Fishkill Baptist Church
Good Friday Worship, April 18, 2025

      • Isaiah 53:6ESV

      • Psalm 118:22–23ESV

  • What Wondrous Love Is This

      • Psalm 22ESV

  • O Sacred Head Now Wounded

      • Mark 15:33–39ESV

  • When I Survey The Wondrous Cross
  • Your Cross O Lord
  • Intro: Theme/Topic (What’s the problem, the question, etc.)
    There’s a kind of “love” we are all familiar with. It’s the kind that sends a Valentine’s card with hearts on it or sends sweet text messages. This kind of love throws around the words, “I love you,” without much thought. It’s an easy love that doesn’t cost much. It’s sentimental. And while it sounds nice and can even feel real in the moment…It hasn’t been tested.
    There’s another kind of love. A deeper love. One that costs and is willing to suffer — A kind of love that doesn’t just say, “I love you.” — It proves it.
    This is the kind of love that we see from Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before the cross. Where Jesus wasn’t just facing death — He was staring into the horror of God’s judgement and fully aware of what it would cost said, “Not My will but Yours be done.”
    If you’ve ever doubted God’s love for you…
    If you’ve ever wondered if you could really trust Him with your life…
    If you’ve ever asked, “Is God’s love real, or is it just words?”
    — Then look with me tonight at this moment in the garden where we will see Christ’s love for us tested and proven.
    Scripture
    Please turn with me to Matthew 26:36-46. If you need to use a pew Bible, you’ll find today’s text on page 989. Once you’re there, please stand with me if you are able and follow along with me as I read...
    Matthew 26:36–46 ESV
    Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”
    This God’s Word!
    Prayer
    Father, open our eyes and our hearts this evening to see and experience afresh the love of Christ for us. And as we reflect on His love may be be transformed by it. We ask this in Christ’s Name — AMEN!
    Intro: Formal (give context to passage, setting the scene, big idea)
    Previous to this scene, Jesus had share the Last Supper with His disciples, He predicted Peter’s denial, and now He withdraws to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, just moments before His arrest, and hours before the cross.
    What happens in this garden is one of the most intimate and intense moments in all of Scripture — because here we get a peek into the very heart of Jesus that helps us to understand what really took place at the cross.
    We see Jesus overwhelmed with sorrow, falling to the ground, and pleading with the Father. This is not ordinary grief. This is agony beyond what any human has ever faced.
    And in this moment we meditate on these 3 things:
    The Horror of Christ’s Agony
    The Love of Christ’s Choice
    The Transforming Power of Christ’s Love

    The Horror of Christ’s Agony

    In v. 36, we see Jesus stepping away to pray with His inner 3. And as He does this v. 37 says, “He BEGAN to be sorrowful meaning AGONY and troubled meaning HORRIFIED or shocked! Then in v. 38 Jesus describes what this felt like…It felt like He could have just died right then and there! Then 3 different times in this scene we see Jesus telling the Father, “I don’t want to do this.”
    Now compare Jesus going to His death with how many martyrs have gone to their deaths…
    On October 16th 1555, in Oxford England, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake during the reign of “Bloody Mary.”
    As the flames were coming up, Latimer spoke these famous words to Ridley:
    “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out”
    And there are lots of stories like this about Christians who went to their death serving God joyfully and not afraid. The puzzling thing is that they did experience anything like the horror that Jesus did here in the garden. They were poised and possessed an inner peace.
    So, why was it that Jesus was no where near as peaceful in the face of death as many of His followers would be?
    The answer is that Jesus’ death was utterly unique. Lots of people had been crucified under Roman rule but no follower of Jesus and no human being ever had to face a death like Jesus’.
    So, what was so unique about Jesus’ death?
    The answer is in v. 39 when Jesus asks the Father to, “let this cup pass from Me.” — The CUP is the difference.
    The CUP was a symbol for suffering but in this case it specifically meant judgement. This is what it meant all through the OT…
    In Ezekiel 23 — The prophet describes the cup of God’s judgement as a cup of horror and desolation. And those who drink it will tear at their breasts and gnaw its shards!
    In Isaiah 51 — Some translations use the the word FURY to describe the cup and those who drink it will stagger!
    And we see this here in the garden — Jesus staggers and falls to the ground in v. 39. And what I think is going on here is that Jesus is BEGINNING to experience here in the garden — what He will experience in FULL on the cross — the abandonment and rejection of God the Father!
    Bill Lane, wrote a commentary on this scene as it’s recorded in Mark’s Gospel. 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 … [and who] came to be with the Father for an interlude before his betrayal, but found hell rather than heaven opened before him …”
    Understand what he’s saying here. Jesus knew better than anyone every time He prayed, a richness of God’s presence and joy and and love, in measures we could only dream of! And now as He draws near to the Father in prayer suddenly feels like He’s gonna die! Because God was beginning to withdraw from Him.
    You see Latimer and Ridley and other Christian Martyrs all died with a sense of God’s presence with them in their deaths BUT Jesus is different! He went to His death with a sense of God’s absence! And as He goes to prayer He is getting a taste now of what’s to come fully at the cross — Essentially He’s beginning to experience hell — utter cosmic abandonment!
    This is why Jesus is in such agony — He’s beginning to smell and even taste the cup of God’s wrath!
    Buy why is Jesus experiencing this now and not just at the cross? Let’s explore this more in my next point…

