Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 22:39-46
[ Pause ] Grab a Bible and find Luke 22. Luke 22, there is an outline if you'd like to follow along on the outline that should be in your bulletin. Luke 22, our passage is verse 39 to 46. I think this is the shortest passage that we have looked at or will look at in our study of Luke's Gospel. It's a remarkable passage and it's one that, in my opinion, requires a great deal of reverence. Obviously, as believers, we think all of the Bible requires a great deal of reverence, but this one in particular, I think, is remarkable for the things that we read here and as we try to understand these things. It's a challenge to take this passage in and to understand not only what's happening but why it's happening. So we're going to begin with just a few pictures. I like pictures, they help me think about what's going on and so let's talk about Jerusalem, okay? That's a modern-day picture of Jerusalem. In Jesus' day, it didn't look anything like that. Obviously, no high rises in the background. This Muslim shrine, the Dome of the Rock on the right and then the Alaksa Mosque over here on the left, sitting on top of the Temple Mount. Obviously, those would not have been there, but the temple would have been standing right there. But you can get a feel for it. And when you look at that, I don't know what all comes into your mind, especially when you look in the background of that picture, but it looks very crowded to me. And it is a very crowded place. I've never been there, but it is a very crowded place. It's one of the most densely populated places on the whole earth. And in Jesus' day, it didn't have the same population it does today, but it still was very, very crowded. And one of the issues they ran into in Jesus' day is that it was so crowded in Jerusalem. People didn't have room. There was no space to have a garden. Now, that mayor may not seem like a big deal to you. You live in Odessa, Texas. It's pretty hard to grow a garden here. But in Jerusalem, people like to have that. And there was just really not the space in the city. And so what the more wealthy residents of Jerusalem would do was rent space outside of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. And they would have a private garden out on this mountain. Now, when we read these verses, somebody asked me right before church, what are we talking about? And I said, we're talking about Jesus praying in Gethsemane. But if you look closely in Luke's account, he never says anything about Gethsemane. He just says Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives. It's not a contradiction because Gethsemane was on the Mount of Olives. And so it's two ways of describing the exact same thing. So this is sort of from the Mount of Olives actually looking towards Jerusalem. If we flip the camera view around on this next picture, now you're up on the temple mount and you're looking out towards the Mount of Olives. And there's a church right here. It's got the three arches and it's got the big red circle around it. You can't miss it. Right behind that church is an area known as Gethsemane. And I know a lot of the time, we talk about the garden of Gethsemane, which isn't exactly accurate. Gethsemane was an area that had multiple gardens in it. And these rich families in Jerusalem would rent out a spot or a space in that garden. And so it's technically the gardens of Gethsemane. And Jesus goes out to one of these places in Gethsemane. From the city of Jerusalem out to this area is just under about a mile. So it's not very far at all. And we read that Jesus and his friends walk out from Jerusalem out to this garden area in Gethsemane which is on the Mount of Olives. Before we read the passage, I want you to look at verse 39. Luke tells us that he came out and he went as was his custom to the Mount of Olives. When you read that on first glance, you may think, well, as was his custom. Does that mean like he did this all the time? He did this every night. It's not talking about his whole life because Jesus didn't live in Jerusalem. In fact, he didn't spend a whole lot of time in Jerusalem. So Luke's not telling us that he did this every night. What he's telling us is that during the last week of Jesus' life, when he is in Jerusalem for the Passover, he and his disciples went out, left the city every day. Remember, he's teaching in the temple precincts, the temple complex. They leave the city every day. They walk across this little valley. They go over to the Mount of Olives and they spend time praying together in this garden every night this last week of his life. And so sometimes again, in our minds, we think we know this story and we think, well, yeah, they went out and they prayed on the night before Jesus was arrested. They did, but they had also been doing that every night leading up to that. Luke tells us here in verse 39 that this was his custom. And that explains in part when we see next week, Judas knows exactly where to bring the soldiers to arrest Jesus. They've been doing it all week, every night they've