In his sermon 'Not As I Will, But As You Will,' Scott Brown examines the events of Matthew 26:36-46, where Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane before His crucifixion. The sermon highlights the deep sorrow and agony Jesus experienced as He submitted to the Father's will, emphasizing the significance of His prayers and the symbolism of the 'cup' He asked to pass from Him, representing God's wrath and the suffering Jesus would endure. Brown explores the parallels between the Garden of Gethsemane and the Garden of Eden, noting the obedience of Jesus as the 'second Adam' in contrast to the disobedience of the first. The sermon emphasizes the mystery of Jesus' humanity and deity, the submission of His will to the Father, and the importance of understanding the gravity of sin and its consequences. Brown concludes by urging believers to follow Jesus' example of submission and to recognize the ongoing significance of His sacrifice in their lives.

Today's text is Matthew 26 verses 36 through 46. Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to the disciples, sit here while I go and pray over there. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then he said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with me.

He went a little further and fell on his face and prayed, saying, "'O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.' Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, What, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again a second time he went away and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done.

And he came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. So he left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then he came to his disciples and said to them, ìAre you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going.

See my Betrayer is at hand. Oh God, Come and help us to understand what you were doing in the garden. Help us to understand what you were doing in purchasing a bride for yourself. Help us to have ears to hear what you would say to us, the wonders that you would open to us, Father, through what you did, through the will of the Father, through the will of the Son, and through the will of the Spirit. God help us through your Holy Spirit that we might see you today through the preaching of your Word.

Come and teach us, Lord. In Jesus' name. It's a fearful thing to make comments about this passage of Scripture. We're in waters that are so deep in a region that is so significant it's fearful to try to describe them. The suffering and the agony of Christ over the weight of sin is a great mystery.

It's much like the great mysteries of the sovereignty of God and the volition of man. It's like that mystery of the humanity and the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the potential to trivialize what happens in the Garden of Gethsemane is great. And so We have to approach this carefully and humbly in many ways to think like Moses did when the Lord said to him, take off your shoes for the ground is holy. And the ground here is astonishingly stunning.

It is holy ground. And it describes the pressures on the Son of God for the holiness of mankind. And so it's very powerful and I pray that God will help us to understand it. And so what's happening here is after the Lord's Supper, after the Lord has washed the disciples' feet, after he's comforted them with this beautiful discourse that you read in John 13 through 17 and his final prayer. After his saying, you know, let not your heart be troubled.

And then now after leaving the upper room and crossing the brook of Kidron, the Lord Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, which is on the western slope of the Mount of Olives. And this hour here is the beginning of the most critical hour in the history of the world. And the disciples are sleeping through it. And they had no grasp of the significance or the gravity of that night. And in some ways, we're a little bit like that, where we often don't grasp the significance of the moment when it's happening to us.

I think that pretty much every time we gather among the people of God to worship, it's like that, where God is among His people, the Word of God is being preached, the worship of God is being engaged, And it's hard for us to estimate the significance of the moment and to really gather and enter into the things of God. And any time we gather there, there are always those who are like on the edge of their seats, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. And also there are those who are asleep, and then there are some who are kind of in between. Maybe you stayed out really late last night and you're going to be nodding off. I might even see you do that.

But when we're in passages of Scripture like this, I'm just fearful that I won't be able to explain it. I know I won't be able to explain it in the depth that it really is. We need the help of the Holy Spirit. We need God's help to come and help us to understand the depth and the gravity of the sufferings of Jesus Christ for us. And you know all throughout this this time with his disciples it said in the Gospel of John that he loved them to the end.

All of this is wrapped in an atmosphere of the love of Jesus Christ for his disciples. He's already told Peter that he's going to deny him, he's going to fall away, and that all they're all going to deny him. Then he says, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. The Lord Jesus is the suffering servant interceding for his children, his sinful children, his sleeping children. And he's praying for them that they might not deny Him and fall away, that their faith would be maintained.

And so you see the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, even in the most difficult night of His life, here at the end of three years of his public ministry. And the Lord Jesus is in the most painful night of his entire time with his disciples and his disciples are sleeping. He asks them to labor with him and they fall asleep. He asks them to watch and pray that they would not fall into temptation. And they slept and they fell into temptation.

