Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/kingdomlife/sermons/77430/the-cross-foreshadowed/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] Well, please turn your Bible to the Gospel of Mark. Mark chapter 14. How many of you were blessed by a time of singing this morning?

[0:19] Thank God for the team. As usual, they're here early, but they were here especially early this morning since they aren't able to rehearse on weekends as they normally would.

[0:29] Mark chapter 14. This morning we begin in verse 32 and end in verse 42.

[0:41] And again, we are continuing our extended sermon series in the Gospel of Mark, and this is where we have come this morning. Please follow along as I read.

[0:54] I'm reading from the English Standard Version. And they went to a place called Gethsemane.

[1:05] And he said to his disciples, Sit here while I pray. And he took with him Peter, James, and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled.

[1:17] And he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful. Even to death.

[1:30] Remain here and watch. And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

[1:43] And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet, not what I will, but what you will.

[2:00] And he came and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?

[2:11] Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.

[2:23] And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping. For their eyes were very heavy.

[2:39] And they did not know what to answer him. And he came the third time and said to them, Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?

[2:51] It is enough. The hour has come. The son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise. Let us be going.

[3:02] See, my betrayer is at hand. Let's pray together. Father, how precious it is to be addressed by you from your word.

[3:19] Lord, and I pray this morning, Lord, that above my voice, yours will be heard. And I pray that you would speak to our hearts for the glory of your great name.

[3:40] I ask, Lord, that you would grant me the anointing of your spirit. I pray that you would grant me the illumination of your spirit.

[3:53] Indeed, Lord, grant illumination to all of our eyes as we behold and hear your word this morning. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

[4:06] As we consider this account of Jesus praying in Gethsemane, one of the first things I think I need to do is to alert us to something that is easy to overlook.

[4:17] And that is that what we are considering in this passage is largely from the perspective of Jesus. And what I mean by that is that the only way that we know what Jesus felt and what Jesus prayed is because he disclosed it.

[4:40] The text tells us that Peter, James, and John were asleep. So Jesus had to disclose what he prayed. He had to disclose what he was feeling.

[4:56] And so the only way for us to know what Jesus experienced on that dreadful night leading up to his betrayal is that he has disclosed it for us.

[5:09] And here in Gethsemane, we see a different Jesus. Before Gethsemane, we saw Jesus who walked on water, who stilled storms, who healed the sick, who cast out demons, who raised the dead, who multiplied bread, who confronted religious hypocrites, and one who had compassion on sinners.

[5:31] But now we see him agonizing in prayer and overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. We're seeing a different Jesus.

[5:45] A short while before coming to Gethsemane to pray, Jesus had his last meal with his disciples and through the Lord's Supper that he inaugurated that night, he acted out what would happen to him in a few hours.

[6:00] the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood. But before going to Calvary, Jesus went to Gethsemane.

[6:14] And here's what we see from this account of the time that Jesus spent praying there. This is what we see in this account.

[6:27] Jesus began to experience in Gethsemane what he would fully experience at Calvary. In other words, the agonies of the cross were foreshadowed in the agonies of Gethsemane.

[6:43] And this morning, I want to consider two ways in which this is true. First, in Gethsemane, Jesus experienced the foreshadow of divine wrath.

[6:54] Now, in Calvary, he experienced the fullness of the furious and unrestrained wrath of a holy God poured out on him as a substitute for sinners.

[7:09] But we should not minimize the foreshadowing of that wrath that he experienced in Gethsemane. Jesus walked into Gethsemane knowing full well that he was walking to Calvary and what awaited him there.

[7:29] We read in verses 33 and 34, and he took with him Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. He said to them, My soul is very sorrowful even to death.

[7:45] Remain here and watch. In verse 33, we have the observation of the disciples saying that Jesus was greatly distressed and troubled.

[7:58] But in verse 34, we have Jesus self-disclosing what was happening to him. He said, My soul is sorrowful even to the point of death.

[8:11] He's saying, My sorrow is so great it feels like I'm going to die. And friends, these are the words of the one who is truth personified. These are the words of one who cannot lie.