been going out to this same spot to pray together. And Judas knows it's away from the city, away from the crowds, it's dark, it's quiet. Nobody will know that we're taking Jesus, we can get him there. It also explains why the disciples are sleeping. Sometimes we give the disciples a hard time, like we would be way more spiritual to them and not fall asleep out in the garden. But it sounds like they've been going out here with Jesus every night for a week, praying, late into the night. They're tired, they're exhausted. Jesus, yes, has been telling them what's coming, but they just don't grasp the full significance of all of it. And so as far as they know that this last night out praying in the garden is just like the other nights. They go out, they pray, nothing happens, they go back to the city the next day. And so it explains a few of the little details in this story. Before we read it, I mentioned this earlier, but I just wanna say, when I read these verses, it feels a little bit like holy ground to me. And I was very intentional this week in preparing thinking about this passage that I don't have any jokes to tell you, I don't have any funny stories to tell you, this is not a funny passage. It's not a joking passage. It's not a silly passage. I don't mean to imply that there are silly passages in the Bible, I'm just saying to you, when you come to these verses, there's just a heaviness that sits over them that I think you need to feel. And so I looked up a few things that well-known Bible scholars has said about this passage. This is a guy named William Barkley. In his commentary on Luke, he said, "Surely this is a passage talking about our verses this morning, which we must approach on our knees. Here, study should pass into wandering adoration." William Barkley is not a guy that I agree with a whole lot when he talks about the Bible, but I agree with him on that. If you just wanna come to this passage to study and to fill your head with some facts, that's one thing, but that's not the goal this morning. This morning, we wanna understand the facts, but then we want study to pass into wandering adoration. Here's another quote from a guy that I do like, Charles Spurgeon. He said, "No man can rightly expound such a passage as this. It is a subject for prayerful, heartbroken meditation more than for human language." That's a guy who's known as the Prince of Preachers. And he says, "You can't preach on this passage." How do you prepare a sermon when the Prince of Preachers says you can't preach on it? It's beyond what you can describe. It's too remarkable, too amazing. So normally what we do on a Sunday morning is we read the passage and then we pray. We're gonna flip that this morning. We're gonna pray first. And one of the reasons we're gonna pray is to ask God to help us move just from study to wandering adoration. But the other reason we're gonna pray is that this is a passage that's familiar to us. It's a story that we've heard in Sunday school a thousand times. And when you come in and you look it up and you see the section heading and you say, "Oh, Jesus praying in Gethsemane." Immediately, you're like me. You think, "I know that story." That's a dangerous thing to think when you get ready to study the Word of God. To walk into it saying, "Oh yeah, I've got that one down." And so we're gonna pray and ask God to open our hearts and open our ears this morning, and then we'll read it and we'll jump in. So let's pray together. Father, we come humbly before you. And we come to sing your praises. We've come to acknowledge you as our Creator and as our Savior and as our King. As we come to this passage in the story of Luke's gospel, we ask that you would give us ears to hear the truth, that you would give us hearts to receive it, that we would not come just as some sort of academic exercise, but that we would come with wondering adoration for who Jesus is and what He came to do for us. And we've talked so many weeks about Luke 19, 10, this idea that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. And we get a glimpse in this passage about what that really cost you and what it cost Christ. And so we pray again for minds to hear, to receive, to understand, for hearts to respond in a way that would honor you. Guide us, convict us, encourage us. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. So this morning, no big idea. We're just gonna jump in. The focus of this passage is Jesus. That's going to be our focus, but you can't jump over this passage without talking a little bit about prayer. So very quickly, I'm gonna give you some truths about prayer. And then we're gonna talk about the main focus of the passage. So six quick truths about prayer. Number one, it requires great spiritual discipline. It's not easy. It's not easy. I can count on one hand the number of people I've known in my life who I think of as genuine prayer warriors. Think about these people. And I think prayer seemed to come easy for them. It just was like natural. Everyone else, I think, is like me. It's hard. It requires work. And you see that