Jesus went a little farther, fell on His face, and prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," yet "not as I will, but as you will." He came to the disciples, found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "So, could you not watch with me one hour?" He told them to watch and pray that they might not enter into temptation, for "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (a paraphrase of Matthew 26:39–41).

"Could you not watch with me one hour?" Just an hour to keep from entering into temptation! Just an hour to give the willing spirit the opportunity to prevail over the weak flesh. Just an hour with the Lord to fulfill the will of God.

But could the disciples be faulted? They were tired, and their eyes were heavy.

It has now been about ten years that I have consistently read through the Bible every year. Before that, I remember reading sporadically and inconsistently, and having the hardest time staying alert and awake, especially in the less exciting portions of Scripture (genealogies, descriptions of the temple, and so on). Back then I probably spent a fraction of the time I spend in Scripture today. But even ten minutes was hard.

I persisted. Ten years ago I was thirty-four. I became a Christian when I was fifteen. For nineteen years I tried to keep a daily, consistent, and meaningful time in God's Word. For nineteen years I had spotty success and more consistent failure. I tried so hard to stay awake, but I just could not do it. I remember my head nodding and my eyes opening and closing as I forced myself through a passage. I would feel guilty because I could not remember what I had just read. I remember crying out to God for help. I remember my atheist boss calling to ask why I had not come in to work yet. I had the hardest time telling her that I was just trying to finish my Bible reading.

I did word studies. I started a notebook to explore theological topics. I tried to prepare Bible studies and outline future sermons. I tried everything I could think of to develop a daily discipline in God's Word. I was good for a day, a week, or perhaps even a month. But then I would fall off course for much longer.

I don't know what finally turned the tide for me. Even if I could pinpoint it, I don't know that it would work the same way for anyone else. But I share my experience as a testimony of my struggle with Jesus' challenge, "Could you not watch with me one hour?" It took me nineteen years to unpack and apply just one principle from that challenge: keeping a daily and consistent time in God's Word.

Today I spend one to three hours in His Word every day — reading, studying, memorizing, and sharing. It is easy to do, and I rarely find myself nodding off. My spirit is willing, and my flesh is kept at bay.

But I cannot say the same about prayer and the earnest pursuit of everything that glorifies God. Yet this one blessing has given me the impetus to pursue these other disciplines, whether it takes me another nineteen years or longer.

Friends, I hope you will not be discouraged in your pursuit of God through His Word, through prayer, and through the earnest pursuit of everything that glorifies His name. Even if it seems hard and is taking a long time, I am confident you will prevail if you do not give up.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Gethsemane reveals both the depth of Jesus' humanity and the tenderness of His understanding. Jesus Himself was "sorrowful and troubled" (26:37) and told the three disciples, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (26:38). He prayed three times with the same words. His rebuke of the sleeping disciples is paired with compassion: "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (26:41). Luke adds that the disciples were "sleeping for sorrow" (Luke 22:45) — their exhaustion was partly grief. Jesus knew both the reality of their weakness and the danger of temptation, and He called them to watchful prayer as the remedy.

The comment's honest testimony — nineteen years of struggle before a daily habit took root — is a great encouragement to anyone who has tried and failed repeatedly to develop spiritual disciplines. It reflects Paul's words, "let us not grow weary of doing good," for we will reap "if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9), and Jesus' parable about praying and not losing heart (Luke 18:1). The comment's humility about still growing in prayer is also a gift: spiritual growth is rarely uniform, and God's patience with His children is far greater than our own. Hebrews 4:15–16 reminds us that Jesus, who knew the weakness of Gethsemane, sympathizes with our weaknesses and invites us to "draw near to the throne of grace."

Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on His head as He reclined at the table (Matthew 26:6–7).

From the information in John's account of this time, the unnamed woman in Matthew's Gospel was probably Mary (cf. John 12:3), the sister of Martha, whose brother was Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, “Why this waste? For this perfume might have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor” (Matthew 26:8–9)

Again, while Matthew does not name the disciple or disciples that objected to what Mary did, John does. It was primarily Judas Iscariot. John also provides the explanation that the objection was made not because Judas cared about the poor but because he just wanted to enrich himself:

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it (John 12:4–6).

