The Cup He Drank

Introduction to the Three Cups and the Cup Christ Drank

0:02 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday evening, February 2nd, 1997, at the Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey.

0:16 Now may I encourage you to turn with me to the 26th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew and follow as I read a portion of the account of those final hours in the life of our Lord Jesus that we read at our communion service last month as we work our way through the passion narratives of the four Gospel writers in Matthew chapter 26, beginning with verse 36, the incident that we commonly call our Lord's Prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

0:59 Matthew chapter 26, and I begin the reading at verse 36. Verse 36.

1:37 Abide here and watch with me. He went forward a little and fell on his face and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away.

1:54 Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. He comes to the disciples and finds them sleeping and said unto Peter, What, could you not watch with me? One hour? Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation.

2:15 The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again, the second time he went away and prayed, saying, My Father, if this cannot pass away except I drink it, your will be done. And he came again and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And he left them again and went away.

2:41 And he went away and prayed a third time, saying again the same words. Then he comes to the disciples and says to them, Sleep on now and take your rest. Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going.

3:03 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 he refused,

3:47 and the cup from which he will drink with us in glory. That was the concluding statement of his meditations on the cup Christ refused, the cup of drugged wine. And when I read those words on the morning of January 9, in conjunction with my own devotions, I wrote beneath that sentence, for there's a lot of blank page at the end of that chapter, possible communion meditations. And when it was decided that I should plan to bring the next few communion meditations, my mind was immediately drawn back to that statement of Frederick Leahy, and as I reflected upon it,

4:32 the more I reflected, the more I was convinced that perhaps God would be pleased to own as our communion meditations over the next couple of months, God sparing us a treatment of the three cups, the cup that he drank, the cup that he refused,

4:56 that he will yet drink. And tonight we focus our attention upon the first of those three cups of our Savior, the cup that he drank. And as we attempt to focus our minds upon the cup that he drank, our minds are immediately thrust into the holy ground of that cup, that place called Gethsemane. I don't know if it's ever struck you that of all the recorded words of our Lord spoken from the cross itself, the so-called seven words of Christ,

Gethsemane: The Shadow of Calvary and Christ's Inner Struggle

5:36 only one of them begins to take us into the depths of his own inner struggles as he was bearing our sins in his own body up to and upon the tree. Only the words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, are as it were an inlet to the deepest recesses of his soul. The other words are primarily concerned either with the needs of others, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Today you shall be with me in paradise.

6:11 Woman, behold thy son, son, behold thy mother, or they are an expression of his physical agony. I thirst. Or of the triumph of his work, it is finished. Into your hands I commend my spirit.

6:27 So we are given very little of the inner struggle of the soul of our Lord Jesus when upon the cross, but when we come to Gethsemane, we have that which the servant of God of another generation called the shadow of Calvary, and there in Gethsemane we see a dark but clear and clearly defined, sharply etched shadow cast backward from the cross, the events of which were yet to unfold, that in many ways give us a deeper insight to the very

7:04 agony of the cross than do the things recorded about the time that our Lord actually spent upon the cross. Throughout the Gethsemane account, the language is nothing short. The language is nothing short. The language is nothing short.

7:19 The words are nothing short of serious and present, nothing short of astounding and intersecting. The words that we read tend to not make sense.

7:40 It is a viewing, a deep looking view of what the heart of the body really is. It has come to believe that the answer lies behind us at that point. That is very false. That is unacceptable.

7:49 Because it truly is. 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 or drunk who staggers and falls and rises and staggers and falls in repeated acts of rising and falling. We read in Luke that being in an agony, his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.

8:26 And then added to all of this graphic descriptive language is the unveiled mystery of the internal struggle which the holy unsinning humanity of Jesus is expressing in this unashamed expression of a virgin. Aversion to what lay before him. Oh my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. He prays again similar words the second and the third time.

9:02 And central to all of this descriptive language, culminating in this aversion of his holy sinless will to all that lay before him, is this issue that centers around the cup that he must drink. I ask you to note that in Matthew 26, 39, this is explicit in the words of Jesus. He went forward a little and fell on his face and prayed, saying, My father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me. In verse 42, again a second time.