in the disciples in this passage. It's a challenging thing. It's a difficult thing to be faithful in prayer. If you think prayer is hard, don't be discouraged. Don't think that something's amiss in your life or maybe that you're not really saved or maybe you're not doing it right. It's just hard. It's a discipline and it requires a lot of work and intentionality. Second, we need to make prayer a habit. Luke tells us it was his custom to go out to the garden and to pray. I explain to you why I think that's just talking about his custom the last week of his life but I'll also give you some verses to jot down and you can read these later. Luke 516 says that Jesus used to go out to desolate places so that he could pray. Luke 612 said one time Jesus went and prayed all night on a mountain. Luke 928, right before the transfiguration, Luke tells us that Jesus was praying over and over and over again and Luke. I could give you more but there's three. He's talking about Jesus' prayer life. What I'm telling you is Jesus didn't come to the last moment of his life, the most crucial moment of his life on this earth and suddenly turn into a great prayer warrior. He spent 30 years making it a habit leading up to this last week where Luke can accurately say it was his custom, it was his habit to go out and to pray. Number three, we should pray in the face of suffering. Jesus was about to suffer. We're gonna talk about that this morning. When you face suffering, you should pray. And alongside that, prayers a means of resisting temptation. Resisting temptation. Verse 40, Jesus tells the guys, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation." He says the same thing in verse 46, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation." Number five, I want you to see that at times, your posture should reflect your heart. Not all the time, but some of the time. It was the custom in Jesus' day for men women, grown-ups, to pray, standing with their hands up and their eyes looking to the heavens. This was the posture for prayer. I know in our culture, this is the posture for prayer. In Jesus' culture, this was the posture for prayer. In this passage, Jesus is not doing this. He's down on the ground. Luke tells us he's down kneeling. When you read the gospel of Mark, it says he fell to the earth to pray. When you read the gospel of Matthew, it says he fell on his face to pray. And what I'm telling you is that sometimes when you pray, your physical posture ought to reflect the position of your heart before God. Not all the time, but some of the time it should. Sixth, one last idea about prayer before we read the passage and jump in, we should always pray and submission to God's will. We'll talk about how Jesus did that this morning. That's a challenge for most of us, right? Most of us are pretty good at telling God what we want him to do. Most of us are pretty good at making suggestions to God about how things ought to turn out. Most of us are pretty good about laying out a plan that we think God should follow. It's okay to do those things as long as you are genuinely in a heartfelt way praying and submission to God's will. So there's a few thoughts about prayer. Now let's just read the passage and think about the real focus, which is Jesus. Look at Luke 22.39. He came out and went as was his custom to the Mount of Olives and the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation." He withdrew from them about a stone's throw and he knelt down and prayed, saying, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done." And there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. When he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and he found them sleeping for sorrow. And he said to them, "Why are you sleeping? "Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation." I want you to get the sense of what's really happening here because this is like nothing you have seen in the gospel of Luke up to this point. It's like absolutely nothing that you have seen. Jesus and the guys walk out of the city across the valley into this garden. It's dark. He gathers them up and he tells them, "I want you to pray so that you don't fall into temptation." And he goes about a stone's throw away, Luke says. And you're not praying like this with his hands up and his eyes up, standing up, but he's down, kneeling down on the ground on his face, praying. And Luke says he's in agony. He's in such great agony that an angel from heaven is sent to strengthen him. I wish I could tell you exactly what that means. I don't know what that means, but I know his agony was so great that an angel from heaven comes to strengthen him. I know that Luke, the physician, is the only one of the gospel writers that tells us his sweat is an actual medical condition when you're under great stress. His sweat is literally blood. He's sweating blood and he's crying out and he's praying earnestly in the prayer is, Tyler mentioned it earlier, father, if there's any way that this cup can pass from me, please. