Let’s now explore the Lord’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane the hour before His arrest and trial, because this moment is intimately tied to His tempting in the wilderness.

“Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And 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: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.”

(Matt. 26:36-46)

There are three accounts of this event in the Garden of Gethsemane. The other two accounts can be found in Luke 22:39-46 and Mark 14:32-42. John would skip over His prayers in the Garden and go straight to the betrayal and the arrest.

First, Matthew 26:36 and Mark 14:32 would say that the Lord went to Gethsemane. Luke 22:39 would say that He went to the Mount of Olives. John would write that He went “over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples” (Joh. 18:1). They’re all talking about the same location. He went to the Garden of Gethsemane, which was at the foot of the Mount of Olives overlooking the valley of Cedron, now spelled Kidron. If you were to look at a good vintage map of the city of Jerusalem, you’ll notice that the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane are behind the temple outside the walls on the upper eastern side of Jerusalem. This spot is about half mile away from the wall of Jerusalem and about a mile long, overhanging the city of Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives rises 187 feet above Mount Zion, 295 feet above Mount Moriah, and 443 feet above Gethsemane. The Mount lies between the city and the wilderness toward the Dead Sea.

Within Jerusalem, west of Herod’s Palace is likely the location of the upper room. The Lord and His disciples walked from that upper room, through an eastern gate in the wall, across the brook in the valley of Kidron, and then north into the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Kevin Sadler, president of the Berean Bible Society, in the Oct. 2018 issue of the Berean Searchlight, wrote of his time at the Garden of Gethsemane. He said, “At the base of the Mount of Olives is the Garden of Gethsemane, where our Lord fervently prayed in the hours before He was crucified. Looking down into the valley below, it struck me that I was looking at the Kidron Valley. The Lord crossed that valley many times when He stayed in Jerusalem overnight on the Mount of Olives (John 8:1-2). This is the Valley of Decision, the Valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:1,2,14- 16), where the multitudes from the army of the Anti-Christ will be gathered for the Battle of Armageddon. That battle will extend for 200 miles (Rev. 14:20), from Mount Megiddo in the north to Edom in the south. The Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives will be the center of the action when Christ returns at His Second Coming.”

The Lord loved going to the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke 22:39 tells us that He “went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives”. John 18:2 would tell us that “Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples.” The Lord loved going there often. I have no doubt the Lord loved the Mount of Olives because of its rich historical and prophetical significance, not only in the past and the present, but also in the future.

We first learn about the Mount of Olives in 2 Sam. 15, in which Absalom usurped David’s throne. David had to flee Jerusalem. The first place he went was the Mount of Olives. There, he wept. Then, in 1 Kings 11, the Mount of Olives would be called The Mount of Corruption because Solomon built altars to idols, all of which would be destroyed by Josiah, the boy king, in 2 Kings 23. It took a boy to fix the mistakes of the wisest man who ever lived.

Of course, we have the famous prophecies about the Mount of Olives. Eze. 11:23 famously tells of the Lord’s magnificent ascension from the Mount of Olives and descension onto the Mount of Olives, but my favorite is Zec 14:4. “And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.” The amazing thing about this verse is that when the Lord returns and His foot touches the Mount of Olives, the entire mountain is going to split in two with half in the north, half in the south, and a great valley between the two. Can you imagine that? When His foot touches upon the Mount of Olives, there is going to be this colossal explosion of that entire mountain, which is a mile long, and that mountain is going to split in two with a great valley between them!

Of course, the Lord first entered Jerusalem by way of Bethpage and Bethany (Mark 11:1), which is a road north of the Mount of Olives. During those days, the Lord taught in the temple, and we find in Luke 21:37 that “in the day time he was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of Olives.” Plus, all those famous passages in Matt. 24-25 about the end of the world, called the Olivet Discourse, was taught on the Mount of Olives (Matt. 24:3). Additionally, after the Lord’s resurrection, it was upon the Mount of Olives in Acts 1:6, that the disciples asked the Lord, “wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” Then the Lord told them in Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” He tells them again about the power they’ll be receiving from the Holy Spirit, and then, in Acts 1:9-11, we read that “when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”

It’s easy to see why the Lord would love so dearly being on the Mount of Olives.

