Well, my only disappointment was that Carl didn't come up and sing with them. But Carl assures me that he and Herb McDonald are going to sing a duet here shortly. So we'll look forward to that. Of course, Herb's got a sore throat right now, but things will get better, right Herb? It won't get worse, is that right? I invite you to open your Bible with me tonight to Luke chapter 22. As you're doing that, let me encourage you to remember Ted Esler and Todd Lang made in prayer.
They are in Zagreb, Yugoslavia this evening, and will be catching flights back to the United States in the next few hours. They have been there this last week on a survey journey, seeking a place where Ted and Annette and their family might live this fall as they anticipate service in Croatia as missionaries for the Lord Jesus Christ. So remember the two men as they return to the United States over the next few hours.
I'm going to begin reading in verse 39 of Luke 22, and I'll be reading from the NIV. Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, pray that you will not fall into temptation. He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done.
An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him, and being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. Why are you sleeping? He asked them. Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. It seems to me that the Garden of Gethsemane may be the neglected stop on the road to redemption.
As I look back over my life, I've heard not many sermons on the Garden of Gethsemane except sermons about the fact that disciples ought not to pray, ought not to sleep when they're called to pray. The Garden of Gethsemane was the place where Jesus was alone. Yes, the disciples were there, but they were not with him in spirit at this point. And he deliberately withdrew himself physically from them some distance so that he would be completely alone.
One is immediately struck in the text that this was not a place that was foreign to Jesus and to his disciples. The NIV puts it this way, Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives. Another translation says, as his custom was. The Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane served as a customary place of retreat for Jesus and his disciples, perhaps on a number of occasions, certainly during these last days during the week of his passion.
If you look back in chapter 21 and verse 37, you'll notice it says, each day Jesus was teaching at the temple and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives. And so during that final week, each evening, Jesus was there in the garden. If you have ever taken a tour to the Holy Land, you know that the Garden of Gethsemane is still there in some form. At least the olive trees that were a part of that garden are still there, some of them.
And some of those trees date back 2,000 years. There is very little doubt that some of the trees that are still growing today on the Mount of Olives were the trees that were there under which Jesus and his disciples retreated during this week and under which he prayed on this night that we read about in Luke chapter 22.
His disciples being left behind on this occasion, although the other writers of the Gospels record that he took with him three of the disciples who went a little closer to where he was, but eventually all of them being left behind, Jesus withdrew to a spot alone to pray. And there he experienced the last quiet that he would experience until the time that he died the next day. This was his last quiet moment, but as we will see, it was a moment of great intensity in his life.
Alone there in the garden, Jesus prayed to his father. It is an intimate moment. As we read these words, it is almost as if we are walking on hallowed ground, entering that garden and observing our Lord kneeling in prayer. I feel as though we are almost intruding into a personal conversation of the Son of God with this Heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. But here in this moment of solitary prayer, you and I can learn something that will help all of us in our prayer life.
The first observation I make is that solitary prayer has its time and its place. But not all praying is in private. There were many times, in fact, when Jesus prayed in public and prayed with his disciples. On one occasion when he had finished praying in their presence, they said, Lord, teach us to pray. For some of us, praying in groups can be a rather intimidating experience. It's good for us, however, to learn to pray with others being present.
I remember as a young boy who was probably seven years of age at the time, experiencing my first prayer meeting. A family in our neighborhood who went to a very fine evangelical church in our small town was taking care of us for a few days and took us along to prayer meeting on Wednesday night. Of course, if they lived today, that would have been a good reason to stay home because they had some guests with them. They took us along and went to church with us in accompaniment.
I remember well the point in the service when we all broke up into prayer groups. The women stayed in the auditorium and the men, of which I was one, went to a back room. There we knelt in prayer. I remember as a young boy listening to these people in the church praying around and realizing that it was going to be my turn eventually. However, a marvelous thing happened. When I woke up, they had already passed me, so I didn't have to pray out loud. Praying in groups can be intimidating.
It's good for us to learn to pray when other people are around. After all, when we pray and others are around, we need to remember we're not talking to them anyway. We're talking to God. They happen to be there listening to us. Sometimes we feel like, well, what if I say the wrong thing? What if I make a fool of myself and what I say in my praying? Can we ever make fools of ourselves when we're praying with sincere hearts to God? I think not. It is good for us to learn to pray in groups.
