The Passion Week of Christ: A Study from the Book of Mark
Week 6: The Servant Suffers - He Is Forsaken
Mark 14:32-42
I. Introduction
A. We're continuing in our Passion Week series. We last found Jesus and His disciples in the Upper Room partaking of an Unforgettable Passover meal during which Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper. As the Ultimate Passover Lamb, "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world," Jesus would soon give His body and blood to accomplish just that. But what was actually involved in the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world?
B. To get us thinking about that, I want to ask you two questions:
#1 What is the most disgusting thing you've ever drunk intentionally or unintentionally? #1 on FB post = spit cups! Youth? Blend-O-Rama!
#2 What is the most agonizing thing either physically or spiritually you've ever been through? HNP, kids, my own sin, leaving Liberty. As agonizing as those are, none left us at the point of death, right?!
C. So what do those 2 questions have to do with this AM's message? They tell us what was involved in the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world. It involved Jesus drinking something SO vile, SO disgusting, in fact terrorizing that He was sweating not bullets, but blood! To drink it required the Father to turn His back on His own Son and forsake Him. It had Jesus in such distress that the Bible records He literally thought He was going to die! In fact, Dr. Luke struggles even to find the words to adequately express Jesus' distress so he uses a hapax legomenon (word found only once). The word? Agonia, from which we get agony. It's a solitary word for a solitary experience. So, what in the world was it that Jesus was about to have to drink that had Him in such physical and spiritual agony that He literally was at the point of death?
D. To answer that, we must stand on some very holy ground. We must accompany our Lord to a place of great pressure - the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane literally means "oil press," and on this cold April night, our Lord, would be pressed to the point that, had it not been for divine, supernatural intervention, He would have lost His very life right there! As we examine our Lord's agony, we will explore the Context, the Severity, the Source, and the Purpose of His Agony as well as Our Response to His Agony.
II. Scripture Reading & Prayer
A. Stand with me to honor the reading of God's Word. Read Mark 14:32-42.
B. Pray - Father, I ask that you would make this passage come alive for us like never before. Do this that we may truly see the agony Your Son, our Passover Lamb, went through that April night as He took away the sins of the world.
III. The Context of His Agony – Read Mark 14:32a.
A. A lot of the talk the past week between Jesus and the disciples had not exactly been Happy, Happy, Happy. In fact it was death, death, death. Three times on the way to Jerusalem - read Mark 10:33-34. And then again 2 days before the Passover (cf. Matt. 26:1-2). Now, during the Passover meal, it's intensified. Jesus had an extensive discussion with His disciples – which John records for us in John 13-17. He's told them one of you will betray me, Peter you will deny me, I’m going somewhere you can’t come in fact I’m going to die, the world will soon hate and persecute you, you'll be thrown out of the synagogues and worse people will kill you and think they are offering service to God!!! The mood in that Upper Room after Jesus’ “pep talk” is summarized in John 16:6 – read John 16:6. This word “filled” in the Greek literally means “crammed full." Now, Scripture doesn’t record for us what the elements were like that Thursday night in Jerusalem – foggy, misting rain, windy. We can only guess. But, we do know that after Jesus and His disciples finished the Passover meal, they sang a hymn and somewhere between 8pm and midnight stepped out into the cold April night, crossed the brook Kidron and entered the Garden of Gethsemane. At that very moment, Judas is out betraying Jesus; by midnight, Jesus will be arrested. By 9am He will be crucified and by 3pm He will be dead. The only thing heavier than the cold, April, air that Thursday night in Jerusalem were the hearts of Jesus and His disciples which were literally crammed full of sorrow!
IV. The Severity of His Agony
A. Evidenced by His Disciples: Read Mark 14:37-40. When most of us read this we would probably conclude as William Burkitt once well said, “Good God! Could they possibly sleep at such a time as this? When Christ’s soul was exceedingly sorrowful, could their eyes be heavy?” These disciples JUST DON’T GET IT! #1 Remember the context we just talked about and the dark, depressing mood that Jesus and the Disciples were already feeling. #2 They had just eaten a large meal, it’s late at night, and they’re in a cool, dark, quiet Garden! What would YOU have been doing? This in part is why Jesus said “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” His humanity well understood how tempting it was to sleep in this situation. #3 When Jesus needed human companionship & intercession the most, His disciples were so grief stricken they couldn't stay awake as much as they desired to do so. Mark hints at their grief – their eyes were very heavy – "bareo," meaning “burdened, weighed down.” Luke in his parallel account says they were “exhausted from sorrow.” Albert Barnes says: “It is frequently supposed that this was proof of wonderful stupidity, and indifference to their Lord‘s sufferings. The truth is, however, that it was just the reverse; it was proof of their great attachment, and their deep sympathy in his sorrows. Multitudes of facts might be brought to show that this is in accordance with the regular effects of grief. Dr. Rush says: ‘There is another symptom of grief, which is not often noticed, and that is profound sleep.’ Have you ever had a time in your life that you were so overwhelmed with grief or sorrow that you slept & slept? #4 If their bodies were literally exhausted from sorrow, what must our Lord have been feeling?