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. When you think about what's happening, here's a few questions that pop into my mind. These are not on your outline. These are some questions I think about. Here's the first one. Why would Jesus pray this specific prayer at this specific time? There's an interesting connection. Did you see in verse 44, it says that he prayed more earnestly? Remember the last time we talked about Jesus being earnest about something? It was when he was eating the Passover with the disciples and he said, I've earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you. I've been waiting for this moment. I've not been dreading it. I've been excited about eating this Passover with you. All of human history, we looked at the verses, we talked about them, from before the foundation of the world, the plan had been to save his people. And he says, I've been waiting for this moment, all this time. Now, not earnestly desiring to eat this meal, he's earnestly praying, asking the Father if there is another way. One commentator I read said, I never read this till this week, he said, when Jesus prays that prayer in Luke 22, he thinks that Jesus is thinking about Genesis 22, story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. Remember that story where God sends Abraham and his son up the hill and he tells him to sacrifice his son and he reaches for the knife to do it and when he reaches for the knife, God says, wait, wait, wait. Don't do it that way, do it this way. Don't kill your son, kill, substitute. And this guy says in his commentary, maybe Jesus is holding out hope that that will happen, that there will be a proverbial ram caught in the thicket. I don't buy it. I don't think that's on his mind in any way, shape, or form. We looked at the verses a few weeks ago that said that this plan, Luke 19, 10, the son of man to come and seek and save the lost, that plan was put into motion before the foundation of the world. When God told Abraham, don't kill Isaac, take the ram. The son of God, Jesus, knew, never was about Isaac in the first place and never really was even about the ram in the first place. It was all pointing to him. He knew what the plan was. He knew it from before the foundation of the world. That was the plan. And here he's praying, if there's any other way, it makes you scratch your head. Here's my next question. How does Jesus' request make sense in light of his many predictions about his death? I'll give you a few verses here. If you want to jot him down, Luke 9, 21 to 22. Jesus said, I'm going to suffer, I'm going to be killed, I'm going to rise. Luke 9, 43 to 45. He said, I'm going to be delivered to the hands of wicked men. It's a prediction, it's a promise. Luke 18, 31 to 34. Jesus said, I'm going to be mocked, spit upon, flogged, killed, and I'm going to rise again. All in the Gospel of Luke, you read those passages and you say he knew exactly what was coming. He knew, he wasn't surprised. And now it looks like he's looking for another way. Question three, this is one that will make you scratch your head. How do you understand this prayer when you see other people face death with great courage? Let me just give you a few examples. Have you ever heard of Socrates? He lived in ancient Greece. He was condemned to die for corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens. They forced him to drink him luck. By all historical accounts, up to the moment they gave him the poison, to the moment he drank it, to the moment he died, he was laughing and joking and having fun, not scared a bit. He wasn't afraid. Another example, I probably don't know who that is. It's a painting, I have no idea what he really looked like, but it's a painting of a man named Judas the Hammer, Judas Maccabeus. He lived after the Old Testament closed the book of Malachi and before the New Testament began the book of Matthew, he lived in this intertestamental period. And he was a tough guy. He led a revolt. He led a bunch of Jews to fight against the occupying military forces in Jerusalem. Lots of Jews tried that and lots of Jews died. He actually did it. He kicked the occupying force out of Jerusalem. He took the city back for the Jewish people. Didn't last very long because they sent a bigger army and they arrested him and they captured him and they sentenced him to die. And by all historical accounts, Judas the Hammer, up to the moment he died, was praising Yahweh, the God of Israel, and laughing at his enemies. He was not scared to die. One last example, two Englishmen. I know that's a fuzzy picture and a small picture, but you can see them standing up, they're tied to stakes. It's two Englishmen named Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, 1555 in England. They were condemned to die simply for the fact that they were Protestant, not Catholic. And they were condemned to die by being burned alive at the stake. And as they're walking from the prison to the stakes, Latimer leans over to Ridley, and this is a famous quote. He says, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley. "Play the man. "We shall this day light a candle "by God's