It is a little disappointing that when we call for a prayer meeting as a church or announce, for example, that on a Sunday night we're going to break up into prayer groups, it usually divides the attendance in half. I think the part of that is a reticence on our part to pray when others can hear us. If we learn to do that, it can be a wonderfully strengthening experience. I look at the services of prayer that we have periodically.
I give thanks to the Lord for those circles, those small groups that pray together. I know that every time there are some people present who have never before prayed in front of other people. It is a wonderful thing to break through that barrier of intimidation, which is self-imposed, and to learn to pray even though others are listening to us. It's good for us to learn to pray in public.
I'm always grateful when I go to a restaurant and look around at others who are just sitting down or who are just being served their food, and they pause for a moment to pray. That does my heart good. It gives you the feeling that there are some people out there who don't just sit down at the trough like a bunch of hogs, but they stop for a moment and recognize that what is before them is the gift of God, and they're saying thanks to God.
It can be a matter of testimony to other people as they recognize that we want to take a moment and are not ashamed to do it in public, to say, God, I give thanks to you for your provision in my life, including this food. I remember hearing the story about one group of men traveling, evangelists and song leaders they were back in the 40s. As I remember, a couple of them were the Palermo brothers, as some of you know or would remember from right here in the Twin Cities.
They were getting ready to pray around a table, quite a few of them, in a public restaurant. One of them said, well, man, let's confirm our testimony and get down on our knees and pray. They got down on their knees in that restaurant and gave thanks for the food. Well, I've never done that. I must be quite honest with you, but I try always to pray. Even when I have a guest with me who may not be a Christian, I say to them, it is my custom to pray before I eat. May I pray for both of us?
You know, I've never had one person say, oh, forget it. They're always grateful, and they say thank you for doing that. I have looked up and seen their faces a little red, but that's all right.
I remember one occasion in a restaurant, and I've told you about this before, some of you, that our staff, when I was pastoring another church, was at a restaurant eating, and we looked over and there were two mothers who came in with their children and sat down to eat, and they all bowed their heads and prayed. I was so touched by that that on the way out, I stopped by their table and I said, I want you to know that I appreciated seeing you stop to pray before you ate.
And one of the ladies looked up at me with a big smile on her face and she said, we always do that. We're Jehovah's Witnesses. I was speechless, believe it or not. It is good for us to learn to pray in public, but solitary prayer has its time and its place. Jesus' warning in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 5 about praying like the hypocrites is not a warning against praying in public. It is a warning against praying to be seen by men. We don't want to do that and fall into that trap.
Jesus is not giving an injunction there against praying in public, but there are moments when prayer alone is necessary and desired. Moments like Jesus was in here and moments like he had had before. In the Gospel of Mark in the first chapter, Mark tells us about an occasion when after a full day of ministry, Jesus got up early the next morning before the sun even came up and went out by himself to a lonely place and there he prayed.
And there were other occasions like the time when he was about to select the twelve who would be with him, whom he would train for ministry when Jesus spent the whole night in prayer alone before such a decision. As Luke tells us in the fifth chapter and sixteenth verse of his Gospel, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Solitary prayer has its time and its place. Perhaps after a busy and pressure-filled schedule that you've had, it's a good time to get alone to pray.
Or when facing major decisions that will impact your life, get alone to pray. When facing trials, get alone to pray. But more than just because we have need, but because also we want to be intimate with God. Solitary prayer has its time and place and such a time and place came again for the Lord Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane. The second observation I make is that solitary prayer can ask any request. There's a natural reticence when we're praying with others to ask some things.
There are some things that are very private and personal that we are very cautious about talking about in front of other people, even if we're talking to God about them. There are times when we don't want to ask certain things or say certain things because we're not sure how those listening might interpret it. But the fact is that there need be no reticence at all when we are alone with God, bearing our soul before Him. You and I can say anything, anything that is on our hearts.
I was talking with someone recently who was expressing certain feelings that he had about God to me. And I said, have you ever told God you feel that way? And he said, no, no I haven't. The fact is that whatever that person might say would never surprise God. God is never caught off guard when you and I are completely transparent and honest with Him. Solitary prayer can ask any request, bring up any subject. And here Jesus asks a request that is most amazing.
