17 Couldn’t You Stay Awake? (Mark 14:27-42)

Speaker: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. This is the 17th lesson of the series of questions Jesus Asked. One of the most difficult questions Christians are asked is if God is sovereign, why pray? It won't change anything. Our passage of today gets us a really good start on understanding this challenging concept of talking with God in prayer. Mark chapter 14, verses 27 through 42. Krisan Marotta: Probably uh one of the most difficult questions we get asked as Christians is why pray? If God is sovereign and he's predestined everything and he's got a plan for our lives, and he's nothing happens to us by chance, then why bother to pray? Because the Bible teaches that God has this plan and nothing happens apart from his will, and he's this great master conductor who's orchestrating every note in our symphony, so why pray? Since I won't change anything. And I that can be an academic question or a theological question, but I think for most of you it's probably a personal question. Uh I bet you felt the tension sometime where you've prayed for something and the answer was not what you wanted or expected. I know when my mother-in-law was battling cancer, we prayed constantly for her healing and she was not healed in this life. And at the same time, this was several years ago, I had a friend whose baby was born uh two months prematurely, and we prayed for the little girl and she's thriving today. So, as a church, how do we explain that? How do you know? Well, I'm not gonna answer that question. Well, we're gonna leave. Okay. Not completely anyway, but I think our passage today is gonna give us a really good clue as to how to understand why that happens and to approach that. So we are gonna start down the path to answering it. So you'll recall we're in the Gospel of Mark, and we've been going through Mark looking at the places where Jesus asks a question. Last week we looked at what's perhaps the most significant meal ever shared, the final Passover between Jesus and his disciples. And a great deal happened in that room last night that night. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples as they entered the room. That's recorded in John. We didn't talk about that, but it was part of that night. He urged them to be humble in their service to one another. He stretched out his hand to his betrayer who was seated at the table with him, and then of course he uttered the remarkable words, This is my body, this is my blood, and uh explained basically the new covenant that just as Passover looked backwards to Israel's Exodus and also forward to their return from exile, so the Lord's Supper, or what we call communion, looks backward to the death of Jesus and forward to his return when there will be a great messianic banquet when he returns. This is recorded in Isaiah 25 six, looking it's the looking forward part. On this mountain, the Lord of her hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined, and he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations, he will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken, and it will be said on that day, Behold, this is our God, we have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord, we have waited for him, let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. So even back when the prophet's Isaiah was looking forward to the final coming, the second coming of Jesus. So at the end of their time together, Jesus prayed a very remarkable prayer that's recorded in John chapter 17. Knowing that he could no longer protect his disciples, he commends them into the hands of God, and then they sing a benediction and walk out into the darkness, and that is where we pick up the story. So turn to Mark chapter 14, and we're going to start in verse 26. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives, and Jesus said to them, You will all fall away, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. And Peter said to him, Even though they all fall away, I will not. And Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. But he said emphatically, If I must die with you, I will not deny you. And they all said the same. I'm going to stop there. So this passage starts with a hymn. They're singing they've just celebrated the Passover meal, and that traditionally ended with the singing of praises, which was called the Hallel. It's where we get the word hallelujah from. Before the meal, they would sing what we know of as Psalm 113 and 114. And then following the meal, they would usually sing the second half of that, which is what we know as Psalm 115 to 118. So this time, it's this hymn is almost a benediction because this is the end of an era. Jesus' time on earth is nearing an end. There's a couple things I want to point out to you about this passage, just this little section. Notice first that Jesus knows what's going to happen to him. Scholars like to debate, you know, how much did Jesus know? Did he understand the whole plan or was it revealed to him in pieces? This passage reveals that Jesus knows what was going to happen to him. And earlier incidents in the gospel suggest that he knows, you see him making arrangements for it. But this passage I think is one of the clearest in that he knows precisely the details. And that raises the question, how did he know? And I think he he beyond any divine knowledge he had, he probably knew what was going to happen because he'd studied the scriptures. Because the Old Testament really very thoroughly lays out what is going to happen. And as a student of the Old Testament, with his understanding and wisdom, I think he would have gotten it. For example, the very hymn that they just sang ends what would have ended with Psalm 118, and Psalm 118 concludes with these words Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords