the reality of his dependantness as a man of his own independent human sense that with the limited created resources that were at his disposal, he couldn't get by. He couldn't handle the situation that was looming up, that was going to happen the next day. By his wits and his physical strength, he couldn't cope with it. And I think we must drive it home and ram it home and offer now a sense of weakness. We sit down after the phone call and think of the implications of this. How can I cope with what I've learned today? Well, that's not a sinful response, you know. That's a human response. That's the response of a creature. living in a groaning, fallen world. It's a reminder to us, if he felt he couldn't bear this load by himself, he couldn't climb this mountain by himself, he couldn't cross this river by himself, he couldn't overcome this trial, by himself except by now strong cryings and tears to God. How can you hope to get through this week? How can you hope to survive? And the greater trials that lie before us, the one great trial at the end of our days, how do you think you will be able to survive? How can you go to God and say, it's okay, I'll handle it? And never come to God with a crushing sense of your own sense of dependence and need, your own impotence. Because when Christ is praying, he's saying in the most eloquent fashion possible, there's no way in my naked and my unaided humanness I can carry this. I can face this cross and the sledgehammer nailing my hands and feet to the cross and the spear and the mockery. I can't finish the work that God has given me to do without divine help given me. I can't bear this load by myself. I can't emerge from this trial without you helping me. He is the enfleshment of all the abilities of God's grace. When he spoke, the winds and waves obeyed him. He could say, Lazarus, come forth, and he could raise the dead. And yet he is praying. And doesn't it say, it doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian, it doesn't matter your eminence, your wisdom, it doesn't matter your position in the gospel church, the number, the quality of your gifts, the length of time you or I have been a Christian, there's no way that you and I ever are going to emerge into a situation when we become spiritually self-sufficient and spiritually independent? No way. There's no way you can face any day without praying. There's no way you can carry any load without praying. There's no day you can climb any mountain without praying or any task that you know has to be done. And you can only do it with a sense of, without you I can do it. I can't do it. Without you I can do nothing at all. I don't mean that we develop a sort of prayer life like they do, Christian mystics and write books about it, that it seems an end in itself. I'm not talking about that. But I'm saying this, you can only survive as a Christian with a realistic view of your own need, your own weakness, your own limitations, your own impotence. Every load is too big. Every burden too heavy. Every temptation too strong. Every privilege is too great. You need God. I need Him. I need Thee. Oh, I need Thee every hour. I need Thee to sing it from our hearts. Here is Jesus Christ. He never failed. Whatever task God gave Him to do, He did it. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. He had the most marvelous charismata on a human level. He had more right than any other creature to pretend to be independent, to be the captain of his fate and the master of his soul. And yet, here he is, felt impotence, reaching out to grasp omnipotence. And then, I want you to notice the earnestness with which he prayed. He falls to the ground. In fact, he threw himself on the ground. God, I must go to God now. And threw himself on the ground. And there was this prostration of earnestness. And we know from other accounts of Gethsemane that his sweat was like drops of blood. the spiritual battle he was entering registered itself on his very physique, on his body. So, that's my first point, he prayed. My second point, and I can only see something of it here, but my second point is this, the fact that it was not God's will to hear his prayer. Praying earnestly for what God didn't intend to give. Now sometimes we get into spiritual troubles and doubts and so on because we think God isn't listening to us when we pray. And that's an old problem. It's a biblical problem. It's the problem the Apostle Paul had. He had a thorn in the flesh, and it throbbed, and it distracted him, and it weakened him. And he could just imagine, oh, what a more vital and effective pastor and evangelist and letter writer and counselor he would be if only God would remove this thorn in the flesh. And so he went to God and he poured it out before God. Take this thorn in the flesh from me. Nothing happened. God not listening. He went again and rolled it out before God. This thorn in the flesh, look what I could do, Lord, for you, for the kingdom. If only you would take it away. Nothing happened. For her time, he went to God and