Christ Presbyterian Church is a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Visit us for morning or evening worship in Mobile, Alabama or on the web at cpcmobile.com. We'll be in Mark chapter 14 again this evening. Continuing to preach through the Gospel of Mark in a systematic way. will be this evening in verses 32 through 42, which you may have noticed in the bulletin. Definitely hadn't noticed if you pay as little attention to the bulletin as I do. But if you did, you may have scratched your head and wondered if that was a misprint, and it's not. That is the same text that we looked at together last week. We're going to look at it again a little bit different way that I'll preach from this text. Mark chapter 14. Verses 32-42. And they, that is Jesus and His disciples, went to a place called Gethsemane. And He said to His disciples, Sit here while I pray. And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And He said to them, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch. And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. And he came the third time and said to them, are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand." Thus far, the perfect word of God. As we prepare to give ourselves over to a consideration of it, Let us go to him in prayer. Most holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for your word that feeds us, that directs us, that creates faith in us and then builds up that faith. encouraging us to know You better, that we might become more like You. Lord, as I preach, I plead with You that You would guard me against saying or preaching anything that is a vain imagination of my own or another's heart. Let me preach only what Your Word teaches, that You have given by Your Word full warrant to be published in Your name. For we believe in Your Word and its power to heal and to nourish. And as has been prayed already, open our ears to hear. We ask for Your glory, and in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, Kellen. We preach, and what you all are used to hearing are sermons preaching systematically through a book of the Bible. When theologians name something, they name it in Latin so that we sound really smart. So that's Lectio Continuum. a continuous reading of the scriptures. And we believe we have biblical warrant to do so. When Jesus taught in the synagogue, it says he was handed the scroll and he read from where they'd left off in Isaiah. So that is what they practiced and Jesus did not take the scroll and turn to some other place that he thought would be better to preach from on that day. He picked up where they had left off. And there are good things about it, safeguards that are there for God's people. I don't select my hobby horses to preach on, I have to preach whatever comes next. And yet sometimes there are legitimate occasions to preach In fact, we just finished in the morning recently a sermon series that was a topical sermon series, still preaching from texts of scripture, but not through a book of the Bible, but rather on a topic, the topic of biblical reconciliation and peacemaking. Derek Thomas is a Presbyterian pastor and a professor at a seminary, at Reform Theological Seminary. I have heard him instruct his students. to preach one topical sermon per year and repent immediately afterwards. So this is my one topical sermon for 2014. As I read this text in preparation to preach last week's sermon, which I hope was a good exegetical sermon, a sermon that seeks to explain what the text means and then to draw out of it implications and applications that make sense for us today, an exegetical sermon. But as I read it, there was a significant theological and biblical idea that really stood out to me from the text. I thought, boy, I'd like to deal with that. So here we go, that's why we have the same text two weeks in a row. What's interesting to me, what kind of jumped out at me comes from the prayer that Christ offers. In verse 35, Mark describes the prayer for us. He says, Jesus went a little further into the garden and he fell on the ground and he prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And that concept of possibility, that issue comes up again then in the next verse as Mark reports to us the prayer that he prayed. Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. And then that's tied to the issue of the will of God. Yet not what I will, but what you will. If it were possible, he prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. Well, was it possible? Mark says he prayed, Father, all things are possible for you. I've taught at least the early questions of the children's catechism to all three of my children. One of the early questions asks, can God do all things? By the time we've gotten to that question, they've kind of figured out how catechism works, answer the question and with a full sentence. And so the automatic answer is yes, God can do all things. But that's the wrong answer, according to the children's catechism. And it takes some effort for them to get the right answer down. Can God do all things? Yes. God can do all his holy will. Yes. But then it doesn't say God can do all things because that's not specific enough for those who write catechisms. Yes, God can do all his holy will. He can do what he wants to do. He cannot do things he does not want to do. He can do all his holy will. And I think as Mark reports the prayer for us, these two ideas are tied together. So Jesus says, all things are possible for you, yet not what I will, but what you will. The question I want to ask and just wrestle with together is why? I mean, we know the answer Jesus gets. The answer is no, this hour will not pass from you. No, I will not take this cup away from you. Why would God choose that? Why is that what He wills? Why, when we have here the second person of the Trinity, the Eternal Son, having taken on human nature, now fallen on the ground, desperately praying to His Father, saying, Daddy, don't make me do this. I do not want to go. You love your kids, right? You have a child look you in the eye, tears