9:45 He went away and prayed, saying, My father, if this, the this being the cup, cannot pass away except I drink it, thy will be done. And so we must ask several questions with respect to this that is central to all of the graphic and vivid language that pertains to the agony of Gethsemane, a shadow of Calvary. And of Golgotha. And the first question we must ask is this, what was this cup?

What Was This Cup?

10:23 The cup that our Lord must drink. And the cup that he does drink. For in John 18, 11, he says, The cup that my father has given me, shall I not drink it? What was this cup?

10:39 Well, I know no answer more condensed and yet more biblically accurate than is given by the man. I've referred to earlier, Hugh Martin, the Scottish theologian and pastor and preacher of the 19th century, who wrote in answer to that question, What was that cup? This is what he said. But doubtless the sorrow arose from the source that his prayer was concerned with.

11:09 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 of the cross. The substitute of his people, a person laden with iniquity. These were the elements mingled in the cup of trembling

11:53 which was now to be put into his hands. And the prospect of this caused him deadly sorrow. The cup to which our Lord makes reference here in the Gethsemane event is the cup that is nothing less than, and that vessel filled with the unmixed fury of God against the sins of those whom Christ is willingly, voluntarily representing, standing before the bar of eternal justice on behalf of all of his people, the great multitude whom no man can number

12:35 out of every kindred, tribe, and tongue, and nation, and people. And there in that cup, as it is put as it were, in his hand, and is brought near to his spiritual senses there in Gethsemane, there is the fetid stench of the wrath of almighty God against the sins of men. There is the horrible sight of what it will mean for him to be plunged into the abyss of outer darkness, to feel the intense pangs of the everlasting burnings of hell itself. That cup, had to be drunk,

13:18 even as it is described in the book of the Revelation, where we read in Revelation 14 a very vivid description of a similar cup. In Revelation 14 in verses 9 and 10, and another angel, a third, followed them saying with a great voice, If any man worships the beast in his image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he shall drink, of the wine of the wrath of God which is prepared unmixed, undiluted in the cup of His anger. And He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone

14:02 in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night. You see the picture of the cup of God's wrath unmixed with mercy, undiluted with pity, nothing in this cup but the wrath of God. And here it is described as poured out upon the wicked.

14:31 Poured out unmixed is the cup of His anger. It was this cup that is presented to our Lord Jesus. The cup that all of His elect would have to drink in their own persons if He does not drink it as their appointed and willing substitute. It is the cup composed of those elements which God's righteousness and justice demanded as He beholds the sins of His people.

15:03 Sins whose wages demand death. Sins imputed as to their guilt and culpability to Jesus the Lamb of God who bears away the sin of the world. What was this cup? It was a picture of the unmixed fury of God against the sins of His people.

What Was Christ to Do with the Cup?

15:28 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 the cup. There is no alternative as to His action in reference to the cup but to drink it.

15:50 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. And our Lord knows when the cup is presented there in Gethsemane that it is presented not to look at it not to admire the pure whole cup. The holy justice of the Godhead that framed the cup. Not to look at the cup and to admire the plan of redemption set in the counsels of eternity which determine there should be a substitute for sinners.

16:30 No, He knows the cup is presented to Him for one purpose and one purpose only. Therefore He says in verse 39 of Matthew 26 if it be possible let this cup pass from me. Pass from me. Why?

16:48 Because I know that it is presented to me with one end in view. Verse 42 My Father if this cannot pass away except I drink it. He knows what He is to do with the cup He is to drink it He is to ingest into His soul as I just ingested into my body the water in that glass. He knows that He is to voluntarily ingest into His soul the wrath of God unmixed in the cup of His fury.

17:31 It is that which is presented to Him and it was that that He knew He must do with that cup. Then we ask the third question was it right for Him to feel at this prospect if the cup was the presentation of wrath unmixed with fury and if His action in reference to the cup was to drink it to ingest it to take into His soul so as to exhaust the contents of the cup all of the fury all of the wrath of God against the sins of His people we ask the question

Was Christ's Aversion to the Cup Right?

