The Cup, Matthew 26:36-46

In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp explores the meaning of Jesus' death and the significance of the cross. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the cross to grasp the core of Christianity. Pastor Aaron discusses Jesus' agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and the significance of the cup that was put before him. He explains that Jesus willingly drank the cup and paid the ransom for sinners. This act highlights the courage and obedience of Jesus, as well as his love and understanding of humanity. He concludes by urging us to embrace the love and sacrifice of Jesus and accept him as their Savior.

Takeaways

• The cross is central to Christianity and must be understood to grasp the core of the faith.
• Jesus willingly chose to drink the cup of God's judgment and wrath on behalf of sinners.
• Jesus' death on the cross demonstrates his love, courage, and obedience to God.
• By accepting Jesus as Savior, individuals can be freed from the curse of sin and experience forgiveness and redemption.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
01:10 Reading Matthew 26:36-46
04:30 The Significance of Jesus' Death
05:27 The Passion Narrative in Matthew
06:25 Jesus' Agony in the Garden
07:49 The Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Transfiguration
09:44 The Authenticity of the Gospel Accounts
10:47 The Reality of Jesus
12:16 The Testimony of the New Testament
13:59 Jesus' Humanity and Divinity
16:08 Finding Common Ground with Jesus
19:43 The Meaning of the Cup
20:44 The Cup of God's Judgment and Wrath
22:12 Jesus' Obedience and Ransom
25:05 Jesus' Perfect Obedience and Righteousness
26:31 Jesus' Love and Substitution
28:46 Jesus' Courage and Choice
30:23 Jesus' Agony and Courage
34:33 The Love and Persistence of Jesus
38:47 Embracing the Love and Sacrifice of Jesus

Creators & Guests

Host

Aaron Shamp

Lead Pastor of Redeemer City Church

What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?

Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.

Aaron Shamp (00:01)
then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane. And he told the disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray. Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. He said to them,

I am deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake with me." Going a little farther, he fell face down and prayed, my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. He asked Peter, so you couldn't stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray.

so that you won't enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Again a second time he went away and prayed, my father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done. And he came again and found them sleeping because they could not keep their eyes open. After leaving them, he went away again and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, are you still sleeping and resting?

See, the time is near. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let's go. See, my betrayer is near." In this series, what we're doing is we are considering what is the meaning of the cross? What is the meaning of Jesus' death? Last week, we looked at the story of the, as it's often called, the Last Supper. It was actually a Passover meal that Jesus and his disciples celebrated together on the evening before all of this began.

the betrayal, arrest, trial, and crucifixion. They celebrated the Passover together. And in the Passover meal, Jesus raises up the bread and he raises up the cup and he says, this is my body, this is my blood. Talking about his death that was about to come. And he says, I want you to do this as often as you meet together in remembrance of me. Now that's significant because what other event in the life of Jesus.

Did Jesus himself command us to always remember, to always commemorate? It wasn't his birth. We celebrate Christmas, right? Amen. I love Christmas. We celebrate Advent. We celebrate Christmas. Love it. But Jesus didn't tell us to do anything to commemorate his birth. Jesus didn't tell us to do anything to perpetually remember any of his miracles. He didn't tell us to do anything even to commemorate his resurrection, but his death, he said.

Do this, speaking of the meal, that's why we continue to celebrate the Lord's Supper or communion today. He says, do this in remembrance of me. He wanted us to remember his death. There is something so deeply meaningful about the death of Jesus that he wanted us to grasp. Because at the core of what it means to be a Christian, at the core of what it means to have a Christian consciousness and identity, and to understand what Christianity is all about, you have to get the cross.

You have to understand the cross. If you do not understand the cross, you will not understand the rest of Christianity. In fact, nothing else in Christianity will substitute for the place of the cross in being able to understand the whole either. It's not as though you can go and just grasp one other aspect and then that'll make sense of everything. No, the cross is what you need to make sense of it all. And the disciples hung to this. They clung to it. Even at the cost of persecution and mockery.