They Arrive at the Garden

When Jesus arrives at the Garden of Gethsemane, the first thing He tells His disciples, “Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder” (Matt. 26:36). Mark would write that He told the disciples “Sit ye here, while I shall pray” (Mark 14:32). Why is the wording of those two instructions different? Did the Lord say what was recorded in Matthew or Mark? Yes. The Lord spoke a lot. Not everything is recorded. We’re only given snippets. Plus, we know the Lord repeated Himself. Thus, He made both of those statements just as they are written.

Then the Lord left the disciples where they were and brought with Him further into the Garden Peter, James, and John (Matt. 26:37, Mark 14:33). In Matthew and Mark, with minor variance, He tells them, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.”

He leaves them and walks further into the Garden about the distance of a stone’s throw (Luke 22:41), which Matthew Henry suggested was about 50 or 60 steps.

After He goes further into the Garden, He falls to the ground on His face (Matt. 26:39, Mark 14:35), and prayed.

I’ve wondered, why did the Lord do this? Why did He leave eight of His disciples where they were? Why did He take Peter, James, and John further into the Garden, leave them, walk 50 more steps, fall down, and pray? Some would say He needed two or three witnesses. I can’t help but wonder, “Why only two or three when He could’ve easily had 11?”

Peter, James, and John are sometimes referred as the Lord’s “inner circle”. They were among the earliest to become His disciples, which meant they had been with Him the longest. The Lord took those three up to the high mountain to view His transfiguration. In Luke 8, the three of them witnessed the Lord bring Jairus’s daughter back from the dead. And here, they have been brought to be near the Lord as He agonized in prayer to His Father in the Garden.

Why? I suspect that, based upon their faith and service, they had been designated by God for special leadership roles in the kingdom, which is why they’re being singled out. What were the qualities in those three men that persuaded the Lord to single them out like this? We don’t know. We can only say that when we’re in our heavenly seats playing an administrative role in the Lord’s thousand-year kingdom and we’re seeing those three men on their thrones in the kingdom fulfilling their God-given responsibilities, then we will know all.

The Lord tells Peter, James, and John, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.” He has a soul, which is the “real you,” and His whole being, the very core of Christ, was in agony and turmoil about everything that was to come to pass. When He says that His soul “is exceeding sorrowful unto death”, He’s not saying that He’s sorrowful until He dies. He’s saying that He felt a sorrow so great, it could bring about a physical death right then, evidenced by the fact that, as Luke wrote, “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Luke, the great doctor, the one who emphasizes the Lord’s humanity in his Gospel, was the only one to reveal the awful physical repercussions of His extremities of agony in the Garden. He wasn’t sorrowful until He died, He was sorrowful to such an extreme in that moment that His sorrow could have brought the death of His body right there in the Garden.

This agony He felt wasn’t even the beginning of His cup of sorrows. This was sorrow over the cup that He was about to drink. After Judas and his men show up and Peter slices off Malchus’s ear, the Lord told Peter in Joh 18:11 to put away his sword. Then He says, “the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” He hadn’t even begun to drink of that excruciating cup of sorrows yet.

What was it about that cup that evoked such extreme sorrow in the Lord in the Garden? Consider first the fact that His sacrifice on the cross was to take on the consequence of every sin of every person who ever lived since the world began. This was more than just physical suffering. This was mental, emotional, but above all, spiritual. He suffered on that cross at Calvary as if He alone was responsible for every sin that ever occurred.

H.H. Snell, a Plymouth Brethren, wrote, “Can we conceive trouble and anguish more terrible, for the heart to be so sorrowful as to be connected with such effects?”

Arno Gaebelein would write, “He suffered in Himself. His holy soul shrank back from that which a holy God must hate, that which He hated — SIN. He was about to be made sin and He knew no sin. What suffering this produced in the Holy One of God to take all upon Himself and to stand in the sinner’s place before a holy sin-hating God, our poor finite minds cannot realize.” His connection to sin and His suffering for sin makes the cross the greatest suffering any being ever experienced in the history of the world. But His agony is even more than this.

We know that the other men on crosses experienced physical suffering, but the Lord experienced also a spiritual suffering that went well beyond human comprehension. Psa. 22 pulls back the spiritual curtain to reveal the demonic realm who were present at the cross to torture His soul. You may also recall in Isa. 53:11 the Father observing the travailing of the Lord’s soul by which He would be satisfied that His Son’s sacrifice would be a sufficient payment for all the sins of all mankind for all time. What depths of suffering must His soul endure to be deemed a sufficient payment for all the sins of mankind? We cannot comprehend that.

