Sidelights on Gethsemane

Introduction to Gethsemane and the Sermon's Focus

0:05 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, June 4th, 1989, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. For those who may be visiting among us, or relatively new among us, it is generally our practice to be preaching through, in a consecutive manner, some major portion of the Word of God. And for several years we have been occupied in following the track of the Spirit's mind as revealed in the Gospel of Mark. And we have come in our consecutive expositions to the 14th chapter, and I would ask you to turn in your Bibles there with me to Mark chapter 14, and to this profoundly mysterious and moving scene that takes place in the Gospel. The Garden of Gethsemane. And will you follow, please, as I read in your hearing, Mark chapter 14, beginning with verse 32.

1:12 And they come unto a place which was named Gethsemane. And he saith unto his disciples, Sit ye here while I pray. And he taketh with him Peter, and James, and John. And he began to be greatly amazed.

1:31 And, And he saith unto them, And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee. Remove this cup from me, how be it, not what I will, but what thou wilt. And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? Couldest thou not watch one hour? Watch, and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

2:32 And he went away, and prayed, saying the same words, or better rendered, saying essentially the same thing.

2:42 And again he came, and found them sleeping. For their eyes were very heavy, and they knew not what to answer him. And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now. And take your rest, it is enough.

3:00 The hour is come. Behold, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going. Behold, he that betrayeth me is at hand.

Reverent Approach to Christ's Suffering

3:16 We come this morning for the third time to the contemplation of this mysterious and moving account of the sufferings of our Lord. Our Lord in Gethsemane. And as we reverently take up this crucial incident in the life of Jesus, we do well to seek to approach our subject in the disposition expressed by C. H. Spurgeon.

3:49 When about to embark on an exposition of this very subject, he said to the hearers of the congregation there in London, we have thus come to the gate of sin, to the garden of Gethsemane, let us now enter. But first, let us put off our shoes from our feet, as Moses did, when he saw the bush which burned with fire and was not consumed. Surely we may say with Jacob, How dreadful is this place! I tremble at the task which lies before me, for how shall my feeble speech describe those agonies for which strong cryings and tears were scarcely an adequate expression? The preacher went on to say, I desire with you to survey the sufferings of the Redeemer, but, O, may the Spirit of God prevent our mind from thinking anything amiss, or our tongue from speaking even one word that, that would be derogatory to our Savior, either in His immaculate manhood or His glorious Godhead. It is not easy when you are speaking of one who is both God and man to observe the exact line of correct speech.

5:17 It is so easy to describe the divine side in such a manner as to trench upon the human, or to depict the human at the cost of the divine. Make me not an offender for a word if I should err. A man had need himself to be directly inspired of the Spirit, or to confine himself to nothing but the very words of inspiration, fitly to speak at all times upon the great mystery of godliness, God manifested in the flesh, and especially when he has to dwell most upon God's soul, so manifested in suffering flesh that the weakest trials in manhood become the most conspicuous. O Lord, open thou my lips that my tongue may utter right words. And so let us pray together that something of the Spirit that animated the heart of that great preacher of another generation may be present, present in your hearts and in mine, as together we meditate on this portion of the word of God. Let us pray.

6:39 O our Father, we would indeed inwardly take the shoes from off our feet, for surely if any ground that we have traversed in our study of the gospel of Mark is holy ground, it is the damp, cold clods of Gethsemane that absorb the sweaty blood drops of your Son. Surely if there were ever holy ground, it was that ground and that garden that was witness to his strong cryings and his tears, to his deep and unfathomable sorrow, and how we plead that the Spirit will come and that he will take of the things of Christ, and reveal them to us with such power that we may not merely look with sympathy upon the suffering of our Savior, but that we shall fall before him who suffered but now is glorified, and own him as worthy of the whole trust of our souls and the unrivaled allegiance and love of our hearts. To this end, may your Spirit help preacher and listener alike as we cry to you for the aid of heaven

8:06 through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Review of Previous Gethsemane Studies