grace in England that will never be put out." They weren't afraid. I could go on and give you other examples. Socrates, Ridley, Latimer, Judas the Hammer. And then I come to Luke 22 and I see Jesus in agony, sweating blood, crying out if there's any other way that this can happen, and it makes you scratch your head. One last question is this. How did Jesus' emotions in Gethsemane make sense in light of Hebrews 12, one to two? You can look it up later. The gist of the passage is that for the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross and he scorned at shame. For the joy that was set before him. I look at Luke 22 and I don't see a whole lot of joy. And I realize that joy is not always smiles and giggles and happy things, but I don't see a lot of joy in that passage. I ask all those questions, and there's a great danger when you try to answer those questions. They're hard questions. The great danger is that you rush in to an answer. And I've sat in way too many church services where a preacher is sort of wrestling with those questions in his mind. And the answer that he rushes to is that crucifixion was really terrible. And he proceeds to preach a sermon in which he details all the horrors of crucifixion. How shameful it would have been to be strip naked and how painful it would have been to be flogged and they describe all the, you've heard it. I don't need to describe it to you. Maybe you've seen the passion of the Christ. You know the point of that is to shock you with how horrific it was. And they talk about how difficult it would have been to carry the cross beam and how painful it would be to have nails put through your wrist and through your feet and the nerves there. And the immensity of that pain. They describe it all too. You write the crown of thorns on the head. They talk about all these physical things that Jesus suffered and they go back to Luke 22 and they say, "Look, he knew it was gonna be bad." And that's why he's praying this. I'm not buying it. Not for a second am I buying that. Don't think for a second that Jesus in the garden is on his face in agony, crying out, sweating blood, needing to be strengthened by an angel because he's afraid of what some two bit Roman soldiers about to do to him. You're not afraid of that. This is the guy, Jesus, who said in Luke 12, "Do not fear those who kill the body and after that, there's nothing that they can do to you. Don't fear those who can only kill you." Not afraid of the Romans, not afraid of Judas or the army or the mob that's about to come get him. This is a guy who marched into the cemetery at the Gatorines and stared down a demoniac who was known for breaking chains, cutting his body and running around naked. And Jesus walked straight up to him, stared him in the eye and cast the demon out of him. He wasn't afraid for a second. This is a guy who marched straight into Jerusalem knowing that the religious leaders were planning to arrest him and murder him and to do it deceitfully and wickedly and unjustly. He walked straight into Jerusalem and threw him out of their own temple. He's not afraid of these guys. This is a guy who walks on the waves and then tells them to be still. This is the guy who, when they don't have enough food, just makes it. This is a guy who comes to people who are blind and heals him. He's not afraid of crucifixion. He is not afraid of a crown of thorns. He's not afraid of being flogged. He's not afraid of any of the physical suffering that's about to come his way. And if you watch a movie or read a book or listen to a sermon that tries to glorify the physical suffering of Jesus as the thing that made him so terrified in the garden, you're reading something that is not true. It's not true. He wasn't afraid of those things. Luke tells us what he was fearful of. Look what he says right here in verse 42. "Father, if you were willing, remove this cup from me." That's the words you've got to get. The one word and the whole passage that unlocks it all, the cup. In the New Testament, just like in the Old Testament, the word cup is an image for the wrath of God. It's not an image for nails. It's not an image for a cross. It's not an image for a cat and nine tails. It's an image for the wrath of God. Look at these verses, Psalm 11, 6. "Let him rain coals on the wicked fire and sulfur "and scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup." Next. Isaiah 51, "Wake yourself, wake yourself, "stand up O Jerusalem, you who have drunk "from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, "who have drunk to the drags, the bowl, "the cup of staggering." He's promising to pour out judgment on his people and he's talking about a cup. Jeremiah 25, "Take from my hand this cup of the wine "of wrath and make the nations to who I send you drink it." Next one, Revelation 14. If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath poured full strength into the cup of his anger. One last one from Revelation. God remembered Babylon the Great to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. This is what you need to get in Luke 22. When