I suspect there was yet another aspect of His sacrifice beyond even this, which took the Lord to the extremes of sorrow, which put His physical body at risk of death in the Garden. That one aspect was knowing that He would be forsaken of the Father while on the cross. I think that’s what took Him over the edge. We cannot comprehend the anguish of anticipation of the magnitude of all His sufferings on the cross while also being forsaken of His Father. He had been one with the Father going all the way back to eternity past. The Lord knows that as He takes on the iniquity of us all, He’ll be forsaken of the Father temporarily, because He can have nothing to do with sin, and I suspect the very thought of that was enough to make Christ sorrowful unto death. Everything would have been far more tolerable if He wouldn’t be forsaken of His Father while He suffered the worst agony of anyone who ever lived.

We’ve known Christian couples who have been married 50 or 60 years. Then a spouse dies. When you have been one with that spouse for so long and you lose that person in death, even though you know it’s temporary because you’ll see that person again in Heaven, yet, you still feel part of your soul has been ripped away from you. This is a pain so exquisite human words can never do that pain justice. Yet, that pain we feel is only a pale shadow of the pain the Lord felt here in the Garden knowing He would be forsaken of His Father.

The Lord in the Garden goes out to pray three times and comes back to Peter, James, and John three times. And on that third time He comes back to Peter, James, and John, that is when Judas and his men show up to arrest Him.

Let’s go through this story moment-by-moment.

First, He tells Peter, James, and John, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.” Watch what? Be alert and watch for everything. Watch the Lord pray. Watch the other disciples to make sure they’re where they’re supposed to be. And especially, watch for Judas and his men.

The Lord goes further into the Garden about 50 steps. Matthew would say that He “fell on his face” (Matt. 26:39). Mark would say He “fell on the ground” (Mark 14:35). Luke would say He “kneeled down” (Luke 22:41). This was not a matter of a proper prayer posture. The Lord collapsed to the ground because of the extreme agony He felt.

In His first prayer, Matthew records that He said, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39). Mark would record that He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt” (Mark 14:36). Luke would record only one of His three prayers. We don’t know which one, but he writes that Jesus said, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).

The Lord comes back to Peter, James, and John. He finds them asleep. He speaks to Peter. He says, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:40-41). Mark would record that He said, “Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour? Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:37-38). He made both of those statements in those words. He said a lot to them. We’re only given selected portions of what He said.

It’s fascinating how the Lord talks about watching with Him for one hour. It’s not that an hour had passed by the time He came back to them. It’s that they were in His last hour before He would be arrested, and He wanted them watching with Him for that entire hour. The Lord knew exactly when He would be arrested. John 18:4 tells us that Jesus knew “all things that would come upon Him.” He knew Judas would betray Him. He knew how and why. He also knew exactly when He would be arrested. Thus, He also knew He was in the last hour, and He wanted His disciples to be alert all throughout that whole hour.

The Lord also tells them, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” What did He mean by that exactly?

We have three components in this one verse. We have a willing spirit, a weak flesh, and we have a great risk of falling into temptation.

First, the willing spirit. He knew their souls had a willing desire inside of them to serve Him, but the flesh is weak. When the Lord said the flesh is weak, did He mean that sinful flesh is susceptible to temptation or did He mean that their bodies were just tired? Yes. The Lord knew that when their bodies were exhausted, they were also particularly susceptible to temptation, which is why He warned them to “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation”, which is interesting. The Lord didn’t even want them to enter into temptation. Why is that? Is it a sin to be tempted? No. Even the Lord was tempted in all points like as we are, yet He was without sin. It’s the decision you make when you are tempted that could become a sin. But in this moment, the Lord didn’t even want them to enter into temptation and warns them that the “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”. He knew that their souls had a willing desire inside of them to serve Him, but He also knew that when their sin-corrupted bodies were exhausted, they were also particularly susceptible to temptation, which meant they’d be highly susceptible to sin, and He didn’t want them to even be tempted to sin.