Now, what John does not record, Matthew records, namely, that Judas went to the chief priests to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver (cf. Matthew 26:14–16). While John does not record this, it is consistent with the characterization of Judas in John's gospel.

Now, what is most remarkable is that Jesus knew that Judas would betray him. He likely also knew that Judas was embezzling funds from their money bag. Yet, never once did Jesus try to deter Judas from his destined path.

Again, when Jesus is in the Garden and guards come to arrest him, one of the disciples tries to fight them off with a sword. But Jesus tells him to put away his sword, for it is not that Jesus could not fully defend himself but that he would not:

Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way? (Matthew 26:53–54).

Jesus had a singular concern to fulfill the will of the Father in keeping with the prophecies of Scripture. This is also why, even painfully aware of his impending crucifixion, his repeated refrain in prayer was "Not as I will, but as You will" (cf. Matthew 26:39,42,44). He would travel this road of suffering and death so that "the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me" (John 14:31).

The unmistakable message of Jesus' life was his singular concern to obey the will of the Father with an unmitigated confidence that God was in control, so that secret stratagems of evil men, like Judas and the Jewish leaders, would not deter him from fulfilling the mission that God had given him.

Friends, we must realize that the same God and Father that directed the life of our Savior directs our lives as well. And like the Lord Jesus, our primary concern ought to be in obeying the will of God. This is both the wisest and safest course, as Paul also wrote:

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is (Ephesians 5:15–17).

Now, let us understand that when we submit to the Lord in this way, this will not guarantee a trouble-free life. It will not necessarily save us from being hoodwinked, betrayed or slandered. But we will share the Lord's confidence and mission.

This is enough for me. Is it enough for you? I take to heart this encouraging exhortation:

And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:1–3).

Friends, let us "RUN WITH PERSEVERANCE THE RACE MARKED OUT FOR US". And when it gets a bit hard for us, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, who "for the joy set before him, endured the cross" and "endured such opposition from sinners." Then we "will not grow weary and lose heart". We know that one day we will be in the paradise of heaven, declaring the praises of Him who walked the road of suffering and death ahead of us:

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9–11).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The anointing at Bethany places two kinds of valuation beside one another. A costly gift is called waste, while Jesus receives it as a beautiful act related to his burial (Matthew 26:6–13). Immediately afterward, Judas negotiates a price for handing him over (Matthew 26:14–16). The narrative asks what Jesus is worth to those around him. Devotion recognizes a significance that calculation misses, while betrayal treats the person as a means of gain.

John’s account identifies Mary and exposes Judas’s dishonest interest in the money (John 12:1–8). Reading the accounts together is reasonable, while acknowledging that each evangelist arranges and emphasizes details for his narrative. Matthew’s report of the disciples’ objection also warns against imagining that only the obviously corrupt person can misunderstand devotion. A legitimate concern for the poor can be voiced in a way that fails to recognize the unique moment before them.

Jesus’ response does not cancel care for the poor. The language echoes Deuteronomy 15:11, where the continuing presence of need is precisely a reason for open-handed giving. His approaching death gives the anointing its unrepeatable significance. The episode therefore cannot simply authorize extravagant institutional spending whenever someone labels it honoring Jesus. It calls readers to discern the person and purpose of Christ, while retaining the ordinary obligations of generosity he elsewhere commands.

The original turns from the gift to Jesus’ submission to the Father. Matthew 26:53–54 emphasizes that the arrest does not occur because Jesus lacks alternatives. He refuses a rescue that would contradict the saving purpose he has come to fulfill. The garden prayer reveals the cost of that obedience rather than an absence of human anguish. Willingness is not the same as emotional ease.

The statement that Jesus never sought to deter Judas is too sweeping. Matthew 26:24 pronounces a grave warning concerning the betrayer, and the following exchange brings Judas into direct confrontation with Jesus. Foreknowledge and fulfillment do not remove moral responsibility or make warning meaningless. The same distinction matters for application: believing that God can work through betrayal does not require permitting theft, concealing abuse, or declining to protect others. Jesus’ redemptive mission is unique and cannot be used as a template for every victim’s response.

