Well, this morning and really for the next few weeks, I would like us to be thinking about the cost of your sins being forgiven. I'm sure we're all familiar with Romans chapter 6, verse 23, where it says, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. We know from scripture, from that verse especially, that salvation and the forgiveness of your sins is given to you as a free gift. And yet that salvation, the forgiveness of your sin, came at an extremely high cost to God. The wages of sin had to be paid. And if you have received salvation from God, you didn't pay it. Jesus paid it for you. Now as we think about the cost of our sins being forgiven, and the very high price that was paid for you, if we can even begin to understand this correctly, we cannot take our sin lightly. We have, but we can no longer. We cannot think little of the death that Jesus died on the cross. We probably have. We should no longer. This is not about merely the physical death of Jesus. Lots of people have died on crosses. Lots of religious people have been tortured and killed for things they believe in. This was much worse. Much more severe. If you were to die with your sin still on you, all of the agony of an eternity in hell will not be sufficient to pay for your sins against a holy God. The fact that that payment for sin in hell goes on forever shows that it will never be enough. You will never suffer enough to pay for your sin. You will never get to the point where you are out of debt to where God will say, okay, that's enough. You're free to go from there. Welcome to heaven. It'll never happen. And yet the payment Jesus made through the cross was sufficient to pay for your sin so that you could be forgiven and set free and have eternal life with God. How costly that must have been. How awful must that death have been for Jesus on that cross. This was not just the death of a man. It was not just an unfortunate event that happened to a nice guy. Or merely a ritual performed on someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. or just a Sunday school story that gives us something to talk about on Easter. For your sin to be forgiven, it required the all-powerful, sovereign, and perfectly holy God to suffer in ways that we never could suffer. We cannot even come close to completely comprehending the magnitude of that suffering of Jesus on the cross. But the level of Jesus' suffering begins to get a little more clear on that night before Jesus went to the cross. We've been seeing some different details about that Thursday night in the Gospel of Mark, in chapter 14, for some weeks now. We saw a little about the severity of suffering in that upper room, some of the things that Jesus taught his disciples. One specific teaching from Jesus that Mark recorded was about communion. How Jesus instituted that with his disciples. We get somewhat of a picture through that of Jesus' suffering in communion. As we're reminded of his body, the flesh that he took on that could suffer and die, and his blood that was shed for us. But it was really after Jesus and the 11 disciples left that upper room. And Judas was already gone, going to round up the people that would arrest Jesus. But Jesus and the other 11 disciples, they left that room. They made their way back to the Mount of Olives. And then they go to a specific location on that mountain, a garden named Gethsemane. That's where we begin to see how much Jesus was affected by what he knew was coming the next morning. We just read the whole passage together that we're going to look at this morning, Mark 14, verses 32 to 42. We've seen the overall picture. Now let's focus in on some of the details that we find about how that next day affected Jesus what he knew was coming Mark 14 verse 32 says they came to a place named Gethsemane and he said to his disciples Sit here until I have prayed The name of this garden and Mark doesn't say it's a garden John tells us it's a garden the name of a Gethsemane means olive press and There must have been some type of equipment there in that garden that was used to crush olives to make olive oil. It's a fitting backdrop for the state of Jesus' soul that night. Other things were going to be crushed in that garden that night. John also tells us in the Gospel of John in chapter 18 that this was a place that Jesus and His disciples came to often. It was well known by all of them, including Judas. So Jesus didn't come here to this garden to hide from Judas, to escape his soon-to-be captors. He knew they were coming. He knew they would find him there. And it was for this purpose that Jesus was on this earth. He was not hiding. But until Judas came, this was a good place. for Jesus to get away from the noise, the crowds, even though they had been in a private upper room earlier that night. There was a lot going on in Jerusalem. A lot of noise. This is a good place to get away and pray. Because of what Jesus knew was coming, it was very important for Him to be able to get away and have some time to pray. Verse 33, And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. So because Jesus knew what was coming, he needed to pray, and he could really use the support of his friends. At a time like this, he needed his friends. And one of the twelve, as I had said, had left. One of the 12 who Jesus had cared for and treated as a friend, he has gone out to betray him to those who will put him to death. The 11 friends that he has left, they're there with him, but he has just told them that all of them are going to forsake him. They're going to deny him. And it's going to come at the worst possible time. He