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fourth of a serin oj sermons on "The Prayers
of Jesus as Recorded in the Gospels. "
TEXT: “Now is my soul troubled and what shall I
say? Father save me from this hour; but for this
cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy
name. Then came there a voice from heaven saying,
I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
E have been considering this general sub
ject, the Prayers of Jesus, and this morn
ing the prayer is Jesus’ prayer for
strength. It is a critical time in the life
of our Lord. Just a few days ago He
raised Lazarus from the dead. This act
created a great sensation in the commu
nity, and people began to flock to Him
from all quarters; some believed on Him
W
and some went away to tell the Pharisees; and the
Pharisees by reason of what they heard were very
much enraged; they were jealous of this man w’ho
was becoming so popular. They joined themselves
with the High Priests; together they began to work
out a scheme to put an end to the life work of Jesus.
They said, “Unless we do this the whole world will
believe on Him.” They were just like many people
today, people that call themselves and that are called
by others, statesmen and patriots, but they are much
more concerned about holding the reigns of govern
ment themselves than they are that righteousness
should reign in their communities. When Jesus
heard of this agitation He withdrew Himself from the
public gaze and retired to the country with His disci
ples. Six days before the passover He came again
to the city of Bethlehem and there He entered into
the home of His friends, Mary and Martha and Laza
rus. When Jesus entered this home it was under
very different circumstances from those that sur
rounded Him before. There is now no friction in
the home. Martha has lost something that she had
when Jesus was there before. When He was there
before Martha was cumbered about much serving but
she has been trained since then in the School of
Jesus, and in this school she has learned a great and
important lesson, and that lesson is, to serve with
out friction. And So now they entertained Jesus
with a great feast; a kind of memorial feast, I imag
ine, to the resurrection of Lazarus. After this feast
is over Jesus leaves Bethany and goes up to Jerusa
lem to take part in the great Passover Feast with
His disciples. A great multitude of those that be
lieved on Him went ahead of Jesus to Jerusalem
and planned to give Him a great triumphal entry into
that city, and their plan was to cover the ground
over which He was to pass with palm leaves,
which was the highest honor that they could confer.
So, instead of Jesus going into Jerusalem as many
thought He would go, a prisoner, He went in as a
King coming into his own. He had His great trium
phal entry at the time when the world had planned
His defeat. «
GENTILES SEEK HIM.
While in Jerusalem He w’as approached by one of
His disciples who said to Him, “Master, some Greeks
desire to see thee.” You would have expected Him
to say, “Very well, tell the Greeks to come; I will
be glad to see them.” But listen, “The hour has
come when the Son of man is to be glorified.” Con
tinuing, He said, “My soul is troubled; what shall I
say?” Then begins the prayer, w’hich w’e are consider
ing. “Father, save me from this hour, but for this
cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy
name.” It is a short prayer, but a wonderful prayer.
There are three great fundamental suggestions in
this prayer: First, the suggestion of the humanity
of Jesus. Second, the mission of Jesus. Third, the
identification of Jesus with His Father. We will
consider them separately, these three suggestions.
First, the humanity of Jesus; and we will get it in
part by coupling the introductory statement of the
first part of his prayer, “My soul is troubled, and
what shall I say,” with “Save me from this hour.”
Xn the use of this word “trouble” we get a glimpse
PERFECT MAN, PLUS GOD
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len 6 'Broughton, T). D.
Stenographlcally reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
of the humanity of Jesus. There are people who say
that trouble is sin, but that is because they confuse
the word trouble w’ith the word worry. It is one
thing to be troubled. It is another thing to worry.
Jesus was both God and man. He was a perfect
man and He w r as all God. There were times in the
life of Jesus when He divested Himself of His God
ship in order that He might show the world the life
of perfect man, and there were times in the life of
Jesus when He divested Himself of His humanity,
that He might show the world all of God. And in
order that we may properly interpret the life of
Jesus we have to keep our eye carefully adjusted to
this one very delicate line of separation between the
humanity of Jesus and the deity of Jesus.
Now, 1 believe that Jesus here is speaking as a per
fect man in this first party of this prayer. “But,”
somebody says again, “Can a perfect man be trou
bled? My conception of a perfect man would be a
man without any trouble whatsoever.” Again that
question is because you have confused the word trou
ble with the word worry. It is a part of the nature
of a perfect man to be troubled. Oh, I know that
there are being organized over the country today the
non-trouble societies and the non-worry associations.
It is all right to have them, but you need never ex
pect to get to the place in your life as a Christian
where you will be free from trouble. And my brother,
if you are not troubled when you look upon the sin
that Jesus faced that day, then there is something
radically wrong with your heart and with your life.
Why was Jesus troubled? He was troubled first be
cause of what He saw. He saw a picture of the
world in sin. He saw’ cursed, blighted humanity,
and it troubled Him. He is troubled because He sees
what you cannot see. He sees through the eye of deity
what is ahead, what is back of his present position;
looking ahead He sees the cross; looking back He
sees the history of the world, the running history
of sin.
TROUBLE VS. WORRY.
