XI
OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. i.
"Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder."--Matt. xxvi. 36.
Gethsemane can I forget?
Or there Thy conflict see,
Thine agony and bloody sweat,--
And not remember Thee?
"THEN cometh Jesus with them unto a place called
Gethsemane," says Matthew, who was one of them.
"And when they had sung an hymn, they went out
into the Mount of Olives," says Mark. "And He
came out," writes Luke, "and went, as He was
wont, to the Mount of Olives; and His disciples
also followed Him." And then, John, who also was
one of them, has it thus: "When Jesus had spoken
these words, He went forth with His disciples over
the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the
which He entered, and His disciples. And Judas
also, which betrayed Him, knew the place; for
Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with His disciples."
Where our version says "a place called
Gethsemane," the Vulgate version has "a villa": while
the Rheims version has in Matthew "a country
place," and in Mark "a farm"--"a farm called
Gethsemane." Now, there was in Gethsemane a
garden, and the owner of that garden had given
our Lord full permission to come and go in that
garden when and where He pleased. Make yourself
at home in my garden, said the owner of
Gethsemane to our Lord; and He did so. "It was His
wont to go out to that garden," says one of the
evangelists. "He ofttimes resorted thither," says
another.
When he is leading his readers up to all this,
Luke, with his practised pen, has two verses that
throw a flood of light on the whole of that Passover
week, so full of preaching and of prayer. "And
in the daytime He was teaching in the temple;
and at night He went out, and abode in the mount
that is called the Mount of Olives. And all the
people came early in the morning to Him in the
temple, for to hear Him." We have some of the
sermons of that Passover week preserved to this day
in the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th and 25th of Matthew;
and terrible sermons they must have been. They
are sufficiently terrible to read to this day: and
what must they have been to hear that week, and
to hear from the lips of the Lamb! So terrible was
His preaching that Passover week that it did more
than anything else to bring matters to a head, and
to a last issue, between the preacher and His
enemies. If true preaching does not subdue us, it
is sure to exasperate us. The better the preaching
is, the more it is either a savour of life or a savour
of death to him who hears it. "This was but a
matter of seven days before He was crucified,"
says Dr. Thomas Goodwin, one of the savouriest
of the Puritan preachers. "For, Christ when He
saw that He must die, and that now His time was
come, He wore His body out: He cared not, as it
were, what became of Him: He wholly spent
Himself in preaching all day, and in praying all
night": preaching in the temple those terrible
parables, and praying in the garden such prayers
as the 17th of John, and "Thy will be done!"
even to a bloody sweat.
"And they came to a place which was named
Gethsemane: and He saith to His disciples, sit ye
here, while I shall pray. And He taketh with Him
Peter and James and John. . . . And He was
withdrawn from them about a stone's-cast, and
kneeled down, and prayed." Now, if you knew
to a certainty that your last agony was to come
upon you this Sabbath night; if all your past sins
were this very night to find you out, and to be laid
of God and man upon you--before morning--how
many of us would you take with you? Christ took
His eleven disciples--but He soon saw that they
were far too many. Till He selected three, and
said to the rest, "Tarry ye here." Who of us,
and how many of us would you send for to-night,
if you know to a certainty that the wine-cup of the
wrath of God was to be put into your hands to-
night? Would you take your minister and your
elder, and who else to make up the three? John
Knox took his wife and said to her, "Read to me
that Scripture on which I first cast my anchor."
Have you a wife, or a mother, or a brother, or a
friend who sticketh closer to you than your brother,
whom you could let come within a stone's-cast of
your soul, when your agony was upon you? No.
Not one. We should all have to stand back when
the heaviness and the exceeding sorrow, and the
amazement and the great agony came, and the
bloody sweat.
Down to Gehenna, and up to the throne,
He travels the fastest, who travels alone.
"And He began to be sorrowful, and very heavy,"
says Matthew. But the second of the four Evangelists,
with those wonderful eyes of his, says a still
more startling thing. "He began to be sore amazed"
is Mark's inexpressibly striking contribution to this
awful, this absolutely unfathomable history. Our
words, our very best words--even the words in
which the Holy Ghost teaches us--all fail us here.
The best and the most expressive of our words
do not come near describing our Lord in anything
He was, or in anything He did. When our Lord
"began to be sore amazed and very heavy," it was
not such a beginning as ours even is. He began:
that is, He took a deliberate step: He performed
a deliberate act: He, of His own accord, opened
the doors of His soul: He poured in on His own
soul, He let pour, in all the unutterable woe of that
unutterably woeful night. We set ourselves, with
all our might, to see and to feel just what it was
that our Lord both did, and endured, that dreadful
night: but we give up the effort utterly baffled.