streaming down the face and say, Mommy, Daddy, I don't want to. Please don't make me do it. Whether you're in a doctor's office and it's time for shots, it's time to go off to camp or college maybe. You look at him and say, you have to. Why? Why would God choose the salvation of sinners when it means the suffering and sacrifice of his son? His only son, his beloved son, the son with whom he has enjoyed for all eternity past a perfect and loving communion. He's going to break that communion. Why? Part of the answer to that question is because the atonement manifests the love of God. And he wants to show forth the fact that he is love. So Romans 5, 8 says, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. There's a contrast there. Verse 7, Paul had said in verse 7, you know, for a really good man, we might find someone willing to die. Then verse 8, but, by contrast, God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 1 John 4.10 says, in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. He sends His Son to the cross because it shows His love. I need to make a couple of notes about God's love. here as we think about that because our culture is very much confused about the love of God. First of all, the atonement, sending Christ to the cross, only displays God's love because sending him to the cross is necessary if sinners are to be saved. I've heard a pastor who illustrates this point because there have been theologians and pastors who have said the atonement is not necessary. That's the way God chose to do it, but if he'd wanted to, he could have simply forgiven sinners. The God who says let there be light and there is light could say you are forgiven and you'd be forgiven. Jesus didn't have to die. So I've heard this illustration. If there's a family standing out at the curbside in the middle of the night watching their home burn to the ground, if a neighbor comes and says, let me show you how much I love you, and he runs into the burning building. That makes sense and displays the love that this man has for his neighbors if there is a child trapped in the house. And he's going to go in and rescue that child. But if all the children and the pets and even all the valuables have been rescued out of the house beforehand, then this makes no sense at all. That's not love. That's just stupidity. Let me show you how much I love you. I'm going to just go burn up. If a bone marrow transplant is necessary for treatment, than the one who volunteers to go through what is a very painful surgery in order to have marrow extracted from the center of his bones in order that it might be transplanted into the other. That's love. But if the illness that the other suffers is a common cold, then that's just insanity to volunteer to donate bone marrow. No, it only displays the love of God that Christ should die because it's necessary. The holiness of God, the justice of God, and the nature of our sin necessitates, if we are to be saved, the Son of God has to die. We're too used to that idea. It doesn't strike us like it should, either with the severity of our sin or with the glory of the holiness and justice of God, or with the love of God. Here's the second note I want to make about God's love. Do not abuse this display of the love of God. there's a temptation to look at this love that God has for sinners and use it in the interest of glorifying sinners rather than using it in the interest of glorifying God. So we'll hear this kind of thing. Think of how much God loves you. Think how special you must be. God wants so much to be in a relationship with you, He just couldn't bear the thought of being without you. So He sacrificed His own Son so that He could have you. Because you're so valuable. You're so precious. Well, I won't say there's no truth in that. I think there's truth to be had there. But the general tenor of such things is to raise up the sinner as somehow glorious. that God puts such value in you. Rather, let us glorify the God who, despite our unloveliness, chooses to love us anyway. And to such an extent. Oh, how glorious is His love. Oh, how majestic is our God who chooses to love. John 17, where Jesus prays his great high priestly prayer. He looks up to heaven and he said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son, that the son may glorify you. See, that's the right focus. Glorify the son, glorify the father, not the sinner. The atonement manifests the love of God in order that we might know and celebrate His love. That is, that the gloriousness of His love might be revealed and appreciated. He is great and greatly to be praised, as more than one psalm says. And I have this because it comes from this morning. I didn't get to be upstairs for Sunday school this morning but I took a walk with Sarah this afternoon and she was telling me about some of the things that Chris shared from the mission field in the Czech Republic. Some about the formal cultic religion that is practiced in the vacuum that rebellion against God creates. And I was thinking a little bit, you know, in a superficial way and from the outside one might see similarities between the demon worship that Chris described and Christian worship. Both will say that object of worship is a real spiritual person who is more powerful than we and who therefore commands our worship and we must submit to Him. The difference between serving one who says, I hate you and I hate the God in whose image you were made and therefore what you will do is cut yourself. Between that and the God who says, I love you and I made you for myself to love me and therefore what I will do is cut my son. That we might be reconciled. God is love, and it's not just that He is love, but He wants to make that known. He wants to show that forth. He wants to manifest that. He wants to be lifted up as great because that's true of Him. So that's the first answer. Why the cross? When Jesus is there praying that this hour might pass from Him, why does the Father say, no, you have to go? Because He wants to display His love. that we might glorify Him for His love. Similarly, the