Isaiah, chapter number 50. Thus says the Lord: "Where is your mother's certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away. Why, when I came, was there no man? Why, when I called, was there no one to answer? Is My hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, by My rebuke I dry up the sea; I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness and make sackcloth their covering." The Lord God has given Me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning, He awakens; He awakens My ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened My ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward. I gave My back to those who strike, My cheeks to those who pull out the beard. I hid not My face from disgrace and spitting. But the Lord God helps Me; therefore, I have not been disgraced. Therefore, I have set My face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. He who vindicates Me is near. Who will contend with Me? Let us stand up together. Who is My adversary? Let him come near to Me. Behold, the Lord God helps Me. Who will declare Me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of His servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches, walk by the light of your fire and by the torches that you have kindled. This you will have from My hand: you shall lie down in torment. Father, we ask that You would send Your Spirit now so that the words that we have read would become alive in our hearts, and that we would know how it is that You would have us to behave in the darkness and the dark night of our soul. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. The context of this passage begins in verse number 1 to verse number 3 with an explanation by the Lord Himself concerning His displeasure for the children of Israel. They are likened unto a woman that has been divorced because uncleanness has been found in her. They are likened to servants that have now been sold off to slave traders because of their uncleanness and iniquity. You see, they have broken the covenant that God had made with them. And God will save the remnant of Israel. God will spare His people through His covenant grace. But the nation at this point stands in a position of apostasy. A people cast off by God because of their rebellion towards Him. They have forsaken the Lord. They have not believed on the name of their God. And after God describes the fact that it is not His power that is too weak to save such a people, but rather it is their iniquities and rebellion that keeps them from coming to God for salvation, we see in verse number 4 this transition from God speaking to someone else it appears to be speaking in this passage. In verse number 4 of this text, it says, "The Lord has given me the tongue of those who are taught." And here we see the servant of the Lord speaking. He is the figure that appears through chapters 42 to chapters 43. And here's this great character of what the scripture refers to as the servant songs, or what theologians refer to as the servant songs in the book of Isaiah. This servant is God's chosen, Spirit-filled bringer of light and justice, the one who brings salvation. Yet he is also a servant who suffers, as we even see in this text, one who gives his back to the smiters, one who whose whose beard is gives his cheeks his beard is plucked from his cheeks. One who is treated with despite being despised and being rejected and shamefully treated. He is the Lord's servant who suffers, but who also brings and fulfills and does all that Israel failed to bring to the nations and do for the nations and live for the glory of God. He's God's true servant. He is the one who fulfills the will of God. And in this passage, He appears to us as God's wise and compassionate servant, and in verse number 7 of this passage, sorry, verse number 4 of this passage, he is the one who has the tongue of those who is taught that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. This is God's wise and compassionate servant that who knows how to comfort the weary just with a word. He is also God's obedient, resolute servant who when he is faced with suffering, does not give up in obedience to God, but continues to submit himself to God despite the suffering. That's verse numbers 5 to 7. "He was not rebellious," says the scripture. "I was not rebellious. I turned not backward. I gave my cheek to those who pull out the beard. I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting." He is one that in the face of hardship and in the face of difficulty is resolute in his obedience, continuing on in fulfillment of the will of God. But he's also one here in this passage that is described in verses 8 to 9 as the righteous, vindicated servant of the Lord. The one who is upheld and helped by God. There is no one that can declare Him guilty. There is no one that can lay charge against Him. He is innocent. He is righteous. He is holy. He is harmless. He is separate from sinners in that way. He is one who, although He may be shamed now and disgraced now, while they spit on Him and mock Him, it says at the end of verse number 7, "I know that I should not be put to shame." He may be shamed in His suffering, but He will not ultimately be put to shame. Why? Because the Lord will help Him. As what it says in the passage, that God will help me. The Lord God would be my helper. It says a couple of times in this text. The servant of the Lord, if you haven't worked out, is Jesus. To whom the apostles also said of Him in Acts chapter 4, verse 27 to 28, "For truly in this city, there were gathered together against Your holy servant, Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your plan determined to take place." Jesus understood