If you are willing {Luke 22}

12:30 AM


October 9, 2018



“One day, Jesus said to His disciples, There will always be temptations to sin…”  Luke 17:1

“Pray that you will not be overcome by temptation.”  v. 40  In other words, pray in the crisis, that temptation will not get the better of you.  Notice that Jesus doesn’t encourage them to pray that they won’t be tempted.  Temptation is a fact of life that neither we nor Jesus can escape.  But it’s the prayer that they won’t “enter into”, or “be overcome” or give into temptation.

How do we resist temptation?

Through prayer.

That’s the simple, but vital lesson of this passage.  It's the communion with the Lord that we develop through prayer and become like Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Imagine being “about a stone’s throw” away from someone.  It’s a short distance, but you can see and hear the person.  In this passage, Jesus’ posture for praying is different.  He kneels.  Typical Jewish prayer posture of the day was standing, with arms open and eyes lifted to heaven.

Ok, so Jesus is just a stone’s throw away and there’s no doubt the disciples heard His prayer.  Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me.”  Just a few chapters earlier in Luke 5, a man with leprosy asked Jesus to heal him if He was willing.  But now, Jesus is asking His Father “if you are willing.”  Only Jesus adds, “Yet, I want your will, not mine.”

Jesus listens.  Matthew and Mark record that Jesus prayed this prayer three times.  Three times!!!!  We tend to flit into the throne room and toss God a contract containing our plans and ask for His signature.  “Please God, rubber stamp this for me.”

Not Jesus.  He doesn’t ask if the Father will permit it.  It’s more if He desires it.  And that’s a huge difference.  Only Father, if you desire it, do I make this petition. 

Jesus had a mission.  On earth, Jesus wasn’t all knowing.  This was part of the glory of divinity that he voluntarily laid aside for a time (Philippians 2:7) when He “emptied” Himself.  As He prepared for His ministry before and after His baptism, and then in the desert, the Father revealed to Him the full scope of the “cup” that He would drink, the destiny to which He was called, the mission He was sent to accomplish.  The scriptures spoke to Him as His Father interpreted them to Him.

As Jesus read Isaiah 53, He begins to understand.  He’s not just a teacher of the truth.  He IS the Redeemer.


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Jesus is the Sacrifice itself.  He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).  He doesn’t come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).  He is the sin-bearer for the people.  He is the righteous one who dies for the sins of the unrighteous to bring them to God (1 Peter 3:18).

But the destiny of the sin-bear is utter desecration as the horrible, despicable sins of mankind begin to weigh upon Him with an unbearable weight of filth before the Lord.  Lust.  Hatred.  Greed.  Deceit.  Theft.  Promiscuity.  Anger.  Murder.  Selfishness.  Betrayal.  Sins that deserve death.  Iniquities that inevitably drive their perpetrators into the lake of fire prepared for Satan and his angels (Revelation 20:14-15; 21:8; Matthew 25:41).  In the Garden Jesus can almost feel what it will be like tomorrow when the sheer weight of the sins of His people literally crush Him and snuff out His life.

And what about His blessed communion with His Father?  How can that continue while He becomes fatally infected with sin, and sins, and innumerable sins of billions and billions of people who inhabit and who had inhabited and who will inhabit this world?  Where is that sweet fellowship and trust?  Of prayer and joy in His Father?  There is no fellowship with sin or the sin-bearer.  It’s no wonder the agony shouts out on the cross the cry of desolation that begins Psalm 22:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”  (Mark 15:34)

We may know what pain and agony feels like.  I’m assuming none of us know what it must be like to be tortured to death until we suffocate while upright, too weak to lift our bodies to take another breath.  But the crushing load of sin?  How can we understand that?

Can you imagine what the pain must have been for the Father?  Can you imagine how the very unity of the Trinity is threatened by the cross?  This is truly the tension of love stretched to its very limits in putting to death the Son for sin. 

But we do know that, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not parish, but have everlasting life.”  (John 3:16)

We also know that Jesus, “for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  (Hebrews 12:2)

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His cup was drunk down to the very dregs, to take on Himself the wrath of God that we deserve for our sin.  Can we fault Him for praying, “Take this cup from me”?

But Jesus yields, submits, and surrenders to the Father’s decision.  Jesus has a preference – that the cup be removed.  But He voluntarily surrenders that preference if the Father’s will differs.

Too often we make the mistake of praying surrender prayers without ever owning up to our own will in the matter.  Instead of petitioning God to do any specific thing at all, we pray:  “Let your will be done.”  That’s is good, but that’s not the real petition, and sometimes it can be a cop-out for determining how we really should pray.  It is not wrong to come to God with a preference.  We should follow Jesus, after we have clearly stated our preference openly, it is then appropriate to pray, “yet not my will, but yours be done.”

If we never state and deliberately set aside for the moment our own preference, we run the risk of “hearing” God say what we might want Him to say.  It is important to sort out what we want and ask for that – it’s not wrong – before submitting to God’s will, whatever that might be.  Our will may very well be God’s will.  But it may not be.  To discern God’s will, we must state our own will and then surrender it to God.  We need to become neutral about the outcome if God were to desire some other outcome than ours.  That is real surrender.

We have one of the foundational prayers in the bible from Jesus in the Garden.  Let us all learn this lesson well.


Lisa


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