8:18 Now I've already intimated that we come this morning to the third of our studies in this matter of our Lord's experience in Gethsemane, and up until this hour we have simply followed the track laid for us by the very language of the text in Mark, as the Holy Spirit said, and the Holy Spirit guided him to write, and we have noted six things in our study thus far. We have noted first of all the place. They come to a place which was named Gethsemane, literally oil press, the place where there was apparently not only a grove of olive trees, but an olive press as well, where someone carried on at least a domestic, if not a commercial, olive oil, oil business. And we know from 22nd chapter of Luke and also from John 18, 1 and 2, that this place was a familiar retreat to our Lord Jesus and His disciples. And in His hour of great need, our Lord would have sought a place that had the remembrance of many hours of blessed communion with His Father, as well as with His own disciples, for John says, He oft times resorted thither with His disciples.

9:45 But He went there also because His hour had come, and He was determined that Judas would find Him quite accessible. The Scripture tells us that Judas knew precisely where he would be, not because of any direct revelation, but because of the patterns that he had observed in the previous intercourse he had had with our Lord. And then we noted, secondly, the people. Our Lord goes with the eleven to the garden of Gethsemane, leaves the eight probably just inside the very outer gate of the walls of that enclosure, and He takes the three, the elect within the elect, Peter, James, and John, and goes further with them into the heart of the garden, and then leaving them, what Luke says, the distance of the stones cast. The stones cast, He goes to pray alone. And the purpose we have noted is very clearly stated by Mark. He said, Sit here while I pray.

10:58 It was His purpose, with the hour of His great ordeal coming upon Him, as He had done in all previous anticipated seasons, in all seasons of crisis, to give Himself to something more than His ordinary devotions, to give Himself to a season of intense and concentrated prayer. But then we noted, as He's on His way to pray, the tremendous pressure or the profound shock that came upon Him. Mark describes Him as continually falling upon the ground. Matthew says, falling upon His face.

11:39 Luke describes Him as kneeling. And it's the picture of one who has entered into such a state of profound inward pressure and shock to His being that these are the words used to describe it. Great amazement, sore troubled, exceeding sorrowful with the sorrow that He felt would crush Him down to the very jaws of death. Even before He would pour out His life upon the cross.

12:13 Then we noted, fifthly, the posture of His prayer. Kneeling and then falling, we've already alluded to it. And then the substance of His prayer. It is summarized by Mark in verse 35.

12:27 And the substance of His prayer was the exploration of the possibility that the hour which focused upon drinking the cup that the Father set before Him might pass from Him. And then the substance of the prayer as loosely quoted by Mark is given in verse 36 in which He prays in a climate of filial access. Abba, that is, My Father. He prays with confidence all things are possible to You.

13:03 And yet the central concern of His prayer is that it is impossible that the cup might pass from Him. But then the great qualification of that prayer, nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt. And as one of God's servants is captured so forcefully the very heart of that prayer, I give you His words as I conclude our review. As our Lord fathoms the depth of the misery that lies before Him in the cup, He allows the voice of nature to utter all the bitter earnestness of its reluctance.

13:45 Yet He never loses self-control, nor wavers in loyalty to His Father, nor renounces His submission to the Father's will. Nothing in the scene is more astonishing than its combination of emotion with self-government. Time after time, God gently and lovingly admonishes others and calmly returns to His intense and anxious vigil. Thus He has won the only perfect victory.