Hebrews 12:1–3 directs weary believers to Jesus so that endurance is nourished by his faithfulness. The race is not sustained by proving that pain does not hurt. It is sustained by attending to the one who endured shame and now reigns. A faithful response may include costly generosity, honest confrontation, patient service, or seeking protection while refusing revenge. The common center is allegiance to the Father’s revealed will. That allegiance frees the disciple from making either self-preservation or other people’s approval the final measure of a good life.

While Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume and poured it on His head as He reclined at the table. The disciples were indignant, asking why this waste — the perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor (a paraphrase of Matthew 26:6–9).

This is a year's wages. You could have used a little rather than the whole jar. You could have helped many people. If you worked the market, you might have gotten more and helped more still. It all sounds good and right — until the Lord spoke. Jesus rebuked them, saying what she had done was a beautiful thing, so much so that it would be told wherever the gospel was preached.

What was wrong with their objection? I believe they had lost sight of the main thing. Serving the poor was a good thing, but not the main thing here. The woman understood, by her actions, what the main thing was: to worship the Lord.

Something similar appears with Mary and Martha. Martha opened her home; Mary sat at the Lord's feet listening; Martha was distracted by all the preparations and asked whether He cared that her sister had left her to do the work alone (a reference to Luke 10:38–40).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The main-thing framing is useful but needs one qualification, because Jesus's actual reply is easily misheard. He says the poor will always be with them but they will not always have Him — and that sentence is a quotation. Deuteronomy 15:11 says there will never cease to be poor in the land, therefore open your hand wide to your brother, to the poor and needy. The clause Jesus cites is the premise of a command to generosity, not a release from it. Any reading on which "the poor you will always have" functions as a reason to deprioritize them inverts the verse it comes from.

What makes the woman's act singular is its timing, which Jesus states directly: she has prepared Him for burial. This was not a choice between worship and charity as standing priorities. It was an act that could only be done in one particular week, by someone who appears to have understood what was coming when the disciples did not.

John's account adds a detail worth knowing: the objection there comes specifically from Judas, and John tells the reader he said it not because he cared for the poor but because he was stealing from the common purse. Concern for the needy makes an unusually respectable cover.

This may be one of the saddest chapters in the New Testament. It begins with the betrayal by Judas, who goes to the chief priests and asks what they are willing to give him to hand Jesus over; they count out thirty pieces of silver (a reference to Matthew 26:14–15).

Sadly, Jesus was betrayed or abandoned by all the disciples, not only Judas. Jesus tells them that this very night they will all fall away on account of Him, and tells Peter specifically that before the rooster crows he will disown Him three times (a reference to Matthew 26:31, 34). The disciples abandon Jesus as He is seized at Gethsemane, and Peter — the self-proclaimed most loyal among them — disowns Him three times. Even in the garden, as Christ agonizes over what is coming, He asks them to keep watch and pray with Him, and they fall asleep.

For three years Christ loved these men, taught and mentored them, and they saw His miracles again and again — yet in the end they thought first of themselves, fearing for their safety or seeking profit. It's heartbreaking, because we are not so different today. A pastor preached recently on Jacob and Esau, and how Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew: in his moment of need, he traded a lasting blessing for immediate relief.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The parallel this comment draws between the disciples and Esau is apt, but there's a distinction within the chapter itself that's worth preserving. Matthew presents Judas and Peter as failing in the same night and then diverging sharply afterward — Judas returns the silver in remorse and despairs; Peter weeps bitterly and is later restored. The difference is not in the severity of the failure, which in Peter's case was denial repeated three times under direct questioning, but in what each man did with it. That the Gospel records both without softening either is part of why this chapter has been a source of comfort as well as grief for readers who recognize themselves in it.

Now as they were eating, He said, “Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.” And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to Him, “Lord, is it I?” (Matthew 26:21, 22 NKJV)

Friends, when I read this account I can so see myself being among the first to ask Jesus, "Lord, is it I?" The disciples, we are told, "were exceedingly sorrowful." Could it be that having spent these years in His presence they became painfully aware of their deep sinfulness and unbelief in light of His pure and perfect faith and obedience? And they perceived Jesus knew the spiritual angst in their hearts, and so they would confess it before He pointed them out.

