In our last study we saw that in these two verses there are two distinct cups: there is “THE CUP” and there is “My cup.” We saw last time that THE CUP (20:22) was a symbol of the judgment of God and the wrath of God against sin and that this was THE CUP of the curse that Jesus Christ was to drink.

But Christ also speaks of “My cup.” Jesus says, “My cup you shall drink . . .” “My cup” is the one that every follower of Jesus Christ will drink. Because Christ drank “THE CUP” of God’s judgment, we who are His followers will drink Christ’s cup of fellowship and grace and blessing. Let’s see what Scripture says about Christ’s cup, which we will call “My cup.”

MY CUP

Jesus said to them, “My cup you shall drink.” After reading of what “THE CUP” meant to Christ (20:22) and how He incurred tremendous suffering to drink that cup, the reader may conclude that “My cup” has a similar meaning. At first, Jesus’ words may sound like an ominous warning, but they are, in fact, entirely different than that. Instead of an ominous warning, these words are the Savior’s sure promise of unspeakable blessing for every disciple of Jesus Christ. With these words, Jesus gives His promise that everyone who has trusted in Christ is entitled to sit at His heavenly table and to drink eternally of Christ’s cup of communion and joy and peace.

“My (heavenly) cup you shall drink . . .”

There are three aspects to “My cup” that we need to understand.

First, “My cup” is a cup of fellowship with Jesus and with His Body, the church. This fellowship is explicitly celebrated in the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus is spiritually present and the Body of believers is gathered to remember Him and to have fellowship with Him, but this fellowship is also manifested in the many “one another” teachings in the New Testament and in the ongoing expressions of Christian love experienced in the Body of Christ.

In the Last Supper (Mark 14, Matthew 26, Luke 22 and John 14-16), the Lord Himself initiated this time of intimate fellowship between Christ and His disciples. The fellowship is now continued through the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 10-11). Because Christ drank THE CUP, His followers have peace with God (Romans 5:1-10; 2 Cor. 5:18-20) and enjoy intimate fellowship with God (1 John 1:3). So the first aspect of Christ’s cup (“My cup”) to recognize is that it is a cup of fellowship.

Second, the disciple of Jesus Christ gets the privilege of sharing in the sufferings of Christ. With the blessings of Christ’s cup inevitably come the sharing in Christ’s sufferings. My experience of suffering is limited, but in that suffering I find that I am in closest fellowship with Christ and am most identified with Christ. (Phil. 3:10; Col. 1:24; 1 Peter 4:12-14; Gal. 6:14, 17; Acts 5:41; Matthew 5:10-12) Because Christ drank THE CUP of God’s wrath, we can joyously and fearlessly endure suffering for His name’s sake.

The third aspect of “My cup” is to realize that we who belong to Christ will ultimately drink Christ’s cup in heaven with Him for all of eternity. Because Christ drank THE CUP of God’s wrath for us, there is a time coming when all believers of all the ages will be gathered around the table of the King of kings and the Lord of lords to forever drink from His cup of peace and joy and love. Jesus’ words from the Last Supper point forward to that day:

“This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new WITH YOU in My Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:28-29). Our destiny is to forever drink from His heavenly cup, because Christ drank THE CUP on our behalf.

SDG         rmb        2/13/2017

Back in October of last year we explored the story of Jesus and His disciples on the Lake of Galilee in the midst of a fierce storm. This is a continuation of those lessons.

There is yet another principle that we see displayed in this story of Jesus and His disciples on the Lake of Galilee. We see the necessity of storms in the spiritual life of disciples. There were a number of lessons learned on the Lake of Galilee in the midst of this fierce storm that could not have been learned any other way.

For example, the storm reveals to the disciples their powerlessness and their need for someone to rescue them. They are weak and the storm that threatens them is strong and, in their own power they will not survive. Realizing the threat and their own powerlessness, the disciples fly to Jesus for rescue. Without the storms of life, how do we see our need to be rescued and how do we see our dependence on one much more powerful than us? For this reason God brings storms into our life so that we will never forget our weakness and will constantly look to Him for rescue and protection.

Also, the storm provided a perfect context in which Jesus could reveal His true identity and His true power. Up to this point the disciples had seen Jesus perform some pretty amazing miracles, but they still did not grasp who He actually was. And then the storm comes upon them on the lake and this seemingly ordinary man stands up in the boat and commands the wind and the waves to be hushed. If there had been no fierce storm on the lake, there would have been no occasion to realize the identity of the Stiller of the storm, but in the storm, Jesus displays His power and glory when He shows He is God.

If there are only blue skies and if all the rains are gentle and refreshing and if all the seas are calm and all the barns are full of grain and if everything is peaceful and prosperous (etc., etc.), how does God reveal to us that He is mighty to save? If all our problems have human solutions, how does God demonstrate He is a great deliverer?

