Mark 14:32-34

I am a worm and not a man. I am poured out like water and my heart is melted like wax.

Psalm 69,

reproaches have broken my heart so that I am in despair. I looked for comfort and found none.

There's this theme that the Messiah will be a man of sorrows. And yet if you were to read Mark up to this point, you really don't see this man of sorrows. Instead, Mark opens with this profound declaration from the Father,

you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.

And then immediately, Jesus defeats Satan in the wilderness, and he heals all kinds of sicknesses and diseases, he rebukes the winds and the waves, he feeds the 5,000, he outwits the scribes and the Pharisees, and he's worshiped by the crowds. You really don't see a man of sorrows. until this moment. In fact, it is because of this moment on that the Old Testament is able to prophesy about Jesus's life and say it is a life that is marked by sorrow and anguish. It is here that Jesus takes his disciples, the same ones who five chapters before on the Mount of Transfiguration saw the glory of his divinity. He takes them here and he brings them to the Mount of Olives and they are now forced to stare into his humanity. The words of the father that spoke of his delight in his son now sound like, this is my son with whom I'm well pleased to crush. And for the first time, the disciples see Jesus in distress. feeling the weight of his task to become the bearer of sins. It is here that they see he really is a man, a man of sorrows. And it is for this purpose that this story is recorded for us. It's a lesson that Mark wants us to learn as well. This passage describes something of the emotional depths of the humanity of Christ, and it is ultimately to show, and this is the important part, It is ultimately to show the depths of God's love for us. In fact, you cannot truly understand how deep God's love is for you unless you have an idea of what's going on here. And so this evening, that's what I wanna help you to do. I want to show you how Jesus's sorrow reveals the depths of God's love for his people. How Jesus's sorrow reveals the depths of God's love for his people. And to do that, I just wanna walk through this text with you and we'll divide it into two parts. So the first part is this, Jesus's emotional response. Jesus's emotional response. Our passage opens by following Jesus and his disciples. They've just finished the Passover meal. They'd been singing hymns. Peter's been put in his place again, and verse 32 tells us that they went to a place called Gethsemane. Now, this would have been familiar to the disciples. Jesus had been doing this every day while he was in Jerusalem. He'd teach in the temple during the day, and then he'd retreat here at night to pray. And that's exactly what we see.

And he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And he took with him Peter and James and John.

This seems like an ordinary night. And yet as Jesus takes Peter and James and John, it's at this point that the tone of the night begins to shift. Mark records that Jesus began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And I want to try to paint a picture with these words for you. This word distress indicates an intense suffering, this extreme pain. In the Greek, it has a connotation of like an alarm. And I'm not talking about those soothing sounds and glowing lights that just gently wake you up. I mean that screeching, ear bleeding cacophony mixed with flashing lights that just completely disorients you so you don't even know where you are when you wake up. This word troubled has this idea of horror, this anxiety or heaviness as it feels like doom and hopelessness are just wrapping around you and pressing you in and you feel like you're in this tight place and there's nowhere to turn and the only thing that you see is the object that is filling you with horror and dread and terror. And this is only compounded by what Jesus says next.

My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.

Literally, an all-encompassing sadness, a grief that is so overwhelming it overshadows everything else. J.B. Lightfoot says that this sorrow describes

the confused, restless, half-distracted state which is produced by physical derangement or by mental distress.

Other commentators suggest that this sorrow was so physically intense that had it not been for divine grace, Jesus's body might have given way to death. And you can kind of see this anguish manifesting physically. In verse 35, he goes a little farther and falls on the ground to pray. It would have been customary for the Jews to stand while praying, and yet here, Jesus is so physically and mentally overwhelmed with sorrow, the Bible says he collapses on the ground to pray. And you could probably imagine what the disciples were thinking. This was a man they had been with for nearly three and a half years. Not a single time had they ever seen him worried or anxious or stressed. There was never a problem he couldn't solve or an obstacle too big. He was always calm and collected and in control, and yet here, Mark says he was distressed and troubled and sorrowful to the point of death. What could possibly cause Jesus to be so alarmed that other accounts say he sweat drops of blood? Well, if we read a little further, We see a cup. And in fact, this cup is a reference to the Old Testament. All throughout the Old Testament, this cup refers to God's wrath and judgment for sin. We see this, for example, in Psalm 75.

For in the hand of Yahweh, there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.

You see, in this moment, Jesus is preparing to drink that cup. And it is not because he was sinful. He's completely sinless. Rather, he has taken upon himself voluntarily this task of drinking this cup on our behalf to redeem us, redeem his people. It is in this moment the sins of God's people are about to be imputed onto Christ. Our sins are being put on Christ such that the perfectly holy, perfectly blameless, perfectly sinless Son of God is experiencing for the first time this alien feeling. the shame and the guilt and the grief and the sorrow of sin. He is becoming sin on our behalf. Our guilt is being laid upon him. And in his holiness, he knows he knows fully what our sin deserves. And he is horrified. so much so that he prays this excruciating request. And that's our second point. We saw his emotional response, and now we have his excruciating request. Look at Jesus's prayer in verses 35 and 36.

He prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 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.

