In the context of the verse I want to see, we have the mother of James and John coming to the Lord Jesus and making an unusual request of him. Verse 21, she said to him, command that in your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on your right and one on your left. Jesus answered and said, you do not know what you are asking for. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink? And so we have here the cup of suffering.
It is the cup about which Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he said, if it be possible let this cup pass from me, nevertheless your will not mine be done. This is the cup that Jesus was thinking of in John chapter 18 when he says that the Father has given him this cup to drink. It is the cup containing his suffering for the sins of the world. The dregs of that cup, the depths of that cup, involve the very suffering of hell itself on behalf of his own.
It was not necessary for the Lord Jesus Christ to descend into hell for three days as one of the creeds puts it, and there to suffer hell, because he suffered hell for us on the cross. Hell is a place, and it is a place where all of the ungodly must go to spend eternity away from the presence of God. It is a horrible place. But hell for the Lord Jesus was on the cross because it was there as he poured out his life that he was separated in fellowship from the Father.
It was there that he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As the sun was darkened and as the Father turned away from his Son, who was bearing sin and who became sin for us, that was the cup of his suffering. James and John could never drink of that cup, nor can we. It is a cup which was his alone uniquely, and it is a cup which he drank entirely. He absorbed in himself all of the suffering that his Holy Father required as a propitiation for our sins.
It is a cup that was emptied on the cross of Calvary. As the Apostle Paul writes to these Corinthians, warning them about partaking of pagan feasts, he says, when you partake of a religious feast, you are actually sharing in that religion. He warns them that in doing that, in a pagan feast, they are partaking with demons at their tables. As he works his way into that subject, he says in verse 16, is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ?
So the second cup of Christ is a cup of blessing. The cup which he emptied at the cross, he filled again, and he hands to you and to me that we might enjoy it. It is the cup of blessing. We have talked this evening about some of the blessings that we enjoy as a people. I would like for you to turn to Ephesians 1 and notice some of the spiritual blessings that are ours in this cup of blessing. In verses 3 through 14, in a long paragraph, the Apostle Paul enumerates these.
He mentions them in verse 3 where he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Then he begins to enumerate them, and he says, Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. Then in verse 5 he says, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself. From the Father we have these blessings of election and predestination.
You say, Well, I'm not sure all that those mean. Frankly, neither is the most brilliant biblical scholar that ever lived. One thing we are told in the Word of God is that God the Father, before he even spoke the universe into existence, looked into the time-space dimension that he was about to create, and he chose a people. And he predestined those people to be conformed to the image of his Son.
You and I who belong to Jesus Christ have that as a part of the cup of blessing that Jesus has handed to us. And then going on, in verse 7 it mentions that in the beloved, the Son, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, as Helmer was speaking about earlier. So we have redemption. We have been purchased through his blood. When the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, he bought something. He purchased something. He purchased the church. He purchased his own.
And it says furthermore, from him we also receive insight. He says in verse 8, in all wisdom and insight he made known to us the mystery of his will. And there is that word mystery again. That is something that God has chosen to disclose to us now that he did not disclose to people in past ages. It is a word in the day in the New Testament which was written which was used of secret religions.
The mystery religions in that day as they were called had certain mysteries which only the initiates of those religions were told. There are certain societies and religions around these days that have similar kinds of things. Those were called their mysteries. The Apostle Paul picks up that word out of paganism and washes it off. The Holy Spirit causes him to place it in God's word. It refers to those things that God chooses to reveal to us in this age.
And the mystery of his will that he talks about here is undoubtedly the mystery of our being one with the Jews who believe in the body of Jesus Christ. He talks about it further in chapter 3. And so from God the Son we have these two blessings. We have been redeemed and forgiven of our sins through his blood. And we have been made a part of his mystery, the church. And we have been given insight to understand that.
We are a different, we are a unique people in all of the history of the world being called out to belong to Jesus Christ as his bride, as his body, as his temple.
And then in verse 13 he mentions that in him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise who has given us, given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory. And so here we have the work of the Holy Spirit in our salvation.
God the Father places into our cup of blessing the fact that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world and we were predestined to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus himself. The Lord Jesus places into this cup our redemption and he says enjoy it. He furthermore places into this cup an understanding that we have of his purpose in this age, the calling out of the church for Jesus Christ, the mystery of Jew and Gentile.
And then the Holy Spirit as it were places into our cup of blessing this truth that he has come into us to seal us and to guarantee us for the destiny that God has predestined us for. As though it were not enough that God's word would do it, the Holy Spirit is a permanent resident in our bodies, acting as a seal upon us, authenticating us as genuinely God's children, but furthermore guaranteeing us as an earnest, as a down payment that what God has said about us will come true.
What God has promised will be fulfilled. Here we have the cup of blessing, the second cup of Christ. It is a cup that is filled with blessing because he was willing to drink its first contents. But there is a third cup of Christ that I want to reference in closing and that is found in Luke chapter 22. We come here in this chapter to the Last Supper.
And at a given point in verse 15, it records Jesus saying these words to his disciples, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he said, take this and share it among yourselves. For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. I title this cup of Christ the cup of reunion.
For Jesus has a future sense here. He is saying, I will no longer partake of a cup of the fruit of the vine until you and I sit down together in the kingdom of God and enjoy it. Jesus was not speaking only to those eleven disciples who were with him on that occasion, but he was speaking through them to us today.
The Bible tells us that there is a feast coming, a supper coming, when we will sit down with our bridegroom at the time that we are officially married to him and there we will enjoy with him this cup, the cup of reunion, the time when we will be with him in body even as he is now with us in spirit, a time when we will be able to look upon his face every moment though now we have not seen him. It is the cup of reunion. The first cup, the cup of suffering, was a past cup. Jesus drank it fully.
The second cup is the cup of the present, the blessing that we now enjoy in Jesus Christ. The third cup is the cup of the future. It is what we anticipate when he returns and we are with him and with those who have gone on before us in Christ forever. As we come to this table tonight, we have those same three dimensions. We have the past concept, the broken body, the shed blood. We have the present concept that now we are partakers of this in this generation, you and I who live in the world.
We come to this table tonight, our hearts having been cleansed by confession of sin, to partake of these elements in a worthy manner. And we come with a view of that day when Jesus will come. We come together looking forward to that blessed hope and the glorious appearing. And if there be a generation after us, they too will come to a table like this until the Lord comes and we are together.
So as we partake of the Lord's table tonight, let us rejoice in the cups of Jesus Christ and what these elements represent to us who are in him. Let's bow together please in prayer as we come to this very important time in our church. And as we bow together, I'd like for those who are serving to come here to the front. Lord Jesus, thank you, thank you for drinking the cup of suffering, for completely emptying it and thus satisfying the justice of the Father.
We recognize that in a wonderful and mysterious way that even that was planned before the foundation of the world. And then you came and accomplished it. And the Holy Spirit has applied that to our lives and secured us for the destiny that you have promised us. But as we come to this table tonight and partake of these elements, may our hearts truly remember you and fellowship with you and anticipate that cup of reunion that we shall share with you in the kingdom of God. Amen.