They continue to cling tight to the cross of Jesus Christ and proclaim the cross and his death, though it brought incredible shame and difficulty for them because of the way that crucifixions were viewed in this first century time period. Why did they do that? Because of the meaning of it. And so what we're doing in this series is we are looking at the meaning of the cross of Christ. And as I said before, we're doing that by looking at the passion narrative here.

in the Gospel of Matthew. And so we're going to look at that today through this story of Jesus's prayer in the Garden of the Gethsemane before he is betrayed. And we're going to look at a few phrases in this passage, all phrases of, well, no, not the first one, but all phrases in this passage that signify to us the meaning of what's going on here and the meaning of the cross of Christ. So the first phrase we're going to look at is how it says, deeply grieved to the point of death.

Then we're going to look at Jesus's phrase, let this cup pass from me. The cup is really the key to understanding this story here. And then Jesus's last statement, the time is near, get up, let's go. Those are the three phrases we're going to look at that clue us in on the meaning of what is happening here and the meaning of Jesus's death. So let's begin by looking at that first phrase that I mentioned, how it describes that Jesus, as they were coming into the garden, notice he wasn't grieved before.

Jesus knows what's coming, right? He's aware. Throughout the gospels, Jesus knows about this hour that is coming, and he seems to also have an idea, not just that the hour is coming, but when it will come. However, it's not until they go into the garden that it says he began to become deeply grieved and troubled. Many of our translations today, even the one that I read, kind of dampen down what Jesus was experiencing here.

He was in extreme agony. He was going through extreme grief here, something deep and incredibly distressing. That's what it's trying to get at by saying he was deeply grieved to the point of death. Have you ever grieved so hard that it feels like you're dying? You know, that you're falling apart, that something is breaking inside of you? Jesus was deeply grieved, began to feel this way as they were going into the garden. And he enters in,

with the three kind of inner circle of his 12 disciples. That would be Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, who were James and John. They go in and the disciples, though they do end up drifting off to sleep, get to witness this change in Jesus as they go into the garden. Now, this is interesting because if you're familiar with the story of Jesus in the Gospels, there's another point in the life of Jesus where he goes off on his own with these three guys, with Peter.

James and John, his inner circle of the disciples. And that other time that he went off away with them and they got to see something that no one else got to see was whenever they went on the Mount of Transfiguration. Do you remember that story? It says that Jesus went up on a mountain to pray and he took those three same guys with him to go up and pray. But this time, whenever they go, you know, in the Garden of Gethsemane, they are surrounded by darkness. But whenever they go up on the Mount and they see the Transfiguration, they're surrounded by a cloud of glory.

They see the glory of Jesus revealed in a way they had never seen before, like a curtain or a veil being pulled back that was hiding something that was always there. We're just hiding a kitchen back there, no glory. Well, there's food, so, you know, that's glory. But like a curtain or a veil being pulled back, they got to see something in Jesus, and it was His divine glory. And He spoke with Moses and Elijah on the mountain, and they were in complete awe.

Now contrast that with this, OK? Before it was them in a time of prayer and they saw glory, they experienced awe. Here we see not glory, but we see brokenness in Jesus. Luke describes his agony as resulting in him sweating so much that there was blood mixed in with the sweat. That's extreme distress, right? Before they saw glory, here they see brokenness. Before they were in awe,

all over what they saw, they asked, like, can we stay here? Right? Whatever they were experiencing was so incredible they did not want it to end. But here, what they don't experience, they experience sleepiness, but what they see Jesus experiencing is agony. Agony, brokenness, distress, and suffering. Now let me just submit this question to you because there's a lot of people who question the truthfulness.

of the Christian story and particularly of Jesus. Perhaps some of you here this morning question it or you might have some doubts about this whole story and say, well, you know, weren't the disciples just making up all these things? They made up this whole Christian story and gospel resurrection, the miracles, right? So that they could get this new religion going so they can maybe accumulate some influence, power, wealth for themselves. And so, you know, they created a religion. Certainly many other people throw it.

human history have done that, they've created a religion so that they might enrich themselves for some reason. There's a lot of people who say that, you know, they say people back then were more gullible than us today. And so it would have been easier to pass off all these stories. OK, let's consider that if that was their goal, if the disciples and Matthew in recording these stories was trying to just make up these things to say, look how awesome Jesus is, you should come.

join our religion. Why would they include this story?

