Willing Spirits and Weak Flesh

As a pastor, you are always supposed to preach the message to your own heart before you deliver it to the church.

Some times, God works in unique ways to make sure you get the message.

This week was one of those weeks.

Monday morning, I had been working on this message and it really started coming together. I was away from studying for a bit, so I kinda put it out of my mind.

On my way back to the office, I pulled up to a stoplight, and my car sputtered out and died, right at a stoplight with nowhere to go. I couldn’t get it started again and had to flag down a passing deputy to block traffic while some kind men helped me push the car into the median and wait for a tow.

The tow truck came and towed it off, Samantha picked me up, and then she dropped me off here at the church.

I walked back into my office, and my mind immediately began racing.

I started thinking about how we would work out transportation for the week and what adjustments we needed to make to our budget to pay for the repairs and how much time it would eat up, and the list goes on.

You could boil down all the thoughts in my head down to this one question, “How in the world am I going to fix this?”

It was then that I looked down at the very notes I had written about four hours earlier.

God had already answered the question, although I still have lots to learn about what it means.

In fact, this is a lesson God has brought me back to repeatedly this week.

This morning, that’s what I want to share with you today.

I want you to be able to answer the question, “What do I do when I find out that I am weak?”

We are one week away from Easter, and today, I want us to look at some of the events that occurred the night before Jesus’ death on the cross for us.

These events are going to show us two different ways we could respond when we find out we are weak, and as a spoiler, only one of them actually works.

You can either try to handle it yourself and fall asleep, or you can cry out to the Father and surrender.

That will make more sense when you see what happened in our passage this morning.

Open your Bibles to .

Jesus and his disciples have been celebrating the Passover supper together. He has spent a lot of time teaching and talking about the fact that he was leaving and that the Father would send the Holy Spirit to lead and guide the disciples.

He has given us a picture of the new covenant he is about to seal and settle as he took the cup and the bread at the Passover meal and redefined their meaning. We will look at that some on Friday evening as we observe that same ceremony together.

He and the disciples have left and are now headed to a garden to pray.

It isn’t overstating the point to say that what would transpire over the next several hours would forever change the course of human history.

This story, like so many in Mark, show just how human these men were. However, it give us an exceptional glimpse into the humanity of Jesus as well.

There is a key phrase Jesus uses with the disciples that we want to unpack together: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

As incredible as it sounds, both Jesus and the disciples demonstrated that our bodies are weak and frail. However, they both reacted differently to that weakness.

Here’s what we will see: when we are confronted with weakness, we can choose to handle it ourselves and sleep or take it to the Father and surrender.

Read it with me, starting in verse 32...

Jesus and the disciples were tired. It was late and had been an incredibly long day, but it wasn’t over yet. In fact, it was about to get much, much worse.

So, how did the disciples respond to their weakness?

So, how did the disciples respond to their weakness?

1) Handle it ourselves.

Think about what is going on for the disciples here.

It is late, and it has been an incredibly long day.

There were all kinds of preparations to make for the Passover meal, so they have been busy.

Then, they ate this big, long, ceremonial meal together.

While they were at the meal, Jesus said some really difficult things to them.

He said that he was going away and they wouldn’t see him for a while. He told them that one of the disciples at the table with them would betray him and that all the rest of them would fall away. Despite his confidence, Jesus said that Peter would deny him three times before sunrise. Jesus also predicted that his disciples would suffer a great deal because of their allegiance to Christ.

Now, as we have seen in Mark, Jesus is broken and trembling under the weight of what will take place.

The disciples are completely wiped out because of their grief over everything that has been said and taken place so far:

Luke 22:45 CSB

When he got up from prayer and came to the disciples, he found them sleeping, exhausted from their grief.

luke 22:

Their bodies just can’t handle it, so when Jesus leaves them alone, they keep falling asleep.

On three different occasions, Jesus leaves them and goes off to pray. Each time he comes back, he finds them asleep when he gets back.

He rebukes them each time, and even that wasn’t enough to keep them awake.

I don’t think the disciples were trying to ignore Jesus.

Like Luke said, their hearts were breaking with grief, so we know they weren’t totally dismissing what Jesus said.

Have you ever tried to stay awake when you are exhausted? It is next to impossible.

I am sure they tried all the tricks…pinching themselves, rubbing their eyes, moving around a bit, but nothing worked.

