The Cup He Refused to Drink

Introduction to the Series and the First Cup

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

0:14 Now will you turn with me in your Bibles, please, to the 15th chapter of the Gospel according to Mark. And I shall read but two verses in your hearing in this section where Mark is giving us details of those events which lead to our Lord being taken outside the city walls of Jerusalem and to the place of his execution. He writes in verse 22,

0:54 Now let us again plead with God that the Holy Spirit would come and shine upon the face of our Savior, that we may see him in the preached word as we anticipate seeing him afresh in the visible words and signs of his body and blood, as we prepare to come to the table. Let us pray.

1:29 Our Father, we bow in your presence to acknowledge that apart from the ministry of the Holy Spirit taking the things of Christ and making them real to our hearts, we will again read and even contemplate some of these sobering and mysterious details, unenlightened and unmoved, we think of those who stood by this scene and beheld the very things that we have read about and walked away without any felt affection for the Savior.

2:13 And we know that left to ourselves we will be like them. And we therefore plead that by the ministry of the Holy Spirit you would set your Son before our eyes and that we may be given hope. Hearts that run out in faith and in felt affection towards him. Speak to us then, we plead, in his worthy name.

2:40 Amen. At our communion service last month, I announced that I would be bringing a brief series of communion meditations entitled, The Three Cups of Our Lord. The thought for that...

3:03 A series of studies was suggested to me by just a little paragraph in that lovely little devotional book recently published by Mr. Leahy entitled, The Cross He Bore. And in the first of those meditations, we focused our attention upon the first of those three cups, the one that I entitled, The Cup That He Drank. And it is this cup to which our Lord made reference.

3:32 In John 18 and verse 11, where John records our Lord saying, The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it? It is the cup before which he staggered there in Gethsemane. The cup which wrung agony from his soul, pressed him to the ground, caused him to plead with repeated supplication, to his Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

4:10 And that cup was nothing more or less than the full, the pure, the non-vindictive wrath of God against the sins of his people. And it was that cup that our Lord willingly drank, and drank until he drained its last, last dark drop. In the very accurate words of the hymn writer, Ann Cousins, it is captured in the second stanza of that marvelous hymn, O Christ, what burdens bowed thy head. Death and the curse were in our cup.

4:52 O Christ, was full for thee, but thou hast drained the last dark drop. Tis empty now for me. That cup was full for me. That cup was full for me.

5:03 That cup was full for me. That cup was full for me. That cup was full for me. That cup was full for me.

5:04 That cup was full for me. That bitter cup, love drank it up. Now blessings draft for me. Now tonight I want you to consider with me the second of the three cups of our Lord, moving on from the consideration of the cup that he drank to our meditation upon that which I am calling the cup he refused to drink.

What Was in the Cup He Refused to Drink?

5:32 And I say it is the cup he refused, he refused to drink for in Mark 15, 23 we read, but he received it not. And as we meditate upon this text, let us ask three very basic questions of the passage. Question number one, what was in the cup he refused to drink? And the text tells us that they offered him wine mingled with myrrh.

6:05 It was a cup in which there was a mixture of wine and myrrh. A combination of these two things and possibly other liquids or ingredients as well, which were intended to act as both an analgesic to relieve pain and a narcotic or a sedative to dull the senses. It obviously had a bitter taste because in the parallel world, in the parallel passage in Matthew 27, 34, it is described as wine mingled with gall.

6:45 And all it took for our Lord to recognize the content of the cup was a taste. For the scripture tells us in the parallel passage when he tasted it, not drank it, merely tasted it, he refused that cup. Question number one then, what was in the cup he refused to drink? The answer is a mixture of wine and myrrh and possibly other ingredients concocted to act as an analgesic and a narcotic or a sedative.

Why Was This Cup Offered to Our Lord?

7:23 Question number two that we ask of our text, why was this cup offered to our Lord? Why was this cup offered to our Lord? And then, there are two possible answers. The first is that according to rabbinic tradition, when Jews were being crucified, women would present to the soldiers a cup of such a mixture in what they regarded as strict obedience to the directives of Proverbs chapter 31, verses 6 and 7.