And so God allows and even brings storms into our lives so that:

• We will call out for help to the great Stiller of the storms;
• We will be reminded of the identity of the God who can still the storms;
• When He delivers us, we will have another testimony to His faithfulness and to the fact that “the eye of the Lord is toward the righteous and His ear is open to their cry.”

So when there are storms in your life, call out to the one who is able to still any storm, realizing that though we are often powerless, He is mighty to save.  SDG    rmb   1/15/2017

In meditating about the first three verses of Psalm 14, I have been struck by how much these verses teach us about the sinfulness of man and about how justly he deserves judgment from the Lord.

These verses teach us about the willfulness of unbelief. The fool (‘nabal’ in Hebrew, which can also be translated ‘godless one’) has defiantly rejected the one true God in a willful act of rebellion. That is, the fool is not neutral or passive in this situation. A fool is not a fool because he is ignorant, but, in the Hebrew mind, a fool was a fool because he was not obedient to the LORD. The psalm reads, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’“ Notice that he has said “in his heart.” For the Hebrew, the heart was where the will and the emotions dwelt. So out of his wicked heart, the fool’s will and emotions rebel against the authority of the LORD and the mouth then shouts its godless defiance: “There is no God!” But again this is not the shout of ignorance, but is the defiant rebellion of a sinner. The fool’s unbelief is first willful.

Next the psalm instructs us about the consequences of unbelief. “They are corrupt; they have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good.” When a person choose to reject God, they necessarily discard all moral restraint in the same moment. As a result, they become corrupt in their mind and heart and then inevitably become corrupt in their behavior. Having abandoned the only authority of moral right and wrong, the godless one “commits abominable deeds” with apparent impunity. Right and wrong are removed and there is nothing that prevents the most heinous wickedness. These are the consequences of unbelief.

Thirdly, this psalm teaches is there is a motivation for unbelief. What I mean is that the fool enjoys the personal benefits of his unbelief and so, to keep receiving those benefits, the fool is motivated to reject God and refuse His rule and reign. By “benefits” I am referring to the rewards of sin which accrue to the fool from his iniquity. Having tasted the pleasures of sin, the fool craves more and he knows that bowing the knee to the LORD in obedience will put an abrupt stop to his pleasure from sin. Therefore, the fool does not “seek after God (14:2),” for this would threaten his sin. “They have all turned aside (14:3),” and have turned away from the path of righteousness, for there is no pleasures of sin on the highway of holiness. So the fool is motivated to remain in his unbelief to indulge in the wicked pleasures of sin.

And so the word of God presents us with man, the planet’s great, dominant biped. Created to be God’s vice regent and to spread the glory of God throughout the earth, because of sin he has been rendered a fool who commits abominable deeds and who, in his natural, fallen state, is unable to do good. The Bible is remarkably consistent in its description of man after the Fall. This short paragraph from a psalm echoes what the Scripture teaches throughout its pages, that man is morally ruined and has turned aside from God to pursue his sin. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).” In fact, these three verse from Psalm 14 are quoted by Paul in his epistle to the Romans as he summarizes his prosecution of mankind (3:10-12) and declares “There is none righteous.” As we have seen from this short study, man is in his unbelief by willful choice and he remains in his sin because the natural man loves his sin.

It is from this miserable state that all mankind must be rescued if men and women are ever to stand before the Holy One, God the Almighty. But how could this ever take place? Where is the Champion, the Rescuer, the Redeemer, the Savior who has the power to change this situation and who, having the power, is willing to pull men and women from the pit of destruction?

But this is exactly how the Bible describes Jesus. The gospel of Jesus Christ declares that Jesus is mighty to save and that, if a man or a woman will confess their sins and will repent of them and will forsake their love of sin and will bow the knee to Jesus Christ as Lord and will trust in Jesus, then the Lord Jesus will save them and will change them. The Lord Jesus left heaven and came to earth to die on the cross to take away sin, so that whoever believes in Him would have eternal life. The fool has said in his heart that there is no God, but through faith in Jesus Christ, even the fool can be saved and can go to heaven.                     SDG            rmb     1/10/2017

Right now, the entire southeast United States is experiencing an extreme drought with places like north Georgia having been without any rain at all for almost three months. I live in North Carolina where we are seeing forest fires in the western part of the state. I have lived in or near western North Carolina for more than 50 years and have never heard about a single forest fire until this year. For reasons that I will explain in this series of blogs, I believe that the drought is a judgment from God because of the sins and disobedience of this nation, and I want to urge all believers to pray and ask the Lord to be merciful and to send rain on the parched ground of the south.

So before I begin this study on drought and on how to pray for rain, I appeal to all my brothers and sisters in Christ, and especially those in the southeast United States, to pray using 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 that the Lord would hear from heaven, would forgive our sin and would send rain on our land.

