Sunday, December 11, 2011

“The Joy: 喜び; The World Is Crowded With Gethsemanes"
 世界はゲッセマネ(・・・の象徴)で満ちている


3rd week of Advent
   I DISCOVERED this past week that the Garden of Gethsemane was not really a garden at all but an orchard. Olive trees still grow there today, but during Jesus’ day it was a place of business, an olive press producing the local areas supply of oil. This is where the word Gethsemane comes in. A gat (Hebrew) is a press, a large five-foot high square stone pillar, and a semane, is oil. So on the evening before His crucifixion Jesus went to the orchard of the Olive Press with Peter, James, and John, to pray and to be pressed.
   If you lived in the first century and worked with an olive press (gethsemane), your day would be spent gathering olives, placing them in a woven fishnet like bag, and putting them on top of a stone table. This specially designed table is round with beveled edges that curve down to a trough. The trough is angled and funnels into a bucket which holds the oil. The top is designed to receive the pressed oil. The tall square stone is lifted up and set on top of the basket and for several hours its tremendous weight is left there to crush the liquid from the little olive.
   It is no accident that Jesus spent His last evening in the Garden of Gethsemane. From there He would leave to go to the Cross and receive the weight of the world, the gethsemane of our sins, blood crushed from His body running down the Cross to the world below. Dr. Luke describes the pressure Jesus suffered that evening: And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. 医者のルカは、「苦しみもだえて、いよいよ切に祈られた。汗が血のしずくのように地に落ちた。」と書いています。 Luke 22:44  It is an image of the gathsemane crushing the oil from the olive fruit.
   Gethsemane ever since has come to symbolize suffering. And you already know that the world is crowded with gethsemanes 世界各地のゲッセマネfrom Bible times; Herod’s slaughtering the innocent. Today: Saran Gas attacks in Tokyo; Oklahoma City bombing; Columbine High School. And around the world: in Dec 21, 1988, over the skies of Dunblane in Scotland, a Pan Am jumbo jet 103 blew up-killing 259 people in the air and another 11 more on the ground, On March 16, 1988, in Halabja, Iraq the gassing of the Kurds that killed 5,000; Bosnia, the scenes of ethnic cleansing where over 100,000 died; and the town of Beslan, Russia where over 300 children were killed by terrorist. Rwanda, in 2004, over 800,000 Hutus and Tutsi were killed in less than 100 days. The world is full of gethsemanes. There are times and towns where the innocent have suffered. In the face of such unspeakable horror we need to ask ourselves some questions:
   First: whom do we turn to? だれに対するのでしょうか?
   50 years from now, people will say, Ishnomaki was the place so many school children died. So many innocent were lost. In times like that, whom do we turn to?  King David had some idea… See Ps 77:1-19 詩篇77:1-19

1 I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. 2 When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; at night I stretched out untiring hands and my soul refused to be comforted. 3 I remembered you, O God, and I groaned; I mused, and my spirit grew faint. 4 You kept my eyes from closing; I was too troubled to speak. 5 I thought about the former days, the years of long ago; 6 I remembered my songs in the night. My heart mused and my spirit inquired:7 “Will the Lord reject forever? Will He never show His favor again? 8 Has His unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time? 9 Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has He in anger withheld His compassion?”10 Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High.” 11 I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember Your miracles of long ago. 12 I will meditate on all Your works and consider all Your mighty deeds.13 Your ways, O God, are holy. What god is so great as our God? 14 You are the God who performs miracles; You display Your power among the peoples. 15 With Your mighty arm You redeemed Your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.16 The waters saw You, O God, the waters saw You and writhed; the very depths were convulsed. 17 The clouds poured down water, the skies resounded with thunder; Your arrows flashed back and forth. 18 Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind, Your lightning lit up the world; the earth trembled and quaked. 19 Your path led through the sea, Your way through the mighty waters, though Your footprints were not seen.

