Lessons From Gethsemane

Good afternoon, everybody! Good to see you all here on this very beautiful day. Appreciate all the weather you ordered up here. It's such a gorgeous day outside. There are days like this and I just want to have services outside and do that. Just our luck we'd have an afternoon shower or something. If any of you have had the privilege of traveling to the Holy Land, and I know several of you in the audience have been able to do that, and one thing that is likely to catch your eye as you travel through Israel is the number of olive trees and olive groves orchards that dot the hillsides there in the land of Israel.

They seem to be everywhere. Olive trees grow quite well where other trees will not grow. They seem to prefer the soil. The more they like it, it seems to be. In Israel, the soil is not all that great. It's very hard soil, very rocky soil. It's not good for growing at least the hillsides, a lot of other types of trees or crops, but the olive trees seem to love it. They grow everywhere in that part of the world in Israel. Interestingly, right around Jerusalem itself, in the Kidron Valley, which lies between the Mount of Olives and the city of Jerusalem, and you can see it here on this picture, you can see the city walls of Jerusalem up here.

This is the Kidron Valley, and these are the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives here. You can see these olive groves just right here in the valley. The Kidron Valley runs between the Mount of Olives here and the city of Jerusalem and runs downhill, and eventually down to the Dead Sea is where it would empty out. Even here around Jerusalem, you'll see dozens, maybe hundreds of olive trees in the Kidron Valley and then in the Hinnom Valley, down further south of there. Several times, and I've been there for the Feast of Tabernacles, it has coincided with the olive harvest in that part of the world.

You'll see Arab men, women, and children out harvesting the olives. This is an illustration of the way they do it. They did it this way 2,000 years ago. They do it the same way today. They will lay tarps or blankets on the ground underneath the trees, and then they will shake the limbs to try to shake the olives off, or beat the limbs with a long pole or stick to knock the olives loose.

They will fall down on the blankets or tarps, and then they will gather up the tarps and pour the olives off into barrels or buckets and jars, containers, and then take them away for processing. You could have seen a scene just like this 2,000 years ago in the time of Jesus Christ and the apostles, in Bible times, olives were probably the most important crop.

They were in the Holy Land. Olives and the oil that came from the olives were vital commodities used in a lot of ways. It was a very economically important resource. There the olives were. And the oil that came from the olives had a lot of uses. I'll just briefly go through some of the uses of the olive oil. First of all, it was used for food, as we do today. Olive oil on salads is very nice.

Olive oil for dipping bread in is very tasty. This is very important in that day, too, because olive oil was an important part of their diet. It was also interestingly used as a combination of soap and lotion for the skin. A dry climate over there would dry out. They would use olive oil to moisturize the skin and cleanse it. Use it again as a soap-lotion type combination. It was also used as a healing agent. You may remember the story of the Good Samaritan depicted here, where the man was mugged, robbed on the road to Jericho, and the Samaritan came along and rescued him and did what?

He poured two things in his wounds, wine and olive oil, for both antiseptic purposes and to promote healing there. So it was a healing agent as well. Also, it was used for lighting the lamps. I've shown the little lamps before here that were used in Bible times there. The average family would have a number of these small lamps scattered around the house to provide light after the sun had set.

Also, they were kind of the flashlight of the day. People could take those around when they were walking around at night and use the light from the lamp to light their way. These would burn for hours off a fairly small amount of oil in the lamps themselves. Olive oil also had a number of religious uses.

It was used, for example, for the menorah, the seven-branched candlestick in the temple. It was fueled by olive oil. Olive oil was also part of the regular offerings at the temple. There weren't just animal offerings. There were other types of offerings as well. One of those was olive oil. It was also used for anointing. Today we tend to associate anointing with healing, asking for healing. But in Bible times it was used to anoint individuals for specific responsibilities. For instance, it was used to anoint kings. It was used to anoint priests. This illustration depicts Moses laying his hands on and anointing his brother Aaron to be the high priest.

It was used to anoint kings, priests, and prophets. It was also used to set apart objects for holy use. We read about that with the tabernacle in the wilderness, that the specific furnishings and items in the tabernacle were anointed with oil to denote that they were set apart as a holy use, or for a holy use by God. With that background, how many of you have ever handled raw olives, not out of a can, not out of a jar, but just straight off a tree? A few of you. And what were they like?

You tend to think they're going to be a little soft and squishy, but they're not. They're extremely hard, almost about as hard as rocks or pebbles. They're very, very hard there. We have quite a few Russian olive trees around here in Colorado. Go out next time you see one, see if there are any olives underneath it, and pick a few up and you'll understand what I'm talking about there. We used to have serval just right behind our house on the green belt there.

So, yeah, they're very, very hard. So, how do you get olive oil out of these almost rock-hard olives? Well, several times in Scripture we find reference to presses. And it's not talking about a printing press. Often those references are to wine presses, where they would gather the grapes, and you'd have a vat, you might say, on the ground, or a carved-out stone area on the ground. Several inches deep, several feet wide and across, and you'd gather the grapes and put them in this basin, you might say, and stomp on them with the feet to crush the juice out of it for wine.

Incidentally, why do they use feet for doing this? Well, it's because you don't want to crush the grape seeds in there, because if you crush the seeds, if you crushed with a rock or something, it would crush the seeds, and that gives a very bad taste to the wine. I'm not sure what having feet in the wine would have the distinction there, but that's the reason for it. So hopefully you wash the feet before it. I presume they did. But that's why they, to this day, use feet to press the grapes.

