This part of Matthew 26 continues a much more somber mood shift that has taken place as we read this gospel. They went to a place called Gethsemane which was basically an olive grove as I understand. And Jesus told the disciples to sit in a specific place and pray. Then, Jesus took his inner circle of three, Peter, James, and John, further into the garden with him. It’s really interesting to think about what comes next. Matthew says that Jesus began to be sorrowful and troubled. 

I haven’t really ever thought much about that word ‘began’ until this week. Something shifts here. Something begins to happen that had not yet happened. And it can’t be that Jesus is just now realizing he will die because he’s been saying this over and over to the disciples. It can’t be that he is just now realizing that he will be betrayed by Judas because he knew this was going to happen. 

So what began in here that is causing him so much trouble? I read the famous 18th century American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, this week on this passage and he said that the agony of the cross began in the garden. That is, the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus, who had only known perfect fellowship with the Father had begun the process of losing that fellowship and that would find its culmination on the cross. 

In Jesus’ words, he was beginning a process of drinking the cup. This moment wasn’t just the full realization of the drinking of the cup, but the beginning of it. Now, I don’t claim to know exactly what was going on inside of Jesus, but I do think that a process had started here in this garden, according to his human nature, and that he can feel things changing fast with his perfect relationship with the Father. In Luke’s account, Jesus actually began to sweat drops of blood which we know can happen under extreme stress or shock. 

Jesus prays three times that this cup could be removed from him. So, what is this cup? Why does he have to drink it? And why does it matter to us? Those are the three questions I want to answer from this passage. 

1. What is the cup? 

The cup is the cup of God’s wrath. All throughout the Old Testament, the cup is associated with the wrath of God. Let me read you a few verses. 8  wFor in the hand of the LORD there is xa cup with foaming wine, ywell mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall zdrain it down to the dregs. - Psalm 75:8

22  Thus says your Lord, the LORD, your God ywho pleads the cause of his people: “Behold, I have taken from your hand rthe cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more; - Isaiah 51:22

15 Thus the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: z“Take from my hand this cupof the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.16 They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of athe sword that I amsending among them.” - Jer 25:15

31 You have gone the way of your sister; atherefore I will give bhercup into your hand. 32 Thus says the Lord GOD: “You shall drink your sister’s cup that is deep and large; you shall be laughed at and held in derision, for it contains much; 33  you will be filled with cdrunkenness and sorrow. cA cup of horror and desolation, the cup of dyour sister Samaria; - Ez 23:31-33

The cup is the wrath of God. But, we have a big problem when we come to the idea of God’s wrath in our 21st century culture. If you follow the evolution of God’s wrath in our Western culture the pendulum shift has been pretty shocking. You had Jonathan Edward’s in the 18th century preaching arguably the most famous sermon ever preached in America titled “Sinners In The Hands of an Angry God” where he said, “Those without Christ dangle over the flames of hell, like a spider over a flame.” Fast forward to Dale Carnegie’s positive message of winning friends and influencing people and Joel Osteen who basically says just be good and whatever faith you’re in will work for you.

The Presbyterian Church in the USA (often just called the PCUSA) wanted to add the song In Christ Alone into their new hymnal, but they wanted to change the lyrics. Instead of using the original line of “Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied” they wanted to modify it to say “Till on that cross as Jesus died, the love of God was magnified.” They didn’t want anything in their hymnal about God’s wrath. But, the authors of that song didn’t allow the change. 

This shift of the 20th century happened for a number of reasons. 18th century German theological liberalism came to our country around that time. In the 60’s, immigration started pulling from a more broad part of the world. We became a more pluralistic society. The 60’s and 70’s produced skepticism of the establishment. Then, you add the 21st century value of expressive individualism to that recipe that made God’s love into an absolute affirmation of the individual and it should come as no surprise that pastors and speakers shifted away from teaching a God who hates sin to a god who just wants you to be happy. From messages based in the Bible to messages based in positivity. We have basically become a culture where the love of God is welcomed, but the holiness of God is not. 

But, the ironic thing here is that out of a desire to have a God who is loving and not wrathful, we created a concept of God that is less loving. And I will say that the idea of a God of wrath took me a while to embrace. But what helped me to embrace this is the reality that a God without wrath is a less loving God. 

