Jesus Prays At The Gethsemane

It’s late on Thursday, and we find Jesus just hours away from His arrest. Again, it is Thursday night, and we are approaching midnight. Jesus and the Disciples have just finished the Last Supper.

It is a week that has been full of last things: Jesus’ last visit to the temple, His last sermon, His last supper, and now, with three of His inner circle, we witness His last known prayer before He goes to the cross.

Jesus enters Gethsemane for this time of prayer in what is a famous passage of Scripture. And hymns have been arranged about this very place and time where Jesus prayed. Gethsemane was a garden outside of the city of Jerusalem, and the garden is still there with olive trees nearby, dating as far back as the 7th century. I have walked through this garden along with my family and many others from this church.

I want to give you an opportunity to join me in tracing the steps of Jesus. The word Gethsemane literally means “olive press” but on this night, it’s Jesus who will be pressed.1 Let’s join Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and see what He did for us there.

Today’s Scripture

And 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.” And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and 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 an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” (Luke 22:39-46)

Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane is well known, and it is one of the few events recorded in all four gospels.2 While Luke doesn’t use the word Gethsemane, he mentions instead the Mount of Olives as the general area Jesus has retreated to.

Look with me at what Jesus already knew…

1. Jesus Already Knew

When Jesus entered the Garden, He knew He would be arrested there. He knew it was the beginning of the end. When John described the arrival of the soldiers to arrest Jesus, he tells us this: “Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples” (John 18:2).

Jesus often met with His disciples at this Garden. Even Judas knew where Jesus would be that night. When I think of the garden of Gethsemane, I consider what Jesus Christ already knew. You see, when everything was dark, when the disciples were asleep, and there were no soldiers there. This was the perfect time in which He could have gotten out.

He knew when He entered in the Garden of Gethsemane that the soldiers were on the way. He knew when He entered in the Garden of Gethsemane there was going to be torture. He knew when He entered in the Garden of Gethsemane there were going to be nails splintering His bones. He knew when He entered in the Garden of Gethsemane there were going to be thorns in His scalp and there was going to be a spear in His side. He knew when He entered in the Garden of Gethsemane there was going to be the slow death of suffocation awaiting Him on the cross. And He knew in the Garden what He was presently experiencing was nothing more than a mosquito bite compared to the pain and torment of the rejection of the Father.

“And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done’” (Luke 22:41-42).

What kind of pressure does it take for the eternal Son of God to felt so that He is tempted to call it quits? It was in the Garden that the Father, in a sense, comes to Jesus. Again, it’s the night before Jesus is going to receive the cup.

The very thought of this moment where the wrath of God is going to fall into His Son’s heart… … He is so upset just thinking about it. The Father was giving him a foretaste … … just a taste of what he was going to experience.

Jonathan Edwards, in a sermon called Christ’s Agony, talks about how is says that in the Garden of Gethsemane: “He had then a near view of that furnace of wrath, into which he was to be cast; he was brought to the mouth of the furnace that he might look into it, and stand and view its raging flames, and see the glowings of its heat, that he might know where he was going and what he was about to suffer. This was the thing that filled his soul with sorrow and darkness …”3