You've probably seen that in TV shows and movies and so on. So that's how grapes were processed and crushed to get the grape juice out of those. But feet aren't hard enough to crush olives. They're much of a very painful on your feet to try to do that. So when it came to extractive olive oil, since olives are so much harder, it took a very different process for doing that.

It was a laborious process that involved several different stages. And it started, first of all, with gathering the olives, as I illustrated earlier, by shaking the limbs or beating the limbs with a rod to knock them loose and then gathering them all up and taking them to a place where they would be crushed. And it would be crushed in a vat, as well, similar to grapes. But this is what it looked like. It had some important differences. Here you didn't stop on them with your feet.

You used a crushing stone, which is kind of a giant wheel. And to get some idea, the scale, this basin here, is about eight feet in diameter and maybe a foot deep, something like that. And this wheel would roll around a central post. And the wheel here, I'm guessing, probably weighs four or five hundred pounds. It's incredibly heavy, and it has to be to crush the olives to start this process here. It was so heavy that it would actually take an animal, like a donkey or a mule or a horse, or several people, one person alone, could not do this for very long.

And they would tie the animal to this post that ran into the center of the wheel. And leveraging it against this post, the animal would walk around, and that would cause the wheel to rotate within this basin. And it would crush the olives that are poured down into here. Here's a better lit illustration, and this technique is still used today. This is a photo from Italy. And you can see the big basin. Incidentally, this is the one horsepower model.

I've never seen a two or three horsepower model. But this is what it's like. And this man is pouring in the raw olives. And over here is some of the crushed paste after the olives have been crushed and split open. And you can see it's fairly sticky because it sticks to the wheel and so on. A fairly messy process.

But after the olives are crushed into this pasty, mash-like substance, that's not enough to crush the oil out of them. This just softens them for what will follow. And then they would gather up this paste and put it in a basket-type thing about a big round. And the closest thing I could compare to would be a very heavy burlap bag. Except these are so thick that the fibers in it are almost like a small rope. They have to be very tough, very durable. And it's kind of like a big flat bag in a round shape and maybe 8, 9, 10 inches deep or so.

So they would fill these bags with this mashed-up, crushed mass of olives. And then the next step that would happen is they would take these and they would put them on top of a stone foundation and stack them up. And this is actually from the site of Gezer, Biblical Gezer, which I know some of you have visited before.

And they have a reproduction of this press here. And notice this foundation stone down here is maybe 5, 6 feet in diameter and has a channel around the outer edge of it and then a notch right here.

And the olive oil would be pressed out of these basket-type things and would be crushed and would run out and collect in a bowl or jar or something here at the corner. And that's how the olive oil was pressed out. Olive oil, by the way, has several different pressings. You may have heard that term and wondered where it came from.

It came from this process of pressing down on this mashy, pasty substance to press out the olive oil. And the lighter pressing, the first pressing, with the less amount of weight, was for the finer, higher quality olive oil. That's the first pressing. And then it would go through subsequent pressings as well.

And the way this worked is, as you can see, this huge rock on top of it as well. It's a thick and a big around. It probably weighs 100-150 pounds or so. So that would press on top of these baskets and press the lighter weight oil out. And it would be collected. But that wasn't enough to get all of the oil out.

So someone, some long ago engineer, came up with the idea of using a lever. So they would anchor the lever into a wall and put it on top of the rock. This also would add several hundred more pounds to it. And that would help, then, also add to the weight to squeezing it down. But even that wasn't enough. So they would also tie rocks on ropes out at the end of the lever.

Several hundred pounds more rocks. And this also would add to the pressure of the olive press. This is why it's called a press. It presses down with the pressure to press out the olive oil. And the more pressure, the more olive oil that is squeezed out. Until finally you can squeeze out just about every last drop of the olive oil. And this is what it looks like with, this is a more modern reproduction.

But here are the baskets and the weight up here. And you can see the olive oil running out and gathering into the channel and the rock. And it would be gathered up, then. And they find these all over the land of Israel. So this was a very common process that was in use for at least several thousand years. And it's probably still in use today in some areas there.

So again, the oil would finally start to flow like this. And several types of oil were produced by this. Again, the finer oil, the lighter weight oil, was generally, or was supposed to be at least, set apart for holy use in the temple. And by the priests, it would be used to light the menorah, which is kept constantly burning in the tabernacle first and then later in the temple. It was given to God for that purpose and also used for offerings, as I mentioned earlier. And as more weight is added to it, a lesser quality of oil, a second pressing, would come out. And that type of oil was used for eating, for consumption, for use in cooking and eating, preparing the meals, dipping the bread in, that sort of thing.

And then finally, the lowest quality of oil that is finally squeezed out, the last of the oil, is used for light, for lamps, for oil fuel, for the lamps, as we've mentioned there briefly. So this process of squeezing the olive oil out and the multiple pressings, adding more and more weight, actually took several days to complete.

And once all of that was done, the paste, the mashes, all of the oil that can be squeezed out, squeezed out, but even that wasn't the end of the process, because the leftover then would then be taken and set out in the sun to dry. And because it does still have a little residue of oil in it, it would then be used for fires, for burning as fuel to cook with, to warm the house, this type of thing. Nothing went to waste in that every bit of the olive was used there. And again, this process took a number of days to complete. So it was all squeezed out, all of the oil, and it was used up completely.

