to the east of the city of Jerusalem there's a little mountain it's called the Mount of Olives it's about 300 feet above the city of Jerusalem a limestone ridge is about a mile in length it's about 2700 feet above sea level and on the western slope of the Mount of Olives is a garden if you go to Israel today you can visit that garden and in that garden there's some beautiful shrubs primarily olive trees as a matter of fact 8 ancient olive trees stand there some believe that they go back to the time of Christ
they're massive trunks are nodded in garl and they stand like silent sentinels watching over that garden where Jesus came to pray we believe that it is the exact spot tradition all the way back to the 2nd century says this is the place where Jesus came to pray it's Gethsemane but this night was like no other night Jesus had been up on Mount Zion there in an upper room he had the last supper with his disciples he talked about his coming crucifixion and prior to that his betrayal you know when the Lord Jesus began his ministry
when he was performing miracles when he was feeding the multitudes opening blinded eyes healing withered limbs oh how the crowds quality oh they loved the miracles that he did but when Jesus Christ began to speak to them of deeper eternal verities and full surrender to his lordship they began to leave him as a matter of fact they left in droves and the Lord Jesus had to turn to his disciples and say will you also go away and from multitudes now he just has 12 but now one of the twelve has left Judas has gone to
betray him now he only has eleven but out of that eleven he chooses a trinity of disciples to come and watch and pray with him now he has three but those three failed him they're asleep and in the most critical hour when he needed that companionship they failed him and I say again this got to me today I believe this is the most critical hour in history and the church is playing games can you see him there in Gethsemane no visible audience the disciples away their sleeping demons looking on angels looking on the father looking
on what does he say father if it be possible may this cup pass away from me but if I drink it then thy will be done what was in that cup then went down the street one day as I it was five minutes of five I remember as I went past the door of this very humble kind of place this lady put her head down said I know who you are you're the pastor of the tabernacle I said that's right I've been to the time I usually sit at the back I'm very poor and I
can't have anything to put in your offering I said all right and she said you you come in my house number cup of tea I said no I'm sorry it's five minutes of 5:00 and I'm due for tea as we say in England or supper at five o'clock now that's not the reason that's not the reason you won't be coming because I'm poor and it isn't a nice house like some of your folk up I'll come in I have come in I went in kind of a house should go in and hold your nose as
you go in you know I've never I've been in some big stars of the house but never one like that I'll tell you that I sat down at the table and that there was just about this much space to get from the door the front door and it was all stacked up with books she bought them at a junk shop down the road she'd read thousands of them the table was full and there's a little space at the sink and then there was a big think it was piled up with dishes she hand had a
washing up of dishes I'm sure for months and there's a nice piece of bacon and he said it was all green and mold you know real appetizing kind of thing what do you call that stuff you get off mold penicillin seed $50 with a penicillin on that thing I'm sure and she didn't even know she said you do drink tea I said yes she said all right inshallah tea pot that have been white once and that it was all messed up on the outside and she reached in the sink and took a cap out that
was all slimy on the outside and as I looked in it the tea leaves and some corruption in the bottom and and she just took that black tea and she poured it in that cup and he said you take cream I said yes I do she said I don't have any you take sugar yeah I don't have any you know as I see how the fingernails are all in mourning they were covered with dirt and she held that filthy cup out with that rotten cold tea with no sugar no cream no anything and I love
to date night I kind of I guess I shrunk off from it you know you drink it you know as I put my hand out to take that cup right there never forgotten it my mind just went 2,000 miles away from England to a place call at that time Palestine and 2,000 years back to this man in the garden when the father said drink it drink it father let this cup pass for me that cop is not talking about a wooden cross bar Roman name you go through the Old Testament you see Isaiah chapter 51
talking about the cup that we drank that it's full of God's wrath you see Jeremiah chapter 25 verse 15 the cup that is filled with the wine of God's wrath Revelation chapter 16 verse 19 a cup filled with a wine of the fury of God's wrath the picture we have in scripture is a cup this cup is a picture of the wrath of God the fury of God Jeremiah and the Lord Almighty the God of Israel said to me take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my fury and give it to
