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PubChurch - Jesus, the Ultimate Drinker

Here’s the talk from Sunday night - Matt. 26:36-46

How much can you drink? Have you ever tried to find out?

When I was at university I knew a group that would have drinking competitions – who could get the most down before they passed out. Seriously. That’s British students for you – Australian students, no doubt, are far more civilised.

Sadly, I started my drinking career long before university. At the age of 9, actually, I have to confess. My parents had a party. I think it was their wedding anniversary or someone’s birthday or something. And the house was full of people. People everywhere. And I wandered around, my 9 year old self, having a good time because parties meant lots of snack food and sugary drinks - which is 9 year old heaven, isn’t it?

So I’m wandering around the house and I see a full, unattended glass of lemonade. No-one’s around so I take it. And I drink it. It did, actually, taste a bit strange but I was in a hurry – I didn’t know how much time I had (I was, let’s be honest, potentially in the middle of a crime, who knows whose lemonade it was) – so I chugged it all down.

20 minutes later I was in a terrible state. I only just made it to the bathroom before I was horribly sick. I had no idea what was going on. 9 years old. It was actually only 10 years later when I had my first ever intentional gin and tonic that I recognised the taste and finally worked out exactly what had happened that afternoon.

Ever since then I’ve found it pretty hard to understand why people would deliberately subject themselves to that. Not the occasional drink, but the hardcore, 2-day hangover sort of drinking. Why do we do it? Who in their right mind would deliberately go through that?

Think, if you can, of the worst that you, or someone you know, has ever suffered because of drinking. Picture it in your mind.

Got it? Well, I’ve got news for you. What you have in your mind now is lightweight compared to the hardest and heaviest drinker I’ve ever known. I wonder if you know Him? You actually met Him just a while ago as a section from the Bible was read to us because the hardest, heaviest – the ultimate drinker you will ever meet is Jesus.

That’s right: Jesus. Does that surprise you? Well turn with me to the bible passage that we just had read out, it’s printed on our sheets, and let me introduce you to a man who can outdrink the world.

The scene is a garden in the evening of the last full day of Jesus’ life. He knows He’s going to die. He’s just had a last meal with his closest friends where he tells them this and then he takes them to a garden in a place called Gethsemane, you may have heard of it.

I wonder what you’d do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow. Maybe you’d do what Jesus does. He goes and prays. He takes his three closest friends with him, Peter, James and John, and he goes deeper into that dark garden and he prays.

Now what does the prayer of a condemned man look like? What would you pray if you faced imminent death? Death long before it should arrive. Jesus was, we’re told, 33 years old. That’s far too young to die. That’s my age.

If it were me I’d be pretty emotional, wouldn’t you?

Well Jesus obviously is – look what he says to His friends in v38,

³⁸ Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

And He asks them to sit with Him as He prays into the night, every word bringing His death nearer. You can feel the weight of expectation.

But if you were reading through Matthew’s gospel, his account of the life of Jesus, then it wouldn’t be a surprise to reach this point because Jesus had already told His followers several times that it was going to happen. So, for example, Matthew records this for us…

Matthew 16:21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

And this

Matthew 17:22 When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. 23 They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.”

And the amazing thing is that, rather than turning around and walking the other way, Jesus walked with his followers all the way to Jerusalem where He knew He was going to die. And so He prays.

If it were me I think I’d be praying one simple prayer.

“God, please don’t let this happen”.

In fact, to be fair, I don’t think I’d be there in the first place. Because Jesus has chosen to be here. He didn’t have to be there. Way back when He told His followers that He was going to go to Jerusalem to die they told Him not to do it. Sounds like good advice if you ask me.

But now here He is.

So what would make someone willingly choose to die? Well, the answer is in what Jesus prays. Just look at it 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.”

In that little prayer you have a fantastic summary of what Jesus’ mission.

There are many theories about Jesus. You could probably name them.
Faith healer, good man, moralist, revolutionary, popular leader, religious reformer.

But none of them, attractive as they sound, come close to His real identity. Because Jesus, while He is, in a sense, all those things, is so much more. He’s the one who drinks the cup.

Those are His words, after all. See them there? That’s His prayer.

Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.

The cup he’s speaking about is an image that comes from deep in the Old Testament, the bit of the Bible written before Jesus was alive. It comes from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. Here’s the image that Jesus is invoking as He prays His prayer.

Jeremiah 25:15 Thus the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.

If Jeremiah was anything he was a prophet of judgement. He brought a message of judgement to the people of Israel and the surrounding countries. He explained to them how they run away from God like an cheating wife runs away from her husband. They’d treated Him like dirt. They’d wanted something from him when they thought they needed him but the rest of the time they just ignored him. He explained to them how God would punish them for it. Here’s how Jeremiah carried on

²⁷ “Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, be drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more, because of the sword that I am sending among you.’ ²⁸ “And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts: You must drink!

Now that is more than the worst hangover. “Rise no more”. The picture isn’t of a headache but of decapitation.

It wasn’t a popular message then. And, to be fair, it’s not a popular message now, is it? The problem is, though, that it’s the truth. It was the foundation of Jesus’ message. In fact, the first recorded word of Jesus’ public life is “repent”. Change! Your lives are in a complete mess and under God’s judgement. Jesus, by any account the most loving man who ever lived, spoke a lot about it. He spoke about Hell where God would send those who had ignore Him, those that push Him aside because they have more important things to do with their lives.

