In preparation for this, I started listening to lots of other sermons from the same passage, so below there are lines and ideas that I have taken from others, some of which I have forgotten and haven't cited. Just assume if it was a good line, I probably took it from someone else.
Death and Distress
Good morning, thank you for coming and celebrating Good Friday with us. It is sort of a strange title for a day like today. Today is the day 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.Louis XV, King of France, ordered that death was never to be spoken of in his presence. We don’t like to think about death, usually because of fear. We normally fear death because of its uncertainty and its significance.
Francis Bacon wrote, “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark” (The Essays, 343).
The fear of death sometimes controls what we do. We put on seat belts in the car, wear helmets on bikes, and look both ways before crossing the road. We take out life insurance, and put smoke detectors in our houses. We want to avoid death; it can be a healthy fear that makes us do all those things.
This story of Jesus in the garden was one of embarrassment to the first-century Romans, as they had less of a fear of death. They liked the stoics, the ones 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.
That is not Jesus in our passage today. We see He is not a stoic when facing His death. We see that 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. Some would like Jesus to be Superman or a Marvel Superhero, where pain and emotions have no effect on Him. Instead, we see Jesus act rather like a real human. This embarrassment factor sort of makes this bit a little more historically reliable, as who would add this bit in about our great saviour and hero?
Overwhelmed
After Jesus had shared a meal with His disciples, they headed just outside of the town to a garden, to a place called Gethsemane. This means “oil press”. This is what an ancient oil press looks like. It is where they would crush the olives to get their oil. And it is in this garden that Jesus would feel His own pressure, where He would wait for what He knows is going to happen next. He takes three of His closest friends, Peter, James and John, who have all said they were willing to suffer for Jesus. Who we all know will fail Him before this night is over.And 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. For Jesus, 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 and dread, why He has fallen to the ground, and why He is anxious to the point of death.
he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36 NIV)
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 conceive. 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 that Jesus is dreading? What is so bad about this cup? There are many, many Old Testament verses about this cup; we read one before this talk from Isaiah
Awake, awake! Rise up, Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, you who have drained to its dregs the goblet that makes people stagger. (Isaiah 51:17 NIV)and it was mentioned again in verse 22. But also in Jeremiah, we read
This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them.” (Jeremiah 25:15–16 NIV)And in Job
Let their own eyes see their destruction; let them drink the cup of the wrath of the Almighty. (Job 21:20 NIV)Also, this cup is also mentioned in Ezekiel (23:31-34) and Habakkuk (2:16) and Psalms (75:8) but you get the point.
This cup that occurs in the Old Testament is talking about God’s wrath and judgment. 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
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 judgment 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 a good day.
Jesus said in Luke
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. (Luke 12:5 NIV)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?
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. (C.J. Mahaney used this line somewhere.)
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, (Hebrews 9:27 NIV)Romans says
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.” (Romans 2:5–6 NIV)We have all sinned and ignored God, and 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.
We look around this world, and we see the powerful take advantage of the weak. We see injustices, and corruption and we want those responsible to be held to account. In this world, we all want justice, and so does God.
God feels anger 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 judgment of God for what we have done, and it will be just.
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, to drink God’s wrath for us. This 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. God is justly upset in how this world is broken and 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 anger at all the sin in our world. And Jesus willingly obeys God’s will and drinks this cup for others.
Jesus would be betrayed, charged and executed on a cross 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 Father's plan. He was willing to align His will to the Father's. 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.” (Mark 14:38 NIV)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. It is here and on the cross where we see God’s anger and God’s love meet. Jesus’ love for us was that He was willing to go to the cross to die for us, to take God’s anger for us. He knew the cost and still did it for us.
The Other Cup
And this is good news for us. This is why we call it "Good Friday" today. It reminds me of an old BC comic. Now, ignore the timeline problems of a comic called BC talking about Good Friday, but it has two people speaking.
The first guys says “I hate the term Good Friday”
The second ask: “Why?”
And he says “My Lord was hanged on a tree that day”
The other guys says: “If you were going to be hanged on that day and he volunteered to take your place, how would you feel?”
He says “Good”.
“Have a nice day”
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. Did you notice that there was another cup in our passage at the start of our reading?
On the night before Jesus died, He celebrated the traditional 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 of the cups to be about Himself. Normally, in this meal, the third cup was called the cup the redemption, and Jesus says that this cup is about Him. We read
Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. (Mark 14:23–24 NIV)Jesus says that this cup is about His blood, which was poured out for many, and that we should drink this and remember Him.
Later, this cup is called the cup of thanksgiving (1 Cor 10:16). It is one half of what we know as the Lord's Supper or as Communion or as the Eucharist. “Eucharist” means thanksgiving. That is our approach now to God, and soon we are going to celebrate it. We are thankful 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 (I took this line from a sermon I listened to in the car and can't remember who said it). 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 judgment for our wrongness. But with Christ, because He drank that cup for us, we can drink the cup of thanksgiving. So today, we can choose which cup we will drink from? 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 now we can be free. We don’t have to fear the unknowns of death. We can know, if we trust in the work of Christ, that our judgment before God has been drunk for us. We can now live a thankful life, knowing that we are reconciled to God, now and after death.
One preacher said:
That is what happened on the cross on that first Friday, so that we can drink the cup of thanksgiving, and celebrate this day as a good day.
0 comments:
Post a Comment