that He was suffering under the hand of God's predestined plan by which God would work all things together for good to Him and for God's glory and in such a way that would redeem man from their sin. And so, He faced the darkness. As God's anointed Messiah, He obeyed, and He did not shrink back, and continued to trust in his God in the midst of the darkness. And in verse number 10 to 11, where I want to bring your attention this morning, we hear a sort of call and a cry, which begins with a question in verse 10. "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of His servant?" There's the question. Who among you fears the Lord God and obeys the voice of Jesus Christ? Who among you believes in God and in his servant, the Lord Jesus Christ? Who among you trusts in the word of God and in His servant? And it goes on to describe that those who are the children of God, those who do believe the voice of the servant and those who do fear the name of the Lord, God's remnant people, God's people that have been chosen by Him, His people of grace, the people that are saved by His name called according to His purposes. He says, despite the fact that they do fear God, and despite the fact that they do obey the voice of the servant, He describes that they are those that walk in darkness. Look what it says. "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of His servant? Let him," who is him? Those that fear the Lord and obeys the voice of God's servant, "let him who walks in darkness and has no light." You see that? The children of the servant are not exempt from the suffering of the servant. The people of the servant are not exempt from the darkness. Whether you're a God-fearer who believes in God as the sovereign creator of heaven and earth, whether you're a believer in Jesus Christ who trusts the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and trusts Jesus as your savior and Lord, the one who redeems you from your sin, it is possible to walk in darkness and have no light. This is not talking about the moral darkness of sin by which those that continue in sin are not born of God and do not know the light. This is talking about the darkness of obscurity that covers the hearts and mind of those who suffer, where it seems like there is no clarity. Despite the fact that you fear the Lord, despite the fact that you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, none of us are exempt from affliction and distress, body or soul. Salvation and obedience does not mean that you will not suffer. This is a false gospel that is proclaimed by people in the world today which is not helpful for the church of God. Suffering is the lot even of the righteous. Regeneration may give you a new nature, but it does not give you a new environment. In one sense, it takes you out of the world, because you now belong to the kingdom of God, but you are still in the world and subject to external pressures and internal struggles as you war not against flesh and blood. The book of Romans chapter 8 speaks clearly to this. It says, "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." The children of God will wait forever until the coming of the Lord. They will wait until the day that He returns for the redemption of their bodies. But until then, there is groaning. There is suffering. The righteous do suffer. It's clear from the text. Here is God's servant who is suffering. The righteous do suffer when you consider Job. We see that he was the most righteous man in all the world at that time, and he suffered a great deal. We see that the righteous suffer when David himself says, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all." Darkness and being in a place of suffering where all seems darkness and that you have no light is part and parcel of the struggle of this journey as pilgrims in this world. But what should the children of light do in the darkness? What is it that God expects us to do when, as it were, the lights go out? There's a vital, yet practical question that I'm asking at this point, which has two main considerations in our text that I want us to consider together this morning. What should the children of God do in the darkness? Well, the first of the things is revealed in this passage. What should those that fear the Lord and obey the voice of His servant who walks in darkness and have no light? What should they do? They should trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. And the next thing is what they shouldn't do. You should not kindle your own fire when you walk in the darkness. We'll have a look at these things each and and work through them together and see how we can learn how we should respond in the seasons of darkness. But the first of these is that we should rely on the Lord our God. We should rely on the Lord and we should resist the temptation to spark our own fires in darkness. And in verse number 10, He says, "Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God." You see the fact that there are two words here, trusting and relying. You say, "Well, aren't they the same thing?" Well, in one sense they are the same thing. But in another sense, they are not. And what I mean by that is you've heard, you've you've listened to the, you probably memorized this scripture in Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." So you have lean, which is rely, you have trust, which is taking confidence in. Trust refers to, if I could say that inward confidence and assurance that you believe concerning God, what His word is, what it's what His word says, who He is. Even if it says here, it says, "trust in the name of the Lord." What is the name of the Lord? The name of the Lord is everything that the Lord is. His name