So here in this passage you have the Lord Jesus Christ and his praying with his disciples before his Father. But what you have here also is a magnifying glass on the submission of Christ for the salvation of sinners. I think the heart of this passage is the submission of the Lord Jesus Christ. And there are at least five kinds of submission that are exposed here, and I have them in front of you in your outline. There's the place of his submission, the place called Gethsemane.

Number two, the sorrows of his submission. Number three, the agony of his submission. Number four, the will of his submission. Number five, the prayer of his submission. And number six, the hour of his submission.

So let's move into verse 36 and see the place of his submission. Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane. Gethsemane, it's a well-known place of Ras, John 18 verse 2 tells us that it was so well known that Judas would make it the place where he would come and meet Jesus, finally. It was a place that Jesus had frequented, and it was known by Judas. And it would be a place where he could be easily apprehended.

It's the place of his arrest. And it's interesting, there's this garden here at the end of the gospel. At the very beginning of the gospel, in the book of Genesis, there's also a garden, the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane, both of them are places of testing. With the first Adam, there's no obedience to his father.

With the second Adam, though, there is obedience to his father. And this is a place of testing. You know, the Lord Jesus has been tested before. He was tested by the devil in the wilderness, And now his father tests him. He tests him with desolation and isolation.

So you have these two gardens. And they're the different kinds of desolation and isolation that takes place. There's a desolation and isolation in the Garden of Eden, and there's also a desolation and an isolation here in the Garden of Gethsemane, but they're completely different kinds. And they have completely different kinds of effects. One is for death, And in this second garden of Gethsemane, it's life.

In the Garden of Eden, the disciples forsake the Lord, and they run. And in this garden, the Son of God does not run. He stays. He stays at his watch. He watches and he prays that there would not be temptation.

And in this garden, the Lord Jesus Christ will pray alone. He'll bear the wrath alone. Peter will deny him and the soldiers will arrest him. The Sanhedrin will condemn him. Pilate will sentence him and the people will cry out against him.

It begins this lonely journey where the Lord Jesus stands by himself while all of his disciples have abandoned him. They will all, quote, forsake him. And then he will say, the Lord Jesus himself to his father, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? So this garden is a garden of so much tension and emotion and significance. It's, Gethsemane literally means the oil press.

And if you go to Gethsemane today, they say there are some olive trees that have been there for over 2, 000 years. Most of them were destroyed by the Romans when they came through. But apparently, not all were destroyed. But it was the place of the pressing of the Son of God. You know, the process for the making of olive oil, as the trees are shaken, they're beaten, and the olives fall to the ground after the beating of the trees.

And then there's this first step in making of the oil where the ripe olives are put in a stone. And there's a millstone. You've seen millstones before. And they're large, and they're heavy. And they crush whatever they roll over.

So they're pushed over in a cylindrical fashion over the olives, and out comes the first oil. There are three kinds of oil that olive presses produce. And the first kind comes in the very first pressing. And it's the finest oil. It's known as virgin oil.

It's for the anointing of kings. For the anointing of kings and it was for the anointing of the Messiah. This very word, this kind of oil, is the word we get, our word, Messiah. The second step, another weight is added so that more oil would be pressed out. And The oil that comes out of this phase is oil for healing, for medicines, and for light.

And then finally, the third and last process where the olives are pressed even harder and what comes out is used for soap, for cleansing. There you have, in the very pressing of the olives, the three things of the Son of God that are so critical. The anointing is the King of Kings. Secondly, the medicine, the light. He is the light of the world.

And then finally, he is the cleansing flood of blood that comes from his veins, like the fuller's soap, like the launderer's soap that Malachi chapter 3 verse 1, that the fuller is the one who cleans the dirty wool off the sheep and they have soap to do it, hot scalding water and soap, the fuller soap. Malachi 3.1, behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming?

Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like a launderer's soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver. He'll purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to the Lord, as in the days of old, as in former years.

