THE CUP OF SALVATION
[p. 340] THE CUP OF SALVATION
Psalm 116: 3, 13; Psalm 73: 10, 12; Matthew 23: 23 - 26; Psalm 75: 8; Psalm 11: 6; Isaiah 51: 17; Matthew 26: 39
Before I say anything about the cup of salvation I should like to call your attention to some other cups of which Scripture speaks. Asaph says, “I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked”; “Waters of a full cup are wrung out to them”; “Behold these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world” (Psalm 73:3; Psalm 73:10; Psalm 73:12). I call this the cup of worldly prosperity.
Many a one has been in the same perplexity as the psalmist. He saw the peace, plenty, and prosperity of the foolish and wicked. He was conscious of his own integrity before God, and yet he was plagued all the day long and chastened every morning, while they were going on without a sorrow or a care. They were prosperous, they were not in trouble nor plagued like other men, their eyes stood out with fatness, they had more than heart could wish, waters of a full cup of prosperity were wrung out to them in life, and they had no bands in their death. It almost stumbled this dear saint of God to see this; he could not understand it until he went into the sanctuary and saw it in the light of God’s presence, and learnt there that this world is not the place to see the righteous government of God.
Sin has come into the world, transforming man from a loyal subject into a rebel against God. This world is in a state of revolt — the claims of God, its rightful Sovereign, are disowned, and rebellious man has assumed the crown and sceptre. So far as we know, in all the vast universe of God this tiny planet is the only dark spot where Home Rule has been established — the rule of a puny creature who has dared to set at defiance the sovereign rights of God. Before long God will come in to reassert His rights in power and crush [p. 341] the rebellion, but for the present He leaves the world in the hands of the rebels while He sends messengers of mercy to offer pardon and peace to every guilty wretch who will lay down his arms and be reconciled to God. We read, “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked” (Job 9: 24). Then if that be the case worldly peace and prosperity is no proof of the favour of God. If this city was to rebel against the Queen and raise the standard of revolt, the man who was happy and content to remain in it would be deemed not to be a very loyal subject of Her Majesty. The fact that a man was true to the Queen would make him a target for the persecution and enmity of the others. So we are told that “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution”, and the more brightly and fully a man shows his colours for God, the more will he provoke the enmity of the world.
Then it follows that the more contented and prosperous a man is in the world, the less likely is he to accept the offered pardon. There is no evil in worldly prosperity in itself, any more than there is rebellion in the pavement of this city, but if that pavement was torn up by the rebellious people and made into barricades to resist the Queen it would become the instrument of a very great evil. Men use their prosperity to exclude God from their thoughts, and when this is the case, and the more full a man’s cup is, the greater the danger of his damnation. The cup of prosperity makes a man drunken with forgetfulness of God until “they are brought into desolation, as in a moment!”
Remember the rich man of whom the Lord Jesus spoke. His cup was full and running over; he had no place to bestow his fruits and his goods. God was forgotten. He thought of nothing but his prosperity until he was “brought into desolation, as in a moment”, and his full cup was dashed to the ground by the words, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee”. Look at those three men who were invited to the great supper of grace. A piece of ground filled the cup of one; five yoke of oxen filled the cup of another; and the joys of the honeymoon filled the cup of the third. These were [p. 342] not bad things in themselves, but the sad part of it was that the men were so satisfied with their full cups that they slighted the invitation of grace. Satisfied worldling, drinking thy full cup of pleasure or prosperity, listen to the awful words which fell from the lips of the insulted Giver of the feast! “I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper” (Luke 14: 24).
In Matthew 23 the Lord Jesus speaks of another cup when He says, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess”. God’s description of the heart of man in Jeremiah 17 is that it is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”. No human pen or tongue could give a faithful description of that chamber of horrors — the heart of man. The concentrated essence of everything that is vile can be found there. Every desire that is earthly, sensual and devilish finds board and lodging in the heart of man. It is, as its Searcher has plainly said, “desperately wicked”. But let it be understood that the heart has no wish to be suspected of such horrors, and being “deceitful above all things” it is able to assume many a fair disguise, and by false pretences to deceive others and even itself. So it comes to pass that an immense number of people are like the cup of Matthew 23, which I call the cup of profession; that is, the inside and the outside belie each other.