he poured it out for him. He besought the Lord thrice to take away the thorn in the flesh. Now, am I going to say, well, he was a very unspiritual man, wasn't he? I'm not going to say that, am I? He ought to have known that the thorn in the flesh was from God. It was given to him, a messenger of Satan, but given to him. He ought to have said, oh, praise the Lord for it. No hint of that exists at all. We have this man, this creature, this saved sinner, and he's expressing his creatureliness, he's shrinking, the painfulness of what he's going through, the longing, the things might be different, that he might escape from what God has given to him, what God has done for him at this time. What is God's will for him and what he longs might not be God's will for him. And in that passion and in that earnestness of importunity, He is praying that the will that he is confronted with, the will of God that he is looking into this thorn deep in his flesh, that God might take it away, that God who gave it might remove it now. It's enough that God's will might be different from what he dreads and what he has reason to believe. This is going to be something I've got to live with for the rest of my life. You see, you know what you say. You say, this is what you say. You say, the moment you know something to be the will of God, then it's easy. Yes, that's what you say. That's what you say. Well, it might be easy for some people, but for most of us here tonight, the whole glory of Gethsemane is telling us the will of God wasn't easy for our Savior, Jesus Christ. Not easy even for Him. Any more than the thorn in the flesh was easy for the Apostle Paul. It's no use just saying, come on now, Paul, come on, pull yourself together now. This is God's will, isn't it? It still hurt. And there are times in our lives when that's our testimony. It's God's will, but it hurts. It really hurts. It hurts bad. And we shrink from it. Any possibility of another cup, Lord, a cup that doesn't contain a thorn in the flesh. I must confess today I don't feel as bad as I used to when I find God's will hard to bear, when I find nursing someone with Alzheimer's quite a challenge. And when I meet God's struggling people and they say, brother, this is hard, you know, because it is hard. God's will is sometimes hard. It was hard for Christ. And I'm not surprised when people go through times in their lives and they plead with God to change things. Lord bend the universe. Lord, make things different. Jesus in the garden, throwing himself to the ground and saying, is it possible, Lord, that I can have another cup which doesn't contain what's going to happen tomorrow? I need that cup very badly. And he is the archetypal man. Luther calls him the proper man. He is God's great definition of what a man should be. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. And oh, it's so comforting to me to see he didn't find it easy. He doesn't find automatic comfort from saying, well, this is God's will, so praise the Lord. He doesn't take it in his stride. He's praying. He's praying earnestly. But then you see this. He's also praying submissively. He saw that great phrase, nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done. Well, that's marvelous too, isn't it? What are we seeing here? We are seeing two wills that are not coincidental. God's will for him, Paul's will for himself. And the two are not fitting as yet. That what Christ wanted, what Christ desired, what Christ longed for wasn't exactly what was in the cup. There is submission. It's not a pretense. He's not pretending, that's really what I want. But he is saying, this is so painful. The prospect is so horrible. The hurt is so strong. I can hardly bear thinking of it. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. I'd love things to be different, if I could only change them, Lord. And, you know, sometimes we find one stretch of the Christian pilgrimage Boy, the thorn in the flesh seems to be right in the sole of our foot. And every time we put our foot down to take another step, ouch! And it's tough. Tough at home. It's tough with the people we live with. It's tough in our calling. Tough in the church. And so on. And there's a voice saying to us, you can't be right with God. This is God's will for you. And you should enjoy it when you know that it's God's will. I do not for a moment believe that Jesus Christ enjoyed Calvary. It was pain, but he was submissive to the great love of God for us that had given him as his bride a company of sinners more than any man can number, and that he'd be given the charge to redeem them. to take their condemnation into Himself, to bear their burden, their anathema on the cross. The third thing I want to say to you is He was answered. His prayer was answered. And how it was answered. It's amazing that He prays and prays so earnestly and prays so submissively. And it's amazing the way God answers. You'll see it in Mark's Gospel in front of you. You'll see it in Luke's Gospel, 22-43. There appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. Strengthening