The Sorrow of Jesus

[0:00] Our scripture reading this morning is from the book of Mark, chapter 14. Last week we read about the Lord's Supper, and we're skipping over the part where Jesus predicts that Peter will deny him because we're going to come back to that in a few weeks.

[0:33] But we're going to read starting at verse 32 through verse 42. Mark 14, 32.

[0:48] And they, that is Jesus and the disciples, went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And he took with him Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled.

[1:05] And he said to them, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch. And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

[1:21] And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping.

[1:33] And he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

[1:44] The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And again, he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again, he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy.

[1:57] And they did not know what to answer him. And he came a third time and said to them, Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come.

[2:08] The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand. Amen. This is God's Word. People who write about this, excuse me, there I go again.

[2:25] People who write about this passage, they always point out that something is happening inside of Jesus that is impossible to describe with words.

[2:38] Mark says that Jesus was, he began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And Jesus told his disciples that he was very sorrowful, even to death. And Jesus uses the word sorrow, but you can tell by the context that it's, yes, it's sorrow, but it's bigger than that.

[2:56] And one person who wrote about this passage put it like this. He said, The sorrow that Jesus is talking about is a mental pain, a distress which hems you in on every side and from which there is no escape.

[3:12] It's a distress inside of you that feels so strong that the feeling itself is deadly. And maybe you've never felt an emotional turmoil like that.

[3:26] An emotional turmoil so strong that you feel like you were going to die. But most people know what it's like to go through a crisis where you say to yourself, if someone were to ask me, how are you doing today?

[3:39] I would say, in my heart, I would say, I have no words. There's no words to describe what I'm feeling right now. And I don't think it's irreverent to say that there's something familiar in Jesus' distress in this passage because Jesus is truly human.

[3:56] In fact, he's surprisingly human in the garden. Sometimes it's tempting to think about Jesus like he is someone that, because he's also God, he is emotionless, or at least he never has bad emotions.

[4:08] He never experiences stress or anxiety or anger. He's always cool and calm and collected. But that's not the Jesus that we find in Gethsemane.

[4:21] Jesus is in the throes here of deep sorrow, and it's sinless sorrow, but it's not painless sorrow. And because of that, because Jesus' sorrow, because Gethsemane gives us a window into Jesus' sorrow, as a man, we can look at that, and we can say, what lessons can we learn from Jesus' sorrow about how to walk through our own sorrows in life?

[4:47] What does it mean to weather sorrow? What does it mean to weather deep sorrow well? So we're going to do that this morning. We're going to ask, what can I learn from Jesus about weathering deep sorrow?

[4:59] But we can't stop there, because as relatable as Jesus' sorrow in this passage may be or may seem, Jesus is also experiencing something unique here. And we can't understand the mission of Jesus unless we appreciate the fact that what makes Jesus' sorrow so deep in this passage is the thing that makes it unique and unlike a sorrow that any of us will ever know.

[5:23] So that's where we're headed in the next few minutes. First, what can we learn from Jesus about weathering sorrow? And I think, if you think about why Jesus is in distress in this passage, the broadest way maybe that you could describe it is to say God's will for Jesus' life was taking Jesus in this moment somewhere that Jesus, in one sense, did not want to go.

[5:50] And we'll get more specific about that in a minute, but that's the basic idea. And it's easy to get tongue-tied here because Jesus is God. Jesus is one with the Father. Jesus always does what the Father wills.

[6:02] And so how can you say that Jesus wants something that God has willed, doesn't want something that God has willed for his life? And I think you could put it like this. If God had come to Jesus and had said to him, Jesus, I can accomplish all that I want to accomplish in one of two ways, by you going to the cross or by you not going to the cross.

[6:24] Jesus, like any of us, would have said, surely, let me not go to the cross. Let me choose the other way. If you can accomplish everything, either way.

[6:35] And that's what Jesus is getting at down in verse 36 when he says, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. He is struggling with the fact that God's will for his life has turned out to be so hard to endure in this moment.

[6:50] And I think that's the point of connection between the emotional pain that we feel sometimes in life and the emotional pain that God felt in this moment. Because sometimes in God's providence, we find ourselves, in God's providence, we find ourselves in a place in life that can feel unbearable.

[7:10] And we can have a distress that we would say to ourselves, there's no words to describe this. A relationship is falling apart. There's a new diagnosis. We're faced with a choice about our future and we're struggling with the indecision of it.

[7:25] And we can look up to God and we can say, God, why have you led me here? Why are you keeping me here? Is there no other way to accomplish your will than that I have to go through this right now?