18:15 does He feel an aversion an aversion so strong that three times He prays for its removal an aversion so strong that in wrestling with compliance with the presented cup His agony becomes so intense that it ruptures blood vessels in the capillaries near the surface of His skin until it mingles with sweat and looks like drops of blood so profuse that they drop to the ground was it right for Him to feel an aversion so deep and so intense that He rises

19:00 and staggers and falls to rise and stagger and fall again this is no charade this was not done for prime time news on channel 4 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 Moses asked the question in Psalm 90 who knows the power of thine anger and thy wrath according to the fear

19:43 that is due unto you who knows O God the power of your anger and knows it in such a way that He can render a fear and dread of that anger into 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 fear and He does know

20:24 the power of the wrath 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 rationalizing sin by excusing sin by thinking lightly of sin was it right for Him to feel this aversion anything less would have been the height of presumption and impiety listen again to Hugh Martin who writes considered simply in itself to desire exemption

21:09 from the wrath of God was the dictate of His holy human nature considered as at once both sensitive and reasonable and holy not to have felt this desire instead of being holiness to the Lord would have argued what we tremble even to think of while we know it could not be to seek daring contempt of the divine anger and will no to have such impressive views as Jesus now has of His Father's wrath and not to be filled with an earnest longing to escape from it considering the matter simply by itself would have argued that He did not possess

21:53 a true human nature with all the sinless sensibilities which are of the very essence of humanity as it were into the dark abyss of outer darkness into the seething flames of the eternal burnings and not to recoil is to be inhuman as well as ungodly therefore for our Lord in His sinless humanity to wrestle and to have a holy aversion to what was in the cup was right and proper but you see there was something of greater concern to our Lord who thirsted for our salvation

Christ's Triumph: Drinking the Cup on Golgotha

22:36 and His commitment to doing the will of the Father the very purpose of His incarnation lo I come it is written in the role of the book I come to do Your will O God a body You have prepared me and in those wrestlings that were real this is no sham wrestling to give us some impressive display of the semblance of real humanity this was real wrestling of the real human soul and will and affections and disposition of our blessed Lord Jesus the overriding concern which brings Him ultimately to the triumph of conquest He finds as He prays

23:21 and says nevertheless not my will but Yours be done not Your will be done passively upon me but Your will done actively by me and then He does it and from there He walks forth with princely dignity to put Himself into the hands of those who come to apprehend Him and from there all the way from Gabbatha and on to Golgotha our Lord Jesus goes forward the aversion notwithstanding He chooses the will of God

23:59 it was in the choice of the will of God that He went He went to Golgotha and it was there in those three mysterious hours of darkness that he was given to know that the dreaded anticipation of Gethsemane did not exceed the anguish and the torment of the actual drinking on Golgotha.

24:31 May I repeat that? As he enters into the darkness of those three hours from high noon to three in the afternoon, 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 his lips by his father.

25:06 And he drinks and he drinks and he drinks and drinks until the agony of his soul burst forth in the cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Then in a cry of triumph he says, Tetelestai, it stands accomplished, it is finished. He drank and drank and drank until the last dark-feeded drop of that cup was drained.

25:45 And in the reckoning of God, that cup was thrown down and dashed to shivers on the blood-stained rocky soil there on Golgotha. And it has lain there shattered ever since. O Christ, what burdens bowed. At thy head our load was laid on thee.

26:13 Thou stoodest in the sinner's stead, didst bear all ill for me. Death and the curse were in our cup. O Christ, was full for thee. But thou hast drained the last dark drop.

26:31 Tis empty now for me. That bitter cup, love drank it up. Now blessings draft. For me.

26:45 That's the cup that he drank.

Application to the Unconverted: The Dreadful Prospect of Drinking the Cup

26:50 That now no longer exists for us. Dashed to shivers on the blood-spattered rocky ground at the foot of his cross. Now then, what does all of this say to us sitting here tonight? Well, it speaks a very powerful and sobering word to every unconverted man, woman, boy or girl in this building tonight.

27:18 If the sinless Son of God, supported by the power of the Spirit given to him without measure. Think of it now, my unconverted friend. Listen to me. The sinless Son of God, whose humanity, body, soul, all that he was, supported by an unlimited supply of the Spirit.

