Mark 14:32-42 The Cup (Goodwin Easter)
Notes
Transcript
Death and Distress
Death and Distress
We are approaching Easter and on Friday it is Good Friday. It is sort of a strange title, for it is one where we remember the death of Jesus and we call it a Good day. Death and good don’t normally go together. And I know, death is not a topic we like to talk about. But we will all face it one day, and in our passage we see how Jesus faced it.
This story of Jesus in the garden was one of embarrassment to the first century Romans. They liked the stoics, the one who resigned themselves to the fact that life is hard but we have a duty and are to just get on with it. There were a bit British their motto could have been, life is hard, but keep calm and carry on.
Socrates, when he was sentences to death for leading the youth astray, gave a great speech about death and dying. He said that when you see a man troubled because he is going to die, then he was not a lover of wisdom but of their body. He said we shouldn’t fear death, for we do not know what will happen. Dying could be a blessing, we don’t know, so why fear the unknown? And so he faced his own death sentence extolling the virtues of wisdom and drank, without flinching, his poison cup of hemlock to the end.
That is not Jesus in our passage today. We see He is not a stoic when facing His death. We see Jesus is deeply distressed and troubled. We see that He is overwhelmed with sorrow.
Jesus, in the hour before His hour of trial, stumbles. He falls to the ground. This is an embarrassment to some, who would like to Jesus as superman, someone who harm and emotions can’t touch him, rather than like a real human.
Overwhelmed
Overwhelmed
After Jesus had shared a meal with His disciples, they head just outside of the town to a garden, to a place called Gethsemane. This means “oil press”. It is where they would crush the olives to get their oil. And in this garden Jesus would feel His own pressure, where He would wait for what He knows what was going to happen. In the garden Jesus’ emotions are too much to contain. He is overwhelmed, the reality of what is going to happen to Him has caught up. It is the moment before everything is going to pivot for the worst. It is going to be a Bad Friday.
He goes on ahead, by Himself, alone and prays to His Father, who He has prayed to many times before. His Father has said from the heavens “This is my Son who I am well pleased”. And so Jesus goes to spend time with His Dad and to make one request.
And it is in this request where we can see why Jesus is upset. It is here we can see why this fear, this dread, why He has fallen to the ground, and why He is anxious to the point of death. He says, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.”
The Cup
The Cup
God is almighty, He can do all things. He can rescue a nation from slavery, He can part the Red Sea, He can give life to a couple who can not concieve. So Jesus asks, if you can do all things, can you do this one thing? He asks if it is possible for this cup to be removed from Him.
This cup is what Jesus is worried about. That is what is on His mind. So what is this cup? Why is this causing so much dread for Jesus? There are many many Old Testament verses about this cup. It is in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Job, Ezekiel and Habakkuk.
This cup that occurs the Old Testament is taking about God’s wrath and judgement. This cup is the metaphor used when God is pronouncing destruction on a city or a nation. And Jesus, in this olive press, is faced with taking this cup of God’s wrath on behalf of the nations.
The known wrath of God
The known wrath of God
Jesus is not like Socrates. Jesus isn’t fearing the unknowns of death, He isn’t fearing the pain of death. Jesus is fearing the known. He is fearing the wrath of God that He is about to experience. He knows this would happen, but now, the time for it is almost here and the reality of what He faces has overwhelmed him. He knows what it means and what it will be like and He staggered.
Nations before Jesus have faced the judgement and wrath of God and it was not good. All those who die apart of Jesus will face it, and it is not good. Jesus knows He is going to face God’s wrath and He knows it is not going to be good.
Jesus said Luke 12:5
But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Jesus was faced with Hell and in this hour before His hour, He staggered. He knew the extent of what He was facing, and it was almost too much.
Was it Possible?
Was it Possible?
And noticed what He asked, He knows all things are possible for God, would it be possible for Him not to drink this cup? And you know what He heard back from His Father? Is it possible to remove this cup? This is what He heard: ____
Nothing. There was no answer.
No voice from heaven, no comforting words. He got the silence of God. He was truly alone.
For God so loved the world that He was silent.
