This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day three of our look through Matthew chapter 26. We're
going to skip a few verses down to verse 36 so that in the section before where
Peter's denial begins, we can see that whole story together in day five of this
week. So when you get down to verse 36, they've been together, they have shared
together, they have sung this hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives, and
they go to a place in verse 36 called Gethsemane.

Let me read for you what happened. Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place
called Gethsemane and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray.
" He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him and he began to be
sorrowful and troubled.

And then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of
death. Stay here and keep watch with me. " Going a little farther, he fell on
his face to the ground and he prayed, "My father, if it is possible, may this
cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will.

" Then he returned to the disciples and found them sleeping. "Could you men not
keep watch with me for one hour? " He asked Peter.

"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is
willing, but the body is weak. " He went away a second time and prayed, "My
father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away, unless I drink it,
may your will be done.

" And when he came back, he again found them sleeping because their eyes were
heavy. So he left them and went away once again and prayed a third time saying
the same thing. And then he returned to the disciples and said to them, "Are you
still sleeping and resting?

Look, the hour is near and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Rise, let us go. Here comes the betrayer.

" So here's Jesus and his disciples in Gethsemane. Gethsemane literally means
oil press, a place where the olives were pressed so that the oil could come out.
And it is the place where Jesus is pressed, a place of sorrow and of spiritual
suffering.

As we watch what happened in Gethsemane, we see this prayer of Jesus, this
moment of great mystery and honesty and clarity all alongside of each other. You
see the mystery of the Trinity as the Son talks to the Father. We don't know how
the Trinity communicates in eternity.

We know that they do communicate. They're in relationship with each other. But
here we see the Son talking to the Father about the will of God, the will for
him to go to the cross.

You see the mystery of that communication. You also see the honesty of Jesus
when he says, "May this cup be taken from me. " Jesus is God in human flesh.

In human flesh he knows that he does not understand everything, that all has not
been revealed to him by the Father. So he's asking, "Is there something that has
not been revealed to me? And if so, may this cup be taken from me?

" The cup of physical suffering, but even more the cup of spiritual suffering.
He's about to take the sins of all mankind. What suffering that would bring, we
cannot even imagine.

And then there's the clarity. There's the clarity of Jesus' commitment to the
cross. Not my will, but your will be done.

This is what I would call the "yet not" prayer, or the "nevertheless" prayer.
Some other translations use the word "nevertheless. " Yet not my will, but your
will be done.

Nevertheless not my will, but your will be done. There are points in my life, in
your life, when we need the example of Jesus. Because everything in us wants
this, but we know that God wants something different.

And we know that in His love for us, God wants something different. He's not
trying to hold back from us. He's trying to love us.

So not my will, but your will be done. Jesus prayed three times. When you're
facing one of these prayers, you keep praying it again and again and again and
again.

Don't think that one prayer is going to be enough. You keep praying. Jesus is
our example here.

In fact, in being our example, notice that interspersed with this prayer is this
experience of the disciples sleeping, and Jesus sharing with the disciples
what's happening in His life. Jesus didn't shrink from disclosing His deepest,
even darkest emotions to His disciples. So you don't do this alone.

There's others that are in this with you. Jesus asked them to share this burden
with Him. Now, not only did He do that, but then Jesus also put up with them not
sharing this burden with Him, not meeting His needs.

Jesus could have come back the first time and thought, "They're asleep. I asked
them to be with me. This is the one moment I needed them, and they're asleep
now?

I know they're going to run away when the cross comes. This is the last moment
they're going to be with me. Couldn't they stay awake for just one hour?

Forget them. I'm going to a different garden. " And He could have left, but He
didn't.

He stayed with them. He put up with them not meeting His needs. You and I,
sometimes other Christians, we don't see our needs met.

So we think, "I'm going to leave my group. I'm going to leave my church. These
people are not meeting my needs.

" Well, the truth is, you're not meeting their needs sometimes, too, because
we're human beings. We're human beings. But Jesus shows us there's great power,
there's great meaning in having other people in our lives even though they're
imperfect people.

