Bữa Tiệc Cuối Cùng & Vườn Tối Tăm: Ý Nghĩa Cái Chết Của Đấng Christ

We’re starting a new series because it’s traditional for the last 2,000 years for Christians to consider and to think and to reflect about the meaning of Christ’s death in these weeks right before and right up to Good Friday and Easter. What we’re going to be doing for about four or five weeks is we’re going to take a look at Saint Matthew’s gospel, at what he says about that last week of Jesus’ life, those last couple of days, in Matthew 26, 27, and 28, which is traditionally called Saint Matthew’s Passion.

You may be noticing we will be using a lot of Bach’s music from his version of Saint Matthew’s Passion in the next few weeks. We’re going to start reading Matthew 26, which is the account of the Last Supper. I’m going to read verses 19–29.

19 So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover. 20 When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. 21 And while they were eating, he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.” 22 They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, “Surely not I, Lord?”

23 Jesus replied, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. 24 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.” 25 Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, “Surely not I, Rabbi?” Jesus answered, “Yes, it is you.”

26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” 27 Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

This is God’s Word

There are so many fascinating incidents in Saint Matthew’s Passion. We’re going to be looking here at the words at the institution of the Last Supper. When you take a look at the deaths of the founders of the all the other major religions, you see they all are fairly similar. Just going by the texts of the religions themselves, for example, Moses dies at 120 years old, full of years, as strong as ever, an undisputed leader, one who has brought his people to the verge of the Promised Land.

Buddha dies at the age of 80. He’s surrounded by a host of his devotees. He dies in peaceful serenity. He’s a complete success by that time. Confucius had originally been forced to leave his hometown, but he dies in his hometown. He comes back. He’s received there with honor. He dies at the age of 72 in his hometown of Qufu, surrounded by those who will continue his work. Muhammad dies in his 60s after having been the first political ruler of the united Arabia. He dies in the arms of his wife.

Let’s contrast that for a minute. When you come to Christianity, you have a man who dies at perhaps age 33 who has a ministry at the very, very most of three years, and when he dies, he’s alienated from his own people. He’s killed by the colonial power of Rome. He’s abandoned by most of his friends, and if you believe the text, he’s even abandoned by God.

His death is premature. It’s tragic. It’s a disgrace. It’s shameful because it’s a crucifixion, and crucifixion was the most shameful, the most degraded of all forms of execution, only for the very worst criminals, because you were stripped naked and you died by inches with everybody just looking at you, watching you die by inches for days.

Here’s the question. It makes perfect sense, in some ways, why the other religions did well. In other words, when you see a founder who teaches some great truth about faith or some truth about spirituality or about how to live and you see the peace and the blessing in his life … In other words, you see his religion works. You see peace. You see blessing in his life. You see the peace of his followers, and you see all of that, of course, people say, “That works! I’m going to give it a shot. I’m going to look at it. I’m going to study it.”

They do, and then they adopt it. But here’s what I want to know, one of the great questions of history. Why would anyone have looked at Jesus Christ, looked at the way his life ended …? Why would anyone have looked at his life, seeing him die that way, seeing him die penniless, seeing him die naked …? Why would anybody have looked at the way his life ended and say, “That’s the message for me. That’s what I want”? Why in the world …?

The only possible answer is nobody would look at the cross and say, “A badge of honor. A way of peace. A way to blessing.” Nobody would look at that, and yet we know, in spite of the fact it created huge problems for people, the early Christians adopted the cross as their emblem. I’ll talk more about this next week.

Cicero said the word crux, which is the Latin word for cross, was a swear word. I hate to do this, and I probably shouldn’t do this, but think of a four letter word. Imagine yourself starting a church, make that the name (the blankety-blank church of New York City), and see who comes.

Why was the cross a swear word? Because it represented everything wrong. It represented shame. It represented hostility. It represented weakness. It represented defeat. It represented absolute, utter humiliation. It represented all those things. Why, then, did the followers of Jesus Christ say, “This is what I want in my life, the cross. This is how I want to live. This is the message for me”? Who would have ever thought …?

The only answer to that historical question, “What would have ever possessed them to pick that up and say, ‘This is the life I want’?” is the fact of the crucifixion would only make people shudder and withdraw, but it was Jesus’ explanation of the crucifixion, Jesus’ own explanation of what it meant, that afterward (especially after his resurrection) his followers went back and now they saw it.

John Stott, a great old commentator, puts it this way. “The fact that a cross became the Christian symbol, and that Christians stubbornly refused, in spite of ridicule, to discard it in place of something less offensive, can only have one explanation [historically]. It means that the centrality of the cross originated in the mind of Jesus himself. It was out of loyalty to him that his followers clung so doggedly to [it].”

In other words, it would never have occurred to anyone (no normal, rational person) to say, “That’s the life for me.” Jesus Christ explained, though, how the cross was a transforming reality, the central reality. He does that in his passion. One of the places we see this is when he institutes the Last Supper.

It’s a shame to call it the Last Supper. In many ways it’s the first supper, the first of millions and millions and millions of these suppers. In the Last Supper, which was a Passover meal, Jesus Christ in the clearest possible way explains the meaning of his death. Actually, every week in the next five or six weeks we’re going to say, “What does his death mean?” We’re going to see different aspects, different perspectives.

What we learn here in the Last Supper is Jesus gives us some of the clearest teaching on what the cross means, what his death means. By using the Passover meal, he wonderfully shows us three things: the centrality of his death (the importance of it), the purpose of his death (why he did it), and how we appropriate it for ourselves. The centrality, the purpose, and how we connect, how we appropriate it ourselves. Let’s look.

1. The centrality of his death

A brief point but important. Notice verse 19. In fact, yes, I’m going to have to skip the whole section about Judas, because it’s a different subject. It’s very important and very interesting but not really what we’re going to talk about today. The reason I put that in was because I want you to see verse 19.

“So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover.” What Jesus’ Last Supper was, what Jesus’ Lord’s Supper was, was the Passover. What was the Passover? When Israel had been for many years in the land of bondage in Egypt and they were just about to leave under the deliverance engineered by Moses, the night before the great deliverance, the night before the great redemption (they were slaves and they were being taken out), they ate this meal.

Then God comes to them and says in Exodus 12:14, “I want you to eat this meal over and over and over again. This will be a perpetual memorial throughout all your generations. Never stop commemorating this night.” As a result, of course, the Israelites commemorated that great night of deliverance from Egypt with the Passover.