the nation's to drink the cup of God's damage pour out your wrath on the nations says the soul they've scorned me they've made me to drink vinegar pour out your wrath on the nations says the psalmist in another place let's pour it out on Egypt God pour it out on the nations that don't know you again the psalmist [Music] the rabbi's debated should we include that Cup in Passover after all it's in the Bible that some day God's damnation some day God's fury will be given to the nations to drink those that don't acknowledge him
that's what he did to Pharaoh should we put it in the Passover they argued and they argue finally they said we can't solve it so we'll wait till Elijah comes and he'll settle the argument for us so they have to this day in the Passover something called Elijah's Cup but Elijah's Cup is not today it's just Elijah's coming but originally Elijah's Cup was to remind them that some day Elijah would come to decide what's going to happen to the cup of wrath and I think Jesus came to the garden and began to think about that
cup that God will pour on the nation's you know what's in that cup it's a terrible thing to fall into the hands of an angry god and I think in his human nature as he wrestled here near an old olive tree get dawned on him I have to drink it no no now that God went back up bath I can't [Music] Oh Oh I will and he drank it he drank every drop look [Music] look my god my god why have you forsaken me he would cry it is finished that the last swallow [Music] that
was for me he's the essence of purities the essence of hominess he was harmless and undefiled and separate from sinners and yet he takes the most horrible thing this world has ever had symbolic of all the sin of all the ages you can mention it all the physical corruption lesbianism either lousy rotten corrupt thing that sends men to jail that makes men rot in their bodies every vicious thing the pride and the anger and all the other things are sins of the flesh the sins of the Spirit and that all day and he took bad
cat what saves us is not nails that were put in his hands and his feet which saves this is not a crown of thorns that was put in his head what saves us is when the wrath of Almighty God was thrust on Jesus Christ like a torrent preachers say God turned away because he could not see the sight of these soldiers persecuting his son that is not why he turned away he turned away because he saw your sin on his son and all the righteous and holy anger and the righteous and holy hatred of sin
do toward you as the center and me as a sinner was all of a sudden in that moment poured out on his one and only son did you say hatred yes hatred God loves all that is righteous and holy and as such he hates all that is the opposite and ladies and gentlemen you and I are the opposite and in that moment god worn out the fury of his wrath this is the language scripture uses upon his son preachers you often time assume too much but your people understand the cross but I can tell you
all over the world I've had people come up to me in tears and say brother washer for 15 years I have I have rolled upon Christ I have trusted Christ but I never could figure out in all this preaching how the fact that Romans and Jews beat him up somehow atone for my sin but tonight I understand he was crushed it pleased the Lord to crush him to crush him imagine you're in a little village and you're just a quarter of an eighth of a mile away from a dam and you're at the very bottom
of that dam on a river and the dam is a thousand miles high and a thousand miles wide and it's filled to the brim and one morning you wake up to a sound like the world cracking into and you run to the window of your house and you see that the dam is broke and a wall of water higher than heaven is coming toward you your strength of stroke doesn't matter how fleet of foot you are does not avail you you are going to die and no one will hear from that moment know your name
you will be gone you will be removed from this earth and before that mighty wave hits you the ground opens up and drinks it down so that not one spot of water reaches your sock so did Christ our mighty champion on Calvary take our sin and bear the wrath of Almighty God and I hear men say this is cosmic child abuse my heart I don't know whether to cry or go to battle it is the most precious truth to me because my sins are so high that only a work like that can save me when
he was perspiring the sweat was like blood it was blood that minut capillaries had ruptured he was in such extreme duress that blood was dripping from his brow sometimes Jesus would pray standing sometimes Jesus would lift his face to heaven to pray sometimes Jesus would kneel and pray but in Gethsemane he fell on his face can you imagine what he must have looked like when Judas led that group into the garden can you see him his face is matted with blood and dirt red blood and black dirt on his face his heart is broken this
