Hello. Thought I'd try something different. Isn't it great to be here today? These seats, by the way, just so you know, they are a special high price, and that's why nobody's sitting there, just so you know that. Oh, here we go again. I'm speechless. We are editing that off the tape, I'm telling you right now. Right. We've been enjoying a series in the Lord's prayer and Lord teaching us to pray. And I want you to know how grateful I am to you all for giving me the opportunity to both study and to preach and to work through these things. They have been a tremendous challenge and encouragement to my own life, my own walk with the Lord. And I have developed in this last six, eight weeks, a tremendous love for time in prayer. And I'm just sitting, the times I spend sitting in my office down in Keysboro with the door shut and nobody around and just pouring out my heart to God has been some of the sweetest times I've had in my entire walk with the Lord over 30 something years. And so I hope you're being encouraged. I hope you're being challenged. I know I am and I appreciate the opportunity to do this every Sunday morning. Just to recap quickly what we've been through, we looked at how prayer is based on a relationship with our Heavenly Father. It's a commanded privilege. It must be in sincerity, not in hypocrisy. It must firstly be in private. If we're not praying in private, we'll never pray as a body of believers. Corporate prayer grows out of private prayer, right? When we pray, it's in full view of His omniscience. God knows everything that we need or we need to talk about before we even open our mouths. God knows exactly what's in our heart. He knows what we need to say, and He knows how He's going to answer. God is omniscient. We also, when we pray, we pray it's in full view of the fact that God is exalted. He is our Father in heaven. We're not speaking to an equal, we're speaking to a God who is infinitely above us, and yet he condescends to hear our prayers and listens to us. When we pray, it's firstly in mind or in view of the things that are uppermost in God's mind. Jesus taught us to pray, first of all, hallowed be your name. Our first prayer is for the holiness of God's name in our lives. We secondly pray for the extension, the increase, and the coming of Jesus' kingdom. And thirdly, we pray for the accomplishment of His will. And as I mentioned to you briefly last week, I can't think of those words, your will be done, without my mind immediately going over to the end of the gospel and considering Jesus in the garden, in the garden of Gethsemane. I just can't get around that. And so this morning, what I want to do, because my thoughts, my thinking, my meditating, my prayers all week, went in this direction. I want to take us this morning not to Matthew 6, but to Matthew 26, and we're going to look at Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. I also understand, I was just kind of tickled this morning as Wes was sharing his communion meditation, and I understand he's speaking on Romans 12 next week, and I just marveled the way God is working his communion, what I wanna share this morning and what he's gonna share next week, and they're gonna flow together just beautifully. So again, you see God's spirit at work taking us and leading us through these things. So I'm looking forward to that, although I'm looking forward to hearing the tape, because I won't actually be here, but it'll be good, I'm sure. There are some scenes of Jesus' life into which we are given a viewing. Some scenes are so sacred, so holy, so private that we are shielded from them. We're shielded from seeing them. One of the things about the cross work of Jesus Christ as those hours of darkness on the cross when all the world was black and nobody could see anything, we were shielded from viewing Jesus' face in those hours. The face of the Savior in such great torment and distress as He was separated from His Father for those three hours. We're not allowed to see that. The Father sort of closed the lights off for those time and that was absolutely private. Nobody could see that. But there are some scenes in the life of the Lord Jesus that we're invited in to see and to provoke our worship. The scenes of the stable scene where Jesus is in the manger and the animals are there and Mary's there and the shepherds are there. They're all worshiping. And the scene of the angels in the night sky singing and shouting the praises of God. We're allowed to see that. And it ought to provoke our hearts to lift up in worship for our living God. The scenes of Jesus as he speaks the words, Talitha kume, little girl, I say to you, arise. And we get to sort of stand by and watch through the pages of scripture as Jesus speaks resurrection and life to a little girl and raises her from the dead to life. We're allowed to see that. And it provokes our hearts to worship. The scene on the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus momentarily displays for his disciples to see and us through the pages of scripture, we get to see him in all of his heavenly, beautiful glory, just for a moment. We get to see that through the pages of scripture and worship from afar. But then there's one scene which we're invited to view out of the Lord's life is prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, a scene so holy and so moving that as we approach, I want to encourage all of us to listen, to see, and to worship. Worship isn't just the music we sing on Sunday morning, it's also as we open God's word and we look at it together, it ought to cause our hearts to lift upwards to God in worship. And as we look at this this morning, I pray that you are worshiping with me. The Garden of Gethsemane, it's a place where olives were crushed in order to bring forth their fruit so the olive oil could be used for cooking and eating and so on. It's also a place where Jesus was crushed in his spirit before his father. You know, in