He is coming as a cleansing force in the world. But the cleansing means that you are separated from your filth. The filth of the wool of the lambs will be secured by the Son of God. But he's going into the Garden of Gethsemane, the oil press. The imagery there is so clearly pointing to the ministry of the Son of God.

But he went to Gethsemane to do what? He went there to pray. And the whole narrative really hangs on these three prayers, these three incidences, going back and forth with his disciples. So here, he said to his disciples, sit here while I go and pray over there. So he comes into the garden, he leaves eight of his disciples, and then he goes ahead.

And the whole structure of the passage hinges on the prayers, the three times that he prays. He goes back to pray three times. We don't have a record, I don't believe, of Jesus ever really praying with His disciples. We find Him praying for them, but does he pray with them? And here they were sleeping while he was praying.

This often happens to us when some of the greatest things that are upon us in our lives, we're sleeping and we're not praying. It happens all the time with parents, where difficult things have come to the souls of their children. Maybe it's a disobedience or some new trend in their spirits, some behavior that we know will destroy them. And what do we do? All we do are external things, and we don't pray.

We're sleeping. We're sleeping through the time of crisis. And this is one of the weaknesses that we all have. We can't even pray for one hour, as the Lord Jesus says. When times of crisis comes it requires that we enter into times of prayer and so this is what Jesus is doing.

He's entering into this greatest crisis of his life and it is it should also be a time of prayer. And so they slept. They missed the moment. Missing the moment is something that we all do. And maybe some of us are doing it even right here now, this morning.

We're missing the moment. We're missing the things that God has for us. And I heard Leonard Ravenhill say one time, he said, So many people go to the house of God every Sunday, and they don't even know the owner of the house. How true that is. We miss the moment.

We don't understand the gravity of the situation, and how important the words are, and the songs, and the people, the fellowship, the things that happened. We so underestimate the moment. And that's what's happening with the disciples. And then not only do you see the place of his submission, a place called Gethsemane, You also see the sorrows of his submission in verses 37 and 38 where he says, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful. Verse 37, And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.

Then he said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death. Stay here and watch with me." So now he leaves the rest of the disciples, takes Peter, James, and John with him, as he's done several times, or at least two other times before, and he does it again now to pray, And then he'll leave them again to go. He takes Peter, James, and John with him to the Mount of Transfiguration, and at the death of the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, he permitted no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John. And so why does he do that? I don't know.

I don't know why he does that. Proverbs 3.32 says, the Lord, to the Lord, His secret counsel is to the upright. Who knows if perhaps these men's hearts were more tender toward him than the others? We don't really know why. It's not explained.

But he does take Peter, James, and John with him more times than he takes others alone, as far as what we know. But he becomes distressed. Sorrowful is the word that's used. Deeply distressed is also used. And Here is a soul in distress.

It's a state of sadness that the word that is used here by Matthew, the Gospel writer. It's exceedingly sad. It tells us that Jesus had emotions. It tells us that Jesus was a man. Here we find ourselves in the midst of the humanity and the deity of Jesus Christ.

And that he is sad. He is exceedingly sad. And it's a term that's used in other places of the sorrow, or the pain, or the anxiety of some kind of misfortune. You've experienced that. You've had a reversal of some kind in your life and you have become sad.

Or a death, someone has died and you're not sure how you're going to go on anymore because of that death. Or some kind of anger or annoyance or some kind of hurt, some kind of insult or some kind of outrage, the sadness that comes from that, the pensive wave that comes over your soul when something has so disappointed you. And this is what Jesus was experiencing, and it would be so intense that he would actually sweat blood. There's a condition that there are very few documented cases under a hundred called hematohydrosis. Only Luke reports the sweating of the blood.

Where there are just a very few cases in the history of the world where people have sweat blood. Now, here's, I'll just give you my opinion. Hematohydrosis is not what happened to the Lord Jesus Christ. No one in history has ever done what Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane. There's no parallel in human history for what Jesus Christ endured on the cross.

That's my opinion. I don't have any medical evidence for that. But what happened with the Lord Jesus Christ is so unique and unusual. No one ever bore the sins of mankind. No one ever endured the kind of pressure that the Lord Jesus Christ endured.

