The Agony of the Cup
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2019 · 7 April 2019
We are in the history of the Passion Week of our Lord Jesus Christ, the week of His crucifixion and resurrection. Here we see our Lord’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane as He wrestles with the coming cross. This is set on Friday morning, in the middle of the night, the very day He was crucified and died. Remember Isaiah 53 where God spoke through His prophet how Christ would suffer in our place?
Jesus knew the effects of sin, disease, unbelief, ignorance, rejection, disobedience, suffering, poverty, loss, and certainly death. He even gave temporary relief to them, showing His compassion as He healed people, cast demons out of them, raised the dead, and fed the hungry crowds. This was a temporary, physical reprieve from the sorrows of life for the brief three years of His ministry.
It was also a preview of His kingdom. He will return to establish an earthly kingdom, and in that kingdom, suffering will be diminished. Life will be lengthened. Health will be increased. But that will, even at its best, only be a preview of heaven, where there is no sickness, no sadness, no crying, no tears, and no death. But our Lord saw it all and felt it all. And He was moved with compassion.
But there was no grief ever in His life like the experience recorded in these verses. This has been called His last temptation. This particular experience of sorrow and grief is so severe, that it almost kills Him, He actually sweat blood. This is a momentous experience in the life of our Lord, in the middle of the night, on that Friday. Let me read it to you, beginning in verse 32.
“And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And He said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” 35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him.”
“36 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.” 37 And He came and found them sleeping, and He said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? 38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. 39 And again He went away and prayed, saying the same words.”
“40 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. 41 And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.” Jesus knew Judas had come.
This is the great battle. Jesus said, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.” Verse 32, “They came” – “they” meant Jesus and the 11 disciples, Judas left to go plan the arrest of Jesus a little later. Jesus and the 11 leave the place where they had the Passover and the Lord’s Table. Verse 26 said at the end of Thursday night, just around midnight, “They sang a hymn, and they headed to the Mount of Olives.”
On the way Jesus says, “You’re all going to fall; you’re all going to stumble; you’re all going to be scattered; you’re all going to end up denying Me.” They don’t believe it. Verse 31, “Peter says, ‘I will die before I will do that!’ And they all said the same thing.” Jesus warned them about their weakness, about the danger, and about coming temptation. That was the conversation as they headed to the Mount of Olives.
They arrive at this garden. It’s named Gethsemane, which means olive press. It’s the Mount of Olives. They grow olives there even to this day. When they arrived there, “He said to His disciples, ‘Sit here until I have prayed.’” But that’s not all He said. According to Luke 22:40 – He also said, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Use prayer as the means to overcome it.
Verse 33, “He took with Him Peter, James, and John.” Why? He left eight of them by the entrance, took Peter, James, and John deeper into the garden, which means it was a large garden. They were the leaders. James and John, had the sense that they were close to Jesus. And Peter was the recognized leader. And they needed to learn a lesson. So, Jesus calls them to go with Him.
If Christ Himself needs to pray in the face of temptation, how much more do we need to pray? As He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, He drew on the Father’s power and protection. How much more do we need to? On the way, verse 33 says, “He began to be very distressed and troubled.” What is going to shock Him? Is there anything He doesn’t know?
Yes, there is an experience He’s never had, and He’s about to have it. What was it that caused these kinds of feelings of anguish? Well, the anguish that captures Him now is something beyond that. It is the anticipation of experiencing the Father’s wrath and embracing the role of becoming a sacrifice for sin. He has never known the wrath of God. He has never known alienation.
We are tempted by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life the Bible says. He had none of those. He was fully man but had no human sinfulness. Nothing in His nature that would be drawn to sin. His temptation, therefore, is not attacking Him at the point of sin as His vulnerability, like it is for us. It is attacking Him at the point of holiness. In this temptation, Satan’s on the side of His holiness.
We struggle because the power of evil is so strong in our nature. We battle against ever-present, unholy, internal impulses. And we struggle to do what is right, to grasp righteousness. Not so Jesus. He struggled in the exactly opposite way because of His holy nature, His sinless purity, because of His total righteousness and obedience to God.
That righteousness was the single motive and impulse of His holy soul is clearly indicated in Scripture, and what God was asking Him to do was to embrace sin as a sin-bearer – not as a sinner, but as a sin-bearer to take the wrath of God for sin, to receive divine punishment. Jesus struggled because His power of holiness was resisting becoming a sin-bearer and receiving the wrath of God.
And the level of divine wrath is staggering because our Lord will embrace eternities of wrath. Eternities of divine punishment. For every sinner for whom He died, He took that sinner’s eternal wrath. For the millions of sinners for whom He died, He took millions eternities full of wrath. And He was totally undefiled and separate from sinners, and how could this be? That’s why His struggle was so immense.
Verse 34 says, “My soul is deeply grieved,” literally surrounded by sorrow. He is engulfed in this grief to the point of death. He had never said yes to guilt. He never said yes to sin-bearing. He never said yes to punishment. In fact, His anguish is so immense in this struggle of His own nature and increased in some way by Satan, trying to get Him to avoid the cross.
