Holy Week Devotional - Friday (The Cup of Wrath Consumed)

Welcome back to Friday of our Holy Week podcast.

Of course, Friday will be the day that Jesus is crucified, which we will,

of course, talk about on Sunday.

But I wanted to draw back into Thursday to talk about Friday, if that makes sense.

Jesus, in praying at the Garden of Gethsemane, he says something really interesting when he's praying.

A pretty famous phrase that he says here is, Father, if it's your will,

let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but your be done.

This cup that Jesus is preparing to drink,

you could look at a lot of things, and a lot of people have described this to,

maybe some specific moments in his Friday or on the cross or things.

I mean, if you think about what happens to Jesus, what he's taken,

if you just look towards the end of Luke 22 and Luke 23, I mean,

he's mocked by the soldiers that are holding him in custody.

He goes before the council and he basically, you know, is tried unjustly.

They lie about him and they say things that aren't true.

And he makes it clear that he believes he is who he says he is, that he is God.

He is God in the flesh. And so, of course, they want to get rid of him.

And so they pawn him off to Pilate.

And Pilate asks him the same questions. You know, are you the king of the Jews?

And he answers him, you have said so.

And the problem, of course, with Pilate is he says, I have found no guilt in this man.

In other words, Pilate, as a Roman, can't see anything that Jesus has done that's wrong.

He says, but he stirs up people teaching all throughout Judea and Galilee,

even to this place. So what does Pilate do?

Well, he sends him over to Herod and to Herod's jurisdiction.

Herod saw Jesus. He was very glad for he had long desire to see him.

And so Herod even has this response to like, man, I've heard so much about Jesus and what he's doing.

I've wanted to meet him. And the chief priests and the scribes are there with

Herod and they're accusing Jesus.

And Herod's trying to find a way out of this because he doesn't see anything

wrong with Jesus either.

He says this at 14 You brought me this man As one who was misleading the people

And after examining him before you behold I did not find this man guilty Of

any of your charges against him And they said I'm going to punish him and release him.

But they cry out to him, away with this man and release to us Barabbas,

a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city and for murder.

So we started the week Palm Sunday. Jesus comes in and some of these same people

that are crying out for him to be murdered and for Barabbas,

the murderer, to be released.

Some of those same people are now yelling, crucify him.

Why? Because the coming king would never find himself in a situation where he

is being placed on the chopping block.

The king that is to save them, the political ruler that they're looking for,

would never find himself in the situation that Jesus is in.

He would never be beaten and bruised and scarred.

He would never allow the high priest and Pilate and Herod and all the guards

to take him away, right? He's the fearless leader.

He's the one that's going to save them from the Romans and take them out from under oppression.

And so when the people see this, they say, well, he must have been lying to us.

Look at all this faith we put in him. Look at all this trust we put in him.

And he's not going to do what we think he's going to do. And we see this constantly today.

Constantly, you see people who say things like, well, I trusted in Jesus, but he didn't show up.

I trusted in Jesus. I was following him, but he didn't help me when I needed

him. That's really the exact same thing we see happening here.

We liked Jesus coming in on a donkey to take care of our problems,

but when Jesus doesn't do what we want him to do, our main recourse is to say,

I don't want anything to do with him.

And even if we wouldn't denounce him, even if we wouldn't say,

I don't want anything to do with him, we wouldn't talk about him.

We wouldn't say anything about him. We may just kind of keep him in our back

pocket as we seek out the answers to our problems in our lives,

as we seek out the things that we think will make us happy.

We just kind of keep Jesus at an arm's distance in case we need him for something.

That's exactly what these people are doing. And so, of course,

Jesus is led away to be crucified.

But again, I want to just zero in on this cup of wrath that Jesus speaks of.

When we see the cup of wrath talked about in Scripture, this is always tied

to God's wrath being poured out.

God's wrath being poured out on people. God's wrath being poured out on nations.

It's incredibly interesting when you do a study of this,

what you will find is that what Jesus was really struggling with at his moment

in the Garden of Gethsemane when he's going to sweat blood,

what he's really concerned about is not Pilate and not Herod and not the cat

of night tails and not the guards beating him, not the sham trials,

not the people shouting crucify him, not his friends betraying him.