8:03 In Proverbs chapter 31, verses 6 and 7, 6 and 7, we read,

8:10 Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine to the bitter in soul. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more. In this section where the son of a king is being warned about the peculiar dangers of the abuse of alcohol, and is being told that it is not for kings to drink and abuse alcohol in such a way as to unstring them for their official tasks, there is also the instruction that there is a proper place for an unusual concentration of alcohol,

8:54 and that is in order to give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and this concentrated amount of wine to the bitter in soul. And it could well be that the women whose presence is described in Luke 23 and verse 27, who were there in some measure of concentrated numbers, and were bewailing our Lord's suffering, to whom our Lord spoke and said, Weep not for me, but for yourselves. It could be that these women, in keeping with rabbinic tradition, had secured, the cup of drugged wine,

9:37 and if it were presented from their hands through the soldiers, it was an act of compassion in order to alleviate his impending agony. It would be very similar to the controlled pain alleviation administered by hospice to someone dying of cancer, in which the proper use of concentration of concentrated narcotics is expressed as an act of compassion to alleviate human suffering and agony. But if it had been concocted

10:19 and repeatedly offered to Jesus by the soldiers, and this seems at least to be the suggestion of the text itself, though some exegetes argue that you have an indefinite plural pronoun, when it is said, they offered him wine mingled with myrrh, the context takes us back to the immediate antecedent of the they, and that would be the soldiers. From verse 16 onward in this passage, Mark is recording the activity of the soldiers. The soldiers led him away, and they, the soldiers, clothed him with purple.

11:04 Verse 19, and they, the soldiers, smote his head. Verse 20, and when they had mocked him. Verse 21, and they, the soldiers, compel one passing by, Simon of Cyrene. So when we read in verse 22, and they bring him to the place, and they offered him wine, the most natural reading of the text is that it was the soldiers who offered him the drugged wine.

11:34 And in the text, the verb used to describe their offering points to a repeated and insistent offering of the wine. There is a use of an imperfect verb describing action in the past that was continuous. So the soldiers were seeking, as it were, almost to force the cup of drugged wine upon our Lord. Well, for what purpose would they have done this?

12:05 Well, remember, these were experienced, hardened soldiers, perhaps those who were somewhat expert in execution by crucifixion. And they had seen firsthand what some of us have only seen and heard about secondhand, that a man very weak in constitution, someone greatly weakened by starvation and physical illness, when brought to the place of execution, can be possessed momentarily of almost superhuman strength in resisting those that would put on, as it were, the final strokes to his execution. And it could be that these soldiers,

12:49 knowing that most of the criminals whom they had executed in the past, struggled with that almost superhuman strength and that rush of adrenaline that comes when we fear that life itself is being snatched away, that to make their job easier, that they offered to criminals the drugged wine. For remember, in the case of our Lord, it had been hours since he had eaten. And this drugged wine would have immediately gone to the nerve centers in the brain and had its dulling, soporific effect. And so if this were the proper answer to the question, why was the cup offered to him?

13:33 In the case of the soldiers, it would not have been an act of compassion, but it would have been an act of convenience to make their job easier, to see our Lord, as it were, more passively yield himself up to the next actions described in verse 24, and they crucify him. In just these few words, the horrible action that was told to John, to make their job easier, the first question is, why did the cross offer to him that sacrifice to make it easier for the world that he had come to meet him? Why did the cross offer to him that sacrifice

14:17 to make it easier to make his life easier for the world? And the last question is, why did the cross offer that sacrifice to make it easier to make his life more pleasant for our Lord? What kind of a question did John, the first question, what was in the cup he refused to drink? The second question, why was the cup offered to him? Now we come to the heart of our meditation. Why did Jesus

Why Did Jesus Resolutely Refuse This Cup?