up to the horns of the altar. So even in that psalm, you have the reference to the sacrifice that is going to be made. So Jesus would have known the story of the Passover and Exodus involves sacrifice, the story of the new covenant involves sacrifice, Isaiah predicts the suffering of the servant. This is what the Messiah was required to do. So even apart from divine knowledge, he could have figured it out from the Old Testament. So the second thing to note about this passage is Peter's response. Peter is adamant that everyone else might fall away, but he's made of different stuff. It's not going to happen to him. So it struck me Jesus is not only telling them every detail of what's going to happen or what's about to happen, but he tells them the significance of it and how it's going to affect them. So he's talked to them about his betrayal and his death, and now he's telling them the impact his betrayal and his death is going to have on them, literally that it will scandalize them, that it will scatter them like sheep. They will be gripped with terror so that every last one of them runs away. This was foretold in Zechariah chapter 10, which is the same prophet that foretold Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on the fall of a donkey. That's in Zechariah chapter 9, if you want to look those up in your small group. And he because he wants them to know what's coming. And of course, Peter's response is kind of typical. It's like, no, no, not me. I'm he's ready to draw his sword and save Jesus from whatever terrible things going to happen. He's like, they may be a bunch of weak sheep, but not me. I won't do that. We'll fight this together. So Jesus responds to his boast with what was probably a very painful revelation for him. He says, Truly I say to you, you yourself this very night before the cockrows twice shall deny me three times. So he tells you, no, it's today, this very night, and it's imminent in just a few hours. The Romans gave the term the cockrow to the watch that was from midnight to three a.m. And that's what he's referencing. So between that watch before 3 a.m., this very night, you're gonna deny me three times. So he's telling Peter the denial is certain, it's imminent, it's just within hours, and it's not gonna be just once, it's gonna be three times. Uh and that, I think, must have been very painful to Peter. Because he sees himself as, you know, I'm different, I'm not gonna do this. And then, of course, everyone else joins in with him. It says, No, no, we we won't do that, that won't happen to us. The quote he references is from Zechariah, uh, again, it's chapter 13. So in verse 27, when he's quoting, he's quoting Zechariah 13, which reads, Awake O sword against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me, declares the Lord of hosts, strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, I will turn my hand against the little ones. And Jesus quotes it, uh, he interprets it as I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, because God is the one speaking. So if you just read Zechariah, it sounds like this mysterious sword is going to awaken and strike the sheep, and the they will scatter, but if you the passage says, declares the Lord of hosts, makes it clear that that God is the one speaking, and it's in his hand that this sword will be held. And I think the reason there's no defense then for the shepherd is because it's his father who is going to destroy him, it's his father who is going to smite him, because he, as we'll see as this passage unfolds, becomes the sin bearer for our sakes. He's the one who will die in our place. But the end of the story is life and not death. So, with all the disciples declaring their faithfulness no matter what, consider what happens next, and this is where we're going to get to our question. So let's go on with verse 32. And they came to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to the disciples, Sit here while I pray. And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death, remain here and watch. And going a little farther he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. Again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again it came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. And he came the third time and said to them, Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough, the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going, see my betrayer is at hand. Okay, so they're in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the name Gethsemane comes from the Hebrew word that means press of olives. The garden was located at the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives, and it was planted with olive trees and had numerous olive presses, so this is where the name comes from. John tells us in his gospel that this was one of Jesus' favorite spots, that this is where he would withdraw when he needed time away from the crowds and time to be with his disciples. And this site is well preserved even today. And there are still a number of olive trees there that some people say date back to the time of Jesus. I don't know if they do or not, but there are still three olive trees there that are still productive. So as he enters the garden, he leaves eight of the disciples at the entrance and tells them to remain there while he prays, and then he takes Peter, James, and John, his three closest friends, with him in deeper into the garden. And it's difficult to describe what happens to him. Mark uses two words here that are very rare in the New Testament, and he combines them in a way that's very unusual. So in verse 33, when he says greatly distressed and troubled, those are kind of hard to translate. The first term speaks of being completely overwhelmed with amazement or fear or shock. So we might use the term shell-shocked today. It's