We are told that the Word of God serves as a mirror for our hearts:

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 NKJV)

Therefore, daily as I meditate on God's Word, I am also daily confronted with my sinfulness, selfishness, pride, and idolatries. It is not that I do not do what Christians do, but I recognize I'm woefully inadequate to do anything worthy of God, and I find myself constantly appealing to His grace for everything.

The Lord rebukes me for real sins, but my brothers rebuke me without good or right cause. Sometimes I wish my brothers knew what the Lord sees in me, so that when they confront me it would be valid, and then I could embrace them for being a true brother to me, being concerned for my soul and drawing me nearer to God. But instead my brothers are only a stumbling block to what God is doing through me, concerned with the traditions of men and with what they perceive to be right in their own eyes. Yet, I am hesitant to rebuke back because I perceive the plank, which they do not see, in my eye, and I am diligently working to remove it by God's grace.

Friends, I know that those that truly seek God will be as these disciples, humbly and sometimes painfully aware of their sinfulness before a holy God. Don't be like Judas, who truly betrayed the Lord, who only asked the question ("Is it I") to keep in step with the other eleven and not to confess and repent. We are told that if we harden our hearts, then there is no forgiveness, but if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The disciples' sorrowful question reveals that proximity to Jesus does not make self-examination unnecessary. They have heard his teaching and shared his ministry, yet the announcement of betrayal unsettles them. The narrative gives us their question and grief; it does not disclose every motive behind each person's words. The author's reflection on their awareness of sin is therefore a thoughtful pastoral inference, while the claim that Judas spoke only to blend in is a reconstruction of motive rather than an explicit explanation supplied by Matthew.

The table setting gives this self-examination a larger frame. Jesus knows the betrayal and still speaks of his covenant blood poured out for forgiveness (Matthew 26:28). Human unfaithfulness is exposed in the presence of the one who will bear its cost. The purpose of searching one's heart is consequently neither self-justification nor despair. It is truthful dependence on the Savior who knows more about the disciple's weakness than the disciple does. Read Matthew 26:20–35.

Hebrews 4 makes a similar movement from exposure to invitation. The word uncovers the heart, and nothing is hidden from God's sight; the following verses then identify Jesus as the compassionate high priest and invite believers to approach the throne of grace. Reading these movements together prevents conviction from becoming an endless inward search with no place to rest.

The original's experience of unjust criticism raises another demanding application. Awareness of a critic's faults does not prove that every criticism is false, just as another person's accusation does not establish guilt. Humility tests correction against truth, accepts what is warranted, and refuses what is not without making retaliation its aim. Confession is most fruitful when specific: name the actual wrong, seek forgiveness, make needed repair, and receive mercy. The searching question at the table becomes a path toward honest discipleship when it ends in Christ's faithfulness rather than in confidence that one has inspected oneself perfectly.

I really liked this chapter — I took a lot of notes. I've been hearing lately from various preachers about the importance of being part of a community of believers. In verse 42 (or nearby), Jesus goes away a second time and prays that if this cup cannot pass unless He drinks it, the Father's will be done (a paraphrase).

Watching Jesus handle such an intensely stressful decision, I realized that being "in" Jesus doesn't mean always wanting the same thing Jesus wants in the moment. Just as Jesus submitted to the Father, drawing encouragement He sought from the Spirit, we too must seek the Father's will, submitting to it with encouragement sought from the Spirit, manifested through the body of believers — reflected in this genuinely striking example.

I love the dichotomy shown here — actually a trichotomy! One person facing despair for the sake of another, encouraged and empowered by yet another. Never just one person alone — always in community. How humbling, that the Almighty Himself would bow in submission.

"Community and unity in the diversity of the Trinity" — Ravi Zacharias.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The community this comment identifies within the Trinity itself has a name in historical theology — perichoresis, describing the mutual indwelling and shared life of Father, Son, and Spirit. What's striking about Gethsemane specifically is that this eternal, perfect community becomes, in that moment, the very thing Jesus draws on to face His most isolating trial — even as His human companions fall asleep and fail Him nearby (Mark 14:37, 40–41). The comment's own insight holds up under that detail: even in His most human moment of dread, Jesus wasn't drawing strength from the community of disciples physically present with Him, who'd already failed to stay awake, but from the community within the Godhead itself, which never once failed Him at all.