the following sermon was delivered
on Sunday evening March 2nd 1997 at the Trinity Baptist Church
of Montville, New Jersey. Now will you turn with me in
your Bibles please to the 15th chapter of the gospel according
to Mark, Mark chapter 15. 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, And they bring Him
unto the place Golgotha, which is being interpreted the place
of a skull. and they offered him wine mingled
with myrrh but he received it not. 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. 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. 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 hearts
that run out in faith and in felt affection towards Him. Speak to us then, we plead, in
His worthy name. 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 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 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. 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 dark
drop. In the very accurate words of
the hymn writer Anne 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. O Christ was full for thee, but
thou hast drained the last dark drop. Tis empty now 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. And I say it is the cup 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. 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 passage in Matthew 27, 34, it is described
as wine mingled with gall. 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. 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 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
31, verses 6 and 7. In Proverbs 31, verses 6 and
7, we read, 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, 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, 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 concentrated narcotics is
expressed as an act of compassion to alleviate human suffering
and agony. But if it had been concocted
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. Verse 19, and they, the soldiers,
smote his head. Verse 20, and when they had mocked
him. Verse 21, and they, the soldiers,
compelled 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. 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? Well, remember, these were experienced,
hardened soldiers, perhaps those who were somewhat expert in execution
by crucifixion. And they had seen first-hand
what some of us have only seen and heard about second-hand,
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,
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 criminals the drug 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? 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 of stretching out His hands upon the transverse
of the cross, and pounding the nails into His wrists, and fixing
His feet upon that cross, and all that went with the act of
crucifixion, it could well be that the cup was offered to Him
as a matter of convenience to make their job easier as they
were about to impale Him upon the cross. Well, having raised
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 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 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
internal pain and agony just a short time before in the garden
when He said, 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 exulted or rejoiced in the Spirit and said, I thank
Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Our Lord openly wept
when weeping was appropriate. 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. Furthermore, because our Lord
was not infected with masochism, The thought that the gaining
of pleasure 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. And may 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. 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, 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 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 that our Lord assumes at Golgotha. No drug wine is
needed to subdue me. I consciously, deliberately,
voluntarily lay down my life. And his refusal of the cup of
the grung 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 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. 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 articulate 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. 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 felon? No, no semi-delirious Christ
says, today you will be with Me in paradise. 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, 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 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 as 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 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 towards His own. Immerse yourself on you 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, 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 the
end. His thirst for your salvation
and mine was so intense that He refused in any way to quench
His thirst with the drug wine. What but His infinite, indescribable,
what but His love to His own caused Him to refuse that cup. 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 that there
is no unsatisfied wrath or unrequited justice towards your sin. 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? 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, 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, 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, fully drank it in refusing the cup of drugged
wine. The hymn writers have captured
this beautifully when in our hymn number 94 in stanza 3, In number 94 in stanza 3, this
imagery is set before us. What air my God ordains is right. Though now this cup in drinking
may bitter seem to my faint heart, I take it all unshrinking. How can I take it unshrinking? even when its bitterness sets
my teeth on edge, because I know whatever is in that cup, there
is not a tram of God's unrequited wrath. 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 and draining its last dark drop while
refusing the second cup. Shame on us that we're constantly
spitting out anything that isn't as sweet as Kool-Aid. Shame on
us when we spit out and are irritated and question the heart of God
when He puts something to our lips that is not saccharine sweet
like Kool-Aid. God have mercy on our pathetic,
self-centered, soft unwillingness to undergo 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. 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 which, if left untended, would destroy us. And then, having considered what
we say to the child 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. or a cup of drugged
wine. You may now dull and drug your
conscience with the drugged wine of an obsession with music, an
abuse of alcohol, 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 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 creature, when the Almighty comes forth in righteous fury
to deal with me in my sins? 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. 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
Savior who says that what He did in drinking the bitter 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. 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, that You were so determined that all would know
that no one was taking Your life from 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 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 afresh in submissive faith to drink
whatever cup you put to our lips, knowing that it is only for our
ultimate 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 with us, by
the Spirit, draw out our hearts' 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.