This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, September 8th, 1985, at the Trinity Baptist Church
in Montville, New Jersey. Now will you turn with me, please,
to the 26th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. Matthew's
Gospel and the 26th chapter and follow as I read beginning
with verse 36 and concluding the reading with verse 46. Then cometh Jesus with them unto
a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto his disciples, Sit
here while I go yonder, and pray. And he took with him Peter and
the two sons of Zebedee and began to be sorrowful and sore troubled. Then said he unto them, My soul
is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Abide here and watch
with me. And 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. Nevertheless, not as I will,
but as you will. And he comes unto the disciples
and finds them sleeping and says unto them, says unto Peter, What,
could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you
enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak." Again, a second time, He went away and
prayed, saying, My Father, if this cannot pass away except
I drink it, Thy will be done. And He came again and found them
sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And he left them again,
and went away, and prayed a third time, saying again the same words. Then cometh he to the disciples,
and saith unto 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. He is at hand that betrays me. Now let us again ask the help
of God as we seek to meditate upon what is, in my estimation,
one of the most profoundly mysterious yet moving portions in all of
God's written record of the life and the suffering and the death
and subsequent resurrection of His own beloved Son. Let us pray. Surely our Father, if you said
to Moses by a burning bush, put off your shoes for the place
where you stand is holy ground, we would in spirit take off our
shoes before we tiptoe, as it were, to behold in Gethsemane
the agony of our Lord Jesus. We confess that in the contemplation
of this portion of your word, we stand upon unusually holy
ground, ground that absorbed the blood and sweat of our Savior,
ground that felt the weight of his prostrate body as he agonized
in prayer. O Lord, by the Holy Spirit who
gave us this record of his agony, Give us eyes to see and at least
in some little measure to enter in and to understand what it
was that He was bearing for us. Hear our prayer and so send the
Spirit to bear witness to Christ that our hearts will be melted
before Him and the sight of His agony for us and for our salvation. we ask in His name, Amen. As we seek in the next half hour
to prepare our hearts for coming to the Supper of Remembrance,
I want you to take this time and with me to engage in what
we can only call as a brief glimpse into the mystery of Gethsemane. In this scene that I've read
in your hearing, recorded in Matthew's Gospel and also recorded
in Mark 14 and Luke chapter 22, we have that which Hugh Martin,
the great Scottish theologian and preacher, has called the
shadow of Calvary. In his classic work seeking to
expound the mystery of Gethsemane, he has entitled that work, The
Shadow of Calvary. And it's a very appropriate title
because if you have any familiarity with the Gospel records, you
will note that in all of the events recorded when our Lord
was actually upon the cross, There is only one of the so-called
seven sayings of the cross in which the Lord Jesus gives us
any definitive insight into the state of His own mind and soul
upon the cross. From the cross He speaks the
word of pardon to the thief. He speaks the word of goodwill
to the very ones who impaled Him upon the cross. Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do. He speaks His word of
triumph. It is finished. He speaks His
word of commitment. Father, into Thy hands I commit
my spirit, but only in the words, My God, My God, why have You
forsaken Me? are we given an insight into
something of the travail of His own soul as He bears the sins
of His people. But here in the incident recorded
in Gethsemane, the Holy Spirit has given us a fuller revelation
of the inner travail of the Lord Jesus as He contemplates what
it will mean for Him who knew no sin to become sin on behalf
of his people. And so, in a very real sense,
before the cross was actually planted there upon Golgotha,
this dark but well-defined shadow from the cross is cast backwards
into Gethsemane. And it is for that reason that
Hugh Martin entitled his exposition of this passage, The Shadow of
Calvary, for in that shadow we are actually given insights into
the mystery of the cross that are not given in the actual account
of the cross itself. Throughout this entire passage,
language is brought before us that is vigorous, strong, and
yet language which in some ways can only be described as shocking
and pathetic language. In verse 37 we read that he began
to be sorrowful and sore troubled. Verse 38 tells us that he confessed
to his own disciples that his soul was exceeding sorrowful
even to the point of being crushed to death there in Gethsemane. Furthermore, we have the record
in verse 39 that with no physical cross upon his back to press
him to the ground in weakness, there was such a weight upon
his spirit that he literally fell upon his face. And in the
tenses used in Mark's account, it's the picture of a man who
falls upon his face as we have sometimes seen in the proverbial
desert traveler who's come almost to the end of his life and he
staggers to his feet and takes a step or two in the burning
sand and then falls upon his face again. Lies prostrate, struggles
to his feet, takes a few steps and falls again The tense of
the verb used in Mark's account gives us that very picture. It
was not a once-for-all prostration, a once-for-all falling, but there
was this repetition of rising to the feet and falling under
the weight of his soul and in prostration, pouring out his
heart into the ear of his father. And then Luke adds that strange
statement in chapter 22 and verse 44 of his account of this incident,
words that none of us can fully understand and I certainly am
not prepared to interpret or even to exegete. I simply read
them. And being in an agony, he prayed
more earnestly and his sweat became as it were great drops