[7:39] After all, I know you can do all things. Is there no other way? And so the first thing we have to say about Jesus and his sorrow in the garden is that Jesus' sorrow validates human sorrow.

[7:53] Just because you grieve does not mean that you sin. Grief is not inherently sinful. Let me put it like that. Because even Jesus struggled with grief and he struggled with sorrow in the garden.

[8:06] He struggled with where God's providence had led him. And so here's the universal truth to start out with. Sometimes God's providence will lead us into situations that we would have never chosen for ourselves.

[8:21] That's an inescapable fact of life. Sometimes God's providence will lead us to places we would have never chosen for ourselves. And so the question for us is not how can we not go to those places.

[8:34] It's how can you weather them? How can you survive the sorrows that come in those times? Earlier this week, I was at a meeting of a group of pastors pastors and there was one of those pastors had come to speak to us and he was talking to us about lessons that he had learned in dealing with his young son's cancer.

[8:53] And one of the points that he made was people often assume that when you go through something like that, that it makes you more resilient, that simply enduring that makes you a stronger person.

[9:05] And what he said was that was not their experience. He said, you know, the more you walk through trials like that, logistically, you may get better at enduring them. But the more those trials come, he said, the weaker and weaker and weaker we felt.

[9:22] It didn't make us stronger, he said. And so how do you weather seasons like that? And that pastor, he came to talk to us about the importance of community and the importance of surrounding people who are in a crisis like that with love.

[9:35] And that's true. You know, even in this passage, you see how Jesus, he surrounds, the Son of God, he surrounds himself with his closest friends in his greatest moment of need.

[9:48] But what I want to look at this morning is the primary way that Jesus weathers his sorrow in this passage. When he is in deep grief, what does he do?

[9:59] He instinctively takes that grief and he takes that emotional turmoil to God. He prays. And you can see why he prays in the very first words that he says.

[10:10] He doesn't call God, God. You see what he calls him? He says, Abba, Father. Abba, Father. That's what he calls God in his deep grief. And that may seem like an insignificant point.

[10:23] You know, if you say the Lord's Prayer, you say that every time you say the Lord's Prayer. But it's important because it tells us something about how Jesus understood that moment. And what it shows is that even in the pit of despair, when he's at his lowest point, and even when it feels like God himself has led him to a place that feels unendurable, Jesus still knows that God is his Father.

[10:51] And that's why he goes to him. You know, when you and I, when we pray to God as Father, we're not just doing it because Jesus told us to do it, even though that's reason enough. When we say our Heavenly Father, we are believing that whatever we're going through is in the hands of someone who loves us like a Father, better than any human father could.

[11:15] And that automatically rules out a lot of suspicions that we have when we're suffering, right? That, you know, for instance, that because we're suffering, God must not love us, or because we're suffering, God has forgotten us, or because we're suffering, God must not care.

[11:31] But praying to God as Father is a way of remembering and also affirming the fact that whatever I'm going through, it's not because God doesn't love me if I'm in Jesus Christ.

[11:47] That's what Jesus is doing here. In his darkest moment, he's saying, Father, Father, you know what I'm going through. But the other thing I want you to see about how he prays is what he believes about prayer.

[11:59] You see, in the way that Jesus talks in this passage, you see that he instinctively believes in the power of prayer. You know, he's walking in the garden, and Mark makes a point of saying that he literally falls down.

[12:13] He can't take one step further, but the one thing that he does is he prays. And then you see what he says when he goes to his disciples? When he talks to his disciples about prayer, he talks to them about prayer like it's the essential weapon for what they're walking through.

[12:30] You see in verse 37, it says Jesus gets up from his prayer and he goes to Peter and he says, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

[12:42] The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. You know, he doesn't go to Peter and say, Peter, you need to pray right now because praying is the right thing to do.

[12:53] He doesn't, even though that's true, he doesn't say, why can't you be more religious? He tells Peter, he says, Peter, you're in danger. You are unsafe right now. He says, pray that you won't fall into temptation.

[13:06] And the assumption there is that Peter needs to pray or he's in danger. He's in danger of falling into temptation. You know, have you ever thought about prayer like that? That prayer is something that actually protects you, that actually keeps you safe?

[13:23] You know, because I think one of the reasons that we, unlike Jesus, one of the reasons we don't instinctively go to prayer is because prayer, of all the tools in your tool belt for handling crisis, doesn't prayer often feel like the least effective tool?

[13:36] Because you get on your knees, you pray, and you don't feel anything. And you stand up and nothing about your situation has changed. And it can feel like your prayers have had no effect because you can't see what has happened.

