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Brenton

 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm.

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Brenton

 Nathan Williams, what's up? It's good to be back with you, Brenton. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, thanks for coming.

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Brenton

 And Coleman Reed, so you-- just as a quick introduction, because I think you've only been on here once.

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Coleman

 That's correct.

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Brenton

 You are the assistant--

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Brenton

 I'm just going to let you say it.

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Coleman

 Yeah, it sounds like I just got fired when you said "were," but I am the assistant pastor for student ministries and community ministries at the Fort Madison campus.

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Brenton

 Yeah, cool. How long have you been on staff here?

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Coleman

 So my bride and my two kiddos moved back home to southeast Iowa a year ago, almost to the weekend.

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Brenton

 OK, yeah, cool.

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Coleman

 Pretty exciting.

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Brenton

 Yeah. Well, I really appreciated both of your sermons this week. It's such an interesting passage.

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Brenton

 And I think John gives such an interesting, different view on what happened. And so I'm excited to get into this.

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Brenton

 So let's start out kind of a normal way for both of you. What stuck out to you most as you studied?

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Nathan

 Yeah, for me, it was really hard just to focus on John. Because all four of the gospels just give really great stuff. But for John specifically, you know what I mean?

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Nathan

 I think his goal is always, through the whole book of John, is to focus on the deity of Christ. And then by believing in him, which is his mission, statement actually in chapter 20, which we're going to be getting to. But he really brings that out again in this passage. It's not just like this has happened. It's like, no, Jesus is God. And that once again just came out loud and clear to me. And it's like, this is all part of God's plan. And boom, just lays it on you. Here he is.

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Nathan

 Not by accident.

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Nathan

 Jesus is God.

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Brenton

 Yeah, you're right, Coleman.

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Coleman

 Yeah, and I'm with you in that, Nathan. You look at these 11 verses, and it's hard to not compare them to the other gospel writers. And so then trying to lean into that, like what's actually taking place here? Why is this not just a narrative transitional story in the text? What's happening? For me, what I fixed on immediately right out of the gate in that first verse was the garden. We have another sinless representative in the garden, a sinless representative of God in the garden against one of Satan's representatives in Judas. And as I mentioned in my sermon, like alarm bells should have been kind of going off for us because this isn't the first time that we've seen a sinless representative of God, face to face with a sinless representative of Satan in another garden where betrayal is on the line.

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Coleman

 And so I just really appreciate God and His kindness and the inspiration of scripture making plain and simple like things that we should try to pick up on. Sometimes to be very honest, even in my own study, I'm quick to just try to sprint through to get to the exciting part of the text.

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Brenton

 For both of you again, was there anything that you didn't have time to include as you went through this?

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Nathan

 For me, it was kind of just, I want to bring in all the stuff from all the gospels because I know this is just John's, but I just, and as you know, I did bring in some things, which I think complimented, but I mean, there's just so much to talk about. It's like, I can't leave out that, I can't leave out that, but you just got to focus in on the few things that are here. So I think I brought in the things that I thought were important to the context of John specifically. I mean, you could have focused in on Mark and Matthew and Luke a little bit more and brought up stuff like the guy who was there and he got, he was trying to run away and they grabbed him by his cloak and he ran away naked. Why would he bring up that? I have no idea, but there's just all these random things. But as John points out also, you know what I mean? In chapter 20, I believe it is, there's so many other miraculous things that I don't have time to write them all in this book. You know what I mean? So you look at all these things and say, "Okay, what is really important to John in this and what?" And so that's what I really tried to focus in and yeah, because there's so many other things you could talk about.

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Nathan

 I don't know, I just picked that random one because it's just so random to me. It's like, why did he even put that in there? But it just goes to show you, these guys that are writing the gospels, they're literally writing what they saw.

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Nathan

 And it's like, why would you write that? Because that's what they saw. There were literally witnesses there or they would talk to someone. In the case of Mark, it would have been he talked to somebody, one of the disciples, and they told him that and he was like, "He wrote it down." You know?

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Nathan

 I just get blown away by some of the details they put in. They're just like, "Why'd you put that there?" Because we were there and we saw it happen.

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Brenton

 Yeah.

