The Garden of Gethsemane

I have been doing a study on the gospel of Luke, and recently came upon the short encounter of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, found in Luke 22:29-46.

If we were to rewind the tape, the whole reason for Jesus’ coming begins in the Garden of Eden and starts to be completed in the Garden of Gethsemane.

From garden to garden, sin begins in the hearts of man in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and ends in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus and His disciples.

But the good news is, that this is not the official end of Jesus' reign and He is alive and well today and waiting to come back and receive His followers. The Garden of Gethsemane is only the beginning of the end. But before Jesus ascended to heaven, he had to first endure the hells of earth.

The Garden of Gethsemane was located on the Mount of Olives just outside Jerusalem.

The Mount of Olives took its name from the groves of olives that grew on it. It was probably very quiet and secluded, surrounded by a stone wall.

Jesus often met and prayed with His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The Story of Gethsemane can be found in the book of Luke, as well as the book of Matthew.

Matthew 26: 36-37 states,

“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.”

As we examine what happened with Jesus in the garden there are two key points we must take note of.

1) Jesus suffered almost unbearable emotional anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane.

As Jesus entered the garden, he began to immediately feel distressed and began to suffer from extreme anguish.

Jesus also adds in, Matthew 26: 38,

“‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”

What would you do if you knew you were going to go through the longest night in all of history and face the cruelest death in all history?

It’s recorded in Luke 18:1 that Jesus told His disciples “they should always pray, and not give up.”

So, even though Jesus was facing a terrible crucifixion at the hands of sinful men, He didn’t become grouchy or angry. He followed His own advice.

He prayed.

Obviously, we are not seers or fortune tellers, but is there anything in your life that you can look back on now, and think, “Even if I had known then what was about to happen, would it have made it easier or harder to endure?”

Would I have been able to follow through or would I have refused the call?

I can give you an example from my life that had lasting repercussions on me, and if I had known what was about to happen beforehand, I don’t think I would have had the strength to endure it.

I had a bit of a different high school experience than most. The summer going into my junior year of high school, I transferred schools against my will. My family moved unexpectedly about thirty minutes from the current high school where I was attending. The move shook the foundations of my world. I became anxious, emotional, depressed, and angry, and I harbored a deep hatred of everything and everyone. I didn’t pray, and I didn’t look to God for answers

Some of you may have never transferred high schools, you don’t know the anxieties of
leaving your hometown, or leaving your childhood best friend behind, but you do know the
anxieties of going from middle school to high school. And the anxieties of that transition can be overwhelming. High school is scary, and daunting, and a lot of unknowns are before you.

I hated my entire junior year. I didn’t make good connections. I played sports and my first year on the Varsity team at that new school, I felt like everybody was out to get me. I would come home crying from practice, I contemplated quitting several times (a sport I genuinely loved) and I even made my mom and dad’s life a living hell.

I hated having to move.

I refused the call to go where God wanted me at that moment in history.

But things turned out all right for me in the end. I made good friends, had a
memorable senior year, and had an accomplished year of volleyball, where I was even scouted by several schools to play in college.

What if I told you Jesus almost refused the call to go to the cross?

Matthew 26:39 says,

“Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will’

Okay, okay, one moment of doubt, sure, whatever.

What if I told you that Jesus tried to refuse the call a second time?

After finishing his prayer time the first time, he comes back to the disciples and finds them sleeping; again telling them to watch over him as he prays.

In Matthew 26:42 it says,

“He went away a second time and prayed, ‘My father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

“May your will be done.”

I don’t have that kind of obedience. I would have flat-out refused the call.

Jesus wanted to refuse the call.

He wanted to refuse the call so badly that he may have actually sweated blood.

In Luke's retelling, it mentions that Jesus’ “sweat became like great drops of blood.”

There are two explanations of this verse. One, Luke was employing a figure of speech, or, two, as a physician, he was describing an actual medical condition from which Jesus suffered in the garden called hematidrosis. Hematidrosis is an actual, although rare, medical condition where a person sweats drops of blood.

In Bill Counts book, Once a Carpenter, Counts writes,

“Under extreme emotional stress blood vessels expand so much that they break where they come in contact with sweat glands. The suffering individual then actually sweats blood. As Jesus prayed in agony, Luke’s Gospel accurately observes that He was covered with bloody sweat.”

