Gethsemane: Watch and Pray, Matthew 26:36-46

Last night Houstonians had absolutely no problem staying awake and watching and praying. This morning were going to study three disciples who had a terrible time trying to stay awake and they could neither watch nor pray. For those of you who are listening and not paying attention to sports the Houston Astros won the American League title last night and so were all in a celebratory mood because after dealing with all of the stuff going on with hurricane Harvey it's nice to have a distraction of a winning baseball team and getting ready to go to the World Series this next week.

It also reminds us that one of the reasons that we have sporting events is to distract us from the ongoing details of life. This is why politics and social issues are to be kept far away from sports because it violates the purpose. We go to sports to live in an environment that distracts us from reality. That's just one of many things I could say on that topic.

But this morning we are going to take a look at these disciples, and what Jesus tells them in terms of watching and praying. So in Matthew 26:36ff we are going to continue our study of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane as He tells His disciples to watch and pray. There is so much that is going on in this episode. We can't plumb its depths. I have taught in two lessons back on the God-Man, on Jesus hypostatic union. We can understand that is what Scripture teaches. We can articulate it; we can define it. But when we start to really think about it, it's beyond our finite ability to comprehend everything that is going on. And as we look in on Jesus and the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, and we listen in to His prayer, we are exposed to some things that I don't think we can ever quite comprehend. But that which we can comprehend is revealed to us so that we can learn from it, and so that it will teach and instruct us on how to pray in times of testing.

What we see in this section is basically three things that we will answer.

First of all, what was Jesus prediction for the disciples that night? He makes a specific prediction that night and what He says to His disciples all fits within that framework.

Second, a reminder and review Jesus own spiritual struggle and His victory, and this is revealed in the three stages of His prayer. Three times we are told that He prayed, and each time it reveals the strength of his conviction. He is not waffling, the grammar really doesn't allow that, but the way it's often translated something is lost in translation. It doesn't reveal the confidence that he actually has.

Third, we are going to learn something about facing temptation. There are two temptations, two tests—that's what the word actually means in the Greek. There are two tests going on here, one related to Jesus, and another related to his disciples. The solution for both is to watch and pray. That's important because people often think that different problems need different solutions; and at some level, that's true. But fundamentally in the Christian life every testing, every temptation, every assault related to our spiritual life demands prayer. That's the focal point. We have to be people of prayer.

What's interesting is that Jesus keeps telling these guys to watch and pray. We have no revelation here that they either watched or prayed at all, and sadly that is too true of too many of us in our Christian life; prayer just seems to be something in addition. Too often people get the idea, Well, the Lord is and control and they use the sovereignty of God as some sort of excuse to not pray, not to witness, not get involved, because they really adopted some sort of fatalistic idea of the sovereignty of God.

And then in the midst of his warning to our admonition to watch and pray He gives a warning: that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. So we need to understand that.

As we approach and have approached this study, what impresses us, or should impress us, is what is going on in Jesus' soul. Because He is the God man we often do not think of Him as someone who is distressed, someone who is sorrowful, someone who is grieving, and yet those are the words that are used, and they are used profoundly. And as I mentioned before, we sang Philip Bliss's hymn, "Hallelujah, What a Savior", Isaiah 53:3 makes it very clear that He was a man of sorrows. That means He sorrowed; He grieved. And we are told that we hid as it were our faces from Him. That means He's rejected. He's rejected by His disciples; He's rejected by the religious leaders of Israel; He's rejected by the nation Israel, to whom He came—John chapter 1:11, that they did not receive Him or accept him as Messiah. And on the cross He is going to be separated judicially from the Father.

No one has experienced the debts, or even thought about experiencing the depths of the loneliness, of being alone, that Jesus experienced on the cross. He was profoundly isolated during those three hours when He bore our sins on the cross.

As I was thinking about this yesterday on my way up to the men's prayer breakfast. I thought about Jesus and the emotion that He exhibits. This emotion demonstrates that He is truly human. We are told in Scripture that many times He was sorrowful, that he grieved, that He wept. He wept over the crowd that was grieving for Lazarus. He didn't weep over Lazarus. A lot of people make that mistake. He didn't weep over Lazarus. He knew that in two or three minutes He was going to say, "Lazarus, come out". Lazarus was going to come out and they were going to hug and high-five, and everything was going to be great. So He wasn't grieving for Lazarus, He was grieving because the crowd was going through grief because of death. Death was not God's original intent for the human race group. Death is a result of Adam's original sin and death is abnormal. That's why when we grieve there's something inside of us that is saying this isn't right, this shouldn't be happening. And that's God getting our attention that sin has destroyed what He intended for us, and that we are grieving because of the consequences of sin.

