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.
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)
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