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“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

᛭ INI ᛭

We often over estimate our own abilities and under estimate our need for Jesus. Gethsemane reveals this. It shows how much we talk a big game but choke at game time. It reveals our inability, how little we understand or care to understand the depth of our inability and our need for Jesus. Gethsemane reveals the depths of human darkness and sin Jesus enters. Gethsemane lays bare all that Jesus’ own disciples often hold dear more than Him.

Jesus is of inestimable, incalculable, unfathomable value. He knows our ability, our strength. Actually, He knows your complete inability, your utter weakness. He’s under immense pressure at Gethsemane. The world’s sin, your sin, is resting on His shoulders. The guilt of the world is His rap sheet. All sin-debt is credited to His account. The Cup of the Father’s wrath is waiting for Him. He’d been the one who’d poured out a portion of that wrath for sin against Sodom and Gomorrah, against Egypt, against the Canaanites, the Assyrians, and Babylonians, and even against His own people Israel and Judah. Now, Jesus was going to drink that cup down to the dregs.

God wanted it this way. As He says through Isaiah: “It pleased the LORD to crush Him. He has put Him to grief.” That’s the cross, of course, but here we see that’s happening at Gethsemane, too. There Jesus prays: “Remove this cup from Me. Yet, not what I want, but what You want.” And so, He does.

JESUS DRINKS THE CUP OF WRATH FOR YOU.

(I. We really need Him to do this.)

We really need to Him to—all people do, especially His disciples. Just look at Peter! “Even if all fall away, I never will!” “Even if I must die with You, I’ll never deny you!” “They all said the same.” His big boast doesn’t last long: When Jesus get’s back from praying, Peter’s asleep. “Simon, are you asleep? Weren’t you strong enough to stay awake for one hour?” They kept falling asleep till Judas shows up. After Jesus gets arrested, “they all forsook Him and fled.” Finally, a young man who’d followed them, decided it was better to run away naked than to get caught with Jesus…

We think because we don’t actively deny Jesus most of the time, we’re okay. But how often we cast off our baptismal identity of disciple to keep ourselves safe from ridicule, suffering, or outed as a true believer. So, we often live like people who just happen to also be a Christian… Apparently, on the side… To the surprise of most people in our lives! The fact that we all go, “Yeah, I know,” shows how much we’re even worse off than Peter. “Jesus says to him, “The spirit is willing but the flesh it weak.” Our apathy actively “quenches the Holy Spirit” daily and much! Something the LORD commands us through Paul not to do! Often living like Judas, maybe not money but something more than Jesus, how can we avoid his fate?

Still, we prefer ourselves, our life, our own reputation, our own name rather than Christ, His life, His repututation, or His name given us in Holy Baptism. “You shall have no other gods.” It’s easy to see in Gethsemane and in our own lives what it looks like when we do have other gods… Jesus says, “Whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”

(Transition.)

“What have deserved from God because of your sins?” “His wrath and displeasure, temporal death, and eternal damnation.” (Christian Question #4) Yet, you still have “hope to be saved.” (CQ #5) Not by fixing yourself. You can’t! “Flesh is weak!” Only the “dear Lord Jesus Christ.” (CQ #6), “the Son of God, true God and man” (CQ #7), is your hope. Trust or confidence in your abilities sinks the whole ship! “A little yeast, leavens the whole batch” (Gal 5:9), spoils the whole thing. “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point is guilty of all of it.” (James 2:10)

So, “what has Christ done for you that you trust in Him?” “He died for [you] and shed His blood for [you] on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.” (CQ # 9) It is His death on the cross. It is His resurrection on the Third Day. It’s also what He does in Gethsemane! “By His agony and bloody sweat,” the “good Lord deliver[s] us” because JESUS DRINKS THE CUP OF WRATH FOR YOU.

(II. Gethsemane leads to fulfilling at Golgotha and grave.)

Christ submits to His Father’s will, agrees to their eternal plan. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, planned the Son’s suffering and death even before the foundation of the world! So, He prays, “Not what I want, but what You want, Father.”