is wonderful counselor, mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace. His name is Yahweh, the eternal, self-existing God who is outside of His creation, not dependent upon His creation. His name is the Lord, the sovereign one, the ruler of heaven and earth. Let him who walks in darkness have confidence in, that is have a sense of conviction that the God that they fear and the servant whom they believe in is God Almighty. Have confidence in Him. But rely takes that a little bit further. It it it kind of looks at the active part of trusting, the part in which you actually take a step. That's where the idea of rely comes from, right? You get a staff, you can't walk, you're crippled, or you've got a walker. You rely on it. And what that looks like is not just saying, "I believe that walker can help me." It means leaning on the walker. Right? So you lean not on your own understanding means that you don't you don't rely upon your own understanding. You don't press into your own understanding. You don't actually obey and yield yourself to your own understanding. Instead, to rely on the Lord looks differently to the relying on your own understanding. It looks like pressing into God. It looks like leaning upon God. It looks like the fact that you believe not only that God is your staff, but that you actually lean your weight upon Him. And so in Isaiah, as we have these two, the combination of these two words, we see that there is a value to having both these words here present in the text. And that is that that that is this, that is true faith is not is more, it is much more than a theoretical belief and a conviction that the that God is who He says He is. That is vital and important for the darkness, that you have a knowledge of who God is. I cannot stress the value of that. I've done that in the last couple of sermons. You need to understand your God in the darkness. You need to know how He thinks towards you, how He feels towards you, how He doesn't handle you according to your iniquities, how He loves you despite your failings, how He accepts you in Jesus Christ the beloved. You must believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You must know who your God is, most definitely. But you must also rely on Him. You see, it's it's it's first trusting in the name. That's the description of who God is. Right? But the relying is on God Himself. What that means is you rely on His person. Okay? That means you don't think God is that being found in your systematic theology book whom you can only find in your systematic theology book. Does that make sense? That He is near you is the point. That all that the systematic theology tells us about Him is a present reality, that He is one that you can lean upon. He is like a staff that you can rest your soul in. He is one that you may lay hold of. There's a big difference. Huge difference. To knowing things about God, even having convictions and believing things about God, and actually taking hold of God. And I believe this is the importance of distinguishing these words in this text. This is the difference between believing that you have a friend that can help you and actually picking up the phone or knocking on that friend's door and saying, "Hey, I need help." That's the difference. Is there a big difference? Yes. Huge difference. We do the same thing with God, don't we? This is the difference that marked the children of faith in the book of Hebrews. You see, faith is the substance or the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Okay, that's what faith is. That's a working definition of faith. Faith is much more than that, but this is a a practical working definition of faith. That there is a confidence, that there's an assurance. I know who God says He is. I believe in God. I trust in Him. But what how we see that faith worked out through every character that follows who were called men and women of faith in that passage, is that we see it from going from what they had in terms of assurance and in terms of conviction to translating in action. So you have Noah building an ark to the saving of his soul and his household, even though he was he was doing it according to things unseen. He had confidence in the word of God, but he leaned upon his God by building the ark. And so you have Abraham, whom God says, "This is the promise that I make for you." God says to Abraham, "Here you go, get up, and I'll tell you take you to a place and and you will basically, I'll I'll have a I'll I'll get out of your country, out of your kindred, and I'll show you a place where you'll go." And Abraham goes not knowing where he's going. You see that? He he knows because God's spoken. He holds fast to that. But his step forward is the relying on his God, as it were. He steps into it. He's not expecting God to reveal all the details of the situation before him before he takes his first step. He has confidence and he and he has assurance in the name of the Lord his God, and so he relies on his God. And then you can go through that passage and see that with every one of these people of faith, that they obeyed the word of the Lord because they believed in the name of the Lord. Now, this is important because when you're in the darkness, the temptation is to say that you know these things about God and you do. But the temptation is not to rely on the God that you know. And I believe a lot of the times that is the is because when we're in the darkness and we have no light, we feel like we have no faith. And I want to address that issue just briefly for a moment about feeling and faith. There is no doubt in my mind and even in the scriptures that you see feeling that accompanies faith. Okay? People have faith