Jesus' Prayer, Arrest and Peter's Denial

There's something exciting in looking in on private moments isn't there? That's why we're so keen to read the autobiographies of our heroes, even more so their diaries; that's why an open curtain in the winter just invites our eyes to have a look. We can't help ourselves, we love to spy on other people's private moments, to see what happens when the masks come off, when the public face is relaxed and someone is authentically themselves.

Well this morning we get to peak in on a private moment between God the Son and his Father, as Jesus prays. And not just any prayer, not just any moment, but we're going to see how the Son turned to the Father in his darkest hour, in his hour of readying himself for his death and all that it involved. Here we see Jesus in his most private moments.

And there's two things I want us to see in this private moment:

1) The Horror of Jesus death: Jesus recoils from the horror of Sin and Judgement, but Submits to God

2) The Necessity of Jesus death: People recoil from submission to God and produce the horror of Sin and Judgement.

1) The Horror of Jesus death: Jesus recoils from the horror of Sin and Judgement, but Submits to God

We walk into a very private moment as the Son in agony cries out to his Father, verse 42, look at it with me:

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.

Here we tread on sacred ground. God the Son speaks privately to God the Father. There are so many things for us to learn here, but we only have a few minutes, so we're going to have to prioritise. So there are four things I want to particularly draw to your attention.

The first is the emotional turmoil we see Jesus in – he prays in earnest, out of deep anguish, so much so that his sweat is like great drops of blood. Mark records Jesus said 'my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death' (Mark 14.34) – he was in such turmoil, such anguish that he was almost crushed under the weight of what was coming, it was almost enough to kill him.

In this situation even Jesus could not stand alone, he needed to pray, he needed the help of his heavenly Father, he needed the help of the angel who appeared to him and strengthened him.

This is not normal, it's far beyond normal, this is extreme, as extreme as it gets. It would be extreme for anyone, but how much more so for Jesus. Throughout the gospels Jesus faced extreme situations like they were entirely routine – he calmed the storm, he raised the dead, he cast out demons. He was never flustered by his enemies – not when they tried to trap him in his words, not when they tried to throw him from a cliff or stone him, not even when he faced Satan himself. Jesus wasn't fazed by anything.

Now, suddenly, he is.

So we see this is exceedingly serious. Jesus is facing such a crisis that it would crush the best of us many times over.

So we must ask 'what it is that causes such anguish even for Jesus?'

And we see this when we turn to consider the content of his prayer.

This is the second thing for us to pay careful attention to. Jesus prays that God – should he be willing – would 'take the cup' from him. At first glance this is mysterious, cryptic – what is this cup? We know he's been speaking of his death for chapters, and now the hour is upon him – surely the cup is a reference to it, but why call it a cup?

But you know the answer to that already; we heard it in our Old Testament reading – Jeremiah 25.15-38 (p551). Jeremiah, along with Isaiah and Habakkuk and other prophets uses the image of the cup to speak of God's holy righteous judgement poured out on unrepentant sinners, like wine they're forced to drink (see also Psalm 11.6, Isaiah 51.22, Lam 4.21, Ezek 23.31-33 and Habakkuk 2.16).

Jeremiah is particularly graphic is he not?
Verse15: 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 all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 16 When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them."
Verse 27: 'This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Drink, get drunk and vomit, and fall to rise no more because of the sword I will send among you.'
Verse 30: "Now prophesy all these words against them and say to them: "'The LORD will roar from on high; he will thunder from his holy dwelling and roar mightily against his land. He will shout like those who tread the grapes, shout against all who live on the earth. 31 The tumult will resound to the ends of the earth, for the LORD will bring charges against the nations; he will bring judgment on all mankind and put the wicked to the sword,'" declares the LORD.
Verse 34: Weep and wail, you shepherds; roll in the dust, you leaders of the flock. For your time to be slaughtered has come; you will fall and be shattered like fine pottery.

Can you imagine it – there in that garden Jesus sees all that bearing down on him, Jesus sees that anger, that punishment ready to be poured out – on him.

