How deeply touching are the words of our Lord Jesus: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful” (Matt. 26:38). We do well to meditate upon them, because while our hearts overflow with praise as we recall what He has done, our spirits are subdued; and while we exult in all the blessing that He has secured for us, we are humbled as we remember what it cost Him. We approach this hallowed spot with unshod feet and with reverent hearts. Leaving the upper room, the blessed Lord, accompanied by the eleven, went to Gethsemane. There He said, “Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder” (v. 36). That was a spot beyond their reach, beyond their understanding. Then He took three who seemed to be a little nearer than the others, but to them He said, “Tarry ye here . . . and He went a little farther” (vv. 38-39). They had reached the utmost limit, just as we do when we meditate upon His sorrow, and we seem to hear a voice saying, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther.”
We are reminded, are we not, of the beautiful picture in Genesis 22 where Abraham went to offer up Isaac? On the third day, he “saw the place afar off,” and “said unto his young men, Abide ye here . . . while I and the lad will go yonder . . . And they went both of them together” (vv. 4-7). Then came Isaac’s question and the father’s answer, and once more we read: “So they went both of them together” (vv. 7-8).
In the garden, the Father and the Son “went both of Them together.” The Son was “exceeding sorrowful,” and if the disciples so little entered into it that they slept, the Father knew it. But oh, His love! If, in the perfection of His holiness, He shrank from the cup, in the perfection of His obedience He took it, and, at the cross, in the perfection of His love He “drained the last dark drop.”
Precious Saviour, we worship Thee! Sorrowing saint, are you crushed and overwhelemed with grief? He was “exceeding sorrowful.” Is the cup that has been pressed to your lips bitter? Never could a cup be as bitter as that which the Father placed in His hand. Today you have at your service the everything-that-you-need in Him who for your sake was “exceeding sorrowful.”
In Psalm 21:6, we see the answer: “Thou hast made Him exceeding glad with Thy countenance.” We follow Him from the garden of Gethsemane through “death’s dark vale,” on to resurrection triumph. We look up to the throne of God and see Him there with “a crown of pure gold on His head” (v. 3), and with “honor and majesty laid upon Him” (v. 5). We see Him set there to be “blessings forever” (v. 6, marg.). All this is the result of His having been “exceeding sorrowful,” and, as He surveys it, He is “exceeding glad.” “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Ps. 30:5). His night of weeping has ended, and He has entered upon the morning of everlasting joy.
We could have no part in His sorrow. Alone He had to bear that, and, blessed be His name, He did bear it. It is our happy privilege, however, to be sharers of His joy. How He delights to share that with us! Yet His joy is always the greatest. If we find joy in being gathered together around Him, and we feel like the disciples of whom it is recorded, “Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20), His joy in having us near Him is even greater. If our joy will be unspeakable when He comes for us and takes us to be with Him in the Father’s House, His joy will be infinitely greater. He shall present us “faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 24). The Father has so ordered things that “in all things He might have the preeminence” (Col. 1:18). He was pre-eminent in sorrow in the garden and on the cross, even as in His pathway He was “a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). He is preeminent in the gladness that fills His heart today. He will be preeminent in the joy that shall be His in the coming day of glory.