and there is feelings that accompany faith. Very often, that is the case. But do not be mistaken to think that if I don't feel faith, that I cannot have faith or do not have faith. There's a big difference. This is where a lot of people stumble in the darkness. They mistake faith for feeling. But faith runs much deeper than feeling. Faith is convictional, primarily, not emotional. Faith is that which overpowers and overcomes feeling. It is not feeling. So when Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 7, "We walk by faith and not by sight," he is making that distinction right there. Because if you want to feel to think that you have faith, then you're basically saying I want to walk by sight. I want my senses to be engaged before I engage God. I want to feel that I'm believing before I rest and lean upon my God. You see how dangerous that can be? Because in the darkness, the one thing you struggle to do is feel. And if you tie faith to feelings, you're in big trouble. As soon as you're not feeling God next to you, you say, "Well, I must not believe in God anymore." You see? And your whole world turns upside down. Because you've tied these things together. The darkness always impacts feelings. Feelings is categorically the same as sight. But we walk by faith and not by sight. Faith is convictional. And the danger of prioritizing feelings over your faith is that you end up prioritizing feelings over scripture. And you begin to make your inward comforts your guide and your lack of inward comforts, that is your internal conflicts, as your way to determine truth. Now let me just make this clear, that internal conflict is very often God's way of communicating to us that something's up. But it is not always and only God communicating to us that something's up. And this is the problem with coming to this faith and feelings lack mixing up the priorities here, because we get we get in this position where we say I don't feel peace. And we think because I don't feel peace, therefore there is something fundamentally wrong with me. Well, I'm going to say something like this. If you mean peace that you feel like you have no conflict, and if you mean by peace that you feel emotionally comfortable, then your definition of peace fails. Peace encompasses that. It may have that. But you can have peace that runs deeper than that. That is the peace that runs into the area of faith, which is the conviction side of things. When someone says or you say to yourself, "I don't feel peace," you need to interrogate yourself or even that other person and say, "Why don't you feel peace?" Because we need to ask ourselves according to scripture and according to sound reason why it is that I don't feel peace. Before I let that peace govern me, before I let that peace rule my heart, I want to know is it the peace of Christ? Is it the lack of peace of Christ or is it just Satan's fiery darts that's got me off off off of course? But when you make peace everything and you make feelings everything and you prioritize it over the scripture, you have no way to test this thing. And you are like the waves of the sea tossed to and fro. And you fail then to have confidence in the Lord, and then you fail to rely in your God, and you're sailing off in a direction that is deadly and dangerous. Listen, not many people experience peace when they have the dark night of the soul. There is a war against our peace in the dark night of the soul. And it means that we must run to God's word, runs to scripture, examine our hearts in the light of scripture and ask myself why I don't have this peace. If I don't have this peace because I'm not a believer, then I need to be born again. If I don't have this peace because there's some besetting sin in my life, then I need to repent of my sin and turn to God. Okay, if I don't have this peace though, because things aren't going the way that I want them to go, and I'm losing things and I feel sorrowful, then it is important that you do not let your peace direct and dictate your decisions. But you stay and rely on the word of God. When feelings lead us instead of supplement our faith, when they lead us instead of supplementing our faith, our doubts begin to multiply. And many lose assurance of salvation by prioritizing feelings over faith. They lose their assurance of salvation and their confidence that they have been saved by God's grace because they are they're they're interpreting their relationship to God according to their feelings, not according to God's truth and objective truth laid out in His word. And this becomes entirely dangerous for those that are going through difficult times of depression and seasons of darkness. The hymn writer says in, "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand," He says this, "I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus's name." You know what that means? The sweetest frame is talking about the frame of mind. The sweet consolations that I have with Christ, the the joyous moments that I have with Him. He says, "I don't even trust the sweetest frames. But I trust in something deeper. I wholly lean upon Jesus's name." On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. Yes, even the ground of your emotions when they are good and right and in harmony with faith, it is sinking sand if you rely on those things. If they come to us by reason of our faith in God and our reliance upon Him, then great. We enjoy them as they come and we rejoice in them and we hope for more of them. Oh, the the joy of having a heart filled of emotion toward praise towards God. There's nothing like it. But I thank God that my faith has found the resting place much stronger than that. Because I don't always have