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Coleman

 Yeah,

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Coleman

 I'm with Nathan. And I took it almost as more of a blessing because of the case of John and how minimalistic his account is.

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Coleman

 I do have a tendency to want to try to include every single cool thing I found in the text. I mean, it's just, we have such a blessing that we get to study God's word. And sometimes what we find cool isn't what needs to necessarily come across in the pulpit. That's not gonna be the most edifying thing.

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Coleman

 So in terms of things I didn't have time to include, I don't think necessarily a ton of things. I think I saw some interesting parallels.

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Coleman

 You know, this happens in the Jewish month of Nisan, which means redemption in some ways.

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Coleman

 Like there's just so many little nuggets that God is so kind of give to us, but at the end of the day,

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Coleman

 make key the main thing and the plain thing and then preach from that.

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Nathan

 Yeah, I think it's also interesting that John actually is the shortest. He's the shortest account of all, the four gospels and Mark, who is the most brief of all the gospels, actually is twice as long as an account in the garden as John is. So it's just kind of interesting.

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Brenton

 Yeah, yeah, we'll get into the differences between the gospels a little bit later, but what would you say,

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Brenton

 so this story is a pretty familiar one again, right? There's a lot of these in the gospel, but not the John account, I would say. This isn't the most common one that you hear.

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Brenton

 But what are some common misconceptions about this story? Right, so everyone kind of has this idea of what Jesus did in the garden, and a lot of times it's praying to the Father and it's sweating blood. But as we think about the story of Jesus in the garden, what are some common misconceptions of how people interpret this?

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Nathan

 You mean like some people would say, oh man, that's unfortunate. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, got caught up with the wrong crowd. That's definitely one, yeah. That's definitely one. And but as John just points out, no, all part of God's plan. And I look pointed very briefly to a couple points in the Old Testament where it points to this time. But when Jesus says, knowing all that would happen to him, he stepped forward. Once again, Jesus said, hey, you know what? It's all a plan. I know what's gonna happen. I was here on purpose.

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Nathan

 Do I like it? No.

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Nathan

 But I'm here because it's part of the plan and this is necessary for your good, for your benefit, that I would do this on your behalf.

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Brenton

 Well, and we saw that when he sent Judas out, right?

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Nathan

 Oh yeah, yeah.

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Brenton

 What you're gonna do, go do it. Go do it quickly.

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Coleman

 He knew exactly what it was. And John even like kind of hints at this to us again. He says that Judas knew in verse two, where the garden was because they met there often. I think sometimes it's almost like to comfort ourselves, like Jesus didn't know this was coming. This is a terrible thing. I don't think so. R.C. Sproul, many of the other commentators make very clear Christ was not going to just escape or try to hide. He was making sure that prophecy was fulfilled and almost as if he was going out of his way to be apprehended, but he would do it in the way that he wanted it to happen, not with any schemes or powers of hell, you know, ruling the day.

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Nathan

 He also makes the point of saying, he went where he knew Judas would find him. He went there regularly with his disciples again. Judas knew where he was gonna be, find him. I'm gonna be there. I love Matthew, the way he points out the more than 12 legions of any, look, Peter, if I wanted to avoid this, I could avoid it. I could smoke these guys just with a click of my fingers. But no, it's just all part of God's plan that, and Jesus,

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Nathan

 going through all he was going through in the tremendous agony. I don't even think we can even begin to understand what he was going through. Our minds just cannot even fathom that, but still willingly to do that and went along with it because it was his plan

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Nathan

 and just should just give us just a tremendous appreciation for him

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Nathan

 and what he's done for us.

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Brenton

 Yeah, okay.

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Brenton

 So again, like I said earlier, like, you know, when we talk about the story in the garden, we typically reference this idea of the cup

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Brenton

 that he wants the cup to pass by him.

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Brenton

 Nathan, you mentioned that every other gospel account includes this prayer to the Father. Why do you guys think that John doesn't include this one specifically? Like, something that we focus on so much as we study this. But rather, he focuses on the authority in this interaction.

