Many readers of the Bible feel that in studying the four Gospels, the easiest thing to study is Christ’s prayer. This concept is wrong. The prayers in Matthew, as we have seen, are hard to understand. They show us how to pray according to God’s will for the accomplishment of God’s economy.
In this message we will conclude our fellowship concerning the God-man living, specifically concerning Christ as a man of prayer. Among other things, we want to consider the Lord’s prayer on the cross in which He said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). It is difficult to reconcile this portion of the Word with what the Lord said in John concerning God the Father’s always being with Him as God’s sent One (16:32; 8:16, 29). God the Father was with Him all the time, but when He was dying on the cross, He cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” We need to see how to reconcile these two portions of the Word.
We want to emphasize that we are still fellowshipping concerning the divine facts in the mystical human life of the first God-man. The significance of the loaf on the Lord’s table has two aspects. One is the physical aspect, and the other is the mystical aspect. The loaf, on the one hand, signifies the Lord’s physical human body of blood and flesh, which He gave for us on the cross in dying for us and for our sins. At the same time, that loaf signifies Christ’s mystical Body. The physical body is judicial. The mystical Body is organic. We are the mystical Body of Christ. We have been baptized in one Spirit into this one Body (1 Cor. 12:13), and God has placed us and blended us together in this one mystical Body (vv. 18, 24).
Such a mystical view can be possessed only by the seeking Christians. Like the Lord Jesus, we need to be those who are apparently physical, yet invisibly mystical. All the genuine prayers, real prayers, prayers that can be counted by God, are divine facts in the mystical human life. We have seen that before the Lord fed the five thousand, He prayed by looking unto His Father (Matt. 14:19). This is something divine, performed in a mystical human life.
Now we want to conclude our fellowship from the previous message concerning the Lord’s prayer in Gethsemane, where He taught His disciples to learn from Him how to pray (Matt. 26:20-30, 36-46).
In Gethsemane the Lord came to His disciples and found them sleeping. He said to Peter, “So were you not able to watch with Me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (vv. 40-41). Watching and praying is a very strong principle in our Christian life because the tempter, Satan, is always around us. The more we love the Lord, the more the tempter pays attention to us. Once we turn to the Lord to love Him, Satan would not stop trying to trouble us. There is a battle and a struggle in this universe between God and Satan.
I believe that the Lord’s telling His disciples to watch and pray was also His warning to Peter. Eventually, Peter entered into Satan’s temptation in the same night. He denied the Lord to the Lord’s face three times. Surely he was not watching and praying at that time. In the same night, Peter entered into temptation due to his not watching and praying.
There is another principle of the seeking believers of Christ. This principle is that all the time their spirit is willing, but their flesh is weak. This is a principle not only in prayer but also in the entirety of the Christ-seeking life. Our spirit desires to be an overcomer, but our flesh is weak. We have the desire in our spirit, but we do not have the strength in our flesh. This is why we should not trust in the flesh but take care of our spirit.
When the Lord came again to the disciples, He found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy (v. 43).
The Lord came to the disciples the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour has drawn near, and the Son of Man is being delivered up into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going. Behold, the one who is betraying Me has drawn near” (vv. 45-46). While the disciples were sleeping, the Lord was fighting in His prayer, even to the extent of sweating with drops like blood (Luke 22:44).
The Lord took Peter, John, and James, who were more close and intimate to Him (see Matt. 17:1), apart from the rest of the disciples particularly and charged them to watch with Him (26:37-38). They did not keep the Lord’s word, because they were weak in their flesh even though they were willing in their spirit (vv. 40-41). This shows us the reason that we do not watch with the Lord in our prayer. Our spirit is willing, but we have a problem with our flesh, which includes our self.