The Cup of Wrath

Pastor Matt Moran

Mark 14:26-50

Transcript

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus
said to them, You will all fall away, for it is written, I will strike the
shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go
before you to Galilee. Peter said to him, Even though they all fall away, I will
not. And Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you, this very night, before the
rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. But he said emphatically, If
I must die with you, I will not deny you. And they all said the same. And when
they went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, Sit here
while I pray. And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be
greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful,
even to death. Remain here and watch. And going a little farther, he fell on the
ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he
said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me,
yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping. And
he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and
pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but
the flesh is weak. And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And
again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they
did not know what to answer him. Then he came the third time and said to them,
Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come.
The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See
my betrayer is at hand. And immediately while he was still speaking, Judas came,
one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs from the chief
priests and the scribes and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign,
saying, The one I will kiss is the man. Seize him and lead him away under guard.
And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, Rabbi, and he kissed him.
And they laid hands on him and seized him. But one of those who stood by drew
his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. And
Jesus said to them, Have you come out against a robber with swords and clubs to
capture me? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not
seize me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled, and they all left him and fled.
Praise God for his word. Let's pray. Father, what a joy to be under your word
together. And we ask for your blessing, for the blessing of your Holy Spirit on
this time. Lord, familiar words to many of us, but I pray that by your spirit
they would become alive and real and applicable, that you would give us
receptive hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. So we are getting to the concluding
chapters of the Gospel of Mark. And as I said, this will be a shorter message
this morning because of the calling of Tom. But what I want us to do is consider
in these verses that are probably familiar to us, we're going to focus on the
cup that is mentioned in verse 36, when Jesus says, Remove this cup from me.
Because that is a theme that is developed in the Gospel of Mark and one that
concludes here. But our passage begins with this prediction of betrayal. What
has just happened is that the disciples have celebrated the Passover together.
And in Mark 14, 26-31, they sang a hymn. When they had sung a hymn, they went
out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, You will all fall away, for
it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. But
after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. Peter said to him, even
though they all fall away, I will not. And Jesus said to him, truly I tell you
this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.
But he said emphatically, if I must die with you, I will not deny you. And they
all said the same. So Jesus and his disciples have just concluded taking the
Passover together. They had been staying in nearby Bethany, but for the
Passover, it was appropriate to stay in Jerusalem. And Jesus predicts his
betrayal when he says, You will all fall away, for it is written, Strike the
shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. That's an Old Testament quotation from
Zechariah 13. And as we read about these dramatic events at the end of Jesus'
life, we have to see something very important here. His death is being portrayed
as the result of human treachery and evil and wicked choices. It is also at the
exact same time the fulfillment of scripture. It is the plan of God. So in
response to this prophecy or prediction that they will all fall away, Peter says
essentially, that won't be me. Peter said to him, even though they all fall
away, I will not. Isn't that amazing? After three years of daily life together,
Peter thinks it's possible that they, meaning the other 11, will fall away. He
can actually picture that happening to the other 11. But he will be strong. That
might happen to those guys, but it won't happen to me. And Jesus says, before
the rooster crows twice, in other words, before morning comes, you will deny me
three times. But he said emphatically, if I must die with you, I will not deny
you. They all said the same. There are these loud, emphatic declarations of
loyalty. You can hear that touch of pride and invulnerability first in Peter,
then in all the disciples. And the truth is, the disciples are just moments away
from disaster. They're really just like us. Maybe some of you can remember a
time as a child or as a new believer that you sang the song, I have decided to
follow Jesus. No turning back, no turning back. You all remember singing that
song? It's a good song, except that it kind of communicates that the key to
following Jesus is our decision, our determination, our commitment, our
endurance. Probably the better thing to say would be, Jesus has awakened my
heart. And I know that following him and obeying him is going to be hard, and in
fact, I'll never do it in my own strength. But I'm going to trust that by his
grace, he will keep me. We'd have to workshop the actual lyrics of that, but it
wouldn't be quite as good, it wouldn't be quite as simple, but it would be a lot
more accurate about what our real condition is. So after this dialogue, Jesus
and his disciples move to the garden of Gethsemane. There's this scene of prayer
in the garden. The text picks up in verse 32 and says, they went to a place
called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And he
took with him Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and
troubled. And he said to them, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain
here and watch. And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed
that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba
Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I
will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping and he said to
Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that