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Nathan

 Yeah, that's a great question. I mean,

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Nathan

 because to me, I mean, it's huge that he is praying this prayer, which just goes to show that he is dreading this time. I mean,

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Nathan

 but yet John just skips right over it. And once again, I go back to that passage where John is like, you know what? I'm just gonna focus in on what I wanna tell you. And I'm gonna focus in on the fact that Jesus is God, because every one of the same gospels are so different, and their motivation in writing the gospel is so different. Like John, I'm gonna tell you that Jesus is God. Matthew, he's a detail-orientated person. I mean, he's a tax collector for crying out loud. So he loves number. He's the one that talks about the 12 legions of angels, he says, and the 12 disciples that were with them, apart from Judas, and he goes into numbers.

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Nathan

 Luke, the physician, of course, talks about the metabolic physical body. He talks about touching the guy's ear.

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Nathan

 Each one of them,

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Nathan

 and Jesus' sweating drops of blood.

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Nathan

 I think each, and you gotta just understand, each gospel writer has his own thing that it's kinda like the way they're wired and the way they write things.

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Nathan

 But yet God inspired each of them on their own. And putting them all together, like for instance, if me and you both saw an accident happen, guess what, the police come along, they're gonna want both of our testimony and anyone else who's there, because when we see it from all the different angles, we just get a broader picture.

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Nathan

 John, too, and I don't know, I'm just talking off the top of my head here, but oftentimes when we're preaching a sermon, or if someone's writing a book, if we just go on and on and on about every detail, sometimes we get lost in the detail. So in this case, I think he's really focusing in on the deity of Jesus. I mean, that's what he does the whole way through. And it's like, okay, he could have talked about this and that and the other, but I'm just gonna focus on this then.

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Brenton

 Yeah.

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Coleman

 Yeah, and I think there's some absolute kindness in that because sometimes, I mean, just the reality of our distracted hearts is we can get caught up in all the details.

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Brenton

 Right.

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Coleman

 Like we can get stuck on how it got here, asking questions and this, that, or the other thing. And in some mercy and grace, John's just like, listen up.

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Coleman

 This is Christ,

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Coleman

 the God made flesh in your presence.

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Coleman

 End of sentence, full stop, like that should be good enough for us. And I think sometimes,

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Coleman

 for me, like out of prideful arrogance, or out of thinking that I deserve something more, I look to texts and maybe try to fill in the blanks. And there's something really beautiful about how John just says, this is Christ.

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Coleman

 Or as Christ himself answers in the Greek and Hebrew, I am, when they ask him, who are you looking for? Who is it? Jesus in Azareth and Christ just says, I am.

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Coleman

 And I think that's a helpful posture for us to remember. And when we come to the text or we come to God,

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Coleman

 everything he's revealed to us is through mercy and kindness and not what we deserve. And that's even true in inspired scripture.

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Brenton

 Yeah, I really appreciate you. I think both of you pulled that out of this text. It's the same reference back to when he was,

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Brenton

 he said, I am before, right? This reference back to the Old Testament.

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Nathan

 So- Going back to your question though, though, Breton, what are some of the misconceptions?

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Nathan

 And I think another misconception is Jesus is just

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Nathan

 anticipating the physical, what he's gonna go through.

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Nathan

 And I don't wanna steal from what is common either, but it's so much, the emotions of what he's anticipating in my thinking is way greater than the physical aspect of it. You know, people even today have been Christians tortured for their faith in horrific, horrific ways that might even be pretty similar to what Jesus endured, maybe even worse, I don't know, and on a physical level.

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Nathan

 But the emotional level in which he took that was a whole new level in thinking, and you know, a lot of times when we do wrong and we're like, yep, I deserve that, we deserve to get punished, but thinking to yourself that you are taking on the punishment of sins that you never committed.

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Nathan

 And not only just a few, but the weight of the world of punishment for anyone who would ever confess and believe.

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Nathan

 We know when we feel guilty,

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Nathan

 the weight of that is really overbearing sometimes. Now multiply that by a billion, billion times, right? And then to think, and here's another part of that too, which when Jesus is on the cross and he says, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which really translated means

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Nathan

 my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it just reminds me a few weekends ago, I was at my daughter's house and she was scolding one of her little toddlers and the toddler was like, like, oh, you know, crying and then ran to her mom who was scolding her. And I'm thinking to myself, if I'm getting scolded, I wanna run the other way, but no, but Jesus was getting punished

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Nathan

 and rather than being comforted, like she comforted her child.