Jesus is doing that with his disciples. They’re having a Passover meal. You see in verse 26 it says, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying …” What this means is Jesus is the presider. At a Passover meal you had to have a presider. The father, if it’s a family, or if it’s a group of people, somebody would be in a sense the presider.

It’s not surprising Jesus Christ, in a sense, maybe gets up here and begins to speak. Why? Because you’re not just supposed to eat the Passover meal. You’re supposed to explain it. The presider’s job was to get up and explain what it meant. What the presider usually does … Many of you may have heard these words yourself at a Passover.

Ordinarily, the presider would get up and say, “This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in the wilderness. They suffered that we would be delivered.” Instead of that, what Jesus does is he gets up and said, “This is the bread of my affliction. This is the bread through which I’m going to bring you out of a greater bondage.”

What Jesus is doing at this point, and this is remarkable, is he says, “What I’m about to suffer is this: Years ago we ate this supper on the night before God redeemed us and brought us out from under Pharaoh’s bondage, but tonight I’m going to pull off the greater redemption. We tonight are eating it on the night before God again redeems his people, but this time not just from Pharaoh, not just from political slavery, but from sin and death itself.”

When Jesus gets up and says, “… this is my body,” he is replacing the ordinary statements at the Passover. “This is the bread of my affliction.” When he gets up and says it, this is what he is saying. He is saying in the most amazing terms (there’s no better way to say it), “My death is the central and climactic moment in the history of the world.”

All the history of the people of God has been moving toward this moment. Every return from exile. Every deliverance from any tyrant. Every substitutionary sacrifice of an animal. Everything. Everything that has ever happened in the whole history of redemption, in the whole history of God’s work with his people, everything is moving toward this. This is the climactic moment in the history of redemption, in the history of the world.

He couldn’t say it in a more amazing way. That’s the first thing we see here. By taking the Passover meal … He didn’t need to use the Passover meal. He could have done it some other way, but by doing the Passover meal he’s saying, “Everything has been pointing to me. This is the climactic moment. This is the deliverance above all deliverances. This is the exodus to end all exoduses.”

Interestingly, this is the only thing he ever tells people to do over and over. Even though Matthew does not record his words, as you know certainly in Mark, in Luke, and in 1 Corinthians where Paul gives us his words … they come four times in the Bible. He also says, “… do this in remembrance of me.”

He makes us bound to perpetually remember through this meal the way God originally had said the same thing about the Passover. Notice there’s only one thing Jesus Christ tells you that you must do over and over and over again. This is not a dramatization of his birth. This is not a dramatization of his miracles. This is not a dramatization of his life or of his teaching, not even of his resurrection.

Over and over and over he wants you to dramatize his death, which means, “This is the main reason I came. This is the central thing. I have nothing to give you unless you believe and understand my death. Nothing. Nothing for you unless you grab this.” The first thing we see in an amazing way here in the Last Supper is Jesus saying, “My death is central.” We’ll see how central in a second. Let’s take a look at the second point.

2. The purpose of his death

By taking the Passover meal, Jesus is also explaining the purpose of his death. The real question is … Why did he die? What was his purpose? What was he trying to achieve? Here we see, not the first one, which was us looking at, “Take and eat; this is my body,” but the second statement.

It says, “Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” That is so loaded. First of all, one of the problems in translating from Greek into English is the little word for. See it says, “… poured out for many …”

The English word for is very, very general. It can mean so many things. To say, “I’m doing something for you,” could mean I’m doing something because of you. It could mean I’m doing something in response to you. The particular preposition used here and in all of the other places where Jesus’ words are given here in the Last Supper, what he’s really saying is, “My blood is poured out on behalf of you, instead of you, in the stead of you.”

This is a language of sacrificial self-substitution, and, boy, there is no better way for him to explain it. “What’s that, sacrificial self-substitution?” Let’s go again to what the Passover meal is. There were three basic elements in the Passover meal. One was unleavened bread. Why? It represented the haste, the difficulty of those times. They had to eat unleavened bread. They didn’t have time to wait for it to rise.

Secondly, they drank wine. There were four cups of wine that were passed around, because they represented the four great promises in Exodus 6, which were read as they were drinking the wine. They had unleavened bread, and they had a cup of wine. What was the main course? Obviously, wine and bread are not enough for a meal. Wine is the drink, and you always have bread. What was the main course?

A lamb. The lamb was the point of the Passover. God had said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go. Let my people go. Let my people go.” Pharaoh continually said, “No. No. No.” Finally, God comes to Moses and says, “I’m going to put a final stroke. I’m going to send a final stroke. I’m going to send the angel of judgment (the angel of death), and he’s going to pass over the land. The angel of judgment is going to smite oppression and violence, and the way he’s going to do that is he’s going to strike dead the firstborn son in every family.”

Then God says to Moses, “Finally, Pharaoh will let you go. This stroke will redeem you. This stroke is the one that will get you out.” One of the most amazing things, which I didn’t realize until last week when I was studying this, God does here is he says to the Israelites, “But here’s what you need to do. On that night, you need to eat a Passover supper.” Why is it called Passover?

He says, “The main course is the lamb. You slay the lamb, of course, and then you eat the lamb, but you take the blood of that lamb and you smear it on the doorposts over your door, so when the angel of judgment comes by, the angel of judgment will pass over you.” Do you know one of the things most amazing about this? This is the most non-discriminatory thing I’ve ever seen.

God does not say, “When judgment comes, of course, it will only hit the bad people, not you good people. It will only hit the Egyptians, not you Jewish people. It will only hit those people who have the wrong religion, not the people who have the right religion.” No! What is he saying? He is saying, “When my judgment comes down, every single household will be subject to it.”

He says, “Don’t you understand?” God is saying, “There’s a deeper thing than what Pharaoh is doing to you. Politically, they’re the oppressors and you are the victims, but spiritually, you’re all alienated from me. Spiritually, you all want to be your own gods, you want to be your own lords, and your selfishness is reeking havoc on my creation.”

In other words, “You’re all sinners.” What God is saying is, “You will not be saved tonight unless you put the blood of the lamb over your doorjamb and take shelter under it.”

What did that mean that night? What would it have meant? Here’s what it would have meant. First of all, the family would have had to admit, “We’re not going to be able to pass muster if the angel of judgment comes by, and the only way to do it is if a lamb is slain.”

