What Happened in the Garden of Gethsemane? A Look at Matthew 26
A few weeks before this message, guest preacher Bryan Barley was hanging out with Pastor Keith at The Factory when Keith asked him to come preach at New River. Bryan said he’d love to. What would Keith like him to preach on?
Keith’s answer was the most dangerous thing you can say to a preacher: “Whatever you want.”
Bryan warned the room about himself right up front. He’s a natural evangelist — and he doesn’t just mean about his faith. He means about everything. When country artist Larry Fleet dropped a new album that Friday, woe to anyone in Bryan’s contacts: Have you heard this song? Have you heard this song? His six-year-old son is the same way. The boy came home from a little Valentine’s date with his mom and immediately announced to his sisters: we saw a movie, and we had popcorn, and we had ice cream. If he’s excited about something, everyone within earshot is going to know about it.
That’s the energy Bryan brought to Matthew 26. He told us he wasn’t interested in pulling stale bread out of the archives — he wanted to bring fresh loaves of what God had been doing, because he had watched the truths in this one scene transform the lives of unlikely people just that week.
The scene is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before the cross. And the message — “Need, Struggle, and Faithfulness,” part of the WORDS series — lands on an idea you will never find on the self-help shelf.
What this sermon is about
Here is the central idea, stated the way Bryan stated it: in Christ, we are given the permission and the invitation that as life grows increasingly heavy, we can become increasingly needy.
As life gets heavier, we can get needier.
Nobody sells books about becoming more needy. We sell books about having no more problems and no more needs. But Jesus came to establish a very upside-down kingdom — one where he is not leading us toward self-sufficiency but toward dependency, where our neediness is not contemptible in his eyes, and where he is near to the weary and the heavy laden. If you’ve ever felt like your needs disqualify you, this message is for you.
The Olympic case for being needy
Bryan started with the Winter Olympics, which were on TV that very week. Specifically, the downhill ski jumping — athletes going roughly fifty miles an hour downhill, flying six or seven seconds through the air, covering three or four hundred feet.
Here’s what’s interesting. Before someone puts their life at risk that way, NBC runs an extended feature that is essentially a celebration of that person’s neediness. Some tragedy, some hardship — and in the middle of it, a community that rallied around them, championed them, gave them a vision for their life. By the time they’re at the top of the ramp, they have something like twelve coaches: a strength coach, a plyometrics coach, a wind technician, a mental coach.
And after all those profiles, nobody at home is saying, “What a baby. Why can’t they just do it themselves?” You’re in tears. You met this person thirty minutes ago and now you desperately want them to win. Something about their neediness and vulnerability resonates with your heart.
In fact, you know what you call a ski jumper who is bad at being needy? Hospitalized. In danger. Disqualified.
Then came Bryan’s “crazy idea”: every single one of us does something every single day that is more difficult than that jump. It’s called trying to do life in a tragic, fallen place called Earth. Not just getting married, but staying married. Parenting in a way that actually breaks generational cycles, not just promising you’ll be different than your dad. Staying single without lowering your standards while you lose another roommate to an engagement. Whatever stage of life God has you in — it is genuinely hard down here.
Which means we’d better be really good at being needy.
The needs of Jesus
Matthew 26:36-38 — “Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I go over there and pray.’ And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.’”
Gethsemane is an Aramaic word meaning “olive press” — and the location is almost a condensed symbol of what’s happening. Olives are squeezed to make oil. Here is Jesus being squeezed in anticipation of making atonement for our sin.
Notice who he brings into his inner circle: Peter, James, and John — the same three men who, spoiler alert, are about to completely fail him. Peter had just made some enormous promises. Has anything ever hurt quite like somebody promising to be with you when you need them most, and then not being there? Even that particular sorrow, Christ knows heart-to-heart. He’s lived it.
But the more remarkable thing is what Jesus does next. He names his feeling out loud: my soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Bryan pointed out that Jesus was someone whose internal world always matched the external realities around him. Most of us are ducks — smooth and composed above the water, paddling furiously underneath, answering “fine” when somebody asks how we are. Jesus had no gap between the inside and the outside.
And his feeling leads directly to a need, expressed out loud: remain here and watch with me. In the original language that isn’t even a polite question. It’s an imperative. As Bryan paraphrased it: y’all watch out for me. I need you.
Bryan confessed his own resistance to this in real time. He and his family recently moved to Franklin, and when people genuinely offered to help with the move, he did what so many of us do: “No, I got it. I GOT it” — carrying furniture alone, well into his forties, because we are so afraid of exposing our neediness.