27:44 For the Spirit was not given to him by measure. If that humanity. The human soul and body of the Son of God, upheld by the fullness of the Holy Spirit, trembles and quakes and shivers before the cup of divine fury. What, I ask you, in God's name will you do, poor, weak, frail sinner, upheld by nothing but divine omniscience that will keep you in everlasting existence, when Almighty God puts the cup of his fury to your lips and says, drink.

28:24 And every mouthful you drink, he will replenish, so that you'll drink and drink and drink and drink and drink forever. And God will fill it and fill it and fill it. Isn't that what Revelation 14 says? They shall drink the cup unmixed.

28:53 And they shall be tormented day and night. My unconverted friend, does it not strike dread to your soul when you look into Gethsemane and see the Holy Son of God, with no accusing conscience for sins committed by his own person, bearing imputed sin, upheld by divine grace and power, yet he staggers. He staggers like a drunk man, falls to the ground, sweats great drops as it were of blood, cries out in agony.

29:38 What will you do when Almighty God puts that cup to your lips? What will you do? Do you think you're up to the challenge?

29:55 You can go sauntering out of here tonight as you've done dozens of times, testing and tempting Almighty God to cut you off in your sins and give you, the foretaste in the disembodied state of what will be your frightening experience for all eternity.

30:20 God have mercy on you, my poor, pathetic, blinded, unconverted friend tonight. If anything should make you say, Oh God, thank you that you've not cut me off in my sins in the midst of my days. You've given me yet another opportunity to run to this place, to the place of my sins. You've given me yet another opportunity to run to this place, to the place of my sins.

30:47 You will flee from their sins and hide in the virtue of his substitutionary curse bearing. All who will throw the weight of their souls upon the one who drank the cup for sinners will find him to be the gracious, loving friend of sinners. But there is more profoundly even a word to us, as God's people, as we prepare to come to the table. And first and primarily and above all else, it is a word of consolation that comes to us

Application to Believers: Consolation, Conviction, and Instruction

31:27 from our contemplation of the cup that he drank. Death and the curse were in his cup. And it was full for him, but as the hymn writer said, he has drained the last dark drop. It is empty now for me.

31:48 Romans 8 in verse 1. There is therefore now, in the present moment, right now, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Child of God, if you come to the settled, marvelously comforting conviction that whatever a fatherly chastisement is necessary to bring you into conformity to Christ, whatever is necessary of God's darker providences to make you know what is in you and to discover more fully the plenitude of grace in Christ, there is nothing of penal judicial wrath.

32:31 It was expended, exhausted, totalted upon Christ.

32:41 His self was dashed to shivers when he cried in his bed. Are you exalted in that tonight? Are you bold to say, that the conscience of God is satisfied with the draining of the cup by his Son?

33:01 My friend, God has a conscience, and it's a very spookiness conscience. His conscience said, I raise my Son from the dead to validate his cry. It is finished. All of the wrath deservingness of the sins of those for whom he dies, the punishment of whom, the sins comprise the horrible cup, it has been drained.

33:37 And as we come to the table to eat the bread and drink of our cup, oh, let us remind ourselves he had a cup to drink, a cup of cursing, a cup of damnation, a cup of dereliction, a cup of abandonment. Our cup is called a cup of blessing, a cup of blessing, which we bless. Is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? Yes, a fresh participation by faith in the consolations of the gospel that in spite of the omniscient God's eye continuing to detect the vileness

34:19 and the deception and the deviousness yet within me, yet in Christ there is no condemnation. Are you rejoicing? In the blessed privileges purchased for you, not by way of anticipation alone, the ones that are yet to come, but present participation, present possession, now no condemnation. Surely there is in the cup he drank a word of fresh consolation to every child of the living God.

34:57 But then there is also a word of conviction, a word of conviction, yes, when we begin to view our sins in the light of the cup of Gethsemane and realize that that was the cup that he took to his hands upon Golgotha. I ask you, can you look into the cup that caused the Son of God to be sore amazed and troubled and talk about little sins? Can you look into the cup the very sight of which drove him to his knees, caused him to stagger like a drunk man, to be in such intense agony

35:40 that his physical frame under the exertion of wrestling with the holy aversion has burst capillaries? And can you talk about little sins? Can you? Can you even think about little sins?