14:19 With a nature so responsive to emotion, He has not refused to feel, nor abstracted His soul from suffering, nor silenced the flesh by such an effort as when we shut our ears against a discordant noise. These all spread before Him. He confesses that He would fain escape, but He resigns Himself to God. In the face of all asceticisms, as of all Stoicisms, Gethsemane is the eternal protest that every part of human nature is entitled to be heard, provided the Spirit retains the government over all. That is indeed the heart and the substance of our Lord's prayer. But now this morning I want you to turn with me to the Gospel of Luke as we consider several of the sidelights that are added by Luke not found in Matthew nor in Mark's account of Gethsemane, which set before us some of the attendant aspects of our Lord's experience, which I felt we would be impoverished if we simply

The Angelic Visitation (Luke 22:43)

15:47 pass through the subject of Gethsemane and not include in the expositions. For here in Luke chapter 22, in what is a very condensed and summarized account of the entire Gethsemane experience, the shortest among the three synoptic Gospels, that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Luke gives us this particular account not even suggested in Matthew or in Mark verses 43 and 44. And there appeared unto him an angel from heaven strengthening him, and being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became as it were great as drops of blood falling down upon the ground. Luke and Luke alone records this angelic visitation and this bloody or blood-like perspiration. And this account in Luke was so startling to Christians very early in the history of the church, some felt that it was such a naked revelation of the raw and real humanity of Jesus, that his true deity

17:15 could well be obscured by such a revelation. And there was a tampering with some of the early manuscripts, a tampering not by the enemies of our Lord's deity, but by those who loved him as the incarnate God and yet felt that this account of an angelic visitation and bloody perspiration was so vastly human that it was beneath the dignity of one who was truly God. And so there is a confusing manuscript witness that those familiar with these matters and who approach them with believing hearts and with the bias of faith speak with almost unanimous voice that indeed these were in the original account which Luke gave. And though the revelation of our Lord's humanity is crass, is stark and in some ways is even shocking and shattering, the Christ who then went on to bear the horrible baptism of Golgotha is the Christ of Gethsemane not only with the prayer that we have analyzed in our previous studies in Mark, but with the angelic visitation and the bloody perspiration. So as we contemplate

18:44 the attendance of the prayer in Gethsemane, we shall do so under those two very simple headings. First of all the angelic visitation to our Lord, verse 43, and then the bloody perspiration of our Lord in verse 44. First of all then the angelic visitation to our Lord. And there appeared unto him an angel from heaven strengthening him.

19:17 Now while Luke is guided by the Spirit to give a very brief and summarized version of the events of Gethsemane, for example there is no indication that there were three distinct segments or three distinct compartments of our Lord's extended season of prayer, we do learn that both from Matthew and from Mark. But though Luke gives to us this relatively summarized version, it was most likely after the first season of intense prayer when according to his own words Jesus was feeling the immediate shock of the cup that had been dropped down by his Father's hand and presented before him, brought so near that he could see its contents, smell its sutured odor, the horrible dregs that he must drain in the course of obedience. It is in that first intense season of prayer that we learn from Matthew's gospel that he is bold enough even to pray these words, O my Father if it be possible let this come from me.

20:45 And so intense was the agony as our Lord, his holy humanity as we saw last week, recoiled from the thought of walking into the very jaws of the wrath of God, unleashed upon him as the bearer of sin. It was that agony that precipitated in the language of Hebrews 5 strong crying which according to our Lord was about to crush him to death, right? My sight now, death. And in conjunction with that frame of mind and spirit, he engaged in that first intense season of wrestling with his Father and bringing the various witnesses together. It appears that at that point, feeling that his sorrow would crush him to death, there there is some of response of mind to the presentation of the cup that Luke tells

22:06 us there appeared unto him, not unto the others, but there appeared unto him an angel from heaven strengthening him. That precise angel, an angel exclusively, and it was an angel sent directly from the more immediate presence of God in heaven, there therefore sent from the Father, and it was an angel sent on the specific mission of imparting strength to the Lord Jesus in the midst of the agony that was about to crush his life from him. That's what the text tells us, that there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening him, but now we ask the question in evidence how did the angel do this? And I answer very simply, because the scripture is silent, and I am not at all suggesting that that question is irreverent.