There would be no going back. It wasn’t possible for Jesus to avoid this cup. There is no other way to save sinners.
The bad news on this Good Friday is that we are all guilty of sin, and so we all are going to face our maker because of it. Hebrews tells
Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,
But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will repay each person according to what they have done.”
We have all sinned and ignore God or harmed and upset others. It is in our nature, and this causes God’s just anger. Think of those you love and if someone caused them unjust harm, how would you feel? Anger might be an appropriate response. God feels that towards those who do not live how they ought, and we all live in ways we shouldn’t. And so we are all going to face the judgement of God.
The only way that we can avoid drinking this cup of wrath is for someone else to drink it for us - and so Jesus did. It was the only way. It was necessary for Jesus to do this. For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son for this purpose. Which is why the Father was silent in this garden.
Way back in the first garden of the Bible, the first Adam failed. He broke God’s rule and ate, he sinned and brought death into our world and we are all facing the effects of sin today, and God is justly upset in how this world is broken, in how we treat each other and Him.
This is the story we find ourselves in, but the story continues.
Now in today’s garden, our second Adam is faced with death and God’s just anger at all the sin in our world. And in all of this, we see that Jesus obeys God and drinks all of this for others.
Jesus would be betrayed, charged and executed by the Romans, but we are not saved because of that. We are saved because God’s wrath for sinners, like you and me, was drunk by Jesus so we don’t have to.
This is why Jesus can’t avoid this. It was the only way. So He yielded His life to the Fathers plan. He was willing to align His will to the Fathers. He felt this tension within Himself and says as much to His buddies when He finds them asleep. He tells them to
Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
This is what Jesus is doing. While He was troubled with what He was facing, He prayed. Jesus was modeling to His friends, the praying life, and the wrestle He faced between His willingness and His weakness.
Three times Jesus goes and prays for this cup to be taken away, and three times gets no answer. And in the end of this temptation, He went to the cross to save us. He was willing to do it, even if it caused Him to stumble.
The other Cup
The other Cup
And this is good news for us. This is why it is called Good Friday for us today.
Jesus drank our cup of God’s wrath for us so that we didn’t have to. He did that so that we could drink another cup.
On the night before Jesus died, He celebrated the Jewish Passover meal with His disciples. In this meal, there were usually four cups of wine. Each one has to do with the memory of how God had rescued His people out of slavery under the Egyptians. But on this Passover meal, we see that Jesus changes the focus of one cup to be about Himself. Normally the third cup is the cup the redemption, and Jesus says that this cup is about Him. That it is about His blood which was poured out for many, and that we should drink this and remember Him.
This drink is the cup of thanksgiving, it is one half of what we know as the Lords Supper or as Communion or as the Eucharist. “Eucharist” means thankful. That is our approach now to God and we are going to celebrate it soon. Because it reminds us that Jesus drank the cup of wrath so that we can drink the cup of thanksgiving. Jesus spilled His blood not for Himself, not to die as a martyr but to die as the Messiah. He died to save others, He died for the many. As a substitute for us. We are saved because of His actions.
Without Christ, we are all going to drink that cup of wrath and face judgement for our wrongness. But with Christ, because He drunk that cup for us, we can drink the cup of thanksgiving. So today, we can choose, which cup will we drink. We can face God on our own, or we can have gratitude now for what Christ has done for us. We can remember and celebrate that now the wrath of God has been swallowed up for us, and we can now have life and be reconciled to God.
One preacher said:
It is like you are standing in front of a damn that is 10,000 kilometers high and 10,000 kilometers wide filled to the brim with water, and in one instant that damn breaks and all of that water comes rushing at you. In the same way, the torrent of God’s wrath came rushing towards you, but imagine that as that water comes towards you, the ground in front of you, right before that water touches you, opens up and swallows every single drop. In the same way Christ went to the cross, He took the full cup of God’s wrath and drank down every last drop, turned it over and cried out, it is finished. (https://radical.net/podcasts/secret-church/6-6-the-garden-of-gethsemane/)
That is what happened on the cross, so that we can drink the cup of thanksgiving, and we celebrate this day as a good day.