you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh
is weak. And he again went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he
came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy and they did not
know what to answer him. And he came the third time and said to them, are you
still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of
Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See my
betrayer is at hand. So they go to this place, this garden area called
Gethsemane, and Jesus asks his disciples to sit here while I pray. There are
times when someone that we love is in distress and we can't really do a whole
lot about it. You've probably been in this situation before. If someone you love
is having surgery, for example, or recovering in a hospital bed, there's really
probably not a lot tangible that you can do. So you sit. It's a way of showing
support and love. If someone that you love, if you're at the hospital and
someone that you love is in surgery and won't be out for three hours, you kind
of know, even though you can't do anything for that three hours, it would not be
appropriate to say go watch a movie during that time. How many of you can
remember times when you just sat in a hospital waiting room and you might wait
for hours from the doctor during that time, and during that time you're just
sitting. It's just a way of showing support. In Judaism there's a practice
called sitting shiva, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, when a close
relative has died and the close family relatives come together to grieve and to
mourn and sit on the floor to demonstrate solidarity and mourning. Jesus asked
his disciples to sit while he prayed. He took with him Peter and James and John
and began to be greatly distressed and troubled and he said to them, my soul is
very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch. So now this request to sit
and remain is made to Jesus' inner circle. He's asking them to support him while
he prays. Look at what has happened to Jesus in this moment. All throughout
Mark's Gospel, Jesus has been opposed by various forces. We've seen him in the
middle of very hostile religious opposition. We've seen him confronted with
horrendous illnesses and diseases. We've seen him confront demons. And at every
moment, I've seen Jesus posed with very hard questions, and at every moment
Jesus has been completely unflappable. He's been in total control of the
situation. He's always had the perfect response for whatever the situation
called for. He's never come unglued at any moment. It doesn't seem like there's
one encounter that ever caught him off guard. Now the culminating moments of
Jesus' life on earth are happening, and the text says that he began to be
greatly distressed and troubled. And as readers, I know this is familiar to most
of us, but this isn't something that we've seen before. We might expect Jesus to
face betrayal and death very stoically and unflappably. If you think about
Christian martyrs or heroes of church history, many of them have been revered
for how bravely they face death. If you think about Stephen, who's known as the
first martyr in the book of Acts, when his opponents come to stone him, he looks
up to heaven and prays for their forgiveness, and even in the face of impending
death, violent death, he seems incredibly calm. Well, we haven't seen Jesus in
this emotional condition before. The phrase greatly distressed, it also carries
with it this idea of astonishment. KJV says that he was sore, amazed, and very
heavy. He was greatly anguished at the prospect of what was in front of him. And
Jesus has known that the cross has awaited him. He's foretold it multiple times
in the book of Mark. But what he sees right now in this moment on the eve of the
crucifixion is overwhelming. Mark tells us, going a little farther, he fell on
the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.
And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from
me, yet not what I will, but what you will. Those words, the hour and the cup,
are both symbolic for the moment of Jesus' death. But the cup is also a symbol
for the wrath of God. The cup is an Old Testament metaphor for God's wrath that
gets poured out on human wickedness. There's multiple examples I could give you
from Ezekiel, from Isaiah, but let me read this one from Psalm 75. Psalm 75
says, For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, with foaming wine well mixed,
and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to
the dregs. Well, what's interesting is that concept of the cup has already been
introduced in Mark. If you go back, let me take a second to trace this. If we go
back to Mark 10, we see this moment where James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
come up to Jesus and they say, Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask of
you. And he said to them, What do you want me to do for you? And they said to
him, Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your
glory. And Jesus said to them, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able
to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism which I am
baptized? And they said to him, We are able. And Jesus said to them, The cup
that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized you
will be baptized. It's an amazing and self-centered request from the disciples.
And Jesus responds by saying, You don't know what you are asking. Are you able
to drink the cup that I drink? And in their self-confidence, the same self-
confidence that says, I will never deny you, they say, We are able to. They
think that they are able to drink that cup. And Jesus actually says to them, The
cup that I drink you will drink. So we think, What does that mean? Then the idea
of the cup returns again in chapter 14, when Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper.
This is the passage immediately preceding our passage today. When he took a cup
and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and they all drank of it. And
he said, This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many. Now in
the garden, we see Jesus asking the Father to remove the cup from him. So we ask
his readers, What was it that made Jesus so greatly distressed when he saw that
cup and what made him ask God the Father to remove it from him? When Jesus was
in the garden and he looked into the cup, he saw the exceeding sinfulness of
sin. This is what is to be poured out on human wickedness. He saw the exceeding
sinfulness of sin. And not only did he see the exceeding sinfulness of sin, he
saw it from his position of perfect holiness on a scope that far exceeds
anything that we're able to grasp. Sometimes we get a tangible sense of the
horror of sin when we get an up close sense of real wickedness and we see it for
what it is. But when we see that, even then, our grasp is only microscopic.