23:35 It is an inevitable question to everyone who would enter in both to the sympathy of our Lord in Gethsemane and to the mysteries of the unseen world of spiritual realities where angels minister to the heirs of salvation How did the angel minister strength to our Lord? And some taking the analogy of scripture suggest, Hugh Martin among them, that in the light of what the scripture tells us when he bringeth his first begotten into the world, he said let all the angels of God worship him and that on that occasion perhaps strength was imparted as an angel was commissioned to come to his rightful creator, and there in the midst of the agony of seeing to worship him, to remind him that though he must tread the fierceness of the wrath of God alone, yet he is the one who is the creator and upholder and the rightful object of the worship of all the angelic hosts, and the time would come as he is faithful to his task when the angels in company with all seemed the fruit of his agony would worship him forever and ever

25:02 in the new heavens and the new earth. Others suggest that perhaps the angels reminded him of all of the promises made by the Father to him in eternity that if he were willing to be the suffering servant he would be upheld, he would be strengthened there is an interesting stanza in our own hymn book on page 182 stanza number four here the hymn writer had his theory of how the angel may have strengthened him tis midnight from the heavenly plains is born the song that angels know, unheard by mortals are the strains that sweetly soothe the Savior's woe you see this hymn writer felt that the angel that visited him worshipped him in song and praise well there is a sense in which holy conjecture may be in place in our moments of sanctified rumination, meditation but while many questions are raised which we cannot answer with any degree of certainty I am personally convinced that this visitation of the angel does indeed set before us two undisputable realities and the first one is this

26:31 this angelic visitation was a clear confirmation of the Father's promise to uphold the Son in all of his redemptive work this angelic visitation was a clear confirmation of the Father's promise to uphold the Son in all aspects of his redemptive work in Isaiah chapter 42 verses 1 and 4 we read these most wonderful words of promise made to the servant of Jehovah behold my servant whom I uphold my chosen in whom my soul delights I have put my spirit upon him he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles verse 4 he will not fail nor be till he hath set justice in the eye of his law the Father says the very suffering servant of Isaiah 52 12 and following on into chapter 53 behold my servant whom I uphold

27:56 and Luke is careful to say that this was an angel sent from heaven whose work no matter how he accomplished it was an efficacious work of bringing strength to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of his crushing agony it doesn't say strengthening his soul or strengthening his body the angel was there strengthening him in the entire integrity of that humanity that was kneeling that was prostrate that was walking back to the disciples that knelt again that was pressed there upon the cold clouds of the soil of Gethsemane the angel's mission was to impart strength and why was strength imparted for he was not to accomplish his mission as the suffering servant crushed to death under the weight of the mere sight of the cup he had to be upheld and strengthened until impaled the cross he would take the cup with both hands and would drink and drink and drink until every last drop

29:24 was done and he could say it is finished and if the mere sight of the cup caused him to say my soul the father plaintive cry and summons an angel from his immediate presence and says go strengthen your creator now in his self-imposed weakness go to the one who freed you and opposed the word of his while now in his weakness he feels crushed to the point of death impart strength that he may bear the burden I have laid upon him not merely seeing the cup not merely embracing the cup but drinking the cup until it is emptied and it's very interesting that from this point on in the rest of Gethsemane

The Angelic Visitation: Confirmation of Christ's Real Weakness

30:51 on into the arrest on into the mock trials and right on to the crucifixion our Lord seems to march with almost regal dignity before all that faces him and he did so in the strength of his father who said behold my servant whom I uphold so the angelic visitation was first of all a clear confirmation by the father of his commitment to his promise to uphold the son in every aspect of his redemptive work that's what the angels visit was to Jesus but now what is the angels visit to us and this to me is the second thing that is abundantly clear in the passage this angelic visitation was a clear confirmation that Jesus was taking our place in real weakness this angelic visitation was a clear confirmation that Jesus was taking our place

32:16 in true weakness of this very Jesus scripture tells us in John 1 as the pre-incarnate word all things are made without him was not anything made that has been made parallel that with Colossians 1 angels principalities and powers where all are his creatures he knows what could be a clear confirmation not just to the angels but to us who know these from the revelation of scripture what could be a clear confirmation that he the creator the angelic was in a condition of self in weakness but humanity in a state of weakness than that angels created by him come to minister strength to him that he might accomplish his glorious work of redemption even as his real humanity

