Luke 22:39-46 - A Garden Variety Temptation

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INTRODUCTION

Everyone of us is tempted when we are carried away and enticed by our own desires (James 1:14). Sometimes the temptation is a garden variety temptation, a common temptation with short-lived earthly consequences if we give in to sin. Other times the temptation is not so common place, and the consequences for giving in to sin are grave.
Adam and Eve faced a temptation in the Garden of Eden that was anything but garden variety. When they gave in to sin, humanity was cursed and separated from God.
Jesus Himself never faced a garden variety temptation. The Bible says that He was tempted in every way as we are, and if He had given in to sin on any of those occasions, He wouldn’t be God in the flesh; He wouldn’t be the Savior, and we would still be dead in our sins and under the wrath of God.
Here in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, Jesus faced the severest temptation and—Praise the Lord!—He did not give in!
In this passage let us marvel at our perfectly sinless Savior! Let us trust in Him as the only One who has said ‘no’ to every sin and so qualified as the only perfect sacrifice for our sin! And let us learn from Him how to say ‘no’ to temptations whether they be garden variety or something more grave.
[READING - Luke 22:39-46]
Luke 22:39–46 NASB95
39 And He came out and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples also followed Him. 40 When He arrived at the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 41 And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, 42 saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” 43 Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. 44 And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. 45 When He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow, 46 and said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
[PRAYER]
[TS] There are four SUBJECTS from this passage that I want us to think about…

MAJOR IDEAS

SUBJECT #1: Temptation

[EXP] Jesus was no stranger to temptation. He was tempted in the wilderness in Luke 4. Israel failed to resist temptation in the wilderness, but Jesus did not. Satan tempted Jesus with bread, idolatry, and unbelief but Jesus never gave in. He never sinned. But Satan never gave up. Luke 4:13 says…
Luke 4:13 NASB95
13 When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.
All the opportune times of temptation that Jesus faced are not recorded for us in the Bible, but the Bible does say that He was tempted in every way as we are and yet every time He walked away without sin.
Some debate whether Jesus could have sinned.
Of course, God cannot sin and that Jesus was God in the flesh would lead us to conclude that He could not sin.
On the other hand, if Jesus could not have sinned, how could His temptation been a real temptation?
But whether He could have or could not have sinned, the most important truth about Jesus in regard to temptation is that He never once gave in.
As Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion, Satan saw an opportune time to tempt Jesus. What did Satan tempt Jesus with on this occasion? The answer lies in the words of Luke 22:42, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”
Now, here again we face another mystery. How could Jesus’s will be different from the Father’s will? The Bible presents God to us as Trinity—One God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If they are One God, they have one will. So how is that here it seems that God the Son at least acknowledges a different will from God the Father?
The answer lies in Jesus’s humanity. Jesus was both fully God and fully man. In His humanity, He did not want to experience the wrath of God as He became sin in our place, so He prays, “Remove this cup pass from me.”
To this point there had never been the slightest disturbance in the perfect love between Father and Son but a disturbance is coming. Jesus will go to the cross and He who knew no sin will become sin and the wrath of the Father will be poured out on Him.
I don’t think it’s the embarrassment of being mocked that makes Jesus pray, “Remove this cup from me.”
I don’t think its the pain of being flogged or even crucified that makes Jesus pray, “Remove this cup from me.”
I believe it was the coming disruption of the perfect fellowship that Jesus shared with His Father in Heaven that caused Jesus to pray, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from Me...”
What a powerful temptation this must have been. But what does Jesus do when faced with this temptation? The same thing He did when faced with every temptation: He said ‘no’ to sin and ‘yes’ to His Father in Heaven. He said, “Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”
[ILLUS] We really cannot understand the intimacy that Jesus shared with the Father because we’ve never known such intimacy. We were born in sin and have always been separated from God because of our sin until we were reconciled to God through faith in Jesus. But even though we’ve been fully reconciled, we still can’t comprehend the perfect intimacy that Jesus had with the Father. The best we can do is perhaps catch a glimpse of it by way of example.
In the middle of the night as Cheryl cared for Lillian, she said, “She just wants to be with Mama.”
Lillian’s crib is only a few feet from our bed, so Lillian is never very far from Mama, but as I thought about it, it occured to me that a few feet from Mama must seem like a million miles to Lillian who has spent 9 months in her mother’s womb. The shortest distance must seem very far indeed.
In the same way, a slight disturbance in the perfect fellowship between Father and Son must’ve felt like the death of the relationship to Jesus.
How tempting then for Jesus to try and save that perfect intimacy by not taking on our sin.
But Jesus resisted that temptation.
He did not sin.
He remained perfect.
He obeyed the will of His Father.
[TS]