your mind's eye, I want you to see it. It's a cold, cold winter night. Kind of like this morning cold. I notice you're all sitting closer to the heaters than usual. I understand that. It was a cold night. And on the outside of the circle of this garden, eight of the disciples are sleeping, separated by some distance from Jesus. And then closer in to the center of the scene, three men are there, Peter and the sons of Zebedee, and they're struggling to stay awake and keep watch. In the very center of the scene, our view is one man alone. The God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ, lying with his face toward the ground, he is wrestling, and the agony of his soul is so great that the words of his prayer come in wrenched gasps and groans. In fact, the Bible says in the book of Lamentations, it says this, look unto all the past by, where'd it go? There it is. Is it nothing to you all you have passed by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the Lord inflicted on the day of his fierce anger. The sorrow of the Lord Jesus Christ was so great. It's something that none of us can really fully comprehend. He was in such a state of distress that he's sweating profusely and it runs like blood. It wasn't just little bits of sweat that kind of dropped and fell. It oozed from him in a continual, unhindered flow like blood from a wound. Even the coldness of that night air, Jesus was sweating profusely as he wrestled in a torment of his heart and his soul. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in his last final prayer meeting with his father, before beginning his suffering and finishing his work. We're privileged to see Jesus at his most frail and most human. We're privileged to see the intimacy of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. We're privileged to see the unwavering submission of the suffering servant, suffering even to the point of death on a cross. We're all so privileged to see Jesus emerge from that scene, the garden scene, the conquering king. There's one scene in the Bible I just love to read over. It's a scene where Jesus comes out of the garden, the book of John, and all the people are coming against him, and the swords, and the staves, and the spears, and the people with Judas there. And he steps forward and says, who are you looking for? And they say, Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus says two words in the Greek, I am. And he speaks the name of God. And the Bible says they all drew backwards and they fell to the ground. In that moment, you can see that Jesus has conquered. He has already finished the work in a sense because he's wrestled with the torment of going to the cross. And he's accomplished that work. And he is coming out as a conquering king. A beautiful scene that is. It's also amazing that we're given this scene to view not only as a provocation for our worship, which it must be, and I pray that God will draw from our hearts worship as we look together, but we're also given the scene to view as instruction and illustration for how we are to pray. And so we pray this morning as we stand quietly and reverently. I want you to think in your minds, we're like moving through the trees. And we all kind of gather in the outer circle around Jesus, and all of us stand side by side, and we look down into the circle, and we see Jesus there in front of us suffering. We're given that in scripture to see. My prayer is this morning, Lord, teach us to pray. From the depths of your sorrow and the darkest hours of your life, Lord, teach us to pray. Lord, teach us to pray during our darkest hours. That's what we want to learn this morning from the Lord, how to pray. Well, let's read together. Matthew 26, from verse 36 to verse 46, it says this. Then Jesus went with them, the disciples, to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray. And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. And he said to them, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death, remain here and watch with me. And going a little further, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, so, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, my father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And so leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to his disciples and said to them, sleep and take your rest later on. See the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hand of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See my betrayer. is at hand. I want you to notice first of all from this passage that prayer is the truest source of strength during sorrow and distress. Jesus is sorrowful and troubled. He's in such a state of sorrow that the natural reaction of most men and women in that type of sorrow is to be absolutely alone, to cut off the outside world, to push everybody away. In a sense, Jesus is like that. He goes into the inner circle all by himself, but he takes his two or three closest friends, and he brings them with him, and they're just a little distance away, and he has a desire to be close to people, even in that darkest hour. It's a sorrow like that of the mourning of the loss of the dearest loved one. which for Jesus it would be. He and his father would be separated during the darkened hours in the cross when the sky went dark and Jesus lifted up his head and he cried out, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But we need to understand that the sorrow of Jesus is linked not with the excruciating physical pain of the nails and the spear and the crown of thorns and the scourging and all that. That wasn't the pain that he was really contemplating and anticipating, but rather the pain of dying the death of a sinner. He would suffer the God-forsakenness of a sinner's death. Someone once commented that there's no word so utterly hopeless as that one word, forsaken. Total, absolute abandonment. Outright rejection. Jesus was about to suffer that