I come to the Garden...
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Good morning, I would like to thank Pastor Jay and pastor Janie for extending this invitation to me to speak once again to the church. This morning we are continuing a series on the road that is ultimately going to lead us to Easter.
As the choir celebrated Palm Sunday, I was reminded that is how the week began. Jesus is in our text this morning began the week with palms waving, people shouting, and a big parade.
Mark 11:9–10 (ESV)
9And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
10Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”
But that was almost a week ago.
Today we have come to the garden of Gethsemane. What a difference a week makes. The garden of Gethsemane presents us with a real challenge.
This challenge has been taken up by artist over the years.
In this first image, we see Jesus kneeling in the garden of Gethsemane. He looked serene, Looking into heaven, a hallo surrounding his head. Darkness encompasses him, but he is in a golden spotlight from heaven. This is the image of his divinity, he is depicted here as part of the Trinity. This by the way is the painting that most of the world knows best when they think of the garden of Gethsemane. Most people today think of this painting, Christ in Gethsemane, Heinrich Hofmann, he painted in 1886.
Other artists have drawn on the human side for their inspiration. In this scene we see Christ, with his hands clap together, head bowed, pouring out his heart in prayer. This artist has clearly tried to depict the more human side of Christ.
In our next painting we see the agony on the face of Jesus as he clutches his hand to his breast, his other hand reaching out, perhaps to take hold of God the Father. We see here a human in distress.
This last artist has tried to combine both images. We see two contracting images, one of agony and distress trouble in the forefront. But in the background we see an image serenity and calm, ready to face whatever comes.
These artists were struggling with what I believe Christ was struggling with when he was in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus was 100% human. He had all the pain and suffering that goes with human condition. But was also hundred percent divine. He was God made flesh.
Now, I know math experts in the crowd are saying, now wait a minute you can’t be 200%. It’s true you and I cannot be 200%. But Jesus was both, he was entirely human, at the same time entirely divine. And it is that dichotomy that we see lived out in the garden.
Before we look at this challenging image let us open with prayer.
Heavenly father, we come to you this morning facing perhaps one of the most challenging scenes in the New Testament. We ask for your clarity and wisdom as we delve more deeply into this image of your son Jesus Christ. May we leave here with a renewed appreciation for the sacrifice of your son for our sins. Amen
First I would like for us to look at Christ as he dealt with the human condition.
Look with me if you will at Mark chapter 14 verse 33. I’ll be reading out of the amplified Bible.
And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be struck with terror and amazement and deeply troubled and depressed.
The translator trying to put into words what Mark had written, which we know was the first-hand experience from Peter uses these words, terror, troubled, and depressed.
They’re all trying to give us a picture of what Peter saw that night. How did he know what Jesus was feeling? I don’t know, maybe he saw it in his face. People who are in deep terror show it in their expressions.
Let’s use our imagination for a moment. Can you see Jesus as he talked to his disciple, eyebrows pinched together, head hanging low, tears flowing from his redden eyes. He says to them, more slumping that bending over, “Remain here and watch.”
This is the testimony of a first-hand witness. Peter, as he tries to put it in words, repeated, terror, troubled, and depressed.
But it does not end there, Jesus said of himself, look with me at verse 34.
And He said to them, My soul is exceedingly sad (overwhelmed with grief) so that it almost kills Me! Remain here and keep awake and be watching.
I don’t mean to give you a Greek lesson, but this is the word Jesus used to describe how he was feeling.
περίλυπος: is means, afflicted beyond measure, grief at this deepest level. The bible translator attempted to capture this emotion with the words, overwhelmed with grief.
I have witnesses that type of grief at a funeral. I remember time a young girls grandfather passed away. They were very close. She visited in his home every night after school. She could not imagine life without him. As we prepared to close the casket, she actually climbed up into the casket with him. We had to remove her physically from that casket.
What was she feeling? περίλυπος, grief beyond measure.
This is type of grief Jesus was experiencing that night in the garden. A grief that is almost killing him.
And going a little farther, He fell on the ground and kept praying that if it were possible the [fatal] hour might pass from Him.
Watch as Jesus stubble a few steps away from them and falls, or collapses onto the ground.
And what has he been praying?
If possible, let this fatal hour pass from him.
Now we are given a insight into Jesus relationship with the father.
Look at verse 36
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.”
He starts by saying, “All things are possible for you.”
He begins by pointing out that the father could stop this whole process. There is nothing impossible for God. So, why did Jesus have to go through the next few days?
Why did the Father not just remove the cup, and relieve the suffering of his son?
What is the real question that hangs in the air of the dark, forboding garden that night. Why?
Why the cross?
As a human, Jesus feared the cross. The Romans were masters at inflicting pain, suffering, and humiliation. Historicians will tell you, no one was better at it. So Jesus had a right to fear the ordeal he was about to go through.
But that was not his only reason for fear that night.
He was also going to face, a seperation he had never faced before.
Image, Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit had been united for all eternity. In the few hours, he would be abandoned by both the Father and the Holy Spirit.
They have been one since before the creation of the earth, before time began. And now he was going to face the cross alone.
Listen to Jesus procliamation in John 14:10
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
He goes on to say.
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
But, as he faces the ordeal of the cross, the Father would leave him. What you say? When he needs the strength and support of the father the most, God the father is going to leave him. Why?
I am glad you asked.
Because of what happens at the cross.
Look up here.
For God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then, in exchange, he poured God’s goodness into us!
Where did God pour our sin into Christ? At the cross.
So why did the Father abandon him?
God cannot look upon sin.
As Courson points out, “Leprosy didn’t intimidate Jesus; storms didn’t frighten Him; armies didn’t faze Him. The only thing that terrified our Lord was being out of fellowship with His Father. And when He who knew no sin became sin for us, that is exactly what happened.”
Why would Jesus go through it all, through the pain, the suffering the humiliation of the cross. Why would he face separation from the Father and the Holy Spirit for the first time in eternity?
For you. Yes! For you and for me, Christ did it all for you.
For people. For people of all ages, races, for me and you.