    The Love of Christ’s Choice

    Jonathan Edwards, the great 18th century pastor and philosopher once preached a sermon on Luke’s account of this scene in the garden. In it he explains why he thinks Jesus is tasting the CUP now and not just at the cross.
    He reasons that if Jesus waited to taste the cup until he was already nailed to the cross it would have been too late to do anything about it.
    Edward’s point is that now — here in the garden, Jesus is alone. His disciples are asleep. The guards have not yet arrived to arrest Him. In this very moment, He is free to leave and just slip away!
    But by experiencing the beginnings of the CUP now and having full awareness of what was to come — This ensured that Jesus’ actions were 100% voluntary and not an act of compulsion but an act of love!
    Jesus is acting out exactly what He said in John 10:17–18
    “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.”
    Edwards explains it like this:
    “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 and might see where he was going and might voluntarily enter into it and bear it for sinners, as knowing what it was. If Christ had not fully known before he took it and drank it, it would not have properly been his own act as a man, but when he took that cup, knowing what he did, so was his love to us infinitely the more wonderful and his obedience to God infinitely the more perfect.”
    It’s as if the Father is setting the cup before His Son and saying, “Here is the cup. Look at it. Smell it. Here is the furnace. See how terrible the heat is! See what horrors you must endure! If THEY are to be saved, there’s no other way.”
    Do you really love these people this much to go through this torment for them?!”
    And this is where Christ proves His love for us! In this very moment because on the cross it will be too late…there’s no turning back then! Here Jesus is shown what He must endure and He chooses to obey!
    In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul calls Jesus the 2nd Adam…
    The first Adam was given a choice in the garden to obey God regarding a particular tree (The Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil). And God promised the 1st Adam LIFE if he obeyed — But he didn’t!
    Now Christ, the 2nd Adam is given another choice, in another garden, to obey God regarding another tree (The Cross). And God promises that if He does, He will be CRUSHED!
    The 1st Adam is told, “Obey me about the tree, and I will be with you.”
    The 2nd Adam is told, “Obey me about the tree, and I will abandon You.”
    This is astounding! All throughout the Scriptures God is always telling people, “Obey Me and no matter what happens, I will be with you! God doesn’t abandon His people who obey Him.
    But Jesus is the only person in history that God told, “Obey Me and I will crush You!” And He did! — No one else has ever been asked to do such a thing — ONLY JESUS! And He did it! He did it for us!
    This why Jesus experiences this agony NOW — to ensure that this would be His choice and that He would not be forced into it. And by this He proves His love for us by His choice to obey!
    Now in my final point, let’s look at 3 ways experiencing this love transforms us…