in the course of His death. The idea, in case you didn't know, of death isn't so much the body leaving the spirit, it is, but the idea of death is actually the idea of separation. And so the death that Jesus suffered was both a living death and a dying death, if you like, because in his living death he was separated and forsaken by his father for a time, and then his body and his spirit were separated, and he experienced that physical kind of death. And that was what he was contemplating. That's why he was in such sorrow and such sadness. But Jesus' sorrow was unlike any sorrow that any earthly creative man has or ever will experience. He has the sorrow of one that will shortly experience the breaking of the intimate relationship, the intimate fellowship that he, his father, and the Holy Spirit have endured or enjoyed, not endured, enjoyed for all of eternity past and all of eternity future. No earthly man has ever endured that level of sorrow. And in these moments when the temptation might be to resort to other means and methods of finding some sort of comfort, the world we live in looks at sorrow, that and finds comfort in the bottom of a bottle or it finds comfort in drugs or something else or meditation or all other kinds of ideas that somehow relieve and give us comfort, but not Jesus. In this, his darkest hour, Jesus instead seeks the face of his father. He goes and he falls on his face before his father and he prays. The source of Jesus' strength during his worst suffering was prayer before his father's throne. What about you and I? Who here has endured sorrow? I think all of us can say, yeah, we know what it means to endure some form of sorrow or another. Maybe nothing so great and so devastating as Jesus' sorrow, but real, genuine, heart-wrenching sorrow nonetheless. Sorrow of a loved one, loss of a loved one, the sorrow of intense loneliness, the sorrow of distress, of fear and worry and heartache, whether it's economic problems or it's relationship problems. And for parents, maybe it's the sorrow of knowing where a child is, knowing how far they are away from God, or even the worst sorrow of not having any idea where their child is. A sorrow, a distress. What's our reaction to that sort of sorrow? How do we deal with that sort of sorrow and distress and trouble? And you know, the devil is so quick to whisper in our ear, and he whispers things like this, oh, God doesn't care. He's not interested in your problems. He's so far away, and he's so busy with the real problems of the universe. The devil may whisper those things in our ear, but we are listening, are we listening? Or are we praying the enemy of our souls plants, the not so subtle suggestion in our hearts that the heavens are silent. They will remain silent. Hey, whispers the devil. It was God's sovereign will that brought you such sorrow. It's his fault. And we're so quickly tempted to listen to such suggestions. Listen, my friend, my brother, my sister, listen, God cares. God cares not only about the universe. He's so omniscient and so omnipotent. He's so unchanging that His power extends and He can control and balance and keep in perfect rhythm and motion the entire expanse of all the known and unknown universe at the very same time. He knows the numbers of the hairs on your head and He keeps them all track. He knows the sparrow when it falls to the ground. He knows all those things. God cares about you. No matter what you're going through, God cares about every single one of us. The father met Jesus in the garden. The father heard his prayer. I'm absolutely convinced as Jesus poured out his soul for that hour in the garden that the father heard what he was saying. And I have no doubt in those moments as he is his eternally begotten son, poured out his soul and strength, the father cried. You say, you got no biblical proof of that. No, I don't. But I know what it's like to watch one of your kids when they're in pain, and they're struggling, and they're in sorrow, and your heart just breaks. And I'm convinced that God is no different, that his heart must have broken as he sat there and listened to his son pouring out his soul and pleading, my father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me. You think the father's heart didn't break? I'm convinced it did. But the father, the Bible says in Luke 22, sent an angel to strengthen Jesus. Yes, the will of God was unchanged and unchanging, but the father still met him with his son in his sorrowful and distressed state to comfort and console and strengthen him. Prayer was Jesus' strength and comfort, prayer to a father that loved him with a love beyond describing, prayer that poured out the heart's sorrow and distress and despair. Listen, whatever your sorrow is, Whatever your heartache is, pray. When you don't know how to pray, and I think a few of us have been there, when you're so torn apart, you go before the Lord and you just can't even begin to say the words. And all you feel inside is that terrible crunching and grinding of your heart in pain. And listen, let me tell you something, those groanings of your heart, the spirit of God takes those and he brings them to the father and says, this is the heart of your child. And he brings those prayers before the father. Whatever you're going through, pray. The same loving heavenly father that loves Jesus loves you with a love so great that Paul had to pray that we would have sufficient strength. Get this. Paul prayed that we would have the strength to be able to comprehend the love of God in Christ Jesus that goes beyond all knowledge. He said, Lord, give the Ephesian people the strength to understand the breadth and the depth and the height of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Whatever your sorrow, whatever your distress, pray. Be a people of prayer. Second thing I want you to notice is this. Prayer is a great source of strength before and during temptation. I want you to notice that