Now, this Olive Oil Press, and this style of press again was used for centuries in that part of the world, had an interesting name in Hebrew. The Hebrew word, actually two words were used for it. One is ghat, meaning press, and that could be used for olive oil or wine press. But an olive press was also called shiminem, meaning oil, or more specifically, types of oil because of the different presses there. So you add these two words together, and you get the word ghat-shiminem. It shows up in the Bible as ghat-semane. Ghat-semane. Sound familiar to us? This has been a rather long introduction to a sermon, and I wanted to give you this background to lay the foundation for what I wanted to talk about today, which is lessons from Gethsemane. Lessons from Gethsemane, because tomorrow evening we'll come together to commemorate the Passover, and every year we are commanded to examine ourselves, to examine our relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ, and to reflect deeply on the significance of Jesus Christ's sacrifice and what He did for us on our behalf, and to see whether our lives truly reflect an understanding of that sacrifice and an appreciation of that sacrifice and what He went through in giving His life for us as the true Passover Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world.

As we've been seeing and going through our classes, our studies on the Gospels for several years, God does not do things by chance. Nothing is a chance with God. He is a God of purpose. He is a God of planning. He is a God of perfection, and everything that He does, everything that He records in His Word is to teach us and help us grow in understanding.

Today, what we'll do is go through some of those events on that last night of Jesus Christ on Earth and see what lessons we can learn from that. What are some of the lessons from Gethsemane that God wants us to learn and to think about and to have on our minds at this time of year? Let's set the stage for the story as it unfolds that evening.

It's Passover evening in the city of Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago, and there's a bright full moon shining out over the city, bathing it in this crystal clear blue light. The rabbi from Galilee, along with his disciples, his Talmadim, had finished their Passover meal. They sang a hymn, and then they departed for the Mount of Olives.

They walked across the town, possibly on the Temple Mount on the way, because it's a fairly straight shot over to Gethsemane, there in the Mount of Olives. So they walked through the streets of the city and passed the temple, and then they crossed a bridge over the brook, Kidron. There was a little brook that ran in the Kidron Valley at that time, during the rainy season, at least.

And crossed over that valley between the city of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. Mount of Olives, of course, named for all of the olive groves that grow there on the mountain. Now, reaching the Mount of Olives, which was several hundred yards across the valley, we saw that earlier with a photo, from the vast temple complex, they stopped at a place that they seemed to have used often when they came to Jerusalem for the Holy Days, for the pilgrimage feasts, for Passover and unleavened bread and Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. And Jerusalem, I've mentioned this before, Josephus records that a million or more people came to the city at that time of year. And the city just did not have enough housing for all of them, so people would stay out in places like Bethlehem, down five or six miles south of the city, the other outlying towns around there, and many people just simply camped out during that time because there's not enough room for them in the city. Josephus records that the hills around Jerusalem were sprinkled with thousands of campfires from all the pilgrims there for the Holy Days at this time of year.

So this is the environment in which Jesus and the disciples come there. So they have made arrangements, possibly they are renting this place, possibly the owner of it is a friend of Jesus, believes in him as a rabbi, and maybe he has just offered this place for them to stay when they come there for the Holy Days and the festivals.

So what is Gethsemane? Gethsemane means an olive oil press. In this case, it's actually talking about a small cave that has been discovered there in the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives, and you can visit there today. And this is where they are staying there. Give you some idea of the size of it. It's about 60 feet across, maybe a little bit wider than this building, and about 30-35 feet deep here, and 10-12 feet high, something like that. Archaeologists have known about this cave that has been explored archaeologically. And by caved, don't think about the kind of caves we have here in the United States. We can go back half a mile, a mile or more, things like that.

These are just shallow niches, you would almost say, in the size of the limestone hills around there. And caves are quite common. This one happened to be larger than most, and was large enough to have at least one, maybe two or three, olive oil presses installed within it. And we know this because in the wall at the back of the cave, they have found the niches where the beams would have been put there to press down on the olive oil, and remains of the olive oil presses there in that cave. In Jesus' day, it would have looked something like this, possibly partitioned off into several rooms, and you would have had, again, the big basins there where the olives would have been dumped, and the wheels to crush them, and this sort of thing. So this would have been the reason Jesus and his disciples would have liked to have stayed there, because it's a nice, warm, dry place to stay when the whole, it beats camping out under the stars in what is potentially rainy weather at that time. It can get fairly cool that time of year at night, too. So this is where they are staying. And right outside this place, if you go there today, this is what it looks like from the outside. I'm not showing you interior photos because it looks nothing like what I just showed you.

It's been converted into a church, multiple churches, actually, that have been built and destroyed over the centuries. So it looks nothing at all like what it would have looked like at that time. So I'm not showing you that. But immediately outside this is a grove of truly ancient olive trees. And the one on the right here has a diameter of about 8 feet, 7-8 feet in diameter.

It's an enormous, ancient, ancient tree. Some people would claim these trees go back to the time of Christ. I don't believe that because Josephus says when Jerusalem was surrounded by the armies in 70 AD that the Romans cut down every tree within miles of Jerusalem to build their war machinery, their siege towers, their battering rams, catapults, things like that.

As well as crosses to crucify the thousands of Jewish victims, prisoners that they would take and execute. However, I do think it's possible because olive trees, like many trees, when you cut them down, they'll send up shoots from the roots. So I think there is a possibility these truly ancient trees here may go back to shoots that came up from trees that were cut down.

In 70 AD, regardless, they are truly, truly ancient. This is what you see as you walk out of this church there today. This is the setting for where these events take place. Again, you can visit it today there. I do recommend you do because it's a very sobering place and helps you capture a lot of the atmosphere of the events it took place there.

So what happened there at Gethsemane, the place of the olive press, that evening, 2,000 years ago? Let's review the story in the sermon today. Let's begin with Mark 14, verse 32. I'll be showing all the scriptures up here so you can look at these and write them down.