[8:26] These are not words of mere exaggeration. Instead, they communicate for us the truth of what Jesus was feeling. His soul was very sorrowful even to the point of death.

[8:42] And so, why was he sorrowful? Why was Jesus so overwhelmed with sorrow that he felt as if he was going to die? Was it because he was aware of the crucifixion that awaited him and the horrors of it?

[8:57] And it was horrible. It was one of the worst ways to die. It still is one of the worst ways to die. And it was reserved for the worst of criminals.

[9:08] But I don't think it was the crucifixion because Jesus, like many other Jews of his day, were very familiar with crucifixion.

[9:20] People were crucified all the time. And Jesus would have faced crucifixion as bravely as countless others had.

[9:31] We're told from church history that the apostle Peter, when he was about to be crucified, he said to his crucifiers, I'm not worthy to be crucified the way my Lord was crucified.

[9:44] Crucify me upside down. And he was. We have countless examples of martyrs in church history who were burned, who were beheaded, who were sawn in two, who were fed to lions, who were made into human candles.

[10:01] And the record is that they died praying, they died singing, they died rejoicing, they died praising God. And I think as it relates to Calvary, as it relates to the crucifixion, we could expect no less from Jesus.

[10:22] Jesus was not facing something that was common and ordinary, which was crucifixion. He was facing something that was unique. Something that had never been done before and something that would never be done before.

[10:39] We read in verses 35 and 36, and going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour may pass from him.

[10:52] And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.

[11:05] Again, we know this because Jesus told his disciples what he prayed. They weren't there. They couldn't have overheard. They were fast asleep. And we're told that Jesus prayed this exact prayer three times in the garden.

[11:19] Abba, Father, all things are possible if you remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. So what was this cup that Jesus agonized over?

[11:34] If it was not crucifixion, what was it? On this point, we don't have to guess. In the Old Testament, we see the cup was a figurative way of referring to the judgment of God and the wrath of God poured out on the wicked for sin.

[12:00] For example, we see in Psalm 75 verse 8, it reads, For in the hand of the Lord, there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

[12:19] And then in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 23, and verses 32 through 34, we see Ezekiel prophesying judgment that was coming against Jerusalem and Samaria, and we read these words, Thus says the Lord, this is what Ezekiel said to them, Thus says the Lord, You shall drink your sister's cup that is deep and large, and you shall be laughed at and held in derision, for it contains much.

[12:49] You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, a cup of horror and desolation, the cup of your sister Samaria. You shall drink it and drain it out and gnaw its shards and cheer your breasts, for I have spoken, declares the Lord.

[13:10] So the cup that Jesus was praying to have removed from him, if possible, was the cup of the wrath of God that was going to be shortly poured out on him in punishment for sin.

[13:24] And it was a unique cup to be drank by a unique person. The one who knew no sin would soon stand in the place of sinners. And he would drink the collective cup of the wrath of a holy God for all of their sins, every sin for every person in whose place he stood.

[13:47] And this is something to contemplate. This is something to think about because Jesus obviously contemplated this in Calvary and he was overwhelmed to the point of death.

[14:01] Jesus was not going to Calvary to be symbolically punished for sin. This was not a slap on the wrist to make it seem like God was doing something to punish sinners.

[14:15] sinners. No, Jesus was not going to be symbolically punished for sin. Jesus was going to be actually punished for sin. And Jesus was contemplating the fact that every single sin, every single sin that God would ever forgive was going to be placed on him and punished in him so that God's forgiveness of those sins would be righteous and just.

[14:45] Jesus was going to have the weight of the legal and moral guilt for every sin that God would forgive laid on him as he stood in the place of wretched sinners who deserved every bit of the punishment for this sin against a holy God.

[15:18] And sometimes we don't think about this. We don't think about the fact that our sins that God has forgiven us of, he forgave us of those sins because they were laid on Christ.

[15:30] They were laid on him, not symbolically, actually. And as Jesus was in the garden and he contemplated the cup that the father had prepared that he was going to drink as a substitute for sinners, he was overwhelmed by it all.