These scribes and Pharisees were to all appearances the most clean, holy, religious people in the world. They were most particular, even to the tithing of their mint and anise and cummin. They said their prayers with the greatest regularity; they read the Scriptures constantly; they never omitted to attend the services at the temple and in the synagogues; and yet the Lord Jesus said unto them, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees”! Instead of owning the corruption of their hearts, and humbling themselves in true repentance before God, they were seeking to hide it by an outside parade of morality and religion. They were making the outside [p. 343] of the cup clean, while within was extortion, excess, and all uncleanness.
All the morality and religion in the world without the cleansing of the precious blood of Christ is only like the snow on a dunghill, hiding the corruption which it does not remove. The paint on a rotten ship, the veneer on a worthless piece of furniture, the gilding on a counterfeit sovereign, all go for something until the truth is discovered, and morality and religion in the life, without Christ and the blood for the soul, are nothing more than these. Oh the shame and contempt that will be the portion of thousands in the all-revealing day when the inside of the cup shall be examined in the light of God at the great white throne!
There are two places where your sins may be hidden: in your own bosom or under the blood of Christ. Job declared that he had not covered his transgressions after the manner of men by hiding his iniquity in his bosom (Job 31: 33). Your iniquity may be hidden from the sight of men in your bosom — in the inside of the cup — while you present a fair, attractive exterior; but the day speeds on in which God will judge not only your works and words but the secrets of your heart, and if you now hide your iniquity there, depend upon it, it will all be found there to your everlasting confusion. Better, better far, to come to God by Jesus Christ, owning all the pollution and folly and wickedness which defiles your heart, saying to that God-provided Saviour of sinners,
‘Just as I am — and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come!’ (446:3)
Washed in that precious blood, you will be in God’s sight “whiter than snow”. No longer then a mere professor, making a fair show in the flesh while the soul’s deep stains of sin are unremoved, you will be justified by grace, apparelled in divine righteousness, and made complete in Christ; so that [p. 344] if infinite holiness searches you it will be only to find that infinite love has removed in righteousness every stain of sin.
Those who are satisfied with the cup of prosperity or of profession may perhaps be aroused when they hear that another awaits them, even the cup of judgment. “For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup ... the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them”
(Psalm 75: 8). “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup” (Psalm 11: 6).
Satan is seeking to make men believe that there is no judgment, and the thought is so comfortable that we can hardly wonder at many embracing it, though we do not envy the pleasant dream which will have so rude an awakening. It is becoming the fashion of modern preachers to avoid speaking of judgment, or at any rate to so tone down its terribleness that people are fast forgetting God’s majesty and holiness, and that “our God is a consuming fire”. Modern theology has made the wonderful discovery that sinners do not like to be told that they are in danger of hell fire, that they must turn or burn, that they must be converted or damned; and theology has been busy trimming its sails, and altering its course so as to catch the breeze of popularity, and there is every reason to suppose, from the drift of matters at present, that by and by the orthodox gospel will be, ‘Believe whatever you like, and do what is right in your own eyes, and you will be saved’.
But the Word of God cuts right across these modern theories, and it speaks of “fire and brimstone and a burning tempest” as the portion of the cup of the ungodly. Seven times in the New Testament do we read the words, “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”, and this from the lips of the Son of God Himself. Sinner, this will be your portion as sure as you exist, except you repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I do not know what is your feeling about it, but I recall the time when the thought of this used to make my blood run cold until I shivered with fear, and my [p. 345] heart quaked until it seemed as if it would break loose from its fleshy cell to flee from judgment so well deserved. That was drinking another cup which we find in Isaiah 51: 17.
“Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out”. Those who drink the cup of trembling now, escape the cup of judgment then; but those who do not have the one are sure to have the other. “To this man will I look, saith the Lord, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (Isaiah 66: 2). The proud heart steels itself against the word of God, and refuses to tremble. The convicted sinner, when he hears the word, comes in trembling like the jailer at Philippi, and says, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Have you tasted this cup of trembling? Have its bitter dregs gone down into your soul, causing you to say with David, “My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments”? Saul was drinking it when “he trembling ... said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9: 6). The woman in Luke 8 was drinking it when she came trembling and fell down before Jesus. May God give you the cup of trembling now, that you may never have to drink the cup of judgment in the terrible coming day!