Mark 14, verse 32. Then they, Jesus and His disciples, came to a place which was named Gethsemane, or Gethsemane in Hebrew. And He said to His disciples, Sit here while I pray. Now, on that night, the disciples are frankly exhausted and sleepy because think back over the week or two, they have walked all the way from Galilee down to Jericho and up to Jerusalem. It's roughly 100 miles. It's about 70 miles, 75 is the crow flies, but about 100 miles walking it. So they've walked all that distance. The days leading up to this time have been very busy, as we read about in the Gospels. They've been very tense at times, with confrontations with different peoples, different groups, the sageses, the Pharisees. Jesus has cleansed the temple.

Again, which has led to a confrontation with the priests, the priesthood. So this has been a tense and stressful few days for them since they have come to Jerusalem. And then they've had a late evening there with a Passover meal, and they've walked across the town and come to this place where they want to go to sleep. And they are sleepy, but their leader is far from sleepy because he has a great deal on his mind. He has come to this place named after the olive press to do more than sleep. He feels a very urgent need to pray for what is going to take place in the coming hours. Catching up with the story, for weeks now, perhaps several months, he has been seeing rather strange things.

To the disciples that puzzled him. What he was saying was quite clear, but for some reason they just didn't get it. Maybe they didn't believe him, maybe they clearly didn't understand, but we don't know why. But let's just notice, recount some of the things that he has been seeing. Matthew 20, verses 18 and 19. This is before they start their journey down from Galilee to Jerusalem. This is probably at least two weeks before this. He says, Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles, the Romans, in other words, to mock and to scourge and to crucify. And the third day, he will rise again. Just two days earlier, Matthew 26, verse 2, he had told them, You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. So twice he has told them exactly what is going to happen. Around the same time, also a few days earlier, you may remember the story that Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, who they also stayed with at times when they came to Jerusalem, had anointed his feet with a very valuable, perfumed ointment, worth a year's wages at that time, and had anointed him with that, and Judas had complained about it. But notice what he said. This is Matthew 16, verses 10 through 12. Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for me. For you have the poor with you always, but me you do not have always. For in pouring this fragrant oil on my body, she did it for my burial. She did it for my burial. And earlier on this evening of Passover, Jesus had said some things that, again, must have puzzled him. He said earlier that evening, all of you will be made to stumble because of me this night. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee. So Jesus had been seeing these puzzling things like this to them as they walked a hundred or so miles from Galilee, down to Jericho, and then up to Jerusalem. And it shows that he clearly knew what lay ahead.

It says multiple times that he is going to be crucified. As they walked and traveled together for three and a half years, they had no doubt at times seen victims of Roman crucifixion, because crucifixion was a public spectacle. It was meant to be an example of what happened when you messed with Rome. So they would crucify people along the main roads, often right outside the gates of the cities and towns, as an example. You might think of a billboard today. It was a very public spectacle there. So Jesus and his disciples had no doubt seen these tortured victims crucified as they traveled for three and a half years.

Maybe at times they had even seen the victims after they had died. And, frankly, the remains are still there, hanging and being eaten by the birds and the wild animals and the insects and things like that. It's a very gruesome thing. But again, it was to be done as a public example of what happened when you messed with Rome.

So they all knew what a horrible death it was to die by crucifixion. But even knowing this, Jesus tells his followers that is how he is going to die. So he makes that long journey to Jerusalem, a hundred miles, step by step by step, knowing every step of the way what lies ahead. He said some other strange things to them earlier that evening when he had broken the bread and passed around the cup of wine. Things like, and this is reading from Paul's account later in 1 Corinthians 11, 24 and 25, the revelation that Paul had received from Jesus himself about that evening, when he had given thanks, he broke the bread and said, Speak, eat, this is my body which is broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do is often as you drink it in remembrance of me. What did all this mean? What did it mean to the disciples?

Perhaps some of them were wondering about it. What's this talk about? His body and about his blood. Maybe they were thinking about that as they drifted off to sleep. They're at the olive press. Think about this too. Jesus knows what is coming. He knows when it's coming. He knows that also he could avoid what is coming, because even now, at this late hour, this is about midnight when he is there praying and Gethsemane. It helps to know the lay of the land there, because you have Jerusalem on this one hill, you've got the Mount of Olives overlooking it on this other hill, and the Kidron Valley in between, and Gethsemane near the foot of the mountain.

What's on the other side of the Mount of Olives? About a half a mile from this spot is the little village of Bethany, where Lazarus and Mary and Martha live. Beyond that is wilderness. Desert. Total desert. Total wilderness. Jesus knows all he has to do is walk about a half a mile over the top of the mountain, and he is in the desert.

He's in the wilderness where nobody can find him. That's why David, when he was king and had to flee for his life, he was not far, less than a mile outside of Jerusalem, and he was in the wilderness. Jesus could have done the same thing. He could have gone down the Kidron Valley, also about a mile, and been out again into the wilderness. He could have gone north a half a mile or so, and been out in the wilderness. Ten or fifteen minute walk, and he's free.

He's home free. They can't find him. But he doesn't do that. He wouldn't do that. And he couldn't do that. Continuing our story, Mark 14, verse 33, And Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him. Peter, James, and John are the disciples, his inner circle, you might say. He has twelve disciples, but three that he's the closest to, that he does special things with. These are the three who are with him at the transfiguration. These are the three took with him when he raised to life the daughter of the ruler of the Saggog in Capernaum.

So these are his three closest friends, special disciples, you might say. So he took Peter, James, and John with him, and he began to be troubled and deeply distressed. What is he feeling and experiencing at this time? In Greek it says he was troubled, greatly distressed. This means anguished. It means depressed.