that just absolutely overwhelmed by some strong emotion. The second term speaks of extreme distress. So it's more of an agony or an anguishing kind of term. So you put the two together and you have this extreme, shell-shocked, overwhelming agony. The other gospel writers say it pressed on him so hard that he was sweating like drops of blood. They were so huge. So one of the scholars I read described this as an extremely acute emotion, a compound of bewilderment, fear, uncertainty, and anxiety, nowhere else portrayed in such vivid terms as here. So he is in agony and he's asking his three best friends to kind of stay with him and keep watch. Now notice they aren't required to do anything heroic at this point. There's nothing courageous being asked of them. He's just asking them to uh stay with him, to wait. So Peter's just said, you know, I'm going to be a hero for your sake, and the Lord says, Well, no, you're not. You will deny me three times, but can you just stay awake now? And I think what's going on is, have you ever gone through a really tough time and you just want someone to be with you? You know, it just helps, even if they do absolutely nothing, just to know that you're not alone. Um, I was thinking about what reminded me of this is before we got married, my father-in-law was hit by a car while he was on his bike. And he ended up all he did was break his leg, so he was in a cast for the wedding. But we didn't know. We just got this word, he was on his bike, he was hit by a car, and of course we all rushed to the emergency room, and my if your mother-in-law was there, and she kept saying, Go home, go home, yeah, I know, I'm all right. And we're like, Like, we're really gonna leave you here. Well, you know, but that's the kind of person who was, oh, it's okay, I'll be alright. And we're like, No, we'll just sit here with you until we find out, you know, where he is and what's happened. And uh and it just helps to have someone, even if they don't say anything, just to sit, you know, how you gather in the hospital waiting room when someone's going through surgery or something, there's there's not anything those people can actually do except just let you know you're not alone when you're going through this. And that I think is what's going on here. This is a deep anguish for Jesus, and he just wants them there with him. The problem, of course, for the disciples is they've just had a large feast, it's near midnight, their stomachs are full, their minds are dull, their bodies are weary, and so of course they fall asleep. So he moves away from them and begins to pray, and when he comes back, he finds them sleeping, and he says, Simon, are you asleep? Couldn't you stay awake? And then, of course, this happens two more times. So Mark gives us a summary of his request and then follows with his exact words. But the bottom line is if there's a way out, Jesus wants out. Now, does that surprise you? I think that's probably one of the most shocking facts of the gospel, that he goes, he's facing the cross and he's asking to be released from it if it were possible. We're going to talk a lot about more about that in a minute, but I want to get through the details of the story first. So let's go back to verse 36. Only Mark's gospel tells us that Jesus addressed God as father or as papa here. He says, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. That's the Aramaic word Abba, it's like daddy or dada in our language. It's a word that you would use for an intimate relationship, a trusting relationship. They had another word for father that was more formal, that would have pointed more towards someone who was respected and in control and capable. The Jews did not use Abba in prayer. This was something that Jesus introduced to his disciples and taught them to use Abba as an intimate and loving term. So he's using this term, I think, to, because he's drawing near to the one who could hold him, the one who can make everything okay, and he says, You can do anything, you can take this cup of ma away from me, will you? And I think this is the ancient struggle of believers. All of us get asked at some point to do something we don't want to do. And there's times when you turn to God and you say, Can't is do I have to do this? Is this is this the path I must walk? Um how can you be all-loving, all powerful, and yet allow me to go through this struggle or this suffering or whatever it is, whether it's health or finances or um you know the martyrs of of in different countries where Christians are persecuted? How do you how do we face that? So it's the same struggle. Luke in his recording of this tells us that an angel came to strengthen Jesus, but other than that, there's no response recorded. So we we don't know any response that he got other than that. So he's saying, Papa, you can do anything. Will you take this cup from me? And there's no answer. And then, of course, he ends his prayer with, but not what I want, what you want. And so he obediently chooses to endure what's necessary so that we might be saved. Now, it's interesting that he uses the language of, will you take this cup from me? Because that raises all kinds of biblical questions. What was the cup he was asked to drink? We talked about this a little last week. Um the cup was usually a cup of wine, and wine was a symbol of the end product of all your labor, because wine was the in-gathering of everything that had been ploughed and sowed and watered and pruned and harvested and finally fermented. It all that whole process ended in the wine. So it was often a symbol of the results of all your labor or your productivity. And in the Old Testament, it's often used to describe God's wrath. So the cup that God hands people is the cup of his wrath, which he's about to pour out on the nations. So, for instance, Psalm 75.8 