But his soul was in distress and the humanity of Christ is on display. You know, the deity, the Lord Jesus Christ, makes him a man and not something more than a man. He is fully and completely a man. He was not playing at being a human. He was a human being.

And in the garden, his humanity manifests itself probably more powerfully and more clearly, more distinctly than any other place in the gospels. You see his humanity here so clearly And you actually see Him with His emotions. You think the Lord Jesus Christ did not have emotions. He did not feel. He did.

He suffered. He suffered as a man. He endured the sorrows of men and women. And he is finding himself here carrying our sorrows, carrying our anguish. So your tears become his tears, Your sorrows become his sorrows.

Your sins literally become his sins. He's bearing all of our sorrows in this sense. And it shows us also a window into sin itself. That sin creates sorrow. Sin multiplies distresses in the human soul.

Sin destroys the soul. It hurts the heart. It damages the emotions. It causes you to lose heart. It causes you to suffer.

This is the most important lesson you can ever teach your children, is how horrible sin is, How destructive to the soul. If they ever want to be happy, they can never get it by sin ever. No one ever got it that way. They might have gotten the passing pleasures of sin, which are such a downgrade to every form of holiness that there is. But you see this death, it's even unto death.

It says the cessation of life, the sorrows that he experienced were giving him the sensation that he was dying, that he was perishing. If you've ever been with people who are dying or have read much about people who die, people when they die, they report that they know that they're slipping away. They know that they're dying. They know that they're on the precipice. And then they slip away into eternity.

The Lord Jesus knew that. It was a sorrow even unto death. And you know, what was the sorrow about? Was it because of the betrayal of Peter? Was it because of the abandonment of all the disciples?

Was it the anticipation of the pain on the cross? Absolutely not. It was something so much more profound. It superseded all physical pain. It had to do with the suffering under the wrath of God.

He was the object of God's wrath. He was submitting himself to the wrath of a righteous God towards sinners. This was the core of his suffering. It wasn't that he was going to have nails driven into his hands. How trivial, how ridiculous.

The body reacts, the body reacts and You go into a state where the pain is dulled. This was a pain of significance far greater than any kind of physical pain. The pain that he suffered while he was being whipped and then finally crucified was trivial compared to what he was experiencing here. He became sin for us and the wrath of God would rest upon him. He was being made sin.

Like someone said, God would rather see a son die, see sin die, than his son live. And here we find ourselves in the midst of the substitutionary work of Christ. And this scene here is one of the great proofs of the wrath of God, that God does extend wrath towards sinners, that He does hate sin, that He does punish every sin, that there's not one single sin that will not be brought to justice. He's going to bring every single sin under His wrath, somehow or another. Either he's going to lay it upon his son and let sinners go free, or he is going to lay it upon the unrepentant for all of eternity.

Those are the two ways that the just wrath of God is satisfied. That's what is happening here. It's the beginnings of it. The Lord Jesus is anticipating it. He's moving toward the cross here, where He will suffer.

But in His soul, there's this ramping up of a sensibility of it. It's impossible to pay for your sins. The weight of our sins is too great. You could spend a thousand years in hell and not pay for your sins. You could spend a million and a billion years in hell and not pay for your sins.

There's only one payment for sin. Your sins are too deep. You're not aware of them. There are sins of not just commission, there are unintentional sins. Your whole being is wrapped in sin.

Your whole nature is the sin nature. You can't get away from it. You cannot pay. It's a debt too great. No one has ever been able to pay for their sins.

The Bible says that the wrath of God abides on those who do not believe in the Son. John 3 verse 36 says that, He who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe in the Son shall not see life. But the wrath of God abides on him. And so he is sorrowful, he is so heavy with it that God finally, he sends an angel to come and he comforts him and strengthens him. The agony is so great.

He is in need of ministry and his father sends an angel. As the book of Hebrews says in Hebrews 2 verse 10, Are they not all ministering spirits? They minister, they come and they give aid, and here they're giving aid to the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, it's interesting, you know, God sends angels from time to time. When the children of Israel were in the wilderness, in Exodus chapter 23 verse 20, we read, Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared." Are you aware of the powerful and wonderful ministry of angels?

