Sunday, April 10, 2011

The Cup

This morning in our worship service at church, we sang one of my favorite worship songs and it has a line in it that says “I want to sit at your feet, drink from the cup in your hands….” and when I got to the “drink from the cup in your hands”, I had to stop.  Drink from the cup in His hands.  See, sometimes I wonder if we really understand what we are singing.  What is that cup? What’s in that cup?  Is it water, because if that’s what the drink is, I’d be okay with that, but what if it isn’t?

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, “Let this cup pass from me”.  There had to be something really bad in that “cup”.  The cup he was praying about wasn’t a literal cup, but he was asking God to not make him “drink from that cup”. My former Pastor, Dan Betzer, used to preach an incredible sermon on the cup.  He said that the cup could have contained all the sins of the world.  Jesus, being sinless, was sent to earth to drink that cup containing gossip, murder, abuse, lying, rape, incest, slander, thievery, and the list goes on.  It had to be swirling around in that cup like thick, ugly, sludge.  Jesus, the Spotless Lamb of God, figuratively took that cup and put it to his lips and drank, filling his body with every sin known to man so that he could be sacrificed once and for all to make atonement for OUR sins.  OUR sins.  That cup was not something I could easily “drink”, yet I easily sang that song.

The next line in the song is “lay back against you and breathe, feel your heartbeat. Your love is so deep, it’s more than I can stand, I melt in Your peace, it’s overwhelming.”  I think we often think of the cup as filled with love – and it absolutely was – but not the warm fuzzy, chocolate heart kind of love.  It was the painful, sacrificing kind of love.  When we were not loveable, God sent His Son, Jesus, to drink from that cup. 

Phillippians 3:6-11 says, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.  That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, being made comformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Today I was reminded of the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for me and I pray that I never easily sing these words without meaning them.

 

2 comments:

  1. This song has been on my heart the past few days. Like you, I have moments that I have to stop and really go deep about what I am singing/listening to. We flippantly sing words like these without having the slightest thought to their meaning. I have been particularly pondering the last lyric "lay back against you and breathe, feel your heartbeat", but I wonder if when we do get to have that overwhelming peace and comfort, if it is the result of the cup God gives us to drink of Himself-- in sacrifice and obedience? In order to experience the privilege of God's grace TO sit back against Him and rest, breathing peacefully against His chest, we must have to endure and share in Christ's sufferings too. You're right. All we want is the fuzzy warm feeling of love. When it comes to God asking us to sacrifice something for Him or obey Him even when we don't understand, now that is a different story.

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  2. This is so good. Our theme my 1st year of Masters was "will you drink from the cup". There were times when the things in that cup were bitter, nasty, and ugly. There were times when I didn't think I take one more drink even though I knew that drinking this cup wasn't all about me. I can't even imagine what Jesus was going through, knowing what was in the cup and knowing the cost of drinking the cup. I am so grateful that He did though. When the cup seems like to much to bare I often think of Philippians 3:12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

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