The transfiguration story makes sense, right? Glory, divinity, all and wonder. Um, right. Some of his miracle stories, those, those make sense to a certain degree. You get to see the power of Jesus where he calms the storm, right? But why this story particularly, and remember the historical context they lived in, they lived in the middle East in the first century. They lived in an honor shame based culture, right? Uh, we, today we live in a guilt, innocence.

based culture, but theirs was much more based on honor and shame. And if you were trying to create a religion that would convince all the other people around you that they should join it and follow it, then you would prop up your central figure or your leader as just awesome, strong, invulnerable, never weak, never in distress, never confused. And in fact, when we read other literature of the time period, that's what you get. Whenever people are making up a story about someone that doesn't exist,

pretty easy to tell because they don't sound like a real person. Why would they include this story if they were trying to make up a story or religion that would actually convince people to follow? In an honor and shame based culture, to present your central figure, your leader, the one that you say is king in this light would have been shameful. It wouldn't have convinced anyone. Why would they do it? Let me tell you this. We could hypothesize all different kinds of things.

I'm going make it simple. There's only one answer that makes the most sense. The reason they told this story is because it was real. It was real. It happened. This story was real. We are reading about something in Matthew 26, 36 through 46 that actually happened that the disciples witnessed. This is real. That's the only other way that that is the best explanation that we can have for why they would have included the scholars.

Today, throughout the last 2000 years, have looked at this, recognized this, poured over the Gospels, and in this and a couple other similar circumstances, they said there is absolutely no way someone in that context trying to fabricate a narrative would have included things like this. It would have hurt their cause to include things like this. It was real. So a couple of sub points from that. First of all, this event happened. Jesus, the same Jesus who's...

divine nature and glory was revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration. The God man, whenever his divinity was incredibly revealed then, his humanity was incredibly revealed here. This happened. God was on this earth. He walked in the same dirt as you and I, breathed the same air. This happened. Do you live your daily reality?

as though Jesus, the God -man, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, who died and overcame the grave, who holds the world together by his sovereign power, that he walked on this earth.

If you believe that that happened and if you say this morning, you know, I agree, you know, we should take it a face value and say that it happened. Does your life reflect that?

It happened. Number two, something that we can imply or infer from this. Number two is that we can trust the testimony of the New Testament. We trust the testimony of the Gospels of Paul that these were people who were telling the truth. They would have had every incentive to not tell this piece of the story. But they included it because it happened and because they told the truth in the the apostle John in.

First John 1 says this, he opens his letter by saying, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, that life was revealed and we have seen it and testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. He says again, what we have seen and heard, we also declare to you.

This event happened, number two, we can trust the testimony of people who saw and heard this. Listen to John there, he's saying this wasn't a dream. This wasn't just ideas. This isn't philosophy, this is history. This is reality. These are things that happened, that we saw, that we heard, that we touched, that we smelled, and now we're telling you. The last thing, this is real. This event happened, that means we can trust the testimony of the scripture. And the last thing is this.

This person is real.

You know, it's hard to find common ground with someone who is just way better than you. Take whatever metric you want to measure that. Maybe they're way more wealthy than you. Maybe they're way more athletic than you. Maybe they're way smarter than you. Maybe they're way better looking than you. But whenever someone is just so much better, it's hard to find common ground with them. Think about the way that like,

celebrities today, whether they be movie stars or whatever else. Think about the way that they are presented to us, how whenever they are brought on camera, they are prepared so they look flawless. They have scripted lines that have been poured over and lawyers checked off on to make sure that everything is said correctly, right? You have these people there who just seem, of course we know not in reality, but they seem perfect and you think to yourself, have you ever thought like, how could I actually, if I actually got to meet this person,

How do I even like know them? They wouldn't make sense to me because I know myself like I don't look as good as them. I don't talk as good as them. I don't seem as smart as them. Definitely not as wealthy as them. There's no common ground between us. They don't even seem real. And as we all know, they're not. Right. It's all TV tricks and marketing. We recognize they're not. And when we read the stories once again of many other religious founders, they don't seem real. They're too good.

