Three cups

THREE CUPS
There are three cups that God holds out for us to drink from. They are; The cup of Iniquity - The cup of the New Covenant – The cup of suffering. These are all cups of new beginnings.
Each one of those three cups has a different setting but they all symbolise the continuing wrestle of The Holy Spirit within our hearts, a wrestle that challenges a state of mind and heart in us that resists the Holy Spirit. The heart of mankind wants to go its own way with its own desires and has from the very beginning. Nd the Holy Spirits work is to change that heart and mindset in order to make way for a new beginning, a new heart and a new mind of freedom because of a new spirit within us. That is the story of salvation.

These Three Cups are cups of new beginnings.

The cup of the New Covenant
This is mentioned in 1Corinthians where Jesus takes the cup at the last supper and says, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood.
This is also called The cup of blessing that we (1Corinthians 10:16) all give thanks for, sharing in the lifeblood of Christ. Jesus called this cup the New Covenant in his blood, the verse often read at Communion. This is the new supernatural bond of faith that is formed when people share life together with Jesus and with one another. God is saying that his life belongs to us and that our lives belong to him and to one another. All spiritual blessings flow from this New Covenant with God through Jesus. This new covenenant is mentioned in
Hebrews 8 When God speaks of a new covenant, it means he has made the first one obsolete. It is now out of date and will disappear.

When the disciple Stephen was stoned to death in martyrdom I believe he saw something of the old covenant passing away, and a new cup being offered to humanity. He saw the resistance to the struggle of the Holy Spirit with the hearts and minds of the leaders of the nation of Israel.
Stephen admonished the leaders of the nation of Israel and entered into a detailed account of their history from the commencement of their nation; and to show how kindly God had dealt with them, and how ungraciously they and their fathers had treated God back, and that they had always resisted the Holy Spirit. There were many who had not resisted the Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets, and there were many who lived and died in faith and loyalty to the Old Covenant. But at this time he was led to the conclusion that God could no longer bear with them, because their cup of iniquity had long been overflowing. That cup was the cup of judgment which was about to be poured out upon Israel after Stephen was martyred. Romans 11:25 The judgement of partial blindness to the Gospel until the fulness of the gathering in of humanity has been accomplished. But Israel will receive Jesus their Messiah at the appointed time of his mercy and grace upon them.
Acts 7:51. You always resist the Holy Spirit; just as your fathers did 6. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven saw Jesus standing at God’s right hand. And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand!” Then they put their hands over their ears and began shouting. They rushed at him and dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. His accusers took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul. As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
The bible tells us that Jesus is always seated at the right hand of the Father – he doesn’t stand, except, it seems, to bring judgement. This marked the time of judgement of Israel.

THE CUP OF SUFFERING – This was the cup that Jesus drank in the Garden of Gesthamane.
There is a story in the book of Matthew 20 where the mother of James and John asks Jesus … Can my two sons sit, one on Your right hand and the other on the left, in Your kingdom.” But Jesus answered and said, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink ?”vs.26 You've observed how godless rulers throw their weight around, how quickly a little power goes to their heads. It's not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant.

Jesus was asking them to have a different mindset to the people in this world ‘s system who arrogantly ruled over others and let power go to their heads.
God’s power doesn’t go to his head it goes to his heart. He cares for us in the personal burdens we carry. In Isaiah 53 the bible tells us that he took our sorrows that weighed him down. It was through his suffering that we could have peace.
He asks us to drink that cup in caring for one another and bearing each other’s burdens. That’s the cup of suffering. It is also going through the tough times without complaining, but giving thanks to God for his goodness. Everyone is going through some kind of suffering at the moment and many are without help and without hope, and many many are complaining bitterly, and that is understandable when a person has no other hope except what this world has to offer. But we have a hope, and can give hope and give help. and that too is taking the cup of suffering.

The story of God and humanity has always featured a struggle right at the heart and centre of its passionate journey of love and response – Divine love and human response. The conflict rages on to this day. It is in the middle of everything that is happening between God and us and between us and one another. God always embraces his creation and that creation, which means us specifically in the context of what I’m talking about today is of a lower order than himself who is Uncreated being. It is even said of us as humanity that we are made a little lower than the angels. This gap of separation between God and humanity provokes us to resist his overture of love and to assert our own self determined course, our own rite of passage to our idea of self fulfilment. The Holy Spirit was there in the first instant of creation bringing light into darkness and order into chaos, bringing form and beauty into nothingness. It is an ongoing story.
The Holy Spirit is right in the middle of this dispute right now, contending with the human heart to allow God’s love to subdue it and reorder it and make it to be at one with his love and virtue and truth.