He asks the Father that the cup be taken from Him. Father, if you're willing, take this cup from me. Question arises, of course, what is the cup to which Jesus refers? There are some who say that it was death, that perhaps Jesus' humanness, His true humanity is showing here that He was afraid to face death. I hardly think that to be the case. In fact, true courage may be in recognizing painful and certain death and then choosing to embrace it.
I don't think Jesus was withdrawing from death itself. Nor do I think, as some suggest, that He was concerned about dying prematurely, that He was afraid that the pressure, the spiritual pressure that was on Him in the Garden of Gethsemane might kill Him before it was time. I don't think that that was the case because He said, I have the power to lay down my life. And I have the power to take it up again. He could choose the moment when death would take Him.
So it wasn't really that He was afraid of dying prematurely. It seems to me that the cup is best explained by going to the Old Testament and seeing there what the cup often pictured. One example of that is in Psalm 75, I invite you to turn back to the Psalms with me. Once you've arrived at Psalm 75, notice verse 7, but it is God who judges, He brings one down, He exalts another, in the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices.
He pours it out and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs. What is this cup that the psalmist pictures in the hand of God? It is the cup of judgment which the wicked must drink from the hand of the Lord and not unjustly. It seems to me that the cup that Jesus is praying about in the garden is just that cup. It is the cup of the judgment of His heavenly Father that He must drink to bear the sins of humanity.
It was a cup that involved His separation from His heavenly Father, His being forsaken by His heavenly Father. It was a cup that involved not merely physical suffering but the terrible spiritual torture of becoming sin for us, as Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 5, 21. And as the holy nature of Jesus anticipated the drinking of that judgment from God and becoming sin, there was such revulsion within Him of that idea that He prayed what He did. Such a thought as this, Father take this cup from me.
And yet you notice that He carefully phrases it. The paramount thing to Jesus was not the suffering He was about to endure, but it was the will of God. And He says, as Luke records it, Father if you are willing, yet not my will but yours be done. That was paramount to Jesus.
And when you and I come to our Father in our solitary praying and we ask of Him the requests of our heart, then we must also come to Him with a will that is yielded in advance, saying Father here is my will, but not my will, yours be done. There is a lady who has in the past attended our church who is at the present time dying of breast cancer. And I have prayed with her a number of times in recent days. One of the things she asked me to do was to pray that the Lord would take her home.
I don't think it's wrong to ask that request. It would be wrong to demand it of God, but I don't think it's wrong to ask Him. And as we prayed together, we prayed that the Lord would be pleased in His time and His way to take her home as it would be His will. You see, we could even ask something like that together, but it needs to be postured in such a way. Father, if it's Your will, do this. And even if those be not the words of our lips, let it be the attitude of our heart.
Father, I ask what is on my heart. I ask my burden. Here is what I would wish that Your will be done. The marvelous thing about solitary prayer is that you can ask of God whatever you wish. God will never be offended, alarmed, or surprised. Thirdly, I observe that solitary prayer taps spiritual resources.
You'll notice on this occasion, and only Luke records this, and though there are some who contest the authenticity of this text, it does seem to have sufficient merit for it to be placed in those translations. Luke records for us that there in the garden, as Jesus prayed alone, there was an angel who materialized with Him in the garden. And it says that there the angel strengthened Him. You'll notice that Jesus, it says, knelt down and prayed.
Kneeling was not the customary posture of praying for the Jews. More customary they would stand and they would lift their hands to God in prayer. If you see pictures today at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, you'll notice that is the posture of the Jews who are praying there as they bob back and forth before the wall in their praying. They're standing with their hands outstretched to God.
But on this occasion it says that Jesus knelt and prayed, and Matthew and Mark tell us that He fell on His face in the garden and prayed. But an angel, it says, ministered to Him and strengthened Him. Think of it. This created spirit being comes to the Creator robed in human flesh and ministers to Him. And in some way that we perhaps cannot clearly understand, actually strengthens the Almighty. Jesus was in a moment of great physical and mental anguish.