of blood falling down upon the ground. Whether the sweat was
actually mingled with blood or whether the sweat congealed as
blood, this much we know from the language, so intense was
the spiritual agony that there were even abnormal physical manifestations
in the body of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Then perhaps the
greatest agony and mystery of the passage is to be found in
that we have a record of something nowhere else found in the record
of the life of Jesus, where the holy, pure, submissive, sanctified
human will of Jesus is with importunity pleading that there might be
a bypassing of what He knows to be the will of God. O my Father,
if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. If this cup cannot
pass away except I drink it, Thy will be done. and it would be impossible in
the time allotted even to begin to expound the entire passage. And all I propose to do after
this general introduction is to focus your attention upon
that which obviously was the focus of all of this trauma which
our Lord experienced. The sorrow and the sore troubling,
the sorrow even unto death, the falling prostrate upon the ground,
the pleading, if possible, that there would be a change in the
will of God, all of this focused upon that which our Lord calls
in this passage, the cup. The cup. The cup. The cup. My Father, if it be
possible, verse 39, let this cup pass away, nevertheless not as
I will, but as thou wilt." When he prays the second time, verse
42, he says, if this, understood again, the cup, if this cannot
pass away except I drink it, the image of the cup again, thy
will be done. And then we are told that he
left them again, verse 44, and prayed a third time, saying again
the same words. In each of the thrice-repeated
petitions, it is this issue of the cup that precipitates the
agony of our Lord. It is the contemplation of the
cup, whatever it is, that causes him to be prostrate upon the
ground in such agony that either sweat mingled with blood or congealed
as blood and dropped from his brow and from the rest of his
physical frame. It was this whole issue of the
cup, the cup, the cup, three times central to his agonizing
prayer is the issue. of the cup. And so the question
forces itself upon the consciousness of every man, woman, boy or girl
who reads the passage or listens to it read with any attention,
what was this cup that it should cause that which is described
as exceeding sorrowful even unto death? What was the cup What
was in the cup that caused our Lord in the thrice-repeated prayer
to plead, if at all possible, the cup might pass from Him? Well, we know from the analogy
of Scripture, we know from the subsequent experience of our
Lord, that under the imagery of the cup is nothing less than
our Lord's actual experience of taking the unmixed wrath of
God due to the sins of his people and so absorbing that wrath into
his own soul that all of the righteous claims of heaven against
his sinful people will be fully exhausted and completely satisfied. In the language of Hugh Martin,
who seeks to answer that question, what is the cup? Here is the
description. That cup is the 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 on the cross, the withdrawal of all comfortable
views and influences, and the present consciousness of the
anger of God against him as the substitute of his people, a person
laden with iniquity. These were the elements mingled
in the cup of trembling, which was now to be put into his hands,
and the prospect caused him deadly sorrow. The cup was nothing less
than the Father presenting to the consciousness of Jesus in
a way that hitherto He had never done what it would mean for Him
literally to exhaust the wrath of God unmixed with mercy against
the sins of a great multitude whom no man can number. out of
every kindred, tribe, and tongue, and nation, and people. To use the very language of the
book of the Revelation which picks up this theme and imagery
of the cup, we are told in Revelation 14.10 that those who worship
the beast and his image shall drink of the wine of the wrath
of God which is prepared unmixed, undiluted in the cup of His anger. The wine of the wrath of God
prepared unmixed in the cup of His anger. You have a similar
phrase in chapter 16 and verse 19b, to give unto her the cup
of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. And the cup which
was presented to our Lord in Gethsemane was none other than
that particular cup. It was the vessel full of the
unmixed vengeance of God against the sins of those for whom Christ
had become surety and substitute. And though he had spoken calmly
and clearly, particularly from Caesarea Philippi onward, that
the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things, and be
rejected, and be killed, and the third day rise from the dead,
I say it reverently He spoke those things while His own soul
was distanced from what it would actually mean to drink the cup. But here in Gethsemane, the Father
brings so near to the Son that cup, that cauldron of His unleashed
fury against sin, brings, as it were, so near to our Lord
that he can smell its putrid smell. He can behold its fierce
and frightening and awesome specter before him. And when he sees
it, everything in his holy humanity recoils. And it would have been
sin for him not to recoil. For a holy creature to contemplate
drinking into the depths of his soul the wrath of a holy God
with indifference would be the height of impunity. It would
show lack of respect for the majesty and the awesomeness and
the fierceness of the anger of Almighty God. It was virtuous
in the human soul of our Lord to recoil from that cup, for
there was no misunderstanding of that cup as the subsequent
cry from Golgotha reveals, that as he contemplated the forfeiture
of all the felt approval of his father, as he contemplated what
it would mean to feel, as it were, the fiery indignation of
his father against the sins of his people. Running along the
track of every faculty of soul and body, he was not overestimating
the reality, for when the reality came, it is that which forced
from his soul the cry, have you abandoned me? Why have you abandoned me? Why have you plunged me into
the darkness of no felt warmth of the light of your countenance?