"It is too high, and we cannot attain to it." We
cannot wade out into all the waves of woe that went
over His soul that night and that morning. We
need not try it--for we cannot do it. He trod the
wine-press alone; and of the people there was none
with Him. We should need to be both God and
man, as He was: we should need to be the Lamb of
God, as he was: we should need to be "made sin,"
as He was--before we could possibly understand in
what way "He began to be sorrowful and very
heavy." The second Evangelist far surpasses all
the rest, and he far surpasses himself, in his extraordinarily
bolt and soul-piercing word--"He began
to be
sore amazed." Luther declared that, to him,
these words of Mark about our Lord were the most
astonishing words in the whole Bible. And that
saying of Luther's is to me a sure measure of the
greatness and the freshness of the Reformer's mind
and heart. Speaking for myself,--I have not come
on any word in the Bible that has more both
invited and then utterly baffled me to bottom than
just this word "amazed." I cannot
see my Lord's
human soul as I here seem to be invited in to see it.
I cannot picture to my mind His experience at that
supreme moment. What was it that so "amazed"
our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane? What was
there that could begin to so sore amaze Him to
whom all things were naked and open? There
was nothing that could so sore amaze the Son of
God, but only one thing. And that one thing was
sin. It was
sin "laid upon Himself" till He was
"made
sin." Sin is so unspeakably evil, and so
unspeakably awful in its evil, that it "sore amazed,"
and struck down, as to death and hell, the very
Son of God Himself. He had been "amazed"
enough at sin before now. He had seen sin making
angels of heaven into devils of hell. And He had
seen sin making men, made in the image of God,
to be the prey and the spoil, and the dwelling-places,
and the companions, of devils. He had seen and
He had studied all His days the whole malice and
wickedness of the heart of man. It had been amazement
and horror enough to stand and see deceit
and envy and pride, and all of that kind, as He
describes it in terrible words, "coming out of the
heart" of man. But it was a new thing to our
Lord to have all that poured in upon Himself. To
be
made sin "amazed" our Lord; it absolutely
overwhelmed Him,--cast Him into "an agony":
it loaded Him and sickened Him, and slew Him,
down to death and hell. A terror at sin and a
horror: a terror and a horror at Himself--to absolute
stupefaction--took possession of our Lord's
soul when He was
made sin. The only thing anywhere
at all like His amazement and heaviness,
and exceeding sorrow and anguish, is the amazement
and the heaviness, and exceeding sorrow
and utter anguish of God's saints; when, in their
life of highest holiness and most heavenly service,
they, at the same time, both see and feel that they
are still "made of sin," as Andrewes has it. Their
utter stupefaction of soul as they see all hell opening
and pouring up its bottomless wickedness all over their
soul,--that is to taste something of what is behind
of the 'amazement" of Christ. That is to drink of
His cup: that is to be baptized with His baptism.
It was sin that so amazed and agonised
our Lord. Take away all its terrible wages: take
away its sure and full discovery and exposure:
take away its dreadful remorse: take away both
the first and the second death: take away the day
of judgment and the fire that is not quenched,--all
which is the mere froth of the cup,--take away all
that, and leave pure sin: leave pure, essential,
unadulterated sin,--what the apostle so
masterfully calls "the sinfulness of sin." Conceive
that,
if you have the imagination. Look at
that, if your
eyes have been sufficiently anointed. Taste
that,
if your tongue is sufficiently tender and strong.
Carry about
that, continually, in a broken, prayerful,
holy heart--and you, of all men, are within a stone's-cast
of Christ in the garden: you are too near,
indeed, for mortal man to endure it long: if you
remain long there you will need an angel from heaven
to strengthen you.
It was not His approaching death. Death and
all its terrors did not much move, did not much
disconcert, did not much discompose our Lord. He
went up to meet His death with a calmness and
with a peacefulness of mind, with a stateliness and
with a serenity of soul that confounded the Roman
centurion, and almost converted the Governor
himself. No. It was not death: it was SIN. It
was that in which our mother conceived us: it was
that which we drink up like water. It was that
which we are full of, from the sole of the foot even
to the head. It was that which never cost us an
hour's sleep. It was that which never caused us--
it may be--a single moment of pain, or shame, or
amazement of soul. It was SIN. It was hell-fire
in His soul. It was the coals, and the oil, and the
rosin, and the juniper, and the turpentine of the fire
that is not quenched. "The sorrows of death
compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon
me. I found trouble and sorrow."
"We know that the law is spiritual: but I am
carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I
allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but
what I hate, that do I.... I find then a law, that,
when I would do good, evil is present with me....
Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver
me from the body of this death?... For the
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against
the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the
other."
