“Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and He said to His disciples, ‘Sit here, while I go over there and pray.’” (Matt 26:36)
The garden. This is where it all started, remember? It was breathtakingly beautiful, thick with animals, trees, an abundance of plants to eat and watered by a pristine river. There was a man and a woman and they walked with God in the cool of the day. They lived in the very presence of their Creator in absolute peace. And there was the tree—one beautiful but forbidden tree in the middle of it. And for a time, all was as it was supposed to be. Steeped in goodness, light and beauty, all creation lived in the perfect peace and presence of the Creator God. The man and the woman were given the task of working with God to multiply and expand the borders of the garden until the whole world was filled with the goodness of His creation.
But no, the man and woman turned their backs on their Maker and chose their own way. God’s beautiful creation was shattered into millions of seemingly-irretrievable pieces. And now, instead of spreading the goodness and beauty of God’s creation, men began to multiply darkness and destruction. It seemed that all was lost.
Until, one day, another man entered another garden. This garden wasn’t Eden, this was Gethsemane. Eden, was the garden of light where God dwelt with man until they turned away from Him. Gethsemane was a garden cloaked in the darkness of night where Jesus would face the reality of His father turning away from Him. And In Gethsemane, Jesus would encounter the ancient serpent from the first garden. But this time, when the serpent lied to the man, this man wouldn’t be deceived.
Like Eden, Gethsemane had a river. John’s account tells us that Jesus went across the Kidron Brook and into the garden (John 18:1). But the Kidron Brook was nothing like the pristine river in Eden. As in all of fallen creation, the brook had been polluted through the centuries by mankind’s sin and corruption. Time and time again, when the righteous kings of Israel destroyed the idols that the Israelites made, they burned them or turned them to dust and threw them in the river (1 Kings 15:11-13, 2 Kings 23:4-6, 12, 2 Chronicles 29:16; 30:13). The poor, sad Kidron Brook had been choked over and over again with the black dust of idolatry, forced to carry away the ugliness of Israel’s rebellion against their Maker.
Like the river, Jesus, pristine and sinless, would soon be suffocated beneath the weight of our black sin. Jesus entered into the garden to meet with His Father, as He had done many times before. But, this time, rather than looking into His Father’s face, He was looking into the great cup of suffering He was about to drink. And this is important to understand. When Jesus prayed, “not my will but your will be done,” He fully understood what that will included. He wasn’t surprised by what He encountered on the cross, He knew what He was signing up for. When Jesus was writhing in agony in the garden, to the point of sweating blood (Luke 22:44), it was because He was looking his suffering full in the face. And yet, alone and under the cover of darkness in the garden when He could have slipped out without anyone noticing, He chose to stay. Even while His closest friends were abandoning and betraying Him, He chose to obey His Father and drink the cup of suffering for them, and for us.
The early church, had a traditional belief that the cross on which Jesus was crucified was “planted” in the exact spot as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had been in Eden. There’s no way for us to know if there is any truth to this but the idea behind it is pretty beautiful. In the very place where sin and darkness entered the world at the foot of a tree, God set up another “tree”—a wooden cross—in order to defeat sin and darkness. At the same place where the first man chose to walk away from God, God sent another man, His only Son, to bring all mankind back home. Like the Kidron Brook, the cross itself was another heartbreaking echo of our fallen world. What God had designed and created to be a beautiful tree thriving in His garden, man had killed and turned into a torture device.
Jesus entered into the darkness and suffering of Gethsemane so that He could make a way for us back to Eden. Before He went to the cross, He confronted the great enemy of death and darkness in the garden. Before His hands and feet were pierced and before a spear was thrust into His side, Jesus won the battle on His knees in prayer. Before Jesus took a drink from the cup of suffering that would tear Him out of His Father’s arms, He looked into the face of broken humanity and at the beautiful world we had ruined, and He decided we were worth it.
Scripture Reference:
“And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.””
Luke 22:39-46 ESV
Discussion Questions:
1. Before He was crucified, Jesus battled darkness by praying on His knees. Do you think of your knees as a place to wage war? What does it look like for you to battle against sin and temptation on your knees?
2. Think about the fact that Jesus entered Gethsemane to make a way for us back to Eden and into the presence of God. What would it look like for you to live your life in gratitude for His sacrifice by remaining in His presence?
3. What does it mean to you that Jesus drank the cup of suffering so that you don’t have to?