Do you think angels don't exist today because we live in the 21st century of naturalism? No, angels exist today just as they always have from the time that God created them. And here the angel comes and meets with the Lord Jesus. And I think Jesus is, and this angel, They're fulfilling what happened in the wilderness, where an angel came to keep them in the way, to take them to the place that God had prepared. This is one of the functions of angels.

You know, we read in the last section where the Lord Jesus is going to pray for his disciples that their faith might not fail, that it might not be eclipsed, but that it'll continue on. And here now an angel comes to continue on the work. This is the love of God toward sinners. He sends his angels, he sends his prayerful son to come and minister to keep us. This is the love of God.

This is why John says he loved them to the end. He loved them. He said, let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me, in my Father's house or many dwelling places.

Here God is bringing help. This whole scene is a scene of, on the one hand, outpourings of love and kindness, mercy, devotion toward his people. On the other hand, the wretched sorrow, the abject depths of grief that are laid on the Son of God on behalf of those who would escape such a great grief. And then we see the agony of his submission in verse 39 where he says, let this cup pass. Verse 39 says, he went a little farther and fell on his face and prayed." Here we are again in this this whole theme of prayer.

Let me give you just a few observations about the prayer that Christ prayed. First, his posture in prayer. The Son of God is on His face and He's praying. This is a right posture of prayer. It's appropriate to pray on your face before your Father.

Question, if the Son of God, If it was appropriate for the Son of God to fall on His face before His Father, how much more would it be for us? When was the last time you were on your face before God? Back in the days of Moses, the children of Israel were complaining, and it was a terrible scene. And Moses and Aaron fell on their faces, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. So often, the glory of God appears when people are on their faces.

And here the Son of God, His posture in prayer is that he is on his face. He is dependent. Secondly, notice the isolation of prayer. He is separating himself. He is not with them.

Thirdly, the intimacy of prayer. He says, Oh my Father, Oh my Father. The most intimate language that Jesus ever uses in prayer. In other places, Abba, Father, Oh, dear Father, Oh, Heavenly Father, Oh, my Father, my Father. It's a prayer of intimacy.

And fourthly, it's an anguished prayer. Let this cup pass from me. Let it go by. So now we come to the whole matter of the cup. Let this cup pass.

What is the cup? Matthew and Mark tell us that he asked three times to let the cup pass. What is the cup? The cup is a common Old Testament symbol of something that you take, something that you consume. Of course, it's used in many contexts, including the context of the Lord's Supper.

It's the cup of blessing there. Here it's a different kind of cup here. Here Jesus drinks a certain kind of cup so that you can drink a very different kind of cup. So that you can be drinking a cup of blessing, he drinks a cup of a very particular kind that's described in Scripture. He is consuming unrighteousness.

He is consuming Filth is what he is doing. It's in Isaiah chapter 51, this is spoken of, and it's the cup of wrath, is the cup that the wicked are required to drink. The people of Jerusalem who had displayed, who had disobeyed, they were carried off into captivity and they were drinking a certain kind of cup. Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, Isaiah 51, 17. You who have drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury, you have drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling and drained it out.

There is no one to guide her among all the sons she has brought forth, nor is there any who takes her by the hand. Among all the sons she has brought up. Here it's the cup of staggering, it's the cup of trembling, it's the cup of directionlessness, There's no one to take your hand. It's the cup of devastation. It's the cup of destruction.

It's the cup of fury. It's the cup of drunkenness in Isaiah chapter 51. Go to Jeremiah 25 verse 15. It's the cup of staggering. It's the cup of going mad.

It's the cup of fury again. In Psalms 75 verses 7 through 8, it's the cup of judgment. It's the cup of wickedness. It's the cup of dregs. In Ezekiel chapter 23, It's the cup of derision.

It's the cup of drunkenness and sorrow and horror and desolation and shards and tearing at your breast. Those are the words that are used of this cup. So here the Lord Jesus Christ, the only innocent person who ever lived, He is now going to drink of a cup that he did not deserve. And he's draining the cup so that the mercy of God would be glorified, so that the justice of God would be satisfied, that the glory of God would be vindicated. He's drinking that cup for a purpose for His people.