It means full of heaviness. He is feeling the weight and the pressure of what is coming. He feels it bearing down on him. You might think of the setting of the olive press there and the pressure that it took to squeeze those olives. And here he is being crushed by the weight and the pressure, feeling the terrible growing weight that is bearing down on him.

What were some of the weights? What were some of the thoughts that are going through his mind? What had he been experiencing up to this point?

First of all, he had been rejected by the town that he grew up in as a child. He had grown up in Nazareth. The people knew him there. They had seen him grow up. He taught in the synagogue. What happened? He ended up with him wanting to stone him to death. He moved from Nazareth to Capernaum. There he taught in Capernaum, Bethsaida and Corazun, each little town just a few miles apart, performed great miracles there. We read that after sundown when he first moved there, after sundown on the Sabbath, crowds of people came, all those who were sick and ill and needed healing. He healed them all. He healed Peter's mother-in-law. He healed many others. Near-society, he performed the miracle of multiplying the fish and the bread to feed thousands of people. He had performed these mighty miracles and great works there. And yet they had rejected him. Looking across the Kidron Valley, he could see the walls of Jerusalem. They could see the temple there. The beloved Jerusalem that just several days earlier he had cried over. He cried over, wept over it, knowing what was going to happen. They, too, had turned their backs on him. He also knew that his four half-brothers, Jacob, Joseph, Shimon, Judah, possibly his half-sisters as well, we don't know about them, were ashamed of him. They were embarrassed by him. They didn't believe in him. What would it have meant to have just one of his blood relatives, one of his half-brothers there with him at this time? Just one of them. He says four brothers, but none of them are there. They're embarrassed by him. They didn't believe in him. They abandoned him, thinking, he's just a little bit crazy. They were embarrassed about him. Didn't want to be associated with him, so they were nowhere to be found. He knows that very soon, within an hour, two hours at most, all of his disciples, the men that he spent the last three and a half years with, who he's taught, who he's trained, gone through all kinds of experiences with, performed many great miracles that they have seen. Not too much earlier, they had seen him raise Lazarus from the dead. But yet, within an hour or two, what's going to happen? All of them are going to abandon him. They're going to leave him all alone to face his fate. He knows that Peter, his dear friend, impetuous, eager, enthusiastic Peter, one of the three disciples that he's closest to, the one who said he would follow him anywhere, one who said he would never leave him, never abandon him. He knows that by the time dawn breaks over the land, in a few hours, Peter will have denied him. Not once, not twice, but three times. Swore they didn't even know the man when he was asked about that. He knew that soon he would face a sham trial before the religious leadership of the nation. Hypocritical men who hated him, who had long tried to discredit him, who had spread lies about him, that accused him of being a tool of Satan, who had hated his teaching, who had plotted to murder Lazarus, whose only crime was having been raised from the dead. And they wanted to destroy the evidence. That's how desperate they were to deny the identity of Jesus Christ. And now he knew that he is soon going to bear the full brunt of these leaders' hatred as they condemn him to death. He knows also that soon he will be condemned by the Romans. What's the significance of that? Well, the Jews executed people by stoning. Stoning is pretty quick. Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, you're unconscious, and you die.

Crucifixion was deliberately designed to keep the victim alive for hours, if not days, and the worst kind of pain imaginable that's ever been imagined in the perverted, demented thinking of human beings to torture somebody that way.

He knew also from the prophecies of Isaiah 53 that he himself had inspired the prophet Isaiah to write that he's going to be so bruised, so badly beaten, so ripped, so disfigured from the beating and the scourging that it's to come that he will not be recognizable to his own friends and family, maybe not even recognizable as a human being. He knows also that before the next evening he will be ridiculed, he will be humiliated, he will be spat upon. He knows that before the sun sets the next day, that thousands of people will walk by him as they leave and enter the city gates of Jerusalem.

And among those thousands, many people will curse him as an evil-doer. They will mock him. They will ridicule him. He knows that some of the same people who had heard about his miracles, heard about his teaching, in only a few hours, will be shouting to the Romans, and they will demand his blood. And he knows that he, as the Son of God, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, as John the Baptist had said of him, will die that coming afternoon at three o'clock is the Passover Lamb, or being slain in the temple. He knows also that he, as the very divine being who had life within himself and the power to create life, the life-giver who had formed Adam out of the dust of the earth, and who had formed Eve from Adam's side, breathing into them the breath of life, the one who, as the Logos, had brought the world, brought the universe into existence out of nothing, who had created all the incredible forms of life that we see on the world.

The plant life, the incredible variety of animal life, the fishes of the sea, the birds of the air, all of that. The life-giver would soon feel the stab of the spear, and he would feel his own life ebbing away as his blood flowed out. And he felt the blackness of death enveloping him. He knew that he who had lived for how many years before he became flesh, billions of years, billions of years, in his existence with God the Father, he knew that he soon would experience something unimaginable to him. The giver of life would taste death for all mankind.

And he also knows that he is carrying on himself the greatest weight that one could possibly imagine, the weight of the world, the weight of all the sins, my sins, your sins, our sins, the sins of every human being who has ever lived, every human who would yet live, the sins of every man, every woman, every child, every murder, every lie, every theft, every rape, every lust, every evil word, every curse that has been hurled at God over the centuries, every shameful, every disgusting thought, every humiliating, degrading thought, it was all on him.

And he feels the weight pressing and pressing and pressing, like the unrelenting weight of the olive press. How great was the pressure that he was feeling? That was crushing him, that was squeezing him, literally crushing the life out. Luke's Gospel adds some more details. Luke 22, verses 41 through 44. And he was withdrawn from them, from Peter, James, and John, about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if it is your will, take this cup away from me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done. We see here the awful weight of the agony of the sins of the world, where more than as a human being he can bear. And he is human. The pressure is becoming unbearable, though, so he pleads with the Father, being physical, being flesh and blood.

