LS-40-Gethsemane
Gethsemane
Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto His disciples, Sit ye here, while I go yonder and pray.--Matthew 26:36. When the Moravian missionaries began their work in Greenland, they proclaimed the great God and His rightful requirements of men. It seemed to them that there was little use in preaching anything else till this was accepted. But nobody accepted it, or cared even to hear about it. It was the story of the Garden of Gethsemane that moved the first soul. The love and sympathy of God as revealed in Jesus Christ was the moving power of the gospel, and opened the hearts of these people to receive the word of life. The Moravians realised they had been wrong in their approach to these people, and were wise enough to change their method.
It moves our hearts too, the story of Gethsemane, as often as we read it. How simply, and how graphically, do the evangelists describe the scene! The first writer says that when our Saviour came into the garden "he began to be sorrowful and very heavy." Other translations of the same passage are: "He began to feel distressed and agitated;" "We began to be full of terror and distress." The second gospel adds this further word: "He began to be amazed." Another translation of this passage is "He began to feel appalled." The third gospel, describing the Master’s experience a few minutes later, says, "And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly." Thus in a few vivid touches they set before us a scene of overwhelming amazement and terror.
They quote His own words too spoken to the little group of intimates who went with Him into the recesses of the garden: "My soul is crushed with anguish even to the point of death." Does He mean that His physical strength had reached its limit, and that the thread of life was about to snap under the strain of His grief and despair?
We may not lightly seek to probe the depths of the experience into which the Saviour entered at this time. It is not a subject for curious investigation Or psychological study. I have heard preachers describe this scene so callously as to make the hair stand and the blood run cold. But this is holy ground. We must tread reverently here. But we must not avoid it. It has many lessons to teach us. Let this be our thought this morning--the strangely moving power of the story that reveals the sacrificial love of the Lord Jesus. It is a story of redemptive suffering that has moved the world to all nobility of thought and life. We shall be better men and women for this brief visit, with understanding and reverence, to the Garden of Gethsemane.