This is the love of Jesus Christ. He is drinking a cup for the repentant, so that they would have a cup of blessing. You just think about the blessing that you have in your life, because he drank that cup. I don't believe we have any conception of the blessings that have come to us because he drank that cup. You think your life is hard now?

You think you have something to be discouraged about? You think you have something going wrong? Let me tell you something. You have no conception of what it would be like if he had not drunk that cup for you. And now he hands to you another cup and he says, take.

This is my blood that was shed for you. This is the cup of blessing. Now there's nowhere that I'm aware of in Scripture that speaks so comprehensively of the suffering of our Lord in this way as Isaiah 53. If you'd open up there, open up to Isaiah 53. I'm just going to bounce you through the passage.

We won't read every word. Beginning in verse 3. He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Verse 4. He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

We read that He was stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. And verse 5, wounded for our transgressions. And verse 5 again, bruised for our iniquities. Verse 5 again, chastised, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him. And whipped because by His stripes we are healed.

In verse 6, was laid on him the iniquity of us all. Verse 7, he was oppressed. Verse 7 again, he was afflicted. He was slaughtered. Verse 8, he was cut off from the land of the living.

Verse 8 again, he was stricken. Verse 10, bruised. Verse 10 again, put to grief. Verse 10, his soul was an offering for sin. Verse 11, He shall see the labor of his soul.

He shall bear their iniquities." In verse 11. And in verse 12, because he poured out his soul unto death, He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors." I think that's the Garden of Gethsemane right there. That's the Garden of Gethsemane. It has to be. He made intercession for the transgressors.

They were his disciples. They were his disciples. He was interceding for his disciples. He loves his disciples who are transgressors. So Jesus' agony was not in anticipation of the physical pain of the cross or the nails, it was from the weight of sin.

Jonathan Edwards speaking of the sacrifice of Christ, he says this, The spiritual David cut off this Goliath's head with his own sword, and he triumphed over him in his cross. Having spoiled the principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it." So this cup, let this cup pass. It was a cup of agony. It was a cup of sin. He swallowed up all sin.

He cleansed our defilement by drinking down our defilement. He took the log out of your eye. He took the stain off of your soul. He purified the filthiness of your mind. He took the darkness out of your heart.

He took the hardness out of your heart. He took the fear out of your consciousness. He cleansed your conscience. He stopped the plague. He took the sword from the death angel.

Christ was doing with that cup. You know, People say that the problem with human beings is that they have a God-shaped hole in their hearts. Now, I think there's a thin sense where that's true. But it doesn't tell the truth, incompletely. You don't have a hole in your heart.

Your heart is deceitful above all things. It's desperately wicked. Who can know it? You have a cauldron of poisons and deceitfulness and wickedness and confusion and spew and filth and rebellion in your heart. And that was the cup that Jesus Christ drank.

And if you just think you have a hole in your heart, you are sadly mistaken. You have something so much worse than that. Something that will kill you for all eternity and you will suffer and be tormented, unless Jesus Christ drinks the cup of suffering. And because of that, you don't drink a cup of condemnation. You don't taste the full force of sin.

You don't ever have complete abandonment. You will never know the crushing of sin, you will never have a Gethsemane. Never. Because Christ went before you, and He did. That's the enormous weight of this moment.

That is the agony of His submission. But then there's the will of His submission in verse 38, 39. Not as I will, but as you will. Now this is not a conflict between the Father and the Son. The Father and the Son each have a separate will, but their wills are not in conflict.

Jesus Christ said, I am the Father, our one. There is no conflict. There is no disconnect between the Father and the Son. Jesus' prayer is answered, not my will, but thine be done. He does do his Father's will.

He loves to do his Father's will. In John 5 verse 30, he says, I myself can do nothing, as I hear I judge, my judgment is righteous, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me." Christ surrendered His will to His Father. Now I think that we have to see this in two levels. There is an example to follow. There is the principle of submission of the Father, the Father and the Son, the submission of the Son to the Father, the love of the Father toward His Son, the delight to do the will of the Father.