14:44 resolutely refuse this cup? As I've already indicated, there was some insistence that he drink it. But his refusal is described with a verb that underscores that it was resolute, it was immovable. He refused to drink of that cup. He received it not. Since

15:11 our Lord was not in any way infected with the doctrine of Stoicism, the notion that it's a noble and virtuous thing to endure pain without flinching. To be stoical is to show austere indifference to joy, to grief, to pleasure, to pain. And surely the Christ of biblical revelation was not in the least bit affected with Stoicism. For Stoicism is inhuman. And our Lord was fully human. He had shown his response to

15:50 internal pain and agony just a short time before in the garden when he said, My son, my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. No Stoic would ever say that. Our Lord manifested joy when joy was appropriate. We read in the passage in Matthew 11 and the parallel passage in Luke that Jesus exalted or rejoiced in the Spirit and said, I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Our Lord openly wept when weeping was appropriate.

16:26 He wailed. He wailed over Jerusalem, Luke 19. He wept with the gentle but real weeping of felt empathy by the graveside of Lazarus. So when our Lord refuses the cup, surely we must not read into that anything of the leaven of Stoicism in his mind or in his Holy Spirit.

16:51 Furthermore, because our Lord was not infected with masochism, the thought that the gaining of pleasure in the life of Jesus Christ was not a good thing, was not a good thing. The measure is to come from suffering, either physical or emotional pain. There was nothing of masochism in our Lord, for this again is an inhuman view of what we are to do in the face of the possibility of physical or emotional pain. What then is the answer to the question, why did Jesus resolutely refuse this cup of the drugged wine?

17:28 May I suggest? I suggest that there are two parts to the answer. And the first is to demonstrate to all who beheld his action the absolutely voluntary nature of his subsequent suffering and of his death. To demonstrate to all who were there to witness the absolutely voluntary nature of his subsequent suffering and death.

18:00 No drugged wine was needed to quiet and subdue him that he might have his hands impaled and his feet nailed to the cross and be hoisted up to hang between earth and heaven. The posture that he assumed from that moment in the garden when they came seeking him. And he asked them, whom are you seeking? Who are you seeking? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. And he said,

18:30 I am. And in a momentary burst of his glory, they fall back, prostrate to the ground. When they gain their composure and rise up again, he puts himself voluntarily into their hands. And they bind him. They lead him away to the house of the high priest. And from there off to Pilate and

18:53 off to Herod and back to Pilate. And in all of this, his posture was as the prophet had predicted, as a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. He gives his back to the smiters and his cheek to those that pluck out his hair. And so the posture of the meek, submissive lamb, the posture assumed at Gabbatha, the posture assumed before the pagan Gentile leaders, is now the posture of the Gentile leaders. And so the posture of the Gentile leaders is now the

19:30 posture that our Lord assumes at Golgotha. No drugged wine is needed to subdue me. I consciously, deliberately, voluntarily lay down my life. And his refusal of the cup of the drugged wine was first of all to demonstrate to all the absolutely voluntary nature of the subsequent suffering and of the death to follow. But then secondly, it was to ensure his complete

20:09 sensibility to all the realities of the consummate suffering of the next three hours. It was to ensure his complete sensibility, the alertness of all of the faculties of mind and body, no analgesic, to ease the pain of body no narcotic to dull the senses he refuses the cup to ensure his complete sensibility to all of the realities of the consummate suffering of the next three hours

20:52 he knew that there were declarations that he was to make from that cross from which those who heard those declarations at that time would derive instruction and comfort and from which the people of God for centuries until his return in glory would find sweetness and consolation and instruction he had declarations to be made not with the slurred speech of a drugged criminal but with the art of of the

21:31 Particulate speech of truth incarnate amidst his agony and pain. He had a sinner to save. Someone else was being crucified with him. On whose behalf he, Jesus, was being crucified.

21:51 And he would leave no doubt in the mind of the penitent thief who would cry, Lord, remember me. He would leave no doubt of his answer. An answer garbled in slurred speech or an answer, if somewhat articulate, would cause the dying thief to say, Can I really trust the words of a semi-delirious fellow, Helen? No, no semi-delirious Christ says, Today you will be with me in paradise.