Jesus demonstrates these emotions, and profoundly demonstrates them in the garden of Gethsemane. And what is Jesus response to this? He cries out to God. We see the same thing on Tuesday night. If you're not following we are studying Samuel, finishing the first book of Samuel and getting ready to start the second. And at that time what separates the two is the death of King Saul, and David is now going to be king. And David has been persecuted for somewhere between five or 10 years by Saul who sought his life, and we are told that he wrote Psalm 18 as a thanksgiving Psalm for God has delivered him. And he wrote it on the day that Saul died, that God had delivered him from his enemies. And in the third verse we learn that David says, "I cry out to you", and it's expressing what he normally did.

Then in verse six he says, "I cried out to you in my distress". Those two verses emphasize that the response to any adversity should first and foremost be crying out to God—the emphasis in on prayer. If that's what our Lord did who was in absolute perfect humanity, without sin and who was always totally dependent upon the Father, then we certainly must. Because we are much more in need of prayer as fallen creatures than Jesus was. In His deity He was omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient, but was not relying on his omni-attributes while He is in the garden, because at this test He has to demonstrate the sufficiency of God's power, God's grace, and go to the cross depended upon God and the Scriptures to sustain him.

So Jesus is emphasizing the same thing and He is going to go through an unimaginable physical torment in the coming hours. He will be flogged with the Roman flagellum, which had bits of bone in it and would rip and shred the flesh and the muscle from the skeletal structure, even to the point of exposing internal organs. He would be beaten mercilessly. He would be ridiculed, He will be mocked, and He will be spat upon. All of these things will happen and we are told also in Isaiah 53 that He was oppressed, and He was afflicted; mild world words for what actually happens. We just can't grasp it. Yet He opened not His mouth. He didn't cry out, He didn't scream. When Jesus is praying in the garden to the Father to "let this cup pass from me", He's not praying about physical death, physical torture and physical pain. That's not what has Him grieved, sorrowful and distressed. What has him grieved, sorrowful and distressed is that He is going to be going to the cross where God the father will impute to him all of your sins and my sins—all of the sins of all humanity throughout the centuries, the millennia, will be poured out upon Jesus. And He is going to be spiritually separated from the Father.

That is spiritual death. Physical death is when our immaterial part, our soul or spirit is separated from our physical body. Spiritual death is when our soul and spirit are separated from God the Father, and that will happen to Jesus for three hours on the cross when He bears the sin of the world and receives the judicial imputation of our sins. We are saved because we are clothed in Christ's righteousness. He took on our sin, so that His righteousness could then be imputed to us. This is what is said in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He who knew no sin was made to sin for us, that the righteousness of God might be found in us."

Alfred Edersheim, who was a Jewish believer, was trained as a rabbi, brilliant man from Austria, I believe, wrote a mammoth work called The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, which is been the standard work to understand what the Scriptures teach about Jesus from a Jewish perspective. It's being supplanted now because Arnold Fruchtenbaum is coming out with a four-volume work, and the fourth volume is due out in December on the life of the Messiah—Jewish perspective of Jesus the Messiah. Edersheim says this about Jesus: "He disarmed death by bearing its shaft in his own heart, and death thereby had no more arrows. He had victory over death in the resurrection, but in His death He conquered the sin problem of death, providing for our reconciliation."

So this is the context. Jesus is going through this suffering to a degree we can never contemplate, fully understand, even partially understand. But what He is showing us by His example is that if He can go through that suffering, to that degree, then the minuscule grief and sorrow and suffering we face can also be handled by taking those requests to the throne of God and depending upon him. This is what Jesus is teaching us: that it is through prayer, through Scripture, and from other passages we know, dependence upon the sustaining Ministry of God the Holy Spirit. That is the only way to handle adversity.