[15:48] The one who didn't deserve judgment and wrath is experiencing judgment and wrath. And here's what Paul says, how Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians 5 21, he writes, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[16:16] The one who knew no sin. The innocent one. And see, for us, this is not, this is, this is not a hard thing for us to fathom in terms of taking sin.

[16:32] I remembered when I was younger, really silly, we had a teacher who would just discipline us for every single thing. I was in primary school.

[16:44] And she had this strange policy of allowing students to take the punishment for other students. And there was this one girl I liked.

[16:56] And I, I went and I was just taking the punishment for this, for this girl. But I was taking punishment for her because I deserve punishment as well. I mean, I was getting her on my punishment.

[17:07] Because I was, I was as guilty as her and the rest who got caught. I just didn't get caught. And see, so for us, we aren't able to, we aren't able to think about in real terms what it's like to have the innocent, the truly innocent, sin, the perfectly innocent, the one to whom sin is foreign, take on sin.

[17:33] So that Paul says it this way, says God made him to be sin. He was sin on the cross. And see, Jesus did not go to the cross and was surprised by what met him there.

[17:47] He knew it. He knew the prophets. He knew the prophecies of the Psalms and Isaiah. He knew what awaited him. And he contemplated it in Gethsemane and he prayed, Father, if it's possible, remove this cup.

[18:07] Yet not what I will, but what you will. Jesus began to feel the weight of sin and the wrath of God for those sins.

[18:18] And we get a glimpse of what Calvary must have been like based on just the contemplation of that in Gethsemane that Jesus prayed.

[18:33] And under the weight of it all, under the utter astonishment and distress of soul that he felt, he prayed three times, Father, remove this cup.

[18:47] And brothers and sisters, the cup was not removed. And the fact that the cup was not removed is instructive for us because, well, first of all, we should consider that if the cup was optional, God was cruel not to remove it.

[19:09] If the cup was optional and Jesus didn't have to drink that cup in order that God might forgive sinners, the Father was cruel not to remove it.

[19:22] But the cup wasn't optional. And God could not remove it if he was going to righteously forgive sinners, ensuring that the price for their sins and the price for their forgiveness had been paid.

[19:42] And this tells us of the necessity of divine wrath to be poured out on sin. It is necessary for a holy God to faithfully punish every single sin.

[19:56] And it is necessary for his wrath to be poured out of those sins so that he can legitimately forgive sins and reconcile sinners to himself and maintain his holiness and his justice without tainting it, without tarnishing it at all.

[20:12] Jesus began to experience the foreshadow of divine wrath as he contemplated the cross in Calvary, in Gethsemane.

[20:28] Second, and finally, in Gethsemane, not only did Jesus experience the foreshadow of divine wrath, but he also experienced the foreshadow of total abandonment.

[20:45] But in Gethsemane, Jesus agonized over the Father's cup and he had taken his three most trusted disciples to be with him. And on three occasions, he took breaks from praying and he went and he met them fast asleep, not praying with him, not standing with him, but fast asleep.

[21:03] And Jesus was all alone contemplating, drinking the cup of the wrath of God for the sins of sinners all alone.

[21:23] And the picture is quite a contradiction. It's quite a contradiction to have the one who was sinless, the one who knew no sin, agonizing over this cup that is not his to drink.

[21:39] While those who deserve to drink it, as holy as they would have been as his disciples, those who deserve to drink it were asleep.

[21:52] And the one who did not deserve to drink it was agonizing and feeling to the point of death. And those who deserve to drink every single drop of it, were fast asleep.

[22:07] They abandoned him. He was all alone. He faced it. He faced Gethsemane all alone. He faced Calvary all alone. The answer to those prayers that Jesus prayed was silence.

[22:23] for the human abandonment that Jesus experienced in Gethsemane was really just a foreshadow of divine abandonment that he would experience on Calvary when he would cry out in a few hours, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

[22:46] And brothers and sisters, you and I deserve to drink the cup of the Father's wrath.