[13:52] And here, Jesus, look at what happens to Peter. Jesus tells Peter to pray that he might not enter into temptation. And Peter doesn't pray.

[14:03] And just a few hours later, what happens? Peter, he's faced with the temptation of denying Jesus and he denies Jesus. And that leaves open the question, what if Peter had prayed? Would God not have met Peter and given him the strength that he needed to fight that temptation?

[14:19] And then you see what happens with Jesus who's the opposite. Jesus does go to God in prayer in the depth of his distress. And you see how he's changed by that. By the end of the passage, here he's in this turmoil.

[14:33] And by the end of the passage in the last verses, he's very matter-of-fact. Something has changed. You see down in verse 41, he says, the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

[14:44] Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand. By the end of his time of prayer, Jesus is totally convinced of where God wants him to go.

[14:57] And he has the willingness, the ability, to go and face that trial. And you know, what's interesting is you never see any kind of distress in Jesus all throughout the next few hours until that moment where he looks at God and says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

[15:17] Did God not give him the strength that he needed in those next few hours? You know, sometimes, maybe sometimes we feel like prayer is useless because prayers aren't being answered the way that we want them to.

[15:28] You know, sometimes we pray for God to meet us in a situation and rather than fixing the situation, he strengthens our heart. And he gives us a heart that can live through the situation. Now, before, I'm going to move on to my second point, but before I do that, let me just make one final point because for most of us, you know, I think at any given point, most of us are not in a crisis, right?

[15:49] Most of us are having normal days, you might say. And so something like this can feel really foreign. And if that's you, if you're not in crisis right now and you say, this seems really distant to me, here's one question worth considering.

[16:04] When you aren't in crisis, are you growing, are you growing a muscle memory? Are you growing muscle memory habits of prayer?

[16:15] You see how Jesus, he just instinctively knows to pray when he's in trouble. And the problem with the disciples in this passage is that prayer for them is not instinctive. They'd rather sleep. They'd rather do something else.

[16:26] and because his whole life, Jesus had developed habits of prayer so that prayer was his instinctive response in times of trials.

[16:37] He was ready for this trial. And, you know, in times of not crisis, it's good to say, am I developing habits so that when the crisis comes, my muscle memory immediately reverts to prayer as the first thing that I do.

[16:49] But let me move on because there's more to this passage than seeing our sorrows and Jesus' sorrows. In fact, that's not the main point of the passage.

[17:01] When you read the account of Jesus' anguish here, you get the sense that something unique is going on. And I'm not the first person to point this out.

[17:13] A lot of, throughout history, theologians have pointed out something really odd about this passage. which is just how troubled Jesus is by his death.

[17:25] And this is, I'm appealing to your common sense here, but think about it. You think about all the stories of martyrs that you may have heard in history. And so many of Jesus' followers who have been martyred, not only do they go to death without any kind of apparent sense of distress, but they go to death almost joyful sometimes.

[17:45] You know, for instance, Ignatius, he was an early church father, Ignatius was one of the first Christians in the second century. He was sentenced to execution for his faith and he actually requested that the church not try to seek his release from prison because he said he wanted the honor of dying for Christ.

[18:06] And there's this quote that has come from him throughout the centuries and this is what he said to his church. He said, let fire and the cross, let the companies of wild beasts, let breaking of bones and tearing of limbs, let the grinding of the whole body and all malice of the devil come upon me.

[18:25] Let it all come upon me if only I may gain Christ Jesus. He was not afraid of death and he was almost looking forward to it. And then more recently you've got a person like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, if you remember, he was a famous German pastor and he was sentenced to death by Adolf Hitler.

[18:44] And one of the doctors at the concentration camp who saw him just before his death recollected that he saw him pray before he went to the execution block and he said this, he said, I was most, the doctor said, I was most deeply moved by the way this unusually lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayers.

[19:08] And stories like that, they raise this obvious question which is, why did Jesus go to his death with more distress, more anxiety than so many of his own followers who seem to go to death with such joy?

[19:24] And on the face of it, that doesn't make sense. And the only way to make sense of it is to recognize that what made Jesus sorrowful to the point of death was not death was not death itself but what came with his death.

[19:43] You can see there's something unique in the way, even in the way that Jesus talks about what he's about to go through because the way that he talks about it, the metaphor that he uses is the cup.

[19:55] He says, Lord, remove this cup from me. And we talked about that idea about cup in Mark chapter 10 and if you remember that, in the Old Testament the cup was a metaphor for the providence of God.