Then he put up a chart. Most of us instinctively believe that as life’s demands get heavier, our needs should get lower — that growing up and taking on responsibility means having no needs at all. We clear everyone off the court like it’s crunch time and we’re the superstar: I got this. Just watch. But Jesus runs the line the opposite direction. As the demands on him reach their absolute peak — the cup, the wrath, the abandonment, the cross — his expressed neediness goes up, not down. And Jesus never sinned, which quietly dismantles the false belief so many of us carry: that to be needy is to be sinful.
“If Jesus was willing to be needy, and Jesus is the truest definition of what it means to be a human being, how much more acceptable and necessary is it for us to be needy as well?” — Bryan Barley
What Jesus models in this scene reduces to three questions we can carry into any ordinary day: What do I feel? What do I need? Who can I tell?
The struggle of Jesus
Matthew 26:39 — “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.’”
C.S. Lewis wrestled with this scene in his lesser-known book on prayer, Letters to Malcolm. Bryan summarized Lewis’s conclusion: he couldn’t perfectly explain it theologically, but he knew this — it is the greatest prayer ever prayed in the history of the world. God the Son wrestling with God the Father: I don’t want this, but I will do it.
What is the cup? Throughout the Old Testament, the cup is the image of God’s stored-up justice toward evil. Psalm 75:8 speaks of “a cup with foaming wine, well mixed” that the wicked of the earth will drain to the dregs. Isaiah 51:17 calls it “the cup of his wrath.” Jeremiah 25:15 calls it “the cup of the wine of wrath.”
Before that language makes you flinch, hear what it actually means. You know how you watch the news and wonder if the evil of the world just gets away with it? It doesn’t. The Father is always watching. He is angrier at wickedness than you are, and he will make all things right and all things new. Gethsemane is Jesus looking at that cup — the one we deserved — and saying: I don’t want to drink it. But if this is the only way, I will be faithful to the end.
Notice, too, that he prays it more than once. Matthew 26:42 — “Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’” We often believe we’re supposed to pray a thing once and be done. Here is the Son bringing the same struggle to the Father again and again. We tend to treat struggling with the will of the Father as sinfulness. In this scene, it’s Christlikeness.
Bryan offered a gentle observation about our cultural moment of deconstruction: the common thread he sees is people taking their struggle everywhere except to the Father — to a podcast that validates the cynicism instead of to the God who can handle the wrestling. The Father could handle the struggle of his own Son. He can handle the struggles of his sons and daughters too. The Psalms are the proof.
“Christianity is not about the absence of desire. That’s Buddhism. Christianity is about wholehearted struggling with the Father.” — Bryan Barley
We can want. We can crave. We can name our desires honestly. And maturity is having the tolerance that sometimes the answer is no, sometimes the answer is wait, and sometimes the answer is yes.
The faithfulness of Jesus
If there’s one overarching reality in this scene, it’s that everybody fails except Jesus.
He saw all of it coming. “One of you will betray me” (v. 21). “You will all fall away because of me this night” (v. 31). “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times” (v. 34). Peter answers with the biggest overpromise in the Gospels — “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” — and every disciple says the same. Then Jesus asks them to do one thing, to stay awake and watch, and he comes back to find them sleeping. “Could you not watch with me one hour?” He prays again; they’re asleep again. A third time — asleep again.
Why is that good news? Because of the lie underneath our refusal to be needy: the belief that everything depends on our own perfection. That life is so fragile the smallest mistake will be cataclysmic. That’s the voice that keeps you awake at night replaying the one dumb thing you said. Bryan called that what it is — an accusatory lie. Matthew 26 is people messing up as badly as people can mess up, and Jesus moving and blessing anyway. He willingly knows the failures of his followers, and he dies for them anyway.
“Grace is not you did your 10% and God will take the last 90%. Grace is we have nothing to contribute to salvation, and God says: I’ll pay the cost on your behalf — and all you need to bring is needy, open hands.” — Bryan Barley
Life is not nearly as fragile as we’re led to believe. We are fickle; he is faithful. We are weak; he is strong. And rather than white-knuckling our way through the week, we can let go — the way a little kid rests in the arms of a dad she’s convinced is a superhero.
What this means for your week in Franklin
- Ask the three questions. What do I feel? What do I need? Who can I tell? That’s all Jesus is doing in Matthew 26, and you can practice it on a Tuesday as easily as on a Sunday.
- Take the struggle to the Father first. Before the podcast, before the venting text thread. He handled the wrestling of his own Son in Gethsemane. He can handle yours — out loud, repeatedly, unresolved.
- Let somebody watch out for you. The next time a friend offers to help — with the move, the kids, the hard week — resist the reflexive “I got it.” Jesus asked three friends to keep watch. You have permission to do the same.
- Stop guarding your own perfection. Your week does not hinge on you never messing up. Everyone in the garden failed except Jesus, and his faithfulness carried them all. It carries you too.
Watch the full message
The full sermon — “Need, Struggle, and Faithfulness” from the WORDS series — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more from the WORDS series and other recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