   Who do we turn to when things are unexplainable painful?  God?
   The Bible asks us this question. And the Psalmist in essence is saying that there is no consolation, not even in God, when your soul has been torn from you. But even in great despair something faithful is happening. Even when we cry out “God is not there” we reveal our deep desire for God.
   There are many who have had it really tough in our world. Some of you have experienced great pain during your life-time. The illness or hard times sapped their strength almost to the point of death. In the midst of this illness, some wrote on suffering. Some would later come to realize: The sickness, which kept them in bed, which held them back, forced them to think about their spiritual condition. Suffering gets our attention; it forces us to look to God, when otherwise we would just as well ignore Him. 
   One who wrote a great deal about suffering and loss is Philip Yancey, who wrote: “Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the Cross. ”  He later wrote: “God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.” What’s So Amazing About Grace? And in that pain of life, we see His Love.
   That’s it. Suffering gets our attention. 苦難は私たちの緊張感を高めます Suffering forces us to look toward another; forces us to ask the deeper questions about life; forces us to turn toward God. Even if it is to express our displeasure and despair, we turn to Him and in those pleas we display our faith in Him.
   The first question is: Who do we turn to? The second is: What are we to do? 私たちは何をすべきか? The answer here could be obvious: we are to pray. When Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane, He went there for one reason, to pray.
   Not the time for sleeping, but to pray. 祈り  Get up and pray! During Advent, it is not a time of leisure and pleasure. Prayer gets us ready for suffering.  Our soul needs prayer to really live.  Jesus told His followers to pray because He knew what was to happen shortly after.
   Prayer does two things. It helps us cope with the hardships that come our way—and they will come our way.

  私たちの道のりにある苦難に耐えられるように助けてください   John 16:3 “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” けてください。ヨハネ163     

   It prepares us for what lies ahead.
   The hard times we go through is like being boiled in water. “If you are an egg, your affliction will make you hard-boiled and unresponsive. If you are a potato, you will emerge soft and pliable, resilient and adaptable." It may sound funny to some, but there have been times when we should pray, "O Lord, let me be a potato."
   #1-helps us cope with what is ahead and #2, It guides away from temptation. 誘惑から逃れられるように導いてもらう祈り マルコ14:38

  Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” Mark 14:38.   

   This was said in the Olive Garden.  In Luke, Jesus said this twice!
   Hardship many times brings temptation: Temptation to compromise our principles, temptation to pursue pleasure over adversity, temptation to renounce our faith in God. (Peter later quickly learned this lesson as he denied that he even knew Jesus.)  All 11 of His Disciples left the scene of His betrayal afraid for their own lives. They did not pray so they did not stay.  They did not stay so they gave into temptation because they did not pray.
   First question: Who do we turn to? Answer: God, even in our despair. Second question: What do we do? Answer: Pray to cope. Pray against temptation. Pray for one another. And pray for the Kingdom to come. Third question: Where do we go from here? 私たちはここからどこへ向かう? Answer? Well this one is a little more complicated. The answer isn’t easy because life isn’t easy. When Jesus left Gethsemane, where did He go?  He went to Golgotha. He went to the Cross. イエスは十字架へ向かった At times we all seem to be running from the garden of despair to the hill of suffering. You will be in good company!
   We have seen so far in our Walk Thru the Bible that people have had their Gethsemane: their place of pressure.  Abraham-when he was asked to sacrifice his only son.  For Joseph, when he was put into jail for something he did not do.  Paul had his gethsemanes in his life. He listed them…stoned, whipped, robbed and shipwrecked.  

  2 Cor 11:24-26 24 第2コリント11:24-26 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.(195X) 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers.” 

   One major truth is found in these: When we are going through them, many times DO NOT SEE the purpose of the Gethsemanes we face.
   We cannot deny the picture painted by the Psalmist when he asks, 7 “Will the Lord reject forever? Will He never show His favor again? 8 Has His unfailing love vanished forever? Has His promise failed for all time? 9 Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has He in anger withheld His compassion?” Does His promises fail? Has God forgotten to be gracious? And David said this in his infirmity (condition)." 

   How does this fit during this, the third week of Advent when the key word is JOY. 
James 1:2-3 2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
ヤコブの手紙 / 1 2-3 わたしの兄弟たち、いろいろな試練に出会うときは、この上ない喜びと思いなさい。信仰が試されることで忍耐が生じると、あなたがたは知っています。

   I believe those three members of the new family did not really know what was going on nor what to do next.  It took a dream given to Joseph to get them going to Egypt as Herod’s killers were on their way to do murder. God was giving them JUST what they needed to take them to the next step. One step at a time-in the Father’s Will—produces JOY 喜び as they learned to TRUST.  Same for us. Look to Him, Pray to Him. Be lead by His Spirit and find the JOY of Christmas.