What was Jesus prediction for the disciples on that particular night? This is the context and we must understand what is taking place. Just prior to their coming to the garden in verse 36, Jesus made a prediction in verse 31: "Then Jesus said to them, all of you …" He's talking about the 11 because Judas is off betraying Him at this point. "… will be made to stumble because of me this night.: He didn't say some of you, most of you, He said all of you. Now He's addressing people who have stuck with him for 3 plus years. They believe He is the promised Messiah, the coming King who will bring in the kingdom. They are still expecting that. In Acts chapter one after the resurrection, just before the ascension, they say: "Lord is it at this time, you're going to bring in the kingdom?" They still expected that. They were going to stick with Him no matter what.

If you carefully read the Gospel of John, the more Jesus taught, the more He challenged his followers with the demands of discipleship, the more people left. By the time He gets to the to Jerusalem there are crowds that welcome Him in, but by Gethsemane there are only the eleven that are sticking with Him. There's just a handful willing to stick with Him. That doesn't mean only a handful were saved. But like many Christians, only a handful are willing to really stick it out to really grow, to really make their spiritual life a priority, to really do what is necessary to honor God with their lives. A lot of people give it lip service. A lot of people think, "Oh I'll show up on Sunday morning and go to some church where it makes me feel like I'm worshiping God". But all that's just wood, hay and straw. It's not going to get anybody anywhere. It doesn't fit any of the patterns Jesus teaches about what is necessary for discipleship—not salvation, that's a free gift, but to grow and mature we have to focus on growing and maturing. We have to make the study, knowledge of God's word, the highest priority in our life. And that means there's a lot of fun, great and wonderful things in life we are going to have to choose not to do because our focus is on our spiritual life, our spiritual growth, and serving the Lord in this life.

And this is what's going to happen to these eleven. They've all made the promises, they've made the declarations of loyalty and faith and they are about to do it again. And Jesus is saying when it gets tough the tough leave; they don't hang in there. And that's what is going to happen. The word that is translated "stumble" is the Greek word SKANDALIZO, from which we get our English word scandal. It comes from a term that originally in Greek referred to the stick that held up a trap for an animal. You may have done this when you were a kid. You get a box, put a stick in there, tie string to the stick, go off and hide somewhere, and put some bread or something in there hopefully a bird or squirrel will come under the box. Then you'll pull the string and that stick will come out and then the animal is trapped. That stick is what's in that action; it is SKANDALIZO. So it is a picture of entrapment.

That is what's happening here: you're going to be trapped by sin. We could paraphrase it that way, "because of me this night; you're going to have a situation where you can decide to follow me or not." And you're all going to choose not no matter how much you protest to the contrary because this is what's prophesied. This is prophesied in Zechariah: that "I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered". I'm sure that when Zechariah wrote that in Zechariah 13:7 very few people really understood what that meant. Now, it became clear this was a messianic prediction that those who are followers of the Messiah would be scattered; Israel would be scattered. It's even a hint there of the scattering of the diaspora and the discipline on Israel for rejecting Jesus. But of course Peter, who is always the first to talk before he is the first to think, immediately says to the Lord, "Lord, even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you". And so said all the disciples.

And that's the point I want to make out of that verse. We all know Peter said he wouldn't deny the Lord and then he did, but all of these guys said the same thing. They all said that they would stick with Jesus no matter what, and they could not envision in any way that they were going to leave Him, betray Him or fall away from Him on that particular night.

As we see the tests that will come upon them. Jesus is trying to teach them to handle that particular test, and he is going to be saying to them in different ways, "Watch and pray …" That's the solution. "… lest you enter into temptation." Entering into temptation is not just having the test. Entering into it is failing the test; it is entering into the trap. It's being trapped by the test so that you have. You have failed; you have sinned.

What we see here as Jesus says this to his disciples is that He is going to give them an example of how to handle testing, even as they fail. So the second part of what were looking at in this last lesson on the Gethsemane prayer is that Jesus own spiritual struggle and victory is revealed in His prayer. As we look at each of His prayers we come to understand what is going on in Jesus' mind, and that helps us to understand the role of prayer as we face the challenges and adversities of life.

In Matthew 26:39 we are told that Jesus had separated from the disciples. Luke tells us that He told them to watch and pray lest say enter into temptation, before He separated from them the first time. Matthew doesn't tell us that, he just says, "Sit here while I go and pray over there". But Luke tells us He said, "Sit here and you pray, lest you enter to into temptation while I go and pray over there." So He goes and separates about a stones throw away, and falls on His face. That shows the emotional intensity of the time.

