Luke 22:39-53
39 And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. 40 And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 41 And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” 43 And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. 44 And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.[g] 45 And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, 46 and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
47 While he was still speaking, there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him, 48 but Jesus said to him, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” 49 And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” 50 And one of them struck the servant[h] of the high priest and cut off his right ear. 51 But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him. 52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders, who had come out against him, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? 53 When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. How does prayer help keep us from entering into temptation?
2. Why did Jesus want to cup removed knowing what it would accomplish?
3. Who was the angel and how was he strengthening Jesus?
4. What does it mean that His sweat became like great drops of blood?
5. Should we resist sleeping when we are sorrowful?
6. Why did Judas kiss Him?
7. What was Jesus' purpose in asking the guards why they were coming out with weapons?
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2019/03/mark-1427-42-27-you-will-all-fall-away.html?view=timeslide says:
ReplyDeleteBefore Jesus came to the cross, he came to the garden, and we get a better understanding of his suffering on the cross by understanding his suffering in the garden. We get a great insight into how greatly he loved the father, how devoted he was to the father's will, how greatly he and the father loved sinners. And we also learn from him how to face the profoundest temptation ourselves and triumph as he did.
Having heard that warning they would have been well to spend this time praying, wouldn't they? Praying that they not fail, praying that God would give them strength to triumph in temptation, but they were smug and self-confident.
The lesson was to be a very direct lesson. They were going to see how he faced temptation, how he dealt with it, and so he took them into this his darkest hour.
but now it is all mounting to culminate and his soul is totally repulsed by the
thought of going to the cross and it isn't because he hates the thought of physical pain, it is because he hates the thought of the wrath of God being poured on him. The horror of that, of alienation and separation from one to whom he is eternally linked as God of very God. He hates the thought of having his absolute sinlessness scarred as it were by the wrath of God as he bears the weight of punishment for all who will ever believe.
The struggle now is a struggle over whether he is willing to go the cross. It is so frightening, it is so fearful, it is so threatening, it is so terrifying that he wants to ask if there's any way it can be avoided.
We must be armed with the word and here he teaches us the other necessary ingredient to battle temptation. One, you need the word, two, you need the power of God and that calls to prayer. Even though you have good intentions, your flesh may, your spirit may be willing, but your flesh is miserably weak. You cannot stand on good intentions. You cannot stand on your own self of confidence.
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2019/03/mark-1427-42-27-you-will-all-fall-away.html?view=timeslide continued:
ReplyDeleteSo if both before and after the prayer in the Garden, Jesus knew what His death would entail, and showed complete acceptance of it, how can we understand His prayer in the Garden for the cup to pass from Him? Did He have a moment of weakness? Was He losing His resolve? Was He afraid of the pain? Did He change His mind? The answer to all of these is “No.”
Part of the problem is that we do not understand the Passover imagery which Jesus was using. Jesus and the apostles had just come from eating their Passover meal, during which time they would have drunk deeply from four cups of wine. At that time, the table would usually share one, large, communal cup. The custom was that when the cup came to the place you were reclining, you must drink from it as deeply as you could, before passing it on to the next person at the table.
Before you could “let this cup pass” you had drink deeply from it.
If the was emptied, it would be filled again before being passed on. Often, at the bottom of the cup, there were bitter dregs from the wine. If you were the person to empty the cup, you must drink the bitter dregs as well, before you “let this cup pass.”
So when Jesus prays, “Let this cup pass from me,” He is not saying, “I don’t want to drink it,” but is rather praying, “Let me drink of it as deeply as I possibly can before I pass it on to humanity. Let me empty it. Let me drain it. Let me drink all of it, even the bitter dregs at the bottom of the cup.”
Jesus was not asking God to let Him avoid the cup, but was asking to let Him take on as much of it as He possibly could, and if possible, if it was God’s will, to let Him drink every single drop, down the bitter end.
This is how the statements about not doing His own will, but the will of God, are to be understood (Matt 26:39, 42). Jesus was not praying to bypass the cup of pain and death, but was praying to end the reign of sin and death once and for all, in Himself, on the cross. Jesus was praying to finish the plan, to bring it to completion.