Think about a judge. What if someone broke into your house and killed your loved one. That person got caught and when he was standing in front of the judge, the judge said to the accused, “You know what? I want to be a loving judge so I’m going to just let you go free.” Then, every other person that came in front of the judge got off free too. How would you feel toward that judge? Would you feel like that is a loving judge? No! He is less loving because he has thrown out justice. 

And if God were to do that, He could not be perfect because he would not be perfectly just. We all have a sense of justice in us. A sense of what is right and wrong and what should happen when people do grievously wrong things. So why would we have that value for our justice systems here on earth, but not for God’s? Because we are the accused defendant. Do you know the one person in that analogy I gave who loves the idea of the judge letting him off? The accused defendant. 

And it’s interesting to me how Peter, James, and John kind of epitomize the human plight. Jesus asks them to stand watch for him while he prays at this horrible hour and they fall asleep. They couldn’t do it. So, Jesus comes back and very clearly says, “Guys, could you not watch with me for one hour?” Then, he says to watch and pray and they fall asleep again! This is when Jesus says, “The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.” This means we know what we should do, but don’t do it. We know what we shouldn’t do and we do it. The disciples are the perfect picture of what is wrong with all of us. 

All of us are born with a disease that makes us want to be kind of god. We want to live our lives the way we want. We don’t want to hear anyone say that our disobedience against God merits any kind of wrath. And because we know it’s true, but don’t want to hear it, we have created other ways for us to be good with God. We have created narratives like God wants me to be happy or God wouldn’t judge anyone, he’s all about love, or as long as you’re a good person, God’s going to be good with you or God’s is going to be chill with whatever as long as you’re sincere. All of these narratives minimize our sin and God’s holiness. And the very logical conclusion to taking God’s hatred of sin out of his character is a world that bends around the desires of the human individual. 

Not only does this kind of thinking create an idea of God that is less perfect and less loving, it also undermines everything Jesus is doing here! The question for the PCUSA if they were to make that change to the song In Christ Alone is if there is no wrath, how was the love of God magnified in Jesus going to the cross? You take away the wrath of God and none of this makes sense. We are left with a pointless gospel and a God who bends to our wills and desires. And that god will never make everything right in the world. 

The cup Jesus must drink is the cup of God’s wrath. Then, the next question is why? Why does he need to drink it? 

1. Why does he have to drink it? 

He drinks it so we don’t have to. One of the questions people have asked is why is Jesus so whiny about dying when so many other people have gone to their deaths with such courage and confidence? One of my favorite examples is the 2nd century bishop of Smyrna named Polycarp. He was a disciple of the Apostle John and was martyred around 155 AD. Before he was burned at the stake in the middle of a Roman amphitheater, he was given the chance to deny Christ and save his life. He looked at the Roman Proconsul overseeing his execution and said, “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He has done me not wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King and my Savior.” Then, as the flames were lit and burning, he prayed, “I bless you, Lord, because You have counted me worthy of this day and hour, that I might receive a portion among the martyrs in the cup of Christ.” 

So, why is Polycarp so bold and Jesus seems so scared? Because Jesus drank the cup for Polycarp. For Polycarp, death was a doorway to the perfect and eternal presence of God. For Jesus, death was a doorway to God’s wrath. There is this idea that hell is the eternal absence of God, but that is not accurate. Hell is the absence of God’s love, mercy, and grace, but the eternal presence of his wrath. And that is what Jesus was not only about to take on the cross, but somehow had just begun that journey. 

If you get rid of a God who has wrath and hell, you have a god who loves us in general, but that’s not as loving as the God of the Bible, who takes that wrath for us. If you have a God who brings his wrath on all of humanity, you have a God who is just, but not super loving. If you have a God who sets his general love on humanity and overlooks sin, you have a God who is kind of loving, but not just. Only in the God of the Bible do you have a God who is fully just and fully loving and the only way this can happen is if his love is costly. And it was. If you want a God who is truly loving, you can’t look anywhere other than Jesus. 

Richard Neibuhr wrote a book called The Nature of Destiny in Man critiquing the softening of Biblical theology in the West and in it he summed up what we see spreading throughout our country, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” 

One of the unexpected blessings of the past year and a half was how many people I got to share the gospel with on podcasts. Because of the nature of my book, I’ve had very left wing interviews like NPR, The New York Times, and The Atlantic and I’ve had very right wing interviews like Ben Shapiro and Vivek Ramaswamy. And the common theme in the way the left and the right misunderstand the gospel is the same misunderstanding of the PCUSA in the conversation surrounding the song In Christ Alone. They embrace this idea that there is no wrath in God, but Jesus’ death is still somehow a display of his love toward us. And my response is, “How so?” If I were standing at the overlook high up on a mountain with my family and I looked at them and said, “Guys, can I show you how much I love you?” And I jumped off the cliff. What love would that communicate? None!! 