[20:10] So sometimes the cup was a way of referring to God's blessing. So if you remember in Psalm 23, the psalmist says, my cup runneth over. But more often than not, the cup in the Old Testament is a symbol of God's judgment.

[20:25] Way more often than not, it's a symbol of God's judgment. So for instance, in Psalm 75, the psalmist says, in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine well mixed and he pours out from it and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

[20:44] And you can see clearly, the cup that Jesus is talking about is not a cup of blessing. It's the cup of the judgment of God. Oftentimes when people, when pastors even, when they try to explain the cross and try to get across the gravity of it all, the way that they'll do it is by explaining what Jesus' body went through in those coming hours.

[21:11] They'll explain what crucifixion is, what it does to your body. They'll explain how Jesus was whipped and the kind of tools that Jesus was whipped with. And I think that's why a movie like The Passion of the Christ is so popular because people assume that if you can see what Jesus went through, then His death will become more meaningful to you.

[21:34] But what I think you see in the fact that Jesus talks about the cup is the fact that what made Jesus most distressed was not the physical torment. It was the cup.

[21:46] It was the judgment of God. It was what you couldn't see. And Jesus in this passage, He knows that He's not walking towards an ordinary death. He's walking towards the judgment of God.

[21:58] The judgment of God. And that soon the sins of the whole world are going to be put on His shoulders and He will receive in Himself all of those punishments that belong to those sins.

[22:14] 1 Corinthians put it like this. 2 Corinthians 5. Paul says this. He puts it in the most graphic language. He says, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin.

[22:26] And because of that, because Jesus is going to be made to be sin, He's going to receive all that sin deserves. Isaiah 53 put it like this. He says, Surely Jesus took up, it's just, surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering.

[22:44] Yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on Him and by His wounds we are healed.

[22:59] That's what Jesus was looking forward to when He prayed. All of God's judgment being put on His shoulders and receiving the full wrath of God.

[23:10] And when I say wrath, you know, when we talk about wrath among people, usually when we call someone wrath, we mean they have anger that's uncontrollable. And when you talk about God's wrath, that's not what we mean.

[23:21] We mean, wrath is God giving to sin what sin deserves. That's all that it means. And that's what Jesus is perplexed by in this moment. All that to say, what am I trying to get out of here?

[23:34] All that to say, the sorrow of Jesus in this passage is unique because no other person had ever faced the prospect of bearing the whole weight of all the sins of the world and receiving the punishment for all those sins in the presence of a God who's perfectly holy.

[23:53] And we can talk about that fact theologically. I can write it down on paper and I can give it to you and I can explain it to you. I can give you words and sentences to describe it. But I think the best way to see the gravity of what's going on in this moment is just to look at Jesus.

[24:10] This man who in so much of his life was calm and cool and collected and yet when he thinks about what is coming in his future he is deeply distressed.

[24:21] He says, I could almost die just thinking about it. What must that be like? We don't know. We don't know. But we can look at Jesus and we can see the gravity of it. And there's a lot we could say about what that means for us.

[24:37] What does the uniqueness of Jesus' sorrow mean for us? And we'll talk about that in the next few weeks. But today I just want to give one takeaway. One takeaway for what it means that Jesus bore a unique sorrow and it's this.

[24:52] And I'll come to a close with this. Believing in Jesus means believing that our sorrows are never final because Jesus has already faced our final sorrow.

[25:07] Jesus, that's what this passage is getting at is that Jesus drank our cup. He drank our cup so that we could go and be with Him and drink His cup of fellowship.

[25:19] He felt the sting of death so that we could feel death without the sting. That's how Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians. He says, O death, where is your sting?

[25:31] O grave, where is your victory? And he goes on to say, the sting of death is sin. The sting of death is sin. But thanks be to God which should give us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

[25:44] That's why Jesus went to the cross with such grief and why so many of His followers went to death with such joy. And it's because Jesus took their grief so that they could go to their deaths with joy without that kind of final sorrow that Jesus looked in the face of.

[26:03] And if you could ever believe that, that will change you. I referenced Bonhoeffer just a moment ago. He was executed at the orders of Hitler.

[26:15] And the story goes that just before his death, he looked at an Englishman right next to him and asked him to go send his greetings to the church in England. And his final words were this.

[26:26] He says, This is the end. But for me, it is just the beginning. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you never overlook our griefs and sorrows.

[26:41] You never minimize our griefs and sorrows. And yet you tell us that our sorrows and griefs are not final. And we place our hope and our trust not in our optimism, but in the fact that Jesus has already borne our sorrows on Himself.

[26:59] Help us to believe that. In your전os전전 we pray. Amen. Amen.