that. Martin Luther said it this way, "Feelings come and feelings go. Feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the word of God, not else worth believing." "And though all my heart should feel condemned for lack of some sweet token," of God's grace, of kindness, that feeling and sense of His presence. He says, "There is one greater than my heart whose word cannot be broken. I'll trust in God's unchanging word till soul and body sever, till I die. For though all things shall pass away, His word shall stand forever." How do we apply ourselves in the darkness? We not only trust in the name of the Lord our God, but we rely upon God Himself. And what that looks like practically is obeying the word of the Lord despite how you feel. That doesn't look like waking up in the morning and asking yourself, "Do I feel like going to church today?" And if I don't feel like going to church, I'm not going to go. You go because you know it's good to worship God, be around His people, hear the word of God preached, have other brothers and sisters speak truth into your life. It doesn't matter if you come in with a sad face. I'd rather be in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. I rejoice when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. This is the place where God meets with the church as a community together and and His presence is among us and working in our midst. This is the place where we hear the sweet word of Jesus speaking comfort to the weary soul. This is the place where we need to be. "I don't want to read my Bible anymore because I'm not getting anything out of it." I think you should read it more because you're not getting anything out of it. "I'm not going to take the Lord's supper because I don't feel like," I don't know, don't feel safe today. Trust in the name of the Lord your God and rely on your God. And what that looks like sometimes is taking that bread and taking that cup and saying, "Jesus, I don't feel You, but I know You're near. And I have confidence and trust in Your name. I'm going to eat, I'm going to drink in remembrance of You. Even though my mind wonders, even though it strays, even though I'm my sin is a is against me, I'm going to eat and drink in remembrance of You." You see what happens when you're in the darkness, the first thing you flee from is all the things where other people are. 'Cause you want to be alone. At good, get alone with God. That's a good thing to do. But don't, don't ostracize yourself from the place where the word of God is proclaimed and where you are lifted up and encouraged and reminded about the name of the Lord this God and stirred to rely upon Him. It is important for us to apply ourselves to the means of God's grace and to continue on praying and trusting and relying upon God, even though we don't feel it. This is what they call in aviation, flying by the instruments. John Bloom, who is, was the co-founder of Desiring God with John Piper, he talks about, in an article, he writes about his own dark night of the soul. And he draws out this illustration which I want to bring to you this morning to help you think about this about flying by the instruments. This is what he said. He was going through a very dark period in his life, and he he he says, "I determined to do something aircraft pilots must learn to do, to fly by the instruments. When a pilot flies into a dark cloud and loses his points of reference, it becomes a dangerous thing for him to trust in his physical perceptions. He might feel like he's flying straight when he is actually descending toward the ground. So he must learn to trust what the plane's instruments are telling him, not what his thoughts and feelings are telling him. His life depends on it." And this is what he says about his own experience. He says, "So I began to fly according to the instruments of God's word and not my perceptions of the world. I kept my habit of personal devotions, despite how Teflon-coated my soul seemed. I kept in church fellowship and involved, got involved in our city in a inner-city ministry. I kept my hand to the vocational plow God had given me and sought to keep providing for my wife and child." That's how you respond in the darkness. Him who fears the Lord, he who obeys the voice of his servant that walks in the darkness and has no light, what should he do? He should trust in the name of the Lord his God and rely on his God. He should not give up stepping out by faith, whether he feels it or not. He should keep coming to the fountain to drink. He should keep eating of the bread of heaven. He should keep sitting under the word of God and he should not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name and fly according to the instruments of God's word. Look, that might look as serious and simple as something like this, "Brother, I'm so in darkness, I don't even know what to do. I'm so confused. Can you tell me what to do from the word of God?" Yeah, if you don't know, ask a brother to give you counsel. And say, "Look, I see it there, I believe it to be true, I'm going to do it." That's important. That's very, very important. And the second thing which he is not meant to do is he is not meant to start his own fire. He needs to resist the temptation to create and walk in the light of his own fire. That's what it says in verse number 11, "Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches, walk by the light of your own fire and by the torches that you have kindled. This you have from My hand, you shall lie down in torment." You see the alternative to trusting in the name of the Lord and relying upon your God is beginning to think that I know how to get myself out of this darkness and not trusting in the name