It appears that when Jesus prayed to let this cup pass, He used the word abar. He was not praying to escape the pain and suffering, and have it pass over (pesach) Him, but was praying to take it on fully, to experience the pain, death, and suffering of the cup of God’s wrath.
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2019/03/mark-1427-42-27-you-will-all-fall-away.html?view=timeslide continued:
ReplyDeleteOne of the more profound mysteries in the life of Jesus is the reason for his anguish and distress in the face of a future that he himself had prophesied.
Some have argued that the "cup" (v. 36) from which he prayed for deliverance was not death on Calvary but rather the intense suffering and agony of Gethsemane itself.
Others suggest that Jesus was not seeking deliverance from death on the cross but from a premature death in Gethsemane at the hands of Satan. On this view, Jesus was praying for strength to reach the cross, not for mercy to escape it.
Yet another view is that Jesus was not requesting exemption from the cross but that his suffering on the cross not be prolonged for eternity.
The most likely interpretation, in my opinion, is that Jesus was asking the Father to remove the cup from him, if that should be his will.
But we are still left with the question, "Why did he seek deliverance from death on the cross and why did the prospect of that death evoke within him such incredible anguish?"
Had he succumbed to the pressure of the physical and emotional distress?
Was it the prospect of separation from family and friends that accounts for this posture?
Was it the shame and reproach he knew his death would bring on them that caused him to hesitate?
Or was it loneliness, the prospect of facing death in solitude?
The death our Lord envisioned, the sufferings he knew lay before him, was no mere physical death, no ordinary martyr's anguish. It was nothing short of the death and sufferings of one who offers himself as a penal, substitutionary sacrifice for sinners. It was the cup of divine and holy wrath he was to drink; it was his Father's cup he was to drink. It was judgment he faced, but not of a political or civil nature. It was divine and eternal judgment, and that for something he did not do! It was the prospect of enduring the righteous wrath of an infinitely holy God that alone can account for the agony of Jesus in Gethsemane.
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2019/03/mark-1427-42-27-you-will-all-fall-away.html?view=timeslide continued:
ReplyDelete2. What about and why was Jesus so sad?
Jesus could have been facing spiritual attack in the garden. It could have been depression and loneliness, which was a small taste of the loneliness He would feel when He was separated from God on the cross. It could have been a dread of being separated from God. It could have been all of the above.
3. Why did Jesus ask God to take this cup from Him?
There were a few reasons suggested above. I agree that at least Jesus was not shying away from they physical agony of the cross. It's possible that He was shying away from separation from His Father. It is also possible that the cup was not the cross, but what He was going through in the garden. I can't see a superior answer in this case.
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/26-39.htm says:
ReplyDeleteHe first kneeled, and then, in the fervency of his prayer and the depth of his sorrow, he fell with his face on the ground, denoting the deepest anguish and the most earnest entreaty. This was the usual posture of prayer in times of great earnestness. See Numbers 16:22; 2 Chronicles 20:18; Nehemiah 8:6.
If it be possible - That is, if the world can be redeemed - if it be consistent with justice, and with maintaining the government of the universe, that people should be saved without this extremity of sorrow, let it be done. There is no doubt that if it had been possible it would have been done; and the fact that these sufferings were "not" removed, and that the Saviour went forward and bore them without mitigation, shows that it was not consistent with the justice of God and with the welfare of the universe that people should be saved without the awful sufferings of "such an atonement."
Not as I will, but as thou wilt - As Jesus was man as well as God, there is nothing inconsistent in supposing that, as man, he was deeply affected in view of these sorrows. When he speaks of His will, he expresses what "human nature," in view of such great sufferings, would desire. It naturally shrunk from them and sought deliverance. Yet he sought to do the will of God. He chose rather that the high purpose of God should be done, than that that purpose should be abandoned from regard to the fears of his human nature. In this he has left a model of prayer in all times of affliction. It is right, in times of calamity, to seek deliverance. Like the Saviour, also, in such seasons we should, we must submit cheerfully to the will of God, confident that in all these trials he is wise, and merciful, and good.