Think about the sins of the world down through human history. When Jesus looked
into the cup and saw the sinfulness of sin, he saw it on a far greater scale
than we have ever been able to conceive of. And when Jesus looked into the cup,
he also saw the wrath of God that was to be poured out on sin. The full weight,
the full reality of what was to happen, what was about to happen, was coming on
Jesus now. He knows that he will be the one to drink that cup. He will be the
one to bear the wrath of God. So what's happening right now is far more the
anticipation of agonizing physical pain. As bad as that would be, this is the
prospect of everything coming undone. This is the prospect of separation from
God. In the garden, Jesus gets a foretaste of what he is going to endure on the
cross, and that cup makes him stagger. That's the source of the anguish. A lot
of people stumble here, and you might say, I don't really like this idea of
wrath and of a God of wrath, and how can a loving God be a God of anger and
wrath, and how can that be poured out on his own son? A lot of us are
uncomfortable with the idea of wrath. What I want you to consider is that love
and wrath have to exist together. It's necessary. Think about how you feel about
someone that you love, whether that is a friend or sibling or spouse or child.
If you see someone that you love, and they are actively choosing to destroy
their life, how do you respond? Or if you see someone who is harming the person
that you love, what do you do? Or how do you respond? If in those moments what
you feel is neutrality or indifference or boredom, then obviously you do not
really love that person. If you actually love them, you feel probably a
multitude of emotions, but included is incredible anger. Tim Keller wrote, the
more loving you are, the more ferociously angry you will be at whatever harms
your beloved. And here's the point for us. God loves you and I so much that he
was not indifferent to our sin and our rebellion. We're absolutely deserving of
the wrath of God. And each one of us should have to take that cup and drink
every last drop. But what happened instead, the apostle Paul put it like this,
for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God. What's contained in that cup is so staggering
that Jesus asked the Father to remove it from him. But then he says, not what I
will, but what you will. And there's a way in which we can pray and ask for
God's will and it's really just kind of a pious cop-out. Just a very passive,
whatever will be will be. Jesus says, here is my desire. And he pleads with God
for it. But then he is willing to put his desire second and submit to the
Father. His greatest desire is pleasing the Father. And now you remember what
Jesus told James and John. He said, the cup that I drink, you will drink. And
the disciples do drink the cup in the sense that they suffered greatly for their
faith. But Jesus has already satisfied the wrath of God by becoming a
propitiation for sin. He's become the sacrifice. He's taken on the wrath of God.
So the cup becomes, for James and John, for all who follow Christ, a means of
sanctification and purification. We will suffer for following Christ, but not in
that substitutionary way. We could never drink that cup. The text tells us that
after Jesus returns from prayer, he came and found the disciples sleeping. And
he says, watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. The spirit was willing. The disciples
had good intentions. Only hours earlier, they had all pledged their loyalty. But
the flesh is weak. Only hours later, they're all asleep. And if we think about
this, Jesus didn't need his disciples to sit with him. It's not like they
helped. It's not like they could take the cup for him, that everyone could
contribute in some way. But I believe they needed to learn from that colossal
moment of failure for the rest of their lives. They would need that in the days
to come. Note that very tangible reminder that the spirit is willing, but the
flesh is weak. And the lesson for us is just extremely simple. We need to pray.
There's going to be no victory in our lives and no spiritual strength in our
lives without prayer. After that time in the garden, Jesus is now facing his
death and his betrayal head on. He's truly God. He's truly man. When he looked
at the cup that he's about to drink, and now he is ready after these hours in
prayer, he has prayed and received strength to do the Father's will. And he says
the hour has come. God's appointed time has come. And he steps out of the garden
to face his betrayer. We could never have done any of this. All we see here is
human weakness, frailty, betrayal. But we see the Lord Jesus drinking the cup
for those who would be incapable of facing it. He took the wrath of God
willingly. He demonstrated the great, intense love of the Father by taking the
cup that we were never able to drink. Let's pray. Lord God, as we read these
words. Lord I pray that each one of us would be reminded afresh of the love of
the Father and the sacrifice of Christ. Lord I pray that we would not trust in
our own spiritual strength, but would be people who see our ongoing need of
prayer. And Lord we are humbled and we worship because you took the punishment
that we would never be able to endure. So I pray that our hearts would be lifted
up in humility and worship now. In Jesus' name, Amen. Would you stand now and
we'll sing together.