I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you have heard bad news and you have fallen to your knees, or fallen down on the ground, just because you just you're just overwhelmed by what you have heard. Some people have done that. I have been in a situation where that has happened to me. It reveals the overwhelming emotional situation, and circumstances that is going on here. Jesus falls on his face and He prays because He is aware of what is going on here. In Luke 24:2 we have Luke's rendition of this. It's not a conflict. Jesus says, "Father if it is your will," and He uses a first-class condition. Here it doesn't mean since, it's more if it's your will, assuming that it is, you will take this cup away from me. But He knows it's not God's will. Jesus is affirming in both the first statement: "if it is your will", because He knows it is not God's will to remove the cup. He said that many times, and simply at the end He is affirming that He is completely committed to God's plan and purpose for His life, He has always understood—it to go to the cross. He is not wavering here, which is what the English often communicates and how it's often poorly interpreted, He is affirming, He recognizes. In his humanity He recognizes the aversion to being identified with sin. In Habakkuk 1 in Habakkuk's experience, he says, "God, you can't look on sin." This is intense. He knows exactly what he's going to get into, but he's not wavering at all in terms of his focus on God's plan and God's purpose, but this is a test.

Like many things in life we are tested. Sometimes we are tested by our own sin nature. Jesus didn't have that problem because he didn't have a sin nature. Sometimes we are tested by the pressures from the cosmic system. That's the philosophical religious system that Satan has developed in every culture in the world in order to challenge and give people a rationale for rejecting God's Word, to make us think that somehow we can make life work apart from God. That's the cosmic system. It has to do with the world system, and that differs from culture to culture, Asian, European, South American, African everyone, every culture is shaped by sin and human corruption. That's the flaw in multiculturalism today, because that's just another term for working to validate everybody's sin nature and corruption. There is only one culture that all ultimately matters and that's a biblical culture, and were all to be transformed by and have our minds renewed by the word of God (Romans 12:2). We are not to be conformed to the thinking of this age.

So the world system is really promoted by Satan. Satan is the enemy of God and Satan is the archenemy of Jesus, and his goal is to keep Jesus from going to the cross. The cross is not Satan's plan. A lot of people think that. The cross was God's plan. Satan wants to prevent the cross because he knows that at the cross, Jesus will solve the sin problem; so he's been challenging this.

The first time that we see Satan challenge this is with Jesus as an infant. He would have been the inspiration behind Herod's attempt to kill all the children. Just eradicate Jesus at the beginning and prevent Him from ever growing to adulthood and fulfilling the mission. The next time we see an attack on Jesus is in his 40 days is the temptation in the wilderness where Satan tempts Him three times. The focus of those temptations is to get Jesus, the God-Man to rely on His deity rather than His humanity to solve His problems. At that point it would void what's going on here because Jesus is supposed to live His life as a human being on the same resources every human being has in order to demonstrate that the only way to make life work is radical dependence upon God. He is going to be dependent and He passes all the tests.

But make a note of the last temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Satan took him where? He took Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the earth. As he shows Him all the kingdoms of the earth he said, "I can give to you", and Jesus never doubted that Satan could give those kingdoms. Satan is saying, I can make it happen that you can get to the kingdom without going to the cross. It's an attack on the cross. Accept the kingdom from my hand and you don't have to go through the cross. He is trying to prevent the cross and God solution for sin.

Then as we read through Jesus' life as He is healing people and He is presenting the claims of the kingdom, what happens? There are a lot of distractions from people who have been targeted by Satan, and demons have entered into those people. You don't see demon possession in the Old Testament; you don't see it much towards the end of Acts. You see it when everything gets stirred up, when the King is coming to present the kingdom; that's when the opposition intensifies, and that's when you have all this demonic activity taking place. But Jesus demonstrates that He is God by casting out the demons.

And then you have an interesting episode in Matthew 16:21 where Peter comes along and says something to Jesus. Jesus whirls around and looks at him and says, "Get behind me Satan." What was going on? Remember what was going on there? This is in Matthew 16:21. From that time, verse 21, Jesus began to show to his disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. What's the point? Jesus is beginning to teach them that He has to go to the cross, and this is where He is going to pay for the sins of the world. Peter then takes Him aside and says, "Wait a minute Lord, you're doing really great, you've got a great ministry, come on over and let's talk about this a little bit. This isn't a good idea."

