and the burden and the blessing of the cross.
If you would say with me, my heart’s open. My mind is ready.
Make me better, God. Make me better, God. By your word.
I receive it. I receive it. I believe it. I believe it. Say it again.
I believe it. And I won’t be the same again. In Jesus name.
Shout a great big amen.
Matthew 26 and verse 39, it reads like this. It says, “Going a little further,” talking about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and he prayed, “My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” If it is possible, somebody say, “If it’s possible.” It’s possible. May this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but I fully surrender to your will, to your plan, and to your purpose for my life.
It’s clear whenever you read this passage that Jesus was dreading the cross. Now, we grew up dreading things. I grew up dreading going to the dentist, doctor, even school, especially if there were tests I wasn’t ready for. Right.
But Jesus was only hours away from being arrested and he was beginning to feel the full weight and the burden of the cross. Jesus had grown up in a city where real criminals and accused criminals were punished. What I mean by that is that the court was a kangaroo-style court set up to do whatever they wanted to do, not based on justice, but based on taking somebody out of the way that they didn’t like.
He’d grown up in a city, in other words, where people were punished and publicly crucified naked. He grew up knowing that as he would watch it in the distance or would see it and maybe try to avoid even looking at it, he grew up knowing that that was his fate.
And maybe you never thought about that. Like Jesus didn’t just find out about the cross when it happened. He was a student of Scripture. He grew up in a Jewish house where they would have known all the prophecies concerning the brutal nature of what was going to happen to the Messiah. And he knew that that was him.
And so he knew the emotional weight of the cross far before the actual physical cross. And he had carried the burden for years. And now he’s close, and the suffering becomes really, really real. And the weight emotionally and the burden becomes really heavy.
And so he prayed, “If it’s possible.” Now he wasn’t saying if you have the power. He was just saying, if you can get this