is the way they found him when Judas planted that kiss of shame upon the Lord Jesus Christ he said my soul is exceeding heavy the word heavy has the idea of being separated alone before those nails ever went into the hands of Jesus they had already come into his soul de semanas the vestibule of Calvary the victory really was won in Gethsemane not on Calvary it was paid for it Calvary it was won in Gethsemane Jesus knowing what he would go through it is said that Nero had 40 men in his army these 40 men
were Restless they were Nero's wrestlers gladiators who would come there to the field of endeavor to the AEGON to wrestle for Nero and they wanted to please their Emperor and as these 40 wrestlers would come there to wrestle before the Emperor the Emperor would sit there in his finery in his velvet box breaked sit there upon his throne and watch the games as these wrestlers would wrestle they were the finest athletes in all of Rome they would come out there with their square shoulders and bulging biceps look up into the box of their Emperor and
they would chant we are 40 wrestlers wrestling for the Oh Emperor to win for thee the victory and for thee the victors crown everybody in the Empire knew who these wrestlers were they were the counterpart of our Olympic champions today then word came to Nero that some in the army had become Christians Christianity was beginning to spread to be a Christian now was a crime worthy of death Christians must be put to death by fire by sword by Beast and so Nero sent out a word his commander-in-chief estación and said you need to go through
the ranks of your troops if you find any Christians they shall be executed Vespasian lined his troops up and he said an edict has come from the Emperor should there be any Christians I'm going to ask you to confess to being Christians and I'm told that a Christian will never deny that he's a Christian but I want to say before you confess that you are Christian if you do this you will surely be put to death then the station said are there any Christians he wasn't prepared for what was about to happen because as one
man forty step forward all 40 of these wrestlers had given their hearts their lives to Jesus Christ when the space Ian saw that he said no no there's some mistake not you forty to a man they said we believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God best base Ian said please step back step back renounce your faith and it'll be over not a one of the moved the space Sheehan said I cannot put you to death with the sword I believe you've not thought it through surely you'll renounce your faith he said I have
a plan it was in the middle of winter there space in built a fire on a frozen lake a big roaring fire then he took from those 40 men their helmet their breastplate their Greaves of brass the shoes this shirt the undergarments strip them down to absolutely nothing in that sub-zero weather and turn them away in the darkness and said you will stay out in the darkness until you freeze but he said if any of you out there in the cold and the darkness decide that you want to renounce Christ all you have to do
is come to the fire surely thinking they would come to the fire Vespasian sent them out there and the 40 men went out there he wasn't prepared for what he was about to hear because he heard the chant that he'd heard so many times but now was different and this is what they were chanting we are 40 wrestlers wrestling for veal Christ to win for thee the victory and from V the victors crown Vespasian said well they're chanting now but they will soon change but on through the night as the cold grew deeper they heard
this chant forty wrestlers wrestling for the O Christ forty wrestlers wrestling for the old Christ to win for thee the victory and from thee the victors crown they grew weaker and weaker and weaker they were being nun by the cold but then the chanting stopped and the space in looked and their slithering across the ice was the naked form of one of those soldiers turning his back on Jesus Christ coming to the fire best base in said haha here he comes the rest will soon follow I knew it I know man the others will be
coming soon but he wasn't prepared for what he was about to hear he listened then he heard in the darkness 13:9 wrestlers wrestling for the oh Christ to win for the the victory from the the victors crown when best base in heard that we looked at the miserable form before him slithering on the ice according to the story the way I heard the space Ian took from his head his helmet took from his chest his armor took from his back his shirt from his feet his shoes and ran toward the 39 saying 40 wrestlers wrestling
for the oh Christ to win for the victory and from thee the victors crown Jesus wrestled for me I want to wrestle for him don't you am i a soldier of the cross I want to be as I look at dark guests Emily I pay the two things that it tells me number one I want to hate sin and number two I want to love Jesus Christ and so should everyone else [Music] you [Music]
