Luke was a doctor. Paul calls him the beloved physician. Colossians 4:14. And Luke is the only gospel writer who records what happened to Jesus’s body that night in the garden. Luke 22:44. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. The other three gospels tell you He prayed. The doctor tells you what the prayer did to Him. There’s a name for it now. Hematidrosis. It’s rare, but it’s documented in medical literature: under extreme anguish, the tiny blood vessels around the sweat glands can rupture, and blood mixes into the sweat. It’s been recorded in soldiers before battle and in men facing execution. The body of the Son of God was breaking under the weight of what was coming, and nobody had touched Him yet. No whip. No thorns. No nails. Just a man on the ground under the olive trees, and the knowledge of what the morning would bring. Now look at where He was. Gethsemane. The name means oil press. An olive grove on the Mount of Olives, with a press for crushing the harvest, great stones bearing down on the fruit until the oil runs out. He went to the place where olives are crushed, on the night He was crushed. And look at the word Luke uses. Agony. In Greek, agōnia. It’s an athlete’s word, the strain of a wrestler at the limit of his strength. He’s not resting in prayer. He’s fighting in it. Mark says He began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy. And then Jesus said the most frightening sentence a human being has ever said about himself. Mark 14:34. My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. The man who calmed the storm with three words, who had raised the dead, who knew the end from the beginning - on His face in the dirt, telling His friends He was so overwhelmed it felt like dying. Matthew 26:39. He went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. What was the cup? The prophets had already told you. Isaiah 51:17, the cup of his fury. Jeremiah 25:15, the wine cup of this fury, given to the nations to drink. It was the cup of the wrath of God against sin. All of it. Every century of it. And He was going to drink it to the bottom. That’s what He saw in the garden. Not the nails. The cup. Now go back to the first garden. Genesis 3. The first Adam stands in paradise. Every tree is his. One command. And he chooses his own will over God’s. Then the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam ran. Genesis 3:10. I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. The first Adam hid from God among the trees. The last Adam went into the trees to find Him. The first Adam said: My will. The last Adam fell on His face and said: Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. Now read what God said to Adam on the way out of Eden. Genesis 3:19. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. Sweat. The curse was sweat. The sweat of your face, until you return to the ground. And in Gethsemane, in a garden, the doctor watched the sweat of Christ’s face fall to the ground, mixed with His blood. The curse that started in a garden ended in a garden. The last Adam took the sweat of the first one, and He bled it out onto the same ground Adam was made from. One more detail. Luke again. Luke 22:45. When he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow. For sorrow. Matthew and Mark just say they were asleep. The doctor gives the diagnosis. They weren’t lazy. They were grieving so hard their bodies shut down. Three times He came back and found them asleep. Three times He went back alone. Could ye not watch with me one hour? He asked His closest friends for one thing, one hour, on the worst night of His life. And they couldn’t give it to Him. He prayed it alone. And look at what comes after the third prayer. Matthew 26:46. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t hide in the trees. Torches are already moving across the valley, and the man who was face-down in the dirt stands up and walks toward them. The fight was over. It was won on His knees, before a single soldier arrived. Now you. Some of you are in your garden right now. You’ve prayed for the cup to pass. You’ve asked three times. Thirty times. You’ve fallen on your face over a diagnosis, a child, a marriage, a fear you can’t say out loud. And heaven hasn’t moved the cup. And your friends are asleep. Not because they don’t love you. Because they’re tired and they don’t know how bad it is. You’re praying alone. He knows that garden. He’s been in it. He sweated through it. And here’s the thing about that cup. The worst cup, the cup of wrath, the one with your sin in it - He didn’t let it pass. He drank it so you will never have to. Whatever is in your cup tonight, that isn’t in it anymore. What’s left is the prayer. The hardest one there is. The one that turned the curse around. Not my will. He prayed it first. Now you can.