How Adam’s sin has affected the earth and has given us drought – The Fall

In the Garden of Eden, the LORD God provided everything that Adam and Eve needed to flourish. Everything was given in abundance and there was no lack of anything. This was a consequence of what may be called “the Adamic covenant” or “the Adamic probation.” God had promised the first man Adam that He would provide everything he needed, but this promised provision was conditioned on Adam’s obedience. When man rebelled and sinned against the LORD God by eating the forbidden fruit, the arrangement between God and man changed. Instead of providing all that the man needed, the earth was cursed (Genesis 3:17-19) and, from that point on, anything that man received from the earth was solely the result of God’s gracious provision. In fact, from the point of the Fall onward, the earth became a means of expressing the LORD God’s favor or, more evidently, God’s judgment. In this present study, we will see that God will withhold rain from the earth as an expression of His judgment on a people or on a nation. The point is that, because of his sin, man has forfeited God’s initial covenant and thus has no legitimate claim on any of God’s blessings which were promised to him in the beginning. After the Fall, all mankind in all places on the face of the earth is dependent on God’s grace for whatever blessings He gives.

The implication of this brief look at this aspect of redemptive history is that God is perfectly justified in withholding His rain from a geographic region when the people’s sin and rebellion has exceeded God’s grace. What we will see in this study is that there are several places in the Old Testament (in the Law, in the history of Israel and in the prophets) where the LORD warns that He will withhold His rain from disobedient Israel, and there is nothing in the contexts of these Old Testament warnings that would suggest they have been abrogated.

To sum up, here is what we have learned from this study so far.

• In Adam’s sin, man has forfeited his right to God’s blessings as a promise and now receives those blessings solely as a result of God’s grace. Thus rain is now a result of God’s common grace.
• In the Old Testament, the LORD warned that He would shut up the heavens and send no rain if the people did not obey Him and did not observe the LORD’s commandments and statutes (references verses will be given later)
• There is nothing in the context of these Old Testament warnings that would indicate they are no longer in effect today, so we can assume that God’s threatening about withholding rain as judgment for sin still holds.
• MY CONCLUSION is that our sin and rebellion in the USA has exceeded the LORD’s patience extended to us in His common grace and, as a result, God is judging us by withholding rain. Our disobedience has led to drought

The next blog will discuss the Scriptures which support the statements that I have made in this blog and will cover many of the verses which present the instances when God warned of the consequences of disobedience or tell of His withholding rain.

There will also be a blog on how to pray for rain biblically so that the LORD will hear our prayers, including how to prepare our heart as we present our requests to God.

In the meantime . . .

“If I, the LORD, shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, and My people, who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chron. 7:13-14

SDG      rmb      11/23/2016

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)”

So far, we have explored two ways of considering this verse to understand mourning. First we considered the mourning over sin that begins the new life in Christ, acknowledging that this is certainly the primary understanding of this passage. Second, we considered the mourning that sometimes comes to the believer as they encounter the pervasive evil of this world. While we are called to persevere and even to overcome the wickedness and the evil of this world (Romans 12:21), there are times when we mourn this burden and lament the ravages of sin (Mark 9:19) that have so stained the world.

Now I want to briefly consider a third type of mourning, which is the mourning that comes to believers as they encounter the physical death of those whom they love. I say “consider” for this feeling of sorrow at the death of a loved one is a profound part of human experience, but I say “briefly” for the believer should respond to life’s sorrows differently than those who are of the world. In fact, if we are far along the path of sanctification, we may even think that there should be only celebration: another saint has entered heaven and has won the victory that Christ purchased for them. In his direct and challenging style, J C Ryle urges believers to see the death of a believing loved one in this way:

“Are you one who is mourning over a departed believer? Then take comfort from this Scripture (Luke 23:39-43 the thief on the cross with Jesus). See how your beloved ones are in the best of hands. They cannot be better off. They never were so well in their lives as they are now. They are with Jesus, whom their souls loved on earth. Oh, cease from your selfish mourning! Rejoice rather that they are freed from trouble and have entered into rest.”       “Christ’s Greatest Trophy” in Holiness by J C Ryle

But we also see in the Bible that God in His word acknowledges the feelings of sorrow and the subsequent mourning that come to humans, even believing humans, when they encounter death. Thus the healthy response is to balance mourning with the trust and joy that are appropriate to believers when death is encountered.

What does the Bible have to say about this mourning? First, it is important to remember that Jesus Christ Himself wept at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:35). This is profound, for in this act of sorrow and mourning, Jesus sanctioned mourning. If the Son of God wept at the event of a person’s death, then it is okay if we mourn at the death of one of our loved ones. I do not know the full meaning of Jesus’ tears, but I do know that He wept, and that is good enough.