B. Evidenced by His Spirit: Read Mark 14:32b-34. #1 Recall Gethsemane literally means “olive press.” Discuss an olive press. This night Jesus was literally crushed and pressed, so the oil of salvation could flow freely to the world. And great pressure is what He felt. #2 Jesus left most of the disciples in one part of the olive orchard, and took Peter, James and John (His inner circle) with Him to another area. There He began to release some of the emotions that He had held in check thus far. Notice the very weight of the words themselves. “Very distressed” and “troubled” are both strong Greek terms – in fact “troubled” is the strongest of 3 Greek words in the NT for depression and implies “a restless, distracted, shrinking from some trouble, or thought of trouble, which nevertheless cannot be escaped.” “Very distressed” = “ekthambeo” meaning “dumb founded, stupefied, astonished, terrified”! The phrase My soul is very sorrowful even to death is an OT idiom (cf. Ps. 42:5) which expressed the tremendous intensity that was involved in the redemption of sinful mankind. The word very sorrowful is “perilupos” - "lupos" meaning sorrow + “peri” meaning throughout. "He was plunged head and ears in sorrow and had no breathing hole." (Goodwin)
C. Evidenced by His Praying: Read Mark 14:35-41a. #1 Look at his posture – “he fell to the ground.” Standing was the usual posture for prayer in ancient times, with hands lifted heavenwards. Prostration in prayer was indicative of extreme spiritual anguish. #2 Look at his persistence “one hour…returning the third time.” Have you ever prayed for a solid hour? How about three times back to back to back? Wow! What a great example Jesus serves. #3 Look at his intensity – Luke tells us “he prayed more earnestly” – “ektenes.” This was a medical term describing the stretching of a muscle to its limits and in Grecian athletes described a runner with every muscle taut and moving at maximum output, straining and stretching to the limit in order to win the race! I don’t know about you but I’ve never prayed so hard I literally got a muscle cramp!
D. Evidenced by His Body: Read Luke 22:41-44. #1 An angel from heaven “strengthened” Him. I believe beyond a shadow of doubt that apart from the supernatural sustenance brought by this angel, Jesus would NOT have died on the cross. He would have died RIGHT THERE in that Garden so great was His agony! Ill. Rev. J. Robertson was preaching a series of sermons on Angels when Dr. Duncan came into the vestry and said, “Will you be so kind as to let me know when you are going to take up the case of my favourite angel?” “But who is he, Doctor?” “I can’t tell you his name, he is an anonymous angel. It is the one who came down to Gethsemane, and there strengthened my Lord to go through His agony for me, that He might go forward to the cross, and finish my redemption there. I have an extraordinary love for that one, and I often wonder what I’ll say to him when I meet him first.” #2 Jesus was sweating blood. Now many an explanation has been offered for this – discuss them – but if the Bible says He was sweating blood, I believe He was sweating blood. This is a real medical condition called hematidrosis where the capillaries under the skin dilate and BURST mingling blood with sweat. J Med article (1996): 76 cases of hematidrosis, extremely rare with only few instances in the 20th century, #1 cause = acute fear, terror (isn’t that the word Mark used earlier?); unimaginable stress; INTENSE mental AGONY! And yet there never has been nor never will be a case such as Jesus! Luke says it was great drops - copious, voluntary (not one lash of the whip or hammer of a nail).
E. What an UNIMAGINABLE picture of distress we get as we see the Lamb of God in Gethsemane preparing to take away the sins of the world! "He stands before us peerless in misery." (Spurgeon) This side of heaven, we may never understand what Jesus went through that night in the Garden. Our vocabulary would go BANKRUPT trying to express the depth of that experience! No wonder Luke used a hapax legomenon to describe it, "agonia" – AGONY!