They're too strong, never fail, never weak, right? Like Superman, no weaknesses, right? Not real. But then we read about Jesus who becomes deeply grieved to the point of death, who is in agony, who is begging his father, can there be any other way? Who is asking his friends, can you stay awake with me and pray? Not only for your own selves, but we can say that Jesus is pleading with them to stay awake with him is because he needed their companionship.

These were his friends, as well as his disciples and students. In that light, that's someone who's real. And that's someone that we can relate to, that we can understand. He's not made up, he's real. And you know what else? It means we can understand him, but it means that he understands us.

He experienced weakness. He experienced distress, agony, suffering, questioning the will of God. Like, I know that this is the path that's put before me, but do I have to follow it? Can there be any other way? He experienced all that. So he gets you. Whenever you experience real pain in your life, in real suffering, you can't spend more than a week on this earth without experiencing some suffering.

or at least witnessing it, there's only, among all world religions, there is only one God who claims to not just feel bad for your suffering, but to know it, to have experienced it himself, and that's Jesus.

This is a real person who experienced fear, agony, heartbreak, weakness. It means that we can understand him, we can know him actually, and that he understands us. So in the Transfiguration, we're exposed to one of the clearest revelations of Jesus's divine glory. But here in Gethsemane, we get one of the clearest pictures of the glory of his humanity and his complex nature of how those two things work together. We see Jesus.

Broken week, like never before, but that tells us just how real the story is and how real he is and how we might know him. He might come into our life and understand us. We understand him and know that he is with us and knows our suffering. Now, as he prays, we don't get a lot of the content of his prayer here. We get just kind of some snippets. And it seems as though at the core of his prayer was he was praying, let this cup pass from me. What was causing Jesus's agony?

As I said before, they're going into the garden and as they go in, it says he begins to feel this agony, this distress. What's causing that? Right. And why is he experiencing it now? Those are two questions we're going to try to answer. Why is what's causing the agony? Well, in the core of his prayer and the content of it, he says this cup, he's talking about this cup a few times, this cup that is before him. Let it pass. Do I have to drink it? Does it have to be this way? Or can there be any other way than this cup? He's not necessarily.

His distress isn't necessarily caused by fear of death. It's not death that Jesus is afraid of, but it's something else. It's something worse. It's this cup that he's referring to. To understand this, you need to see that this isn't the first time in the Bible that we've heard of this cup. In fact, if you go back and you read a few different places in the Old Testament, there are references to a cup that God has that he pours out. And what this cup was, was the cup of God's judgment and wrath on sin.

Whenever in different places in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament, it talks about God unleashing His wrath and executing His justice, His judgment and condemnation, His curse upon the unfaithful, upon the nations that do not follow Him and submit to Him. It talks about that justice being executed as a cup being poured out, this cup of His judgment.

And then here we have Jesus in the garden, afraid, like I said, not necessarily of death, but what is causing his distress is this cup, the cup. What is he talking about? He's talking about that same cup. That cup that before has always been reserved for sinners, for the wicked, for those who have broken God's law, for those who have been unfaithful to God, for those who have worshiped in idolatry, right? For those who have chosen to follow their own authority or the authority of anything else other than the Lord.

That cup was reserved for them, the justice of God. But here we have Jesus who is presented with the cup. Why? Why does Jesus have to drink the cup? It was always for sinners. It was always for the wicked. It was always for the godless. But here's Jesus. He is, yes, the son of God, but he was also the son of God, not just entitled, but in reality, he was perfectly obedient. Perfectly obedient before the father, perfectly righteous.

He loved God and he loved others more perfectly than anyone else ever has. He obeyed God's law down to the letter. He was perfectly righteous, perfectly obedient. So why was the cup put before him? Why did he have to drink the cup? Well, why? Jesus tells us himself. There's another place in Matthew in chapter 20 where the mother,

of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come before Jesus and she asks him, will you allow my sons to sit at your right and left hand in my kingdom? And this is how Jesus responds to her and to the sons. He says, you don't know what you're asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I'm about to drink? He's referring to that same cup here. What does that cup mean? In verse 28, he tells us, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.

and to give his life as a ransom for many. What does that mean? A ransom is something that would have been paid to to a power that was holding someone captive, like like a kidnapper who holds someone and they have them trapped. And the only way to get them out of that that entrapment is to pay the ransom so they may they may be freed or slaves who are being held captive by by a power of some kind.