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Nathan

 God's like turned his back on Jesus and Jesus was anticipating that because he was really bearing that. And that's maybe something will be covered later, but that's what Jesus, he knew that perfect unity with the Father

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Nathan

 and he's anticipating that.

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Nathan

 And it's just like, I can't even begin to fathom or think what that would have been like, to think what it's like to have our own friends and family

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Nathan

 reject us when we do wrong, you know what I mean? Is nothing compared to that. And he was taking on all that, the anxiety level must have been through the roof, you know what I mean, for Jesus anticipating that, taking on all our anxieties and a hit on that too and why he would do that, but yeah, that's another.

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Brenton

 Well, let's just go to that now then.

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Brenton

 Essentially, you know, the question is, you know, the assumption a lot of times is that this cup that he wanted to pass was the physical pain of it, right? Which is obviously, I mean, you look at the other, the way the disciples, the other disciples died, right? You look at Peter wanting to be crucified upside down.

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Brenton

 Like that's just not what Jesus was worried about, right?

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Nathan

 I mean, it's a part of it, you know what I mean? By his stripes or heel, but I don't think it's the bigger part of it, right?

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Brenton

 So I guess my question then is like, what's lost when the cup is kind of minimized into this physical pain instead of really focusing where it belongs, which is on God's wrath? What do we lose in that?

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Coleman

 I think a couple of things. I think sometimes, and not out of wrongful intentions, but we minimize the obedience of Christ down to one moment on the cross.

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Coleman

 And the reality is that it was accomplished there, right? And three days later where he comes out of the grave and death's defeated, it was accomplished there.

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Coleman

 But our sacrifice, Christ, had been actively obedient his entire life. And so if we just zoom into this incredible moment, right? Like world changing, rewriting history, I'm not trying to skim over that, but we can miss the fact that for his entire life, he did the thing that all of us can't even fathom, which is be perfect.

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Coleman

 And so the active obedience of Christ is huge.

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Coleman

 And the other part is we skim over the fact that

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Coleman

 Christ is taking the wrath of God, which also then we see with what you quoted, like, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" He's sitting in the gap in our place in the absence of the Father, bearing the weight of the sin. So that if we come to him, we will never experience the absence of the Father. But for those who choose to take the cup themselves, meaning don't choose Christ,

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Coleman

 part of the reality of hell is, yes, eternal punishment and damnation, but it's also without being in the presence of God. In the eternal glorious garden, the paradise, like we're fellowshiping with God like we were when Adam and Eve was, in the original garden before sin entered in. And so I think we can just really miss some of the realities and skim over some key components of what's at play here.

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Nathan

 Yeah, I think too, we tried to,

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Nathan

 we tried to visualize it in something we can understand. And I just don't even think we can even understand.

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Nathan

 I mean, for instance,

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Nathan

 we've all read stories, horrific accounts of sinful behaviors and just deviant, deviant behavior. It just makes us sick to our stomach. Once you make it, maybe even throw up, right?

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Nathan

 And then to think,

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Nathan

 hold on a second,

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Nathan

 that's just one story here or one story there, or a behavior that's just like so repulsive. And yet Jesus was taking on all that. And he felt every one of those sins he was taking on to pay for. And I just don't think we can even begin to, I don't think our brains are large enough to even understand that. The weight of that must have been just tremendous. Was he really feeling that guilt and shame for every single person to whatever feel, what would that have been like?

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Nathan

 And I don't think our brains are capable to even understand that to be quite honest with you.

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Coleman

 Well, Nathan, think about how sanctification worked for us, right? If God were to reveal all of our own individual sinfulness at once, we couldn't stand just ours. So God in his mercy, in our sanctification, as we get closer and closer and more and more like Christ our savior, we see even little sins more magnified as we get closer to God. So now pull that back in like you're saying, look at Christ, we couldn't bear the weight of our own sin, let alone of all humanity. I think it's a great point, bro.

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Nathan

 The more we talk about and think about this, the more it just blows your way, what is sacrifice worthy with? It's just like, incomprehensible.

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Brenton

 It's good.

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Brenton

 All right,

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Brenton

 so we're gonna move on to one that,

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Brenton

 it'll be an easy one for you guys.

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Brenton

 That's not true.