All of those things that we would think that must be the very worst cup that you could ever drink.

No, what Jesus was concerned about in the garden was drinking the cup of wrath

poured down on him from God.

That was Jesus' concern.

That's an incredible thing. Listen to just these few verses from the Old Testament.

Jeremiah 25, 15 tells us, Thus the Lord, the Lord God of Israel said to me,

Take from my hand this cup of

the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.

Isaiah 51, 17, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath.

To the dregs, the bowl, the cup of staggering. In Revelation 14,

an angel speaks, if anyone worships the beast in its image and receives a mark

on his forehead or on his hand,

he will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger.

So Jesus prays in Matthew 26, my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass

from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

Again, Jesus' cup of suffering is different from every other cup of suffering

because it is the full weight of God's wrath poured out on every single sinner that he is to save.

It's the accumulated fury of God against sins of all types.

Heinous crimes, adultery, careless words, dishonoring thoughts,

lives, all of it will be punished by God.

Every single idle word, idle thought, every single sin will be poured out on

Jesus, on the cross, for those whom he has come to save.

Think of the worst feeling you've ever had after you've done something.

Think of the biggest mistake you've ever made.

I don't know what that is for you. everyone's a little different.

Maybe it's an incredibly harsh thing if you're younger.

Maybe you haven't done something that maybe warrants an incredible response,

but all of us have done something and felt an amount of shame,

an amount of guilt that comes with those things.

Now, imagine you had to feel that multiplied by billions of people.

This is what Jesus experiences, not only God's wrath, but also the guilt and

shame that's associated with those sins.

This is what concerns Jesus as he goes to the cross.

He's not concerned about nails in his hands or nails in his feet or a spear

in his side or a crown of thorns on his head.

The blood that he spills and the pain that he experiences pales in comparison

to the cup of wrath and the guilt and the shame that is going to be poured out

on him on the cross for you and me. And yet he goes.

As it is the Father's will, as it is his will, as it is the Spirit's will who

empowers him as a human to do these things,

Jesus goes to the cross to drink the cup that you and I could not drink,

to experience the shame and the agony of what sin brings to us,

so that you and I, if we are believers in Christ Jesus,

no longer have to experience guilt or shame, but we can come before the Father

on the basis of Christ's sacrifice.

Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.

See, I think there is a misconception when we talk about Jesus and when we talk

about Easter and Resurrection Sunday, we of course should focus on the love of Christ.

Of course, what incredible love is this, that the Son of God would lay down

his life for sinners like you and me.

But we fail to realize or maybe fail to think about at times the amount of wrath,

that's poured out on Christ and the wrath that we rightly deserve from a holy and just God.

See, your forgiveness wasn't free, it was bought.

If you stand forgiven before God today, it's not that God looked at you one

day and said, you know, I love you.

You said you were sorry, and so I forgive you.

No, he said, I love you. I've given you a new heart to believe.

You've repented, and now all the wrath that was due you, I will pour out on my son.

I will pour out on my one only begotten son. And that is how you're saved.

You're not saved because of something you did that God responded to.

You're saved because of something that God did that you responded to.

And that's so important to remember on Good Friday.

That on the cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

The wrath of God was satisfied.

His righteous wrath poured out on the Son of God.

As it's been rightly said, of course, in Corinthians, he made him who knew no

sin to become sin so that you might become the righteousness of God.

Or as Colossians says, you stand before God without a single fault because of

what Christ has accomplished for you.

Pray that that's something to meditate on this Good Friday, that Christ loved

his church so much that he endured not just beatings and shame,

not just painful moments and moments of betrayal, all of those things which

we can experience, all those things maybe you have experienced.

But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was he who had been in perfect

relationship with his father and never sinned and never felt in shame,

never felt remorse, never felt anything from God other than love, experience,

wrath, and shame all on the cross poured out on him.

Why? Because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that

whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.

Looking forward to Saturday. Thank you for listening.