of the Lord and not relying on your God. What that looks like and what that simply is is is you coming to the place where you fear the darkness so much and you are not leaning and trusting in God that you start to manufacture your own light. You seek self-comfort, you seek worldly substitutes, you seek self-constructed pathways. You basically say, "Let's mix this up." I mean, obviously, I was with God, and then I came into the darkness, so maybe God got something wrong here, so I need to do something else to fix up God's mishap. And so you begin to start your own fire. And your own fire, ultimately and finally, is whatever you depend on for your security, for your safety, and for your salvation in the darkness. That's what your own fire is. And what I mean is that might also be good things. You understand that? Your own fire might be your spouse. Your own fire might be the doctor's report, medication. Your own fire might be a friend that you latch on to and think that that friend's going to save me. Your own fire is whatever it is that you depend on, whether it is good or not good, it becomes bad when you rely upon it as your God. When it becomes your staff. Now, I'm not saying that you can't have these things. As I mentioned, you need fellowship and friendship. You may need medication in your situation as you rely upon God, as the wisdom of God is is expanded to you. But where does your help come from? That's the ultimate question this morning. Where does your help come from? However you answer that question is what it is that you depend upon. And if you answer that question not saying, "My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth," then what you have is an idol. And what you have is a substitute for God. And what God says is, "This you will have from My hand, you will lie down in torment." You know what that means? If you seek a light outside of God and trust in that light to get you out of the darkness, you know what you're going to end up? That light's going to go out and prove itself to be a superficial light that cannot save. And what will end up happening is you'll be tormented in the darkness more and more as you're scrambling for matches to start fires all the time and they go out, instead of just, "Don't worry, let the darkness settle in and know that God is with you. Let the darkness settle in and know that I have the name of the Lord my God. Let the darkness settle in and rely on the Lord your God. Let the darkness settle in and hold on to the light of His word until the light dawns." But don't ever start a fire. Because that's like the children of Israel running in the wilderness for another 40 years because they were scared of the darkness and did not have faith in God. "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God." There are two kinds of people in this passage, those who walk in darkness through reliance and trust in God, and those as one commentator said who seek to conquer the darkness by the fires of their own making. This passage calls us this morning to arise and to hear the voice of God's servant. To follow the way of the servant despite the darkness. This passage of scripture calls us to come to the one who has been given the tongue of those who are taught who knows how to sustain with a word him who is weary. This passage reminds us that the way of Jesus is the truth, it is the life, it is what can satisfy my hungry soul. This passage reminds us that we must come to Him and continue to come to Him who gives us rest. This passage not only reminds us of that, it gives us an example that we can learn from of the one who is the servant who walked in the darkness but trusted in the Lord his God. "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will." There you have it. The darkness, he's weary, his soul is troubled. He cries. Here is the expression of true anguish and emotion, "Let this cup pass from me." The thought of bearing the sins of of God's people upon himself and suffering and being alienated from the Father upon the cross and suffering in their place is too overwhelming for him to bear in the garden as he comes under the burden of that. And as it were, he sweats great drops of blood under the pressure of that. But his confidence is in the name of the Lord his God, and he relies on his God. So he says, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. Be it unto You, oh God, according to Your word." And Jesus, the Lord, the savior, as this passage testifies, sets His face like a flint, that is like a rock. He's determined to do the will of God, to finish his course despite the darkness, to finish the work that his Father gave him to do despite the dark night of his soul that was coming upon him. He was not rebellious, as the scripture tells us. He did not turn backward, but he pressed in in obedience, giving his back to the smiters and his cheeks to those who pulled the beard, and he did not hide his face from shame and disgrace. Jesus in the dark did not kindle his own fire. Take it from him. Learn from his example. He who can speak a word of comfort to you in the darkness, he did not light his own fire. He said, "If it were I could right now call 12 legions of angels to come and to deliver me and to destroy his enemies," but he would not light his own fire. They mocked Him. They said that he is the son of God, but he can't even save himself. But he resisted the temptation to save himself and to destroy his enemies because he knew the will and word of God. This Jesus, our Jesus, the savior and Lord, flew by the instruments in the midst of the dark night because he knew the name of the Lord his God and relied upon Him. Let's follow Him, the servant who calls us to come. Let us pray.