No felt sense of your approbation and smile and approval? My God, why have you abandoned
me?" And it was in Gethsemane that our blessed Lord, facing
that cup, in His holy human soul, recoiled and said as an act of
virtue, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass. Then his prayer moves into a
new dimension when he says, if it cannot pass, pass it must,
if any sinner is to be saved, saved righteously, saved justly,
saved in a way that leaves no tarnish upon the throne of Almighty
God. If it cannot pass, except I drink
it, not my will, but thine be done. And as you read the Gospel
record, you will know that He came forth from the agony and
the travail and the conquest of Gethsemane with a majestic
calmness that is not broken until the cry of dereliction. He goes
forth from this point with no murmur, as the lamb before her
shearers is dumb, so He opens not His mouth And there, upon
the cross, the Father answers the prayer. Not my will, but
Thine be done. I embrace Thy will. And if Thy
will means that I must drink that cup to the last dark drop,
drink it I must, drink it I shall, drink it I will. Out of love
to You, my Father, and love to the sheep for whom I am to lay
down my life." And there upon the cross, the cup met Him again. And this time it met Him, not
held in the Father's hands in prospect, but put into His hands. And He was told to drink, and
He drank, and He drank, and He drank, until when He came to
the dregs of that cup, The agony experienced rung from Him that
cry, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? But in a short while, the Father
let Him see that the cup was empty, and it is then that He
cried, Tetelestai. It is finished! The last drop in that cup was
drained, and then not expiring in weakness, but with a shout
of triumph he cries, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. Now that in brief is the message
of that cup. What does it say to us as we
stand and sit on the threshold of coming to the Lord's table?
Well, let me in closing bring out three very simple but oh
so vital lines of application. First of all, a word to you men,
women, boys, and girls who are yet in your sins, who have never
fled to Christ as your sin bearer. I call upon you in this passage
to view the fiery indignation of God against you in your state
of uncleansed sinfulness. If the Lord Jesus viewed the
cup of God's wrath undiluted with mercy, the fierceness of
His anger with no dilution of compassion or mercy, pure justice
in the cup, My sinner friend, what makes you think you will
escape in the day of judgment? If the Son of God did not escape
the cup, when bearing sin vicariously, when becoming the sinner in position
before the bar of God, voluntarily and willingly as the substitute
of his people, if God's anger was not diluted for him, but
caused him to stumble before the sight of it, to cry that
he might avoid it. What will you do, sinner, when
you go before God and a cup is held before you, and it is God's
wrath against your sin? every lie, every profanation of His name,
every thought and deed of lust, every act of disobedience to
parents, every feeling of jealousy and bitterness and anger and
wrath, every word of deceit, every word of bitterness. My
sinner friend, in the name of God, will you be able to take
that cup? the incarnate God staggered in
Gethsemane before it. No wonder scripture says in that
day men will cry for rocks and mountains to hide them from the
face of Him that sits upon the throne and from the wrath of
the Lamb. Oh my sinner friend, don't trifle
with God's offered mercy in the Lord Jesus The Father takes sin
seriously, so seriously that He puts the cup of imputed sin
and therefore of imputed wrath and judgment before His own beloved
Son until it almost crushes His Son to death at the very sight
of it. My soul is exceeding sorrowful
even unto death, but for you it will crush you, and that with
eternal death. Oh, I plead with you, by the
sweat drops of Gethsemane and the blood spilt upon Calvary,
my sinner friend, repent and flee to the Lord Jesus. Child
of God, as we contemplate coming to the Lord's table, the cup
of Gethsemane contains a profound message to us. First of all,
it contains for us a word that ought to produce the deepest
conviction on the one hand and the greatest comfort on the other.