him. He brought the strength of heaven to Jesus on the floor. in the garden. You contemplate that angel now. One of our theologians said that after he had gone to heaven, after he had seen Jesus, he wanted to see the angel that comforted his Lord. There's this one, and they all came before God this day. They gathered, and he gave each one his instructions, what he was to do. He said, there's Jeff Thomas coming from Chiswick down here to Hailsham. Give him a safe journey here and back. And then he said, and there are a couple of dozen people who are going to be there morning and evening. Bring them there. And some of them are uncertain about coming. They don't feel so well. Bring them, help them, bless them. You do what you can now, my servants. And the angels have been busy in bringing us here around the word of God tonight. And this angel, he said, now, I want you to comfort your Lord. You'll find him in a garden called Gethsemane. You'll find him lying on the floor, bathed in sweat and blood. You go and comfort him. Encourage your Creator. Speak words of strength and consolation into the ears of your Father in Heaven. Majorly, majorly. Majorly, of course. He's there. in the garden. There was no more amazing mission an angel was ever given or has been given ever since than that mission that day. Now, you want me to tell you how we did it? And I don't know. I don't know how we applied the strength of heaven to our Lord. I know I've been strengthened from heaven at times in my life. And I'm not sure how the Lord lifted me up. And you can say the same thing. Hugh Martin suggests that he adored him. That he said, you're a son of God, eternal, unchangeable. In your being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. The very God, the very God, in the beginning you were and are still, will be forevermore, loved by your father. Did he say that? Is that how he strengthened him? Or with two of his wings did he fly, and two of his wings he covered his eyes, and two of the wings he covered his feet, and he cried, holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, all the earth is filled with your glory. Did he use what Isaiah used? Was used for Isaiah when God showed him his greatness? Or did he just say to him, your father sent me here today to tell you how much he loved you? You're his beloved son. He's so pleased with everything you've done. There was never a creature given more honor as that angel sent to comfort his Lord. The fourth thing I want to say to you is that after the comfort of heaven entered his heart, Jesus was composed. Jesus was strong. Jesus was at peace. I want you to notice that. It's enough, he says, it's enough. I've tasted the power of this trial and temptation, it's enough. I know it's not going to be any worse than this. He's conquered it. All right? He's conquered it. The angel has strengthened him. He's ready for what lies ahead. Rise up, he says to them. Come on, boys. Come on, let's go. Let's go. He's gone through this struggle and he's faltering. He's not faltering sinfully. He's faltering humanly like we all do. at these great trials. And he goes forth then, he leads the three men, and he goes in the strength of an angel's comfort. He stands erect, his shoulders back, and he heads straight for Judas and the soldiers, and identifies himself. So they fall to the ground, and he receives the kiss. Here comes my betrayer, he says. And from that moment on in Mark's Gospel, Luke, John, you have a masterful Christ. We have the one when Judas comes, he's in control. When he stands before Herod, he's in control. When he stands before Pilate, when he stands before the Sanhedrin and the wretched Annas and Caiaphas, he's in control. He's fully composed. Let me encourage you to trust the Lord. When those great events come into your life, you will be composed, composed to speak to your children and grandchildren and your friends, who with their, our lisping, stammering tongues want to say, we're so sorry, we're so sorry. And you're composed. You say, thank you. And then the, is it the fifth thing I want to say to you? I want to speak to you now about the failure of the disciples. Patent spectacular failure. They take him to the garden to be with their savior, to assist him and comfort him and watch with him at every single step There is total failure. It's monumental. All right. First thing, they fail in spite of their position. Their office. These men are apostles. Peter, James, John. The most eminent. These are the three men who enter the room of Jairus' daughter and see him raised from the dead. These are the three he takes with him on the Mount of Transfiguration. The inner group. Now let me turn that in a number of ways. Shall I say this? The church expects too much from its leaders. Let me turn it this way. The leaders presume too much upon their status, as if our office could keep us. Both are true. Every church must know the people that lead you are human beings, vulnerable, falling, imperfect, sometimes