His shoulders bear all the guilt of the whole world. He’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So, He carries even your sins as His own. Since He’s got all the world’s sin, God declares Him guilty and sentences Him to bear the whole wrath of God. This is the “cup” that Jesus is talking about at Gethsemane. “All things are possible for you. Remove this cup from Me. Yet, not what I want, but what You want.”

Christ fulfills the Scriptures, even in Gethsemane. “My own familiar friend lifts his heal against Me,” the Psalmist says, “the one who ate bread at My table.” He was “numbered with the transgressors,” counted as sinner, and so they come out against Him as a common criminal. Yet more importantly, Gethsemane paves the way to Governor Pilate, the Governor to Golgotha’s cross, Golgotha to His grave. Christ drinks the cup of wrath, down to the dregs. Nothing left in the cup for Jesus to drink. Overcome by the wrath of God, “like a strong man shouting because of wine” (Ps 78:65): “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?!”

If Jesus were drinking modern wine, He’d down all the sulfites, histamines, and tannins. With ancient wine, He’d be drinking all the solids, sediment, seeds, skins. 

**‘Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”’ (Hebrews 10:5–7)** 

Because Christ drank the cup of wrath, there’s only the cup of blessing for you. “The cup of blessing that we bless, isn’t it a Communion of the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, isn’t it a Communion of the Body of Christ?” (1 Cor 10) You know there’s no wrath because “Christ died for you, shed His blood for you on the cross for the forgiveness of sins” (CQ #9) but “by His body and blood given you as a pledge in the Sacrament.” (CQ #11) We go to the Sacrament that we mean “learn to believe that Christ, out of great love, died for [your] sin, and also learn from Him to love God and [your] neighbor.” (CQ #18)

(Conclusion.)

“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” And so, CHRIST DRINKS THE CUP OF WRATH FOR YOU. Your flesh is so weak that boasts of great things for itself! It never does what God actually demands. Selfishness is what your flesh wants! It would serve up Jesus to His enemies, like Judas, or simply run away from Him like Peter and the young man.

“No creature can make satisfaction for your sin. Only Christ, true God and man could do that.” That’s how “very serious” your sins are. God had to die! We should “be horrified by our sins.” (CQ #16) Yet, “Christ, out of great love, died for [you] and other sinners.” (CQ # 18) He was motivated by “His great love for His Father and for [you] and other sinners.” (CQ #17) That is quite on display at Gethsemane. Thus cup doesn’t pass from Him:

JESUS DRINKS THE CUP OF WRATH FOR YOU.

He’s faithful for us who are unfaithful. This isn’t an excuse to be unfaithful, we’re already that without excuse. His great faithfulness creates all the more faithfulness within us, creating and sustaining our faith in Him, that “we may find joy and comfort in Christ alone, and through faith in Him be saved.” (CQ #16)

JESUS DRINKS THE CUP OF WRATH FOR YOU, that you’d only have the cup of blessing. It’s only ever a cup of blessing for those who trust Him, and trust His Words at face value: “My body and blood, given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins.” “Anyone who does not believe these words or doubts them is unworthy and unprepared.” (SC: Sacrament of the Altar) They eat and drink not for forgiveness but for judgment. (1 Cor 11)

There is more faithfulness and forgiveness in the Cup of Blessing than you have sins and unfaithfulness. In fact, only it will keep the cup of wrath far from your lips! That cup of wrath still stands for those outside of Christ… (Rev 14:10; 16:19) But because our flesh always over estimates our ability and under estimates our constant need for Jesus, we are, by and large, pretty much all the time, “unaware of our great need and have no hunger and thirst for the Sacrament.” (CQ #20) What’s to be done? Well, “to such a person no better advice can be given than this: first, he should touch his body to see if he still has flesh and blood. Then he should believe what the [Bible] says about it in Galatians 5 and Romans 7.” (CQ #20) Or just look at Gethsemane, look not just at Peter and Judas and the young man, but JESUS who DRINKS THE CUP OF WRATH FOR YOU.

᛭ INI ᛭