there are two main characters in this scene. If you look at the way that Matthew writes the story, he takes the disciples as a group and puts them outside in the outer edge of the garden. And he takes Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. Mark, who wrote the first gospel, and Matthew is using Mark as kind of a source book, Mark actually lists the two disciples by name, but Matthew puts them in a group, and as he kind of separates them, and in a beautiful literary way, He sort of pushes the two sons of Zebedees back away from the scene a little bit, and really what you have is the center stage, and there's two men. There's Jesus in one corner, and he's on his face crying out to his father, and the other side, separated from a distance, is Peter, and he's with the two sons, but really those two men are kind of the two key players in the scene. Just an hour or so earlier, Peter has made some great boasting statements, and we all know Peter, right? Peter is good for great boasting statements. And you know what he said? He looked around, he said, hey, Peter answers Jesus and said, listen, though they all pass or fall away, you can just see him look around going, eh, the rest of them. The lower disciples, Lord, your other friends, though they all pass away or fall away because of you, I will never fall away. And he made that great boasting statement to Jesus. What a boast. But when Jesus returns to speak to the three disciples, his words are very clearly aimed straight at Peter. And what's he say? So. Could you not watch with me one hour?" It's only been an hour and a half since he made that statement, and he's boasting about how he will remain with Jesus. And he's saying, you couldn't even last one hour, Peter. And he says, Peter, watch and pray that you do not enter into temptation. Listen. Jesus and Peter in the garden were both completely temptable. They were both subject to temptation. Peter had the desire. He wanted to stand with Jesus. He wanted to suffer with him. He wanted to die with him. He was his friend and there was a desire intimacy there. But you know what? The Bible says that his spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak. And what he means by isn't his like his physical flesh and blood. What he means is his sinful. human nature was unable to endure, unable to stand with Jesus through that. And when Jesus comes to see his disciples sleeping, no doubt although Jesus knew that Peter would fall to the depths of denying him with curses and with oaths, I am sure that Jesus in his total humanity longed for the comfort of a friend, to watch with him, to pray near him and with him, to stand with him and to be with him. But though Peter's spirit might be willing, his flesh was unable to endure it. So Jesus repeatedly urges him to be alert, to watch, to stand, to pray, lest he fall into temptation, the temptation of turning away from the Lord. But Peter's not the only one subject to temptation. Jesus also is subject to it. If you have a chance, go online, look up C.H. Spurgeon, and look up a sermon on Jesus' temptations in the garden. It's a beautiful sermon. I haven't included any of it this morning, but just as a little side note, go read it if you have a chance. Jesus was tempted to abandon his mission. Imagine for a moment some of the subtle whisperings of the devil to Jesus. They're not worth it, Jesus. Look at them, your friends. They're sleeping during the worst agony of your life. Look at Judas coming through the night, leading men in the hours of darkness to bind your hands, your hands that created all things, your hands that opened blind eyes, and your hands that healed sickness and disease, your hands that are holding everything together. You're giving them the breath to breathe, the heart to beat, and the strength to walk towards you, to arrest you, and bind your hands. Jesus, they're not Worth it. I can just imagine that thought rattling through Jesus' mind. And no doubt it did. But you know what? You know how He endured. Jesus in this hour was tempted. Tempted in every way as we are. Yet He prevailed. Remember His prayer? Lead me not into temptation. Right? He was actually following his own advice. He was living out the prayer he has been teaching us to pray. And he was praying that he would not fall down, that he would endure, that he would pass the test. He followed his own advice to Peter. He watched and he prayed. Jesus' strength to endure temptation and prevail was not found in willpower. It was found in prayer power. And it's the same with us. Exactly the same with us. Jesus, like all of us, in the darkest moments of sorrow and despair, suffered the temptation to abandon his mission. Yet he was able to endure by continual, fervent, agonizing in prayer before God, his Heavenly Father. Did you notice, by the way, when we're reading here, we get one sentence of Jesus' prayer. But if you read the very next verse, in verse 40, so could you not watch with me one hour? By the time Jesus comes back to the disciples the first time, he's already been wrestling and agonizing before his father for over an hour. That's just a little tiny glimpse of what he was saying. He was pleading with God through that whole hour not to give in, not to fail. He was able to endure only by continual agonizing in prayer. Listen, my brother, my sister, my friend, whatever sorrow you are enduring, the temptation, no doubt, has arisen in your heart. Give up. Give it up. Abandon your faith. Walk away. What bother with prayer? Forget your Bible reading. It's so dry. Who needs church and those loser Christians? Walk away. God doesn't love you if he's allowing you to endure this. How many of you have seen those or heard those thoughts rattle through your brain? I have. Absolutely. The temptation during those deepest, darkest moments when we're struggling and we're sorrowful and we're distressed and we're depressed and we're lonely and we're afraid is to give up, walk away, don't bother. The problem that we encounter as we face and endure sorrow and heartache and despair and loneliness and all those things is a temptation to abandon our faith, to turn back. Just thinking about that Psalm, Psalm 22 or 23, what does he say? Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. He doesn't say, though I take you out of the valley of the shadow, though I take you the other way, I give you the shortcut, though I walk through it, all the way through it. The prayer that we have, Jesus' example for us in the garden, in his agonizing in prayer, in his words to Peter, is the greatest example for us. We're enduring those sorrowful, distressing, depressing times. Prayer is the greatest source of strength that we've got. Prayer is also the greatest source of strength before and during the temptations we encounter. My brother, my sister, you're sitting here this morning and you're cheating on the edge. The brink of giving up because of the hardship seems too much to bear. Listen, if you forget everything else I say, remember this. God, your heavenly Father, loves you. The cross is the eternal, never-fading proclamation from the heights of glory all the way to the depths of hell that God loves us. God, your heavenly father sees your pain. God, your heavenly father hears the silent, desperate cry of your heart. Don't walk away. Don't walk away. Follow Jesus. See His example. Fall on your face and wrestle with God in prayer. He will see you through. Prayer is a source of our strength during sorrow and despair. Prayer is a source of our strength before and during temptation. The third lesson we can learn from Jesus' prayer in the garden is this. Prayer is pleading for God's omnipotence to intervene. God's almightiness. Notice what the text says when it describes Jesus' prayer. He says there in verse 39, my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass me nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. If it be possible, in the Greek grammar, you could actually render it differently. You could actually render it like this, since it is possible. And you say, wait a minute, what does that mean? It means this. First of all, Jesus is not praying outside the will of God. He was pleading that there might be another way to redeem fallen humanity aside from his dying the death of a sinner on the cross. Jesus is praying in full view of the omnipotence of God, the all-mightiness, the all-powerfulness of God that could accomplish redemption another way other than the cross. That sounds cataclysmic wrong to our minds. We're so used to hearing the gospel, and that's the way God saved us. But what Jesus is saying is this. He's saying, since it's possible, let this cup pass me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. God could have redeemed humanity another way. The Father could have found some other plan. That's the meaning of the omniscience of God and the omnipotence of God at work. Listen, God and His sovereign will and purpose had determined from eternity past, this is the way that redemption must incur. You say, why? If there was some other way, why go through that incredibly painful, excruciating time on the cross? And there are so many reasons, biblically, to look at why it had to be the cross. Let's look at just a couple, just run through them. Jesus must learn obedience through the things he suffered. That's why the cross had to be there. Jesus suffered to leave us an example of how we must suffer. You know this, that Jesus said, or that Paul says, it's been granted to you not only to believe, but also to suffer for his sake. So Jesus suffered on the cross to give us an example. Jesus suffered on the cross to show us the full height of the holiness of God and the depth of the vileness of the sinner. Jesus suffered to bring to full completion all the things spoken of Him in the Law and the Prophets. Jesus suffered sacrificially to show us the height and the depth and the width and the breadth and the full scope of the love of God. And that's what I want to focus on. I could unpack all those other things and take six or eight hours. We won't do that. I just want to focus on that one, the love of God. I said earlier, that the cross of Jesus Christ is the single, unmistakable, undeniable proclamation of God's love for you. Whatever you're going through, and we all go through tough times. Wes made that comment before. We're all going through hard stuff. Never, ever, ever doubt God's love for you. That issue is forever settled on the cross. The greatest display of love is in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, giving himself for us. The father was willing to sacrifice his only begotten son, not Not because you were so valuable that he had to save you. No. The love of God for you and I, displayed by Christ's suffering on the cross, magnifies the immensity of the grace of God. You say, how does that work? Like this. It is right that someone pay a high price for a valuable item. But there's no love or grace in paying a high price for a valuable item. The thing's worth $100,000, you fork out the $100,000, it's a contract, it's equivalent, you give him the money, he gives you the thing, you walk away. There's no love or grace in that, right? So it's not about how much we are valued. The reality is that Jesus is of more value to the Father than 10,000 creations, never mind one filthy, rebellious sinner. It is grace lavished As Ephesians 1 says, lavished on us for God to pay an infinitely high price to purchase our salvation, to redeem sinners. The cross is necessary to show the immensity of God's grace, to show the indescribable love of God. It's like this. We, as sinners, deserve what? God's wrath. God's judgment, we deserve to go to hell. All those that go to hell will not go saying, I was framed, it's unfair, that was fixed. They'll go there saying, Jesus is Lord. I am wrong, he's right. They'll go there saying, I deserve