left eight of them near the entrance of the garden. He took his three closest friends, Peter, James, and John, to go with him as he went in further to the garden to pray. Now remember I pointed out last time something else Jesus said to his disciples on their way to the garden. In John chapter 15, verses 13 through 15, Jesus told them Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. He was speaking these words to these 11 men. You're my friends. I love you. Verse 14 of John 15 says, you are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you." These are his friends. He cares about them. He loves them with the greatest kind of love. He is about to lay down his life for them. And now he could really use his closest friends to pray with him. Because as we are told here in Mark chapter 14 verse 33, Jesus began to be very distressed and troubled. And when we read these words, he was distressed, that could also be translated as amazed as the King James does, or alarmed. He was distressed, amazed, alarmed. The word translated as troubled can have the idea of anxiety. The Christian standard Bible translates it as horrified. I have a picture in my mind of the kind of distress, the anxiety, the fear that's just weighing so heavy on Jesus. That's also the way that King James translates that last part. says, he began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy. This may be that it was getting hard for Jesus to breathe because he was so tense about the fear of knowing what was coming. Verse 34, and he said to them, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and keep watch. These are some very personal details that Jesus shared with his friends. That he wanted to be recorded for all future generations to know this about Jesus on that night. These are real emotions that Jesus was experiencing in that garden. Jesus, even Jesus, had an intense fear that was not an irrational fear. Sometimes we can have some strong fears about things that haven't happened and probably never will happen. We can have some fears about wanting to please men. But Jesus' fears were about things that He knew were coming. His fears were based in reality. He says His soul was so deeply grieved about what He knew that it almost killed Him. He's deeply grieved to the point of death. Even before Jesus went to the cross, just knowing what was coming, the sadness that that brought to Him almost killed Him. Just think about that. Jesus knowing what was required for your sin to be forgiven. What was required of Him was so severe that just the thought of it almost killed Him before He went to the cross. We cannot treat that lightly. We cannot minimize our sin and treat our sin like it's no big deal. We cannot treat the suffering that Jesus endured for our sin as though it was no big deal. And one of the ways that we might minimize the suffering that Jesus endured for our sin is to either overemphasize his humanity or overemphasize his deity to the exclusion of the other. To see Jesus' death as it really was, we need to try to maintain the right balance in our thinking about the humanity and the deity of Jesus Christ. That Jesus was fully God and fully man. Now we may think, as we're meditating on Jesus and our thoughts of who Jesus is, and as we think about the cross, we may think, yeah, this would be really hard stuff for any person to go through. But this is Jesus. This is a little different. Yes, he took on human flesh, but he is still fully God. Now being fully God, Jesus knew what was coming, but he also knew what the outcome would be. Jesus knew that his death would not be the end. Jesus knew that he would be victorious and rise again. Jesus made prophecies that that would be the case. He knew that he would rise from the dead. Knowing that he's eternal God, how bad could this death really be? We might think. He's God. He knew the outcome. He knew what was coming, but also that he was going to rise. How bad was it really? We may think. But remember, knowing that it was coming almost killed him. It was that bad. We should try to think of it more in this way. That because Jesus is God, His suffering was even worse than if He had just been man. Because He had no limits on what He could endure. So what we really should be saying is that, yes, Jesus is fully God, but he is also fully man. And in his humanity, Jesus was weak in the kinds of ways that we are weak, and yet without sin. He identifies with us in our human flesh. He knows what it is to be man because he became man, fully man. In all these ways that Jesus was suffering as deity without limits. He's also suffering in his humanity. So Jesus is fully man. Suffering to the extent that only someone who is also fully God can suffer. We could never suffer to the extent that Jesus did. Because we are just men and women. Jesus being fully God and fully man, He could and did suffer more than we ever could. And He did that to pay for your sins. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, it says, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This eternally and infinitely holy God was about to take our sin on Himself. I can't even comprehend that. Holy God was about to take our sin on Himself. And somehow, in some way, without Him becoming a sinner, He became identified with our sin. And somehow, in some way, that was going to create a separation between the Father and the Son. That had never happened before. The Father would somehow forsake or turn his back on the Son. Now how that can happen within the Trinity, I don't know. That's beyond my ability to comprehend. But the thought of it almost killed Jesus. And he did that to pay for your sins. Now this was something that Jesus needed to pray to his father about. In verse 35 it says, and he went a little beyond them and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass him by. And we know that Jesus came willingly to this earth born as a baby to live as a man for this purpose. This is why he came. And yet, knowing what was coming, if it would be possible, if there's any other way, Jesus would prefer to not have to go through this. It would be his preference to skip the cross, if that was at all possible. Notice that that's what he's praying to the Father. If it were possible, the hour might pass him by. And when he asks if there's any way that the hour might pass him by, he's not talking about the time on a clock. It's getting kind of late here. Can we just hurry this along? Can we move this along so I can hurry up and get to the cross? That's not what he's talking about. He's not talking about what hour of that night it was. The hour he's referring to is the time period of his suffering when God's wrath for our sin is poured out on him. And we know that Jesus had read Isaiah 53. He knew that passage well. He knew it was talking about him, that he was the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. That's Jesus, and Jesus knew that. He knew it was talking about Him when it says, Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed." Jesus knew that verse 10 of Isaiah 53 was speaking of God the Father when it says, but Yahweh was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief if He would render Himself as a guilt offering. This is what Jesus was facing, what He knew was coming the very next morning. The Father was going to crush Him, put Him to grief, to be a sin offering. There had never been a problem or a separation for all of eternity past with the Father and the Son. there had been a perfect relationship between the Father and the Son, until your sin was put on the Son. So verse 36 says, And He was saying, Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Remove this cup from Me, yet not what I will, but what You will. The cost of your sin to be forgiven was so high that Jesus, though He is fully God, eternal, holy, all-powerful, He pleaded with the Father. If there is any other way to carry out your plan, if there is any other way to save these sinners and you still get glory, then please, Abba, Father. This is how A human son would address his human father. Abba. Abba, Father. We get a sense of the relationship here between God the Father and God the Son. It's kind of like Jesus is saying, Dad, please. This is going to be awful. You can do anything. If there is any other way any way other than me taking their sin and being separated from you and enduring an eternity's worth of your wrath on the cross. If there's any other way than that, then Dad, please, let's do it that way. You think of earthly fathers? It's Father's Day. We've got to talk about that a little bit in here somewhere, don't we? An earthly father, if he loves his children, he loves them imperfectly and yet he wants what's best for his sons and daughters. An earthly father isn't always going to know what is best. He may not always follow through. We may get it wrong sometimes. But a loving, yet imperfect, earthly father will want to do what is best for his son. God is love. God the perfect father loves God the son perfectly. You better believe the father wants what is best for his son. You better believe that if there was any other way, the father would have granted the request of the son. The fact that he didn't. is one of the strongest proofs there is that there is no other way. If there would have been any other way, the Father would have given it to the Son. Just think about that as you consider the cost of the forgiveness of your sin. There's no other way. Look at verse 37. He came and found them sleeping and said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Even though this was a time of such great distress for Jesus, and though it would have been really nice at a time like this that Jesus' friends would spend some time praying with Him and praying for Him, Notice that Jesus' concern about them sleeping was not primarily about him. I remember some of the things that Jesus has told these disciples that night. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends. He's been telling them he's going to lay down his life for them. And he was just about to do that, to lay down his life for them. and yet they were not willing to lay down their naps for Him. They couldn't just stay awake for Jesus. Isn't that pathetic? It wasn't very kind of them when Jesus was in such distress, just go to sleep. It's sad to think of all that Jesus was going through and He was doing it alone. He was suffering alone that night in that garden because his friends were sleeping. But notice how unselfish Jesus' response was to his sleepy disciples. His concern was still for them. It was for their benefit that they should be watching and praying. It would be good for them if they would stay awake and pray because Jesus knew that they were about to enter into a time of testing and strong temptation that they'd never seen before. Jesus had just warned them that they all were going to fall away, that Peter would deny him three times before morning. They needed to pray. Peter and the other disciples insisted, we will not fall away. We will not deny you. Their spirits were willing, but their flesh was weak. They should have been awake. They should have been praying. They should have cared enough about Jesus and what he was