33:45 is seen in the gospels when his physical life sustained by eating and drinking the very thing he created as his humanity is seen in his sleeping and resting to be refreshed the eternal God who faints not and is not weary is wearied by Jacob's well and leans upon it at noonday he who spoke the worlds into being of in putting the mountains in place and so weary that he falls asleep in the stern of the ship in the midst of a raging storm he sleeps so drugged with weariness and so what his eating and drinking and sleeping and resting are fingers pointing to the reality of his true his real humanity in a state of weakness so here when the angel comes to strengthen him and I believe there is a very very striking parallel after that first vicious concentrated encounter with the devil in the wilderness

35:12 on the front end of his ministry Matthew 4 11 says that after that period of fasting and the period of intense temptation forty days and forty nights it says and the angels came and ministered to him and as his creatures ministered to him as the second Adam who comes to our state of weakness yet without sin as the angels ministered to him after that first great temptation so they ministered to him now after that last great temptation if it be possible may the cup pass nevertheless not my will but thine be done and as I meditated upon this week and this throughout the week I thought if ever there was anything like innocent rivalry in heaven after the vicious rivalry that made the devil and his angels what they are if there was ever anything like innocent rivalry I can only imagine how it must have expressed itself near the throne of God when he said I must choose one of you my myriads of angels to go and strengthen your creator in the agony of Gethsemane

36:40 can you let your imagination work oh how ready every angel must have been and yet one and only one was selected it would be something like a strong loving caring father of six children who has come into the throes of a horrible disease that leaves him as weak as a year weak old infant upon his bed his brain raging with a fever his mouth parched and gathered around him are his six children who love him bound to him in the deepest bonds of filial affection and love and respect and he whispers will one of you bring me a glass of water you can imagine the innocent rivalry as each loving child would spring forward to serve so loving a father in a moment of need take and augment that to infinity and there when angels beholding the scene of Gethsemane I say it reverently perhaps every angel straining in order to be sent on the mission yet one is sent and is sent not only to confirm to our lord's heart that the father will indeed uphold him

38:08 in all of the ongoing trial but that you and I might know that when the scripture says we have not an high priest who cannot be dutched with the feeling of our infirmities but was tempted like as we are yet without sin that is not poetic exaggeration that's reality for the scripture says he was crucified through weakness yet he lives by the power of God so in the midst of his prayer breathed out while prostrate upon the damp clods of Gethsemane with the eerie shadow formed by the full moon playing upon the narrows and branches of the olive trees an angel from heaven comes and imparts strength to the son of God in his ordeal but now then notice secondly not only the angelic visitation to our lord but then the bloody perspiration of our lord and here again I am determined to follow the track of scripture and not allow undue speculation to enter the text says verse 44 and being in an agony he prayed more earnestly

The Bloody Perspiration: Immediate Physical Cause

39:36 and his sweat became as it were literally clots of blood continually falling down upon the ground if indeed the angel's visit came between the first and second seasons of prayer then according to this passage strengthened by the angel that strength is put into more fervent wrestlings with his father I want us to approach this verse with three very simple questions number one what was the immediate physical cause of this bloody perspiration secondly what was the precise nature of this bloody perspiration and thirdly what was the ultimate spiritual cause of this bloody perspiration first then what was the immediate cause of this bloody perspiration in summary we may say it was a state of agony and the intense prayer which that state produced look at the language of the verse and being he prayed more earnestly

41:04 became the sweat becoming was the result of the prayer and the result of the prayer was or the prayer of this state of agony now the word being in an agony refers to a condition of intense conflict or inner tension it includes the supreme concentration of all in the face of imminent danger it is this word being in an agony that draws itself like a whirlpool draws into its vortex anything near it writers have written or all that matthew and mark have written of his exceeding amazement that great heaviness all in produced a condition which luke and luke alone calls being an agony of this most intense concentration and this