We need to be clear here – Jesus has no sin of his own which warrants God's wrath. And yet the wrath of God is poured out on him. 2 Cor 5.21 puts it like this: 'God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God'. Jesus' death was a sacrifice for sins. And in that one sacrifice Jesus takes on himself the great wrath that God feels towards sin – and he takes all of it, as if God's anger was boiled down to a concentrated syrup, a fortified wine of ferocious strength; or as if it was focused down in to a single point in a great moral magnifying glass, a fierce laser of moral judgement. Every sin was laid on him, he became sin for us. And God unleashed hell, the fullness of God's awesome wrath, the penalty that we deserve – all of it – on him.

No wonder Jesus was in anguish. Jesus looked forward to that and shuddered, his body almost failed him, his gut wrenched, his mind rebelled, his spirit recoiled. This is why Jesus needed strengthening, he who was perfectly holy, perfectly united to his father, was about to take on himself all our rebellion and filth and deception and fear and shame; and on top of that – because of that – to take for us the fearsome punishment. He was going to drain the cup to the very dregs so that it was no more.

And there's more. Thirdly, see the glorious way in which Jesus resolves his prayer – he recoils in horror from becoming sin and bearing the wrath of God – and well he might; but even so, he will not rebel against his Father. So he says those glorious, wonderful words 'but not my will, but yours be done'. Not my will, your will. Jesus will not do an Adam and Eve, he knows there is no gain in rebellion, only loss, and he loves the Father more than life itself, and he loves us more than life itself, he will do what his Father wills.

You can see how we stand on holy ground can't you? Jesus' heart of submission and love is laid bare for us here – what a saviour!

And lastly, before we move on – we need to see here the absolute necessity of this one perfect sacrifice, the absolute necessity: The perfect son of the Father kneels and begs 'take this cup from me'. Matthew and Mark summarise the prayer slightly differently – 'if it is possible take this cup from me' they say. If it is possible, if it is possible… take it from me.

And we can be sure that if there was another way God would have done it.

Do you think the Father sits in heaven hearing that prayer, seeing the blood dripping from Jesus' brow, feeling his anguish and thinks – well there are other roads up the mountain, but I want you to do this? Do you see how that is completely opposed to God's character, God's love, God's faithfulness – do you see how blasphemous it is to say that Jesus is just one way to God?

If that were the case there was no reason for Jesus to die, if we could come to God by our good works, or by prayer and contrition, by a special diet and exercise plan or by animal sacrifices, or even by flying a plane into a building – if there was any other possible way – then Jesus would not have been there in that garden, and he would not have been hung on the cross the very next day.

So we have to know that there is no other way to be saved. We can come to God through Jesus, and only through Jesus, Jesus death for sins alone can save us.

So in this one scene we have graphically laid out for us the terrible, terrible weight of sin and it's consequences – for our choices, for our lust and pride and wilful rebellion Jesus paid a terrible price, the price we deserve… And we see too the great depths of the holy God's love for us – Father Son and Holy Spirit united together to pay the great price, united in love for us to turn aside wrath from us on whom it should rightly fall. We see Jesus' willing submission to give his life as a sacrifice for us.

Now some of us here this morning might just think that is taking things a bit far: our sin isn't as bad as all that, surely there must be another way we can be saved, surely we're over doing it.

Well if that's what you're thinking the next two sections of Luke give us a handy reminder of why Jesus had to die. We've seen Jesus recoil from the horrors of sin and judgement and yet submit to God, but now we'll see the exact opposite – people recoil from submission to God and produce instead the horror of sin and judgement.

2) The Necessity of Jesus death: People recoil from submission to God but produce horror of Sin and Judgement, v47-62

See the necessity for Jesus to die in the sin and failure that is all around him at the time when he dies. This is a communion service, so we've got to keep this short. But again there are four things I want to draw your attention to, briefly. Four sad indictments of human sin:

1) Judas' betrays Jesus with a kiss. Verse 48 'Judas, are you betraying the son of man with a kiss?' Judas, one of Jesus 12 disciples was the one who led his enemies to him. Jesus' friend, a man who saw all he did, heard his teaching, watched his miracles, shared his bread and wine – and yet who hardened his heart and handed him over to death for a measly coins.