V. The Source of His Agony
A. What I’m more interested in us getting a picture of is NOT the severity of Jesus’ agony but the SOURCE of Jesus’ agony. What was causing all of this sorrow in the first place? Judas’ kiss of betrayal? Denial and desertion by His disciples? Rejection by the very people He created? Being called a liar and blasphemer by a bunch of hypocrites, a brood of vipers? Injustice of His coming trial that broke every law of jurist prudence and tried the perfect, sinless Son of God? The disgrace and humiliation of being mocked and spit upon in the face? The pain of being beat with fists, slapped in the face, a crown of thorns on his head? Surely he was terrified at the thought of a cat of nine tails ripping through the flesh of his back and the muscles around his spine? Perhaps his humanity recoiled at the idea of having a spike driven through the nerves of His wrist and His shoulders dislocated upon the cross, yet His deity recoiled, indeed was terrified, horrified at the idea of something else. You and I have NO idea of the conflict in Jesus soul! He, unlike us, had never experienced the slightest shadow of sin and had never known any barrier between Himself and the Father. The answer to what horrified Him is right there in His prayers.
B. Read Mark 14:36.
#1 “Abba, Father” Abba Father would abandon Him. The Gospels were written in Greek but Jesus’ native language was Aramaic. Here Mark writes NOT the Greek word for Father but the Aramaic term “Abba” (Jesus' own hapax legomenon). Abba is the term that children called their fathers at home – dad, daddy, pop, papa. The Jews didn't address God with “Abba” because they considered such intimacy disrespectful. Jesus used the word because He – as the eternal Son of God had experienced perfect fellowship with the Father from eternity past – and thus was on intimate terms with the Father. Yet, something was about to disrupt this perfect fellowship. In less than 24 hours, God would turn His back on His own Son and Jesus experiencing the HORROR of this abandonment would cry out at the top of His lungs “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” What could cause God to abandon His own Son?
#2 “take THIS CUP from me.” He had to drink the Cup of God’s wrath. To understand what Jesus meant, we must turn to the OT: Read Psalm 75:7-8; Isaiah 51:17; Ezekiel 23:31-34. We find similar passages in Psalm 11, Jeremiah 25, Habakkuk 2. The point – time and again the Bible speaks of a cup of God’s wrath which will be poured out against sinners. It is a cup of horror, desolation, shame and destruction. It is a cup filled to the brim with the perfect wrath of a perfectly just God who HATES sin! When Jesus in His deity and perfectly sinless humanity considered the events that would shortly take place, He didn’t fear men, spikes, a cat of nine tails, an old wooden cross. But as He peered into that cup of horror filled to the brim with God’s wrath against covetousness, adultery, rape, abortion, homosexuality, murder, incest, greed, pornography, drug abuse, blasphemy, and idolatry He saw something SO vile, SO disgusting, in fact terrorizing He literally was at the point of death! In a few short hours, Jesus would have to drink that cup as Scripture says down to “the dregs.” Do you know what the dregs are? Ever got down to the bottom of your cup and that last bit that’s not stirred, mixed, got some chunks of spit in it and you toss it out? That’s THE DREGS! Jesus drank the dregs of your sin, my sin, our sins, the WHOLE WORLD’S sins! How disgusting and vile that must have been! Any person in his right mind would have shrunk from that cup and, like Jesus, pleaded “Take this cup from me”!!!
#3 And yet, Jesus says - “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” You see in the OT a cup is not only associated with the wrath of God but also is an expression of one’s destiny. And Jesus KNEW His destiny – cf. Mark 10:45. That’s why He also said no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. And why at His arrest he would say - John 18:11. Don’t let the fact that all of this is taking place in a Garden escape your notice! Remember the first Adam (Garden of Eden) – what’d he say? Yet not what YOU will, but what I will. Exerting his own will, he brought about the ruin and damnation of the human race. Now comes the Last Adam (Garden of Gethsemane) to reverse the curse – what’d he say? Yet not what I will, but what YOU will. Deserting His own will, He brought about the redemption of the human race. Paullays this out beautifully in Romans 5:18-19 (MSG): “Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.” WOW, LOVE IT! As vile and disgusting as that CUP was, as horrifying as it must have been for Jesus to be abandoned by His Father even for a few hours, thanks be to God that He said “Yet not what I will, but what you will”!
