Jonah Albrecht

Lent Midweek 2

Mark 14:32-41

Jesus Bore the Burden of Our Guilt

And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” 35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” 37 And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? 38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. 41 And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

INI, who came, not to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many, DFR:

The starting guard for the basketball team sits in the locker room and sweats. “One more hour,” he says to himself.  “Sixty minutes till tip-off in the biggest game of my life.”  Across town, a college student is frantically scanning her notes, cramming for her final exams the next day.  “In 24 hours,” she mutters to herself, “this will all be over.”  A few houses away a man is restless in his living room.  He is trying to watch television, but his mind keeps wandering away to the next day’s events.  He glances at the clock; in 12 short hours he will be unconscious on the operating table.

Have you ever felt that way?  Have you ever had an event so big and earth-shaking coming up that you actually counted down the hours until it happened?  Then maybe you can begin to appreciate how Jesus must have felt that Maundy Thursday evening as He left Jerusalem and headed for the Mount of Olives with His disciples.  In an hour he would be arrested. In 24 hours, He would be dead.  The eternal fate of every human being rested in his hands.  There was only a brief interlude, an hour of prayer standing between Him and the start of a terrible ordeal that He must go through.  But the place where He spent that last hour held a struggle all its own.  Tonight, we join Him there, as we continue on the Road to Easter, we remember that Jesus Bore the Burden of Our Guilt.

As the day is waning away, we see Jesus and His disciples making their way from the upper room, passing through the Lion’s Gate, and weaving through the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives. This wasn’t an unusual thing for Jesus to do; the disciples recognized it as a place they had gone to frequently. Sometimes it was to rest from the crowds, or for Jesus to teach His disciples, and other times just to pray. But tonight was different from those other times.

Our text says, And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” 35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

We see a different Jesus here, don’t we? Never before has He been in such a vulnerable position as this. We’ve come to know Jesus as the one who had an answer for everything. When faced with the hungry mouths of thousands, Jesus filled them with His blessing. Winds and crashing waves that threatened to capsize the boat were calm at His command. Even the dead sat up and came alive again by His Word. But tonight? Tonight, He is face down in the dirt, revealing a soul that is bursting from a terrible burden of anguish.

Mark tells us, He began to be greatly distressed and troubled. The word used to describe His agony means: the feeling of fear in the abdomen. The cold sweat, knotted stomach, the sickening sensation that one experiences when faced with great danger. This is nothing like you have ever experienced before. This bitter anguish, Jesus says, brought Him within inches of death.

What is the source of this bitter anguish? 36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Jesus is battling the heavy burden of our sins. He is being pressed down by the cup of wrath from the Righteous God over the sins of mankind. The burden is truly indescribable. This cup is so horrible that He prayed, “if there were any other possible way, to let this cup pass from Him.” It is even more striking when you consider the Source of this prayer. Here is the one who denied Himself food and comfort because He said, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Here is the Jesus who proclaimed, And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Now we see Him crushed underneath the agony that our sins deserved. The load so burdensome; the struggle so intense, that it brings the Son of Man to His knees.

Each one of us has been haunted by the burden of our sin. That is why you are here, isn’t it? Many people think, “My business is my own and no one else’s.” They don’t understand the true burden of their sin. But the sinner whose conscience is pricked by the Law of God knows. The terrified sinner comes crawling back like the Prodigal Son who was crushed and broken by his sin praying, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” It is the publican who couldn’t even raise his eyes to heaven, but beats his breast and cries out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”

How often do you live with regret; do you think back to those skeletons in your closet; do you wish you could take back that action, word, or thought, but it is too late? We see the effects of our sin and think, “If only I hadn’t done that.” We see our failures and think, “If only I had…” Our sin becomes this haunting burden that weighs us down and crushes our souls. That is what we see happening tonight to the Lamb of God. Like an olive in an olive press, Jesus is being pressed beneath the weight of our guilt; His sweat squeezed out in His anguish becomes great drops of blood.

But we see another important character in our account tonight. Not the disciples who were so proud to stand with Jesus, but were asleep on the ground. Rather, the One to whom Jesus is praying, God the Father. Throughout Jesus’ life the Father pronounced His approval of His Son, but now He must answer Jesus’ prayer: Save His Son, or save us. How does He respond?

It is subtle. We don’t hear the booming voice of the Father, but we do see a dramatic change in Jesus after the 3rd time He prayed. We don’t see the same broken and in bitter anguish Jesus as before. He is resolved and has set His eyes, once again to the cross all because He received an answer from the Father. Yes, it was His will for His Son to drain the cup of wrath in our place. It is exactly how Isaiah prophesied 700 years earlier, Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. 11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

It was God’s will to lift the burden and punishment of sin from our shoulders and place in on the head of His Son. Our guilt would be drained out on the cross because this was God’s plan from eternity. God determined that the cup of suffering would be pressed, not to the lips of those who deserve it, but to the mouth of our Savior.  Because He punished Jesus, God tells us, “For these My children were lost, but have been found!” “God was in Christ,” the Bible says, “Reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them.”

That’s the glory of the Lenten season.  The God against whom we have rebelled, has declared us righteous in His Son.  The Savior who struggled in Gethsemane, fearlessly walked the road to Calvary so that He might free us from our sins.  The journey that begins in the Garden of Gethsemane culminates in the Garden Tomb.  The resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday assures us that the victory has been won.  Your sins and mine have been atoned for in full.  Eternal life is reserved as our inheritance. Paul writes, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead!  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive!”

In the early days of our country, prisoners were forced to work in chain gangs.  Though they would we working outside of their prison cells, there was no hope of them escaping– either they were chained to each other, or they were chained to a heavy weight.  In the same way, you and I still have moments when we are haunted by guilt from the past.  We seem to be chained to an awful weight from which we cannot get free.  But remember, It only seems that way.  Thanks to Jesus the chains have been broken.  The guilt has been permanently removed.  We are free.  Let’s use our wonderful Gospel freedom to serve Him who bore our burden for us.  Amen.