Why? Because they were trying to stay awake using their own strength and their own power.

As Jesus said, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. They wanted to stay awake and be there to support Jesus, but they weren’t able to do it.

Like Luke said, their hearts were breaking with grief, so we know they weren’t totally dismissing what Jesus said.

Have you ever tried to stay awake when you are exhausted? It is next to impossible.

I am sure they tried all the tricks…pinching themselves, rubbing their eyes, moving around a bit, but nothing worked.

Why? Because they were trying to stay awake using their own strength and their own power.

That sentence from Jesus is convicting, isn’t it? The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

Let’s pull back the curtain for a minute: Where is your spirit willing, but your flesh is weak? Is there something in your life that you know you are not supposed to be doing that you keep doing anyway?

Is there something you are supposed to start doing but you just can’t?

Maybe you can identify with the way Paul described the battle that goes on in our heads and hearts:

ro 7:19-

Romans 7:19–24 CSB

For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Romans 7:19–22 CSB

For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God’s law,

ro 7:19-22

I do what I don’t want to do, and I don’t do what I want to do!

I do what I don’t want to to

There is a battle and a wrestling in my flesh, in my body, and it fights against what I know God is calling me to do.

Understand this, though: the Bible uses the term “flesh” a few different ways. Sometimes, it is simply referring to our physical bodies that aren’t as strong and as capable as they should be because of the curse of sin that has impacted all of creation.

Other times, like in , it is referring to that part of our nature that is weakened by our old sinful patterns.

For the disciples in our passage in Mark, it is somewhat referring to both. They were exhausted physically, so their flesh was weak.

However, because they were like us an sinful, they also struggled with an old nature that still gave into sin and temptation.

Jesus wasn’t rebuking them for being tired; he was rebuking them because they were trying to do this on their own and not recognizing their need to cry out to the Father like we see Jesus doing.

We still live in bodies that are weakened by the effects of sin in the world. That’s why we get sick and things hurt and there are challenges in our mental and physical health.

I am not denying the fact that your physical flesh may be weakened by some disease or disorder.

However, what Jesus rebuked the disciples for is the same thing he would rebuke us for: instead of crying out to God for him to either deliver us from this pain or to give us strength to endure it for his glory, we try to handle it on our own.

If I just try harder, I can overcome my depression or my anxiety. If I achieve more, I won’t feel so worthless. If I make more money, I won’t be afraid of the future. If I have more stuff, then I will finally be happy. If I can just eat more or have sex more or have a steady relationship, I will finally feel good.

No one wants to be weak, but like the disciples, you can’t rely on your own strength or your own goodness or your own power.

When you find out how weak you are, don’t make the mistake the disciples made.

Don’t “stop apologizing and wash your face” as a popular women’s author has written recently.

If you do, then, just like the disciples, you will be asleep every time.

Well, if I can’t handle my weakness on my own, then what do I do?

You follow Jesus’ pattern here and...

2) Cry out for help.

Jesus’ reaction is completely different than the disciples.

I want to be very careful with what I say here, because this is one of the most incredible moments in human history. I want to describe it well.

I believe what we said of the disciples can also be said of Jesus: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Let’s be clear, though: Jesus’ flesh isn’t weakened by a sinful nature like ours. Because Jesus was born of a virgin, he did not have a sinful nature like we have and like the disciples had.

However, when he came to earth in what we call the Incarnation, when the Father placed him in Mary’s womb through the work of the Holy Spirit, he fully and completely took on human flesh.

Jesus never stopped being God, but in the Incarnation, he became fully man as well.

There are aspects of this that we may never fully understand, but for right now, let’s acknowledge that there is nothing that could describe God is that Jesus isn’t. At the same time, there is nothing that could describe the true nature of humanity that isn’t true of Jesus.

Here’s why that matters: Jesus isn’t faking it when he is crying out to the Father here. His flesh is weak.

Look back at verses 33-34.

Jesus knows what is about to take place. Soon, he is going to be arrested, beaten, and hung on a cross to die.

While experiencing that physical pain, he will be enduring a spiritual agony that is impossible to comprehend: as the divine man, who has never sinned at any point ever, is about to become the embodiment of sin:

2 Corinthians 5:21 CSB

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Jesus was taking my sin and your sin upon himself on the cross, taking all the punishment I deserve for every sin I have committed or ever will commit, and doing the same for everyone in the entire world.