Next, it is also significant that Jesus gave His apostles instructions about what to do when He died in Jerusalem (John 16:6, 20, 22) and His instructions included their sorrow over His death. At no time does Jesus correct or rebuke this sorrow, again indicating that it is good and right to mourn and lament the loss of a loved one.

In at least two places Paul makes clear that sorrow and mourning are appropriate and normal for all people, even believers, when they encounter death. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, the apostle says that believers will grieve when their friends have “fallen asleep,” but that they should do so as people who have a sure hope. Grieving while believing is the pattern for followers of Christ. In Philippians 2:27, Paul praises God that He spared Epaphroditus from dying and thus delivered Paul from “sorrow upon sorrow.” Paul would certainly have mourned if his good friend and co-laborer in the gospel, Epaphroditus, had died of his sickness, but God was merciful and spared the man for ongoing gospel service.

Finally few believers are sanctified to the point of having no fear of death and of having no doubts about heaven and hell, but the Bible allows for disciples who still need to grow. In other words, God is gracious and compassionate toward those who have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, even if there are still lapses in their trust. So the Bible allows the believer to be human and express their mourning in appropriate ways, but the Bible also insists that we grasp tightly to the promises of God and continue to trust the Lord with all our heart and might.

What we have seen is that, by balancing the two responses of mourning and of gripping to God’s promises, we can develop a healthy theology of mourning. In those life events when our humanity demands an expression of mourning and a lamenting of a loss, we can weep as the Lord wept (John 11:35; Romans 12:15) and pour out our pain before the Lord. We know, however, that we can only mourn briefly and we can only stay at the place of sorrow for a short time, for if we stay there too long, we run the risk of acting in unbelief. Because of the truth of the empty tomb and because of our trust in the promises of God, our mourning must turn quickly to joy. So our humanity mourns the separation from the one who has fallen asleep in Christ, but our spirit then shouts the victory cry: death has lost its sting, Christ has defeated death, and soon Christ will throw death and Hades into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14).

For the believer, then, we can see that “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be satisfied.”                        SDG                 rmb                 11/20/2016

In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord is teaching about the kingdom of God and is describing the characteristics of the citizen of the Kingdom. After saying that the blessed person is poor in spirit, Jesus declares, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)” I want to take some time to consider this topic of mourning and understand what Jesus is teaching us. We will see that there is great blessing concealed in mourning.

In Part 1 of this study we discovered that the primary point that Jesus is making in Matthew 5:4 is that those who mourn deeply over their sin and who repent of their sins and trust in Christ for forgiveness and salvation will be comforted. Their mourning over sin will be replaced with the joy of salvation. That is certainly the main teaching of this verse. But while this is the “Mount Everest” of this verse, I believe there are a couple of “sand dunes” of application related to mourning which can also be useful to the believer.

In these last days of the last days, I find myself deeply troubled by the rampant escalation of evil in this world. Through every available medium, man’s wickedness, cruelty and blatant immorality are constantly on display and I am affected by this. God’s holiness and His commandments are despised and ignored and man hurtles like a runaway train toward God’s judgment.

The pain created by the escalation of evil causes me to mourn. I mourn the fallenness of man and the sadness of this life and I lament how irreversibly we have strayed from God’s paths of righteousness and peace and I can become so discouraged.

But I believe that God has spoken into this type of mourning also and that there is a path from the place of mourning and lamentation that leads into the place of God’s comfort.

God has provided us with His Word and there in His Word I can find solace. I read in the psalms of other believers who experienced similar mourning over the evil and wickedness in the world and sharing these lamentations with others brings comfort. Also, as I read of others who cried out to the Lord in the midst of their mourning, I can likewise cry out to the Lord, for God’s Word has sanctioned my lamentations. If life was difficult for them, then it is okay if it is difficult to me.

It is also obvious from the pages of Scripture that the Lord Jesus Christ was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). As Jesus walked through this sinful world, there is no doubt that He was burdened by the sin of the people around Him. Jesus mourned the evil in the world and yet still kept His eyes fixed on the cross (Hebrews 12:2). Thus He left me an example to follow in His steps (1 Peter 2:21). He demonstrated that life in this fallen world is about striving against sin (Hebrews 12:4). With Jesus as my perfect example of striving against sin, I can imperfectly strive while mourning the evil remaining within me and the evil I see and feel in the world around me.

Finally, even though this mourning is a burden and can sometimes drain me of joy and encouragement, I know that my mourning is temporary. Even if it should last for all of my lifetime, I am convinced that one day the mourning will cease and I will arrive in heaven. One day the Lord will wipe away every tear from my eye (Revelation 21:4) and will eliminate all wickedness and evil and sin and will take me to the house of the Lord. Because of Jesus and His death and resurrection, I am persuaded that heaven is my destination. Therefore, blessed are those who mourn in the Lord, for they will be comforted.      SDG    rmb      11/19/2016