this. Every single one of us deserved nothing more than the judgment of God. The fact that God the Father was willing to give up His Son, to sacrifice His Son, does not show how highly valued we are. It shows the massive, immense... I can't think of enough big words to cover it. It shows the immensity of the grace of God. It's God's favor just shoved out on top of us. It's not God's grace like a salt shaker. You know, a little sprinkle will do you. We need a little sprinkle of God's grace to save us, but he took a truckload and just dumped it on top of us and said, here's my grace for you. The cross shows the immensity of God's love. It shows the indescribable love of God. It shows the holiness of God and the vileness of the sinner and so many other things, but the cross was not the only way. So when Jesus pleads, if it's possible or since it's possible, he is pleading for the omnipotence of God to accomplish the work of salvation apart from the cross. But, he adds that last great part, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. And you say, wait a minute, was the will of the Son, the will of the Father Contrast and distinction? No. They're talking about two different things. What Jesus is saying is, not as I will. I don't want to be separated from you. I don't want to endure that cutting off. That's why when he's on the cross, he can cry in such agony of his soul. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He didn't want to be torn apart for that time from his father, and his father's will was to accomplish his purpose through Christ. So Jesus is saying, listen, I know it's possible if there's another way, but not as I will, as you will. And so he's praying in total submission to his father. So aside from the worship-inspiring truth of that statement, that prayer, what is a lesson for us? How does this, reading what Jesus is saying in his prayer, how does it teach us to pray? And there's two ways, and you absolutely cannot divorce them. If you split them apart, and you'll see why in a second, you preach prosperity gospel. We pray for the omnipotence of God to intervene. If you separate that from the second part, praying in total submission to the will of God, you start to become a name it and claim it. The power of God can give me a brand new boat. The power of God can give me a brand new V-twin. The power of God can give me whatever I want. And we separate the will of God from that. But that's not why Jesus prayed. He said, listen, it is possible. Let this come pass me nevertheless. Not as I will, but as you will. So he was pleading, first of all, for the omnipotence of God, the all-powerfulness of God, to intervene into his situation and give him what he desired. But he was submitting that prayer to the prayer that God's will would be done. He was praying in total submission to the Father. So the prayer, first of all, is to pray the omnipotence of God to intervene. What's the omnipotence of God? Who's ever heard of Stephen Carnock? No. Over there, anybody? Stephen Carnock, no? He's a great Puritan writer. He wrote a book on the nature that's called The Existence and Attributes of God. I think it's about 800 pages thick. One of my goals, before I finish this life, is to get through Stephen Carnock's The Existence and Attributes of God. Here's why. Listen. Stephen Carnock said this. I won't read the whole 800 pages. Here we go. The power of God, the omnipotence of God, is that ability and strength whereby He can bring to pass whatsoever He pleases, whatsoever His infinite wisdom may direct, and whatsoever the infinite purity of His will may resolve. So what he's saying is, listen, the omnipotence of God is, God wants to do something, His omnipotence can accomplish it without any, He can't lift a sweat. You know how God created the whole heavens and the earth? He did it with a word. He didn't roll up his sleeves and put on his work clothes and get his tool belt out. He just spoke into existence. That's the omnipotence of God at work. His omnipotence is his power to bring to pass whatever his infinite wisdom may direct, whatever the infinite purity of his will may resolve. As holiness is the beauty of all God's attributes, so power, or omnipotence, is that which gives life and action to all the perfections of the divine nature. Don't worry about that. This part is great, okay? Listen to this. He said, how vain, how pointless would be the eternal counsels if power did not step in to bring them about. In other words, he's saying, how pointless would it be for God to make all these great plans for what he's going to do with creation, with Jesus, and putting all things together under one head, Jesus Christ. What would be the point of all those things if he didn't have the power to bring them about? It's like a man sitting in a bar and he's boasting about what he can do, but he doesn't have the power to do anything. No, God has the omnipotent power to bring about whatever He desires. Without power, His mercy would be feeble pity. His promises an empty sound. So all the promise of God in scripture without the omnipotence of God to bring them about, they're just empty clanging bell. His threatenings, all the threatenings of God, all the things he's going to do to us if we don't behave, if we don't obey, if we don't repent and believe, his threatenings are a mere scarecrow, a fake man hanging on a rod, unable to do anything. God's power is like himself. It's infinite. eternal, incomprehensible. It can neither be checked, restrained, nor frustrated by the creature. What's he trying to say? God's omnipotent power is the power of God to do whatever he desires, unhindered, unrestrained, in accordance with his sovereign purpose and will. God is able to stop all suffering in an instant. God is able to end your sorrow, your despair, your distress, your sadness, your loneliness, depression, like that. He is finish it now. God is able to change your circumstances, to fix