The Garden Choice

Some messages feel personal enough to make you wonder, “Did someone tell the preacher about me?” We start there, because a lot of us have been in that seat. Then we pull back the curtain on what’s really happening when God’s Word hits a nerve: it isn’t a public callout, it’s an invitation to see what we’ve been missing and to take spiritual growth seriously without pretending we’ve “arrived.” 

From that honesty, we move straight into one of the heaviest scenes in the Gospels: Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. We read Matthew 26 and Luke 22 side by side to see Jesus’ sorrow, His loneliness, and His steady decision to obey. We talk about the disciples falling asleep, the warning about temptation, and the raw line that changes everything: “Not my will, but yours be done.” If you’ve ever tried to do the right thing while feeling unsupported, this moment will meet you where you are. 

We also dig into what Jesus means by “the cup,” tracing the biblical theology of the cup of wrath through the Old Testament. That thread forces a serious look at sin, God’s justice, and why grace and mercy come at a real cost. Finally, we bring it home personally: Jesus could have walked away, but He chose to carry what we could not carry, and that is why we keep telling people about Him. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Sermons Sting

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Because I think a lot of times we we feel as uh listen, I've been there. I've sat on and on sermons and and I've sat in and listened to preachers and who I felt like reading my diary the night before. And I'm like, why? Who told them I did that? And I could tell you that my intention when I go into my sermon prep time, I do not, I promise you, I do not sit around with a list of all the people who come to church here and go, who am I gonna come after today? It's not me. I'm not coming for you, I promise. But I will tell you that that there are times when when the word of God is, it it hits us in a way because it's something that God is trying to show us. Every sermon I prepare is always done at a much deeper level than just to present it. I have to ask myself what what are things that I'm that I'm missing, what areas am I lacking? My prayer every day is that I never get to the point that I feel like I've arrived as a Christian. At least not until I die. Because only then will I step in to perfection. So this morning it it's gonna be. I mean, not only is he so in tune with God that he speaks truth, but he says things in ways that you're just like, huh, I never thought of that. And so his prayer life is is amazing. So to hear I'll say this. If you think that you don't need to spend time in prayer, let me challenge you with this. The Son of God, who had a greater relationship with God than any of us will ever experience, felt the need to find time for quiet in his life. He knew that he needed to be in prayer, in communion with his father. And so the last couple weeks, we were talking about the end of the uh the Last Supper, and and they met together, and and and John does a beautiful job of capturing this conversation. And so you get to the point where Jesus comes to the end and he prays for himself, he's glorified, he he prays for the disciples that God will protect them, that they understand that the world is going to get a lot more difficult for them, and then he prays for all those who will believe after. He says, All those who will believe because of you. God, I protect them. And then they get up and they leave. For the last time, they leave the room. Their last meal together. There are moments in life that that are life-changing, and this is one of them. And so often that those life-changing moments happen in stillness and in quiet. It's not always profound. So Jesus gets up with his disciples. Judas has gone on to do his thing. He's setting the stage. Then Matthew picks up Matthew 26, verses 36 through 46. Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to them, Sit here while I go over there and pray. He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. And then he said to them, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Ever had someone tell you that? I'm so tired, I'm so anxious, I'm so overwhelmed. The death just seems like a good option. He takes his three closest disciples, says, Listen, I'm gonna go pray. I need you to stay here with me. Not as I will, but as you will. Then he returned to his disciples and he found them sleeping. And he said, Couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour? Yes, Peter. Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Then he returned to his disciples, or sorry, he went away a second time and he prayed, My father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away, unless I drink it, your will be done. When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them, and he went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. Then he returned to the disciples and he said to them, Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man has delivered the hand of sinners. Rise, let us go. Here becomes my betrayer. It's heavy. Jesus comes and he shows up and he takes his disciples and then he takes his three closest friends and says, Listen, if you if you can just just stay with me. And then he he just steps off a little ways and and he and he prays. He says, He says, God, if you can take this cup from me. What is he asking God to do? Psalm 75, 8 says, 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. Isaiah 51, 17 says, uh, awake, awake, rise up, Jerusalem. You have drunk from the land of the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath. You have drained it to its dregs, the goblet that makes people stagger. Jeremiah 25, 15 says, This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me. Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath, and make it the nations, uh, make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. This this wrath of God, when we look at the symbolism of the cup, the symbol in this moment, it's pulling from the Old Testament. When we understand the Old Testament, we understand how the Old Testament functions, we understand, we should understand as people, that there is a consequence for sin. The wrath of God is something we see throughout the Old Testament. For those who are disobedient, those who fail to follow him, those who continue to live in sin. Uh, we see this prophetically so many times over and over again, that they will take upon his wrath. They will see his discipline, they will see his justice. This is not a light thing. You know, sometimes we we talk about sin and we really, I think we kind of water it down like, well, it's it's not that bad. Yes, I lie occasionally.

