A Garden and A Cup

Introduction

Things change…

Me...

Bremerton...

Kids...

Building where I pastored…

Things change. In the change there is goodness and there can be difficulty.

If I cherish the good when my kids are little, but think that’s all there is… I miss out on joy of them exploring life and experiencing the goodness of God in this world.

Some things work out as I had hoped and intended, and then there are things that happen that are out of my control that create pain and difficulty.

If I think only of the once was, then I miss out on what God is doing on the here and now. (I’m disillusioned to the difficulty that was also accompanied the past).

Our text speaks to this today. There is imagery of good and beautiful things, but there are also hard and difficult things that are taking place.

There are many times a garden is mentioned in the Bible. The motif of the cup is also found throughout scripture. Here these two images collide in John’s gospel during Jesus’s arrest. Do both the garden and the cup speak of intimacy with God? John the disciple of Jesus is helping us understand what following Jesus requires of us and the hope that we have in and through Christ.

If you have your Bibles, or on your devices, would you turn to John 18. If you are able would you stand with me as I read our text this morning.

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray

You may be seated.

The Garden

The garden is throughout scripture.

The first time we see a garden is in Genesis 2.

Gen 2:8-9 “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed. The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

It is imagery in the Bible that speaks of God’s favor and kindness.

Isa 58:11 “The Lord will always lead you, satisfy you in a parched land, and strengthen your bones. You will be like a watered garden and like a spring whose water never runs dry.”

Our text tells us that this is a place that Jesus would often go. After sharing his final discourse with His disciples, praying the prayer He prayed in John 17, he heads to the garden of gethsemane.

A place of rest

A place of refuge

Sometimes this happens in life. You come off of a great time of rest or enjoyment to enter into a difficult season.

This night in John 18, it is a place of trial and temptation. Trial that he would be taken and temptation that this would be the beginning of his suffering.

This is the choice that we have when we enter into trial.

This is the choice that Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden. Will I do what I want to do or will I allow God’s word to direct and order my choices?

In Matthew’s gospel he chronicles how Jesus prayed three times, “Let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but yours be done.”

Adam and Eve decided they wanted to do what was right in their eyes… they wanted to be like God defining what was right, good, and beautiful. They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we start to decide we know better than God (in how to treat people, in retaliation, going against God’s ethic), we are doing the same thing Adam and Eve did.

They were ushered out of the Garden (Gen 3) that they might not eat of the Tree of Life and forever be in that state of separation from God. From that moment on of ushering them out of the Garden, God has been seeking to bring them back into the garden… back to the tree of life.

Illus: Ushered out of the East of the Garden/ Temple

It is in the Garden of Gethsemane that Jesus begins to finalize the opportunity for us to be back in relationship with God

Everyone is looking for Jesus

They come looking for Jesus.

There are those who are already with Jesus. Learning, following, seeking to understand Him and His ways.

Some are seeking Him for their own motives… to help them bring about what they want (disciples)

Some seek Him out as a way or means to do harm, to secure their own power. (religious leaders)

Some are seeking Him because they think they can bring about the things of God through their own efforts. (Judas)

I think this is the trouble that the modern American church has to contend with. How much of what we do is motivated and empowered by the Holy Spirit? How much is run by our programs, energy, money, and propped up efforts?

Have you taken inventory of your life and your efforts? How much of what you are doing is initiated and sustained by God. The strength, endurance, and peace that God supplies are great indicators of evaluating what we are doing is from Him or not. Are you burned out, are you exhausted, are you stressed, are you exhibiting more works of the flesh than you are the fruit of the Spirit… it might be time to reevaluate what you are doing. Galatians 5 is a great barometer as to where your source of strength and motivation lie… works of the flesh or fruit of the Spirit.

It’s these stressful moments that reveal what is taking place in our soul. When we are crushed, what comes out? What is the aroma that is omitted? May our prayer be for the aroma of Christ. That who even in the midst of being arrested and captured, facing imminent death, still men trembled at His feet by the very words He spoke.

The soldiers come to capture Jesus… they ask for him and He says “I am He”. How John records this is the way that Jesus says this is the way that we find Him saying it the same way that God tells Moses in Exodus 3:14, I AM Who I AM.

Jesus says this and they all fall back.

“Something of this is the only reasonable explanation why, in this version, the arresting party stumble backwards and fall to the ground. Their reaction, whether voluntary or involuntary, mirrors what people in the Bible do when coming face to face with God.”

Wright, T. (2004). John for Everyone, Part 2: Chapters 11-21 (p. 103). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

The Cup the Father has given me

In the midst of this traumatic event, where all that the disciples held dear was being threatened...(that is Jesus, the Kingdom of God, their ministry, their future, the thing that they have decided to give their lives too), Peter swings out with his sword and cuts off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the High Priest.