Yes, that is definitely here. But the lesson here really isn't primarily pray more, obey more, try harder, be more honorable. The lesson is that Jesus Christ knelt and He prayed and He suffered on your behalf. The lesson here is not be brave, be sacrificial, be obedient. That is not the lesson here.

The lesson is that Jesus Christ sacrificed His life for sinners. And He is here teaching us. He is teaching us what is the basis of our worship. Paul says it like this, He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, will he not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things. It was by one man's obedience.

It was by one man's obedience to the will of his Father. Jesus said, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Psalm 40 speaks of Jesus when it says, behold, I come in the scroll of the book, it is written of me, I delight to do your will, oh my God, and your law is written in my heart." John 8.26 says the same thing. Not as I will, but as you will." Now this is something that we cannot miss here this morning, that the Lord Jesus is doing the will of His Father. Now why is that so significant?

Because Every time from the time of your birth that you wanted to do your own will and not your Father's will, every time, every single time is enough to commit you to eternal damnation. Every time this morning that you wanted to do your own will, the Lord Jesus Christ is doing His will for you. Every moment when you do not say and do the will of God is a moment where you are under divine judgment. This is the most fundamental principle of life, to do the will of your Father in heaven. And when you don't do the will of your Father in heaven, you are condemned.

And Lord Jesus Christ did the will of his Father. Every time you resisted the will of your Father, Christ was struck. Every word that you said that was not under the government of his love, Everything you ever did, every click on your keyboard, every word you ever spoke that was not under the will, according to the will, consistent with the will of your Father, deserved eternal punishment. That is the significance of the Lord Jesus Christ when He says, not as I will, but as you will. Christ's obedience is what accomplished our freedom.

Not as I will, but as you will. He kept the law. He did his Father's will when we could not. And then we see the prayer of his submission in verses 40 through 45. So he returns, he finds his disciples asleep again, and then he says to Peter, What?

What? Could you not watch with me one hour? I mean, after all, it was after midnight. You know, everyone would be tired by then, right? Wouldn't it be just normal for you to go to...

You need your sleep, right? You know, these desires, these things that we want so much, often get in the way of prayer, like they did here with the disciples. To watch, to be vigilant. Like the householder on the alert. It's the same term that's used in Matthew 24.

The householder that at least ought to know that the thief is coming. And you ought to do something about it. Watch, to be vigilant, to be alert. And these are commands. He says, watch and pray.

These are imperatives in the text. These are two things that we must do, watch and pray. Now, He is, at the same time, He's praying for them while they are sleeping. He's carrying them. He's bearing them up.

But this whole matter of prayer has been visited by us before in the Gospel of Matthew. Do you remember the man who had the demonized boy, the disciples, and just Peter, James, and John had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration and there was this big conflict with the Pharisees. It seems like hundreds or thousands of people were gathered. And there was a man who had a demonized boy who was throwing himself down, and it was just a horrible, horrible scene. And the father came up to Jesus and said, your disciples couldn't cast out the demon of my son.

What is wrong? And Jesus says, this kind doesn't come out, but by prayer and fasting. So like, when were they supposed to fast? He had just been brought there. They had not prepared themselves by prayer and fasting.

That's why it says, watch and pray so that you do not fall into temptation. Prayer on Tuesday saves you from sin on Thursday. That's the idea. It prepares you. Watch and pray that you do not in the future fall into temptation.

So our prayers are necessary for our future. They fortify us, they make us ready. But the disciples are sleeping. It's hard for me to rage against the disciples at this point in this story, because of all the so, oh, how many times I was not watching and praying like I should have been. And Jesus diagnoses the problem.

He says the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. That's true. The spirit is willing. You want to, you say you want to, but you're weak. It's a weakness of the flesh.

You know, as a church here, we should be crying out to God for His help that we would be watchful and prayerful because of the weakness of our flesh. So how weak is your flesh? I don't think all of our flesh is as weak as the other flesh. And you may be really weak in your flesh. What are you going to do about that?