36:00 A little compromise? A little irritation with husband or wife? A little look of lust? A little desire of covetousness?

36:10 A little inclination to pride and to vanity and irritation? Every time you're tempted in the language of one of our wonderful hymns, you who think of sin but lightly here its guilt may estimate. Bring the cup before you and that, quote, little sin. Sniff its smell in the cup, its feted, devilish, hellish scent.

36:40 Pray God for grace in the power of Christ to flee that youthful lust, to mortify that sin, to cut off that offending member and to cast it from you. As we think of the cup he drank, it brings not only a word of consolation and also a word of conviction, but finally it brings us a word of instruction. For this whole incident of our Lord embracing the cup that he drank is referred to in Hebrews 5

37:23 as a peculiar crucible of learning, the principle of obedience. Hebrews chapter 5, a direct allusion, a direct reference to Gethsemane. We read in verse 7 of Hebrews 5, Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and having been heard for his godly fear, though he was a son, a perfect son, a sinless son, yet learned obedience

38:07 by the things which he suffered. You see our Lord learning in a new plateau of experiential awareness the principle of obedience in Gethsemane. When his greatest act of redemptive accomplishment is before him, that for which he had become incarnate, that towards which he had looked, but now as the hour draws near and he begins to experience in the depths of his soul what it will actually mean to be the Lamb of God who finally and fully bears away the sins of the world,

38:50 what it will mean to drink into his soul, to ingest spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, physically, the full unleashed fury of the wrath of God. There is a holy aversion in all of his holy humanity, yet, yet, in that holy humanity he deliberately chooses the will of his Father, even though it leads to his deepest baptism of suffering. And if the Son of God needed that to learn obedience as a principle of life, he learned obedience. I didn't write it, the Holy Ghost did.

39:33 You've got this silly notion that Christ was divine and as the divine human Son of God, why he just sort of floated into acts of obedience. No he didn't. He sweat as it were great drops of blood. Have you ever faced such agony when there were contrary and equally pulling alternatives before you and yet so committed to do the will of God that bringing all of your psyche into line with your renewed judgment, you burst capillaries?

40:06 I never have. I've groaned. I've sweat. I've cried and I've moaned.

40:15 But I never took a hanky out and found it red with blood. What a soft age we are. Shall we be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease? What little saintlings we are.

40:33 Why? Born in ease. Raised in ease. Immediate gratification.

40:41 Pop a pill on the TV. Feather bed of consolation in some carnal delight. God have mercy upon us. God's committed to make us like his Son.

40:59 And if we're going to be made like his Son, we'll learn obedience like his Son did. Though he were a son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he saw. And the great lesson of the cup is we too will follow in the train of our Savior. However, with this great disparity, any suffering we endure in the path of obedience has no penal judgment in it.

41:27 It has no wrath in it. It has nothing of the contents of the cup. For he drained those contents. Never will one drop be placed back in on behalf of those for whom he drank it.

41:46 So may we as we come to the table tonight as God's people know afresh the consolations of the cup that he drank. May we know the conviction that ought to come from the cup that he drank. And may we embrace the instruction that comes from the cup that he drank. Let us pray.

Prayer of Conclusion

42:09 Our Father, we confess to you that at times we feel as though we pollute and defile the very holy ground of Gethsemane and Golgotha when we attempt to meditate upon it and speak of it. Take our pathetic efforts to speak the unspeakable, to expound the inexplicable, O Lord, may your Spirit take the truth as it is in Christ

42:53 and help us, O help us, to grasp with deeper understanding and firmer faith the realities of the cup that our Savior drank. Seal these truths to our hearts and, O God, would it not please you to answer our cry that you would take the proclamation of Christ suffering and crucified for sinners and use it to draw some out of themselves and out of the state of rebellion and pride and cause them to flee to Christ. Ere you place the unmixed cup of your fury to their lips

43:35 and make them drink it for all eternity. Have mercy upon sinners amongst us, we pray, and continue with us in this period of remembrance at the table. For Jesus' sake. Amen.