reads, In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices. He pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to the very dregs. And then the other language you see in this is that just one sip of this cup is enough to make one stagger, and yet the Messiah is asked to drink all of it. And it's if you look through the passages that predict the exile, you'll see the cup is used to predict the downfall of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon. Um, they are all spoken of as drinking the cup of God's wrath or his anger. Rome is going to suffer the same fate. Israel had tasted her share of it when they went into exile. But even in exile, Isaiah looks to the day when this will not happen anymore. This is Isaiah 51, 22. This is what your sovereign Lord says, your God who defends his people. See, I have taken out of your hands the cup that made you stagger. From that cup, the goblet of my wrath, you will never drink again. So Isaiah predicts that the day will come when they will never experience God's wrath again, and then he goes on to say, Why? Because someone else will drink that cup for you, someone else will become the sin bearer of his people, which goes into the passage you're probably familiar with, Libby read from earlier, Isaiah 53. But the Lord was pleased to crush him, he made him sick if he would render himself as a guilt offering. And what we're seeing in the garden right now is that choice of Jesus struggling with that choice to render himself as the guilt offering. So having poured out his agony to the Father, he drags himself out of the dust to go check on how his centuries are doing, and of course, he finds them sleeping. And this happens three times. The last question in 41 is a little more difficult to translate. It can be taken either as a question or as a statement. So it's either, are you sleeping and resting, as kind of a disappointed question, or it can be taken as an ironic kind of statement, well, go ahead and sleep, or sleep for the remainder and the rest. And scholars debate which one is it. Is it a question or is it kind of this ironic, well, you might as well sleep? I tend, once I discovered that as an option, I kind of like it. D.A. Carson sums it up well. He says about that the hour of the Passion is near, it is too late to pray and gain strength for the temptations ahead, so his disciples may as well sleep. Doubtless Jesus could see and hear the party approaching as it crossed the Kidron with torches and climbed up the path to Gethsemane. The sleepers for whom he would die have lost their opportunity to gain strength through prayer. By contrast, Jesus had prayed in agony and now rises with poise and advances to meet his betrayer. So he thinks that this is probably an ironic command, you might as well sleep, you've missed your opportunity to pray and wait and watch with him. So this is the dark night of Jesus' soul when he's faced with the choice, do I offer my life or not? It's probably the place he was most vulnerable when everything that was human about him was crying out not to do this, to do anything but face the cup of God's wrath. And you see him alone, all his three closest friends asleep, so he's alone, face down on the ground, um bereft. And yet he rises confident and walks out to meet his um his fate. So let me make let me go back to the to his choice. And I promised you we were going to talk about the fact that Jesus wanted to avoid the cross. I think that's probably one of the most shocking facts in the gospel because we tend to think that Jesus was so righteous that he never sinned because he never wanted to, or he was never tempted in any way, that it was he was just so far above it that it wasn't even a struggle. I think this passage, along with the record of his temptation in the wilderness, suggests that that's not true, that he did struggle, and that there was a part of him, insofar as he was human, that would have been tempted, but he could meet that temptation righteously. And I think this explains why the author of Hebrews says Jesus is a faithful high priest because he knows what we've gone through. He has faced the struggle. There's no temptation that isn't unfamiliar to him, that's all familiar to him. He personally experienced what we experienced, found the desire to disobey in the sense of not wanting to face this suffering, and yet overcame that desire because he wanted to follow God's will. So he wanted to avoid the cross if possible, but he voluntarily chose to go through it, and that's what makes him the perfect sacrifice. If you think about the sacrifices of the Old Testament, they were goats or lambs or bulls, they had no choice. They were just picked and taken. Jesus has a choice, and it's his choice that fully satisfies God's wrath. So I think this passage, the other thing this passage I think refutes is the idea that righteous people live these serene, peaceful, quiet, uneventful lives. You know, there's kind of this myth that if you're a Christian, if you're just Christian enough, or if you just believe enough, or you're good enough, you'll have this smooth sailing, calm, you know, unruffled existence. Um and yet here you have the only perfect man who ever lived facing this deep personal gut-wrenching agony. And uh I think as his followers we should expect to face the same kind of struggles. But God does not promise us serenity, he promises he'll get us through it. The other thing I think uh it struck me is why would the disciples fall asleep? Was that something, you know, why would God orchestrate it that way? Why wouldn't he have had them stay awake? And it struck me, well, it could have been just to make Jesus face this choice alone, or it could have been that the the very near, obvious weakness of his disciples was part of the thing that strengthened Jesus to make the choice. I mean, here he's struggling with should