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Brenton

 Coleman, you mentioned several times in your sermon that God purposes evil to bring about both his own glory and our redemption.

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Brenton

 This can be a very difficult discussion to have.

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Brenton

 So can you first just kind of expand on what you mean by this?

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Brenton

 And then maybe like what the other side of it, what you don't mean by it, right? Because I think maybe we can go too far or just get off the rails a little bit with this conversation and say things that aren't necessarily true.

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Brenton

 But I guess how do we communicate this truth rightly and then wrongly?

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Coleman

 Yeah, so let me start first with just our posture, both in how we approach God in this conversation.

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Coleman

 And I think the posture we need to recognize when we come to God is that he is God and we are not, right? And so that should immediately give us some level of humility. Isaiah writes that God's ways and thoughts are not our thoughts, they're above us.

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Coleman

 And so that's kind of like a precursor there, but also recognizing our posture towards God's word because of who God is, is that we should be expectant, we should be hopeful. So when we come into these discussions to look at God like the cosmic bully or to look at God as someone who's not present in suffering is not helpful.

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Coleman

 To get to your point, in my sermon, what I brought up was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and how God purposed that for our plan of redemption, how he revealed himself through evil, how he used all of these things to display his glory, his mercy, his justice, his forgiveness in this moment. And so all of this though is wrapped up in what we call God's sovereign plan or the fact that God is totally in control of all things. And the reality is, is that none of us sitting at this table, none of us breathing air in the world can totally understand or begin to understand how this play wraps up.

[00:27:22:07 - 00:27:57:01]

Coleman

 And this is where faith and trusting his plan to bring about redemption comes in. And so the other part that we need to remember as we come to the posture is not only God's sovereign and good, but he's also just in all he does. And so where I'm talking about posture here is I think it's helpful for us when we get into these discussions to remind ourselves of truth before we ever try to wade in with any opinion. Because we can be very quick to say, I feel like, or I think this, and the reality is if we don't start with truth, then it's gonna be really tough for us to frame that conversation up.

[00:27:58:15 - 00:28:25:19]

Coleman

 God's allowance of evil is not his agreeing with evil, right? So he made Adam and Eve, he gave them free will so that they could love him. If we wind back that and God doesn't give them free will and pre-programs them to love the robots, it's not love, right? And so this free will allows them to love God, but it also then allows them to disobey, and they disobey. And then God, from that point in the garden on,

[00:28:26:19 - 00:28:38:09]

Coleman

 continues to weave this beautiful love story of redemption towards us. So an illustration here where God's sovereignty really felt at play for us and hopefully to make this more tangible for us listening,

[00:28:40:09 - 00:28:47:23]

Coleman

 my wife and I experienced our second miscarriage a couple years ago, in February.

[00:28:49:01 - 00:28:54:14]

Coleman

 And we got in the car and we were just kind of besides ourselves. And the doctor had used the phrase,

[00:28:55:23 - 00:29:03:12]

Coleman

 "You guys are just unlucky." And obviously you take that and you don't even know how to stomach a statement like that.

[00:29:05:01 - 00:29:21:00]

Coleman

 One of the first men we called to let them know the news, he didn't try to say, "I know what you're feeling like." He didn't try to water down what we were feeling. He told us he loved us. And then he reminded us of God's sovereignty.

[00:29:22:03 - 00:29:31:23]

Coleman

 And in that moment, the comfort I felt from the fact that God was in control of this was unimaginable.

[00:29:33:01 - 00:29:47:12]

Coleman

 And the reason that is, is not because I viewed God as some evil deity that was extracting some revenge on me. It was because that I knew God knew me. He saw my bride who was hurting in ways I couldn't even imagine.

[00:29:49:03 - 00:29:57:12]

Coleman

 And that he was gonna use this for his glory and our eventual good. So to maybe rephrase this in a different way that might be more applicable.