42:30 arming together of all the energies of the mind of the angel what does he do it says he prayed and it's the only place this word occurs in the new testament more earnestly the family of words is used by peter in first peter one twenty two loving one another fervently and again in first peter four eight it is translated fervently but this particular form of that family of words occurs here and only and so being of agony strengthened by the angel no longer death will overcome him under the pressure of the present trial he prays the yet more fervently the yet more intensely the yet more earnestly that brings us to the second question what was the precise nature then of the bloody perspiration well the text literally reads and his sweat became as it were clots of blood continually falling down upon the ground and the crucial issue is the little particle of comparison jose

The Bloody Perspiration: Precise Nature

43:58 translated as it were now it's the word used in mark chapter one when speaking of the descent of the holy spirit upon our lord mark wrote and some of you can remember way back perhaps when we considered this passage he saw the heavens to sunder in the spirit jose as a dove descending upon him does it mean the spirit came in the form of a dove or gently and peacefully as a dove well if all we had was the use of the comparative word jose in mark we'd have to leave the issue open ended but we read in luke that he appeared in bodily form and the usage of this comparative would leave two possibilities before us one is this his sweat came with such unusual profuseness in this intense agony of prayer that for some reason or another instead of the sweat coming out of the pores and spreading over his face and soaking through his garments for some unknown reason the sweat congealed as blood congealed and instead of falling off him in unusually small and ordinary droplets it fell to the ground in larger

45:26 globules of sweat that's a possibility linguistically but you see for luke the physician to use the analogy of sweat falling like globules of blood is most unusual for to my knowledge in all of my research i have found nothing that indicates that any medical authorities ancient or modern ever speak of such a condition however linguistically there's another possibility and that possibility is this that as our lord in this agony so incentrated were all that there in that night so cold that soldiers in a few hours will warm their fire yet under the pressure of this agony now with strength imparted by the blood of a man to give himself to degrees of earnest prayer that otherwise he would not be able to sustain what happened is this that in that agony there was an actual rupturing of some of the capillaries near the sweat glands and that the actual pigment or some of the blood found its way through the sweat pores and mingled with the sweat and therefore gave

46:55 that ability to the sweat to heal in little clots thromboy we get our word thrombosis from it of blood and that these clots fell to the ground as it were clots of blood but with medical accuracy luke does not say that he sweat clots of blood is sweat falling down upon the ground and not trusting commentators who say that this has been medically attested because they sort of cited no sources I called Dr. Gary Rule and I said brother will you look this up for me I found a word in one of the commentators hematidrosis and he looked it up in what is the bible of the medical profession illustrated Stedman's medical dictionary and sure enough there is an entry hematidrosis the excretion of blood pigment in the sweat an extremely rare disorder and yet going back to Aristotle going back to a man a Greek writer on philosophy and medicine named Galen

48:23 who wrote at the turn of the second or the beginning of the third century there are records and documented records of recognized medical authorities in the 19th century writers of the 1800s and what luke the physician would be describing with unusual accuracy is what is now called in Stedman's medical dictionary this very condition very rare but none the less observed in which the blood or the pigment of the blood mingles with the sweat and here we find in this account that our Lord in the midst of this agony of intense and earnest prayer in that agony the experience of the rupturing of some of those blood vessels the mingling with his sweat until appearing covered with a bloody sweat forming little globules and falling to the ground sweat mingled with his own blood coagulating and falling to the ground now I know all kinds of questions did he appear then

49:50 with his outer garments soaked in his own blood when they came to apprehend him was his face smeared in his own blood I don't know as it were grey drops of blood falling down a present participle continually falling down upon the ground I have preached with such intensity on a few occasions to rupture little capillaries in my throat and I've preached my throat into a bloody state but I've never known any intensity that caused the capillaries to burst and mingle with my sweat our Lord entered a realm none of us has ever entered and that brings us to the third question having seen the answer to the question what was the immediate physical cause of the bloody perspiration it was his state of agony giving birth to an intensity of prayer we've considered what was the precise

