Jesus’ Agony in the Garden

Midweek Lenten Worship
February 25, 2026
Matthew 26:30-46

“Jesus’ Agony in the Garden”

In our midweek Lenten worship services, our focus will be on the Passion narrative from Matthew’s Gospel as we follow Jesus on his way to the cross. Today, we are with Jesus in his agony of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Following the Passover meal with the disciples, in which Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, they all headed out of Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley. They entered into the quiet refuge of this place called Gethsemane, located on the Mount of Olives. Gethsemane was an olive grove with a press in it for producing olive oil, which is what Gethsemane means in Aramaic, “oil press.” If you go to Jerusalem today, you can visit a place called the Garden of Gethsemane, although the actual location of the one mentioned in Scripture is unknown. There are some very old olive trees to be found here (some nearly 1000 years old), but none from the time of Christ. It is here, in the quiet and darkness of this place called Gethsemane, that Jesus wrestles in prayer. Leaving the larger group of disciples behind, Jesus takes the inner circle of Peter, James, and John further into the garden with him. He told them what was going on and what he needed from them: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me” (Matthew 26:38). But after the heavy Passover meal, and the four cups of wine that went with it, the disciples found it hard to stay awake. Not once, not twice, but three times, Jesus returns from prayer to find them sleeping. Jesus’ words to Peter are spoken to us as well: “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:40b-41). In our own lives, in our own watching and praying, we know all too well that however much our spirit may be willing, our flesh is so very weak. Like those first disciples, we are prone to fall asleep; to fall away.

What was it that Jesus was wrestling with so intensely there in the Garden of Gethsemane? Matthew’s account tells us this clearly: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39), and “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (Matthew 26:42). This was the terrible struggle that Jesus was wrestling with. In his human nature as the Son of man, Jesus wrestled with what was to come, and what this would mean for him. So intense and powerful was this struggle, that Luke records Jesus’ sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground (Luke 22:44). This is an actual medical condition called hematidrosis. Under extreme physical or emotional stress a person’s capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing the condition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematidrosis). Here in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was at a critical crossroads! The future – our future – depended on which road Jesus would choose. That cup image and drinking from it is one found frequently in the Old Testament (Isaiah 51:22; Jeremiah 25:15, 17, 28; 49:12; Ezekiel 23:32; Habakkuk 2:16). It refers to the cup of God’s wrath; his fierce anger and punishment for sin and disobedience. Alone in the garden in the dead of night, Jesus came face-to-face with the awful purpose of his life and mission: to drink down to the dregs the cup of God’s righteous judgment on our sin and disobedience. Though he is the sinless Son of God, Jesus is also the Son of man, a human being, and in the frailty of his humanity Jesus cried out to his Father: “Let this cup pass from me!” Knowing what lay ahead of him, Jesus chose obedience over disobedience. He chose the Father’s will over his own will. He chose us over himself. That life of perfect obedience that we can never see in ourselves, we see in Jesus, who submitted his fears, his desires, his will, to that of the Father. Jesus’ obedience would soon lead to betrayal, rejection, scorn and ridicule, a mock trial and injustice, political expediency, torture, and death on the cross as a common criminal. That was the mighty struggle in Gethsemane.

In a little book called, Why Pray?, John DeVries, opened my eyes to an important spiritual truth. In a chapter entitled, “Prayer Is Work,” he wrote the following: “Haddon Robinson first called my attention to prayer as work by asking me the question ‘Where did Jesus do the work of the atonement? In the garden, in the judgment hall, or on the cross?’ Robinson said that in his estimation the real work of the atonement came when Christ sweat drops like blood, agonizing in prayer in the garden. Because Christ did the work of prayer, He could enter Pilate’s judgment hall with quiet confidence, and on the cross He could say, ‘Father forgive them’” (Why Pray? 40 Days – From Words to Relationship, by John F. DeVries. Grand Rapids: Mission India, 2005; p. 57). Without Gethsemane, there could not have been Golgotha. Had Jesus not wrestled in that agony of prayer, submitting his own will to that of the Father, he could not have done what he did. At the crossroads of our salvation, Jesus “became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

Because Jesus became obedient unto death, even death on a cross, for our sake, we are now called to new obedience. Christ died for us that we might live for him! When we wrestle with submitting our own will to that of our heavenly Father, when we struggle with praying “Thy will be done,” when we are tempted to take the easy and expedient way out over against the hard road of following Jesus, at these crossroads of life Jesus is there with his mercy and his grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16). We have this assurance: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Because in Christ there is now no condemnation for us, this works a new obedience in our lives – an obedience that is not begrudging or half-hearted; an obedience that is superficial and has no depth. Led by the Holy Spirit, this new obedience flows out of a heart that is filled with thanks and praise to God for the gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation that is ours through Jesus’ agony in the Garden. Amen.

Join us next Wednesday for our midweek Lenten worship when we will hear of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest (Matthew 26:46-56).