As he is rebuking Jesus, Jesus says in verse 23, "Get behind me Satan". Why? Because the mission is to go to the cross, and Peter is following in the footsteps of Satan and saying, we were trying to stop you, you don't need to go to the cross. We can we can have a good ministry and bring in the kingdom without the cross. That is satanic thought; that's the adversary opposing Jesus. So this is what Satan is trying to do: get Jesus to avoid the cross.

Some people have speculated that at this point in Gethsemane perhaps Satan was able to make Jesus and realize in some way the horrors of becoming sin. I don't know, I think that's too much speculation. But whatever is going on, in a fresh way Jesus is realizing the intensity of what is going to happen the next day when He who knew no sin is made sin for us. And certainly Satan is involved in this. In John 13:2 as Jesus is meeting with His disciples for the Seder, and He's going to introduce the Lord's table, at the very beginning we are told that Judah that Satan put into the mind of Judas the idea of betraying Jesus.

So even though when we look at those stories, the description of the last Seder, in Matthew Mark and Luke there's no mention of Satan. Satan is mentioned by John. Satan is present. He is tempting Judas. Judas yields to that temptation, and then in John 13:27 were told that Satan entered into Judas. So Judas is Satan possessed. And then the Lord tells him to leave and go do what he must do, and he is off at this point betraying Jesus.

While he Jesus continues to just to teach the disciples in John 14:30 He says, "I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me." He says just prior to walking from the upper room to Gethsemane, and He is anticipating that the ruler of this world is coming. He knows there is this conflict again between Satan and himself, and this is going to center not on the cross but on trying to block him one more time from going to the cross.

Jesus makes the comment after he's arrested to the Pharisees and the chief priests and the elders: "When I was with you daily in the temple you did not try to seize me …" That would be the three or four days earlier in the week. "… but this is your hour and the power of darkness." Well who is the power darkness? That is Satan. So even though Matthew, Mark and Luke don't mention anything about Satan, when we look at the descriptions of what's going on in John, John tells us that there is definitely satanic opposition, direct opposition to Jesus during this time. And so he is dealing with this, and what he shows us is that the solution in spiritual warfare is not head on confrontation with Satan.

If you go to eighty per cent of the churches in this country today and you talk about spiritual warfare, all they are going to talk about is casting out demons and taking dominion over Satan, and a whole lot of other stuff that has absolutely no nothing to do with the biblical text. The Bible doesn't say that. The Bible says that we are to resist Satan. That's not attack Satan, that's a defensive term, not an offensive term. We are the defense; were trying to keep Satan from scoring on us. And as in good military there is someone on the offense who is going to take care of the enemy. That's Jesus. We are to submit to God. That's what James says in James chapter four, and this is what Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 5. I wonder where Peter got the idea. Maybe he got it and learned it here at the garden of Gethsemane.

We are not to engage Satan. I've seen these televangelists get out there full of arrogance, stomping on Satan, and all of these histrionics and dramatics, and people get all wrapped up in that. It's garbage; it's paganism; it's heresy. And those people ought to be fired from their job but it's become popular so they can build big churches and ministry that wastes billions of dollars on their egotistical schemes. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with what the Bible teaches about spiritual warfare. The Bible is very different. What are you supposed to do? Watch and pray, not go and engage Satan.

So Jesus has prayed at this time that, "this cup would pass from me". That is the spiritual death that He will be engaged in at the cross. That is His first prayer. And the way He states this in verse 39 indicates, shall we say, it's not as strong a statement of conviction as the second. He is saying to some degree if it's possible, but He also knows it's not possible. But the way He expresses it is not as strong as the second time, so we see this progression.

This is what happens in prayer. We don't pray to change God, we go to God in prayer and pray through the Scriptures that God and the Scripture will change us, and conform us to His will. Were not trying to get God to conform to our will. And in the second prayer, Jesus says, "Oh, my Father, if this cup cannot pass from me …" And here He uses a first-class condition again, but he's not saying if it's possible, like He did the first time using a debater sense of the term. He has used it in a sense that it's expressing a very strong conviction again, in a lot more clear way than the first time. "… if or since this cup cannot pass from me unless I drink it, your will be done. I'll drink it, I will be identified with their sins."

Luke doesn't tell us about all three prayers, so it's a little hard to fit the chronology of Luke into Matthew and Mark. But Luke tells us something the others do not, and that is that an angel appeared to Jesus from heaven, strengthening him.