Right. And the only way to free them is to pay the ransom so they might be redeemed from their slavery to redeem, to set free the captives. Jesus says that the cup is coming for him and that he is going to have to drink it. But why? Not because he deserves it. We already established that he doesn't deserve the cup. But he says he is going to drink it so that he might pay the ransom for others. He is talking about people like you and I.

He's talking about people like you and I who are who are lawbreakers. Who disobey God's law, who transgress against it, people who are idolaters, who place ourselves, our wisdom, our desires and so on above our love for the Lord, that we tend to desire them. Maybe we tend to adore them. Maybe we tend to give more allegiance to them than we do to God. This is idolatry.

He's talking about people like us who, because of our law breaking, our transgression against the Lord, our idolatry, our rebellion against him and however else you want to say it, because of these things, we are slaves to sin and death. And if we are left on our own in our condition, then we will eventually pay that price in ourselves. We will die for our sins. One day that cup will be poured out on us. But Jesus says he came to pay the ransom.

for others. What does that mean? He came and he had the cup put before him. God put it before him and he had to drink that cup so that he could pay the ransom price so that you and I could be saved, so that you and I could be freed, could be delivered, redeemed from our captivity to sin and death. What Jesus did is he came and he stood in the place that should have been ours. He paid the debt that should have been ours to pay.

But we never could have, right? We would have died in paying that debt. Instead, Jesus comes and he stands in our place. Since we do not have the means to pay for it, he pays the ransom. This is why the cup of God's wrath and judgmental sin was placed before him and he had to drink it so that by his drinking it, we might be saved from that cup.

He drank it on our behalf, for us. I said this last week, I'm probably gonna say it every week, you will not get Christianity, you will not get the cross until you get this, that he did it in your place. He didn't do it just to prove his love. Like if you didn't need redemption, if we weren't slaves to sin and needed a ransom paid, then why would he die on the cross to prove his love? Wouldn't there be many other ways to prove love, right?

and to show how loving you are. He didn't die on the cross just to be a model of love. But the sins that we should have experienced cursing and that cup being poured out upon us for the sins that we have committed are the sins that put him on the cross that made him have to drink the cup. And because he drank the cup on our behalf, because he was nailed on the cross and cursed, we are freed. He stood in our place as Paul says in Galatians.

He became the curse for us.

He took it from us. And this is incredible because all over scripture, you can read, especially the various covenantal moments in the Old Testament, all over scripture, you can read about God saying to his people, whether it be Abraham or Moses or to the whole nation or in many other places, God comes before his people to establish a covenant with them. And here's the basis of the covenant. He says, here is my law, right? The Ten Commandments and other laws. He says,

We're going to enter into this relationship. I will be your God. You will be my people. You will obey me, right? You will love me. We show our love for the Lord by obeying Him. He says, you obey me. And then wherever you obey me, you will live. That's the blessings of the covenant. We come into it with the Lord. We obey. We live as He desires. And then we receive the blessings and the life that come with that. And throughout all the scripture, that's the narrative.

Obey and you will live, obey and you will be blessed. That is what God always says to his covenantal people until the garden, until this moment. For the first time ever, and the only time ever, God looks at someone he's in covenant with and he doesn't say, obey me and you will live. He says, obey me and you will die. He doesn't say, obey me and you will be blessed. He says, obey me and you will be cursed.

That's the cup that Jesus stood before. The decision that he had to make, will he obey the Lord and in exchange for his obedience, receive our curse?