In every home in that whole country, there was either a dead lamb or a dead son. It was one or the other. In other words, every firstborn son who survived that night looked down at the lamb and said, “This lamb died for me.” Notice something interesting about the text. Jesus picks up the bread and says, “This is the bread of my affliction.”

Jesus picks up the cup. Wait a minute. Where is the main course? What kind of meal is this? Have you ever noticed that? We do this once a month. It’s not very filling. You say, “Bread. Okay. Rolls. Not even butter. Rolls and a little something to drink. Where’s the main course?” There is no main course. Jesus is the Lamb. Jesus never refers to the lamb. Jesus never points to the lamb.

We don’t even know if there was a lamb there, but there was. In other words, Jesus Christ is saying to them, “Do you really believe, friends, our firstborn children were saved because of some little wooly quadrupeds? Our firstborn sons were saved because God was going to offer up his firstborn Son, and tonight he does.”

Jesus Christ, therefore, is saying, “I am the substitute. I take the judgment. I am slain so you’re not.” You do not know how completely that whole idea suffuses everything he does. It is amazing how it suffuses everything he does. I never noticed it until recently. We’ll talk about it later on.

For example, do you know the place where Jesus looks at Jerusalem and he says, “Jerusalem! There’s going to be a judgment day”? Then he says, both in Matthew 26 and Luke 13, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to her, how I want to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing, but you would not.”

You say, “That’s sweet. Jesus is likening himself to a mother hen.” Wait a minute. It’s in the context of judgment. N.T. Wright, a very interesting and great New Testament scholar, says, “Do you realize what Jesus was saying? He is saying, ‘Judgment is going to come down on you, and I would be very happy to put you under my wings.’ ” And do what?

Some years ago, it was reported that National Geographic said this about the Yellowstone fires? Do you remember the fires in Yellowstone? After a forest fire in Yellowstone, forest rangers began their trek up a mountain to survey the damage. One ranger found a bird literally petrified in ash perched statuesquely on the ground at the base of a tree.

Somewhat sickened by the eerie sight, the ranger knocked the bird over with a stick. Three tiny chicks scurried out from under their dead mother’s wings. When the blaze had arrived, the mother had remained steadfast. Because she was willing to die, those under the cover of her wings would live. She was a substitute. She took the blaze. She took the heat.

Jesus Christ at almost every place, even when he said, “I wish I could just take you under my wings,” what is he talking about? He’s talking about that. He’s likening this to a fire in the barnyard, and he says, “Come under my wings, and I’ll take the heat.” Over and over and over again, “I’m the Lamb.”

What does this mean? Again, we’ll be able to look at this over the weeks, but here’s what it means. It means at least two things. The first thing it means is if Jesus’ death is substitutionary, then Christianity is an all or nothing thing. Years ago in the early days of Christianity the emperor Alexander Severus was very impressed when he realized, “We have a new religion here, Christianity.”

The emperor said, “Well, all right.” He put an image of Jesus Christ in his chapel along with all the other gods. “Might as well be safe.” He bowed down to it. The thing that really bugged everybody, though, was the Christians wouldn’t return the favor. I mean, here was the emperor willing to bow down to Christ. Why wouldn’t the Christians bow down to the emperor?

The Christians said, “We can’t worship Christ at all unless we worship Christ alone.” Why? It’s for this reason. Why did Jesus die? You’ve heard many people say, “To show his love.” Have you heard that? Imagine a boy and a girl walking along the river, and the girl is not really interested in the boy. He says, “You don’t know how much I love you.”

“No. I guess I don’t.”

“I’ll show you how much I love you.” He throws himself into the river and drowns. Does the girl say, “Oh, my word! He really, really did love me”? No. What she says is, “What a jerk! What an idiot!” That doesn’t show any love at all. If you’re going to die, that’s irrational. It’s illogical. It’s mad. It’s wicked. It’s wrong.

If you’re going to die for somebody, you can only die for somebody if it’s the only way. Suicide is a bad thing. Suicide does not show anybody you love them. If the girl was in the water and the boy jumped in the water and risked his life or died saving her, then she would say, “Oh, how he loved me.”

Here’s the point. If Jesus Christ died (and nobody doubts that), unless he died substitutionarily, unless he died in our place, unless he died to take our sins, unless he died, in other words, in order to really save us because we can’t save ourselves, that means his death is ridiculous. It’s stupid. It’s awful.

What does that mean to people who say, “Well, look. There are many ways to God. I believe all good people can reach God. Christians can reach God if they’re good people. Everybody who is a good person can get to God.” Wait a minute! There is nothing good about Christianity unless it’s the only way in.

Jesus’ death on the cross, unless it’s the only way, unless there was no other possible way for us to get to God, his death is terrible. It’s wrong. It’s wicked. It’s stupid. It’s irrational. Therefore, either Christianity is based on, as we see here, the centrality of the cross (it’s based on something stupid and wicked and irrational, and therefore, it’s not one more way to get to God), or else it’s the way to get to God. See, what Jesus is claiming here is a way of saying, “You can’t put me in a pantheon. It’s all or nothing.”

There’s one other thing the substitutionary death means. Every other religion says, “The covenant is based on your commitment to me.” In other words, in every other religion the god says, as it were, “Your commitment to me … If you’re really committed, if you really work hard …” Jesus Christ is the One who says, “Oh, no. Your salvation is based on God’s commitment to you. This is the blood of the covenant.”

What he’s saying is, “Here’s how you see how much I’m committed to you.” The substitutionary death of Jesus Christ makes Christianity unique. It’s either the inferior religion or the superior religion. It’s the claim of what he did on the cross. We can’t help that. As Christians, we really don’t have control over this. It’s just what he claimed.

The average, modern American hates this “all or nothing.” They definitely want to move Christianity into the pantheon. It’s so important because they see so much good in it. Jesus Christ says, “No! This blood was poured out for you. I have died for you, and my death is meaningless and wicked unless it’s the only way you can be rescued.”

3. How you appropriate his death

This is one of the most interesting things about Jesus’ use of the Last Supper, the Passover, is it tells us we each have to make it our own. The death of Jesus Christ does not necessarily or automatically do anything for you, just like you could starve to death in the presence of a meal. You have to eat it. Jesus Christ does not say, “This is my body.” He says, “… eat it …” He doesn’t say, “This is my blood.” He says, “… drink it …”

What he’s saying is, “You must learn how to make the benefits of the cross yours. You must pick it up. You must take it.” You must know these words have been tremendously debated. I think it’s only fair for me to tell you, at least basically, about the debate. On the one hand, you have the very high view of the Lord’s Supper.