You see, the scripture tells us that He bore our sins, plural,
particular, individual. He bore our sins in His own body
up to the tree. That cup was full of the wrath
of God unmixed with mercy, not simply against the sins of His
people generically, facelessly, but the particular sins of all
of His people particularly. And though the hymn is speaking
of Calvary, it can be applied to Gethsemane, you who think
of sin but lightly. Nor suppose its evil great here
may view its nature rightly. Here its guilt may estimate. Child of God, what sin are you
rationalizing about sitting here tonight? What sin are you excusing? What sin are you justifying? What sin are you covering over
with euphemisms? What sin are you presently in
this very hour excusing? Because everyone does it! Is
it sins connected with the tongue? Is it sins of the heart? Sins
of attitude? Sins of the eyes? Sins of the
ears? Sins of the hands? Sins of the
sexual organs? Whatever they be! child of God,
go to Gethsemane and look at your sin in that cup! Look at
your sin in that cup! See your sin in that cup! And I defy anyone in whose heart
grace exists to go on rationalizing his sin while gazing into that
cup, excusing the sin while gazing into the cup. gazing into the
cup where God gives us His true estimation of that sin, even
in the life of a believer. But the cup that caused our Lord
to quake and tremble and fall prostrate in an agony of soul
should not only bring conviction to us as His children, but it
should bring comfort to us. My soul is exceeding sorrowful
even unto death. And that sorrow did culminate
in the wages of sin which is death. Death and the curse were
in our cup. O Christ was full for thee. Thou hast drained the last dark
drop. It is empty now for me. bitter
cup, love, drank it up! Now blessings draft for me. Child of God, can you rejoice
in full and free forgiveness? If you find it difficult to do
so, go to Gethsemane. Behold your Lord trembling, staggering
before the cup Then behold Him upon the cross, drinking it until
its bitterness rings from His soul, the cry of dereliction. Then in His triumphant cry it
is finished. Believe that the cup is empty. There will be no wrath bearing
twice. God has punished your sins in
the person of your substitute. Therefore the cup we take tonight
is called a cup of blessing. It is a cup unmixed with wrath
because His cup was unmixed with mercy. A cup unmixed with wrath,
dear people. There is no wrath in that cup
we drink because there was nothing but wrath in the cup that He
drank. And then in conclusion, there
is a final word of application that must grow out of Gethsemane
and the cup. It's the application forced upon
us by the language of Hebrews 5 where it says of our Lord who
in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers with
strong cryings and tears and was heard in that he feared a
reference to Gethsemane though he were a son yet learned the
obedience by the things which he suffered, and being made perfect,
he became unto all that obey him the author of eternal salvation. What are we to learn from Gethsemane
and the cup? We are not only learned to be
convicted, to see sin in its true light, to be comforted,
but child of God, it is here that we learn the principle of
obedience. Everything in the spotless, stainless
human soul of our Lord had an aversion to that cup, and that
aversion was not sinful. And we learn the principle of
obedience when in the path of obedience God brings to us that
which in and of itself provokes and evokes in us nothing but
a sense of aversion. I cannot make that decision. I cannot break that relationship. I cannot make that issue right. I cannot humble myself in that
circumstance. It would mean the death of me.
My friend then die and live. The great lesson of Gethsemane
according to Hebrews 5 is that this is how the Son of God learned
obedience. If the spotless Son of God had
to learn the principle of obedience in such a context, do you think
we will be exempt from a similar context with all of the remaining
deviation and corruption within us? And without in any way irreverently
speaking of our own personal Gethsemane or anything of that
sort, the principle is nonetheless there in Scripture. And I ask
you, child of God, what is it, sitting here tonight, that causes
you to say, O God, anything but that? Though I see the principles
of Your Word leading me to that, to that decision, to that commitment,
to the breaking of that relationship, to the establishment of that
discipline, to the making right that wrong, it will publicly
shame me. It may bring me into total financial
ruin. I know the Word of God points
that way, but everything in me says, Oh God, anyway but that. when you've said, not my will
but thine be done, that you've begun to learn the principle
of obedience. According to Hebrews 5, 9, Jesus
went through what he went through to have a people whose salvation
comes to light in the impartation of a similar spirit of obedience. He became the author of eternal
salvation unto all that obey Him. Our obedience does not secure
the salvation His drinking of the cup did, but the faith that
embraces the provision of His drinking puts our feet into the
way of obedience. So as we come to the table, what
better time to say, not in the generic, not in the broad and
general, but in the specific where God is pressing your conscience
even tonight. Not my will, but Thine. Be done. May God help us so to
come as we gather to the table of our Lord. Let us pray. O our Father, we confess with
shame that we feel the dullness of our hearts that we can contemplate
even for a few moments the record of our Lord's agony and not have
our hearts utterly shattered and broken and the fountain of
our tears opened and flowing copiously What a hard-hearted
people we are by nature. Oh, soften and melt our hearts
in the contemplation of our Lord in Gethsemane, that dark but
well-defined shadow of Calvary. And as we come to the table of
remembrance, oh, may we so come as to feed upon Him who, loving
His own, loved them even unto the end. Oh Father, seal your
word to our hearts and continue with us as we wait in your presence. Amen.