Sep 12
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The Agony in Gethsemane
The following is from Spurgeon’s sermon, “The Agony in Gethsemane” #1199. Luke 22:44
“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Matthew 26:38
“And being in agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Luke 22:44
See the excellence and completeness of the atonement of Christ!
How black I am, how filthy, how loathsome in the sight of God; I feel myself only fit to be cast into the lowest hell, and I wonder that God has not long ago cast me there.
But I go into Gethsemane, and I peer under those gnarled olive trees, and I see my Savior!
Yes, I see him wallowing on the ground in anguish, and hear such groans come from him as never came from human breast before.
I look upon the ground and see it red with his blood, while his face is smeared with gory sweat, and I say to myself, “My God, my Savior, why do you suffer so?” I hear him reply, “I am suffering for your sin.”
Now I can understand how Jehovah can spare me, because he smote his Son in my stead! Sinner as I am, I stand before the burning throne of the severity of God, and am not afraid of it. Can you scorch me, O consuming fire, when you have not only scorched, but utterly consumed my substitute?
All hell was distilled into that cup of which Jesus Christ was made to drink. The woe that broke over the Savior’s spirit, the great and fathomless ocean of inexpressible anguish which dashed over the Savior’s soul when he died, was inconceivable.
Our Lord’s main suffering lay in his soul. His soul-sufferings were the soul of his sufferings.His position as a sin-bearer, and the desertion by his Father engrossed his contemplations. The bloody sweat of Jesus came from an
utter faintness and prostration of soul.
He was in an awful soul-swoon, and suffered an inward death, whose accompaniment was not watery tears from the eyes, but a weeping of blood from the entire man.
He could say with David, “The pains of hell got hold upon me.”
All God’s waves and billows went over him. Above him, beneath him, around him, and within, all, all was anguish.
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January 7—Evening—Lamentations 1:12
“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.”—Lamentations i. 12.
Dearest Jesus! I would sit down this evening, and looking up to thee, ask the instructions of thy blessed Spirit, to unfold some of the many tender inquiries wrapped up in this question of my Lord’s. Whatever the mournful prophet’s views were of the churches sorrow, when he wrote his book of Lamentations, surely sorrow never had its full potion poured out, but in the cup of trembling which thou didst drink. And as in all the afflictions of thy people, thou wert afflicted, added to all thine own personal sufferings, their’s also thou didst sustain. And where shall I begin, dear Lord, to mark down the amazing history of thy sorrow? From the manger to the cross, every path was suffering. Indeed thou art, by way of emphasis, called ” the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Thorns and thistles the earth is made to bring forth, to human nature at large; but as in taking away this curse, thou becamest a curse for thy people, none but thyself, dearest Jesus, was ever crowned with thorns; as if to testify the supremacy of thy sufferings. And did all our curses indeed fall upon thee? Was all the Father’s wrath in the full vials of his anger against sin, made to light upon thee? Didst thou wade through all and sustain all, and bear all, on purpose that thy redeemed might be delivered? Did great drops of blood in a cold night (when a fire of coals became needful to warm thy disciples) fall from thy sacred body, from the agony of thy soul’s suffering? Did the Son of God, who from all eternity lay in his bosom, the only begotten and dearly beloved of his affection, indeed die under amazement and exceeding sorrow, and the cry of his soul issue forth of his Father’s desertion? Were these among the sorrows of Jesus? And is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Is it nothing to you, Oh! ye that by disregard and indifference would crucify the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame? Come hither, ye careless and unconcerned; come hither, ye fools, that make a mock of sin; come hither, ye drunkards and defiled of every description and character, whose cups of licentiousness and mirth have mingled for him the wormwood and the gall; behold Jesus, and say, “is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” My soul, bring the question home to thine own heart, and never give over the solemn meditation. It is indeed to thee every thing that is momentous and eternally interesting. Yes! precious Jesus! every wound of thine speaks; every feature, every groan, every cry pleads for me, and with me. If I forget thee, O thou bleeding Lamb! let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; yea, if I prefer not the solemn meditation of Gethsemane and Calvary above my chief joy.- Robert Hawker –poor man’s morning and evening portion.
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The mystery of the cross
Why was it a necessity for the LORD to lay on Christ the iniquity of His people before bruising Him? All our hope, brethren, is that the judge of all the earth shall do right! (Prov. 17:15). The whole purpose for which the Lord Jesus laid down His life was to declare the righteousness of God. But if iniquity itself had not been laid upon Christ, it had been injustice for the Lord to have bruised him. The mystery of the cross is not that God punished one who was innocent, though Christ knew no sin of himself.