What kind of temptation was the Lord worried about? What was the sin He was concerned they’d be tempted to commit? If they didn’t pray and fell asleep, then that would be a sin. Why? Because they’d be disobeying the Lord. If the Lord told them to do something and they didn’t do it, that was a sin. He was the Messiah. He was the Lord Jesus Christ. If they didn’t do what He said, they sinned. The Lord wanted His disciples to stay awake and pray with Him. He didn’t want them to even be tempted to fall asleep. Why? Because the Lord knew what was about to happen. He knew Judas was coming with men to arrest Him, which would ultimately lead to His crucifixion. The Lord wanted His disciples alert, awake, and in prayer in the last hour before His arrest. If they didn’t obey His instructions, then they had sinned.

The Lord then goes back into the Garden to pray a second time. Matthew records that He said, “O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done” (Matt. 26:42). Mark says that He “spake the same words” in His prayer (Mark 14:39). The Lord comes back to Peter, James, and John. They’re asleep again. This time, He lets them sleep.

He goes back into the Garden to pray a third time (Matt. 26:43, Mark 14:40). Matthew writes that the Lord said the same words (Matt. 26:44). Then He comes back to Peter, James, and John, and Mark records that He tells them “Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand” (Mark 14:41-42).

The Three Prayers

In His first prayer, Matthew records that the Lord said, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39). J.C. O’hair once made the point that that’s a big IF. The Lord isn’t saying “I won’t do this.” He’s saying, “I don’t want to do this. IF it be possible, let this cup pass from me”. He’s giving the Father a wide berth for any possibility to get Him out of the suffering to come, but then He relents to obeying His Father’s will. He says, “nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” O’Hair wrote, “Sin is saying to God ‘I will’ instead of ‘Thy will’. Because the anointed cherub said, ‘I will’ in Heaven the Anointed Son of God in Gethsemane, had to say, ‘Thy will.’”

Here we see like no other the greatest conflict between the Lord’s human and divine natures. In His divinity, He knew the will of the Father and what had to be done on the cross. He had a full and clear understanding of all the sufferings that was about to befall Him. He knew beforehand about the treachery of Judas, the betrayal of Peter, the hatred, the rejection, and the false witnesses of His own people. He knew that He would in a few hours be whipped, beaten, spit upon, crowned with thorns, His beard ripped off His face, nailed to the cross, but worst of all, He’d be temporarily forsaken by the Father for the first time ever because the sins of the world were laid upon Him. His soul was sorrowful unto death fulfilling the prophecy of Isa 53:3 that He would be “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows.”

So, in His humanity, He cries out, ‘O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” But He knew the answer. Was it a sin for Him to not want to go to the cross? Of course not. In His humanity, He openly shared all His desires and anguish with His Father in Heaven. And yet in both His humanity and in His divinity, He fully chose to acquiesce to the will of the Father: “nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” He freely submitted His whole being to the will of the Father. Christ, all of Him, all that He was, chose to obey. He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And here in the Garden of Gethsemane, He knew in Himself, in His divinity, the will of His father, and yet He cried repeatedly in His humanity, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me...” “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me.”

Yet, He was obedient. He willfully chose to be obedient unto death, and He refused to save Himself so that He might fulfill all righteousness and save all of us who believe in Him.

I loved how William Kelly wrote,“From this table our Lord goes to Gethsemane, and His agony there. Whatever there was of sorrow, whatever there was of pain, whatever there was of suffering, our Lord never bowed to any suffering from men without, before He bore it on His heart alone with His Father. He went through it in spirit before He went through it in fact… Thence our Lord goes forth; not yet to suffer the wrath of God, but to enter into it in spirit before God… As the cross was of all the deepest work and suffering, so most assuredly the Lord did not enter upon Calvary without a previous Gethsemane.”

The Angel that Ministered

Whereas angels, plural, ministered to Christ after the tempting in the wilderness, only one angel ministered to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke is the only one who would provide details about this encounter. Luke 22:43-44 tells us, “And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. 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.”

We first learn in vs. 43 that “there appeared an angel unto him from heaven”. The angel was sent from Heaven to personally be with Christ. This was during His prayer, perhaps His third prayer. The angel strengthened Him. The appearance of the angel and the strengthening He received, didn’t stop the Lord from praying. He continued praying “all the more earnestly” because of the extreme depths of agony He felt.