When we look over scripture, we see that sin began in a garden. In the story of Adam and Eve, whenever they were tempted by the serpent, they were in the Garden of Eden. They disobeyed the Lord. For the very first time, someone didn't love God enough to obey him, so they disobeyed. They broke that law, and sin comes into the picture. Sin began in a garden, but salvation began in a garden as well. Though Adam was promised life,

Jesus was promised death. You see, as I said before, no one has ever loved God and their neighbor to such the degree that Jesus did here in the Passion narrative and in the Garden. He proves that love for the Lord, for God, the Father, by obeying Him, by taking the cup and drinking it all the way down. Because He says, let this cup pass from me if there's any other way. But what does He say after that? Nevertheless,

your will be done. Every time he says, your will be done. He lives out the Lord's prayer. As he taught us to pray, our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. Jesus lived it out. He says, your will be done. No one has ever loved God under this kind of pressure to this great of a degree. It was the greatest act of obedience in the history of the world for Jesus to obey God and receive a curse for that obedience.

This is the meaning of the cup. It's the meaning of his death.

But there's one last question that we have to answer, and it's why did he begin to experience the agony? So he answered, why was he in agony? It was the cup that was put before him, the curse that would come with that. But why was he beginning now to experience it? He knew about the cup. We read about that in Matthew 20. He knows. He knows about this hour that is coming. He references it many times throughout his life. So why now?

Why is he suffering in an agony and distress now? What preachers and commentators and scholars have said throughout the years is that the reason that he must have gone into this state of extreme distress now at this point is because as he was going into the garden before the Lord, right on the precipice of his hour, right, God was giving him a little bit of a taste of the cup.

He was giving him a little bit of a taste of the cup of what was to come. You see, for all of Jesus's life up until this point, he was used to going to God, the Father in prayer and experiencing the presence of his Father and love. But this time, as he's going into the garden to go before his Father in prayer, for the first time, he doesn't experience the love of the Father, but he experiences the Father pulling away. And that's why it says he began to be deeply distressed and in agony to the point of death.

It's one thing to say that you're going to do something difficult if you have no idea what it's going to be like. Right? We all have stories like that, where we signed up for something that ended up being way too much force, weighing over our head, way too difficult, something we weren't equipped or ready for. You know, it's one thing to do that, to, out of ignorance and naivety, say that you'll do something difficult. It is something else entirely, however, to know full well how hard a task will be and then to do it anyway.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, God the Father was giving Jesus a little bit of a preview. He was giving him a little bit of a taste of here's what is going to come so that Jesus, by making that choice, that act of obedience, would not do so on the basis of ignorance and naivety, but would do so on the basis of knowing full well what he was choosing to do. In the Garden, he was beginning to experience a little bit of what was going to come. He had the opportunity to change his mind and to turn around.

to say, no, I can't do it. He went before the Father and experiencing love, the gates of hell were opened. He had the opportunity to change. But what does he say? He says, your will be done. Your will be done. He chooses to do it anyway. The old preacher, Jonathan Edwards said, Christ was going to be cast into a dreadful furnace of wrath. And it was not proper that he should plunge himself into a blindfold.

as not knowing how dreadful the furnace was. Therefore, that he might not do so, God first brought him and said him at the mouth of the furnace that he might look in and stand and view its fierce and raging flames, and might see where he was going and might voluntarily enter into it and bear it for sinners as knowing what it was. And that's the key word, voluntarily. No one was twisting his arm. No one was forcing him to do it.

Jesus had the choice, will he obey and be plunged into that furnace for us, receive the curse that we should have received, or will he turn away and say no? Notice in the very last phrases of what we read today, it says that Jesus tells his disciples, the time is here, they're coming. He says, get up, let's go. Notice, Jesus isn't trying to hide.

He doesn't see them coming and remove himself. He doesn't see them coming and start to pull away and fight and then have to take him and capture him by force. He says, get up, let's go. He sees it coming and he steps forward to the challenge.

No one took the life of Jesus without his permission.

You see, I said, Jesus loved God and neighbor like no one else ever has. We can see his love for God and his perfect obedience to him. And you know how we see his love for us? He chooses the cup. He says, get up, let's go. He walks towards it.

He proved His love for you in choosing the cup. He loves us so He substitutes Himself for us in His voluntary sacrifice. In this, we also see the courage of Jesus Christ, that He knew what was coming before Him and that He even had a little taste of it, and yet He still chose it anyway. We see the courage of Christ. Jesus, we see here, is the model obeyer. He is the model at prayer.

