Join Pastor Chester Clark III on a journey through the Garden, the cross, and empty tomb, and learn how each step of the way was taken for you!

<p>Join Pastor Chester Clark III on a journey through the Garden, the cross, and empty tomb, and learn how each step of the way was taken for you!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

Chester Clark

It Was for Me

Father in heaven, today we are grateful that You have given us not just this day of life, You've given us every day purchased by the blood of Jesus.

If it weren't for the cross of Christ, Lord, We wouldn't be here today.

We wouldn't have the probationary life in which to make a decision for eternal life.

We thank You, Lord, that You have stood in our place, that You are standing between us and our just desserts even today, that we are alive and have breath and food and can have the sights and sounds of spring flooding our senses, Lord, because of Jesus.

So today, Father, we pray that You would just be close to us, inspire our hearts, enlighten our minds, speak to us, for we need you.

A top secret project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, now we know as the Manhattan Project, was developing nuclear weapons.

Now, 1 of the things that they had to do in order to develop these nuclear weapons, they had to determine the critical mass values of different types or cores of uranium and plutonium.

Now, 1 particular core had already caused a fatality.

Harry Doglian had been exposed to radiation by the same core that was on this day being used to once again conduct this experiment.

But today it was a Canadian chemist by the name of Luis Alexander Slotin who was putting these 2 cores closer and closer together and measuring their reactivity 1 to another.

Now I'm not a nuclear physicist, so I don't even understand completely what Luis was doing, but I know that as he was doing this, something went wrong.

The record shows that he was not quite following protocol, and the tool that he usually used to separate those 2 cores back apart somehow slipped.

And as that tool slipped, the cores came closer and closer together, a reaction began to take place that filled the entire room with a bluish haze.

Without his tool in his hand, Luis did the unthinkable.

He grabbed these 2 items with his bare hands and pulled them apart.

He was carted off to probably some sort of a confinement or treatment, but as he did he told his co-workers, you'll be okay, but I won't be.

Luis knew, and indeed, he died just a few days later from the radioactive exposure that he had experienced.

However, Luis had saved the others in the room.

In fact, he may have saved the whole laboratory.

He had sacrificed his life for that of his co-workers.

Now today we're remembering the death and the resurrection of Jesus.

And I've entitled our time together, It Was For me, because indeed it was for me and for you that Jesus lived and died and that He rose again." Let's start with a Bible study this morning.

We're going to start and looking at a number of ways that Jesus' sacrifice was for me.

We're going to start with his time in the Garden of Gethsemane.

We're going to look in Matthew chapter 26 to start with, verses 36 through 46, and we're just going to trace Jesus' life through these hours, these last hours.

He's already finished his last supper with the disciples.

He's made his way, or he's making his way to the garden.

And as He makes his way, he has something to say.

Matthew chapter 26, and we're going to begin reading in verse 36.

The Bible says, Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray.

And sitting with him and taking with him Peter and the 2 sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled.

Then he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful even to death.

And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

The Bible here is recording a phenomenal experience in the life of Jesus.

Jesus has always been the obedient son, right?

He has been the 1 who even though none of his disciples completely understood him, poignantly illustrated here by his 3 closest ones falling asleep while he prayed, right?

Even though no 1 understood him, no 1 experienced what he experienced, Jesus has always stood strong.

It was for us that he stood strong, by the way.

But now he is going through a very unique experience that has heretofore been unknown to him.

He is experiencing the beginning of the weight of the sins of the world.

And it wasn't just the weight of the sins of the world.

This morning, I have to be reminded that it was the weight of my sins that he was experiencing.

The guilt that I should experience, he was experiencing, and that guilt was driving him from the sense of the presence of the Father.

Jesus was being separated from his Father.

Eventually, he would experience what he felt was a complete separation from the presence of the Father.

And this, my friends, is actually what we call the second death.

It's dying outside of hope, Dying outside of the presence of God.

Dying with no sense of the Spirit's peace filling your heart.

And It's not just the death that we experience on a regular basis here.

It's sad when people who we know and love pass to their rest.

The wages of sin is what Jesus was already starting to experience.

And Jesus says something, he's very interesting in these verses, verse 37, I mean it's 38, he says, my soul is very sorrowful even to death.

I don't think Jesus was 1 prone to exaggerations.

Jesus is saying, this separation, my soul is feeling this weight of guilt, this hopelessness, this despair is such that it could kill me.

He says, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death, because the wages of sin is death and he was feeling my sin.

He was feeling what this sinner would feel when faced with the awful reality that he could have had eternal life and yet he's eternally separated from God.

Jesus was feeling this burden, the burden of sin and he came to the disciples as he's praying this prayer of of consecration and surrender, he's he comes back to the disciples.

He doesn't feel any encouragement, he feels despair and despondency, he feels depression and discouragement, but he looks to his disciples, surely in this hour when he's told them he's hurting so bad he's about to die, surely they're listening, surely they're awake, surely they're praying, But no, they're sleeping.

He says to Peter, the 1 who had been so confident a few minutes earlier that he was willing to go to death with Jesus, Said to Peter, so could you not watch with me for 1 hour?

Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation.

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

He went to and he prayed, my father if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.

And again, he came and found them sleepy for their eyes were heavy.

So leaving them again, he went and prayed for the third time saying the same words again.

Then he came to his disciples and said, sleep and take your rest now, sleep and take your rest later on.

See the hours at hand, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Here you find the story of Jesus struggling in the garden.

And I want you to know that this struggle in the garden was for me.

He was struggling the struggle that I should have to have.

He was feeling the weight that I should feel.

Luke chapter 22, let's look at Luke's account of this story very briefly here.

Luke chapter 22 and beginning with verse 39, he's going as his custom was to the Mount of Olives, his disciples are following him, and in verse 40 he says, he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation, and he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, Father if you're willing remove this cup from me, nevertheless not my will but yours be done.

Jesus was so agonized in the garden that His words that my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death, they were not idle words.

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It Was for Me

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