Jesus and the Sleeping Disciples #1

Driving home: Mysteries which all have their origin in what it will mean for Jesus to drink the cup, the cup of the Father's own wrath against the sins of his people.

Compares Gethsemane to the holy ground Moses stood on, conveying the reverence and awe due to Christ's suffering there, despite human unworthiness.

as you said to Moses standing by the bush that burned with fire and yet was not consumed, take the shoes from off your feet for the ground whereon you stand is holy ground. And as we have come to that plot of ground called Gethsemane in recent weeks, surely, holy Lord, we have felt that it is holy ground. And we have wondered at what right we even have to stand on that ground. For we confess our own sinfulness, our own unfitness to look upon our Savior in his moments of intense agony. And yet because you have told us that your word is given to be light and life, we dare not through a false hum...

4:30 - 5:55 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: After a second prayer, Jesus finds them sleeping again, their eyes 'exceedingly weighed down' by sorrow. They are speechless, unable to offer an excuse, indicating their…

Describes the physical struggle of fighting sleep, like eyelids weighed down with 'fish sinkers,' to illustrate the disciples' heavy eyes and eventual surrender to slumber.

Now here I can give an illustration to which you can all relate. Do you know those times when you're in a given company of people and alas often it's in a church that a preacher can see it and someone is fighting sleep and that's noble to fight sleep. The person who doesn't fight it, the first wave of it he feels coming over just folds his hands and do you ever see someone fighting it? Fighting their lip, shifting around in the pew and changing their posture tape and you see their eyes beginning to flutter and then they jerk their heads and they hold up their eyes and then after a while the ey...

37:27 - 38:44 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: After a second prayer, Jesus finds them sleeping again, their eyes 'exceedingly weighed down' by sorrow. They are speechless, unable to offer an excuse, indicating their…

Compares the disciples' sleeping for sorrow to people using alcohol, drugs, or sleep as a 'crutch' to escape painful realities, highlighting their retreat from spiritual watchfulness.

Luke adds a very touching stroke that they were sleeping for sorrow. You see it was a state of the heart that was affecting the condition of the eyelids as it began to dawn upon them to some degree that as they beheld their Lord in his wrestlings before they nodded off to sleep the first time and as they beheld him in his wrestlings before they nodded off to sleep the second time that something foreboding, something frightening, something like a gathering storm of fury was about to break upon them and to some degree their hearts entered in to the sorrow of that hour and in their sorrow rather ...

38:45 - 40:14 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Jesus returns a third time to find them sleeping. He delivers what Martin interprets as a gracious but ironic rebuke: 'Sleep on now, and take your rest. It is enough.' This is…

Describes the exegetical challenges of the passage as a 'mine field' and a 'veritable maze,' conveying the difficulty and complexity of interpreting certain Greek words and verb forms.

hand now I confess dear people that when I began my study of this passage I did not realize what a mine field of exegetical problems I was walking into there is a sense in which ignorance is bliss when you are trying to be a responsible expositor of the scriptures but when I opened my Greek text and began to examine the passage carefully I found I could hardly take a half of an exegetical step without gingerly feeling to see if my foot were on another mine or to change the imagery what I thought would be a clear path of exegetical study and this is perhaps a better imagery became a veritable m...

43:13 - 44:42 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Surely it may well be said, consider him who endured such contradiction and endured it from sinners against himself.

Quotes a commentator describing Jesus, 'the one perfect flower of humanity,' being thrown into the 'polluted and polluting grass of wickedness,' illustrating the outrage and malice of his betrayal and apprehension.

And as one commentator has very, very accurately opened up the significance of that, and I quote him, the one perfect flower of humanity, referring to the Lord Jesus, is thrown by treachery into the polluted and polluting grass of wickedness in its many forms. The traitor delivers him by his hands to hirelings. The hirelings by their hands to hypocrites. The hypocrites by their hands to an unjust and skeptical pagan judge.

51:27 - 52:02 Read in full sermon

The point: Go to Gethsemane and see Jesus coming not once not twice but three times to nurture slumbering disciples, and know that he is here this morning to do that for you, child of God, who by a combination of neglect and indiff…

Illustrates the devil's deceptive tactic of telling believers that their willful spiritual sleeping and prayerlessness make them unworthy of seeking Christ's forgiveness, thereby 'making a cheap thing of the blood of Christ.'

the same yesterday today and forever one of the greatest tricks of the devil is this to tell you well it doesn't matter if you're sleeping spiritually when you should be awake it doesn't matter if you're doing something else when you ought to be praying and you come into a state where you're overcome by temptation because you did not watch and pray in obedience to the word of Christ and then the devil comes and says aha you knew you should have been watching you knew you should have been praying your sin was willful and wide-eyed you can't go and seek forgiveness from the Lord that's to make a...

61:07 - 62:07 Read in full sermon

The point: Behold in these dealings of our Lord with his disciples in Gethsemane his ability to discern the graces of God his people even when they are buried out of sight to others by spiritual dullness.

Uses the imagery of a 'dimly burning flax' and a 'bruised reed' (from Isaiah) to represent the struggling believer, assuring them that Christ will not quench or snap them but will nurture them back to strength.

but spiritual dullness but he saw what others could not see he said the spirit is willing and the only other place that word willing is used in the New Testament apart from Matthew's use of it in the parallel passage is in Romans 1.15 where Paul says as much as in me is I'm ready I'm willing to preach the gospel to you who are at Rome as Paul's heart was anxious bursting as it were to preach our Lord says the spirit indeed is willing our Lord saw that the true state of those men was not to be read in their slumbering when they had been commanded to be wakeful in their prayerlessness when they ...

63:42 - 65:10 Read in full sermon

The point: For any sitting here this morning who do not know so gracious a savior, foolishly trying to weave upon the loom of their own efforts a cloak for their own sins, God help them to smash the loom in true repentance from dea…

Advises unbelievers to 'smash the loom' of their own efforts to weave a cloak for their sins, urging them to repent and trust in Christ's perfect obedience and righteousness.

foolishly trying to weave upon the loom of their own efforts a cloak for their own sins God help them to smash the loom in true repentance from dead works and throw the weight of their souls upon the perfect obedience of Jesus obedience even unto death a righteousness made upon the loom of his perfect life and his death oh may they have no rest till they know they are clothed with that righteousness we pray for any of your disciples who came this morning spiritually slumbering prayerless careless vulnerable to temptation oh Lord Jesus come and succor them bring them back to wakefulness and pra...

68:05 - 69:19 Read in full sermon