Illustration – Tim Hansel, in You Gotta Keep Dancin’, writes Most of the Psalms were born in difficulty. Most of the Epistles were written in prisons. Most of the greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers of all time had to pass through the fire. Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress from jail. Florence Nightingale, too ill to move from her bed, reorganized the hospitals of England. Semi-paralyzed and under the constant menace of apoplexy, Pasteur was tireless in his attack on disease. During the greater part of his life, American historian Francis Parkman suffered so acutely that he could not work for more than five minutes at a time. His eyesight was so wretched that he could only scrawl only a few gigantic words on a manuscript, yet he contrived to write twenty magnificent volumes of history. Sometime it seems that when God is about to make preeminent use of a man, he puts him through the fire.
Context – All of us who has been used by God has experienced this. And often we feel alone in going through our trials, but as today’s Scripture will show us, Jesus walked through the fire too. Let’s read together Luke 22:39-53.
Scripture Passage
Luke 22:39-53 - Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. 40 On reaching the place, he said to them, "Pray that you will not fall into temptation." 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. 45 When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. 46 "Why are you sleeping?" he asked them. "Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation." 47 While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, 48 but Jesus asked him, "Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?" 49 When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?" 50 And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. 51 But Jesus answered, "No more of this!" And he touched the man’s ear and healed him. 52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? 53 Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns."
Everyone struggles with obeying God at one time or another. And obeying God seems like an impossible task when we’re going through the fire. But Jesus gives us the key to obedience in this passage, and that’s what we’re going to take a look at today.
Reactions to the Threat
Now if it were you or me in the garden that night, how would we have acted? I like to think that I would have been calm and collected like Jesus was, but that’s just wishful thinking. I would have been like Peter, who another gospel identifies as the one who cut the servant’s ear off. I would have swung the sword, trying to decapitate him but missing badly enough to only get the ear. Actually, I probably would have totally missed. More likely than not, just about all of us would have had the same approach as Peter. But on the other hand we have Jesus.
It is so easy for us to say, "Jesus is the Son of God, so it was much easier for Him than it would have been for me!" Hebrews 4:15 says of Jesus, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. Hebrews 2:18 nails the door shut on our cop-outs - Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Many over the years have tried to deny, or at least minimize, the humanity of Jesus because their minds cannot comprehend the concept of Someone who is both fully human and fully God. I confess that I really can’t fathom it either, but that doesn’t make this God-Man an impossibility! If reality is limited to what I can figure out, we’re all in trouble!
Was Jesus tempted to call in the angel battalions when He saw the mob coming? Probably yes. But He didn’t, and while the key words are found in the phrase "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done", the keys to His obedience to God are more that this one phrase. Jesus wanted His own will – He wanted to avoid the pain and anguish He knew was coming – but He wanted God’s will even more. We too can want God’s will more than ours. Let’s take a look at the keys to having this kind of life focus.
The Keys to Overcoming
The first and perhaps greatest key to being able to handle tough situations is found in verse 39 - Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives. Jesus was in the habit of going to quiet places to pray to God. It was part of His lifestyle. If we’re going to make it through life’s hardest trials and remain true to our faith, we have to live a lifestyle of prayer. As a matter of fact, if we commit ourselves to living a lifestyle of prayer, true communication with God and not just treating Him like a heavenly version of the Home Shopping Channel, we will live a lifestyle of wholehearted devotion to God. That is how crucial prayer is. Oswald Chambers said, "Prayer doesn’t prepare us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work." The first key to overcoming trials while keeping our commitment to our God is to live a lifestyle of prayer.
The second key is found in verse forty – "Pray that you will not fall into temptation." Focusing our prayer on God’s ability to keep us from fall into temptation is critical to the survival of our faith. We can all think of those involved in ministry who fell hard into sin. My guess is that they probably spent more time treasuring their temptations than in praying to be kept from them. There is a small but very important book out by Bruce Wilkinson called "The Prayer of Jabez." In 1 Chronicles 4:10, Jabez prayed, reading from the New King James, "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain." And God granted him what he requested. Jabez prayed that he would be kept from evil so that he wouldn’t hurt others, and God answered his prayer. Jesus considered it important enough to issue a warning to His disciples. It was probably a prayer that Jesus Himself prayed often. So the second key to overcoming the trials that threaten to bury our faith is to pray regularly that we won’t fall into temptation.
Living a lifestyle of prayer and regularly praying that we won’t fall into temptation are crucial, but by themselves they are not enough. Jesus knelt down to pray, and the emphasis in the Greek is that of bowing down before a king. In other words, Jesus knew and acknowledged Who was Boss. Then He prayed, but not some King James prayer like we sometimes mouth that sounds great and godly but still seeks to enforce our will on God. Jesus prayed, "Dad, I’d really rather not go through this, and every part of me says no thank you, but what I want isn’t important. What You want is more important, and even though it’s going to tough, I’ll do what You want instead." Call it the Hawes Revised Version, but that was the intent of what Jesus prayed. And He didn’t just mouth it; He struggled with it in prayer. Verse 44 – And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. It wasn’t easy, but He made the decision and the commitment to follow God’s will no matter what it cost Him personally. The third key to making it through the tough times with our faith intact is to wrestle in prayer until we are willing to do what God wants us to no matter what, and not just mouthing the words, but truly meaning it with every fiber of our being. Otherwise we will flake out. We have to wrestle through to obedience. That is the third key.
The fourth key we find in this passage is that of actually walking what we have prayed. Obeying in the face of impossible odds. Jesus could have called in the angel armies. He could have escaped without harm. In fact, His disciples had swords and used them, albeit incompetently. But Jesus didn’t just talk the talk; He walked the talk. He followed a lifestyle of prayer, He prayed not to fall into temptation, He wrestled in prayer until He was completely committed to the Father’s will, and then He obeyed the Father’s will. The first three steps are nothing if there is no follow-through. We have to walk the talk.
James Packer, in Father Loves You, writes, Grace is God drawing sinners closer and closer to him. How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the world, the flesh, and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstance, not yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology, but rather by exposing us to these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort or another – it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defense, and a sure refuge and help for the weak is that God spends so much of his time showing us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find or follow the right road. When we walk along a clear road feeling fine, and someone takes our arm to help us, likely we would impatiently shake him off; but when we are caught in rough country in the dark, with a storm brewing and our strength spent, and someone takes our arm to help us, we would thankfully lean on him. And God wants us to feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing, so that we may learn to lean on him thankfully. Therefore he takes steps to drive us out of self-confidence to trust in himself, to – in the classic scriptural phrase for the secret of the godly man’s life – "wait on the Lord." Trials are going to come – we know that in our hearts but our heads are often in denial! Let’s allow God to use the tough times to drive us to Him, and then to use us for even greater things!
Conclusion
What are you struggling with? Jesus went through every temptation that we do, and it was just as hard for Him as it is for us, but He didn’t sin. That tells us two things: first that He understands how we feel, and second, that He can show us the path to take. Jesus prepared Himself for the greatest work that God had for Him by living a lifestyle of prayer, praying that He wouldn’t fall into temptation, wrestling until God’s will really was more important than His, and then by obeying. If we do the same and rely on Him to show us the way, we too will make it through the toughest trials remaining true to the faith.
So I ask again, what are you struggling with? Jesus is our strength and encouragement. If you need His help to overcome the tough time you’re going through, all you have to do is ask, then obey. If you want to tell Jesus that you are willing to obey Him and follow His example, then I’ll give you two choices. With every head bowed and every eye closed, you can either come forward and pray, or you can raise your hand where you’re at and we’ll pray for you. Answer God’s call on your heart today.