As mentioned in my last post, I taught Sunday School this past weekend.
For some time now, probably two or three years I have been thinking about a single word in in Matthew 26: 42.
The word that was nagging me was ‘unless’. I knew there was something very important in the use of that, but I couldn’t place what it was beyond just in my own imagination.
Since the new year, my wife and I have been reading the Bible each night, she would read from the Old Testament, and I the New Testament, and from time to time our readings would match thematically or each connected with the stories. It was during one of these reading that I gained my answer, or at least a clue as to what to look for.
When an opportunity arose to teach class again, I volunteered and decided I would take my little question and research it and turn it into a full Bible Study.
Though it fell on Palm Sunday, I brought the class forward to the events happened in the hours just before what we call Good Friday, upon the Mount of Olives and in the Garden known as Gethsemane. A lot happens in that garden scene, but I forced on one particular thing.
However, to stress how important this was, I had to take my class much further back in time. Actually, I took them back somewhere around 66 Million Years Ago. When a massive asteroid struck what we know as the Yucatan Peninsula. This was the asteroid that brought about the death of the dinosaurs. Scientists call this an EXTINCTION EVENT.
Yes, I brought up Dinosaurs in a Sunday School lesson.
I then brought us back to the bible with Noah and the Floor. In Chapters 6 and 7 of the Book of Genesis, God had decided that all the wickedness of man should be destroyed and brings about the Great Flood. This too could be called an EXTINCTION EVENT.
Now I turned the class attention to an Extinction Event that should have happened, but didn’t.
We then looked to the Gospels and the events in the garden called Gethsemane.
I read the Four Gospel accounts, in a different order than is traditional.
I begin with the Gospel of John, because, well… As John focus on Christ’s spiritual side while on Earth, he doesn’t include the Gethsemane scene even though he was there. Oh, right, he slept through it.
However, as this was Palm Sunday, we looked to a scene from the Triumphal Entry (John 12:27) and Christ sounds a lot like the torment he goes through in the garden nearly a week later.
“Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!’
I then brought us to the Gospel of Luke and read chapter 22, verses 39 to 46.
There are many things in the Gethsemane scene I could break down into several lessons:
Luke is the researcher and documentarian of the facts.
He is a physician and so he is the only one that mentions that Jesus sweated drops of blood.
It think it is interesting that this man who “I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning” (Luke 1:3) is the only one to record the appearance of an angel.
Matthew and Mark say that an angel came to Christ’s aid after the Temptation.
Christ starts and ends the scene by saying “Pray. That you will not fall into temptation.” And “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”
Luke records online one PRAYER that Christ makes to his Father in Heaven.
We then turned to the Gospel of Mark and read Chapter 14 verses 32-14
“Abba, Father.” Expressing intimacy with his Father. Like a child calling out “Daddy.”
Even before his prayers he is already “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” – Does he feel like he’s dying, or that he wishes he was dead? Both very human feelings in the midst of the stress Christ is going through.
Mark records two Prayers of Christ.
Now turning to the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 26:36-45
I will include the entire section here as it is important to the lesson.
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.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
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.”
Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter “watch, and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”
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.”
When he came back, he again found them sleeping because their eyes were heavy. So, he left them there and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
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. Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”
(Matthew 26:36-45- The New International Version Study Bible)
Again, Christ feels overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.
He asks the others to keep watch, but they fall asleep, and again he asks them the keep watch, but this time he says “keep watch with me for one hour?” Not keeping watch to protect Him, but to watch with him. He’s including them in the events.
Again “Pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” He knows that last one too well, his human body is week, but his spirit keeps going forward to do the work of his Father.
Now let’s focus on the Prayers of Christ in Matthew. Matthew writes that Christ prayed THREE times, but only recorded two of them. Over all the prayers are nearly the same as what Mark and Luke recorded, but there are subtle differences.