[00:29:58:15 - 00:30:00:01]

Coleman

 If you've ever been hurt,

[00:30:01:20 - 00:30:57:22]

Coleman

 the blessing and knowing that God is sovereign over that situation, that he is just, that he has not forgotten you, or forgotten the thing that was done to you, or forgotten the person that did that evil thing to you, should be of the utmost comfort to our soul. And this would follow the line that scripture says, "Because it means," and scripture, amen, says that he is the avenger of the person who's been hurt. He has not forgotten that thing. And in his justice, that person will one day answer for the sin that was committed. So our hope isn't in the fact that God didn't see it, or doesn't know what happened. It's in the fact that he has used even evil things to remind us that this is not our forever home, to remind us that he loves us, and to remind us of the fact that he will use it for his glory and our eventual good. And so that can sometimes be a tough thing to swallow or understand.

[00:30:59:01 - 00:31:12:19]

Coleman

 But I do think there's a big component in which it comes back to recognizing that my posture, in which I'm thinking about things, especially as it pertains to God, is huge. And we are in a faith that does not say, we have to put our questions on a shelf.

[00:31:13:20 - 00:31:21:23]

Coleman

 We believe in a God who says, "Bring your questions to me, see who I am, and let me show you even more how good I am to you."

[00:31:23:11 - 00:31:55:20]

Brenton

 It's really, I think that's helpful. And to get back to something you said, the importance of our posture when we think about these things, because in your story, you could have taken that two different ways, right? You could have said, "Well, God's responsible for this if he's sovereign." And that can lead to anger or whatever. And maybe it does. Maybe that is just the reality of where you're at in that situation. And that's still something that you can take to God. But also, a humble posture would say,

[00:31:57:07 - 00:31:59:09]

Brenton

 "Okay, God's in control of this, right?

[00:32:00:11 - 00:32:03:23]

Brenton

 And he has the right to be in control of this."

[00:32:03:23 - 00:32:04:11]

Coleman

 Yeah.

[00:32:04:11 - 00:32:07:03]

Brenton

 So, no, I think that's really good.

[00:32:07:03 - 00:32:32:09]

Nathan

 It's interesting. That whole topic is interesting, because James talks about in James chapter 113, "When tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone." However, God, like you say, does allow us to do evil. And even when we do evil, he can use it for his good.

[00:32:33:13 - 00:34:16:11]

Nathan

 I think of a scenario when I went out to, a few years ago when my grandkids were smaller, I went out to my daughter's house and my son-in-law, and they had a, it was wintertime, so they had a stove, right? Wood burning stove. Well, my son-in-law had built this fortress around the stove, said to keep the toddler from getting close to the stove and burning himself. You know, that was, but then after a while, I went out there another time, it was like, the fortress was gone. I'm like, what's the matter? Aren't you worried? Well, kind of figure, you know what I mean? If he gets up close, we've told him, if he burns himself, he will learn and he will not do it again, you know? So, allowed him, didn't tempt him to do it, in fact, told him not to do it, but allowed him to choose free will and in his desire to go against what he knew he shouldn't, he learned the lesson that, you know what I mean? Thankfully, you know, he got close enough, he felt the heat and it's like, it didn't get badly hurt or anything, but it's that kind of a thing to, God allows that for, in that case, it was so the child would know better and learn from that, but the same is good for us. God can use even our sinful activities, as he did here with all these people, with Judas to bring about his plan that Jesus wasn't gonna subvert that plan. He was there. It was his plan that he was gonna be there. He could have called more than 12 legions of angels, totally obliterated everything, but no, Peter, I don't want you to protect me, either put your sword back in the sheath. This is all part of the plan.

[00:34:18:06 - 00:34:40:23]

Coleman

 Yeah, and I think to that point about the plan, if we look at our posture as we're talking here, Brendan, and we think about viewing God as good, right, and just, then when we experience or witness horrific things that we don't have the answer for, there's almost an element of resting that can be installed into our life that didn't exist before, because,

[00:34:42:08 - 00:34:48:05]

Coleman

 oh my goodness, it doesn't matter that I don't know the plan here, right? So for the instance that I shared with my wife and I,

[00:34:49:10 - 00:35:12:00]

Coleman

 we didn't know what the plan was. We didn't know what God was using it for, but I can promise you, with full certainty, looking back how much it has grown us closer together in him and for him, how it has changed how we view life and impacted the way we talk about things,

[00:35:13:05 - 00:35:16:13]

Coleman

 most importantly, how the impact of the way we talk about things to ourselves.