He's the model friend. He's the model of courage here. But I want to end with this today, that only as a model, he will kill you. One day you will stand in judgment before him and he will execute justice if he only remains as a model for you. But if he becomes your savior, if you recognize and you receive that he died in your place, that he died to be your savior so that he moves from just being a good

model of love to being your savior in love, who took the curse on your behalf, who died in your place, who hung on the cross for you because of your sins, then he will save you. Then your sins will be washed away. The ransom will have been paid. And now you will stand before God in absolute acceptance and favor in a covenant that is secure with the Lord.

based upon the blood of Jesus Christ shed, not your own blood. It will be based upon His blood shed, and you will stand before the Lord with nothing to hide. Do you know that? How many things do you have to hide right now? Everybody, you know, how many things do you have to hide right now? Are you hiding from people around you? Are you hiding maybe even from yourself? Would you be just awfully, you feel you're dread to think of these things being known?

By others, you know, God sees them and knows them, and one day they will all be exposed. But if you're in Christ, you will be able to stand before God one day, Him fully knowing you and you having no shame.

because you are covered in the robes of righteousness that Jesus Christ took off and wrapped around you. No shame. Do you want that? Do you wanna know that your sins have been paid for, that they are no longer yours to carry? Do you feel like you've been carrying a curse in your life? Maybe from your family, maybe from things that were done to you, things that have happened to you, maybe things that you have done.

and you feel as though you're still carrying that curse. Remember, Jesus drank the cup, He took the curse, He became the curse for you. You can be freed from it. The chains can be broken, you can be liberated, no longer oppressed by that curse. But if He only remains your model, if you just hear this message today and say, how nice, but then you don't embrace Him, you don't get it.

Will you go before the Savior who hung on the cross before you today? Cling to His cross, let His blood wash over you and lay your life down before Him. Say and confess, it is not by my works. It is not by anything that I have done. It is not by anything I can do. I will never pay it back. But I want this blessing from the Lord. I want my ransom to be paid. I want my sins to be forgiven. And I confess that it will be only done by the work that was done on this cross.

If you do that today, you will be saved.

Let me finish with this. Nothing could have stopped his love for us. If Jesus tasted the cup and still went through with it, what can make him give up on you? What do you think if any of you are holding back right now from grasping the cross, from falling down before Christ as your Savior and Lord? If there's anything holding you back right now, if that cup did not stop him, what on earth do you think you could do that could stop him and stop his love for you?

The obvious answer is nothing. As Paul said in Romans chapter eight, what can break or separate us from the love of God for us? It makes a long list. At the end of the day, it's nothing. And that includes nothing you can do. So let me say, if there's anything holding you back, look at the love of Christ. Look at how he saw the cup, he tasted the cup, and then he said, get up, let's go.

Nothing you can do can separate you from that love. So will you embrace it today? Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you and we are in awe and wonder of the glory of Christ's humanity displayed for us in this story, of the agony that he experienced, the distress that he had in turmoil. Lord, as he wrestled in prayer with you, as he was beginning to experience that cup. But Father, we praise you for the obedience and the courage of our Savior and King.

who tasted the cup and then drank it down to the dregs, who saw the furnace open before him and plunged himself into it so that we who deserve the cup and the furnace in hell might be redeemed and saved, he took our place. What if there's any here who are held back from experiencing that ransom being paid because they are allowing shame to hold them back because they, um,

perhaps because they still are holding on to their own works to be what saves them. Lord, we ask that you would help all of us be free from those things. Let those who are held back by baggage and shame, the feeling that a curse is hanging over them, would you just banish that away? Let your Holy Spirit break through so they might see that freedom is offered to them in Jesus Christ.

For those of us who are still clinging on to our works and our past and the things that we have done, the things that we can do, assuming that we will enter a covenant with you based upon our works, Lord, give us repentance from those things. Let us see that all of our good works are like garbage before you compared to the work of Jesus Christ. So let us have empty hands that might just receive the cross.

where we praise you and we thank you. And we are at awe of the cross of Christ. We pray these things in his name, amen. Let us stand together now.