The Catholic Church, but also Luther … I know a lot of you think of Luther as the enemy of the Catholic Church. Not in this area, because the Catholic Church and Martin Luther believed when Jesus says, “This is my body,” he meant the actual physical food was his body. Martin Luther used to just bang the tables, “Hoc est enim corpus meum. This is my body.” It doesn’t say, “This represents my body.” He said, “This is my body.”

The high view says, “If you want to appropriate it, you just get the bread and the wine and you eat it. If you have the bread and the wine, if you have the physical elements, you have Jesus.” On the other end of the spectrum, you have the typical evangelical Protestant (I guess you ought to say) who says, “No. This just represents his body. This is nothing but symbol. It’s just a memorial service. It doesn’t really do anything special to you.”

Without going into any detail, I want you to know I believe (maybe I’m wishy-washy) in an absolute compromise. On the one hand, when Jesus Christ said, “This is my body and this is my blood,” it had to be representational. I’m sorry. Because Jesus Christ’s actual body was holding the bread. Right?

How could that be? Because Jesus’ blood, when he said, “This is my blood,” his blood hadn’t been spilled yet. That night, at least, it had to be representational. Being able to say, “This is my body and this is my blood,” does not necessarily mean it literally is. On the other hand, there’s another place where Jesus speaks about this that, I think, goes beyond what the Protestants very often claim for the Lord’s Supper.

It’s in John 6, where Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. […] Does this offend you? […] The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. […] This is why I told you that no one can come to [the Father] unless the Father has enabled them.”

That seems to go beyond what the Protestants are willing to grant, and here’s what I would give you really briefly. I’ll show you how it works for the last couple of minutes. Do you remember when Jesus Christ says right there in John 6, “My words are Spirit and life”? That’s a weird way to put it.

Here’s what I think it means. When you take the Lord’s Supper … By the way, we’re not doing it today. We’re doing it next week. I’m going to give you a week to get ready. A lot of you might say, “Wouldn’t it have been nice to have the Lord’s Supper after a sermon like this?” I don’t think we’re ready. We can take time to think about it.

I believe when I understand the words of Christ about his death, when I eat and drink the bread and the wine, when I eat and drink the bread and the cup, remembering and thinking about what his death means, the Spirit of God in a more profound way than any other place (more profound than your quiet time, more profound than a devotional, more profound than a small group meeting, and those are all pretty important) Jesus and the Holy Spirit take the cross and really shape your heart with it, really bring the cross into your experience.

Remember, we talked about this last week. It makes it a controlling consciousness. You say, “Why? What’s the big deal?” Think about this. For example, the cross is an emblem of shame, but for us, Paul says, “We should glory in the cross.” Why? Why would we glory in the cross? Paul says the cross is a source of glory, of significance, of worth, because when you see the Lord of the universe was willing to take the shame of the cross because he valued us that much, think of how much he loves us.

Think of how much worth we have. Think of how much he values us. The cross means we are of infinite value. Do you feel that way? Do you walk around with that kind of confidence and joy? Do you not care what people think about you? Do you have that kind of incredible self-image? No.

How are you going to get that? “I’m just going to say, ‘I know God loves me.’ ” No, no, no. “I know God loves me.” No. Come to the Lord’s Supper and take his words that are Spirit and life and take the elements and, by faith, tell yourself what the cross means. As you partake, the Holy Spirit does a deep work, and it brings that glory into your life.

Let me give you another one. The cross is a symbol not only of shame, but it’s also a symbol of hostility. The cross is a symbol of the fact Jesus Christ went up against the Romans and went up against the authorities and lost. Paul says the cross is our peace. He says, “The cross is our peace. He has brought down the dividing wall. The cross has brought down the dividing wall between Jew and Greek, between slave and free, and between male and female.”

He says that in Ephesians 2. Why? Here’s what Paul is saying. He says, “If the cross is a living reality in your life, that means you know it’s a humbling thing. You know you are so lost there was nothing less than this that could save you, and that humbles you.” Groups of people you always felt superior to, you no longer feel superior to.

The cross also represents Jesus Christ dying for us while we were his enemies. It’s the ultimate pattern of someone doing self-donation to the other race, to the other gender, to the other class. Jesus Christ’s cross humbles us and gives us a pattern, so if it becomes a living reality in your life, you will be able to have relationships with people who otherwise you never could, people you couldn’t bring yourself to embrace.

Let me just show you what I mean. Let me keep going. Are you suffering? The cross completely transforms your suffering if it’s taken into the center of your life. Why? Because of all the gods of all the religions this is the only God with scars. The cross means, even though suffering remains a mystery, God stands with you in suffering, and he works his will in suffering redemptively.

I’ll even press you a little further. If the cross is something really, really central to your consciousness, you will not judge a book by its cover. In other words, it’s very typical, especially in New York … We look at how other people are dressed. We look at whether they’re sleek or slick or not. You won’t do that, because the cross was an apparent defeat, it was an apparent weakness, but it was really strength and power.

If the cross is central in your mind, you’re not going to write people off. You’re not going to look at a situation and say, “It’s lost.” You’re going to be very, very discerning. You’re going to look beneath the surface. You’re not going to judge a book by its cover over and over and over again. The cross gets rid of your guilt. The cross leads you to say, “If he died for me, then I’m going to be risky, and I’m going to be adventurous for him.”

If the cross is put into the center of your being through the Lord’s Supper and the particular way Jesus Christ says, “I’ll meet you at the table,” more and more and more you will become a person of the cross. You’ll be filled with confidence, and you’ll be filled with humility, and you’ll be able to handle suffering, and you’ll live a guilt-free life (all the things we were just talking about).

What is the Lord’s Supper? Interesting. The last thing he says is, “I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.” My favorite story is … By the way, I’ve been so sick for the last two days all I did was read fantasy fiction, so I’ve been reading The Lord of the Rings again. It’s the only thing I can do when I’m sick and I can’t think.

One of the things I remember is one of the hobbit heroes named Pippin is standing at the gate of the fortress. The gate has been broken through, and the demon king (this terrible, villainous thing) is about to come in and is about to destroy all the good people inside the fort. Just as it looks like the most terrible moment, it looks like it’s all over, suddenly Pippin hears horns in the distance. Horns, horns, horns. What are the horns?

The horns are the cavalry, basically, who have come. The king of Rohan comes, and he rides to his death, but he saves the city. We’re told in the novel from then on, for the rest of his life, whenever Pippin heard a horn blowing in the distance he burst into tears. Why? Because whenever he heard a horn blowing in the distance he received a living memory of his salvation.

