Communion Service - Livestream (15/08/2021)

What was in the Cup? (Matthew 26:39)

-Transcript-

Good morning church. My name’s Dan, I’m from the East Campus, and I have the honour of leading us in communion this morning.

So I encourage you to find something around your house to drink and something to eat, so we can be reminded of what our Saviour has done for us.

For the past year I have been drawn again and again to the Garden of Gethsemene, and the mental torment our Lord went through. Matthew recounts in chapter 26 of his gospel three times Jesus asks his Father “let this cup pass from me, let this cup pass from me, let this cup pass from me”.

And I always had the question: what is in this cup?

And as I studied a little I read some commentators who said “Jesus, in his omniscience, looked forward to the floggings, the false witnesses, the cat of nine tails, and the betrayals, and the cross, and seeing this he sweated as great drops of blood.

Now, the physical pain was essential to the cross, but if this is where we stop the story we are not yet at the heart of the Gospel.

The physical sufferings our Lord experienced are a window through which we see the far greater pain as he bore our sins.

What was in the cup?

For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. - Psalm 75:6

Thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and go mad because of the sword that I am sending among them.” - Jeremiah 25:15-16

This is the cup! The anger of our all-pure and entirely holy God towards sin was in this cup.

We can think of how we feel when we hear of some horrible abuse towards an innocent party. Our love means we need to get angry at wrongdoing. That’s a good anger. But the anger that we as sinners feel is but a drop in the ocean of the anger that our God who dwells in unapproachable light has against sin.

But in his grace, rather than us drinking this cup, His own Son came down from perfect intimacy with his Father, took on the very flesh that he created, lived a perfect life, and, as Isaiah prophesies in Isaiah 53, at the cross “the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

We can’t begin to imagine what it meant for God to funnel the judgement all his people’s cumulative sin deserved down onto one man, His only Son, but we can pray and meditate on what this means. That because Jesus took that punishment on himself, he drunk the cup of God’s anger, all of us who are saved are now considered holy and blameless in the Father’s sight. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” So now our beautiful Shepherd Jesus can take us by the hand, and gently lead us to our Father, to be knit together with him forever.

This is the Gospel. We don’t upgrade from this to signs and wonders, or to this to new church growth strategies… or anything else, this is where we live our whole life… at the foot of this cross. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day, and what better way to do that this morning than by taking communion together.

So as we eat and drink these elements in remembrance of what our Shepherd has done, let me pray for us.

Father, as we drink and eat, may we be reminded of what you have accomplished for us at the cross. That Jesus bore our sins, took the punishment we so rightly deserved, so that when you look upon us, your children, you see the holiness of your Son Jesus. As that hymn goes, “because the sinless saviour died, my sinful soul is now set free, for God the Just is satisfied, to look on him and pardon me”.

So Father, may the love of Jesus draw us to him, may the joy of Jesus draw our hearts, and may the peace of Jesus guard our minds. And may the grace, mercy, and peace from you our Father, rest upon each of us, now and forevermore, amen.