Mark
14:32-42
We note, first,
the place (14:32a):
And they came
to a place which was named Gethsemane:
And we note, also,
the pain (14:32b-34):
and he saith
to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. (14:32)
An enclosed piece
of ground was there at Gethsemane. The Lord seems to have left the main body
of the disciples outside. He had a parting word of advice for them, however:
"Sit ye here!" He said, "I am going to pray." The implication is that they would
be well advised to do the same, especially with Zechariah 13:7 still fresh in
their minds. They should stop protesting their resolutions and start praying.
Judas and the mob would soon be there.
Advertisement
And he taketh
with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very
heavy; (14:33)
The other disciples
were getting used to the choice of these three for further revelation. It had
happened twice before, once in the house of Jairus, when they had been chosen
to witness His greatness in the raising of a little girl to life, and
once to be with Him and witness His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Now they were being taken aside to witness His grief.
And what grief
it was! The word for "sore amazed" occurs in only two other places, both of
them in Mark's gospel. We have met the word before. When the Lord came down
from the Mount of Transfiguration, we read that "all the people, when they beheld
him, were greatly amazed. . ." (9:15). The glory of that other world, revealed
in all of its awe-inspiring magnificence on the mount itself, seems to have
left its aura about Him. The people were awed by the splendor of another world.
It would be the same on the resurrection morning; when the women came to the
tomb and saw the angel there, "they were affrighted" and were told to not be
"affrighted." Again, it was contact with another world that awed them (16:5-6).
In Gethsemane,
the Lord was brought into contact with another world too -- the world of our
sin, the world of unspeakable horror that lay before Him at Calvary when He
would take upon Himself our guilt and be "made sin for us." He was "sore amazed."
The Greek word
actually conveys "to be stunned with astonishment." It depicts the pain that
results from some great shock. The Lord had lived on this sin-cursed planet
ever since He was born at Bethlehem. He had rubbed shoulders with sinning humanity
all of His life. But this was different. This was sin in the raw, naked sin,
sin in all of its undiluted wickedness. The Lord's first reaction to the full
horror and heinousness of human sin seems to have been one of overwhelming shock.
The reality exceeded all of His expectations.
He was "sore amazed."
Mark adds that He was "very heavy." The word means to be deeply weighed down,
to be depressed, to be uncomfortable, to be in a situation in which He no longer
felt at home.