Reading: The Cross of Christ pg. 75-86
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried and were rescued;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
“He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him;
let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
Psalm 22.1-8
From his agony of dread, as he contemplated the implications of his coming death, Jesus emerged with serene and resolute confidence. So when Peter drew his sword in a frantic attempt to avert the arrest, Jesus was able to say: ‘Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?’…Jesus knows now that the cup will not be taken away from him. The Father has given it to him. He will drink it…The agony in the garden opens a window onto the greater agony of the cross. If to bear man’s sin and God’s wrath was so terrible in anticipation, what must the reality have been like? | Stott, pg. 79
If Jesus, God the Son, sweat blood and shed tears in the Garden of Gethsemane, what does this say to us about the severity of sin?
Go to dark Gethsemane,
You who feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see;
Watch with Him one bitter hour;
Turn not from His griefs away;
Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.
James Montgomery