VI. The Purpose of His Agony
A. As we reflect on this terrifying, horrifying agony Jesus was going through, don’t we naturally ask “Couldn’t God have taken away the sins of the world some other way than to subject His own Son to this?” Grudem quote. Just a minute ago, I said that I was more interested in us getting a picture of the SOURCE of Jesus agony than in the SEVERITY. But what I’m MOST interested in us getting a picture of this AM is the PURPOSE of Jesus’ agony. Think about this – who was that cup Jesus drank intended for? Is it not, YOU, ME, US?!
B. Read Jeremiah 49:12 & 2 Corinthians 5:21. Did you catch the pronouns? YOU must drink For OUR sake he made him to be sin...so that in him WE might become the righteousness of God The purpose of Jesus’ agony was that HE drank the cup for you, for me, for us! HE experienced the agony of separation from the Father for a few hours so you, me, us wouldn’t have to experience it for ALL ETERNITY! We're not left with a bitter, horrifying cup to drink but the sweet cup of the Lord's Supper, His blood, our remembrance!
C. Look at one last thing Jesus says – Read Mark 14:41-42. This phrase Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? is a Greek idiom that's hard to interpret. Is it a question? Is it irony? Is it a statement? Is it a command? Even more interesting is the next phrase – It is enough. What is enough? The disciples’ sleep? That’s what some commentators say. But I think the answer is found in the Greek – this phrase is a single Greek word “apechei” (ap-ekh’-i). You know what the root of that means? To receive in full. In fact we find this word used in the Koine Greek papyri in Egypt of something paid in full. Sound familiar? Fast forward a few hours. Read John 19:30. “Tetelestai” “It is finished, paid in full” What is finished? Jesus has drank the cup of wrath down to the dregs. It was as good as drank right there in that Garden! It is paid in full! What is paid in full? The wages of my sin, your sin, the WHOLE world’s sins! Jesus won the spiritual victory right there in Gethsemane!
VII. Our Response to His Agony
A. Hold up a mirror. How many of you used one of these this AM? I want us to conclude this AM by checking ourselves in another mirror – God’s mirror, the Word of God. Hold up Bible. Adrian Rogers said “as a mirror, the Bible serves two important purposes: showing us the condition we are in and revealing who Jesus really is – His transcendent glory and splendor.” I think we’d be hard pressed to find another passage that does this so vividly. As I said earlier, we truly are on holy ground when we come to Gethsemane. And yet James says there is a danger with this mirror. A danger that having looked into it and seen our condition we will simply walk away and forget “what matter of man” we really are! Let’s not do that.
#1 When we look into this mirror (the Agony of the Lamb), we should TURN! Turn to Him who drank the cup, acknowledging that He drank the cup of wrath that was meant for you. Think about this - If drinking that cup and feeling that abandonment from the Father just for a matter of hours had Jesus, God Himself, sweating blood and sorrowful to the point of death, what must it be like to experience that for all eternity? Don’t leave here today without Jesus as your Savior!
#2 When we look into this mirror (the Agony of the Lamb), we should REJOICE! Be thankful that Christ drank the cup down to the dregs. Be thankful, knowing that 70 x 70 eternities would not be enough time for you to drink that cup. Be thankful as we come to the Lord's Supper this AM that our cup to drink is sweet - full of the Savior's Love! And a million songs, books, movies, words cannot express adequate thanks for the sacrifice Jesus made.
#3 When we look into this mirror (the Agony of the Lamb), we should OBEY! If sin was this horrifying to Jesus, shouldn’t it be the same for us? Shouldn't we stop giving pretty names to sin? If this man loved us this much to drink that vile cup, shouldn’t we love Him back by being obedient? Jesus said “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Don’t forget, the same man that drank that cup for you, will one day also judge you!
#4 When we look into this mirror (the Agony of the Lamb), we should PRAY! Our Lord entered Gethsemane sorrowful to the point of death and left it strengthened and victorious. What was the difference? He went into His arsenal! Broke out the original I-Phone and called His Father. We WILL have our own Gethsemanes and our best hope of victory? Prayer! As we celebrate Crossway's Anniversary, it has been and needs to continue to be a house of prayer! The same man that prayed in that Garden now serves as our High Priest, interceding on our behalf!
#5 When we look into this mirror (the Agony of the Lamb), we should REST! Rest in Him and in His infinite, complete, awesome love! Our cup is empty, consumed in the greatest act of love the world will ever know.
VIII. Invitation
IX. Lord's Supper
