Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2767
“When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples over the Brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which He and His disciples entered. And Judas, who betrayed Him, also knew the place; for Jesus often met there with His disciples.” John 18:1,2.
I REMEMBER to have read somewhere, though I cannot just now recall the authority, that Bethany—to which place one would have thought the Savior would have gone to spend the night, at the house of Mary and her sister, Martha, was over the brow of the Mount of Olives and was out of the bounds of the city of Jerusalem. Now, at the Passover, it was incumbent that all who kept the feast should spend the whole night within the boundary of the city and our Divine Lord and Master, scrupulous to observe every point of the old Law of God, did not go over the hill, but stayed within the area which was technically considered to be part and parcel of Jerusalem—so that His going to Gethsemane was, in part, a fulfillment of the Ceremonial Law and, for that reason, He went no further and sought no other shelter.
Our Lord also knew that on that particular night He would be betrayed into the hands of His enemies and, therefore, He would need to be prepared, by a special season of devotion, for the terrible ordeal He was about to endure. That Passover night was a night to be remembered on this account and He would, therefore, keep it peculiarly sacred. But it was to be made still more memorable as the time of the commencement of His passion sufferings, so He determined to spend the whole night in prayer to His Father. In this act He reminds us of Jacob by the Brook Jabbok—when he had to face trouble in the morning, he spent the night in wrestling prayer—and this Greater Jacob spent His night, not by Jabbok, but by the black, foul Brook Kidron, and there wrestled with mightier Power. Even. than the Patriarch put forth in his notable night struggle with the Angel of the Covenant. I want you to try, in thought, to go as far as Gethsemane. And I think you ought to be encouraged to go there because our text says, “Jesus often met there with His disciples.”
I. And, first, so far as we can in thought, LET US VIEW THE PLACE.
I have never seen the Garden of Gethsemane. Many travelers tell us that they have done so and they have described what they saw there. My impression is that not one of them ever saw the real spot and that not a trace of it remains. There are certain old olive trees, within an enclosure, which are commonly thought to have been growing at the time of the Savior—but that seems scarcely possible, for Josephus tells us that the whole of the trees round about Jerusalem were cut down—many of them to be made into crosses for the crucifixion of the Jews. Others of them to assist in building the bulwarks with which the Roman emperor surrounded the doomed city. There does not seem to have been scarcely anything left that would be a true relic of the old city and I cannot imagine that the olive trees would be spared. From what I have heard from Brothers and Sisters who have gone to the reputed Garden of Gethsemane, I conclude that it is not very helpful to one’s devotions to go there at all. One who thought to spend a part of his Sabbath there, and who hoped to enjoy much fellowship with Christ in the place, said that he was made very bitterly to learn the meaning of our Savior’s words to the woman at the well of Sychar, “The hour comes when you shall neither, in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father…The hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him.”
I do not want to find out exactly where Gethsemane was. It is enough for me to know that it was at the side of Mount Olivet and that it was a very retired spot. My conception of it is the result of having, for many winters, resided in a little town in the South of France where olive trees grow to perfection and where, on the side of the hills, I have often sat down in olive groves and I have said to myself, “Gethsemane was a place just like this.” I am sure it was so, because one olive garden on the side of a hill must necessarily be very much like another. The hills are lined out in terrace above terrace, each one seldom above eight, 10, or 12 feet wide. Then you rise, say, five, six, seven, or eight feet and there is another terrace and so on right up the hill—and on these terraces the olive trees grow.
One of the charms of an olive garden of that kind is that as soon as you get into it, you may sit down under the lee of the bank at the back of the terrace—perhaps in an angle where you are sheltered from the wind—and you will be completely hidden from all observers. I have had persons sitting within a few yards of me, of whose presence I had no idea. One Sabbath, when we had been spending a little time in prayer together, I saw what appeared to be an Englishman’s tall hat moving away, at a little distance, just above one of the terraces. By-and-by, I recognized the head that was under the hat as that of a Christian Brother whom I knew—and I found that he had been walking up and down there, studying his sermon for the afternoon. He had not noticed us, except that he had heard some sounds that seemed to him like prayer and praise. Many of you might be in an olive garden, but, unless you made some sign of recognition to your friends, they would scarcely know that anybody else was there! And under the thick, yet light foliage, with the glints of sunlight shining through, or at night under the kind of ashy, gray color, with the moonlight glimmering through with its silvery beams, I cannot imagine a more delightful place of retreat—a place where one would feel surer of being quite alone, even though somebody might be near you—a place where you might feel free to express your thoughts and your prayers because, at any rate, to your own consciousness, you would seem to be entirely alone.