You'll notice that Jesus is not asking the Father to remove the cup. He is not suggesting the Father remove the cup. He's not even telling the Father to remove the cup. He is pleading for the Father to remove the cup. He sees the horror of judgment and wrath swirling in that terrible cup, and he knows it must be drained to its dregs. And he knows that when he drinks that cup, he will no longer feel or be aware of the infinite pleasure and joy and delight of his father, but the only thing he will experience is the fullness of the wrath of God. All the blessings he has forever experienced will be replaced with curse and woe as the father's smiling face is clouded from his sight, and the floodgates of heaven are thrown open to pour down the torrents of God's just wrath. And so in his desperation, our Lord turns to his father and prays, as Ferguson says,

he had to pray this prayer. Father, if it is possible, remove this cup. He had to pray that prayer.

because there is not a single holy fiber in his perfectly holy being that would ever want to experience the horror of being alienated from his father's blessing and the complete desolation that would have him cry out,

my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And the father hears this plea. and he sees the anguish of his son. But we hear his silent response in the chapters that follow. The father takes the cup and he presses it into Jesus's hand and says, no, my son, it is not possible. If sinners are to be saved, you must drink. Do you see God's love for you? For the father who has never denied the request of his son, the son is the object of all of the father's love, joy, delight. Everything Jesus has done or said or asked or thought has always been pleasing to the father. And yet in Jesus's darkest hour, there he is crumbled on the ground, suffering, pleading for his father to remove the cup. And the father would say, no. And he would say no so that he could say yes to me and to you. He would choose to save us over his son in that moment. Isn't that incredible? But we also see Jesus' love, don't we? for Jesus to see the horror of the cup and still pray, yet not what I will, but what you will. He has the option to never endure the wrath of God. He never sinned, and yet he submitted and offered himself for you because he loves you. In just a few hours, Jesus, the son of God, is nailed to a cross to suffer excruciating agony. And that's only on the human level. It's only a drop compared to the ocean of wrath that he experienced at the hand of his own father. On the cross, Jesus takes our sin in one hand, and with the other, he grabs hold of the cup that we were supposed to drink, and he drains it down to the dregs, turned it over, and said,

it is finished.

That's how much he loves you. That's what the cross is. And so do you see the cross that way when you look at the cross again and again? In your Christian life, do you see it as this dazzling, spectacular display of God's love? Of God giving his best for us? Of God suffering the depths of sorrow so that we could experience infinite joy? That's exactly what the cross is. The cross is not just proof that you've been forgiven, it's proof that you are infinitely loved by God. You know, we could probably end right there, but I think there are several implications that we ought to pull from this text, and I'll end with just two. The first thing is for anyone here who might not be a Christian. If you're not a Christian, the lesson you need to walk away with is there is no other way to God than through Jesus. Do you see that? I mean, that's exactly Jesus's request. Father, if it's possible, if there's any other way, let's, let's just go with that. But please remove this cup. The father in his infinite wisdom and in his infinite love for his son tells his son there is not. And so if you're here today and you're still thinking you can approach God on your own terms, then you have fundamentally misunderstood this passage. The father told his son there was no other way. He will not make an exception for you. Friend, each of us has a cup, and you can trust that Jesus drank your portion at the cross, or there is coming a day when you will have to drink it yourself. So trust in Jesus. He is the only way. But there's a second thing we ought to pull from this text, and that's for those of us who have trusted in Jesus. You know, if that's the case, this text ought to be incredibly comforting for us. We skipped over it, but I want you to notice what Jesus is doing, even in the midst of His sorrow. He's going back to His disciples to tell them to pray, and it's not to pray for Him, it's to pray that they might not enter temptation. He knows that they're gonna abandon him, and yet he sees that they're sorrowful, and so he's encouraging them. He's exhorting them. Even while he himself is under this immense sorrow, he continues to shepherd them. And I think we could reflect for a moment and ask, if that's who he is in Gethsemane, then how much greater, now that he's conquered the grave and is exalted at the right hand of the Father, how much greater is His care for you now. And this is really what Daniel Hyler preached this past Sunday and Jason Kehoe last Wednesday, which, by the way, if you haven't listened to their stuff, you really should because I'm just gonna be borrowing from it. When you're sorrowful or weary or anxious or don't know what to pray, you are not met by a distant or indifferent Savior. You're met by Jesus. who knows what you're feeling and actually sympathizes with you. Like Daniel said,

Jesus isn't annoyed by your weakness. He isn't surprised by your exhaustion. He doesn't wait for you to pull yourself together.

He sees your despair and it resonates with him. It moves him to compassion so that when he sees you laden with sorrow and grief, he doesn't shame you or rush you. He comes alongside you and says, let me carry you. And you know, you can be confident that he will, because he has already carried the greater burden of sin. He's experienced the greatest sorrow, so you never will. And if he did the greater thing of drinking that cup, he will not deny you the lesser thing of sustaining grace. If he endured that kind of anguish to save you, he won't walk away when you're in pain. So when you feel weak, when your sorrow feels overwhelming, when your faith feels uncertain and your prayers feel empty, I want you to remember this. The love that led Jesus into sorrow is the same love that meets you in yours. And you can be sure it is more than enough because God's love is deeper than you will ever know. Will you pray with me? Father, we cannot begin to imagine the sorrow that your son felt in that garden, but we are so thankful that he willingly drank the cup for us. We thank you, Father, that you did not spare your own son, but gave him up to save us and to call us your own. We pray that as we store this passage in our hearts, we pray that your spirit would continually remind us and show us the depths of your love for us. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.