overwhelmed, Every leader must know that for himself, that truth, that he's a stumbling man, that he's not an infallible man, he's fallible. He has human feelings and emotions. If he pretends otherwise, his whole personality will crack in the struggle that such dissimulation brings. The church must reckon with the creatureliness of its leaders, and the leaders must reckon on their own humanness. The office will not keep you. So let me say that, let me say this. They failed despite their privileges. They spent those years with the Lord. Three years, three years, night and day, everywhere. All the miracles we read of, they were eyewitnesses of his majesty. We're so naive, you know, we're so naive. We measure preachers, evangelists, by the behavior of their converts, by the behavior of their members. And we think whenever there's a Bible preaching ministry, and there's the Word of God taught and applied, it's going to show itself in some impeccable lifestyle among all those who listen to it. We think that. Well, these people had been three years, a thousand days with Jesus. Was it through lack of teaching that they failed? No. Was it through a lack of an example they failed? No. Was it through pastoral care, absent, that they failed? No. It doesn't matter what privileges you've had. You might have had a great ministry and you sat in that church with hundreds of other people and were fed and there was the presence of God week by week. That won't keep you. Churchill, Galatia. They taught Paul as its pastor. Church in Corinth had Cephas and Apollos and Paul, what a trio, taking turns to teach and preach. Philippi. Ephesus, just the same. Tremendous privileges. The privileges do not keep us. These disciples, they'd been to the upper room, they'd heard John 13, John 14, let not your hearts be troubled. John 15, 16, they heard the greatest prayer that this world has ever heard. John 17, they broke bread with him. It didn't keep them. It didn't keep them. They went straight from there to Gethsemane. They sang a hymn together. They failed miserably. Again, let me turn it in this way. They failed in spite of warnings that he gave. He'd be more symphatic. He distributed the Passover, the bread and the wine, and he said, one of you is going to betray me. One of you is going to betray me. Peter, you're going to deny me. Three times. Peter laughed at him, laughed in his face. He made the peril spectacularly clear. But they were so self-confident. We didn't come here to be warned. You know, we are your red-hot servants. We'll never, never forsake you. And Peter was most emphatic, if they all, if they all forsook you, I'm there. You can rely on me, I'll never. The great word of the orator, never. Never. And the Lord says, it was just an hour. I asked you to watch. Sixty minutes. That's all. Not for your life. Not for the night. And you said never. But you couldn't watch one hour? People hear of the lapse or the fall of some Christian leaders and they say, oh, if only somebody had warned them, they say. Well, someone had warned these people. They'd had exquisite pastoral care. He'd spoken to them very, very plainly. They could understand. He didn't tell apart, but he told them, this is going to happen. And they failed, in spite of privileges and in spite of warnings. Let me turn it this way. They failed when they were most needed, because they were needed. They were needed. He needed them in the garden. He needed them to watch. He needed them to pray. Didn't he? They weren't there for tokenism. They weren't taken there as observers to write about it or tell Mark when he wrote just what happened in the garden. Watch with me. Watch. Be my co-watchman, he says. Here's the gregariousness, the humanness. Here's the difference between Jesus and John the Baptist. John the Baptist, the loner, takes camel's hair that the thorn bushes have pulled off wild camels and weaves it into a garment which he wears, cuts a strip of a dead animal and makes a belt and feeds himself on locust grasshoppers and honey, lives there like that. Jesus went to weddings. Jesus went to feasts. Jesus lived in a home for 30 years. He chose 12 to be with him. He wasn't a loner. He really wanted them to pray with him. Like you say, pray with me now. This week is going to be a tough week. Pray with me. As I face the operation, at least stay awake and keep your eyes open, but I can give myself to prayer. You can listen to men standing on twigs and branches and talking to them and see lights and know that there's a group come to look for me. The police are here. And maybe when the Lord needs us most, when the church needs us most, When the cause of Christ needs us most, we fail. Alas, we fail. Let's be prepared for that. And I can say it wasn't their last failure. You'd think that when they were startled by the soldiers and take out a sword and they're wild in what they do. and then realize it's a terrible, it's a terrible failure and I run away. You'd think the shame of him waking them up when they were asleep and running away and attacking