That, my friends, is the cup that we all have to drink one day because who can say that they’ve ever made God the centre of their lives? Who can say that every day has been lived with God, the creator of every good thing that we have, at the centre – giving him the place that’s due to him?

Instead we find ourselves in a terrible place. Facing God’s judgement.

But think once again about Jesus’ prayer because although it speaks of a terrible future that waits for all of us it also speaks of our rescue from that cup of anger.

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.”

Have you spotted what’s going on here? Have you seen it? If Jesus’ prayer here is a window into His mission then understanding it is the key to understanding what Christianity is all about.

Have you spotted it?

Jesus chooses to drink the cup.

Let me say that again so we’re all on the same page. This is the heart of the Christian faith.

Jesus chooses to drink the cup.

I wonder if you’ve ever grasped how momentous that is.

Because if there were ever anybody who did not have to face God’s anger, if there were ever anybody who never pushed Him aside, never lived for themselves – if there was ever anybody who loved everyone He met then it’s Jesus. Even a brief read through of His life makes that clear.

In fact Jesus is the one man in recorded history who had no need to drink the cup. If every person that ever lived was lined up in front of God and their lives examined then only one person would pass. Jesus. So what is He doing choosing to drink the cup? Willingly doing a thing that he knows is going to be terrible to face?

Well, He drinks it so that you and I don’t have to.

He drinks it so that you and I don’t have to.

That is what’s going on here. He is steeling Himself to drink the cup that He doesn’t deserve to drink. So that you and I don’t have to.

Because, you see, God isn’t just a God of judgement – he’s also a God of mercy. But one doesn’t offset the other. God doesn’t just sweep evil under the carpet and pretend it’s not there – no, he deals with it justly, He punishes it.

And so he sends His only Son, Jesus, to drink the cup. And the incredible thing is that Jesus willingly drinks it. There is no other way because he knows there is no other possible way for God to be just and for you and I to get off the hook. No-one knows that more than Jesus as he prepares Himself here not just to die physically on a cross – and that was a horrible way to die, let’s be clear about that – but his coming death is far worse even than that because as He hung there on the cross He took upon Himself God’s anger.

And it leaves us with a choice.

It leaves us with the choice of how to respond because this is not a done deal.

There are, I reckon, 3 ways to respond. 3 ways you could react to what Jesus was preparing for in the garden, 3 ways you can react to the cross.

First, you could ignore it. Just carry on. Live life as before. It’s not perfect but there you go. You get knocked down, you get up again, you get knocked down, you get up again. Nothing’s ever really going to keep you down. Problem is, you can ignore God for only so long. You’re going to have to drink the cup. You will get knocked down by God himself. God says “you must drink!”.

Rather than ignoring it, you could have a go at making the cut. You could work on being good enough. It might be worth a shot. Except that you won’t manage it, trust me. Jesus three friends couldn’t even manage to stay awake for one night; can you imagine putting in a lifetime of effort to get onto God’s good side. It’s impossible. We’re hopeless. We have selfish thoughts every moment of the day. We’d be horrified if our lives were exposed to everyone around us. We have secrets that we don’t want even our nearest and dearest to know about. Every song that reminds us of our good times is followed by one that reminds us of our bad times. And we can be very bad. No, we won’t ever succeed by trying to be good enough.

But there is a third way. And it sounds too simple to be true but it’s the only sensible way. You can trust Jesus to drink the cup for you. It’s as simple as that. And it’s the only rational thing to do. Because Jesus not only died on that Cross and get buried in a stone tomb but a couple of days later was raised from death back to life. Swallowed down the whole cup, every last drop, got the ultimate knockdown and then got up in the morning better than ever and holds out to you the offer of doing the same. Of having nothing to fear in the face of God’s justice and of getting up after you’re knocked down by even death itself. It’s what elsewhere he calls “eternal life” – being with Jesus and God the Father for ever.

Well, my time’s almost up here and, indeed, our four drinks with Jesus are almost over. I hope, however many of those weeks you’ve been with us you’ve got to know Jesus a bit better. But an encounter with Jesus can’t just be like a brief encounter at a bar. It demands a response. The more clearly you see what He’s done, and I hope you’ve seen it clearly tonight, the more you understand that a response is needed.

There’s a number of things that you could do now.

First, simply talk some more. Hang around as the food comes in and find out more.

If you want you can also do that in a slightly more structured but equally relaxed way by joining a course that we run that explains a little more about Jesus – you’ll hear more about that in a moment.

But there is one more thing you could do now. Because I reckon there are a few people here tonight who have seen enough of Jesus to know that following Him would be the right thing to do and they want to do it. I want to give you the chance to do that right now.

And you can do it by asking him to drink the cup for you. By saying a simple prayer.

Here it is

Dear God,

I’m sorry that I’ve spent my life ignoring you. I recognise that I deserve your punishment.
Thank you that Jesus came to drink the cup of your anger so that I don’t have to. I want to trust him now to do just that.
Help me to live for you – not just now but into eternity.

Amen.

Posted by on 07/30 at 07:45 PM

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