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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 41. Gethsemane
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Gethsemane
At the farther extreme of the service years, there came to the Lord Jesus the other three of these dark experiences, all three close together. On the night of the betrayal came the Gethsemane Agony. That was a very full evening. Around the supper table they had gathered and talked, and the Lord Jesus had made His last, tender but fruitless effort to touch Judas' heart by touching his feet. There was the long quiet heart-talk in the supper room after Judas had gone out, "and it was night" for poor Judas. (Joh_13:14
Then the talk continued as they walked across the city within view of the great brass vine on Herod's temple, so beautiful in the light of the full moon. And then, as they walk through the narrow, shadowed streets, the shadows come into the Lord Jesus' spirit and words. (Joh_15:16 Now they are outside the wall of the city, out in the open, under the blue, and with upturned face, the great pleading prayer is breathed out. (Joh_17:1-26.) Now they are across the Kidron, and now in among the shadows of the huge olive trees of the garden called Gethsemane.
It's quite dark and late. He leaves the disciples to rest under the trees, and with the inner three He pushes a bit farther on. And now He pushes on quite alone in the farther lone recesses of the woods. And now the intensity of His spirit bends His body as He kneels, then is prostrate. And the agony is upon Him. He is fighting out the battle of the morrow. He is sinless, but on the morrow He is to get under the load of a world's sin; no, it was yet more than that, He was to be Himself reckoned and dealt with as sin itself. All the horror of that broke upon Him under those trees, more intensely than it had yet. The brightness of the full moon made the shadows of the trees very dark and black, but they seemed as nothing to this awful inky black shadow of the sin load that would come, no longer in shadow but actually, on the morrow.
The agony of it is upon Him as He falls prostrate on the ground, under the tense strain of spirit. Out of the struggle a bit of prayer reaches our awed ears, "If it be possible let this cup pass away from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt." And so tense is the strain that an angel comes to strengthen. With what reverent touch must he have given his help. Even after that the great drops of bloody sweat came. But now a calmer mood comes. The look full in the face of what was coming, the realizing more clearly how the Father's plan must work out, these help to steady Him. Again a bit of prayer is heard, "Since this cannot pass away; since only so can Thy plan for the world be accomplished Thy—will—be—done." The load of the world's sin almost broke His heart that dark night under the olives. It actually did break His heart on the morrow. This is the meaning of Gethsemane, intense suffering of spirit because of the sin of others.
And at first thought you say, surely there can be no following for any of us in this sore lonely experience of His. And there cannot. He was alone there as on the morrow. None of us can go through what He went through there. For, it was for us, and for our sin that He went through it. And yet there is a following, if different in degree and in depth of meaning, yet a very real following. While Gethsemane stands a lone experience for Jesus, yet there will be a Gethsemane for him who follows fully where He asks us to go.
There will be a real suffering of spirit because of the sin of others. We will see the world around us through those pure, seeing eyes of His. We will feel the ravages of sin in those we touch, with something of the feeling of His heart. Close walking with Christ brings pain and it will bring it more, and more acutely. We will see sin as He does, in part. We will feel with our fellow-men toiling in its grip and snare as He did, in part. There will be sore suffering of spirit. This is the Gethsemane experience, and it will not grow less but more.
"'O God,' I cried, 'why may I not forget?
These halt and hurt in life's hard battle
Throng me yet.
Am I their keeper? Only I? To bear
This constant burden of their grief and care?
Why must I suffer for the others' sin?
Would God my eyes had never opened been!'
And the Thorn-crowned and Patient One
Replied, 'They thronged Me too. I too have seen.'
'But, Lord, Thy other children go at will,'
I said, protesting still.
'They go, unheeding. But these sick and sad,
These blind and orphan, yea and those that sin
Drag at my heart. For them I serve and groan.
Why is it? Let me rest, Lord. I have tried—'
He turned and looked at me:
'But I have died!'
'But, Lord, this ceaseless travail of my soul!
This stress! This often fruitless toil
These souls to win!
They are not mine. I brought not forth this host
Of needy creatures, struggling, tempest-tossed—
They are not mine.'
He looked at them—the look of One divine;
He turned and looked at me. 'But they are mine!'
'O God, I said, 'I understand at last.
Forgive! And henceforth I will bond-slave be
To thy least, weakest, vilest ones;
I would not more be free.'
He smiled and said,
'It is to me.'" (Lucy Rider Meyer.)
The word Gethsemane has not been used accurately sometimes. And it is not good that it is so, for it keeps us from appreciating what the real meaning is. In poetry and otherwise it has been used for some great experience of sorrow in which the soul has struggled alone. But there are two things in the Gethsemane experience that give it a meaning quite different from such. The Gethsemane sorrow is on account of the sin of others, and it comes to us through our own consent, of our own action. We need not go through the Gethsemane experience save as we make the choice that comes to include this. It is only as we choose to follow fully, close up to His bleeding side, where the Lord Jesus is leading, that this experience of pain will come.
Moses knew what this meant. As he came from the presence of God in the mount the sin of the people seemed so terrible, that the fear that possibly it could not be forgiven unless he made some sacrifice sweeps over him and came out as a great sob. (Exo_32:31-32 The sight of their sin brought sorest pain to his spirit. Paul tells us there was a continual cutting of a knife at his heart because of his racial kinsfolk, their sin, their stubbornness in sin, the awful blight upon their lives. (Rom_9:1-3.) There was sore, lone, unspeakable pain of spirit because he felt so keenly the sin of others. This is the Gethsemane experience. Have you felt something like this as you have come in touch with the sin, the blighted lives, the wreckage of lives among both poor and rich, lower class and better? You will if you follow where He leads.