He pleads with God to take that weight away, asking if there is any other way, any other way. But there is no other way. And with the pressure building even greater, Luke says, in verse 43, a little detail that Luke includes and the other Gospel writers don't, that an angel appeared to him from heaven, strengthening him. Strengthening him, yes. But delivering him, no. Earlier that same evening, or actually later the same evening, Jesus will tell his disciples, don't you realize that I could call on my Father, and he would send 12 legions of angels to deliver me? But God doesn't send 12 angels, 12 legions of angels. It's about 80,000. He sends one angel to strengthen him.

This also tells us something of the incredible pressure that he's feeling, that the Father realizes and knows the pressure that he's under, and knows that he needs this encouragement, this strength, and to show him that he's not alone, that he's not forsaken, that he's not forgotten in this hour of greatest need. Verse 44, and being in agony, interestingly, the Greek word here is the word from which we get agony. Being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. In other words, he intensifies his prayers.

Then his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. It's interesting that Luke, who is a physician and a doctor, records this detail here, something that none of the other Gospel writers note. This word, agony, says that Jesus was in agony, a Greek word that means struggling severely in anguish. The physical torture will come later. Now he's going through the mental torture, the emotional torture.

And Luke goes on to say that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. And people have puzzled over this for years, and this is a real and rare medical condition called hematodrosis. And it's rare, but it does happen. I'm not saying that Luke knew about it. It's been rare throughout human history. So Luke just documents what happens, doesn't describe what is going on. But it is something that, to the best of my knowledge, first became noticed seriously during World War II, during the Blitz in London. And during World War II, the German bombers flew over London nightly, dropping their loads of bombs.

And London had, in the other English cities as well, what they called the blackout, which means that you turned off all your lights, or you pulled the shades, you hung blankets over the windows, over the doors, so no light could escape, because if there was any light, that's what the German bombers would target.

They could tell where the cities were and drop their tons and tons of bombs and destroy the city. And to this day, if you go to London and you see the areas of new construction, those are the areas of the town that were bombed out during the war. So what happened with most of the men away in the military or in civil defense, the women and the children, for the most part, because they weren't safe from the bombs above ground in their apartments and their houses, they would go down to underground shelters, or down in the subways underneath the city, to be safe from the bombs.

And there they would listen to the sounds outside, the anti-aircraft guns, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And occasionally the huge thunder of the bombs would fall, and the ground would shake, and the lights would flicker on and off. And that is when this medical condition was first noticed on a large scale. Because the people who were there experiencing this and hearing the shrieks and the wails of the wounded and the dying outside would literally sweat blood.

Because what happened is the pressure on the blood vessels underneath the skin is so great that the blood vessels would rupture, and the blood would ooze into the surrounding tissues and come out in the sweat glands. And people would literally sweat blood. And if you want to look it up on the internet, you can. Again, I don't recommend looking at the pictures because they're pretty gruesome of this, but you can find that. It's real. And this is the kind of relentless and crushing pressure that our Savior felt that night at Gethsemane.

The pressure was so great that the blood was literally being squeezed out of Him as the pressure from the enormous weight of an olive oil press. Press the oil from the olives. He knew the awful price it had to be paid for sin. Every act, every thought, every attitude that is in rebellion against God, disobedience to God in His Word and His will, He knew a price had to be paid for it.

And that bill was coming due. One of the surprising things about olive oil, I didn't mention this earlier when I showed this photo, as olive oil is pressed out, squeezed out of the olives, it's color. Notice the color here. It's not the bright green that we're used to seeing with olive oils. No, when it comes out, when it's first pressed out, it's a reddish, rusty brownish color, much like blood. It's not until it's filtered and the impurities are either filtered out or settled out that we get the nice, bright green olive oil that we're used to.

But this is what it looks like coming right out of the olives themselves. And like the olive oil, the press that Jesus was enduring would literally press out of Him His very blood. And at this point in the story, the pressure is so great that He is literally sweating blood from the pressure and the weight that is on Him. Continuing back in Mark 14, verse 34, Then He said to them, Peter, James, and John, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.

Stay here and watch. Again, consider the pressure that He's feeling, that He's so mentally tormented that He says He's dying. These aren't just exaggeration. These aren't just flowery words. He's describing what He's feeling, that He is sorrowful in agony, even to death.

And He says, Stay here and watch. He went a little further and fell on the ground. Notice this. He fell on the ground. He didn't kneel down to pray. He fell to the ground. Matthew adds that He fell on His face to the ground, meaning He is spread-eagled in the dirt.

No doubt squirming, writhing from the mental anguish that He is going through. And He prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. And He said, Abba, Father, Dad, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from Me. He was pleading with all of His being if there's any other way for this cup to pass from Him, that it be done.

But there isn't. So He says, Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will. There was no other way. There's no other solution to the problem of human sin. God didn't say, Sin doesn't matter. You can do whatever you want. You can think whatever you want. You can live however you want. No, there's a terrible price to be paid. He didn't say, You can worship any other God. You can worship Buddha. You can worship Krishna. You can worship Muhammad, any other God. It doesn't matter. God wasn't going to change His plan of salvation. There's only one way to pay the penalty for the sins of all mankind, and that was by Jesus Christ, the Creator God, the Creator of the human race, taking on Himself the punishment that we deserved.

As 1 Peter 3 and verse 18 puts it, For Christ died for sins once for all, for all mankind, all mankind for all time, the righteous dying for the unrighteous. For what purpose? To bring you to God. To bring you to God. So there was no other way than for Him as our Creator to make the one ultimate sacrifice for all mankind for all time.

