22:39 ¶ And he came out,
and went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives; and his disciples also
followed him. 40 And when he was at the
place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. 41 And he was withdrawn from them about a
stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, 42
Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. 43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. 44
And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it
were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. 45 And when he rose up from prayer, and was come
to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow, 46 And said unto them, Why sleep ye? rise and
pray, lest ye enter into temptation.
From this we see that
Jesus regularly went to the mount of Olives as evidenced in Luke 19 and 21 plus
the other three gospels. Jesus’ prayer here is an example to us. There are
difficult things we must face in this life and we ask for mercy, that we do not
suffer, but we should and must always acknowledge that it is God’s will that
must be done, not ours. We make it clear that we acknowledge our dependence on
God and that all things are by His hand. All we can do is to ask for mercy
acknowledging His authority over our lives and giving Him the glory.
This is very difficult
for modern Christians who have bought into the evil that has divorced the God
of the Bible from reality. We have created a caretaker God who stands off but
is not active in every moment or function of life and existence. We call on Him
for help, assistance, or for a blessing but do not see His hand in every
difficulty, every joy, and, indeed, in every cell function, heartbeat, and
stirring of a breeze.
It was the era of Isaac
Newton that began to relegate God to a sort of ‘First Cause’ who set up
processes that function normally just fine without Him. You’ll even hear
preachers talk about things like childbirth or the death of someone as if, when
something goes wrong, God needs a phone call or a text message to know what’s
going on. God isn’t an absentee landlord who you call when the plumbing breaks.
He either broke the plumbing or allowed it to be broken for a reason you may
never know, if you study the book of Job, and you need His mercy, His wisdom on
how to fix it or have someone fix it and understanding of what He wants from
you as a response to this life challenge, blessing, or sorrow.
Here, the visible image
of God, the very body of God, the man who is fully God and yet fully man, shows
that while He is not looking forward to the suffering He must face in order to
die for our sins, the sins of the world, He acknowledges that the will of God,
which is also His will as He is God, must be done.
Hebrews 5:7 Who in the days
of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong
crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard
in that he feared; 8 Though he were a
Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; 9 And being made perfect, he became the author
of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
An angel or appearance
of someone from heaven ministers to Him.
Psalm 104:4 Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:
Hebrews 1:7 And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.
This reinforces our
understanding of what Christ knew about His upcoming physical death and relates
it to our suffering if we are not drugged or unconscious when it happens to us.
Indeed, dying and death
rank highly among some of mankind’s greatest fears and we go to great lengths
to increase our years or try to ameliorate the suffering of death with drugs.
God came as a man, in part, for this very reason.
Hebrews 2:14 ¶ Forasmuch
then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise
took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the
power of death, that is, the devil; 15
And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime
subject to bondage. 16 For verily he
took not on him the nature of
angels; but he took on him the
seed of Abraham.
By Christ’s agony in
the garden and from other events detailed in the Bible we can relate our own
fears, anxieties, and thoughts over the end-of-life suffering and be comforted.
You are not sinning or showing faithlessness if you resist the agony you may
face because even our Lord did not look forward to it. God comforts us with the
Bible when we see that we are not alone and that it is not wrong to not be a
Stoic with the proverbial stiff-upper-lip when it comes to life’s pain and
grief.
2Corinthians 1:4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation,
that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort
wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
From the Bible we learn
that we are not condemned when we suffer because we respond to it in our humanity.
We are also taught how to respond to the suffering of others.
Romans 12:15 Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
A temptation is
something that can cause you to doubt God or calls into question your faith or
makes you deny Christ. Prayer here is one answer to the danger of temptation.
Remember the prayer Jesus taught His disciples that mentioned temptation. See the comments on chapter
11:1-13. This is not tempted to do wrong but tempted to doubt God or turn from
Him, to not do what Jesus has done, acknowledge that it is God’s will that must
be done.
The disciples are said
to be sleeping for sorrow. Only Luke
gives us the cause of their sleepiness. It is the result of emotional
exhaustion. The disciples have been experiencing an emotional overload.
Different people respond to such things differently. But, here, these frail
human beings who follow Christ can bear the extreme stress placed on them as
the Lord they love told them that He must die no more. In an ongoing time of
grief and sorrow that is unremitting and merciless some people eat a lot, some
go about their daily trivialities with an obsessive-compulsive attitude, and
others fall down exhausted in their hearts.
It is also possible
that these exhausted disciples were being oppressed by Satan although it does
not say so in the text. Remember;
31 And the Lord said,
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to
have you, that he may sift you
as wheat: 32 But I have prayed for thee,
that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
Simon Peter’s emotional
catharsis, that moment of relief as the floodgate of tears opens and he is
enabled to be the Apostle he would become, the one Jesus prayed for, is coming
up here in verse 62.
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