I go to the cross or not? And his three closest friends who should know him the best and understand the plan or not, can't stay awake. They can't do what they need to do, and he sees they need me. They need me to help them. So elsewhere in the Bible it says he endured the cross because of his love for us, and I think maybe just seeing the obvious need of his disciples so closely might have been part of the thing that helps strengthen his resolve. Okay, so look at the contrasts in these stories that are set side by side. First, you have Jesus predicting Peter's denial, and Peter saying, No, that will never happen, I'll never leave you, and all the disciples join him and say, No, we will never make that, we'll never fall away, we'll never scatter. Then he asked the three to stay awake and watch with him during his dark night of the soul, and they can't, they fall asleep three times. And then side by side with that, you have Jesus agonizing over the cup set before him, praying that if there was some other way, uh, that he could have that other way, and yet voluntarily choosing to obey all the suffering and the humiliation that's coming. So you have this picture of we want to obey and we can't. But Jesus, even when he doesn't want to obey, does. And that is the gospel. That is why we need him. Without Christ's sacrifice, we could never be different. They could never be different, and neither can we. And that I think is part of the point Mark's trying to make here. No one is good enough to be saved. Not one of us. There is none of us that faced with um, you know, that can count up the ledger seat and say, Oh, my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds, so I should be saved. That's not the way it works. None of us makes the cut. Just as a little bit of yeast permeates the entire loaf of bread, so a little bit of sin makes us sinful. This is the way, when I used to teach Sunday school, this is the way we used to explain it to the kids. It's got my hand signals here. This is us, my left hand, this is God. And it's we start in the garden, face to face with God, in communion with him. The problem is we fell. We turned our backs on God and said, you know what? I think I'd rather do it my way. I'd rather be God, I'd rather decide what's right and wrong. I want to be the judge of the universe. I'm gonna decide what's right and wrong, and I don't need you. When that happens, God, in his wrath, turns his back on us. So it's not just that our choice was unfortunate, it was wrong. It was criminal. It's a debt to justice. And God is a just God, completely just, must respond to that. And so he turns his back on us, or as Paul says in Romans 1, he gives us over into the custody of sin and death. And God is the only source of life and goodness and truth and beauty and everything that we think of as wonderful in this in this world. Without him, we're stuck with death and sin and decay and corruption. In this state, if we could turn back around, I don't think we can theologically, but if we could, apart from Christ, it would do no good because we still have this problem of God's wrath. What we did was wrong, and a debt to justice must be paid, and that is our problem. So justice demands a response, and without Jesus' death on the cross, this is the state we're in. We used to tell the kids that our choosers are broken. So the very thing inside you that makes you choose, you can call that your personality, you can call that your ego, you can call it your nature, you can call it your body chemistry, uh, genetics, whatever it is in you that makes you you and choose is broken. So that when you choose, you choose selfishness over service, you choose sin over goodness, you choose things that are wrong over right. So just resolving, I'm gonna choose better next time, doesn't work because your chooser is broken. Because God has his back turned, he's not offering life, and we don't have the ability without him to choose rightly. So you'll remember a couple years ago we studied Romans, this is from Romans 7. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. That's what we see in the disciples in the garden. They didn't want to fall away, but they did. They didn't want to fall asleep, but they did. So the wishing is present, but the doing is not. For the good that I wished, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing that I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells within me. I find the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. And then he goes on and says, Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from this body of death? The problem Paul's describing is not the rebellion of a child who, you know, I know you've all seen this if you have children, where you say, Don't cross the line, and they look you in the eye and they go, I'm gonna do it. That's not the problem he's describing. He's describing the child who wants to obey, who agrees that the law is good and right, and can't, and finds he doesn't have what it takes to obey, and that's the situation we have in our stories. Peter and the other disciples don't want to abandon Jesus, but they do, and they want to stay awake, but they can't. They want to have what it takes to remain loyal sheep when the shepherd is struck down, and yet they scatter anyway. So left to themselves, they're stuck. They can't change that fact, and neither can we. I saw a show once where they interviewed a Jew who had survived the Holocaust, and during the show, this man came face to face with Adolf Eichmann, who was uh the man responsible for his suffering. And as Eichmann walked into the courtroom, the Jew fainted, and later on the newscaster interviewed him and he said, you know, why did you faint? If was it just the terror and the evil of Eichmann that overwhelmed you? And the man replied, No, I was as I was expecting to