unknown 9:58

That's okay.

Sin, Wrath, And The Cross

Luke’s View And Bloody Sweat

Obedience When You Feel Alone

Why We Tell Others About Jesus

Closing Prayer Of Thanks

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Or we talk about other sins, we we lust. We talk about gluttony. The Bible's clear that you know those who overfeed themselves, the idea of being greedy, we we talk, we we we as a society have made sin a spectacle. God does not see the same, see sin the same way we do. It is not something to be shied away from, it is not something to be ignored, it is something that has to be dealt with. So when Jesus is in the garden and he's praying, he says, God, take this cup from me. What he's asking is, God, if you can take the wrath that is about to be poured out on me because of the sins of my people. God, please. If you can take it, please. But if you won't, God, let your will be done. Jesus is about to bear the consequences for every sin that ever was, that was then, and that is yet to come. He is about to take on the wrath of God in a way that no one has ever seen before. So this question isn't about whether or not Jesus is worried about the cross. He's not. Listen, he already established this in his prayer in John 17. God, may I glorify you. I will be glorified because of this. But he has to, his humanity, he's dealing with the reality that he is about to experience the full wrath of God. Not just the wrath of God, but isolation, separation. You realize because sin and God can't be in the same place. So the cross is so much more than just his death sentence, it's him bearing the sin for all of humanity. And he says, God, if you can take this from me, please do. But if not, let your will be done. Jesus is looking at one of the most difficult things he's ever gonna have to do. And he chooses to be obedient. Not out of fear, not out of doubt, not out of worry, not out of, listen, he's not getting anything out of this. But he chooses to be obedient. The very human side of him and the very divine side of him in this moment come to the realization that this is what I have been called to do, even though I know it's gonna be one of the most painful things that I've ever done. And he comes to this conclusion while his closest friends sleep just off in the distance. So when he comes back to them and he says, Listen, why how are you asleep? It's not because he doesn't care that they're tired, but but the weight of the world is literally on his shoulders. The weight of everything that is about to happen to him. The weight of the cross, the weight of the burden, the weight of the sin, the weight of all of it is coming down to this moment. If there's ever a moment in time that defines who we are, this is it. Jesus could have walked away if he wanted to. He could have chosen not to do this. He could have chosen not to go to the cross, he could have chosen to go into hiding or run away, or maybe just comply. But he didn't. He chose instead to be obedient because he knew what you and I often fail to realize that sin has to be dealt with. Luke chapter 22. Luke captures another angle of this prayer. So 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 it strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he arose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, asleep, exhausted from sorrow. Why are you sleeping? He asked them. The temptation. Luke tells us that his his sweats, it was drops of blood, the intensity of this moment. He was so overwhelmed that his body was reacting. By the way, that that's physically possible, scientifically possible. There's a way that at high levels of stress, when people are in incredibly stressful situations, that their body, when it sweats, the sweat can be tinted red because the capillaries around your head explode, and when that happens, it can actually run out with the sweat. And I mean, this is like high level intensity. These are a physical symptom of things that can happen. And so Jesus is sitting here, and I love what Luke says. He says, an angel came not to take him away from this moment, but to strengthen him in this moment. And as he prayed, and the blood fell down. Can you imagine? Imagine you're asleep. Jesus shakes you, and he looks at you, and all you see is just his sweat-covered face. And it's tinted red. And he's like, what are you doing? And then