And it is by God's grace which is a free gift to us, but it did not come without a price. Yes, grace is free, but it's not cheap. It was the greatest price ever paid in the history of mankind. Again, what is olive oil used for? How does it relate to Jesus Christ and His sacrifice? The best oil, the highest quality oil, the first pressing, was for God's use.

Used to light the menorah in the temple. Representing what? Representing the light of God. Who is the light of God? Who is the light of the world? Jesus Christ. It was also used for offerings in the temple, who gave Himself as a total, complete offering and sacrifice to pay for our sins. Jesus Christ. The best of the oil was also used for anointing. Who is anointing in the sense of healing? Who is the one who is going to heal the nations? Jesus Christ. What does Christ mean? In Greek it means anointed.

Same as the Hebrew word messiah. Meaning one who is anointed. Who and what was anointed, as we read about in the Bible? Well, again, kings were anointed. Who is Jesus Christ? Who is the King of kings and Lord of lords? It's Jesus Christ. Priests were also anointed. Who is our High Priest? Jesus Christ. Prophets were also anointed. Who is the greatest prophet who ever lived? Who foretold the future? Who revealed God's way to mankind?

Who is the one who inspired the prophets of the Bible? Jesus Christ. The tabernacle and everything in it were anointed. You can go back and read about that. Why? Why were the objects anointed? Well, to show that they were set apart for God's use and for God's purpose.

What did Jesus Christ say about Himself? He said, I come to do my Father's will. As we've seen again and again, not my will, but your will be done. A total and complete dedication to God. The next high grade of oil that was pressed out of the olives was used for medicinal purposes. Who is the great healer? Jesus Christ. It was also used for cooking and for eating.

Who is the bread of life? Represented by the bread that we will take at Passover. Jesus Christ. Who is the sinless, unleavened bread that we partake of daily during the days of unleavened bread? Who is the bread of life? Jesus Christ. It was also used for cleansing. Who is the one whose blood has washed away our sins and cleans us up so that we can come before God pure and clean and sinless?

Jesus Christ. It was also used for lighting lamps to provide light. Who is the light of the world? Jesus Christ. Who is the one who lights our paths and lights our lives to give us light so that we'll know how to live? Jesus Christ.

Even the residue of the pulp after all the oil had been squeezed out of it was dried and was burnt for fuel and warmth. In the same way, Jesus Christ gave everything for Himself, holding nothing back. He was a complete and total sacrifice, holding back nothing for her sakes. And as the fuel the leftover was used for fuel and warmth, Jesus Christ is the one who does warm us, who comforts us in our time of need. Continuing back in Mark 14, verse 37, Then He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not watch one hour?

Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again, He went away and prayed and spoke the same words. What words? Habba, Father, take this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not what I will but Your will be done.

In other words, He says, I don't want to drink this cup. Is there any other way? Any other way? Anything else that can be done? But through all of this, He does it voluntarily. Nobody forces Him to. The Father didn't force Him to.

As John 10, verse 17 and 18 tell us, Jesus' own words, Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. So the Father did not force this on Him.

He chose this, knowing full well the consequences of that choice, what He would have to endure for our sakes.

Continuing Mark 14, verse 40, From not He know it was His coming, pleading that there might be some other way. But the deliverance doesn't come.

So He comes back the third time and says, Are you still sleeping and resting? It is enough. The hour has come. Behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.

Here, too, it helps to understand the geography of this area, because, again, you have the city of Jerusalem here, the Kidron Valley, and the Mount of Olives. And this Gethsemane is right across from the temple, the walls of the city, the temple over there, and a bridge that crosses the valley.

And as Jesus is praying there, in the early hours of the morning, He can probably glance up and see the torches of the squad of men. How many? We don't know. 20, 30, 40. He can see the torches snaking their way down from the city of Jerusalem across the bridge, and He knows why they're coming.

He can probably, as they get closer here, the clanking of their armor, the swords, the clubs, as they get closer and closer. And again, again, it's the middle of the night. He knows the land well. He can slip down the Kidron Valley, disappear down toward the Dead Sea.

He can go over the Mount of Olives a half a mile, disappear into the wilderness, go a half a mile or a mile to the north, disappear into the wilderness. All He needs is 10 or 15 minute head start, and He'll never find Him. And He can escape everything that's coming. He can be safe. But He won't do that, because He can't do it. Switching over now to John's account, John 18. Pick up a few more details. Verse 2.

In previous times, we know from going through the Gospels that Jesus has avoided His enemies because He knows His time is not yet. And He slipped away into the crowds at times. But now He knows the time has come. And He doesn't flinch from what is coming. He was ready to be taken, as prophecy had foretold, as a lamb to the slaughter.

Verse 4. Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that would come upon Him, went forward. It's easy to overlook this detail. He went forward to meet the group that is coming to arrest Him and take Him to His fate.

Again, He didn't draw back, didn't hide, didn't scurry behind a tree, didn't scurry and hide there in the cave, didn't run away into the darkness. He went forward to meet them. And He said to them, Who are you seeking?

They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them, I AM.

And it's misleading the way it's worded in our Bibles because the He has been added there, but it obscures the fact that He responds, He is the I AM. He is the God who appeared to Moses at the burning bush.

And when Moses asked Him, Who shall I tell the Israelites sent Me? He says, I AM that I AM.

So He identifies here who He is, the God who interacted with Israel in the Old Testament times.

Jesus said to them, I AM. And Judas, who betrayed Him, also stood with them. Verse 6, Now when He said to them, I AM, they drew back and fell to the ground.