Again, how many times do we swing out on our own efforts, reacting to the moment, but not aligned to God and His desire. Notice Jesus tells Peter to put the sword away. He’s not understanding what God is doing.

How many of us whip out the sword cutting people in the name of holiness when in fact God has brought people to us to love and to sit with. It’s the Spirit’s job to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement (John 16:8)

Jesus speaks to Peter about the “cup” that is His to drink. In scripture, a cup is sometimes just that… a physical cup. It is also a figure of speech to represent one’s portion of or participation in something. (consolation, demons, divination, drunkeness, immorality, inheritance, judgment, the Lord, prosperity or blessing, salvation, suffering, and thanksgiving).

The cup that Jesus drinks is the cup of suffering taking upon the wrath of our sin upon Himself.

This is the cup we do not have to drink. This is the cup that we do not have to drink, because Jesus took it.

This is what Jesus, being fully man and fully God, had to drink that we might have relationship with Him.

The idea of drinking the cup is to symbolize that we are taking it, receiving it, walking in it, participating and accepting God’s will and desire for us.

Church, God is good. God is so good. I want us to know that. I want you to believe that.

You may not believe that. It may be difficult for you to believe that.

If you are having a hard time believing that… I hope you will ask God to show you His goodness.

Scott Erickson, in his book “Just Say Yes”, asks his readers to do an exercise… he calls it the death practice...

"The only thing standing in the way of resurrection eyes is the life you think you should’ve had. The point of our regrets is to help us see that existence has always been a gift to receive. We must let the false idealized existence rooted in comparison die (when we’ve idealized life and experience disillusionment or the death of dream/expectation) … you must let go of everything you’ve been given in this life.

So he encourages the reader to lay down in a room, dark, still, and quiet… just as if you are buried 6’ under. While in that space… “take everything in your life, find that spark of joy, give thanks for it, and let it go. From the biggest events to the smallest abilities, just run through everything you’ve been given. (I’ve adapted his list to me)

I’m grateful for the way my fingers work because they let me create music, pick up pizza, pet my dog, hold my daughter’s hand—and they’ve been great companions along the way.

I’m grateful for how I notice light in the world.

I’m grateful for the way carne asada tastes in my mouth.

I’m grateful for hearing my daughter sing a song in the afternoon that I introduced her to on the drive to school in the morning.

I’m grateful for that experience with the elephant in the Bush. And that midnight walk in Italy. And that broken heart in my twenties. That time I was overwhelmed to point of tears because I felt crushed from of all the pressure I was feeling on my life and how it revealed beautiful things about my character.

From the biggest to the smallest, the most publicly known details to the deepest personal secrets, as you work through all you’ve been given and let it go, the secret hidden path of desire that has been put in you to walk, the one you’ve lost sight of, will slowly rise to the surface. As you keep letting go and letting go and letting go, this path will come to the forefront. You’ll see it. There it is. And you’ll realize, That’s what we lose sight of.

The idea being is that when something dies, something is reborn. In Jesus there is the resurrection from the dead.

We see this all around us… when one day ends it allows for the next day to begin.

God has a plan for us. A cup He asks us to participate in. To partake with Him. In the ANE, to eat with someone, to drink with someone is to become one with someone. This is part of the practice we have with communion in the cup and bread, that as we drink, we are uniting with Christ in His life, death, and resurrection.

This was a cup that He recieved from the Lord.

Conclusion

Our passage starts in a garden.

We see that sin entered into the world in a garden

Adam and Eve were ushered out of the garden as to not partake of the tree of life

Jesus is in the garden

Initiating what will be the beginning of the culminating event that brings us back into relationship with Him.

That he would be crucified upon a tree. That this tree would be the tree that gives life to all those that believe on him.

That we see when all is said and done, in the new heavens and earth… John records in Revelation 22:1-5 “Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the city’s main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations, and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Night will be no more; people will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

Come Lord Jesus.

Church, may we remember that no matter how difficult it becomes, God is good, God is at work, He has done the difficult and impossible task, we are His, and the cup before us is that which God desires us to drink (not of the cup of suffering for our sins) knowing that He is working it to our good and for the working of good in so many others. In our hardship, in the crushing, in the difficulty, no tear is shed in vain… but that He is working all things for good… that when we are able to see what it is that we are going through, with His eyes, His understanding, His intention and the beautiful results from our faithful obedience… I am convinced that we will say, like Jesus, “not my will, but yours be done.”

Let’s stand.