a man and hurting him that they'd be overwhelmed with guilt and shame and their consciences would be so pricked by their failure that They let him down when they most needed him, that they would say from now on, that's never going to happen again. What wicked men we are, what's he done for us and how we've treated him. You might have think the moral precipitant then. would engender a determination in them from now on, they would be erect, and they would be watching, and they would be ready, and they would take God's will without question. It was not to be Peter who attacked Marcus, Peter who ran away and left Jesus in the hands of the squaddies, denied him when a little girl asked if he was with him, with curses. You'd think after they'd been with Jesus 40 days on the Mount of Ascension, they would all be filled with expectation of what he could do in them and through them in the years to come. But on the Mount of Ascension, some doubted still. You'd think after Pentecost then, they were filled with the Spirit and then They could take on anything. But Peter is trapped again by Judaizers with their shining eyes and smiling faces and telling them, if you want to live a really blessed life, you get circumcised. If you want to really please the Lord, you don't eat bacon. You've got to keep food laws. That's why they're in the Bible, and it's in the Bible. Peter broke away from sitting with us Gentiles. He failed in the garden. He failed at the fireplace warm in his hands. He failed in the house of Cornelius. The short, sharp shock It's not the answer. Blaming and shaming Christians doesn't work. Apostles, with all their privileges, failed and failed again. But he took them back. And he blessed them on the day of Pentecost. And in writing two wonderful letters, he took them all back, despite their failures. Simon, do you love me? And Simon Peter didn't say, well, I don't know, really. I don't know. Oh, look how I've been in the garden. I slept there. And then I denied you, and I cursed. Oh, I don't know. Can I say I love you? Simon, do you love me? You know everything. You know that I love you. You know, you know I love you. He didn't allow his assurance to be destroyed by his sin. And you mustn't, you mustn't. A friend of mine is at a bad fall. He's out of the ministry now. I long that he shouldn't lose his assurance, that he's a child of God, and that God will use him still, in some way, and God will keep him, that he'll do that. Don't let your sins destroy your assurance. You go to God, like I do, with the same sin, The same sins, my lack of love for him, my lack of praying to him, my cowardice, my pride, my ego. I'm not planning to assassinate the Prince of Wales. I'm not going to forge 50 pound notes. I haven't got imaginative sins like that, new sins, the old sins. And he's never tired and weary of forgiving me. More. Sin abounds. Grace much more. Much, much more abounds. Keep going. Don't let the devil say, oh, you've gone to God and confessed his sin again and again. Oh, what a hypocrite you are. That's the voice of the devil. You go to him. It's the same sins in a groaning world that we confess. Peter could say, God has not finished with me yet. I should be wiser. I am older. I've had great experiences and great blessings in my life, and I let my Lord down, but I let him down whom I love. And I'll continue to serve him all my days. And the Lord bless his word to us tonight. Heavenly Father, Do help us now as we contemplate what our blessed Redeemer endured for us, His humanity, His humility, His submission, that He would rather have Thy will than anything else in the world. Make us like Him, we pray. Help us when we betray Thee, to grieve and repent and accept thy forgiveness and still work for thee. Deliver us from trials that are too great for us and ever make a way of escape that we can bear it and answer our prayers and help us always to say, nevertheless not my will but thine be done. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Let's sing our final hymn. It's number 134. Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts, thou fount of life, thou light of men, from the best bliss that earth imparts, we turn and fill to thee again. 134. ♪ Of loving hearts ♪ ♪ The fount of life ♪ ♪ The light of men ♪ ♪ From the resurrection ♪ ♪ And heaven impart ♪ ♪ We tell the tale to thee, O God ♪ I, truth unchanged, have ever stood, the same as those That only war, to them that sin may bow, are good to them. And long to feast upon this field. We drink of thee, the fountainhead, and thirst our souls for thee to fill. A restless spirit doth call him Where'er a change of heart is caused ♪ That when my gracious Father ♪ ♪ Gave sweetest breath of faith ♪ ♪ That hope he found ♪ ♪ O Jesus, death, the grave, the stake ♪ ♪ Make all the lovers bow and cry ♪ ♪ Chase the dark night of sin away ♪ ♪ Shed all our sorrows by holy night ♪ Now unto him who is able to keep us from falling, and to present us, all of us, before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen. Amen.