Victory in the Garden

• On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus struggled mightily in prayer. And the struggle revolved around an issue that we all have to deal with - the issue of self-will.

• Jesus was the Son of God incarnate. That means that, in an incredibly unique way, he was both human and divine. He had a human nature and a divine nature, and therefore he had two wills—a human will and a divine will. In that sense, he was unlike any of us, because we have only one nature and one will.

• Theologians wrestled with the issue of the exact relationship between Jesus’ two wills and two natures for centuries.

• Now with his human will, Jesus did not want to die. Like any of us, he wanted to live. And that is not wrong. That is not sinful. I’m not suggesting that Jesus’ had a sinful nature, or that he was being selfish here. It is only human to want to live. Every fiber of his magnificent humanity cried out to avoid what he knew was coming.

• But with his divine will, he wanted to do what God wanted Him to—and that was to lay down his life as our substitute.

• And in this prayer in the Garden, we see something of this inner struggle. His two wills are wrestling over this issue of life or death. Look at verse 34: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”

• Look at verse 36: “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.” Now which of Jesus’ wills was speaking there? It was his human will. It was his human nature. He didn’t want to die. If only there was some other way.

• But then look at what he says… “Yet not what I will but what you will.” Which part of him was speaking there? His divine will. That part of him that wanted to do God’s will no matter what.

• Q. Which of Jesus’ wills won the battle? His divine will. Jesus’ divine will overruled his human will, and so he was ultimately willing to go to the cross. And everything that happens from that point on shows us that Jesus’ desire to do the will of the Father superseded his normal human desire for self-protection, for self-preservation. He had won the victory over self-will. And that victory was won in the Garden, in prayer.

• Now while Jesus had been praying, the disciples had been snoring. But then all of a sudden, a large crowd burst into that tranquil place. They are carrying torches and lanterns. Some of them are soldiers. Some of them are government officials. All of them are expecting trouble because they are heavily armed—swords, clubs, spears.

• Leading this small army is none other than Judas Iscariot—former friend and follower of Jesus. The Gospel writers are still calling him “one of the Twelve”, as though they still can’t believe that Judas has actually deserted them.

• Turns out that this is a posse. An arrest party. They’ve been deputized by the highest authorities in the land. And they’ve come to put the collar on Jesus. To bring him in. To book him.

• This is a power play—that’s why they brought weapons. They were ready for a pitched battle. And Peter—good old, impetuous, talk-now-think-later, lead-with-your-mouth- and-follow-with-your-brain Peter—the guy Jesus nicknamed Rocky because he had rocks in his head—almost gave them what they wanted. Peter was ready to declare war.

• It says in the Gospels that Judas came up and kissed Jesus to signal that this was the man they had to arrest. And when they stepped forward to seize him, Peter whipped out a sword and took a wild swing at the high priest’s servant—a man named Malchus. He was probably trying to cut the guy’s head off, but he missed and only got his ear. (You have to realize that Peter was a fisherman. The only heads he had ever chopped off belonged to fish.)

• Now at this point, I’m sure that everybody in the crowd went for their swords. You can almost hear the sound of cold steel being drawn out of leather sheaths. Malchus is probably writhing in pain, a bloody hand covering the hole where his ear once was. This situation is about to hit the fan.

• Then Jesus steps in and takes control. He does something very strange. Instead of congratulating Peter for sticking up for him, he rebukes him. (I’m reading from Matthew 26:52…)

• “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”

• And then he reaches out and, according to Dr. Luke, he touches the man’s ear and heals him. This is the last miracle Jesus does before the Cross. He heals a wound that one of his own followers has inflicted on one of his enemies. After this miracle, Jesus does no more miracles.

• Wouldn’t Good Friday have been a perfect day to do some really big miracles? Jesus could have turned the soldiers into stone. Turned Pilate into a pig.

• But no. The next thing Jesus did, after healing Malchus’ ear, was to hold out his hands for them to tie up. He simply and quietly surrendered. Why?

• Because he had already decided whose will he was going to do: the Father’s.

• As human beings, our tendency is to want to respond the way Peter responded. To whip out our swords and lash out. To fight fire with fire. To muster all the power and influence we can as Christians and simply impose our will on the forces of evil. To ram righteousness down our enemies’ throats.

• But when we do that, we are not following Jesus.

• When Peter pulled out his sword, he was running ahead of God. He was trusting in the arm of flesh, just as Moses did when he killed the Egyptian. He was trying to fight a spiritual battle with physical weapons. He used the wrong weapon at the wrong time for the wrong purpose with the wrong motive because he hadn’t won the battle over self-will.

• And look at the result. Peter did not achieve his goal by what he did. He did not bring glory to God. And neither do we when we try to live the Christian life in the power of our flesh. We need to gain the victory over self-will.

• We need to surrender ourselves and let God fill us with his grace. The grace that causes us to bless our enemies rather than blast them. The same grace that motivated Jesus to go to the cross for us. The grace that is greater than all our sin.

• Let’s sing about that grace by turning to #201 in our hymnals.

• Victory in the Guardroom - Mark 14:53ff

• They took Jesus to the house of Caiaphas, the high priest. Many people stood up and testified against Jesus falsely, but their testimony did not agree. Then the high priest accused him of blasphemy, and the people began to spit at him. The guards blindfolded him and struck him with their fists. They beat him up.

• What did Jesus do? How did he respond?

1 Peter 2:23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.

• Why? Because he had won the battle over self-will. But what about Peter? He had followed Jesus into the outer courtyard. “There he sat with the guards and warmed himself.” (Mk. 14:54)

• And, like Paul Harvey says, we know the rest of the story. A young servant girl comes by. She accuses Peter of being one of Jesus’ followers. Peter denies it and goes out to the doorway. It’s getting a little too hot by the fire!

