The Cup He Drank

In this part of the sermon: Pastor Martin introduces a series on the three cups of the Savior: the cup He drank, the cup He refused, and the cup He will yet drink. Tonight's sermon focuses on the cup Christ…

Martin quotes Frederick Leahy's book, which categorizes Christ's cups (drank, refused, will drink), providing the structural framework for the sermon series and this specific message.

Arise, let us be going. Behold, he is at hand that betrays me. In a recently published little book, entitled, The Cross He Bore, very choice, helpful meditations on the sufferings of our Lord Jesus, the author, Frederick Leahy, a ministerial colleague of our dear friend and esteemed brother, Pastor Ted Donnelly of Northern Ireland, wrote on page 67 these very pregnant words, Our thoughts might well be of the cup Christ drank, the cup of the Holy Spirit, the cup he refused, and the cup from which he will drink with us in glory. That was the concluding statement of his meditations on the cup Chr...

3:01 - 4:30 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin contrasts the limited insight into Christ's inner struggle on the cross with the profound revelation of His agony in Gethsemane, calling it 'the shadow of Calvary.' He…

Martin uses the image of a wounded or drunk man who staggers and falls repeatedly to vividly describe Christ's intense agony and physical distress in Gethsemane, as depicted in Mark's Gospel.

Throughout the Gethsemane account, the language is nothing short of vigorous and vivid. And at times, if we take it at face value, it is shocking and pathetic in the true sense of that word, full of the deepest pathos. Reading the parallel accounts of Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22, we find such words as he was great in his faith, greatly amazed, and sore troubled, exceeding sorrowful, even to the point of death, that he fell upon his face, or in the more vivid graphic description of Mark, he uses a form of the verb that he was continually falling upon his face. The picture of a man wounded ...

7:14 - 8:42 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The cup to which our Lord makes reference here in the Gethsemane event is the cup that is nothing less than that vessel, that vessel filled with the unmixed fury of God against the sins of those whom Christ is willingly,…

Martin quotes 19th-century Scottish theologian Hugh Martin, who provides a condensed yet biblically accurate definition of the cup as 'the curse of God,' 'the sword of the Lord's wrath,' and 'the penal desertion of the cross,' detailing its horrific elements.

But doubtless the sorrow arose from the source that his prayer was concerned with. The vivid view and near approach of that cup, which the Father was just giving him to drink. That curse of God from which he came to redeem his elect people, that sword of the Lord's wrath and vengeance which he had just predicted, the penal desertion of the cross, the withdrawal of all comfortable views and influences, and the present consciousness of the anger of God against him as the substance, the substitute of his people, a person laden with iniquity, these were the elements mingled in the cup of trembling...

11:02 - 12:29 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It is that which is presented to him and it was that that he knew he must do with that cup. And then we ask the third question was it right for him to feel an aversion at this prospect...

Martin uses the simple act of drinking water from a glass to illustrate what it means for Christ to 'drink' the cup – to ingest it, internalize it, and make it part of Himself, thereby exhausting its contents.

Now the second question we ask is what was he to do with the cup? What was he to do with the cup? Well it's clear that once the cup is presented to him Jesus knows there is no alternative as to his action in reference to the cup but to drink it. When you drink something when I drink the water I see that objective reality the glass that holds the water the water within the glass and when I drink it I ingest it I internalize it the water becomes a part of me.

15:28 - 16:05 Read in full sermon

Driving home: I answer not only was it right it would have been the grossest form of impiety and hardness of heart to have looked into that cup with anything other than a holy aversion...

Martin again quotes Hugh Martin, who argues that Christ's desire for exemption from God's wrath was a dictate of His holy human nature, and not to have felt it would have been 'daring contempt of the divine anger,' underscoring the righteousness of Christ's aversion.

the power of your anger and knows it in such a way that he can render a fear and dread of that anger commensurate with its reality because of our sin we are dull to the culpability of our sin because of our blindness we do not see clearly what our sin deserves but here is pure spotless moral purity in the person of the son of God exposed in his holy human nature to bearing the unmixed fury of deity and he does know the power of the wrath of God he can gaze upon it with an eagle's eye undimmed by sin he can feel by way of anticipation its horrors for he has never had a soul calloused by rationa...

19:45 - 21:15 Read in full sermon

Driving home: he was given to know that the dreaded anticipation of Gethsemane did not exceed the anguish and the torment of actually drinking the cup for there upon the cross the cup is no longer presented before him but is placed to…

Martin quotes a hymn that beautifully summarizes the substitutionary nature of Christ's suffering, emphasizing that He drained the bitter cup of death and curse, leaving it empty for believers, now a 'blessings draft'.

until the last dark feated drop of that cup was drained and in the reckoning of God shivers on the blood-stained rocky soil there on Golgotha, and it has lain there shattered ever since. O Christ, what burdens bowed thy head, our load was laid on thee. Thou stoodest in the sinner's stead, didst bear all ill for me. Death and the curse were in our cup.

25:40 - 26:22 Read in full sermon

The point: Embrace the instruction that we too will learn obedience by the things we suffer, following in the train of our Savior.

Martin contrasts his own experiences of groaning, sweating, and crying with Christ's agony in Gethsemane, where His sweat was like drops of blood, highlighting the unparalleled depth of Christ's suffering and obedience.

I've groaned. I've sweat. I've cried and I've moaned. But I never took a hanky out and found it red with blood.

40:08 - 40:19 Read in full sermon

The point: Embrace the instruction that we too will learn obedience by the things we suffer, following in the train of our Savior.

Martin uses a rhetorical question from a hymn, 'Shall we be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease?' to challenge the audience's complacency and lack of commitment to suffering for obedience, contrasting it with Christ's example.

What a soft, shall we be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease? What little saintlings we are. Why? Born in ease, raised, immediate gratification.

40:21 - 40:39 Read in full sermon