Now, after going through this several times this week and looking more precisely, I am convinced that Luke at the end just tells us about the third prayer and then what happens after Jesus passed the test. That's important. Jesus isn't passing the test, because the angel is strengthening him. The test is to conform to God's will, to be obedient to the point of death. Jesus affirms that conviction through the challenge of the test. Once He has passed the test, the angel strengthens him. It's a lot like the wilderness temptation. The Holy Spirit ministers to Jesus after He passes the three tests. So this is the consolation prize, as it were. You pass the test, now the angel comes and comforts Him.

So what we learn about these about temptation, facing testing. That's what the word means. The noun form is PEIRASMOS, and it can refer to a temptation, and it can simply refer to the objective test. When most of us think of temptation we think of already having an internal attraction to something. You have been on your diet for three weeks, you've lost six or seven pounds, and now you've been thinking about that cheap meal, and somebody comes along and also offers you a nice big piece of chocolate cake with ice cream on it, and you is gobble it up. You're drawn to it; you want it.

But if you've ever tried to diet you know that there are times when you're very susceptible to whatever comes along. There other times when you have eaten healthy, you've done well, your appetite is satiated, and somebody offers you dessert and it doesn't even appeal to you. See, Jesus is like that. As perfect righteousness He's not internally attracted to sin or disobedience. But as sinners we are like the dieter that's hungry and we are always attracted to the sin; we are always attracted to failure. So we have two temptations here. We have the testing of Jesus, who is without sin, and we have the testing of the disciples who fail consistently and miserably.

The disciples were told that, just like Jesus who is perfect, their solution is to pray, but they don't pray. Jesus, were told in Philippians 2:8, passes the test of obedience. He humbled himself, that is, submitted to the authority of the Father and became obedient to the point of death. That's Jesus passing the test.

There are a couple of good promises that you should have in mind. You should make a note of these; you should memorize these. These are critical in verses for instructing us on temptation. First of all 1 Corinthians 10:13, "There is no temptation (or, no testing) that has overtaken you but such as is common to man." It's every category of testing every one of us goes through. Now some people may have it worse, some people may have it less, but you never know, you never see what's going on inside people.

There is a horrible tragic myth that is going on. I've heard it today in relation to other things that are going on socially in our culture, and that is the idea that nobody has the right to express an opinion or talk about something unless they've gone through it themselves. And that's just not true because I is a pastor have not gone through everything, but I have on the authority of God's word, the responsibility to talk about what is necessary to go through whatever you're going through. I may not go through the same thing you're going through, but I've gone through other things that you have no knowledge about; but I do know what the solution is and it always starts with the grace of God and the word of God, the Spirit of God, because God's Word is sufficient, and that He is graciously given that. So whatever the test is you're not unique, you'll never experience it to the degree Jesus did, so don't even think about it. And your solution is the same as His: the word of God and the spirit of God.

Paul goes on to say, "… but God is faithful [That's the issue] who will not allow you to be tested beyond your ability." Now as a believer in Jesus Christ you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, can be filled by the spirit, you have the word of God, so don't get caught up in this trap: Well, Jesus has given me this test, He must think I can pass it. If you are a born again believer in Jesus Christ, you have everything you need to pass any test, no matter how extreme it is. So don't think that because you're going through a tough time that God has given you a pat on the back and an extra special test. Everyone of us is given assets at the instant of salvation. He "will not test us beyond our ability" because we have the word of God and the spirit of God, "but will with the testing make a way to escape"—not to avoid it, but to endure it. That's the last line, "that you may be able to bear it."

Sometimes God will pull you out and take you home and you won't live to go through it. Other times God's going to remove the testing completely, but most the time were going to go through those crises over and over again. In Hebrews 2:10 were told about what Jesus went through: "It was fitting for him [God the Father] to whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation [Jesus Christ] perfect." That means mature through suffering. If the perfect God-Man had to mature through adversity, don't you think we have to go through that same route? It's going to be tougher for us, but we have to mature through suffering.

But we have a high priest. That's what the writer of Hebrews goes on to say. Hebrews 2:18, "For in that he himself has suffered being tempted [this one place, in the garden] He is able to aid those who are tempted." And in Hebrews 4:15 we read, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin". So He is tested objectively and He never yields. So the solution that He gives to the disciples is, "Stay here and watch with me".

And in Luke 22:40 they are to pray that they may not enter into temptation. This is at the beginning. It's interesting, He says this is the beginning, He says that after each time He returns, and at the very end. He says this; he keeps saying it. There are four times that He says this and they failed to do it each time.