see in Adolf Eichmann an ugly monster, but instead I saw a man just like me. And that's the problem. We all that's our stories are all the same. The same evil that would cause someone to turn into Adolf Eichmann is in all of us. We all have the same disease, we all have the same problem, and we all need the same cure. So we have to come face to face with that realization. I'm a sinner, I'm a slave to sin, I have no excuse, and apart from that radical heart surgery, there's no hope. So had I been there, I would have been sleeping in the garden too and scattering just like sheep. Um Horace, the Roman poet, said that don't bring a God onto the stage unless the problem is one that deserves a God to solve it. He's talking about Greek tragedies. That's what we have in our story. Our problem is so great that no one other than God can solve it for us. And that's what Jesus' death on the cross is all about. In Leviticus, you can read the sacrificial system, that blood was required to placate the wrath of God. You couldn't approach God until a sacrifice had been made and blood had been sprinkled on the altar. And then the prophets take that even further. In Isaiah 53, he the what the Libby read this earlier, he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the chastising of our peace fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. And they Isaiah predicts that a servant would come who would shed blood for our sins. So we're in this state, and what happens is through Jesus' death on the cross, it pays the penalty for our sin. So it's a legal, judicial, he's paying for our crime. God can then turn back around and offer us life, and he draws us to him, so we turn back to face to face. So Jesus pays the penalty for our sins, it satisfies God's wrath, so he can then once again offer us life and buy us out of slavery. So you've probably heard the term redemption when talking about that. Redemption was part of the slave vocabulary. It was not a religious word, it was used to buy someone out of slavery. So in the Greek and Roman wars, when the the victors would round up the losers and cart them back to their land to be slaves in their households, and if some prominent citizen was captured, their relatives could offer enough money to buy them out of slavery. And that's what the word redemption was, was buying you out of that slavery. So God gave us over into the custody of sin. We were slaves to sin, and with the blood of Jesus, we have been redeemed. We have been bought back out of that slavery. Now remember from last week, this is not Daddy Warbucks, you know, writing a little check to get little Annie out of the orphanage. This is the God of the universe bankrupting himself. This was an enormous cost. This is his only son dying a horrible, humiliating death, giving up divinity and becoming human to pay this price for us. And the only thing we contribute is our sin. He takes the initiative to solve our problem and he offers everything to do it. Okay, so what you see in that then is that God is both just and merciful, because his justness is shown in his wrath. Sin is wrong and it requires a response. It's a breach of justice. And he would not be just if he didn't res if he just looked the other way and let it go. So you see his justness in his response to our sin, but he is also profoundly merciful, so merciful that he does for us what we can't do for ourselves, and he solves the problem of our sin by sending Jesus to die for us. So the penalty, his anger is justified, it's fair and reasonable because sin is a breach of justice, and the penalty is fair and reasonable, and yet he is so profoundly merciful he solves the problem for us. So left to ourselves, we're prisoners of sin and death, and like Peter and the disciples, when we want to obey, we can't. But Jesus voluntarily chose to pay the price for our sin even when he didn't want to do it. So because of his sacrifice, we can be different. So that just leaves one question. How? If all this is true, how do you claim it? How do you become justified or how are you saved? What a I told you, I think earlier, saving faith is a gift. It's given to us as grace, but what is it? I'm gonna first I'm gonna tell you what it's not. These are my pet peeves. Saving faith is not obedience. So it's not the same thing as loyalty, it's not this quality of being dedicated to God, and you know, I'm taking my faith seriously, and I'm going through the motions, and I'm just racking up the good points on the good side of the ledger. That's a good thing to be obedient, but that is not what saves you. You can't be good enough to earn salvation. So saving faith is not obedience, it is also not intellectual assent. It is not just how you would vote in a debate, what's true or what's false. You could be a theist and have all the right doctrine, but that is not going to save you without it changing your life. So it's not a series of doctrinal statements. Now, you ought to believe things that are true and not things that are false, and sound doctrine is a good thing to know rather than false doctrine, but you can have perfect theology and it wouldn't save you. So saving faith is not obedience, it's not intellectual assent, and it's not believing without reason. And that's this is the one that drives me crazy because you see this all over the media. They will hold these people up and they'll believe something absolutely stupid. And the stupider it is to believe, and the more strongly they believe it, the more virtuous their cast. And like this is not what faith is all about. You had there are very good reasons to believe Christianity, and there's no value in believing something that there's no reason to believe. It's just that's a myth that that's perpetrated, I think, by the media, that uh of all religions, Christianity ought to be, we ought to be the ones racing