The mystery of the cross is that the Just One willingly submitted himself to the LORD who took the iniquity off his children and laid it upon Christ making him sin so that God was just to pour out wrath upon Christ (I Pet. 2:24; Is. 53:6, 11-12; 2 Cor. 5:21). Then in perfect harmony with holy justice “he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.” This amazing faithful act of God’s Servant was both the complete active fulfillment of the law (and the fulfillment of the penalty of the law for the elect of God. Those born of the Spirit of Christ are made partakers of the divine nature so that we believe on Christ in whom we have established the law and by the constraint of his love for us by which Christ has made us complete in him we walk with him daily.-Clay Curtis.
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Bought with a high price!
(Spurgeon, “Bought with a Price” #1004)
“For God bought you with a high price.”
1 Cor. 6:20
Refresh in your souls a sense of the fact that you are “bought with a high price.”
There in the midnight hour, amid the olives of Gethsemane, kneels Immanuel the Son of God; he groans, he pleads in prayer, he wrestles. See the beady drops stand on his brow, drops of sweat, but not of such sweat as pours from
men when they earn the bread of life, but the sweat of him who is procuring life itself for us. It is blood! It is crimson blood! Great gouts of it are falling to the ground! O soul, your Savior speaks to you from out Gethsemane at this hour, and he says: “Here and thus I bought you with a price.” Come, stand and view him in the agony of the olive garden, and understand at what a cost
he procured your deliverance. Track him in all his path of shame and sorrow until you see him at Gabbatha. Mark how they bind his hands and fasten him to the whipping-post. See, they bring the scourges and the cruel Roman whips; they tear his flesh; the ploughers make deep furrows on his blessed body, and the blood gushes forth in streams, while rivulets from his temples, where the crown of thorns has pierced them, join to swell the purple stream. From beneath the scourges he speaks to you with accents soft and low, and he says, “My child, it is here and thus I bought you with a price.”
But see him on the cross itself when the consummation of all has come. His hands and feet are fountains of blood, his soul is full of anguish even to heartbreak; and there, before the soldier pierces with a spear his side, bowing down he whispers to you and to me, “It was here and thus, I bought you with a high price.”
O by Gethsemane, by Gabbatha, by Golgotha, by every sacred name collected with the passion of our Lord; by sponge and vinegar, and nail and spear, and everything that enlarged the pain and increased the anguish of his death, I implore you, my beloved brethren, to remember that you were bought with a high price,” and “are not your own.”
Yes! it is a cheering consolation, that He who suggested the merciful excuse for the sleepers in Gethsemane—”the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,” He will “gently lead” the Little-faiths and Ready-to-halts—as well as the Samsons and Asahels of His flock. Often does He come in the night-seasons of their darkest doubt, and lights the dim candle of faith and hope and loving confidence. Just as a mother, when her child awakes at midnight, frightened and scared with visions, strikes a light and illuminates the chamber, smoothing the ruffled brow, and kissing every fear away—so does the Lord remove the gloomy misgivings of His children—”You,” says the Psalmist, “will light my candle, the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.” -John MacDuff extract from the shepherds gentle dealings with the burdened of the flock.
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It was not the nails
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Mark 15:34
It was not the nails driven through His hands and feet—it was not the crown of thorns placed upon His brow—it was not the stripes which mangled His back—it was not the languor and faintness under which He suffered—that caused the Lord to die. It was not the mere bodily agony of the cross—it was not the mere pain, though most acute and severe, of the nails driven through His sacred hands and feet. It was not the being stretched upon the cross six hours, that constituted the chief part of the Redeemer’s suffering.
But it was the almost intolerable load of imputed sin—the imputed sins of millions—it was the tremendous pouring of the wrath of God into His holy soul—it was the hiding of His Father’s face, and the very pangs of hell that there caught hold of Him! Our suffering Savior drank the cup of the wrath of God to the very dregs—when our vile, dreadful, and horrible sins were laid upon Him! “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief: when You shall make His soul an offering for sin.” Isaiah 53:10 J.C.Philpot.
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Lord, ’tis not that I did choose Thee;
That, I know, could never be;
For this heart would still refuse Thee
Had Thy grace not chosen me.
Thou hast from the sin that stained me
Washed and cleansed and set me free
And unto this end ordained me,
That I ever live to Thee.
‘Twas Thy grace in Christ that called me,
Taught my darkened heart and mind;
Else the world had yet enthralled me,
To Thy heavenly glories blind.
Now my heart owns none above Thee;
For Thy grace alone I thirst,
Knowing well that, if I love Thee,
Thou, O Lord, didst love me first.
Praise the God of all creation;
Praise the Father’s boundless love.
Praise the Lamb, our Expiation,
Priest and King enthroned above.
Praise the Spirit of salvation,
Him by whom our spirits live.
Undivided adoration
To the great Jehovah give.
Josiah Conder,1836.