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/luke/22-43.htm says:
ReplyDeleteStrengthening him - His human nature, to sustain the great burden that was upon his soul. Some have supposed from this that he was not divine as well as human; for if he was "God," how could an angel give any strength or comfort? and why did not the divine nature "alone" sustain the human? But the fact that he was "divine" does not affect the case at all. It might be asked with the same propriety, If he was, as all admit, the friend of God, and beloved of God, and holy, why, if he was a mere man, did not "God" sustain him alone, without an angel's intervening? But the objection in neither case would have any force. The "man, Christ Jesus," was suffering. His human nature was in agony, and it is the "manner" of God to sustain the afflicted by the intervention of others; nor was there any more "unfitness" in sustaining the human nature of his Son in this manner than any other sufferer.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-22-commentary says:
ReplyDeleteThe waters of the Kidron were also darkened by blood. 250,000 lambs would be slain in the Temple in one week. The blood of those lambs was poured on the altar as a crimson offering to God. From the altar, there was a channel which led down to the Brook Kidron. The blood from the altar drained down this channel into the brook Kidron. When Jesus crossed the brook to go to the Garden of Gethsemane, it would soon be solid red from the blood of the slain Passover lambs. Jesus was about to cross the dark waters of crucifixion and death. The sacrifice He was about to make with His own blood would be vivid in His mind. It is very interesting to note that in the Old Testament, the Brook Kidron was also a place of suffering and anxiety for someone else in Jesus' family. When King David was fleeing from Absalom, he too, had to cross the Kidron. Their situations were very similar. David was betrayed and rejected by his nation and so was Jesus. Jesus was betrayed by Judas. The betrayers of both men ended up being hung. Absalom hung in a tree and Judas hung himself.
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Christ’s sorrow in facing death as the sin bearer is beyond comprehension. It defies description and surpasses understanding, because what Jesus endured is absolutely unique and without any parallel in human experience. The account of His temptation in the garden confronts those who read it with an incalculable mystery. It leaves them awestruck over Christ’s agony in facing the Father’s anger at the cross and stunned by the intensity of this greatest of all battles against temptation.
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In smug self-confidence, they still thought of themselves as loyal, dependable, and invincible. Like many believers throughout the history of the church, they foolishly mistook their good intentions for strength. The sinless Son of God felt a desperate need for communion with His heavenly Father, but His sinful, weak disciples, as so often they do today felt no desperation about their weakness and vulnerability.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-22-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteIn response to Jesus’ prayers, the Father did not take the cup from Jesus; but He strengthened Jesus by angelic messengers to be able to take – and drink – the cup.
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Hebrews 4:15-16+ For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-22-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteANSWER - While we cannot be absolutely certain why Judas betrayed Jesus, some things are certain.
First, although Judas was chosen to be one of the Twelve (John 6:64), all scriptural evidence points to the fact that he never believed Jesus to be God. He even may not have been convinced that Jesus was the Messiah (as Judas understood it). Unlike the other disciples that called Jesus “Lord,” Judas never used this title for Jesus and instead called him “Rabbi,” which acknowledged Jesus as nothing more than a teacher. While other disciples at times made great professions of faith and loyalty (John 6:68; 11:16), Judas never did so and appears to have remained silent. This lack of faith in Jesus is the foundation for all other considerations listed below. The same holds true for us. If we fail to recognize Jesus as God incarnate, and therefore the only One who can provide forgiveness for our sins—and the eternal salvation that comes with it—we will be subject to numerous other problems that stem from a wrong view of God.
Second, Judas not only lacked faith in Christ, but he also had little or no personal relationship with Jesus. Additionally, the only documented dialogue between Jesus and Judas involves Judas being rebuked by Jesus after his greed-motivated remark to Mary (John 12:1-8), Judas’ denial of his betrayal (Matthew 26:25), and the betrayal itself (Luke 22:48).
Third, Judas was consumed with greed to the point of betraying the trust of not only Jesus, but also his fellow disciples, as we see in John 12:5-6. Judas may have desired to follow Jesus simply because he saw the great following and believed he could profit from collections taken for the group. The fact that Judas was in charge of the moneybag for the group would indicate his interest in money (John 13:29).