• Then the servant girl says it again (v. 69) “This fellow is one of them.” Again, Peter denies it.

• Finally, the people who were standing near say to Peter “Hey, you must be one of Jesus’ followers. You look like a Galilean, you talk like a Galilean, you even smell like a Galilean. You’re one of Jesus’ followers, aren’t you?”

• And Peter begins calling down curses on himself and swears to them: “I don’t know this man you’re talking about!”

• Q. What made Peter do that? Self-preservation. When the chips were down and the pressure was on and it was getting really dangerous to be identified with Jesus, Peter cut and ran. Because he was still being controlled by self. And self thinks only about self-preservation. Even if you have to turn your back on the Son of God, that’s what self will do.

• That’s why it is necessary, if I am going to follow Jesus Christ, to deny myself and take up my cross and follow Him. If I try to follow Jesus in the power of my flesh, sooner or later, I am going to deny him. What happened to Peter in the guardroom proves that.

• They dragged Jesus before Pilate, the Roman governor. He pronounced the death sentence, even though he knew that Jesus was an innocent man. (You see, Pilate too was interested in self-preservation.)

• That is how Jesus came to be under the tender loving care of a Roman execution squad in the Fortress Antonia. I’ve been to Jerusalem and seen where the Fortress Antonia once stood.

• On the pavement in the courtyard where the Antonia Fortress once stood are two inscribed markings. You can still see them there today. One is the drawing of a scorpion. A scorpion was the symbol of the Ninth Roman Legion—the very legion that we know was stationed in Judea in 30 A.D.

• The other is a drawing of a circle with certain symbols in it—a crown, a scepter, a robe. Historians tell us that it is the game board for a game the soldiers called the Game of the King. Once a year, the Roman governor would give the soldiers a prisoner to do with what they would really like to do to Caesar.

• So they would play the Game of the King with him. They would throw the dice and move the marker around the game board. When it landed on the crown, they would jam a homemade crown of thorns onto the prisoner’s head. When it landed on the robe, they would drape his bloody shoulders with a purple robe and laughingly bow in homage.

• When it landed on the scepter, they would put a rod in his hand, and then snatch it away again and smash him in the face with it. And when the soldiers finally tired of their game, they would take the prisoner out and crucify him.

• That’s what they did to Jesus.

• O sacred head now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,

• Now scornfully surrounded with thorns thine only crown.

• How pale thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn,

• How does that visage languish, which once was bright as morn!

• Turn in your hymnal to #178 and we will sing that hymn together.

• Victory at Golgotha

• They took Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem to a place outside the city called Golgotha—which means the place of the skull.

• And there, they nailed long iron spikes through his wrists and his ankles and pinned him to a rough-hewn cross. Crucifixion is said to be the worst possible way for a person to die.

• Quite apart from the excruciating pain of having spikes through your hands and feet, what happens is that all the weight of your body comes down on your rib-cage, and it becomes difficult to breathe.

• You slowly asphyxiate. You try to pull your body up in order to fill your lungs, but the incredible pain from your hands and feet makes it impossible. Eventually, the crushing weight pulls your shoulders out of their sockets, making it even more difficult to support your weight.

• As the sun burns down on you, you slowly begin to dehydrate, but in the meantime, your lungs are filling up with fluid. Your body goes deeper and deeper into shock. Some victims of crucifixion lasted for days in agony.

• It’s no wonder that back in the 1st century A.D., you didn’t even use the word “crucify” in polite company—it was regarded with such dread.

• And this is the kind of death Jesus died for us. While he hung on the cross, Jesus said “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” And were it not for the fact that Jesus had won the victory over his own human will, we would never have received forgiveness from God.

• Once upon a time, there was a young Russian soldier who served in the army

• of Czar Nicholas 1. He had been made a paymaster in one of the barracks. But the young man was a gambler, and pretty soon, he had gambled away not only all of his own money, but the money he had been entrusted with as paymaster as well.

• The day came for inspection of his accounts. The representative of the Czar was on his way. The young man knew he was in a lot of trouble. As he looked at his books, and what he owed the government, he was overwhelmed at where his gambling had got him. He was ruined, and in a few hours he would be disgraced as well.

• At last, in misery, he decided to take his own life. He pulled out his revolver, placed it on the table before him, and wrote out a summary of his misdeeds. At the bottom of the ledger, where he had totaled up his illegal expenditures, he wrote “A great debt. Who can pay?” He decided that at the stroke of midnight, he would die.

• As the evening wore on, he became drowsy and eventually fell asleep. That night, Czar Nicholas visited the barracks. Seeing a light on in the young man’s room, the Czar stopped and looked in. Finding the soldier asleep in the chair and noticing the pistol on the table, the Czar looked at the ledger. Immediately he understood what had happened. He was about to awaken the young man and place him under arrest, when his eye caught the message at the bottom of the sheet.

• Suddenly, with a surge of compassion, the Czar leaned over and wrote one word beside that note, and quietly withdrew from the room. The young man awoke later that night and seeing it was well past midnight, reached for his revolver to shoot himself. But his eye fell on the ledger and he saw something that had not been there before. There, beside his writing “A great debt. Who can pay?” was the word the Czar had written: “Nicholas”.

• The soldier was dumbfounded. It was unmistakably the Czar’s signature. He said to himself “The Czar must have come while I was asleep. He’s seen the ledger. He knows everything. Still he is willing to forgive me.”

• The young man then rested on the word of the czar and the next morning a messenger arrived from the palace with exactly the amount needed to pay the debt. Only the czar could pay, and the czar did pay.

• In the same way, only Jesus Christ was able to pay our debt to God. He loved us so much that he was willing to be placed on the cross to be our sin-bearer.

• A great debt. Who can pay? Only Jesus.