Luke 22:43 says, “God sent an angel to strengthen Him.” How severe was it? Luke 22:44 says the struggle was so immense, the stress on His physical form was so great that He began to sweat drops of blood. Under immense stress, the capillaries inflate, and explode, and then blood comes out the sweat glands. And this is the maximum point of human stress. And an angel had to strengthen His life.
“Remain here,” He says in verse 34 “and keep watch.” And He left the three in the garden. And verse 35, “He went a little beyond them.” And Luke 22: 41 says, “He went a stone’s throw. And He fell to the ground and He began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by.” The hour of the power of the darkness, of all the suffering leading up to and including His cross.
Some people say, “Doesn’t this show reluctance to obey His Father?” Now if He didn’t react like this, we would wonder whether He was holy, right? This is the only possible of a holy person about the thought of bearing sin, guilt and judgment. We don’t have a perfect hatred for sin; Jesus did. His plea is absolutely consistent with His nature as God. No wonder He came almost to the point of death.
His words are even given here. This is His actual prayer, a passionate petition. He was saying in verse 36, “Abba! Father!” No Jew would ever even call God Father, let alone call Him Abba. “All things are possible for You,” He says. That is an absolute fact. There is nothing that God doesn’t have the power to do and the privilege to do. He can do whatever He wants in all the Earth.
However, God couldn’t allow Christ to miss the cross. If Jesus doesn’t go to the cross, then we have some big problems. Satan wins; nobody is saved and heaven is empty; hell is full; the Bible isn’t true; the promises of God are lies and there is no salvation. God said Himself that without the shedding of blood, there’s no forgiveness of sins. God can’t go back on His word. He always fulfills His promises.
The request nonetheless, is clear. We know what’s on Jesus’ heart, “Remove this cup from Me.” Cup is the symbol from the Old Testament of divine wrath. You see that in Psalm 11, Psalm 75, Isaiah 51, Jeremiah 25, Jeremiah 49, Lamentations 4, and other places. “Let this cup of wrath pass from Me.” Our Lord referred to it in Matthew 20:22 when He said, “Can you drink the cup that I’m about to drink?”
Earlier, in John 12, the issue came up about Him dying. He said, “I’m going to die.” And He even gave an illustration of it in verse 24, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain.” He was saying, “I need to die to bring forth the fruit that God has ordained.” And then He said this in John 12:27, “Now My soul is troubled.”
“But for this purpose I came to this hour.” He knew that. So here comes His triumphant resolution, “Yet not what I will, but what You will.” In the end, that’s what Jesus always said, “I only do what the Father tells Me, shows Me, desires of Me, and what I see the Father do. I follow only His direction.” Even when He was 12 years old, “I must be about My Father’s business.”
Well, in the horrors of that agonizing struggle, He starts to think about the disciples. We see affectionate exhortation. Verse 37, “He came and found them sleeping.” Peter, James, and John. “He said to Peter, ‘Simon,’ are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?’” Luke actually adds something helpful, “They went to sleep for sorrow.” Where was the kingdom?
Our Lord warns them in verse 38, “Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation.” The point is this, in the middle of the most agony of His entire existence, He is concerned about us. Now, that’s the kind of High Priest we all need, right? A compassionate High Priest, who in the middle of a supernatural struggle, goes back because He cares about the spirituality of His disciples.
Verse 39, “Then He went away, and He prayed, saying the same words.” As in verse 36, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” He didn’t say it in six seconds. He repeated those words agonizingly over perhaps a period of hours. But He went back to pray the same prayer. He only interrupted the prayer because He was concerned about their spirituality.
Verse 40, “And again Jesus came back, still concerned. He stops praying again and comes out of this immense struggle. And He found them sleeping again, for their eyes were very heavy; and they didn’t know what to answer Him.” And then He went back in to pray some more. And He said the same thing again. Three times He poured out His heart, saying, “Remove this cup from Me.”
Verse 41, “The third time He came, and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and resting?’” So, we have seen the affliction and the petition. There’s a final remauk coming in the last couple of verses, the triumphant submission. He yields to the will of the Father in those three cycles of prayer. But He finally comes out triumphant. The last temptation is over.
In the middle of verse 41 Jesus says, “It’s enough.” Temptation over, struggle finished, prayer done, answer clear. “The hour has come.” He means by that it’s now here. He says, “Look, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.” There was an entourage coming, the Sanhedrin of Israel and also soldiers. There were as many as 600 Roman soldiers.
How is it that God would allow Christ to be turned over to sinners who would kill Him? That was precisely the issue that He struggled with. But He steps up triumphant in verse 42, “Get up, let us be going.” He is bloodied, but He is unbowed, and He gives the order. “See, My betrayer is at hand.” Judas was coming up the hill.
Verse 43 describes the crowd with swords – why? Because they were all afraid that if the crowds of Jerusalem found out, there could be a massive revolution to protect Jesus, and they would need this force to quell the riot. Jesus confronts them. According to John 18, Jesus went forward, “Whom are you seeking?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” He says, “I am He.” And they all fell down to the ground.
What was it that caused Jesus to come out with that triumphant submission? The answer is in Hebrews 5 :7, “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His holiness.” Jesus entrusted Himself to God, who was able to save Him from death and would do so because He was holy. Let us pray.