The Bloody Perspiration: Ultimate Spiritual Cause

51:17 nature of this bloody perspiration hematidrosis and what was the ultimate spiritual cause of the bloody perspiration I answer in brief the ultimate cause was this who he was and what he had to do who was the God and their weakness that one of his trees strengthened him he has not forfeited once one of his hosts been wholly harmless undefiled separate from sinners and while he is free to relinquish the prerogatives of Godhead while he is free to relinquish those things that are right not free which he is humanity

52:44 never drawn in upon itself in selfishness and insensitivity the most sensitive soul ever present on this earth was the soul of the Son of God and if we take the heightened reality of human sensitivity unsullied by sin joined to infinite purity of a sinless soul what must it have been when because of who he was who he was as the perfect yet vulnerable God-man the cup is presented to him and he sees that as the redeemer of humanity to that that the Bible will not be ashamed language he God has made him Jesus to be when looking in at which he had known

54:04 of eternity to take it upon himself that it becomes his sin personal defilement alone excepted the only exception was personal defilement alone excepted he would be so of agony that would have crushed him to death that being strengthened by the angel leads to the intent so fervent as to cause capillaries burst up to the ground that he must drink

55:20 to be so identified with the wrath of God against sin that he will exhaust all of its claims upon all of his people for all eternity the infinite fierce frightening wrath of God that cause Moses the man of God to say who knoweth in anger who can fully know the wrath of God and the God-man looks into the cup and sees that wrath that he must drink for our sins that's what he was facing that's what he must do he must so engage the power of darkness and somehow their influence is mixed in that cup for the scripture tells us that in his death he overcame them he said this is your hour prince of darkness and all what a horrible revulsion it must have created in the soul of our Lord Jesus to come so close to me that he may take him and defeat him what was the ultimate spiritual cause of the bloody sweat who he was wholly harmless yet sensitive

Application to Careless Sinners

56:49 vulnerable perfect manhood facing what he must do drink the cup for sinners and as I have sought to follow the track of scripture I come now in closing to several simple applications and my first is this you careless sinners sitting here this morning and I grieve to think that in that category we have children four and five and six and eight and ten and fourteen years old you're careless sinners and what do I mean by careless sinners you wouldn't deny that you lie to your mom and dad lie to your teacher lie to your friends you wouldn't deny that you disobey mom and disobey dad you wouldn't deny that you think mean thoughts jealous thoughts envious thoughts you want this you want that and you know those things are sin but you're absolutely careless about them you don't kneel by your bed before you go to bed at night and say oh God forgive me for the lies that I spoke today and then run out to mommy or daddy and tell them what you've confessed to God and confess it to them your lies don't disturb you your selfishness doesn't disturb you your envy and your jealousy and your angry spirit it doesn't disturb you you're careless in your sins dear children

58:18 can I take you may I take you this morning by the hand and bring you in your mind's eye to Gethsemane and there look at the Lord Jesus falling to the ground like he was being shot and then rising only to fall again and saying my soul is to the point of God's and standing out in his brow is not a slick clear sweat like the sweat upon my brow upon his not the clear that you see staining my blood and sweat an ugly picture and those sweat drops congeal and they fall and stain the ground listen to me children in those bloody sweat drops are your lies your disobedience to mommy and daddy your selfishness your pride your envy your covetousness

59:36 in those bloody sweat drops you dear children can continue to hear the gospel preached to you after week as you do in this and be led by the hand to the mount of transfiguration to the mountain side where Jesus feeds the multitudes and into Gethsemane your sins I see children may already be hardening your heart to the place where God is preparing a special chamber in hell for you you've got privileges denied millions you hear about the uprisings in China a billion people one fourth of the world's population most of those children have never even heard the name of Jesus seen one page of a bible and here you've been taken into Gethsemane