Additionally, Judas, like most people at the time, believed the Messiah was going to overthrow Roman occupation and take a position of power ruling over the nation of Israel. Judas may have followed Jesus hoping to benefit from association with Him as the new reigning political power. No doubt he expected to be among the ruling elite after the revolution. By the time of Judas’ betrayal, Jesus had made it clear that He planned to die, not start a rebellion against Rome. So Judas may have assumed—just as the Pharisees did—that since He would not overthrow the Romans, He must not be the Messiah they were expecting.
These Old Testament prophecies indicate that Judas’ betrayal was known to God and that it was sovereignly planned beforehand as the means by which Jesus would be killed.
But if Judas’ betrayal was known to God, did Judas have a choice, and is he held responsible for his part in the betrayal? It is difficult for many to reconcile the concept of “free will” (as most people understand it) with God’s foreknowledge of future events, and this is largely due to our limited experience of going through time in a linear fashion. If we see God as existing outside of time, since He created everything before “time” began, then we can understand that God sees every moment in time as the present. We experience time in a linear way—we see time as a straight line, and we pass from one point gradually to another, remembering the past we have already traveled through, but unable to see the future we are approaching. However, God, being the eternal Creator of the construct of time, is not “in time” or on the timeline, but outside of it. It might help to think of time (in relation to God) as a circle with God being the center and therefore equally close to all points.
In any case, Judas had the full capacity of making his choice—at least up to the point where “Satan entered into him” (John 13:27)—and God’s foreknowledge (John 13:10, 18, 21) in no way supersedes Judas’ ability to make any given choice. Rather, what Judas would choose eventually, God saw as if it was a present observation, and Jesus made it clear that Judas was responsible for his choice and would be held accountable for it.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-22-commentary continued:
Mattoon agrees writing "The disciples remembered Jesus' words about the sword (Luke 22:35-38), so they asked Him if now was the time to make use of their two swords. They totally misunderstood what Jesus said." Why did Peter resort to the sword? The answer is he was unprepared for what was happening in Gethsemane. He was unprepared because he slept when the Lord wanted him to pray. He was unprepared because earlier, when Jesus was trying to get through to him and the other disciples, Peter was talking when he should have been paying attention to Christ. He now fights, when he should have yielded. He did not discern the events of his situation with what Jesus had been saying up to this point. He was fighting the wrong enemy with the wrong weapons. Peter's real enemy was Satan, and His real weapon was the Word of God. The same truth holds true for us, too. Beloved, our real enemy is Satan. The Scriptures are the most effective way in dealing with him and our own sinfulness.
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Stein - As in Lk 22:38 they did not understand Jesus’ teachings. They did not pray (Lk 22:40, 46), and thus they neither knew nor were able to act correctly in this time of trial.
Questions and findings:
ReplyDelete1. How does prayer help keep us from entering into temptation?
Prayer does a few things: It aligns our will with God's. When we spend time with God, we see Him a little better. When we see Him better, we fall in love with Him more which motivates us to be like Him. When we see Him a little better, less important things fall away (like whatever was tempting us).
2. Why did Jesus want the cup removed knowing what it would accomplish?
Jesus didn't want to be separated from God. Jesus' human mind and body were being overwhelmed. Even though it was the only way, Jesus still had to ask if there was any way they could not be separated.
3. Who was the angel and how was he strengthening Jesus?
There's no mention of who the angel was. I speculate that Jesus was in so much anguish that His body was tearing itself apart. His prayer helped His mental state and the angel strengthened His body. Why didn't God provide this directly? I don't know.
4. What does it mean that His sweat became like great drops of blood?
Probably that the sweat was large drops. We shouldn't assume that there was blood mixed in with His sweat.
5. Should we resist sleeping when we are sorrowful?
In this case, the disciples were about to face something. It wasn't time to sleep. There are times when we should sleep and there are times when we should pray. Each case should be considered separately.
6. Why did Judas kiss Him?
I think Satan gave him the idea, consciously or unconsciously, to provide the ultimate insult to Jesus. It's hard to say what was going through Judas' mind.
7. What was Jesus' purpose in asking the guards why they were coming out with weapons?
I think that whole conversation was a delay tactic so that all the disciples could escape. But, otherwise, Jesus may have been being merciful to His captors and give them a chance to repent. Who knows? Maybe some of them did later.