Of course, he spent all of his life going along saying, “I know I’ve been saved. I remember that day I was saved. I would have been dead. If it wasn’t for the king who rode to his death for my sake, I wouldn’t be alive.” He knew it, but whenever he heard the horn he knew it in a deeper way. Remember, we talked about this last week. He got a living memory. He burst into tears.

The fact of the matter is when you look at the elements of the bread and the cup, what is that? That’s a horn blowing in a distance. It’s reminding you, not only of the day in which the great King rode to his death in weakness on a little donkey, but it’s also reminding you of the day in which he comes back again when he will not come riding on a donkey but riding on a cloud in absolute triumph to put everything right.

That’s what Jesus is saying. “When you eat this thing, you’re not only remembering that day, that sad day, but you’re remembering that incredible day that’s coming. You’re between these two days, and I tell you I will give you a living memory of the reality of your salvation whenever you eat and drink in faith.”

I know it’s pretty amazing for a Presbyterian to say, “Small group, Bible study, prayer, give your life to Jesus …” There’s another thing Jesus is telling us here. You will not have the benefits of the death of Jesus Christ in your life and have that transforming reality in the center of your life unless you eat and drink of the Lord’s Supper, so next week, get ready. Let’s pray.

We thank you, Father, for giving us a day in which your Son can show us just what his death meant. We pray for the next couple of weeks we might continue to understand it so the cross can be reborn in our lives, and much of the greatness and much of the power and much of the love that can be ours would be generated in our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

The Dark Garden

Saint Matthew’s Passion; The World’s Last Night—April 2, 2000

Matthew 26:36–46

Please turn with me to the passage on which the teaching is based. What we’re going to do for three or four weeks before Good Friday and Easter is we’re going to be looking at the events in the life of Jesus Christ that led up to his crucifixion and asking a simple question … What does the death of Jesus mean?

Virtually everybody in the world knows the message of Christianity is Jesus died for us. Why? What did that accomplish? What does it mean? What does the death of Christ mean? Let’s read this passage which is the incident of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Matthew 26:36–46.

36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” 40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”

42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” 43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. 45 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

This is God’s Word

There’s something that happens in the very beginning of this narrative that begs for an explanation. Thoughtful readers over the years have been surprised by it, puzzled by it, and so we’re going to ask what it means, and we’re going to ask two questions that follow up on that. We’re going to ask three questions of the text. Why the magnitude of Jesus’ agony? Why the immediacy of his agony? What difference does it make to us?

First of all … Why the magnitude of the agony? That’s the thing that begs for an explanation. Take a look and see. Verse 36. We see, “Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane …” Which is an olive grove basically; it means olive press. “… and he said to them …” That’s the body of his disciples, the 12 of them. “ ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee …”

What that means is Jesus came to the outskirts of the garden of Gethsemane, and then he said to most of his disciples, “You wait here, and I’m going to go deeper into the garden and pray,” and he took with him Peter, James, and John. Here’s what’s so odd, and I want to show you the puzzle.

Verse 37. The very first clause actually has a present progressive verb and the NIV translation does not really bring it out. It says literally he was taking Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him when he began … Something began. As he was walking from the outskirts of the garden into the place where he was going to pray … Before he got there, something began. Something started. What was it?

Three of the gospel writers … Matthew, Mark, and Luke … when they are describing this they tell us something that’s really very astounding. First of all, Jesus begins to experience something he calls “overwhelming sorrow,” an agony, a spiritual and mental anguish so strong he feels he’s sinking under it.

When he says, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” we have to take him seriously. He is saying, “Something has come upon me that makes me feel it’s going to kill me before I even get to the cross. It’s so overwhelming. I feel like I’m going to die under this.” It says, “… he began to be sorrowful and troubled.”

One commentator, a guy named B.B. Warfield, says the word troubled is the word for horror, and what that means is as he was walking along, something came over him … a crushing, overwhelming, devastating sense of horror, a mental and spiritual anguish and agony that made him feel like he was dying.

The gospel writer Mark adds … It says as he was going to the place, he was astonished. There’s nothing more astonishing than to say that something was astonishing to the Son of God. Luke tells us one thing none of the other gospel writers tell us, and that is when Jesus came back each time from praying … Luke tells us what the disciples saw was not only was Jesus drenched with sweat, absolutely soaked, drenched with perspiration and sweat, but there was blood in his sweat.

The gospel writer Luke says there was blood in his sweat, and that is very unusual, but it is possible. Blood can come out of your pores when you’re sweating if you’re experiencing a severe shock. So you see, something came down on Jesus Christ that utterly astonished him, sent him into incredible horror and agony. He was reeling with it. He was leveled into the dust with it. The reason this is such a puzzle … Let me make it more of a puzzle by telling you two other quick things that have made it a very great puzzle to people over the years.

First of all, what began to happen to him couldn’t mean he got new information. It couldn’t mean on the way he started to say, “Oh my, I really am going to die.” He knew he was going to die. He knew all about it. He’d been teaching his disciples. He didn’t just think he was going to die in general. We know by reading the Gospels that he, in a very, very, detailed and a very comprehensive way, knew why he was going to die.

He knew he was going to suffer for sin, and he told his disciples about it. So whatever came down upon him and hit him wasn’t the knowledge, the information, that he was going to die. The other thing that puzzles people very much is the contrast of Jesus here with hundreds, thousands, of other people who have died for what they believed with poise and peace.

Maybe one of the most famous ones is if you go to Oxford, England, right on the main street there’s a monument to a couple of people who were burned at the stake for their faith. They’re very famous because of the last words of one of them. This was back in the sixteenth century. They were tied up, and they were about to be burned. The flames were coming up.

One guy, Hugh Latimer, turned to the next guy, who was bound up there and about to be destroyed by fire, Nicholas Ridley, and he said these famous last words. He essentially said, “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day, by God’s grace, light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out.” Stirring words, but why do I quote them right here?

Here’s why. There’s no bloody sweat. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley aren’t falling to the ground and saying, “God, do I really have to do this?” They’re not crushed. Why would hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of followers of Jesus Christ die better than Jesus? See, the question is … What came down on him? Why the magnitude of his agony? The answer is very simple in a way because he actually tells us all about it three times.