61:03 to see the Lord Jesus in his agony in his drops of bloody sweat so real does God take sin sin that he would sooner stand and bear the infliction upon himself of beholding the agony than let sin go unpunished oh dear children don't you be indifferent to your sins don't you treat your sins like new careless sinners in your mid teens and you careless sinners in your early twenties and you careless sinners in your thirties and forties and fifties and sixties and seventies you need an angel to strengthen strengthen the strength is poured into the agony of the salvation of men until the bloody sweat drops congeal and fall to the ground

62:30 how can you go on an indifferent sinner how can you go on that these are realities Christ was not wrestling unto blood for fairy tales he saw hell in the cup and he didn't want to drink it and when he wrestled and said not my will but thine be done and in the strength imparted by the angels to bloody sweat drops it's because there's a real hell and it's the hell into which you'll drop if you do not believe on the Lord Jesus if you do not repent of your sin if you do not turn from doing your own thing and running your own way unto this savior who sweat drops of bloody sweat in Gethsemane that he might be able to give to all of his servants the warrant to say

Application to Careless Saints and Trembling Believers

63:58 him that comes unto me I will in no wise cast out but I want to say a word to careless saints here this morning some of you are saints who truly repented and believed in the Lord Jesus you're in the orbit of those blessed dynamics of the new covenant you've been given a new heart a new principle of obedience implanted within but you've grown careless by degrees there's come a hardening things that once caused you to blush and to weep now no longer even cause you to twitch you need a fresh trip to Gethsemane my friend those days of prayerlessness behold them in the light of the prostrate son of God strengthened by an angel those days of indifference to communion with God behold Gethsemane and behold the bloody sweat the triune God he died to bring us to God Peter says he died to make the world ugly and to make heaven beautiful but for some of you the world's begun to be attractive heaven doesn't seem like too much to get excited about careless saint

65:26 go to Gethsemane today and my final word is for every true child of God who's sitting here this morning is alive and awake to the reality of the world of the spirit conscious of the fighting and the struggles with remaining sin conscious of all that yet clings to you that is so unlike the savior and you tremble at times in wonder will I ever a trembling brother or sister go to Gethsemane what Jesus did in Gethsemane what Jesus accomplished in that mighty wrestling in those mighty wrestlings in which he embraced the will of God for him and the will of God meant the draining of the cup the scripture says he that spared not his own son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all things trembling child of God go to Gethsemane and be reassured that in the wrestlings of Jesus and in the bloody sweat of the son of God your salvation from beginning to end was secure and in the language of Augustus Toplady

66:53 more happy but not more secure than the glorified spirits in heaven and you wonder with all the remaining sin within and a seducing world without and a devouring my friend go to Gethsemane Jesus wrestled not to accomplish nine tenths of our salvation but the whole of it and when he had finally drained the cup and cried tetelestai our redemption was secure and we need this day to draw comfort and strength from the wrestlings and the bloody sweat of our redeemer yea I to the end shall endure as sure as the earnest is given more happy but not more secure the glorified spirits in heaven may God grant that as we reflect upon the angelic vision and visitation to our Lord and the bloody sweat of our Lord that all indifference shall be swept away by the sight of the angel strengthening

Concluding Prayer

68:21 and the agony producing the bloody sweat and that with renewed confidence we shall worship and adore and magnify him who in love was so thirsty for our salvation and stayed in Gethsemane until the victory was won and came forth prince-like to meet all that would face him in the accomplishment of our salvation let us pray our Father we do confess that before such mysteries we are baffled we are overcome with the sense of our great limitations as creatures of the dust and yet you have said the things that are revealed are for us and for our children and as we have meditated upon this revelation of the angels visit and the bloody sweat of our savior may they be profitable to our salvation and to our growth in grace seal your word oh God seal it may some who came today careless sinners leave this place

69:49 disturbed and awakened Lord we would be bold to pray for even more than that may they leave thoroughly penitent believing sinners deal with us your people oh how quickly we slumber while our savior wrestles how quickly we sleep while he agonizes oh help us to be alive and alert to spiritual realities lest through care and careless spiritual slumber we find ourselves overcome by the enemy oh father seal your word we pray to the praise of your beloved son Amen