[00:35:17:23 - 00:35:26:02]

Coleman

 And I just think that sometimes we forget, as many biblical authors remind us, that we are the clay and not the potter.

[00:35:27:18 - 00:35:38:12]

Coleman

 Think of the inter-counter with Job and God, right? We're dust, and it is purely by the mercies of God that we are breathing air, right?

[00:35:40:03 - 00:35:53:02]

Coleman

 Because the reality is we don't want justice. We don't want fairness. Justice and fairness is that Christ does not go to the cross. Justice and fairness is not that he takes the cup from us like we both talked about in our sermon.

[00:35:54:11 - 00:36:58:09]

Coleman

 Justice and fairness is that we wear the whole weight of that. And so, yeah, I think that's a really good question. That's a question that we shouldn't skim over, but I do think it's one that we need to kind of check ourselves at how I'm entering into this discussion. And if you're someone who's been hurt and you're hearing what I'm saying, and you're like, "I don't understand," you're 100% right because I'm not God. But in that same breath, please hear me say that he knows. He does understand. And I would just encourage you, if you've been harmed and hurt and are wondering how God can even use that, just as a shameless plug for our counseling ministry, there is nothing sweeter than going through something that you saw that is absolutely life-ending and realizing that God is using that to make you more like His Son and that He loves you, and He loves you too much to just let you stay where you're at. So that's just my shameless plug for Matt Yaley and the counseling center.

[00:36:58:09 - 00:37:27:13]

Nathan

 Yeah, I know that's really good. Can I just add to this too? That's really good, Coleman. It's not always that we have to understand either. Yeah, amen. Because part of the trust and healing is that I trust God through this hard time, even if I don't understand it. And someday, I'm sure it will all be revealed. But that's not necessarily even this side of glory. It could be, but it's part of the faith journey and trusting. So one last thing on this note.

[00:37:27:13 - 00:37:41:06]

Coleman

 There's a hymn that's kind of actually, Sovereign Grace is made a little more famous again, but Sammy Roddegast wrote a hymn in 1675. So to take us back a few years. It's entitled, "What ere my God ordains is right."

[00:37:42:10 - 00:37:52:22]

Coleman

 And just the posture of that hymn and recognizing like every single thing I'm going for and going through has been purposed by God, is not an accident.

[00:37:54:21 - 00:38:11:22]

Coleman

 Verse two that says, "What ere my God ordains is right, He never will deceive me. He leads me by the proper path. I know He will not leave me. I take content what He hath sent. His hand can turn my griefs away. And patiently I wait His day."

[00:38:14:00 - 00:38:27:00]

Coleman

 I will be the first to admit that I so rarely have that posture anytime I face something bad in life, be it a poor night sleeping or my truck being too cold in the morning, let alone like something really tough in life.

[00:38:28:02 - 00:38:37:05]

Coleman

 And I think when we recognize how good God is that He will use every single thing and we come with this posture that's being mentioned here in this hymn,

[00:38:38:15 - 00:38:49:01]

Coleman

 I think that God really, really honors that heart and really just is excited to see how we're going to take the tough parenting for good, the tough love for good.

[00:38:51:19 - 00:38:54:18]

Brenton

 Yeah, thanks for that, both of you. That was really good.

[00:38:56:11 - 00:39:00:09]

Brenton

 Like I said, it's a hard topic, but yeah, thanks for talking it over.

[00:39:01:19 - 00:39:04:06]

Brenton

 Could probably end it there, but I want to do one more quickly.

[00:39:05:13 - 00:39:11:21]

Brenton

 Just to wrap this up, I want to talk about the application that you guys had and each of yours was a little different.

[00:39:14:02 - 00:39:21:01]

Brenton

 What, just answer this separately, what did you guys want the congregation to walk away knowing and also doing?

[00:39:24:11 - 00:39:27:09]

Coleman

 Yeah, so for me, I broke my sermon into three parts.

[00:39:29:02 - 00:39:38:08]

Coleman

 Garden, glory, and good. The garden, right, tying in a few different gardens there, Garden of Eden, Garden of Gethsemane, and then the eternal and glorious garden.