SUBJECT #2: Prayer

[EXP] Jesus tells the disciples to pray that they may not enter into temptation. We are reminded of the model prayer the Lord Jesus taught us, “and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” God never tempts us, but He does use temptations to strengthen our faith. He uses temptations to drive us to our knees in prayer.
The disciples are commanded to pray, but Jesus goes about a stone’s throw away and begins to pray. If the Lord Jesus commands you to pray, you should pray. If the Lord Jesus prays, you should pray. On this point J.C. Ryle wrote...
“It is a striking fact that both the Old and New Testaments give the same prescription for coping with trouble. What do the Psalms say? “Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you” (Psalm 50:15). What does the apostle James say? “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray” (James 5:13). Prayer is the prescription which Jacob used when he was frightened by his brother Esau. Prayer is the prescription which Hezekiah used when Sennacherib’s threatening letter arrived. Prayer is the prescription which the Son of God himself was not ashamed to use in the days of his flesh. In the hour of his mysterious agony he prayed. Let us take care that we use our Master’s remedy…”
[APP] Prayer is direct access to the Creator. It is direct access to Perfect Wisdom, Infinite Mercy, Total Truth, and Abounding Grace. Prayer is the door to the Father that Jesus opened for us. Hebrews 10:19-22a says…
Hebrews 10:19–22 NASB95
19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Jesus is our High Priest. He sacrificed Himself for our sins though He had no sins of His own. And in His death and resurrection Jesus opened the way for us to come into God’s presence—to come in prayer before the throne of grace with confidence.
We come before God’s throne of grace with confidence not because we are confident in ourselves or even in our praying but because we are confident in Jesus and what He has done for us.
I will also say that it is confidence in what Jesus has done for us that brings us before the throne of grace in prayer after we’ve failed to resist temptation.
When we’ve sinned, perhaps one of the last things we want to do is pray. But we must pray.
We must confess and repent and ask for help in the future, and we can go confidently before the throne of grace with all of that because Jesus has paid our way to be there.
We don’t pray before the throne of grace based on our own merit.
We pray before the throne of grace based on the merit of Jesus.
Beware here brothers and sisters, Satan will accuse you on this point. He does not want you praying.
He will tell you that because of how sinful you are, there’s no point in praying.
He will tell you that God doesn’t hear your prayers because of all the bad things you’ve done.
And he is right on two counts—you are sinful and you have done bad things.
But what he doesn’t want you to grasp is that you can pray and know that God hears you because of how perfect Jesus is!
[TS]

SUBJECT #3: Strength

[EXP] Prayer calls down strength from Heaven.
Most early manuscripts of Luke’s gospel do not contain verses 43-44, so they may not belong in this passage at all, but the contents—although perhaps strange to us—are not so strange biblically.
For example, v. 43 says an angel appeared to Him, strengthening Him. Seems different, but we read about a similar thing after the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Matthew 4:11 says...
Matthew 4:11 NASB95
11 Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.
If they ministered to Him in the wilderness, it should not seem so strange to us that they would minister to Him in the garden.
Verse 44 tells us why Jesus needed to be strengthened. His praying had become so fervent that His sweat became like drops of blood.
Perhaps this is a metaphorical description of the agony of Jesus, but it is possible that Jesus was really bleeding in the garden before He bled at Golgotha.
There’s a condition know as hematidrosis (hema-ti-drosis) where blood vessels dilate and burst and sweat and blood mix together. This happens during times of extreme emotional and physical distress. But whether we should understand Jesus’s sweat drops of blood as metaphorical or literal, Luke’s point is to highlight the agony Jesus endured during His garden prayer.
Given this extreme level of agony, it would not be strange then that an angel came down from Heaven to strengthen Him.
[APP] We will never experience anything close to the agony Jesus experienced as He prayed in the garden. Nevertheless, when we are praying through our agony, we can be confident that God will send down strength from Heaven. In most cases it will not be an angel that comes down to us, but it might be courage or faith or whatever else the Lord knows that we need to give us strength.
But there’s another important lesson here: the strength we receive from Heaven is not strength to escape but strength to endure.
The strength Jesus received was not strength to escape the cross but strength to endure the cross.
We love to celebrate when God chooses to heal someone. They are hurting and we pray. God answers our prayer by healing the one we prayed for. And we rejoice!
But more often God chooses not to heal. They are hurting and we pray. And God answers the prayer that we should have prayed instead of the one we prayed.
J. I. Packer said that God, because God is good, He either answers the prayer we prayed or the one we should have prayed.
Sometimes the prayer we should have prayed is for strength to endure the agony rather than escape from the agony.
When Jesus finishes praying, He rises not to run but to face the cross!
He rises to bear the burden of our sins!
He rises to become a curse to break the curse that hung over us!
He rises to pay the price for our sins!
When we are sent strength from Heaven, let us look to Jesus and remember that it is usually strength to endure rather than escape.
[TS]

SUBJECT #4: Obedience

[EXP] Jesus rose up from this praying to find that His disciples had not obeyed. Rather than praying that they would not enter temptation, they slept. Verse 45 says they slept from sorrow—the long day, the news that one of them would betray Jesus, the talk about Jesus giving His body and blood for them—all that contributed to their fatigue.
Even so, Jesus rebuked them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
This is what Jesus had been doing. He had been praying that He would not give into temptation, and of course He did not.
The betrayer came, and Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified, but not one took His life from Him.
He obediently laid it down of His own accord.
[APP] Temptation invites us and entices us to disobey, but through prayer God provides strength to rise up and obey.
Sin is easy, but obedience is hard. This is why we need strength from Heaven to obey.
It can be safely assumed that the praying man will be an obeying man. It can also be safely assumed that a disobeying man is not a praying man.
If we would obey, we must pray.
That’s what Jesus did before He obediently went to the cross.
It was the will of the Father to crush Him, and Jesus found strength through prayer to walk in obedience to that will. Jesus said in John 10:17-18
John 10:17–18 NASB95
17 “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18 “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”
[TS]

CONCLUSION

Do you see how Jesus was tempted, how he prayed, how he was strengthened, and how he obeyed?
Do you see the agony He endured—even before the agony of the cross—so that you would be saved from God’s wrath?
Do you see Him resisting every sin so He could bear your sins to pay for your sins?
“Guilty, vile, and helpless we, Spotless Lamb of God was He;
Full atonement! can it be?
Hallelujah, what a Savior!
Come now and turn from every sin and trust Jesus as your Savior.
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