    The Transforming Power of Christ’s Love

    One way Christ’s love transforms us is by showing us that we can trust Him with our lives.
    Let’s be honest—we only truly entrust ourselves to someone when we are convinced they love us to the fullest, when we know they would go to the ends of the earth for us. And this is exactly what we have in Jesus.
    He didn’t just say He loves you—He proved it.
    He obeyed the Father all the way to the cross, all the way into the darkness, all the way under the full weight of divine wrath. No one else in history has obeyed God and had the full weight of hell crash down on them.
    This is the kind of love we dream of.
    This is the kind of love we spend our lives searching for.
    And friends, this kind of love is only found in Jesus.
    And tonight, He invites you—
    Not just to admire Him,
    Not just to learn about Him—
    But He invites you tonight to trust Him with your whole life.
    Trust that He was crushed for you.
    Trust that He stands ready to forgive you.
    Trust that He will give you eternal life.
    You can stake your eternity on His love.
    A second way Christ’s love transforms us is by giving us assurance that He will never let go of us.
    Maybe you’re here tonight living in fear that one day you’re gonna blow it so badly that Jesus will say, “That’s it—I’m done! Deal’s off!”
    But look at this scene. His closest friends can’t even stay awake. They let Him down in His hour of greatest need—not once, not twice, but three times!
    And yet what does Jesus say in response? He doesn’t reject them. He doesn’t abandon them. He says, “Not My will, but Yours be done.”
    Do you see? His love isn’t based on your performance. It’s anchored in His obedience.
    He already drank the full cup of God’s wrath—down to the last bitter drop—for ALL your sins.
    So what could you possibly do now that would make Him walk away from you?
    Nothing!!! Because He already paid for it all! So, He’s not going to let you go now.
    Finally, Christ’s love transforms us by giving us the strength to say along with Jesus, “Your will be done.”
    This is how Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But it’s knowing His love for you that empowers you to actually pray it!
    When life brings suffering, when obedience is hard, when the road is uncertain or painful—His love gives us strength to say, “I trust You, Lord.”
    I’m not saying this is easy. Even Jesus, in His moment of agony, prayed three times, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” He didn’t pretend to enjoy the suffering. He was honest. But each time, He entrusted Himself to the Father’s will.
    So, if Jesus could drink the big cup of wrath for us, then knowing His love for us, we can drink the smaller cups of suffering for Him.
    His obedience is our example. His love is our strength. So, because He has gone before us, we can say even in the hardest moments:
    “Not my will, but Yours be done.”
    Conclusion & Communion Transition
    Tonight, we’ve stood with Jesus in the garden.
    We’ve seen the horror of His agony, as He looked into the cup of God’s wrath.
    We’ve seen the choice of His Love, when He could have walked away.
    And we’ve seen the transforming power of His love—
    A love that we can trust,
    A love that will never let us go,
    A love that strengthens us to say, “Your will be done.”
    And now, we come to the table of the Lord.
    And I want us to understand something deeply profound: The only reason we are invited to drink the cup of blessing tonight... is because Jesus drank the cup of wrath for us.
    In the garden, Jesus looked into the cup of God’s judgment—And He said, “Not My will, but Yours be done.”
    He took that cup… and He drank it all.
    So that we—the redeemed by His blood—might take the cup of the New Covenant in our hands.
    Not a cup of wrath, but a cup of grace.
    Not a cup of judgment, but a cup that declares, “Your sins are forgiven.”
    So as we come to the table tonight, come with gratitude. Come with reverence. Come remembering what it cost Him—so you could come freely.
    Communion
    Closing Song: O The Blood
    Benediction
    Isaiah 53:4-5 (Adapted) As we go from this place, may you remember the One who bore your griefs and carried your sorrows.
    He was pierced for your transgressions. He was crushed for your iniquities. The punishment that brought you peace was upon Him— and by His wounds, you are healed.
    Go now in quiet confidence, knowing what it cost your Savior to redeem you. Go in humble gratitude, knowing you are loved beyond measure. And go in hope—because Sunday is coming.
    Amen.

      • Matthew 26:36–46ESV

  • O The Blood

      • Isaiah 53:6ESV

Fishkill Baptist Church
lori@fishkillbaptist.org
845-896-9386
http://fishkillbaptist.net
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