22:25 He had a conquest to be undertaken. He is giving himself up to death. Without any dilution, any mitigation of the pain of death, as alienation from God that confronting death, he might conquer death. And above all, he had a cup to drink.

22:48 And if that cup was the unleashed fury of the wrath of God against the sins of those for whom he was dying on that cross, he could only empty, empty the cup if in conscious pain of separation from his Father he drained the cup. Therefore, though beaten, bruised, his back shredded to a pulp, his face distorted with contusions, the tears upon his brow from the crown of thorns, he refuses to drink the drugged wine. To put it simply,

23:31 simply as I know how, he refused the second cup that he might utterly drain the first cup. And it was in his refusal of the cup of drugged wine that our blessed Lord fully drank the cup of the Father's wrath against the sins of his people. And so in answer to the question, why did Jesus resolutely refuse to drink that second cup, I suggest that it was to demonstrate the absolute voluntariness of his suffering

Application for Believers: Immerse, Confirm, Commit

24:16 and to ensure his complete sensibility to all of the realities of the consummate suffering of the next three hours. Now then, what do we say when we stand before the cup, that our Lord refused? Well to you who are the people of God, to you who in the language of Hebrews have fled for refuge to this Christ, let me suggest three lines of application, and the first is this. Child of God, immerse yourself anew in the ocean of the love of Jesus

24:59 towards his own. Immerse yourself anew, in the ocean of love that Jesus bears towards His own. His physical agony was about to be heightened to its most intense level as He was undergoing perhaps the most cruel and painful death ever invented by the wickedness of the human heart. But His physical trauma, though great and intense,

25:38 was such that He refused to do anything that would in any way lessen His bearing for you and for me, the full fury of the wrath of His Father. And surely John 13.1 finds its expression here, having loved His own, He loved them unto. To the end.

26:06 His thirst for your salvation and mine was so intense that He refused in any way to quench His thirst with the drugged wine. What but His infinite, indescribable, what but His love to His own caused Him to refuse that cup. Amen. But then secondly I say, child of God, not only immerse yourself anew in the ocean of His love to His own, but confirm yourself anew in the confidence

26:48 that there is no unsatisfied wrath or unrequited justice towards your sin.

26:59 Confirm yourself anew in the confidence that there is no unsatisfied wrath or unrequited justice towards your sin. We read in Romans 8.1, There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Why?

27:22 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh and all of your sins, and all of mine, in all of the wrath deservingness of them, the cup was full for our Lord. And as He drinks the cup of the wrath of God, it is in the context of refusing the cup of the drugged wine. Why? That looking at the empty cup that He drank and looking at the full cup that He refused to drink, we, even here at the table tonight,

28:08 might confirm ourselves anew in the confidence that there is no unsatisfied wrath or unrequited justice towards our sin. And then thirdly, child of God, commit yourself anew to drink in submissive faith whatever cup God places to your lips.

28:37 Commit yourself anew to drink in submissive faith whatever cup He places to your lips. For whatever cup He places to your lips, no matter how bitter it may seem, this much you know, the bitterness has not a dram of God's wrath in it. All the bitterness was in the cup that He drank. He drank it in refusing, in refusing the cup of drugged wine.

29:15 And the hymn writer has captured this beautifully when in our hymn number 94 in stanza 3, hymn number 94 in stanza 3, this imagery is set before us.

29:33 What e'er my God ordains is right. Though now this cup in drinking may bitter seem to my God, My faint heart, I take it all unshrinking. How can I take it unshrinking?

29:58 It sets my teeth on edge, because I know whatever is in that cup, there is not a pram of God's unrequited path. And surely, if the pattern of the child of God is established in the work of Christ, suffering now, and glory to follow, we know that those sufferings are disciplinary. They are the sufferings that come to sons and daughters from the hand of a loving Father. Then shame on you, and shame on me, when beholding our Lord, taking the first cup to His lips,

30:43 and draining its last dark drop, while refusing the second cup.

30:51 Shame on us, that we're constantly spitting out anything that isn't as sweet as Kool-Aid.