Jesus wanted to refuse the call, he wanted to so badly that he sweated blood, but in the end, he didn’t refuse the call.

The second thing we need to understand about the Garden is that, despite his enduring emotional anguish...

2) Jesus made the final decision to go to the cross in the Garden of Gethsemane.

We cannot know everything that was going through Christ’s mind as He prayed. Surely, He must have been asking Himself some hard questions about whether or not He should proceed to the crucifixion.

Did it seem right to have all our sins laid on Him at once?

Could He bear the utter hell of being forsaken by God?

Was mankind worth all the suffering it would take to save us?

These were probably some of the questions Christ asked.

Since Jesus, like us, had free will, He had to make a very real decision about going to the cross. He never sinned, but this trial of the cross was the most demanding test of His obedience to the Father. Painfully, and with absolute heartbreak, He made His decision upon His knees in prayer.

There was only one way for us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and experience the fullness of a relationship with God.

So Jesus follows God’s orders out of willful obedience to his Father to follow through with one of the most agonizing deaths in the history of the world, because he decided that you are worth it.

Jesus decided, in the Garden of Gethsemane, that mankind was worth all the suffering it would take to save us.

Because He knew He was the only way to a relationship with God.

John 14: 6 states,

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

No person in history ever struggled as Christ did in the garden.

The Bible tells us in Luke that an angel came from heaven to strengthen Him.

Three times He went back to His disciples only to find them sleeping.

Three times He went back to pray to the Father only to find Himself in agony.

At some point during His climactic time of prayer, Jesus reached His final decision.

He decided that He would follow through with the most painful experience in human history. He would allow Himself to be crucified and have the sins of mankind laid upon Him.

Are there any Marvel superhero fans here?

I might spoil something from the movie Endgame, but if you haven’t seen the
movie or even heard about this “minor” detail yet, you literally live under a rock, ok?

I think throughout the movie Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, knew he was going to die.

He wasn’t 100% certain, but he was pretty sure

So, a lot happens in the two-part conclusion to the Infinity Saga, but one of my favorite
parts, as morbid, as it is is towards the end of Infinity War where Dr. Strange goes forward in time to view possible outcomes of the coming conflict. He is asked, “How many did you see?”Strange replies, “Fourteen million, six hundred and five.” Tony Stark looks at Dr. Strange and says, “How many do we win?”

And Strange responds, “One.”

The only one where they win was with Tony Stark willfully laying down his life for the
sake of the universe.

In the midst of the final battle in Endgame, Stark begins to realize what’s coming. He asks Strange, “You said one out of fourteen million, we’d win, right? Tell me this is
the one?”

Strange is afraid Stark’s humanity will hold him back from the ultimate victory, responding, “If I tell you what happens, it won’t happen.”

But later on, in the heat of the battle, Strange holds up that one finger, and Stark knows.

This is the only way.

And Stark follows through to the end, dying to save the universe.

Sound familiar?

Obviously Stark is not Jesus Christ, and Dr. Strange is not God, but the message is still there.

He didn’t want to, but he loved the people of the world so much that he decided to follow through with it.

Jesus had every power to say “no”, but he didn’t.

He went to the cross, not just out of his love for us, but a love for his Father. 

He had always been determined to do the Father’s will, but now His will was like iron as He left the garden and headed for the cross.

Jesus looked at the cross, He looked at you and me, and he said, “They’re worth it.”

Even if they doubt, even if they never follow me, they’re worth it.

He loved you so much that he was willing to die for you. He wanted to provide us hope, and show us unconditional love, and let us know that darkness would not and will not win.

That is what the decision in the Garden of Gethsemane gave us.

A message of unconditional love and a message of hope.

It makes the story of Jesus Christ the greatest story ever told.

Let me end with this:

During World War II, the Japanese air attack corps often attacked a target by having pilots crash into the target with explosives on board their planes. The plane, of course, would explode upon impact, and the pilot would die for his country. When a Kamikaze pilot strapped himself into the plane, he was committed to the Japanese emperor’s cause.

He was sold out.

Jesus made that same commitment to us.

And as He set His mind to go to the cross, He knew that there was no turning back.

He was sold out, and he was committed. 

Jesus clearly made a decision about you and me in the garden. It was the most difficult and the most important decision anyone has ever had to make.

He set His mind to suffer for us.

Now Jesus asks mankind to make a decision about Him.

In turn, it is the most important decision each of us will ever make.