Jesus knew His disciples. He knew their struggles, their imperfections, but He
still wanted them there with Him even as He struggled through this prayer. Even
while He's suffering, Jesus is teaching.

First time He goes back, He says to Peter, "Oh, you couldn't stay awake? Watch
out that you don't fall into temptation. " In fact, He says two words that are
very important.

They teach us how to stay away from temptation. Jesus says, "Watch and pray. "
You want to know how to battle temptation?

Those are the two words. You watch and you pray. First you watch, you identify
your weaknesses, and then you pray.

You trust in God's power. Watch and pray. First watch.

Identify your weaknesses. When am I most tempted? Where am I most tempted?

Who is with me when I am most tempted? How do I feel when I'm tempted? You watch
for those traps that Satan has that he wants to use in your life.

You watch. You be aware of the fact that you're going to be tempted. You be
honest about that.

You watch. You're aware of your own weaknesses. You never get to a point where
you feel like, "Well, I'm not temptable anymore.

" Of course you are. You're a human being. You watch.

By the way, Jesus, who was God and man, was tempted. For you and I to think I'm
not temptable is blasphemy, is to think I'm better than Jesus. You watch and you
pray.

You trust in God's power. You pray for God's help. You talk to him.

If you're not talking to God regularly about your temptation, you have no
protection against your temptation. Now, as simple as this is, I don't know
about you, but I too often forget to pray. I forget to pray about my
temptations.

It's because I'm selfish. I want to go my own way. But more often than not, you
know why I forget to pray?

I'm just too busy. I just rush off to the next thing. And I trust myself rather
than taking the time to trust God.

Because we're all busy, we need to learn what I would call "microwave prayers,"
quick prayers. Send it up immediately. Pray it immediately.

You pray it in the middle of the circumstance. God, help. God, I want to trust
you through this.

The Bible says in Psalm 50, 15, "Call to me when trouble comes, I will save you.
" When the trouble comes, not afterwards. And it doesn't have to be a long
conversation.

You just immediately call to him when the trouble comes. You learn this one-word
prayer, "Help, help. " If you're out on the freeway and some jerk next to you in
the lane is making you angry and you want to cut him off, you're angry at him
and you want to express that anger, You don't think, "You know, I should add
this to my prayer list so that tomorrow in my devotion time I can be praying
about this attitude.

" That's not going to work. You've got to pray, "Help, God, I need your help
right now. " One of the keys that Jesus teaches us here as we pray, as we trust
God, is you don't face it alone.

You gather fellow believers around you for support, even as he did. Sometimes
they will fall asleep on you, no doubt about it. But even an asleep brother or
sister is better than you facing it all alone.

Why should you expect God to help you when you watch and you pray? When you ask?
When you say, "Help?

" Because he cares. That's what Jesus shows us here. He's sympathetic to your
needs.

He understands this experience that Jesus is going through in the garden. It
shows us how deeply he understands it when you're tempted. And because he chose
to say no to temptation, he can give you that same strength.

You know that he cares and you know that he has the strength to help. So let's
do what he asked us to do right now. Let's watch and pray.

Jesus, as we talk to you, we want to follow what you taught us to do. So help us
to watch, to admit our own weaknesses, to admit when we can become most tempted,
to admit the places that we are, the people that we're with, to be aware of the
fact that we have a weakness to watch. Let us not stop there with
self-understanding.

Let us also pray. And right now we pray. We give this temptation to you.

We trust you with it. We trust in your power, not our power, your power, to be
able to say yes to you. Father, help us to not so much focus on saying no to the
temptation as looking for the place where we can say yes to you instead.

Because that temptation, it wants to get in the way of some great thing you want
to do in our lives. We know that. We see that.

So we say yes to you. Help us to say yes to you. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Well, tomorrow we're going to look at Jesus' betrayal. We're also going to
look at the arrest of Jesus and what happens as they trust Him even through this
trial.