See how God deals with the trembling sinner in Isaiah 51: 22. “Thus saith thy Lord the Lord, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again”. Precious grace! God Himself draws near to remove every cause of fear from the trembling sinner. The moment you accept that cup as your portion God draws near to take it away. He takes it out of your trembling hand and says, “Thou shalt no more drink it again”.
But what is to be done with that cup? Is nobody to drink it? Are your sins simply to be passed over and forgotten? No! eternal justice refuses to lend her high sanction to any such evasion of judgment. The cup must be drunk. And if it [p. 346] is taken out of the hand of the sinner, it is put into the hand of the Saviour where it becomes the cup of substitution. “And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26: 39).
What a sight is before us here! The Son of God, become a Man in perfect grace that He might in suffering and death atone for sin, is seen approaching the wondrous crisis of Calvary. He has spoken His last words of love to His poor sorrowing disciples, and He turns from them to His Father for a brief moment of communion in view of the cross. Satan seizes the opportunity, and having been completely foiled when he presented all that was fair and attractive to tempt the Saviour from His path of obedience at the commencement of His ministry, he now confronts Him with all the terrors of the cross. The veil is lifted, and we are permitted to see Him under this last assault of the enemy. He sees the cup. He measures its depth. He knows its bitterness; and he prays, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me”! He shrank from it — He could not but shrink from it. His very perfection as the peerlessly spotless Man made Him shrink from it. His perfect knowledge of the holy judgment with which sin must be visited, His nearness to God, would have been belied if every sensibility of His holy soul had not shrunk from that unspeakable cup.
Ah! my friends, Calvary’s work was no mockery of justice; it was no stage-play of substitution; the Son of God did there really and actually take upon Him the innumerable sins of believers, and every pang of sorrow, every stroke of judgment which was due to those sins He endured in His own body on the tree.
‘O! for this love let rocks and hills
Their lasting silence break;
And all harmonious human tongues
The Saviour’s praises speak’.
[p. 347] It was all this that was pressed upon Him in the garden, and the prospect of it forced the sweat of blood from His brow and caused His holy form to be prostrated in an agony of prayer. Yet this terrible ordeal only served as a dark background to show out in greater brilliancy the submission, the obedience, the devotedness, and the love of His heart. He said, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt”. “O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done” (Matthew 26: 42). “The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18: 11). He took the cup from His Father’s hand, and He bore it to the cross. What the drinking of that cup involved will ever be to us an unknown mystery of suffering. We stand afar off and we hear the shout of triumph which pierces the darkness from the dying Victor’s lips, “It is finished”; and we know that the last bitter dregs of that burning cup have been exhausted.
‘It is finished: all is over,
Sin’s dark cup of wrath is drained;
Such the truth these words discover,
Thus the victory was obtained;
’Tis a victory
None but Jesus could have gained’.
The cup of suffering and substitution has been drained by the Saviour. Now let us look at Psalm 116 to see what there is for the trembling sinner. Here we find the cup of salvation, and the sinner who takes it. Listen to his own account of himself in verse 3: “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow”. It is a mercy when the pains of hell get hold of a man before he gets there, for the people who never suffer the pains of hell in this world will suffer them for all eternity in the next. The outcry of an awakened conscience and the smitings of conviction of sin have given many a man a sharp touch of “the pains of hell”. You may hush your conscience to sleep now, but the day is coming when it will wake up and speak in [p. 348] thunder tones. May God awaken you now, while the cup of salvation is still within your reach!
Then, further, this sinner of Psalm 116 says, “The sorrows of death compassed me”. Unsaved man, you cannot look in any direction without seeing death before you. It stares you in the face from every side; you are compassed with it — a terrible enclosure without a single loophole through which you can escape. And, remember, the circle gets less every day! It is silently closing in upon you, and very soon it will seize you in a vice-like grip, and turn your hands and feet and brain and heart to dust. Oh! what will you do in that solemn hour without a Saviour?
But what have you inside that awful circle of death in which you live? Just what the psalmist had, who said, “I found trouble and sorrow”. You may seek rest and joy as earnestly as you like, but all that you will find is, in the end, trouble and sorrow. Lord Byron did his best to enjoy life, but in the end he had to say,
‘My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and fruits of life are gone,
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!’
