The Lord told them to ask God that their flight would not be in winter nor on a Sabbath (Matt. 24:20). Winter is a time when escape is difficult. Also, on the Sabbath one was allowed to walk only a short distance (see Acts 1:12, note 2), a distance not adequate for escaping.
They should believe that God is the One who controls the weather and the surrounding environment. To pray that they do not flee in winter is to ask God to control the weather. To pray that their flight is not on a Sabbath day is to ask God to manage their environment. When we ask God to do something, we must be the right persons, persons for God’s economy on this earth. We must also be one with God so that we can believe that the very God to whom we pray controls the weather and rules the world situation.
In His prayer in Gethsemane before He was arrested, judged, and sentenced to be crucified, He prayed and taught His disciples to learn from Him how to pray (Matt. 26:20-30, 36-46).
After the Feast of the Passover, He taught His disciples how to remember Him by breaking the bread and drinking the cup (vv. 20, 26-29). He was firstly eating the Passover according to the Old Testament. Then at the end of that feast, He established the Lord’s table to remember Him by breaking the bread and drinking the cup.
He was burdened to go to Gethsemane, a quiet place, deep in the night, with His disciples, to pray (vv. 30, 36).
He took Peter, John, and James aside and began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed, saying to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death,” and asking them to remain there and watch with Him (vv. 37-38). He was sorrowful, even sweating with drops like blood (Luke 22:44), because He realized the full meaning of the great commission for Him to die for the accomplishment of God’s redemption for God’s fallen people. This burden was too great. We should not forget that He was a human. To be crucified on the cross was a real suffering. He also knew that Judas, the betrayer, would bring others to arrest Him. In His humanity He was exceedingly sorrowful, distressed even to death. He brought the disciples to the garden of Gethsemane to pray. When they arrived He took Peter, John, and James, these three intimate ones, aside. This shows that how far we can follow the Lord depends on our situation with Him. Then the Lord even left these three to pray.
He went forward a little, fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will” (Matt. 26:39). This cup refers to His death on the cross. In His humanity He was so submissive in His suffering. In His humanity such suffering was nearly unbearable, yet He prayed for the Father’s will, not His will, to be done. He went away a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done” (v. 42). He left them and went away again and prayed a third time, saying the same word again (v. 44). Philippians 2 says that He was obedient even to death, and that the death of a cross (v. 8).
The first God-man’s prayer here, like all His prayers in the synoptic Gospels, was prayed by Him in His humanity; this prayer here, made by Him when He was exceedingly sorrowful and deeply distressed, corresponds with the one in Paul’s writing in Hebrews 5:7 in which He offered up both petitions and supplications with strong crying and tears, asking God to save Him out of death. He was praying under this kind of condition, but He still was submissive and obedient to the Father. We need to see that the Lord prayed this way in His humanity, in which He was troubled. In John 10 He is the good Shepherd who would lay down His life for His sheep. He was willing to do that in His divinity. But in His humanity, He was sorrowful.
The Lord’s prayer in Gethsemane was after Christ’s prayer in John 17 as the conclusion of His divine teaching in John 14—16 concerning the union, mingling, and incorporation of the processed and consummated Triune God with His chosen and redeemed people, which was prayed in Christ’s divinity. We have to make a distinction between Christ’s prayer in His humanity and His prayer in His divinity. All the prayers in the first three Gospels were made by Christ in His humanity. Only the prayers in John were made by Christ in His divinity. This is because the first three Gospels are related to Christ’s humanity as the King, the Slave, and the Man, but John is concerning Christ as God. Thus, whatever He did in John was done by Him in His divinity. In John the Lord said, “I and the Father are one” (10:30). Such a word was not recorded in the first three Gospels. Then He said that as the sent One, He was not alone, because the Sender, His Father, was with Him all the time in His divinity (16:32; 8:16, 29). We will cover the Lord’s prayer in John 17 in the Crystallization-study of the Gospel of John, in the upcoming summer training.