Jesus is on his face, being strengthened by an angel, crying out in great agony, asking if there's any other way, what he's thinking about is not a cross and nails, but it's this cup of the fury of the wrath of God that he's about to drink. That's what's on his mind. Hell is about to be poured out on Jesus for his people. That's what he's thinking about. That's what he's wrestling with. And understand this, when he prays this prayer to remove this cup, he's the only person on earth who knows the severity of what's about to happen. And when I say the only one on earth, I mean past, present, future. He's the only one who knows the full extent of what's about to happen to him. No one else has a clue. Even as it's happening, they don't have a clue in the moment about what's going on. But these are the passages that are rolling through Jesus' mind as he's thinking about the crucifixion, 2 Corinthians 5, 21. For our sake, God made Jesus to be sin, and he knew no sin, so that in Jesus, we sinners might become the righteousness of God. He was about to be made sin. Think about the sin in your life, the things that you've done, the things that you've said, the things that you've thought. Jesus, according to this verse, was about to become those things. It's about to carry those things. Galatians 3, 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, how he became a curse for us. Not even is it the idea that he was cursed for us, it's that he became the embodiment of the curse for us. The curse takes you all the way back to Genesis to the first sin, and God curses the woman, and he curses the earth, and he curses the serpent. And Galatians says that you've been redeemed, you've been set free from that. Not because God swept the curse under the rug, but because he placed it on Jesus. He's about to bear that curse, verse from Peter. Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree. He's not afraid of Judas. He's not afraid of Caiaphas or Anas. He's not afraid of Herod. He's not afraid of the Centurians. He's not all wound up about the flogging or the crown of thorns or the beatings. He's not anxious about having to carry that crossbar outside of the city and up a hill. He's not worried about getting nails driven through his hands and his feet. He's not anxious and upset and uptight about being hung up naked for everyone to see. He's not worried about those things. He's not worried about being stabbed in the side. He's not worried about whether they're gonna break his knees or not. He's not worried about that stuff. He's thinking about the cup. The cup of the fury of the wrath of God that he's about to drink. And his prayer is, father, if you are willing, remove it. Remove it. He knows he's about to bear the curse. He knows he's about to become sin for us. He knows that he's about to endure hell for his people. And his prayer is, if you are willing, remove it. Thank God he followed that question, that petition with the statement. And the statement was, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. Thank God he took the cup and he drank it to the dregs, to the very last drop and he turned it over and he said it's finished. Thank God Luke 19, 10 is true. It was true before the foundation of the world. It was true on Gethsemane's Hill. It was true a few hours later and it's true today. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Let me pray for you. Father, our hope is in Jesus, in who he is, and what he came to accomplish for us. It's a remarkable earth-shattering thing that before the foundation of the world, you had a plan to save your people. That that plan involved you coming to be a servant. To humble yourself to the point of death on a cross, to bear the curse, to become sin, to die our death, to take our hell. Father, forgive us when we look at Jesus in this passage and we see a man afraid of physical suffering, or a man afraid of human beings, or a man afraid of physical death. Help us to understand the wonder of what's really happening in this passage, that Jesus is seeking us and saving us in the only way that it could have been done by satisfying justice and by giving us grace, by giving us what we don't deserve and doing what your law required. Father, we have no good thing to bring to you or to offer to you. We just cling to the cross where Jesus redeemed us, where he purchased us, where he died for us. And Father, we pray for the people in this room who maybe have never heard that or understood that. They've never grasped the significance of what Luke 22 is describing. And we pray that today you would open their hearts to hear what your word is saying about Jesus, that you would open their hearts to believe the truth about the one who came to seek them and save them. Father, all of our worship, we direct to you. Every praise, every song, every prayer, you are worthy of all of it and you alone. So as we sing together, we sing to you with grateful hearts and thankful hearts and hearts that are just amazed at who you are and what you've done for us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.