• “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
• “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
In the first prayer, Jesus knowing that is to come is asking that this CUP be taken from him. Yet, he is willing to follow God’s Will.
In the second prayer, Jesus’ prayer is not about himself, but about us.
It is this second prayer that I am focusing on.
All three of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) mention The Cup in Christ’s prayers. So, it must be something important.
It is not the “The Holy Grail” of legend or the Cup that he drank from in the Last Supper.
Though related, it is something far mor important.
According to the notes in my NIV Study Bible – the CUP represents – is a symbol of deep sorrow and suffering. Here it refers to his Father’s face being turned away from him when he who has no sin was made sin (a sin offering) for us.
The Cup of Sorrow
As much as Christ is going to feel that his Father has turned away from him:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)
I don’t see The Cup mentioned in the prayer is about Christ’s own suffering and sorrow. It is far more than that…
My Study Bible calls us to look at two Old Testaments references.
Isaiah 51: 17
Awake, awake!
Rise up, O Jerusalem,
You who have drunk from the hand of the Lord
The cup of his wrath
You who have drained to its dregs
The goblet that makes men stagger.
Ezekiel 23: 32-34
“You will drink your sister’s cup,
a cup large and deep;
It will bring scorn and derision,
For it holds so much.
You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow,
The cup of ruin and desolation,
The cup of your sister Samaria.
You will drink it and drain it dry;
You will dash it to pieces
And tear your breasts.
And then referees to the Psalms
Psalm 74:7-8
But it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. For in the hand of the Lord 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.
Isaiah calls it the CUP OF HIS WRATH
Ezekiel calls it the CUP OF RUIN AND DESOLATION
Psalms says all the wicked of the world will drink of it.
It was while my wife and I were doing our nightly reading that we came across something else. She was reading from the book of Jeremiah:
Jer 25: 15-30
This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you to drink it. When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them.”
So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand and made all the nations to whom he sent me drink it: Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, its kings and officials to make them a ruin and an object of horror and scorn and cursing, as they are today, Pharaoh king of Egypt, his attendants, his officials and all his people, and all the foreign kings of the Philistines (those of Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the people left at Ashdod); Edom, Moab and Ammon; all the kings of Tyre and Sidon, the kings of the coastlands across the sea; Dedan, Tema, Buz the kings of Arabia and all the kings of the foreign people who live in the desert; all the kings of Zimri, Elam and Media; and all the kings of the north, near and far, one after the other – all the kingdoms on the face of the earth. And after all of them, the king of Sheshach will drink it too.
Then tell them, “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Drink, get drunk and vomit, and fall to rise no more because of the sword I will send among you. But if they refuse to drink, tell them, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: You must drink it! See, I am beginning to bring disaster the city that bears my Name, and will you indeed go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, for I am calling down a sword upon all who live on the earth declares the Lord Almighty.’
Here is is clear that EVERONE must drink of the CUP – every nation of the world, starting with God’s own people first. – For all have fallen short of the Glory of God. We are all sinners, all wicked, and must take the CUP of our punishment. It will bring about the end of all the wicked on the earth. – We must all drink of it, unless…
Here we return to Christ’s second prayer from Matthew:
“My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
That word UNLESS is caring a lot of weight here. This isn’t about that Christ is going to take up the Cup and drink, but that we were all the one destined to drink of it. This cup is intended destruction of all that is Wicked, it is meant to wipe of all out.
Another way of writing this prayer is:
“I know that it is your will, Father, that I must drink of this Cup so that they will not have to.”
Where the asteroid struck the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, this Cup was meant to punish us. However, Christ drank of the Cup of God’s Wrath instead of us, and we are saved from the Extinction of all who are wicked.
Instead of an Extinction Event, we had the Crucifixion.
After the lesson, as always, the entire class added their own thoughts, building upon what I brought forward.
As always, everything I teach even if it’s a bit odd, like including dinosaurs, always begins with the scripts and ends with the scriptures.