their minds, like only they're like, well, we were tired. You you you keep talking about how you're leaving us, and and we don't quite understand what that means, but but but you you say your hours come and and and and and Judas left and Jesus, we don't know, we're we're wore out, we're exhausted. What what do we do? And and Jesus says, you should be praying like me. So you can avoid being tempted because what's about to come next is going to be some of the most difficult things that you've ever been through. Why are you sleeping? I've always wondered the garden. What that setting would have been like. Jesus is just, he knows. Like I I think a lot of times when we I've heard people talk about it and we didn't have a choice. And look, he did, he had a choice. He he could have walked away. He could have chose to be disobedient, he he could have chosen to do whatever he wanted. I mean, he was the son of God. He could have called an angel, he could have called angel armies, an army of angels down, and it would have been taken care of the situation, but he didn't. Because he understands that he is the only one in all of humanity. He is the only one in all of heaven that can take the wrath of God. He is the only one who can take all of sin upon himself and once and for all bury it. Oh death, where is your sting? Jesus knows that in this moment the entirety of his ministry will be defined. His disciples don't see it. They don't understand it quite yet. He's alone. Sometimes being obedient brings us to loneliness. Sometimes we feel like we're the only ones doing what we're supposed to be doing. Sometimes we can't understand why those are we feel like those around us are missing what we're trying to accomplish. And I feel that with Jesus, right? He understands what's coming and he sees what's happening, and he's talking to his disciples, and he can't understand why they're they're asleep. And he's saying, why, why, why, why are you resting? Because sometimes when when God calls us to things, sometimes it makes us alone. But Jesus wasn't worried about it. He knew, he understood what had happened. Sweating drops of blood, overwhelmed, tired, exhausted, but knowing in the end that this is it. This is the only way. The sacrificial system of the Old Testament wasn't enough. There was never going to be enough. Someone had to take the place. Someone had to take the wrath, someone had to take the justice, someone had to take the punishment for the sin that you and I cause. Jesus was sinless. He never sinned. He did not deserve what was coming. But he knew you and I couldn't handle it. So this prayer is it's short. But man, it's heavy. Facing certain death, facing arrest, facing being beaten and broken and spit on and mocked and a crown of thorns shoved on his head. So close to the end. The same men and women who loved him weeks, maybe months earlier now, cheering for his crucifixion. Knowing that he's going to be hung on a cross and displayed for all to see. Knowing everything he knew. Judas was going to betray him. Peter was going to deny him. The disciples were going to be scattered. Knowing everything that he knew. He still chose obedience. I could not have done that. There's a handful of people in this life that I would die for. But I could not die for people that were gonna mock me and spit on me and ridicule me. Why why would I give my life for them? Obedience comes at a price. The grace and the mercy that you and I have came at a cost. And Jesus, in one of the darkest moments, one of the darkest nights of the soul, I think A.W. Tozer was one of his praises. The darkest night of his soul. As he prayed in the garden, as he swept the blood, as he knew that his arrest was coming. He said, God, if you can take it from me, great. But if not, your will be done. Not mine. When people ask me why I do what I do, why am I so bent on telling other people about Jesus? I question that sometimes in my own mind. The answer for me always comes back to one thing. In the moment that Jesus could have left me to my own device, he chose to save me. He took the weight of my sin. He bared the wrath of God on my behalf. He chose to give up his life so that I didn't have to lose mine. He made a way where there was no way. Something had to be done. Sacrifice had to be made. By the grace of God, it wasn't you or me who did it. God, we thank you.