The weight of that is unbearable, and the weak flesh he lived in felt every bit of it.

Luke even tells us that he was in such anguish that he began to sweat blood. Likely, this refers to a rare condition where the strain is so much on the body that capillaries in the skin begin to burst and mix with his sweat.

Although he did not have a sin nature of his own, Jesus still lived in a frail human body that was subject to the effects of sin.

He was staggering under the weight of what was to come.

How did he handle it? Did he try to just push through and pull himself up by his own bootstraps?

No; he cried out to the Father. As he does, he gives us an incredible pattern to follow in how we handle our weakness.

Look back to verse 36.

Notice how he prays:

He acknowledged that God the Father was his loving heavenly Father. He started by crying out to God in a way that only a family member could. If you remember, this is also how he taught us to pray when he gave the Model Prayer in .

Next, he acknowledged God’s power. He didn’t do that to remind the Father, as though he somehow forgot. Instead, it was to call to mind what is true of God: that he is able to do anything he sees fit and best to do.

From there, he makes his request: Father, if there is any way that this can be accomplished apart from what I am about to endure, let it be done another way.

Finally, he surrenders his will to that of the Father. This is where the rubber meets the road. If we really trust that God is our loving Father, if we really believe he is always able to do what is best, then we must acknowledge that he may not answer our prayers in the way we want him to answer them.

He prays this way three different times, and then he is arrested. It becomes clear that the Father’s will is not to allows this cup to pass, but instead, Jesus must take it and drink it for us.

Let me ask you, though, after Jesus surrendered to the Father’s will, did he just, “let go and let God,” as we sometimes say?

I don’t prefer that phrase because I think it is confusing.

Jesus did surrender his will, but in doing so, he wasn’t passive.

He actively obeyed. He went with Judas when he could have called down legions of angels to rescue him. He responded with restraint during the trials and withheld his divine power, allowing his body to be beaten and destroyed.

He even continued to pray and seek forgiveness for those who crucified him. While on the cross, he made sure his mother was taken care of by entrusting her to the disciple John. He even shared the message of the kingdom with one of the others who was crucified beside him!

The next 12 hours were anything but passive for Jesus.

In the same way, surrendering our will to the Father doesn’t mean that we are going to go into some trance-like state and wake up a week later having accomplished his will.

Instead, the Holy Spirit inside us will strengthen us to carry out the Father’s will in a way that we never could on our own.

Your spirit is too weak to get your flesh to do what you need it to do. As much as you want to be a better person, the only way to overcome the sin and weakness you face is by crying out daily, perhaps even moment-by-moment to the Father, asking him to deliver you from the problem or to give you strength to face it.

This is the way we respond when we find out we are weak.

Let’s slow down on this point for a minute: What did Jesus ask the Father to do? Take this cup from him.

Did the Father take the cup from him? No.

So let’s apply that to something we addressed earlier: we have bodies that are weakened by sin. That may cause us to have cancer or some other disease or disorder.

Sometimes, that even affects the mind and causes us to battle issues like depression and anxiety.

God may choose to take that cup from you completely and heal you in ways that he alone can take credit for.

Are you willing, though, to pray that last part of Jesus’ prayer? “Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.”

What if God doesn’t desire to heal your body of this disease or your mind of this disorder?

The apostle Paul followed Jesus’ example when he was faced with a place where his flesh was weak. He had what he describes as “a thorn in the flesh,” and he begged God three times to take it away.

Here’s how God responded:

2 Corinthians 12:9 CSB

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.

God didn’t take Paul’s thorn away so that Paul would be able to clearly demonstrate God’s grace to sustain him through the midst of that battle.

He didn’t take the cup away from Jesus. Instead, his will directed Jesus to the cross to take your sins and mine.

Are you willing to join those ranks and say of the thing that plagues you, “God, should you choose to leave me in this situation, I will honor you by surrendering my will to yours”?

Remember that you and I will never be able to do this perfectly.

All of us have sinned, all of us have put our will above God’s will.

That’s why Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane that night: because he succeeded where we failed.

Because he suffered this way, you and I can now cry out to God for salvation and help just like he did.

We can rightfully refer to God as our Father if we are willing to put our trust in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.

Have you done that? Why not do it today?