In following Jesus, we eventually come to a cup.  It’s not a nice cup, not a cup that anyone would volunteer to drink.  In a sense, it is a cup full of hazardous waste.  It is a cup full of abomination,1. a cup of wrath, 2. a cup of heart break.

Jesus came to a place in His ministry when he had to drink this cup 3.   But He was not the only one who would drink from it.  There would be others.4.

And what shall we say?  It was on the matter of this cup, that we first see a difference in wills between Jesus and His father.  For the first time from eternity past, there is a difference between them.  It was the Father’s will that Jesus should drink of this cup.  It was the Son’s will that it might pass from Him.  In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus was locked into a conflict of wills, a conflict, which would not pass, until His Father’s will prevailed.  The conflict was so great, that Jesus asked his closest friends to come and pray with him, but they fell asleep in the midst of it, and didn’t wake up until it was over.

In a sense, this matter had already been settled from before the foundation of the world, but none of us should be to quick to think that we can drink from this cup.  When the moment of truth finally comes, we too may sweat blood over the matter.  We may not be called to drink the cup for everyone, but we may be called to drink the cup for those we love, if we are going to love them to the end.

There were those in Babylon that The Father loved.  He wanted them out of there.  But the only way to get them out was to dispose of the cup from which they had been drinking.  It was a cup in the hands of a mystery, 5. Once again, Jesus asked, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” 6.  Jesus knew that this cup had to be disposed of.  He wanted another way to get rid of it, but there was no other way.  Perhaps someone else to stand in the gap, but there was none. 7.

In order to make it possible for us, the ones who were captive in Babylon, to be intimate with Him, He had to drink the cup of our abomination, and, with it, the desolation.  In order to love me, he had to take the worst of me into Himself.

Would that were the end of it.  In loving one another, there is a cup, which we also must drink.  Otherwise, we will break faith with one another. 8.

Are we prepared to do whatever is necessary to get the objects of God’s affection out of Babylon, and Babylon out of the objects of God’s affection?

“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.”9.

April, 2000

1.  Revelation 17:4, 18:6, Ezekiel 23:31, 32, 33, Habakkuk 2:15, 16, 2.  Revelation 14:10, 16:19, Psalms 75:8, Jeremiah 25:15, 17, 28, Jeremiah 49:12, Jeremiah 51, Lamentations 4:21,  Zechariah 12:2, 3.  Matthew 20:22, Matthew 26:39, 42, Mark 10:38, Mark 14:36, Luke 22:42, John 18:11, 4. Matthew 20:23, Mark 10:39, 5. Revelation 17:4, 6. Matthew 26:42, 7. Ezekiel 22:30, 8. Malachi 2:10-16, 9. Lamentations 1:12

Love!

For continued reading, see: ‘OFFENSES‘.