It is the sinner who tells us in verse 3 that the sorrows of death compassed him, that the pains of hell gat hold upon him, and that he found trouble and sorrow, who says in verse 13, “I will take the cup of salvation”. There is no reason on God’s part why you should not take it today. The cup of salvation is now in the victorious hand of a risen Saviour who has passed through the sorrows of death and endured the judgment of God, that He might in righteous grace bring salvation to you. Nothing could be simpler than the gospel message. Here it is: “Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13: 38, 39). God seeks nothing from you; He brings everything to you. He asks you not for works,
[p. 349] or tears, or prayers. He only wants a listening ear and a believing heart. In short, the terms on which you may have salvation are plainly indicated in the words, “I will take the cup of salvation”. That is, you must have it not as the reward of works, or even as the answer to earnest prayers, but as a free gift.
“The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6: 23). The One who drank the bitter cup of death and judgment which our sin had filled is now alive for evermore. He can never again be charged with sin; He is for ever beyond the reach of death and judgment; and every believer has eternal life in Him. “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5: 11, 12). Have you taken this precious gift? Have you believed on the name of the only-begotten Son of God? The grace of God makes you welcome to that risen and glorified Saviour, and to all the blessings that are the fruit of His death. God says, “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely” (Revelation 21: 6); and he also says, “Let him that is athirst come: And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22: 17).
Then let not the siren voice of the world prevail: let not her “stolen waters” any longer entice your heart; but turn to God and to His beloved Son. Renounce all righteousness of your own, and submit to the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ. Do not delude yourself by the vain thought that you can work for salvation or pay for it; it is not even needful that you should pray for it. You cannot please God better than by simply taking it as His gift. “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men” (Titus 2: 11). “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16: 31). May the language of your heart at this moment be, “I will take the cup of salvation”.
Thank God! this cup not only contains pardon and peace, and a sure and certain hope of glory with Christ at His coming,
[p. 350] but it is a cup of endless satisfaction. The worldling’s joys are like the crackling of thorns under a pot, or like a strain of music that holds the ear for a moment, and then dies away for ever. The Christian’s joys are in the Lord, and they are inexhaustible and eternal. We have a living Saviour in glory who loves us as much today as when He died for us on the cross. We are the treasure of His heart and He delights to manifest Himself to us. His love is better than wine, and when He looks upon us it puts gladness in our hearts that the world knows nothing of. We rejoice in Him with joy unspeakable and full of glory. The Lord is the portion of our cup.
When believers are unsatisfied, it is because they are not living up to their income. They have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters, and they are proving that the cisterns of the world are broken and will hold no water. The hand that never makes a mistake has written over every earthly fountain, “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again”. Backsliding believer, get back to the Lord! The serpent has beguiled you by his subtlety, and turned you aside to earthly things. But your dishonoured Lord loves you still. Go back to Him and tell Him all. Tell Him how you have slighted and forgotten Him; confess your wanderings, unburden to Him all your sorrows and disappointments, and break your heart in contrition at His feet. He will receive, restore, and satisfy your soul.
Just a closing word to another, and a numerous, class of believers. Your life and walk are pious and separate from the world. You love the truth of God and would not surrender it for anything. One thing only is lacking, and that is expressed in the word of the sweet singer when he says, “My cup runneth over”. If you saw a beautiful fountain — however elegant was its design, however exquisite its workmanship, and however faultless its material — you would be disappointed if there was no flow of water. God would have us overflowing in praise and worship to Him, and in blessing and refreshment [p. 351] to all around. Listen to the words of His beloved Son, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7: 38). What is the secret of all these dry fountains? How is it that we yield scanty drops instead of a gushing stream — thimblefuls instead of rivers? Is it because our hearts are not really full of Christ? He is not the absorbing and satisfying Object of our souls, and hence we are dry.
Worship and service are the overflowings of a heart that is being fed and filled from the inexhaustible Reservoir — a glorified Christ in heaven. Our coldness and dryness are only the sorrowful proof of how little we are like Naphtali — “Satisfied with favour, and full with the blessing of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 33: 23). May the Lord flood all our hearts afresh with His love, and thus make our cup to be constantly running as Charles Wesley’s was when he wrote, over,
‘My heart is full of Christ, and longs
Its glorious matter to declare!
Of Him I make my loftier songs,
I cannot from His praise forbear:
My ready tongue makes haste to sing
The glories of the heavenly King.
Fairer than all the earth-born race,
Perfect in comeliness Thou art;
Replenished are Thy lips with grace;
And full of love Thy tender heart.
God ever blest! I bow the knee,
And own all fulness dwells in Thee’. (328:1)