And as He prayed alone, there were spiritual resources that were tapped to strengthen Him. That's exactly why Jesus told His disciples on this occasion to pray. He wanted them to pray because He knew trial was coming. In fact, in earlier verses here in this very chapter, He had warned Peter in particular that he would be tempted and would in fact deny the Lord. And so Jesus says to His disciples, pray so that you will not fall into temptation. Pray. Why pray?
Because you need the spiritual resources that come by prayer. Prayer was their very best defense and it was their strength against approaching temptation. Solitary prayer taps spiritual resources. Well, of course, I'm not suggesting that when we pray in groups, we don't tap those resources because we do. When you and I are alone before our God in prayer and lifting our hearts to Him with earnestness and sincerity, it unleashes all kinds of spiritual resources to come to our aid.
And though no angel may materialize and appear in our presence, you can be sure the angels are involved in that moment of prayer. None of us can understand fully all that that would mean. But it's a marvelous thing to contemplate. I'm trying right now to think of the author who wrote those couple of books. Frank Peretti has authored a couple of books on spiritual warfare, which are not theological treatises, understand. They are novels. They're fictional.
And yet he has an intriguing way of just playing with your mind and opening to you some possibilities as to how prayer and the angelic world interact. If you want to read a book, you can't put down and get one of Peretti's novels. Solitary prayer taps spiritual resources. I noticed the exhaustion that was brought on the disciples. He says it was brought on them by sorrow. It is in times of emotional exhaustion that we especially need to pray and to tap the resources of God.
Immediately comes to my mind, and perhaps yours, Elijah, who also in a moment of emotional exhaustion ran. He took time to pray but ran until God had him cornered in a cave on Mount Horan. When you and I are exhausted, whether it be by sorrow or other emotions, in that moment we must understand the importance of prayer so that we can tap the resources of God in our human weakness and thus experience the strength of God.
The fourth observation I make is that solitary prayer can involve extreme intensity. I've already talked about the fact that Jesus, according to two of the writers of the Gospels, fell to the ground on his face. We read here of the anguish that he was experiencing. The word in the original language is our word, agony, and it refers to the anguish, the all-out pressure, of an athletic contest. Jesus is in here, as it were, a spiritual contest in which his soul is in anguish.
He said to his disciples, according to Matthew's account, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. The Son of God is saying those words. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. He says to them, stay here and watch and keep watch with me.
The language suggests that there were several periods of prayer, and in fact the other writers of the Gospel record of this event tell us that Jesus prayed, and he would come back to his disciples and find them sleeping, wake them up and say, please pray. He would go away again and pray by himself. Come back and find them sleeping. And three times he did that, coming back to find them asleep. But he himself, again and again and again, prayed in this time of extreme intensity.
You and I only have to go to the Psalms and see there that the writers of the Psalms knew the meaning of tremendous pressure in life. I'd like you to turn again to the Psalms, to the 88th Psalm, which has been called the saddest Psalm in the Bible. Psalm 88. If you are depressed, this is not the Psalm to come to. This is God's Word, and the emotion that is expressed in this Psalm was very real to its author, who is said to be Heman.
Oh Lord, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you. May my prayer come before you, turn your ear to my cry, for my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave. I am counted among those who go down to the pit. He is talking about Sheol, the grave. I am like a man without strength. I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care. You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
Your wrath lies heavily upon me. You have overwhelmed me with all your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape. My eyes are dim with grief. He continues with the same kind of a theme. It seems to me that these words of Psalm 88 may very well have been some of the emotions that Jesus felt. The psalmist sees himself here as a dead man in verses 4 through 6, as the ones who go down to Sheol.
He sees himself as a drowning man in verse 7, where God's waves have overwhelmed him and he is sinking beneath them. He sees himself in verse 8 as a defiled man, whom no one wishes to be around. He sees himself in verse 14 as a doomed man, whom even God himself has rejected. Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? Have you ever felt that way? Does God really care what I am going through?
Someone might say, well yes I have felt that way, but I would never tell God I felt that way. Do you think he doesn't know it? And here is a writer of Scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit who puts those very words into the eternal revelation of God. So I see again, you are not going to surprise God with anything you say to him. This psalmist is crying out of deep anguish, a time of intense suffering in his soul and bearing his heart before the Lord.