What is it he’s wrestling with? What is it three times he goes to the Father and says, “Do I really have to go through this?” The thing he keeps mentioning is the cup. “Do I have to drink the cup? Do I have to have the cup?” The third time he talks about the same. What’s the cup? Well, the Bible is pretty clear on this and commentators are pretty clear on this. The cup in the Bible is the judicial wrath of God on human evil.

In those times, in the ancient times, very often people were executed with a cup of terrible poison, a cup of poison that went in and basically emulsified your insides, tore them into pieces, ate you up from the inside, and you died. Perhaps the most famous execution by the cup of poison was Socrates, of course. Because that was the method of execution for many people, the Old Testament, the Hebrew prophets, came to use the cup as a metaphor for the wrath of God on human evil, and so there are many, many, many references.

So for example, in Ezekiel 23 we read this. “You shall drink the cup of ruin and desolation and tear your breasts.” Isaiah 51. “You will drink the cup of his fury and stagger.” So the reason why Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, and all the other people who died for what they believed in didn’t die the way Jesus is dying, didn’t fall to the ground, didn’t find this horror coming down, was they didn’t face the cup. They didn’t face the justice of God against all human wickedness and evil, which was just about to come down on him.

We haven’t quite answered our question. What began in verse 37? What began as he was walking along? Didn’t he know about the cup? Sure he did. Didn’t he know he was going to suffer that? Of course, he did. Absolutely, he did. Well, then what’s going on here? Well, what’s going on here is pretty simple.

As he began to walk, he began to experience the wrath of God. He began to actually experience God turning away from him. How does God punish sin? The Bible tells us (it’s almost poetic justice) the sinful human heart wants to get away. It wants to be away from God. It wants to be able to be its own master. So the way God punishes sin is to give the heart what it wants.

What God does … Second Thessalonians 1:9. He will punish them. “They will be shut out from the presence of the Lord and the majesty of his glory.” In other words, what God gives the human heart, the punishment, the ultimate destruction, is to be cut off from the presence of God. The reason that’s destruction is that we were built for the presence of God. We need the presence of God like the flowers need the sun or they wither. We need his love. We need his glory. We need to serve him.

What was happening to Jesus? It didn’t even occur to me, really, until this morning. Early this morning I got up and I was meditating on this passage. What was Jesus doing in verse 37 on the way to the place of prayer? Well, knowing Jesus … Jesus is one who lived in fellowship with the Father.

Jesus is one who got all of his power and his grace and his love from his relationship with the Father, and therefore (it jut occurred to me this morning), as he was walking to the place of prayer, he would have started praying. He wouldn’t have waited until he got there. In his heart, he would have turned to the Father, the way he constantly does, and that’s when it came down and that’s when it hit him. Because when he turned in his soul toward the Father, there was nothing there.

One commentator, Bill Lane, who has written a great commentary on Mark, puts it perfectly when he says, “The dreadful sorrow and anxiety, then, out of which the prayer for the passing of the cup springs, is not an expression of fear before a dark destiny, nor a shrinking from the prospect of physical suffering and death. It is rather the horror of the one who lives wholly for the Father … Jesus came to be with the Father for an interlude before his betrayal, but found hell rather than heaven open before him …”

Jesus Christ turned toward the Father and there was nothing there but the abyss. There was nothing there but the darkness that opens out into an infinite nothing. He turned, expecting heaven and the Father, and there was hell. Jonathan Edwards, in his great sermon on this passage called Christ’s Agony, puts it very vividly, as he is wont to do.

He essentially says, “The agony that Jesus experienced in the garden was caused by a vivid, bright, full, immediate view of the wrath of God. God the Father, as it were, set the cup down before him, which was vastly more terrible than Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. He now had a near view of that furnace into which he was about to be cast. He stood and he viewed the raging flames and the glowings of its heat, that he might know where he was going and what he was going to suffer.”

He felt what Ezekiel said, “You shall drink the cup of ruin and desolation and tear your breasts.” He felt what Isaiah said, “You will drink the cup of his fury, and you will stagger.” Jesus Christ turned to the Father and there was nothing there but the beginning of the experience of wrath and hell and forsakenness. He tasted it, and he staggered.

He’s staggering. He tore his breasts. What this means is … here’s the answer to the first question. Why the magnitude of his agony? The answer is because of the passive obedience of Jesus Christ, which is a theological term. The theologians mean Jesus Christ in the garden began to experience passively …

That means he received onto himself all of the justice and wrath of God on human evil. It was all coming down on him, and he was beginning to experience it. There’s a second question that immediately leads to, but first, can I just suggest two little quick but important theological implications of what we just said?

First, years ago, studying the garden of Gethsemane when I was a young minister, it was in the garden of Gethsemane that I came finally to grips, I made my peace as it were (it’s a strange way to put it), with the wrath of God. That might shock some of you that a preaching minister was struggling with the very idea of a God of wrath, a God who sends people to hell.

The very idea of it was something that really I struggled with and I wrestled with. I hope that doesn’t shock you, but I did. Then, it was studying the garden of Gethsemane when I finally came to peace with it because I realized the reason why people get rid of the idea of hell and wrath is because they want a loving God. They want a more loving God. They say, “I can’t believe in hell and wrath because I want a more loving God.”

I came to realize in the garden of Gethsemane that if you get rid of the idea of hell and wrath, you have a less loving God. Because if there is no wrath by God on sin and if there is no such thing as hell, not only does that actually make what happened to Jesus inexplicable … Jesus staggering the way he is, asking God, “Is there any other way?” sweating blood, means he was wimpier than hundreds of his followers, if there was nothing like that.

Here’s the main thing. The main thing is if you don’t believe in wrath and hell, it trivializes what he has done. If you get rid of a God who has wrath and hell, you have a god who loves us in general, but that’s not as loving as the God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ, who loves us with a costly love.

Look what it cost. Look what he did. Look what he was taking. You get rid of wrath and hell, he’s not taking anything close to this, and therefore, what you’ve done is you’ve just turned his incredible act of love into just something very trivial, very small. I came to realize if I got rid of the idea of wrath and hell, I didn’t have a more loving god; I had a less loving god, a god who loved me without any cost to him at all.

So that’s the implication. By the way, if the anticipation of these sufferings, if the very taste of these sufferings sent the Son of God into shock, what must it have been to drink them to the bottom? The second question that comes up … Almost immediately you have to ask this question.