A -woman came to me and said, “Pastor, my son
is unsaved, and is as wicked a boy as ever lived. I
have been praying in great agony over him, but thank
God I have come to the place now where I am not
troubled one whit about him or anything that he
does.” I said, “If you speak the truth you reveal the
saddest condition of the human heart that can pos
sibly be revealed. You reveal two things, that you
have lost the mother heart, and God pity a boy w r ho
has a mother without a mother heart; and you re
veal the fact besides that you have failed to conceive
of one of the sublimest touches in the life of the Son
of God.”
People come to me and say, “Don’t trouble.” Who
is it that says, "Don’t trouble?” It is the man -who
has lost the Master’s vision of sin with its awful,
hideous, horrible record in all this great world. But
that is quite another thing from worry. Thank God,
it isn’t said of Jesus that He worried. I have been
told of a woman who had the habit of putting down
in a note book every worry and vexation of her life.
She formed that habit until it became so strong that
she ventured a step further and anticipated things
to worry about and put them in her note book, until
she waked up one day to find that she had one hun
dred things in that note book that had never occur
red and likely never would, and there she was brood
ing over those things and fretting her life out. That
is worry; that is not trouble. But our Lord was be
set with a spirit of trouble. He groaned in Spirit
over the lost and ruined condition of the world of
society.
Besides that, Jesus looking out into the future saw
Gethsemane, and the thing that He saw in
Gethsemane that weighed heaviest upon His
heart, that troubled Him, was the denial of
His disciples. See those disciples, the men
that He had so blessed, so helped and so in
structed, so watched and cared for, see those
disciples at that critical moment turn their backs
upon Him and leave Him in the Garden of Gethsem-
The Golden Age for March 10, 1010.
ane to fight out His battle alone. Have you ever stood
facing some great crisis in your life with burdens
that pressed heavy and hard upon you, then seen
the friends and the standard bearers that you have
relied upon as one by one they turn their backs and
walked away? There is lonesomeness. And that is
what Jesus saw before Him.
Then, too, He saw’ the cross; and Jesus was a man
even though He was God; and the cross with all of
its hideous scene, cuts to the core the heart of Jesus.
He felt all the hideousness of the cross, the disgrace,
the humiliation, the shame, the jeers, the sneers and
the mocking of the mob, and it troubled Him.
And in that troubled moment Jesus prays, “Father,
save me from this hour.” What hour? It is the hour
that is ahead; the hour of His lonesomeness in Geth
semane, the hour when He shall sweat drops of
blood, the hour when He is to conquer His will to the
will of God; the hour of the cross where He is to
pay the price of the world’s sin. “Father, save me
from this hour of suffering,.” But at once comes
the second division of the prayer in which He re
veals His mission. “Father, save me from this hour;
but,” as much as to say, “Hold on, I do not mean
that; I was speaking as a man; hold on; it was for
this hour I came.” Here w r e find the mission of
- Some people tell us that Jesus came to show
this world how to live a perfect life and all that is
needful is that we shall follow in the footsteps of
Jesus and live as He lived. Hence we have spring
ing up here and there fads like this, “Live ten days
as Jesus Lived,” or “Live twenty days as Jesus
lived.” Let me say from a heart that is speaking
with the honesty of its ow r n convictions, there does
not live the man on this earth that can live like Jesus
lived. Jesus was God; God and perfect man, with
no sin inbred and inborn, and as perfect man with
no sin inborn He lived, and when I come to stand
before Jesus with this matchless life of purity, I un
cover my head and worship Him, and all that we
can do is to so study the principles of His life and
bring ourselves by the Holy Spirit into accordance
w’ith them as that we may live as near like Jesus
as it is possible for man to live on this earth.
CHRIST’S MISSION.
Jesus came to this earth for what? To teach men
how to live a perfect life? Yes, in part, but that is
not the main mission upon w’hich Jesus came. Just
the mission upon which Jesus came is set forth in
this second declaration of His prayer, “For this hour
I came into this world.” What hour? The hour of the
cross; the hour in which the penalty of the sins of
the earth are to be met by the atoning work of the
cross of Calvary. That is the hour, and that is the
mission that brought Christ to this earth, not to live
but to die. Christ when He came from heaven to
this earth came occupied with one thought—the
cross, and all through His life from the first day until
the day when He was nailed upon it, the cross stood
out before Jesus as the one thing over which and
for which He had come to this earth. If you left out
the cross, on which the penalty of the sins of the
world was nailed with Jesus, you have left out the
one supreme conception that Jesus had in His earthly
ministry.
Then He goes immediately into the third division,
expressing the co-operation of Christ and the Father,
or the identification of the work of Christ with the
Father. “Father, save me from this hour, but for this
cause came I unto this hour.” Then, “Father, glorify
thy name.” Now, mark you, Jesus had just before
His prayer said this, “The hour is come w’hen the
Son of man is to be glorified.” “Father, glorify thy
name.” Here He identifies the name of the Father
with the glorification of the Son; the glorification of
the Son with the name of the Father; so that He and
the Father in the glory that is to be revealed, are
one. Now, mark you, I used the word identification
rather than the word resignation, because it means
more. Resignation is when a man simply agrees to
submit; as for example, a wife may agree, though
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