That was not our Lord's amazement
and agony: but that is as near our Lord's
amazement and agony as any sinner can ever
come. Are you able to drink of My cup, and to be
baptized with My baptism?--Christ says to every
true disciple of His, as He leads him down into the
Gethsemane of his sanctification. Till, as his true
sanctification--so very heavy, so exceeding sorrowful,
so sore amazing--goes on, that man of God
enters into the "fellowship of the sufferings of
Christ"; to a depth of pain and shame and tears
and blood, that has to be hid away with Christ
among the wine-presses and the crosses and the
graves of the garden. For he--this elect soul--
wrestles not any more with flesh and blood, but
with principalities, and with powers, and with
spiritual wickednesses, in the high places of his own
soul.
"Who is this that cometh from Edom, with
dyed garments from Bozrah? ... Wherefore art
thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like
him that treadeth in the wine-fat?" The hollow
of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with
the angel. But with all that, there is one here
greater than our father Jacob. Jacob halted on his
thigh indeed, as he passed over Peniel. But our
Lord's sweat with
His agony was, as it were, great
drops of blood falling to the ground. When the
light of their lanterns shone on the dyed garments of
the betrayed Man, who came to meet them, the
Roman soldiers fell back. They had never before
bound such a prisoner as that. There is no swordstroke
that they can see upon Him; and yet His
hands and His head and His beard are all full of
blood. What a coat was that for which the soldiers
cast their lots! It was without seam, but,--all
the nitre and soap they could wash it with,--the
blood of the garden and of the pillar was so marked
upon it, that it would not come out of it. What
became, I wonder, of that "dyed" garment? and
all that "red apparel"?
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time Caesar ever put it on;
'Twas on a summer evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii:--
Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed;
And, as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark, how the blood of Caesar followed it, ...
Then burst his mighty heart:
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,--
Even at the base of Pompey's statue,
Which all the while ran blood--great Caesar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!...
Now let it work.
And as Peter preached on the day of Pentecost,
he lifted up the seamless robe he knew so well:
and, spreading it out in all its rents and all its bloodspots,
he charged his hearers, and said: "Him ye
have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified
and slain.... Therefore let all the house of Israel
know assuredly that God hath made that same
Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and
Christ."
"O piteous spectacle! O noble Caesar! O
woeful day! O most bloody sight! Most noble
Caesar, we'll revenge His death! O royal Caesar!
Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?
Now let it work!"
And, one way it will surely work is this,--to teach
us to pray, as He prayed. "And it came to pass,
that, as he was praying in a certain place,"--most
probably Gethsemane,--"when He ceased, one of
His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to
pray!"
1. Our blessed Lord had "a place" of prayer
that He was wont to retire to, till even Judas knew
the place. We should have said that the Son of
God did not need retirement and seclusion and
secrecy in order to seek and find His Father. We
should have said that He did not need our aids, and
instruments, and appliances, and means of grace.
He was always "in the spirit." He was always
collected, and disposed, and heavenly-minded.
And yet, for reasons of His own, our Lord had
a closed-in place of His own,--an olive-tree, a
wine-press, a stone's-cast out of sight, where He
sought and found His Father.
2. The wrestlers in the ancient lists went and
practised themselves on the spot where they were
to-morrow to close with their enemy. They went
down into the arena alone. They looked around.
They looked up at the seats where the spectators
would sit. They looked up at the throne in which
Caesar would sit. They looked well at the iron door
at which their enemy would come in. They felt
their flesh. They exercised their joints. They
threw, and were thrown, in imagination. And the
victory was won before the day of their agony
came. Pray much beside and upon your bed, my
brethren. You will die, as you hope, in your bed.
Well, make it, and yourself, ready. "Forefancy"
the last enemy. Have your harness in repair.
Feel the edge of your sword. Aye; cross the
Kedron sometimes, and stand beside your fast-opening
grave, and read your name on the cold
stone. For,
The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight.
3. And our last lesson in this: Non multa, sed
multum, that is to say, "One thing is needful."
The cup! the cup! the cup! Our Lord did not
use many words: but He used His few words
again and again, till,
this cup! and
Thy will!--
Thy will be done, and this cup--was all His prayer.
Cato the Censor,--it did not matter what he was
speaking about in the Senate house, or what bill
was upon the table--ended every speech of his
with the same gesture, and with the same defiant
exclamation,--
Delenda est Carthago! "The cup!"
"The cup!" "The cup!" cried Christ: first on
His feet: and then on His knees: and then on His
face. "Avenge me of mine adversary!" cried the
widow. "Avenge me of mine adversary! Avenge
me of mine adversary!" And, O God! this day,
from this day forward, avenge us of ours! Our one
and only enemy is sin.
Delenda, avenge!
Lord, teach us to pray.
Now let it work!