That’s the answer to the magnitude of his agony, but the second question comes up right away, and that is … Why the immediacy? Why did God begin to let him experience it in the garden? Why this, in a sense, preliminary experience of it before the cross? This is where Bill Lane, the commentator, and Jonathan Edwards, the preacher, who I’ve already quoted you … This is where they really helped me a great deal. Here’s the point.

It’s one thing to say, “I’m going to do something,” but you don’t know how bad it’s going to feel until you get there. Jesus Christ begins to taste the wrath of God, begins to experience the lostness he’s going to go through when no one is around. He’s not nailed to the cross yet. He’s not in public. Nobody is around. Everybody is asleep. What that does is it means the obedience, in order to do what he had to do to love us and to obey God, was vastly, millions of times, harder than if he’d only begun to experience it just as he got to the cross.

Jonathan Edwards put it like this. He essentially said, “Christ was going to be cast into a dreadful furnace of wrath, and it was not proper that he should plunge himself into it blindfolded, as not knowing how dreadful the furnace was. Therefore, God brought him and set him at the mouth of the furnace, that he might look in and stand and view its fierce and raging flames, might see where he was going, and might voluntarily enter into it and bear it for sinners as knowing what it was.”

He continues, “If Christ had not fully known before he took it and drank it, it would not have properly been his own action as a human being,” and get this, “but when he took that cup then, knowing what was in it, so was his love to us infinitely the more wonderful and so was his obedience to God infinitely the more perfect.”

Look at what he had to do. He did two things in the garden, and those two things are he loved God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind, and he loved his neighbor as himself. Let’s look at the second one first. Look at him. Who are the people he has to die for, experience this incredible thing for?

Peter, James, and John are the representatives of the human race who are at his feet. Three times Jesus looks at them and says, “I’ve never asked you to do anything for me, and now I’m asking you. This is the moment of my greatest need. This is the greatest test. I only want one thing. I don’t want to face this alone.” How human. “I don’t want to face this alone. Would you just stay awake with me? I’m not asking for advice, just stay awake.” Three times, they fall asleep.

God could have easily arranged it so that that night they would have not only stayed awake, but they would have sat around and they would have said, “Lord, I can’t believe you’re doing this for us. How wonderful that you would die for us. Oh, we’d be lost if you didn’t do it. It’s just so wonderful. It’s so incredible. Let me hug you and kiss you,” but they didn’t.

They fell asleep on him three times. Every time he’s walking out it’s like the Father is saying, “That’s the human race for you. Swallow hell for them. Take into yourself this spiritual atomic bomb and let it explode for them.” He put this enormous pressure on Jesus, and he did … He loved us, but that’s not the only thing.

The second thing he did was God was putting down in front of him, God was saying to him, “Obey me. Obey my will,” and Jesus Christ says, “All right,” but get this. Every other time in the history of the world, before or after, when God comes to a human being and says, “Obey me,” God always says, “Obey and you will live.” Right? Obedience is the way of life. Right? “Obey me, and I will welcome you. Obey me, and you’ll become like me. Obey me, and I will reward you.”

That’s what he’s always saying. That’s what he said to the first Adam. The first Adam in the garden of Eden … He said, “Do you see the tree? Obey me about the tree, and you will live.” Only once in the history of the world did God say to a human being, “Obey me, and I will send you to hell. Obey me, and I will crush you to powder.” See, that’s the reason for the last verse of Tom Jennings’ setting of the George Herbert poem, “The Sacrifice.”

You see, sin began in a garden. Now salvation is coming in a garden. Sin began when the first Adam disobeyed God about a tree, and now salvation is coming when the second Adam obeys God about a tree. You see, the first Adam was just told, “Obey me about the tree, and you will live, just don’t eat it,” but the second Adam, God says, “Obey me about the tree, and I will nail you to it, and I will destroy you on it.” That’s the reason why you have Jesus Christ in this poem saying:

O all ye who pass by, behold and see;

Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree,

The tree of life to all, but only me:

Was ever grief like mine?

What’s going on? Never in the history of the world has somebody had to love God and love his neighbor under this kind of stress, and therefore, what you have is the first perfect act of obedience in history, perfect fulfillment of the law. He loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind, and his neighbor as himself. Not only that, I don’t believe there has ever been any place where somebody obeyed God and got nothing out of it. That’s real obedience, isn’t it?

I mean, when I say to my kids, “Obey me,” and they say, “Sure. Just, what’s in it for us?” I’ll say, “I could tell you, but then it wouldn’t be obedience. Then, it would be a bargain.” Only when you’re doing something just for God or when you’re doing something just for your neighbor are you really doing it for them and not you. Jesus Christ is the only person who perfectly obeyed.

Do you know the old story …? Whenever I tell this story, I always get a few confusions because it’s not in the Bible. It’s an apocryphal story. It never happened. Don’t come up to me afterwards and say, “Where was that?” It’s a great story. It goes like this. Jesus Christ was sitting around with his disciples and he looked at them and he said, “Carry a stone for me.” They all looked at each other.

They didn’t get it, and because they didn’t get it, Peter looks around and he picks up the smallest stone he possibly can. He just picks it up. “Okay.” He puts it in his pocket. “All right. I’m in compliance.” Jesus says, “Now follow me.” They got up and they walked. It was very hot, and it was very dry. They were all very sweaty. Finally, around lunchtime, Jesus Christ says, “Okay. Everybody sit down.” They all sat down. “Get out your stones.” They got out their stones. He waved his hand, and they all turned to bread. He said, “Now have lunch.”

Here’s Peter looking at his little mini muffin in this terrible heat, and he eats it, but he says, “Oh, okay. Now I get it. Why didn’t he tell me to start with?” So Jesus Christ stands up and says, “Now I want you all to carry a stone for me.” Peter looks around and he says, “Now I got it,” so he takes this huge boulder. He’s putting it on his shoulder, and he’s just about crushed under it. He can hardly walk along, but he’s saying, “I can’t wait for supper.” So on he goes.

Finally, around supper time, Jesus brings them all to the shore of a river, and he says, “Now everybody throw your stone in the river.” They all throw their stones in the river, and then Jesus says, “Now follow me,” and he begins to walk away. They’re staring at him, and he says, “Who were you carrying the stone for?”

Nobody has ever actually carried a stone for Jesus, but Jesus carried a stone for you. Let me tell you what the stone was like. It did crush him. It utterly crushed him. He got nothing out of it. In other words, he obeyed God just for God, because God said to him, “Obey me, and I’ll kill you,” as it were. He loved us just for us, because we fall asleep on him all the time, and therefore, what we have in the garden of Gethsemane is the fullest salvation … Let me give you a little theological lesson.