Why did they fall to the ground? Well, obviously Jesus did nothing. He is willing to be led as a Lamb to the slaughter at this point.

So what's going on here? It seems evident, at least in my thinking, that God the Father or an angel caused this.

These men are coming to take captive the One who is God in the flesh.

And what makes the most sense to me, and I'm not saying this is just my own personal opinion, but I'm thinking what is going on here is they are coming to take the Son of God captive.

And God demonstrates that He is allowing this to happen.

And that God knocks them all backwards to show His power, to show what could happen.

He could knock them down, He could knock them unconscious, He could knock them stone cold dead.

But He is allowing this to happen. It's happening by His will. And He chooses not to exercise that power.

Verse 7, then He asks them again, Whom are you seeking? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus answered, I have told you that I am.

And notice this, therefore if you seek Me, let these go their way.

That the saying might be fulfilled, which He spoke.

Of those whom you gave Me, I have lost none.

So in this moment when He needed the support of His friends, of His disciples the most, He tells those who are arresting Him to let these others go.

It's Me that you've come for. I'll go with you, but let them go.

And they go into the night, disappearing like a bunch of scared rabbits, leaving Jesus to His fate alone.

Matthew 26 adds another detail. Matthew 26, verse 48.

Now His betrayer, referring to Judas, had given Him a sign saying, Whomever I kiss, He is the One, sees Him.

Immediately He went up to Jesus and said, Greetings, Rabbi, and kissed Him.

And it was utterly unthinkable in that day for a disciple, for a Talmadeen, to betray his rabbi, because what was the whole point of becoming a disciple? It was to become like your master, like your rabbi.

It's written in the records at that time that the disciple loved his rabbi more than his own family, more than his own brother, sister, father, mother. He loved his rabbi more than anyone, because after all, his whole point was to become like his rabbi in every way.

And to come up and betray your rabbi, especially with a sign of affection and love, like a kiss, was just utterly incomprehensible. It was just never been done.

And yet that is what happens. An action that is just unimaginable.

And what is Christ's reaction to Judas' betrayal?

Verse 50, Jesus said to him, Friend, why have you come?

And I hear in those words an infinite sadness.

Friend, why have you come?

Because Jesus knows full well why he has come.

And yet he calls Judas' friend to the very last.

Verse 56, But all this was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled, then all the disciples forsook him and fled.

They did what Jesus could have done.

They ran out of the way into the darkness of the night and disappeared, and saved their own skins.

We're familiar with the rest of the story as Jesus continued to bear the weight of the sin of the world that had begun there at Gethsemane.

He's arrested. He's taken away for a sham trial where the verdict has long ago been rendered.

False witnesses have brought in a lie about him.

He's struck. He's mocked. He's spat upon. He's ridiculed. He's condemned. He's beaten. He's scourged.

And finally, he is crucified.

And after several hours, he is stabbed with a spear.

And with that stabbing, the last of the oil, the last of his blood, is squeezed from his bruised and crushed body, and the body is left hanging lifeless in the sun.

What did he feel in those last hours?

He felt and experienced indescribable pressure, sorrow, anguish, grief, abandonment, terror, weight, and crushing burdens that he chose to bear for our sakes.

Tomorrow evening, as we come together to take the Passover symbols, remember these things.

And I hope you'll think about the Gethsemane, the olive oil press.

What was the press, the Gethsemane, that Jesus Christ bore?

It was me. And it was you. And it was us.

It was of me and my sins. It was your sins.

It was our sins that did that to him.

Every sin, every evil thought, every wrong attitude, every rejection of God, every disobedience to his word, everything that is contrary to his perfect will and his revelation.

Each of these has a price, a terrible price.

He carried the weight of the world on himself.

For you. And for me.

He could have escaped it, could have avoided it, could have made other choices, but he didn't. He willingly chose to go through that and more on that Passover night about 2,000 years ago.

And he did it all for us, though we might share eternal life with him in his kingdom.

Our story today started there on the slopes of the Mount of Olives at a place called Gethsemane.

And hopefully we'll remember that as we partake of the Passover symbols tomorrow evening.

The Mount of Olives has been one of my favorite places in the Holy Land. I've visited it several times, and I know some of you have been able to visit it as well.

And it's one of the most meaningful because of the events it took place there.

And not just the events that took place there, but what will yet happen there. Because this isn't the end of the story, because all of you have a future trip to the Mount of Olives waiting for you.

If you remain faithful to the end, if you take these things to heart and never lose sight of them. And that's because the Mount of Olives is a sight of the next chapter in the story.

A chapter we read about in Zechariah 14 and verse 4, because Jesus Christ will return to earth, and He'll be accompanied by whom? By His resurrected saints.

Where is He returning? We read it right here in verse 4.

And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east.

And the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east and west, making a very large valley.

Half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south.

And this is describing the indescribable power of His presence and His coming when this mountain, which is a mile, mile and a half long, several hundred feet high, will split in two and will divide.

And it goes on to say, And in that day it shall be that living water shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea, toward the dead sea, and half of them toward the western sea, toward the Mediterranean.

And both summer and winter it shall occur, and the Lord the Eternal shall be king over all the earth.

And He wants more than anything else for us to be there with Him on that day.

He wants it so badly that He gave up everything, including life itself, that we, that you and I, might share in that future with Him.

So take these things to heart. Don't let anything stand in your way.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God, as Paul tells us.

Let Him who died for you live again within you.

As God in the flesh, He gave His life for man.

And if He, as God, could give His life for you, is there any sacrifice too great for you to make for Him?

Those are the lessons of Gethsemane.