THE CUP OF INIQUITY
The cup of Iniquity
Psalm 75:2 For the Lord holds a cup in his hand that is full of wine mixed with spices.
He pours out the wine in judgment, and all the wicked must drink it, draining it to the dregs.
That word judgement means that everything we do has consequences. The word in the bible for this word is KRISIS. A Crisis, as we know, is always a time of decision making. It means a time of opportunity to make a right decision along with good outcomes but it also holds within it the danger of a wrong decision, and the harmful consequences. This means all of us, nations and indviduals.
I believe this world is being offered this cup in the current situation of our global catastrophe. Recently I spoke of the message of God to Noah about how he had to prepare an ark before the global game-changing event of the flood occurred that marked the end of things being done man’s way and beginning to be done God’s way. That was the time of the preparation of the Ark which was 120 years when The Holy Spirit wrestled with the heart of mankind to change his ungodly ways to God’s ways; the cup was filling up. There are a lot of things in our world currently that are not happening God’s way. But God always gives us time to change before he acts in judgement.

There are many examples of the pouring out of this cup in Scripture and it always involves the Divine Delay of Judgement – The longsuffering of God.
In Genesis15 there is God’s message to Abraham that his descendants would inherit the promised land of Canaan. But he makes an interesting comment about a time frame that had to be fulfilled before this could come to pass.
He said that there would be a delay of 400 years because the cup of iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.
God gives people time to mend their ways and to repent. Here he gives the land of Canaan 400 years. This is called the longsuffering of God. So why the Amorites (Amos uses ‘Amorites’ to mean the whole land of Canaan). The answer is because they were people just like us, but who chose to live in wickedness, for example, they worshiped many gods and goddesses practising immoral rituals and they made idols to these gods. They even offered their children as human sacrifices to the god of Molech. But God was still longsuffering and yet they did not change their ways. Then Israel came out of Egypt under Moses and finally, a little after 400 years Abraham’s descendants became God’s instrument of judgement upon the Canaanites and possessed the Promised Land.

Then there is one other example – when Jonah the prophet of Israel was told to preach to Nineveh and madly protesting – They were cruel and murderously evil - so why Nineveh? Why not just judge them? Well…Judge them for what? They had to be told about God by Jonah in order to repent. And they did- so was it then godly Nineveh forever? No they fell away after a while. So what’s the point? The point is that is the story of God and humanity. It is the story of what is happening in the earth globally at this very moment. Many nations have heard about God. Some nations may come out of the experience of this cup from God as more godly and some less – some people more godly and some less. And there will be a divide between the two. God will be present in his people with more power, and darkness will assert itself with more intensity.

This is a time for light to shine. When God allows a catastrophic occasion to occur, like the one we are in the grip of right now, he causes things to be brought into the light that were hidden, and exposes the greed and corruption of power and control that usurps God’s place of power and command over the lives of mankind. This is what is happening in the earth today with the current shaking of the global Corona virus pandemic which is bringing a halt to all the perceived control and entitlement of the agendas of the proud and oppressive. His heart in these times of judgement, or crisis in which we live, is always to redeem the hearts of people.
Let’s read the full Psalm.

Psalm 75:2 God says, “At the time I have planned, I will bring justice against the wicked.
When the earth trembles and its people live in turmoil, I am the one who keeps its foundations firm.
“I warned the proud, ‘Stop your boasting!’ I told the wicked, ‘Don’t raise your fists! Don’t raise your fists in defiance at the heavens or speak with such arrogance.’” For no one on earth—from east or west, should raise a defiant fist. It is God alone who judges; he decides who will rise and who will fall
For the Lord holds a cup in his hand
that is full of wine mixed with spices.
He pours out the wine in judgment,
and all the wicked must drink it,
draining it to the dregs.
But as for me, says David, I will always proclaim what God has done; I will sing praises to the God of Jacob.
For God says, “I will break the strength of the wicked, but I will increase the power of the godly.”
(Some nations will come out of this calamity in a more godly way than others)

The time for light to shine
Isaiah 60: 1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.
And nations shall come to your light.

- Peter Blanchard , from Northwestern University in the USA, a co-author on the study of a supernova explosion tells us of a huge explosion of a supernova, recorded in The Australian 14/4/2020

“This is the most light we have ever seen emitted by a supernova.”
Blanchard then writes.
In a typical supernova, the radiation is less than 1 per cent of the total energy, but in SN2016, we found the radiation was five times the explosion energy of a normal-sized supernova. This is the most light we have ever seen emitted by a supernova.”
To become this bright, the explosion must have been much more energetic than usual. By examining the light spectrum, the researchers were able to demonstrate that the explosion was powered by a collision between the supernova and a massive shell of gas, shed by the star in the years before it exploded.
“While many supernovae are discovered every night, most are in massive galaxies,” said Peter Blanchard. “This one immediately stood out for further observations because it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. We weren’t able to see the galaxy where this star was born.

There is light in the universe, in the midst of darkness right now.
So we can accept the cup of the new covenant and be joined even more closely to Jesus and to one another. We can accept the cup of suffering and bear one another’s burdens and know that God is bearing ours. And we can be a light and a hope for those who are suffering without hope and without help. Pray for God to continue to fill you with the Holy Spirit and that he will pour out his Spirit on those who are crying out to him at this time.