31:04 When we spit, and are irritated, and question the Lord, when He puts something to our lips that is not saccharine sweet like Kool-Aid.

31:19 God have mercy on our pathetic, self-centered, soft unwillingness to understand. There go those things that are in our best interest that Christ might have what He died for. And that is a people who reflect His likeness. And He perfects none into the likeness of Christ, apart from the crucible of suffering, and the discipline of chastisement, and the pain of pruning, as we considered last week.

32:01 The cups that God puts to our lips that are bitter, are never, never, never tinged with divine wrath. They are cups put for our nourishment, or they are cups put to our lips as medicine, put to our lips, as the old writers would say, as purgatives to clean us out. Put as nutrients, or put as medicine to go after those things in our spiritual system, system which if left untended would destroy us then having considered what we say to the child

Application for Unbelievers: The Absence of Drugged Wine in Hell

32:43 of god in the light of the cup he refused i close with this word to you who are not christians fellows girls men women children what does this cup that jesus refused say to you what jesus experienced while refusing the drugged wine he did in the place of sinners what you will do in drinking the cup of god's wrath you would give anything for a cup of drugged wine you may now

33:26 dull and drug your conscience with the drugged wine of an obsession with music and abuse of alcohol the use of the use of illicit drugs, obsession with fun and games, a thousand things can be your present cup of drugged wine to dull your senses, to somehow silence your conscience that speaks of hell and of judgment and accountability to God. But when the scripture says that the unconverted shall drink of the cup of the fury of God's wrath amidst, amidst, there'll be no drugged

34:09 wine in hell. No drugged wine offered in hell. And my friend, if you want to take lightly what Jesus bore, ask yourself this question. Am I prepared to bear what he bore vicariously, substitutionarily on behalf of his people? Am I prepared to bear as a poor, helpless

34:34 creature when the Almighty comes forth in righteous fury to deal? With me, in my sense, what a horrible thing to even contemplate that frightening reality. And I plead with you as you see God's people taking the simple elements of broken bread and the fruit of the vine, and by taking them into their hands and into their bodies, saying by faith they have appropriated this Christ as their only hope of life and salvation.

35:13 So may you, by the hand of faith, reach out to this Christ, and even as you sit among us this night, plead, Son of David, have mercy upon me, and lay hold of this Christ, who drank the first cup, but refused the second, that this night I might have the unspeakable privilege of offering to you a gracious, a willing, and able heart. And I plead with you, Lord, that you, who are my Savior, who says that what he did in drinking the bitter

35:52 cup, in refusing the cup of drugged wine, is accessible to all who will have him who drank the one and refused the other. They bring him to the place called Golgotha, which is being interpreted the place of a skull, and when they offered him wine mingled with myrrh, he received it not. Let us pray.

Closing Prayer and Communion Preparation

36:25 Our Father, we thank you that in your great mercy and kindness, you sent your only begotten Son into the world to receive such contradiction of sinners against himself. And we thank you for the record of all that he bore on behalf of his people. We thank you, Lord Jesus, for that you were so determined that all would know that no one was taking your life from

37:06 you, but that you were laying it down of your own will, so determined that you would consciously experience the torments of the damned, that you refused that cup of drugged wine. Lord Jesus, as we come to partake of the cup of blessing tonight, may we in the name of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen. Indeed, immerse ourselves afresh in the ocean of your unspeakable love to us. May we have confirmed afresh the reality that there is no wrath towards your own. And may we be determined

37:48 afresh in submissive faith to drink whatever cup you put to our lips, knowing that it is only for our ultimate well-being. Well-being and for your glory. Have mercy upon those who this night have no interest in these things. May the preaching of your word, blessed by the Spirit, draw them to embrace the Savior, even this night in this place. Meet with us, O Lord, as we gather to the table. May your presence

38:23 with us, by the Spirit, draw out our heart's affection towards you. Strengthen our faith and deepen our resolve to live as those who have been bought with a price and joyfully acknowledge that they are not their own. Hear us, we plead, for your name's sake. Amen.