your relationships and end your pain. With God, nothing is impossible. And we should pray in light of that reality. That's exactly what Jesus is praying. He's saying, since it's possible, since your omnipotence could bring about a change of the way we're gonna accomplish the redemption of humanity, nevertheless, not as you will, but as I will. We should pray in light of that reality, but the second part must go with it. Jesus prayed in light of the omnipotence of God, perfectly balanced by the absolute submission to the will of God. God's will is to bring all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth into submission to one man, Jesus Christ. Listen to what the Bible says, Ephesians 1, that part of the sentence that Wes read earlier. He says this. He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. What's God's singular purpose and plan for all of creation? is to bring it in the fullness of times, the old King James says, to bring it together and unite it all under one head. So there's gonna come a day, like we said last week, when every single creature in heaven, on earth, and under the earth will all shout in one unified shout, Jesus is Lord. That's God's purpose, that's his will. So God's singular will is being worked out in your life and my life and Jesus' life, exactly the same, and a hundred billion other lives, all towards that one single goal and design and purpose. So when we pray, and like Jesus, we plead for the omnipotence of God to work, we pray in total submission to his will, we're praying just like Jesus did. He said, pointless. He already knew the answer. What was he even doing in the garden? He knew there was no other way but to go to the cross. He'd already told his disciples repeatedly, hey listen, I'm going to Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders, they'll betray me, I'm gonna be killed, I'm gonna rise again the third day. He already knew all that. Why go there? Why go and pray? Why plead for that? You say, it's a pointless prayer. He knew the answer. Yes, he knew the answer. No, it absolutely was not pointless. In praying like that and recording for that for us in scripture, he showed us his desire not to be separated from his father. He showed us that God is all powerful and can accomplish the seemingly impossible and we should ask him to do so. You got an impossible circumstance in your life? I do. So do you. Take a long look at your life. When was the last time you got on your face before God and said, it's possible. I know you can do this. Nothing is outside the extent of the power of you to bring about whatever you desire. It's possible. He showed us that God is all powerful and can accomplish the seemingly impossible. We should ask him to do so, but we should ask him to do so submitting our will to his will. He showed us that our relationship with God is real and honest and absolutely transparent. He didn't go in the garden and pray some fancy flowered prayer and just kind of get through the prayer meeting because he was still thinking about the cross. No, he went in there on his face and he was in such an agony. He poured out sweat and he cried out to his father. If it's possible, let this cup pass. He showed us what it means to really be a son of the Father in the deepest, darkest moments of our life. He also showed us that persistence in prayer effects the greatest, the best possible result. And that's getting what I want, right? No, not at all. The best possible result for us is getting what God wants. That's the best possible result. What is the end of the will of God accomplished in our lives? God's name is glorified. What's the end of the will of God accomplished in your life and my life? It's God's kingdom increased. It's God's will is done and our best is also achieved. God's will is not designed to give you the worst possible outcome. It's designed for your absolute best. Romans 8, 28, right? One of those great foundational rock solid verses that every Christian ought to memorize and hang on to with a grip of death. We know that for those who love God, all things, all things, every single last one of them, no one's accepted, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. Jesus prayed in full view of the omnipotence of God who could make another way since it is possible. Jesus submitted himself totally to the will of his father, and Jesus walked out of the garden. Jesus conquered sin and death on the cross, and Jesus is now exalted to the right hand of the Father, and praise God, Jesus is coming again soon to reestablish, not reestablish, to establish his kingdom reign on this earth. Right? So he got the best possible result, the best possible answer that could possibly happen. His submission to God resulted in the best possible outcome for him as well as for us. But I'm not Jesus. I'm not gonna go to a cross and I'm probably not gonna get exalted to the right hand of the father and I'm almost, I'm guaranteed to know, and I'm not gonna one day rule as king of kings, right? Neither are you. So it's nice to talk about Jesus, but what about our situation? How does this work itself out for us? So I'll finish up this with a simple scenario to try and illustrate everything I'm trying to say. There's a situation in your life. You can fill in the blank what it is. I'll take a generic one. I'm just gonna call it cancer. I don't know what else you can think about whatever's going on in your life that fits that scenario. In prayer, we seek the strength that God alone can provide to get through it. In prayer, we seek protection from the temptation to abandon our faith, and the temptation will come up again and again and again. In prayer, we plead with God in light of his omniscience, his all-knowing of our needs and wants, including the cancer that's ravaging our body. In prayer, we plead with God in light of his all-powerfulness to deal irrevocably with our cancer and in prayer we submit ourselves fully to his