headlong into the tough questions because our God created logic, created the world, and um he didn't abandon all that when he made us. So we can't face those tough questions knowing there's an answer. So if you don't know why you believe, find out. There are lots of good books on the evidence for Christianity and the evidence for Jesus, and there are lots of reasons to believe the whys and the and the hows, and we ought to know them. So saving faith is not obedience alone, it is not intellectual assent alone, and it is not believing without reason. What is it? Saving faith is trusting God to save you from your sin because of the blood of Jesus Christ. So it's very specific. It's trusting someone for something. And the Bible is pretty clear the who and the what. The who we're trusting is God. We're trusting God to save us, not some other God, not doctrine, not our obedience, um, not you know, our responses or something. It is trusting the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who sent his son. And we're trusting him for holiness or righteousness to save us from our sins. So it's not trusting him for money, it's not trusting him for health or power or success or happiness. You know, it's okay to trust God for those things you should, but that's not what saves you. What the bottom line is we're trusting him to save us from our sins, and that involves four things. So the first is knowing I'm sinful. I have to know that I am not the person I should be, that despite my best efforts and my best intentions, I am not going to able to muster up whatever uh courage or divine spark or something within to make myself righteous. So I have to know that I'm sinful. The second thing is I have to know God owes me nothing. He's not required to save me. There's nothing about me that twists his arm into forcing him to give me any gift of his. I expect nothing because I am truly unworthy, totally unworthy. So I know I'm sinful, I know that God owes me nothing. The third thing is I know that left to myself, I can't make myself good. So I can't change that. It's a recognition of I'm in this state where I'm our my relationship with God is broken. So there's nothing I can do in myself to change that fact. So I know I'm sinful, I know God owes me nothing, I know I can't make myself good, and then finally I trust God because of the death of Jesus Christ to make me good, to free me from my sin. So if I have those four things, I have saving faith. I'm trusting God to save me from the problem of my sin. Now, it implies that this is a future hope. We wouldn't be trusting Him for it if we already had it, if we were completely freed from our sins. We get the down payment with the Holy Spirit and we see progress, but we are not going to be completely freed from all our sin this side of heaven. So, now I'm back to the original question: why pray? I said earlier, why pray if it doesn't change anything because God already has it planned out? That's a bit misleading because prayer I don't think will disrupt the plans of history or the course of history, but it can change my heart. And that's the reason we pray. The thing that changes is not God, the thing that changes is me. And I think you see that even in the garden. Jesus starts the process face down on the ground in agony, and at the end, he rises up strong, faces his betrayers, and from that point on you see him strong and resolute through the rest of the gospels. So I pray not to twist God's arm or badger him into doing what I want or trying to get him to see things my way, or, you know, reminded him like he's some absent-minded professor that I have to remind him, oh, it's time to take care of me now, or something. Or it's not, you know, rub the magic genie lamp and get a prayer request out. That's not what prayer I think is for. I think it's we pray because it changes our heart. It changes our perspective, it gets our eyes off of our emotions, off of our circumstances, off of all the what-ifs and what if that, and forces us to focus on what do I know is true, what do I know about God, what is he promised? And that can change our hearts. So it strengthens us. And I think that's the reason to pray. We may not get the answer we expect, but we will get the strength we need to go on. So in those real battles where we're confronting circumstances or evil or whatever, um, simple, honest prayer can change our soul. So change our heart. So just as Jesus rose from his knees, knowing now he could face his betrayer, the trial, the false accusations, the mockery, the spittings, the beatings, all of that, the final hours of the crucifixion, um, that's what prayer can do. Prayer didn't change the Father's highest good. He still had a perfect plan, but it did change his son and strengthened him to face that. So the only choice left then is do you want to follow him or not? Do you want to trust him that what he did on the cross paid the penalty for your sins? And that is a choice we can all make, and it is open to anyone. You don't have to be born in a certain way, or raised a certain way, or live in a certain life. It's never too late, uh, as long as you're breathing. So, as Peter writes, this is from 1 Peter 5, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of sufferings are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. That's the hope of the gospel. You, after a little while, he will perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. And then he concludes to him be dominion forever and ever. Speaker: Thank you for joining us at Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. We hope you have enjoyed our study together and grown closer to the Lord. Please let us know if you have any questions about this study. We are on the internet at wednesdayintheword.com, where you will find this and other Bible studies. We hope you'll join us again soon.