But, if one of my kids were about to fall off and the only way to prevent that was for me to fall in their place, that would communicate great love. In the same way, Jesus died to drink the cup of God’s wrath in our place. If not for this cup, this passage and the rest of the gospel make no sense. No love would be displayed, but just lunacy. 

People have often criticized the Bible by saying the God of the Old Testament can’t also be the same God in the New Testament because the Old Testament God has so much wrath and the New Testament God doesn’t seem to. But, God in the Old Testament has a lot of patience that we see over and over again and God in the New Testament has a lot of wrath, but we don’t tend to see it because it went to Jesus in our place. 

Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath from the Garden to the cross so we would never have to. That is the beauty of the cross. I mean, just think about how crazy it is that a cross would ever become the symbol of a religion. The cross was one of the worst methods of execution ever devised. But, that cross became a representation of what we deserve and didn’t get. It became a picture of our hope. It symbolized a God who is perfectly just, punishing all sin, and perfectly loving, taking that sin on Himself for all who put their faith in Him. 

So, I want to finish simply by asking why this matters for us. 

1. Why this matters for us

It matters for many reasons, but I’ll give you four. First, because Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath for us, we can finally rest. We don’t have to worry about having a good heart to be good with God because we don’t. We don’t have to worry about doing more good than bad to be right with God because we can’t. We don’t have to worry about doing the Ten Commandments to be accepted by God because we are unable. We can rest from climbing the spiritual mountain to earn God’s favor because Jesus drank the cup for us. We don’t have to worry about earning God’s love because God loved us first and Jesus drank the cup to bring that love into our hearts. 

Second, we can find joy in obedience. The wrath being removed allows us to find joy in our obedience instead of seeking joy through obedience. There is a subtle but important difference. I heard a true story some years ago about a high school girl who qualified for AP English. She was terrified of this class. She couldn’t eat or sleep and she finally went to her dad and said she just couldn’t do it. She asked if she could get out of that class and her dad said she could and she went to her teacher and the teacher said something she didn’t expect. He asked her if she were guaranteed an A in that class, would she take it? She paused and said, “Well, if I’m guaranteed an A, then yes, of course I’d take it.” The teacher said, “Ok, the A is yours. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

She then went on to earn the highest grade in that class. You see, once the threat of failure was removed and the guarantee of success, she was freed up to work hard…and enjoy it. The Christian life is similar. Because the threat of the cup has been drunk already for us and because the guarantee of Jesus’ righteousness has been given to us, we are freed up to live a life of obedience, not because we have to, but because we get to. We get to enjoy the love of God more through our obedience to Him in this life. His love is already permanently on us and it is in our obedience that we love Him back and bask in that love. 

Third, because of the cup, we can forgive each other. We can read this passage and think, “Gosh these stupid disciples, they couldn’t even give Jesus one hour.” But when we see that that’s us. All of us, and we see the ways we fail Jesus, but he is still faithful to drink the cup for us, it should give us a well of forgiveness to draw from when others fall asleep on us. We are simply extending a mere fraction of the grace we have received from Jesus. And like obedience, it’s not that we have to, but we get to. 

When we forgive, we unlock depths of Jesus’ grace in our own lives we didn’t even know existed. This is why we say that forgiveness is more of a gift to you than to the other person. I had the opportunity to forgive someone this week after years of tension and strife and you know who got the greater gift between the two of us? Me. I got to feel the grace God had already given me in Jesus even more deeply. 

Fourth, we can have hope because of the cup. We can know that as hard as things get here on earth, that a home has been established for us where we will know no sin, where anxiety, depression, and loneliness will never rear their heads again. Where we will be with our Savior for all eternity. 

We can have hope because the sin that began in one garden was beginning to be fixed in another garden. We can have hope because Adam disobeyed God regarding a tree which brought sin into the world. But the second Adam, Jesus, obeyed God by being strung up on a different tree, the cross, and in so doing, took us out from under the curse of sin. Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath so now, we come to the table and drink freely of the cup of his grace, mercy, and love.