will. In prayer we plead with God's will to be done knowing it will be for the glory of his name and for our ultimate good and joy and happiness. And what do we do then? We pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we persist in prayer. Remember the story of the persistent widow? Went knocking to get what she wanted from the judge. And she got it because she simply would not give up. She just kept banging away, I need this to be resolved, I need to be resolved. And she persisted, and persisted, and persisted, and eventually she got what she wanted. One of the things with us that we gotta learn, I gotta learn, I'm still learning it, is persistence in prayer. Not letting go of God. It's like, remember Jacob and the angel? In Peniel, right, the darkness of the night, all of his family's on the far side of the river, and as it goes dark, a man comes and he wrestles with Jacob all through the night. And the sun's beginning to rise, and the angel, the Lord as it is, says, let me go. And Jacob says, no, I'm not letting you go until you bless me. And he hung on to God until God blessed him. And Jesus persisted in prayer. And the widow persisted in prayer. And the promise of scripture is this, God will give us peace that passes all understanding. God may, God may cure cancer. Is it within his power? Absolutely. Sometimes God does that. There are times when God acts and reverses medical situations. There are times when God acts and things are done and dealt with in a massive, omnipotent way. God may not cure the cancer. All of us know scenarios where that's the case. If it's within his will to cure cancer, he will, because that will be for his glory and your good. If he does not cure cancer, if it's outside his will to do so, the end result is that we will, like Jesus, walk out of the garden with the strength and the confidence to finish the work, to endure the suffering, to glorify God whatever may come, to walk the path that God has laid out for us. The end result is that God's will will be accomplished. The end result is that we will know peace unlike any other. I can tell you just as a real brief example, this week I was struggling and wrestling with something. I went into my office, I shut the door, and I pleaded with the Lord for an answer. An hour went by, and one little thought came into my mind. It wasn't the full answer, but it was just the next step ahead. And I walked out of there with a joy I can't even begin to describe. And trust me, I'm no example of persistence in prayer, not at all. But I can assure you that in those situations, God's will will be done. We will know peace unlike any other. The end result is that we will glorify God and be totally satisfied in him, whatever the scenario may work it out to. Point is this. Pray the way Jesus is teaching us to. Pray the way Jesus prayed. Pray, people of God, on the good days, pray and give thanks. Pray, people of God, on the bad days, pray and give thanks and plead for God's omnipotence and omniscience to continue to work. But pray. That's the pleading. That's the example. That's the teaching of Jesus. If you asked me two years ago, What's a central function of a church? I'd probably say preaching and teaching the Word of God. You ask me today, I'll tell you what I believe the central function of a church is, it's prayer. Yes, preaching and teaching is important, totally believe that, but it's prayer, pleading with God to do what only God can do, to work in your scenario. Well, having said all that, I'm going to close in prayer. Do you have one more song? Okay. I'll close in prayer and then Wes will come and lead us in one more song. Would you stand with me and we'll pray and then we'll sing? A father in our God as we stand here this morning and we look into that circle. That scene in Gethsemane. 2000 odd years ago. And father, we are caused to stand back and bow our heads as we see the son of the living God. Wrestling in a great distress. His sorrow is unlike anything that we have ever experienced or ever will experience. And Father, He wrestled and He wrestled and He wrestled in prayer. And Father, He submitted Himself to Your will, and yet He still pleaded for the omnipotence, Your omnipotence to work. And Father, the teaching of that prayer is that when we plead for Your omnipotence to work and we submit ourselves to Your will, it will be for Your glory and for our good. And father, I'm convinced this morning as I stand here that there's some in this room that are struggling desperately with depression and sorrow and loneliness and fear. And father, we're very good at putting on masks when we leave the door on the way to church on Sunday morning. But father, you see into the very depths of our heart and our soul. And Father, I cry out to you this morning that you would bring comfort to those who are struggling in such a way. Father, provoke them and encourage them and comfort them to seek you in prayer. Father, give them the words to say. And Father, if there are no words, help them to pray with those deep groanings. Father, that they might know the peace of God that passes all understanding. Father, we just rejoice in the fact that you do give us that peace. Father, we cry out to you this morning for our church. We pray, O God, that you would restore the joy that we have in our salvation. Father, that you would again ignite a fire in all of us, O God, that we would burn brightly for Jesus. The Father, the light that's in us would be high and set up where all the world can see that we know and we love Jesus Christ. Father, we need to be a people who are burning brightly for him. And Father, we plead with you that you in your omnipotent will and your omniscient will would accomplish that in our lives. Father, drive us back to our knees, bring us in repentance and seeking your face again. Father, we plead with you for this church. And Father, we seek your blessing and we cry out to you in Jesus' name, amen.