[22:56] And you and I deserve to have him abandon us and turn his back on us. But because Christ agonized over the cup in Gethsemane and because he resolved to drink the cup on Calvary, God will never abandon us.

[23:14] God will never turn his back on us. And because of that, you and I can truly sleep. We can have legitimate sleep and rest in Christ because he drank our cup. He drank the cup of the wrath of God that you and I justly deserve for all of our sins.

[23:37] And because of that, we can have a true rest and a true sleep in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Luke's account, we have an aspect of Gethsemane that is only found there.

[23:54] It's in Luke chapter 22 verses 43 and 44. We read, And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly and a sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

[24:20] And why did the angel come to him? The angel did not come to keep his company. The angel didn't come to give him moral support. The angel came to strengthen him to drink the cup.

[24:34] the angel came to help him to drink the collective cup of the wrath of God for sinners who deserve to die.

[24:51] And his sweat became like great drops of blood because in Gethsemane he experienced the foreshadow of drinking the cup and its contents that he would drink in just a few hours.

[25:09] It wasn't the Roman cross and the pain of it all that caused him to cry and to cry out and to sweat these great drops of blood as it were.

[25:23] It was the weight, the sheer weight of the moral and legal guilt of sinners in whose place he stood that brought him to that place of emotional distress.

[25:48] And as we consider these words in Mark's gospel this morning, the reality is that we're considering it from one of two different vantage points.

[26:02] Every single one of us this morning is in one of two groups. We are either saved, we are those who have come to put our trust in Jesus Christ and we have come to know the pardon of our sins, or we are unsaved and we are the objects of the wrath of a holy God.

[26:29] And if you're saved this morning, as you think of what Jesus went through in Gethsemane and what he will soon go through at Calvary, when you think of the fact that Jesus was contemplating and eventually resolved to drink the cup that included your sins, every one of them, every single sin that you have ever committed, your sin, your guilt, your shame, he stood in your place.

[26:58] They have legitimately been paid for. And so this morning, your heart should be filled with gratitude that you do not have to know the wrath of God.

[27:10] The Bible says that there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ. We don't have condemnation now. We will never have condemnation in the future. Our heart should be filled with gratitude.

[27:23] But if you're not saved, if you are separated from God, you need to consider the reality of the wrath of God in the Father's cup.

[27:35] I know that if Christ does not drink it as your substitute on your behalf, if you do not trust in him, that he stood in your place, then you will drink it.

[27:47] For yourself. Sin is going to be punished in one of two ways. Sin will be punished on the back of Christ on the cross, or it will be punished on the back of every sinner who does not put his or her trust in Jesus Christ.

[28:08] Jesus agonized over the cup of the Father's wrath, and he eventually drank the cup of the Father's wrath for every single person who would ever put their trust in him and believe on him for salvation, without exception, without distinction.

[28:24] and if you do not turn from sin and trust in Christ, what you're saying is, I'll drink my own cup.

[28:36] will pay for my own sins. And friend, if that is your attitude today, I encourage you to think long and hard and contemplate the reality that this cup was not removed from Jesus because there's no other way to pay for sins.

[29:01] There's no other way. drinking our cup will never bring the result that Jesus brought by drinking the cup for sinners in whose place he stood.

[29:19] He rose again. Those who will be punished because of not trusting in Jesus, there is no resurrection to life for them.

[29:32] And so this morning I plead with you, if that is your situation, if you know that you need to trust in Jesus this morning, if you know that you are away from Jesus this morning, I plead with you, turn from sin and turn to Christ and throw yourself on the mercy of God.

[29:51] And if you do, you will find pardon for your sins. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the amazing grace that we who have trusted in Christ have received.

[30:10] We thank you that the cup was not removed from Jesus as he prayed in Gethsemane. We thank you that he resolved to drink the cup so that undeserving sinners will never have to.

[30:26] Lord, I pray that you would cause us to truly have hearts of gratitude who put our trust in Jesus.

[30:38] And I ask that you would convict those who are yet to do so. Would you do your work in all of our hearts? We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

[30:49]  Amen.