[00:39:39:16 - 00:40:03:07]

Coleman

 And then we focused in the middle section of our text on God's glory and how Christ sought to fulfill Scripture through doing everything for God's glory. And then that led to our ultimate good. And in the ultimate good, our good section of it, what I really want us to see is that through Christ's work in the garden of our text today,

[00:40:04:08 - 00:40:12:08]

Coleman

 we see that He steps in the gap between us and the powers of hell and grants us assurance, right? We don't need to look at our own works or in the mirror,

[00:40:13:16 - 00:40:42:03]

Coleman

 be reminded of a time we prayed a prayer to have assurance, we can look at the work of Christ. And then also just spinning that out, like the disciples eventually leave the garden this night. They go away unscathed. And so what we see in that is that God preserves His disciples, He preserves us, He allows us to be kept by God and by Christ's work forever. And then it also grants us the opportunity to persevere, to press on to that final glorious garden in the end.

[00:40:43:15 - 00:41:03:14]

Coleman

 And then kind of culminated for the people in Fort Madison, just at the end of the text where, as Pastor Nathan noted, Christ is not going to try to dodge this cup. The application for us and for us as we share the gospel is that He wants to take the full cup of wrath away from you.

[00:41:04:23 - 00:41:24:20]

Coleman

 He doesn't want you to have to sit under what you've earned. He wants to pay the penalty. And that's just a message. And that's the gospel that we need to be preaching to ourselves every day. And to those who don't yet know Christ, who are in essence choosing to bear the full weight of the cup of wrath by not submitting themselves at Christ.

[00:41:26:22 - 00:41:27:17]

Brenton

 Yeah, what about you, Nathan?

[00:41:27:17 - 00:42:19:07]

Nathan

 Yeah, so this is one of these passages that just should make us just sitting in awe of Jesus. And I think that was part of my thing was, well, you had the three Gs, I had the three Ps, you know, it was all part of Jesus' plan. You know what I mean? And His purpose was to drink the cup on our behalf. And then the power He had, not only to knock these people backwards, but then to keep that power He had as the one and only deity as God Himself, to keep that under control so that He could do it with us. And then really the application for anyone who's not a believer should have been to say, hey, you know, Jesus is God. And He did that for you.

[00:42:21:23 - 00:42:31:20]

Nathan

 Are you gonna continue to reject Him? Or are you gonna fall on your knees and just trust in Him for that? I mean, all this burden we're carrying, all the sin,

[00:42:32:22 - 00:42:38:19]

Nathan

 all our griefs and shares to bear, our sins to bear, you know that, Him?

[00:42:40:02 - 00:43:00:07]

Nathan

 And He said, I'll take it. Why not give it to Him? And then for believers, and I did bring in this from the other gospels, how the disciples were actually sleeping when chaos was about to break out. But once again, it's really easy for us as believers who have been believers for a number of years to just get lazy.

[00:43:01:11 - 00:43:27:12]

Nathan

 And we fall asleep and we're like, yeah, okay. I heard this story a hundred times. Every time we hear this story, even if it's the 101st time or the 1000th time, it should continue to blow us away. And we fall on our knees in worship of Him and just appreciate that all over again. And it should fire us up to not be like the disciples sleeping when they should have been praying. But yet say, hey,

[00:43:28:19 - 00:43:31:18]

Nathan

 because of what you've done for me, Jesus,

[00:43:33:01 - 00:43:42:06]

Nathan

 I need to get back into the game and I need to stop being lazy. And I need to put up my guard to keep Satan from tempting me, because that's what Jesus told the disciples, pray that you don't fall into temptation.

[00:43:43:08 - 00:43:56:21]

Nathan

 And I think that's, we can get lazy as believers. So it's an application for non-believers, there's not obviously an application for non-believers, but also for believers that, you know what?

[00:43:57:22 - 00:44:01:11]

Nathan

 Maybe do I wake up sometimes? For sure. Yeah.

[00:44:01:11 - 00:44:07:04]

Brenton

 That's true. All right, guys. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for your work this past week.

[00:44:08:09 - 00:44:10:07]

Brenton

 Yeah, thanks for coming today. It was a good discussion.

[00:44:11:11 - 00:44:18:18]

Brenton

 If you guys have any questions at home, please feel free to reach out and ask at furtherpodcast.com. And we'll talk to you next week.

[00:44:19:21 - 00:44:25:05]

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