We have 3 things that occurred here. The angel appeared. He strengthened Him while He was praying. And the Lord, now strengthened, prays all the more earnestly because of the agony He felt. When He was strengthened, His reaction was to pray more earnestly. So what kind of strengthening are we talking about? Mental, emotional, physical? I would suggest that the angel’s strengthening here did not help the Lord’s mental and emotional state because vs. 44 says that “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly”. It would seem that the only kind of strengthening He was given was physical born out by the context, because in the next verse, Luke would describe for us the external physical repercussions of His internal emotional agony. “And his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”

What does that statement mean exactly? The expression “as it were” is an interesting study. This occurs 43 times in the Bible and conveys that something was like something else. It’s descriptive of a similarity. “This thing over here was kinda like this other thing over here but it wasn’t that other thing.” I suspect that Luke is saying the Lord’s sweat was like great drops of blood, but it wasn’t great drops of blood. It had the appearance as it were of great drops of blood, but it wasn’t great drops of blood. Then we have to ask the question, “Why would Luke make the connection between sweat and great drops of blood? What does that mean?”

Most likely, this was sweat mingled with blood that had the appearance of pure blood, but it wasn’t pure blood, only sweat mingled with blood.

It is possible, albeit rare, for someone to have such anxiety that blood could be mingled with sweat, which is a phenomenon called Hematohydrosis. As one medical article states, “Hematohidrosis… is a condition in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to exude blood, occurring under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress.” The article reported that there are documented cases of this happening: “six cases in men condemned to execution, a case occurring during the London blitz, a case involving fear of being raped, a case of fear of a storm while sailing, etc.”

Should any of us be surprised that the Lord experienced something like Hematohydrosis while He agonized in the Garden? How could He not? When you consider all the reasons why the Lord was in such agony in the Garden, how can we not expect to see some extreme form of physical repercussion to all that internal anxiety and agony He was going through?

How did the angel strengthen Him physically? This is a curious thing because we have no accounts in Scripture of angels healing anyone but an abundance of verses about miraculous healings through the Spirit by the Lord, His disciples, and even the Apostle Paul.

There is the story in John 5:1-18 of the angel who, at a certain season, came down to stir the pool at Bethesda, and the first person who jumped into that pool was healed.

What was this all about? Why did the angel stir the water? I’d suggest that the stirring of the water at the pool of Bethesda was designed to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah and all the healings He would bring them. Whereas the one lucky person who jumped into the pool first was healed, when the Messiah comes, everyone would have the opportunity to be healed. God limited the number of healings at the pool so the people would be conditioned to rejoice evermore at the unlimited number of healings by Christ for all the people when He arrives. Now that the Messiah has come, no longer would there be limits to the number of people who could be healed. Now they’d have healings without limits, restrictions, or conditions. The healings were not only signs that Christ was the Messiah, but they also painted a portrait of Israel’s spiritual poverty and the healing He brings. Plus, they foreshadowed life in the kingdom, the healing of His own people, as well as the healing of the nations, and the restoration of long life as they had in the distant time past.

Thus, I think, the angel who stirred the waters of the pool Bethesda was operating in service of the Holy Spirit who was the One who actually did the miracles. The angel stirred the waters, which made everyone know that it was time to jump into the pool, and then the Holy Spirit Himself healed the first one who jumped in.

Likewise, it may well be possible that angel who came down from Heaven facilitated a healing by the Holy Spirit just so Christ could physically make it to the cross.

Gethsemane was, for Christ, His moment of choice. As William Kelly wrote, you cannot have a Calvary without first having a Gethsemane. And you cannot have a Gethsemane without first having a tempting in the wilderness. The tempting in the wilderness was the trial run. The Garden of Gethsemane was the actual test, and all of this was the God-ordained process by which the Lord would learn obedience through the things He suffered (Heb. 5:7-8).

You cannot help but make that connection between the Garden of Gethsemane and the tempting in the wilderness. In both scenarios, we find the Lord’s obedience to the Father put to the test through His suffering. In both scenarios His humanity was in conflict with His divinity. In both scenarios, the Lord’s very life was on the line. In both scenarios, the hope of all mankind hung in the balance with Christ, at His most weak and most vulnerable state, was tempted to betray the will of the Father. In both scenarios, after He chose obedience, angels came down from Heaven to minister unto Him. And in both scenarios, Christ made the choice of victory.