atonement manifests God's mercy. Not just His love, but His mercy. God is merciful. It's not just that sometimes He displays mercy. He is merciful. It's who He is. It's the essence of His being. He is a merciful God and He wants to reveal that about Himself. when Moses wanted to see the glory of God. He said, show me your glory, I want to see it. God didn't actually visibly show him anything. Instead, the scripture says, he declared his name before Moses. See, a name in that culture and in most cultures is not just a convenient label, like we think of a name, but a name accurately describes the essence of the thing or the person named. And so in Exodus 34, verses 5 through 7, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him, that's Moses there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That's who He is, is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, that's who He is. And when Moses says, I want to see your glory, I want you to make your glory manifest to me, show it to me, I want to see it, this is what God declares. So it's not just who He is, it's what He wants known about Him. It's what He wants to be celebrated for. Psalm 116 verse 5 does exactly that. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Our God is merciful. The atonement, the cross work of God to reconcile sinners to Himself, displays the love of God, it manifests the mercy of God, and it makes known the wisdom of God. Who but God could have come up with a way to at the same time make manifest His holiness and justice on the one hand, that He is perfectly right and fair and will execute justice upon all those who violate His law and at the same time and by the same means manifest His love and His mercy and His grace and His forgiveness. Paul is drawing our attention to that as he writes in Romans 3 verses 23 through 26, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. You see what Paul is saying? For thousands of years, God had been passing over sins. He had not been executing justice. People were sinning and getting away with it. And it looked like, you know what's true about this God who's in control of this world? He's not righteous. He is not just. He does not do all things well. People sin and they just go on sinning. And they are not punished for it. We have multiple Psalms that wrestle with this from the standpoint of the righteous saying, look at the wicked. They're sinning with impunity and they're having a lot more fun than we are. This isn't fair. Paul says, then Jesus shows up and is offered by the Father as a propitiation for our sins. He takes the wrath of God against sin upon himself, and then now, after that has happened, then you can look back over all the thousands of years and say, oh, taken care of. There is judgment, it's displayed on the cross. And if there is forgiveness, it is well paid for, so that God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. As this idea of what is possible jumped out at me from the text, that he prayed, if it were possible the hour might pass from him, that he prayed, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done. The doctrine that that brought to mind is called the necessity of the atonement, which means that if sinners were to be saved, then the cross work of Christ was necessary. In the end, I've dealt more with the question of why does God want then to save sinners? I've wanted to dwell on that because it is to God's glory to dwell on that, to celebrate our God for who He is. In conclusion, I just want to wrestle a little bit with this fact that as Mark reports it, and he's unique in reporting it this way, Jesus says, all things are possible for you. We know that that statement is not an absolute. He doesn't mean absolutely all things imaginable are possible for you. Maybe you're rebelling against that statement, churning a little bit. I'm just going to let you for a bit. And then I'll relieve that for you. Titus 1.2 says that God cannot lie. 2 Timothy 2.13 says God cannot deny himself. Two instances of scripture that plainly say here is something God cannot do. So when Jesus says all things are possible for you, he does not mean all things imaginable, all things indiscriminately and absolutely. That's why the children are taught to reply, yes, God can do all his holy will. While God cannot deny himself, similarly, God cannot not glorify himself. God cannot not glorify himself. He will seek his own glory. Now He is glorious, we can add nothing to Him. When we talk about glorifying God, we're not talking about God has this much glory and we're gonna pile some more on top. You're welcome God, now you're more glorious than you used to be because we sang a little ditty. No, God is infinitely glorious. When we say we glorify Him, what we mean is we publish that fact. We make it manifest, we make it show up in the world. something at least of how glorious God is. In the cross work of Christ and by his resurrection, God has published his glory in the world. He has made his love and his mercy and his wisdom manifest. Our role is to receive grace and mercy forgiveness of sins, justification, adoption, and the hope of glory, and to receive all this with simple joy, and to celebrate, to republish the glory of the Father through the Son by the power of the Spirit. That's why He sent Him to the cross, is to publish this truth about Himself. And our job is to reap the benefits of that, to enjoy it, to celebrate it, to republish His glory in the world. Let's pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are truly great and greatly to be praised. We are not nearly pleased enough to get to know and serve a God who loves us, who is merciful to us, who in His perfect wisdom has displayed His righteousness and His grace and has redeemed us. Oh Lord, impress us. with how truly wonderful you are. Make us to live in awe of you. Make us to live out of thanksgiving to you. And make us to desire nothing more than to live before your face in communion with you and to publish abroad the news of your glorious grace. We pray it for your glory, and in Jesus' name, amen.