Build up that weakness. We're all weak in our flesh, for sure. But some of you are very weak. And it's because you nurture your consciences on things that defile your conscience. And you're weak because you keep drinking in weak things.

You spend your time doing weak things. And it should be no surprise to you that you're weak because of what you read, because of what you listen to, because of the places you go, the way you spend your time. Many of you are weak because your affections are for weak things and you're weak. And there's only one way to avert that And that is to turn your whole heart toward God and devote every moment of your life to Him. But the Spirit is willing and the flesh is weak.

And then Jesus goes and prays a second time in verse 42. He goes away and he says, Oh my Father. He goes away a third time and then he returns to his disciples. And then miracles. And then there is the hour of this submission.

In verse 46, Jesus announces that His hour has come. He did that before the Lord's Supper. He said His time was at hand. He knows His time. He knows that His separation from His Father is coming.

In John 12, 27, He says, Now my soul is troubled, what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. There is an hour That is upon him now And he says for this purpose I came To this hour. This is the most important hour in the history of the world right here. This hour is the hour of the ages and here the Lord Jesus again is proclaiming His sovereignty over every hour and particularly this pivotal central hour in all of human history.

He is going to have the cock crow at a certain time. He is going to have His crucifixion to happen at a certain time. He is going to have his crucifixion to happen at a certain time. He is going to bleed and suffer and die and be resurrected on his own appointed hour because he is sovereign over all things. God is orchestrating everything.

And so here, in the most important hour of all of history, the Lord Jesus Christ shows us the meaning of His suffering, and that He would drink the dregs of the filth to protect us from it ourselves So that He would be a substitution For the wrath that we deserve the just wrath of God towards sin is being displayed here. And this is really the heart of the Gospel. That those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved from what? From the wrath of God, from the just wrath of God. And here, in the will of the Son of God, is the secret to the freedom of every repentance center, that Jesus Christ always did the will of his Father.

So that those whose wills do not always do the will of His Father would be saved. And He is watching, He is praying that you might not be destroyed by that death angel. And that's the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now there, it would be right to just end it with that. That's enough.

It's enough to just know the power of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and all of His sufferings for mankind and His obedience. It's enough just for that. But There really is more. Philippians chapter 2 tells us what's more about it. Philippians 2 verse 5.

Because there's a way that we ought to live because of this. Let this mind be in you, which also was in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond-servant, and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in the appearance as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, God has also highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. Therefore, my beloved brethren, As you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to do, for his good pleasure.

Do all things without complaining and distributing, that you may also become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world holding fast to the word of life so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. So there is a way that we apply this in our lives. And that is that we go and we do the will of God. We go and do the works of God. That's how we apply this in our lives.

On the one hand we rejoice in the sufferings of Christ and the protections that He's given to us. On the other hand, we also go and we do His will. Now we don't bear one another's burdens in the way that Christ did, but we do bear one another's burdens. We cannot bear the weight of the sins of our brothers, but we do bear with the sins of our brothers. We cannot forgive exactly like Christ forgave, but we can be tenderhearted and forgiving of one another.

His suffering and bearing of our sins can give us a heart to suffer and bear with one another. So here we find our Savior who kept the will of His Father. And for us as a church, that's the most important thing in all of our life together, that we know and that we do the will of our Father. His will is wrapped up in our love toward one another, our compassion toward one another, our service in this community. Everything that we do is wrapped up in the will of our Father.

And here, as we see the will of the Son of God to do the will of His own Father. It stands there for us that we would look at Him and we would long to be like Him to do the will of our Father so that others might be saved as well, in the same way that He saved us by the doing of His Father's will for us. Romans 8.3 says, and I'll close with this, for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Would you pray with me?

Oh Lord, Lord we thank you that your Son walked in the Spirit, that your Son bore our sins, that your Son drank the condemnation and the filth to the dregs, so that we might have freedom, so that there could be hope for us. Oh Lord, that You would come and work all these things out on us, that You would give us such a will to do Your will, that we would delight to do your will. Oh Lord, we thank you for the suffering of your Son. Amen.