2) the crowd that comes out to arrest Jesus vervse 47 a crowd came up, verses 52 we see this crowd included the chief priests – they were there in the garden in the middle of the night! – the temple guard and the elders, who – Luke says – had come for him. This is the elite of Jerusalem society – the religious elite. These were leaders of God's people, and here they are with swords and clubs rebelling against God's rule. God himself comes to visit and lives a perfect life among them – and they are so incensed they are desperate for a chance to kill him. And they're not worse than us remember, they're just like us.

3) And we're reminded here of the reign of darkness in verses 53. It's not just the chief priests and the elders and the temple guard, there is spiritual darkness here. Satan was mentioned explicitly in verse 3, inciting Judas to betray Jesus. Here the reference is indirect, but it's clear enough. Satan was working to make all this happen, his reign is the reign of darkness, and the chief priests etc. are – inadvertently – doing his bidding. They do his bidding because that is what we all do in sin – when we rebel against God we're not neutral, we're slaves to sin and Satan. That is why Jesus rescues us out of the Kingdom of darkness and brings us into his Kingdom of life and light.

4) Perhaps saddest of all we have here the failure of Jesus' followers too. So often in the gospels Peter serves as their mouth piece, their representative. He speaks to put his foot in it, or to reveal God's work, but throughout he speaks for them, he sums them up. So it is here – Peter's failure is on view, but he represents the failure of them all. Not one of the disciples stood with Jesus – not even Peter who insisted so strongly that he was ready not only to go with Jesus to prison, but even to die for him. Now look at him, vs 57-60 he denies that he even knows Jesus three times. Vs 62 he goes out and weeps bitterly as, well he might, as would you and I.

All these are real, and terrible and damning illustrations of the problem Jesus came to deal with – this is what people are like by nature – we're out of control, we can not help ourselves, we are unwitting pawns of Satan, driven by forces we don't understand and can't resist and we're lost, until he comes to rescue us.

And the truth that we need to see is that they represent all of us, it is our sin that put Jesus on the cross, that wrath that was poured out on him belongs to us, we've earned it, just as they did. We need to feel the weight of this – of our guilt and shame, we are rebels worthy of judgement…

And in the light of that we see all the more clearly, and more wonderfully his love and grace – despite all that he still loves us, still gives himself to rescue us! Jesus is the wonderful saviour that we all need. If you've not put your trust in him you must, you so should. Come and do Life Explored with us and find out how to do it.

Before we finish there's two practical things I want us to see really quickly. First Jesus said to his disciples watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. He said it again after the time to pray was gone, just as he was being arrested… clearly he meant for us to hear it as a continuing instruction – he needed to watch and pray, how much more do we. Jesus stood firm in the hour of temptation through the strength that God gave him in response to his prayers. The same thing can be true for you and me too. We don't have to give in to sin, but we can't resist it on our own, we can have strength to resist temptation only if we pray and ask for it. So watch and pray. If you've fallen out of the habit of daily prayer times, get back into. If your prayer is short and perfunctory, be earnest like Jesus and watch and pray.

Secondly Peter failed to watch and he failed to stand – he fell asleep when he should have prayed and he fell into sin when he should have stood with Jesus – but wonderfully Jesus restored him, and he will restore us too, if we turn back to him. When the cock crowed Jesus turned and looked straight at Peter – and how that look must have cut him to the heart. But Jesus had already said to him that after he had denied him he would have a job to do to strengthen the brothers (verse 32). Jesus prepared Peter for his fall so that he would turn back and be forgiven because Jesus died for that too. You and I will fall into sin too, and we might well weep bitterly, perhaps we should. But Jesus has already paid for it. The question is, when we fall into sin, will we turn back. Perhaps that's where you're at this morning, running away from God again. If it is, turn back, there is forgiveness and grace enough for every sinner, for every sin. Jesus died so we can be cleansed and restored. Won't you come to him for grace this morning?