going through that night to stay awake and pray for him. Verse 39, again, he went away and prayed saying the same words. Now in case you don't think that Jesus was serious about not really wanting to go through with the cross, because it was going to be so bad, He prays about it a second time. If it's possible, Dad, please let this cup pass from me. And yet He was willing. If that's what the Father wanted Him to do, He would do it. In verse 40, and again, He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy and they did not know what to answer him. Jesus came back to check on his disciples to see if they were awake and watching and praying so they would not fall into temptation. They were asleep. They should have cared. They should have cared enough about Jesus and what he was going through to stay awake and pray with him. But he finds them again sleeping. Why was it so hard for them to stay awake? at a time like this? Well, it was late. By the middle of the night, by this time, they had just eaten a big meal. Then they went on a long walk. It had been a busy week. And when you think about those details, it's kind of understandable. They were really tired. But haven't we all been in situations where we're so concerned about someone that we can't sleep no matter how bad we want to sleep, how tired we are. Sometimes you care so much about someone, you just can't sleep. The disciples though, they just weren't all that concerned. They still had this expectation that everything's going to turn out alright. Jesus is the Messiah. and they're gonna be reigning with him sometime soon. So whatever Jesus is concerned about, it couldn't really be that big of a deal, he's a Messiah. Luke tells us that they were sleeping from sorrow. From the evidence that I see as I read through these passages, I don't think it was sorrow that Jesus would soon be going to the cross. because I don't think they really believed that would happen. I think it was sorrow that they had just had a big argument with Jesus because he didn't trust them. They had all kinds of confidence in their faith, but Jesus didn't. Jesus said they were going to deny him, desert him. They didn't think that would ever happen. They argued with him about it. They were sure they would not forsake Jesus. And that argument wore them out. Jesus didn't trust them. They were tired. They went to sleep. Everything will probably turn out fine. And so Jesus suffered and prayed alone. Verse 41, he came the third time and said to them, are you still sleeping and resting? It is enough. The hour has come. Behold, the son of man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up. Let us be going. Behold, the one who betrays me is at hand. Now coming the third time and finding them sleeping implies a third time of Jesus praying. And we don't have to just assume that that's the case because Matthew tells us that actually was the case. Jesus went and prayed the third time. If there's any other way to save these sinners and still glorify you, please, Dad, let's do it that other way. Yet not what I will, but what you will. Three times. Jesus' closest friends slept and let Jesus suffer alone. Not yet taking seriously the cost required to pay for their sin. Not taking seriously Jesus' warnings about their weak flesh and the severity of the temptations that was about to come on them. Things they had never seen before. Well, the time for warnings came to an end. No more time for sleeping. The hour that Jesus dreaded so much had come. It was time for all of it to begin. Jesus' betrayer was coming. Now Jesus getting his disciples up from their naps was not so that they all could run away. Jesus had no intentions of running from this. He had gotten His answer from His Father. The answer was no. There is no other way. Jesus got up. He walked toward His captors. He got His answer from His Father. There is no other way. And Jesus would obey. He would be willing to suffer God's wrath for our sins. He was willing to suffer this separation from the Father in whatever form that was. And the fact that we can't really comprehend how that could be, I think, highlights just how bad it was. As you look on what happened in that garden that night, we should see the grace of Jesus as he walked toward his captors. How much it terrified him, knowing what was coming, and yet he walked right toward them. Consider the love of Jesus, who is concerned for his friend's well-being, even while he was grieved nearly to death. Think about how selfless Jesus was, knowing what was coming, and yet still shepherding his disciples. Consider the mercy of Jesus, who took God's wrath so you wouldn't have to. As you're thinking about Jesus that night in that garden, consider the sins that you have committed against God that made this necessary. This was our fault that Jesus suffered that. That He was grieved nearly to death. We did that to Him. It should cause us to grieve and rejoice. It should cause us to grieve that we could be so selfish that we could sin against God's holiness, cause so much suffering for our Savior, and yet so often take it so lightly. We just don't care. We sin again, and sin again, and sin again. How could we do that to Jesus? But we should also rejoice that Jesus was so selfless. That He paid the price of sin. so that we could receive the free gift of eternal life. Think about the price that was paid for your forgiveness. It was so high we can't even begin to comprehend. Think about what Jesus suffered that night in that garden. Because He did know. He did understand. The cost was so high. We ought to grieve. and we ought to rejoice.