Peter learned this lesson. In first Peter 4:12, he says, "Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you." We know the context here, that that all through this part of 1 Peter, Peter is using Jesus as the example: You're going through hard times? Here's the example. Look at Jesus and his suffering, undeserved, unjust, and He handled it and showed you how you are to handle it. And then in terms of the spiritual dimension Peter also tells us in first Peter 5:8-9, "Be sober". That means to be objectively minded; it doesn't mean not to have alcohol in your system. The word has to do with being an objective clear thinker, and you only get that from the word of God. "… be vigilant [that is to watch], because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour".

One of the things that we saw when we were in Italy, you go to the Sistine Chapel and there's this enormous work that Michelangelo did on the last judgment. And then when we were in Florence we went to the main Cathedral there, the Duomo and you have Brunelleschi's dome, which is an architectural marvel, and it's painted with all the scenes on the inside of Jesus and judgment, and heaven. And if you look closely at the images there is this depiction of Satan as this grotesque beast, and out of his mouth you see somebody's legs wiggling. He is devouring people. That's in hell. You also see some other pretty remarkable things too, but that that is how that inspired that artistry. The devil walks around seeking whom he can devour.

We just have these tracts: God has a wonderful plan for your life. We could revise and use these pictures and say Satan has a horrible plan for your life, and he wants to devour you over and over again throughout all of eternity. It should put the fear of the devil into you, but the solution that Peter gives is, resist him. That is, not attack him; it's resist him. It's a defensive term in the Greek—steadfast in the face. Stand firm, in other words, which is used in Ephesians 6:10ff, "because you know that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world".

So the solution is to watch and pray, "the spirit is indeed willing but the flesh is weak". This is really illustrated in Romans 7:15-20 as Paul says there, "I do the things I don't want to do and I can't do the things that I do want to do." The spirit, our immaterial part, we are regenerate, wants to please God. We are devoted to it; we are committed to it, but we can't pull it off. That's what Paul is saying in Romans 7:15-20. We can't pull it off in our own power because the flesh is weak; it's influenced by the sin nature. The flesh there is often a term for the sin nature, it is in Romans. But the solution comes up in Romans 8:1-2. "Therefore there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh [the sin nature], but according to the spirit. All through Romans seven Paul struggles with "I can't obey God because I do the things I don't want to do, and I don't do the things I do want to do."

What's the solution? The solution is to walk by the Spirit. It is through the spirit of God and the Word of God that we can engage in an effective, focused prayer. That is, how we take all those spiritual skills, problem-solving devices, faith-rest drill, doctrinal orientation, and grace orientation; all those things get focused through prayer.

At the end, Jesus comes back and finds them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. And again He says, "Why do you sleep? Rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation". Luke tells us one thing that the others don't. He's the doctor. He says they were sleeping because they grieved.

If you've ever really been depressed you know that it's hard to stay awake, because you are just tired. That's what seems to be going on here. They are grieving. They understand. They may not understand everything that is going to happen, they understand that something really bad is taking place and they are in the middle of it, and this pressure on them. They're not handling by prayer, they are handling by escape, and they have just fallen asleep.

What we learn from this: First of all, prayer must come before and throughout the crisis—prayer, prayer, prayer. And we need to discipline ourselves to constantly have focused, intense prayer.

Second, the content of the prayer expresses submission to God, our orientation, his plan and His purposes for us. It's not a prayer for one thing and then using Oh, not my will be your will be done as an escape clause. We are to express a total focus on God's will for our lives.

Third, we are to pray to not enter into to temptation, to succumb to temptation, that God would strengthen us, and recite Bible verses and focus on the Scripture. God will strengthen us. The Holy Spirit will strengthen us.

The fourth thing we observe is, the failure to pray pass the test for the disciples led to further failure and sin that night. If we don't take it to the Lord in prayer and fight our way through the problem in prayer, then we just open the door for more failure and worse consequences.

The fifth thing we learned from the statement that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, is that good intentions are not enough. The apostles, the disciples had great intentions. "Lord, we are not going desert you." But without prayer and without the Holy Spirit, they fell apart. Of course they didn't have the Holy Spirit then as we do. I understand that, but for us the only way to survive is through Scripture, the Word of God and the spirit of God. That is the only solution. God has provided us everything to pass the tests. The issue is now your choice of my choice. Are we going to utilize with God provided for us or not?

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