There have been times in my own life when I have done this and I have said things to God that I was glad no one else was around to hear. I wasn't proud that I felt the way I did about God, but I told God exactly how I felt. And I think I am correct in saying that without exception when I have done that, I have gotten halfway through my discourse of complaint, or I have gotten almost through it, and suddenly I am broken.
When the crisis passes and getting that poison in my system out before the altar of God somehow is cleansing, it's a catharsis for the soul, and God pours in his healing balm. Solitary prayer can involve extreme intensity. Going back to the Gospel record, we see that this was such an intense time in Jesus' life that the perspiration was perfuse. You would expect Dr. Luke to note the details that he had heard about. Remember, Luke was a physician.
And so he puts it this way, and being in anguish he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. Now people understand that differently. There are those who believe that the capillaries below Jesus' skin actually burst because of the pressure that he was under, a pressure that you and I will never know, we could never know. Only he could bear it. Only he, a sinless man, could experience what he experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane.
And it may be that those capillaries in bursting allowed blood actually to seep through the skin so that the sweat was red in color and was partially blood. Or it may be that the sweat was so perfused it was like a dripping cut from his forehead, just a constant drip of sweat. But you get the picture, don't you? Of the Son of God in a moment of extreme intensity pouring out his soul to God.
And the final observation I make about this garden experience is the solitary prayer leads to renewed service. After Jesus had several times prayed and come back to the disciples, he ultimately came back, the time of prayer was finished, and he awoke the disciples. And he awoke them to the events that he knew were in store. Events that very quickly unfolded as Judas and the soldiers came and found him in the garden and he was placed under arrest and the disciples fled.
Solitary prayer, you see, does not lead to the life of a monastic. Solitary prayer is not the prayer only of monks who withdraw from the world to their selves. Solitary prayer leads to renewed service, to revitalized service on behalf of others. Again I think of Elijah who after his time with God on Mount Horeb was able then, strengthened then, renewed then in order to go back down and to accomplish what God wanted him to do to conclude his ministry.
The purpose of solitary prayer is not to remove us from our service but to restore us for it. Each of us has a garden as it were within our hearts where we are called upon to be alone with the Lord. One hymn writer put it this way in a hymn that is rarely sung anymore. There's a garden where Jesus is waiting. There's a place that is wondrously fair. For it glows with the light of his presence, tis the beautiful garden of prayer. There's a garden where Jesus is waiting.
And I go with my burden and care just to learn from his lips of comfort in the beautiful garden of prayer. There's a garden where Jesus is waiting. And he bids you to come. Meet him there just to walk and to talk with your Savior in the beautiful garden of prayer. How long has it been since you've been to that garden? Maybe it's not a garden like Gethsemane with this kind of intensity at this moment, but it's a garden nonetheless.
On the other hand, maybe there are those here who are going through the pressure and the stress, the wringer of life. The Savior invites you to come to that garden and to pray. That garden may be cultivated and kept because we are often there, or it may be a garden that has frankly been neglected and has become disordered and weeds have grown up.
But it's never too late to go to that garden and pull up those weeds and to cut them back, to cultivate it and make it a beautiful place where you and the Savior meet for some solitary praying. Let's bow together. There's a garden where Jesus is waiting and he bids you to come meet him there. How is it in your prayer life? Is that garden frequented? Are you daily, regularly, consistently with Jesus in that garden of prayer? Dear friend, how he wants to walk and to talk with you in that garden.
But you must make the decision to turn in the gate and to spend time there. Is that the desire of your heart? Is that the commitment of your heart tonight? So that before you go to bed this evening, you're in that garden with Jesus. And tomorrow, in the next day, as you go on the course of your daily routine, will you say tonight, Lord Jesus, I'll meet you in the garden? For there he walks and he talks with you. And he would put his arm around you and tell you that you're his and he loves you.
And there, in pouring out your transparent requests and feelings before the Lord, you will tap into his eternal resources. Lord, I pray that that garden may be one that will find us present tonight and this week. Forgive us when we neglect it. We do it to our own weakness, to our own sorrow. We would come to that garden, that beautiful garden of prayer, and we would there lay bare our souls before you. Jesus, what a friend we find in you. All our sins and griefs to bear.
What a privilege to carry everything to you in prayer. Thank you for opening this garden for us to enjoy in fellowship with you. Amen.