You don’t just have in the garden a dying Savior, but a doing Savior. You don’t have just Jesus Christ dying the death you should have died, but living the life you should have lived. If you thought up to now (and some of you have) that all Jesus Christ did for us when he died was he took our sins upon him, our punishment upon him, so that when we believe in him our sins are wiped out, that’s right, but wake up. That’s not all he did.

Because if all he did was the passive obedience of Christ, that is, he took upon himself our sins, that means when you believe in him, your sins are wiped out, but it’s up to you now to live a good life and to earn God’s blessing and love and welcome, but that’s not all he did. He didn’t just die the death we should have died. He lived the life we should have lived.

He’s not just a dying Savior, but a doing Savior. He didn’t just save us with the passive obedience of Christ, but what the theologians call the active obedience of Christ. In other words, he perfectly obeyed so that when we believe in him, not only do our sins go into his account, not only does God treat him as we deserve to be treated, but his righteousness goes into our account, this kind of righteousness.

In the garden, he was receiving from God what we deserve, and we were getting from God what he deserves. This means you are supposed to live life with your head up. This means you do not have to be worried about who is rejecting you. This means you’re supposed to be reveling in the fact that he’s ravished with your beauty, not just simply tolerating you because Jesus wiped out your sins and now you’re pardoned. Do you see? The second question is … Why the immediacy of this agony? So that his obedience could be matchless.

There’s a place where Jonah said, “All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me, yet I look to your holy temple,” and Jonah was obeying in spite of being under an ocean of water, but Jesus Christ was under an ocean of God’s wrath and obeyed. There has never been obedience like this. He’s not just a dying Savior, but a doing Savior.

I’ve actually done much of the answering, but the third question is … What difference does this make to us? All difference in the universe. On the one hand, you have a model here, do you not? This is how you’re supposed to live. Look at the integrity of Jesus. Or let me put it to you this way. What are you like in the dark, when nobody is looking?

Is it the same as when you’re in the light, when everybody is looking? Is there anything you do in the dark you wouldn’t want your friends to see in the light? Look at Jesus Christ. There’s integrity. He is exactly the same when no one is looking as when people are looking. He’s a model of integrity.

Also, he’s a model of prayer. Look at how he’s emotionally honest. He doesn’t go in to God saying, “Oh, Lord. This will be hard, but I’m just praising your name. I know that somehow I’ll get through it with your help.” No. He’s emotionally so honest. He pours himself out. He says, “I don’t want to do this.” Here’s the Son of God saying, “I don’t want to do this.” Talk about emotional honesty. Yet, he knows the purpose of prayer is not to bend God’s will to our will, but to mold our will to his. Look at him loving people who let him down.

Is there anybody who has fallen asleep on you? Is there anybody who really has let you down in the moment of your greatest need? What have you done with them? Have you just written them off? Have you pulled back? How can you do that when he has done this for you who have fallen asleep on him over and over? So what a model for relationships, what a model for prayer, what a model for personal integrity, but only as a model, it’ll kill you. As a model alone, it will kill you.

However, if you see him not just being your example but being your substitute and your Savior, that’s the difference, because I’ll tell you … Do you know why I have trouble really obeying him? Do you know why I have trouble, and why you have trouble, I believe, whether you’re a Christian or you’re not a Christian or you don’t know who you are exactly? Why do we have trouble completely giving ourselves to him, utterly and completely laying ourselves out unconditionally, without reserve, utter surrender? Why don’t we do it? It’s a lack of trust.

First, on the one hand, we don’t trust him. Right? We’re afraid he might not have our best interest in mind, that he might ask us to do something that won’t be really good for us. So on the one hand, we don’t really trust him, but on the other hand, we don’t really trust ourselves. One of the reasons why we don’t give ourselves wholly and utterly and completely is because we’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid we’re going to let him down. We’re afraid we’re going to wear out his patience and love. This will heal anything.

All your lack of trust in him and all your lack of trust even in yourself … Look. Here is a love that hell came down on … His love for you, hell came down on it, and it didn’t eat through it. His love for you, hell came down on it, and it didn’t break it. Then nothing will. See, on the one hand that will heal you of the trust problem. On the one hand, if he would do this for you, how dare you doubt him? How can we do it? How could you even begin to think he’s not out for your best interest?

On the other hand, here’s why I want you to give yourself to Christ utterly and completely tonight, because if you fail, do you think somehow that’s going to wear through his love for you? Can you believe that after the garden of Gethsemane Jesus Christ is going to look down at you, at anytime ever, and say, “Well, that does it”?

If this didn’t do it, how are you going to do it? If this didn’t eat through his love for you, how is something you do going to eat through his love for you? Nothing will! This is the love you have been after. This is the love you need. No friend love, no married love, no career success, no critical acclaim … Nothing will satisfy you like this.

Nothing will turn you into a person of integrity, nothing will make it possible for you to deal with the injustice in your life because you see he dealt with a great injustice, nothing will help you forgive people falling asleep on you because we fell asleep in the ultimate way on him, nothing will help you be able to handle the little cups of suffering in your life that you don’t understand because he took the big cup, nothing will help you trust him like seeing the ultimate love.

As Jonathan Edwards basically puts it, “The Father, in a sense, gets next to him and says, ‘Here’s the cup you are to drink, Son. This is the furnace into which you are going to be cast if they are going to be saved. There is no other way. Either they perish or you perish. Do you see how terrible the heat is? Do you see what pain and anguish you must endure? Will you still go through with it? Is your love such that you will go in?’ ”

Edwards says something like, “Did Jesus turn to his Father and say, ‘Why should I, who am so great and glorious a person …? Why should I go plunge myself into such dreadful, amazing torments for people who cannot ever requite me for it and who will not even stay awake with me in my hour of greatest need? Why should I do this for them?’ But he didn’t. He loved us.” Look at him dying in the dark for you. Adore him. Fall down and adore him for it, and when you get up, you’ll be more like him. Let’s pray.

We ask, Father, that you’d help us tonight to give ourselves to you wholly because you gave yourself wholly to us. To not give ourselves wholly to the One who gave himself wholly for us is not just immoral; it’s stupid. It’s a crucifixion of the intelligence. We ask, therefore, that you would help us to respond to your Son proportionate to the way he responded to us. Let us give ourselves to him confident that through both his death and his life, both his doing and his dying, he has purchased for us an absolute great and complete salvation. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.