Fill your cup with the good things of God! Thirst for Christ, even as a deer longs for streams of water. Worship God with your family, your friends, and on your own. Delight in the great things that God has done and is still doing.

There’s the cup that Benjamin found in his sack of grain, or the “outside of the cup” that the Pharisees anxiously kept clean. “Cup” has a symbolic meaning too, standing for the basic quality of your life. In Psalm 16:5, David rejoices to say that the LORD is his portion and his cup, for God sustains his life.

One of these symbolic cups that nobody wants is what Scripture calls the “cup of wrath.” God speaks of giving this cup to his enemies. Because of their evil deeds they must take this cup and drink it all the way down: the cup of God’s anger and justice.

We don’t mind if his cup gets handed to God’s enemies. But there’s another cup, filled to the brim. Isaiah 51 says it’s been handed to God’s own people: “Awake, awake! Stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; you have drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling” (v. 17).

From those words it’s clear that Judah has received this cup already. Their cup had been filled with the wine of God’s wrath, and they’ve had to drain it to the bottom. They’ve even become drunk on it, and they’ve walked away, staggering and trembling.

Is that a good picture for divine wrath? If we had to suffer punishment that was like a little drunkenness, that wouldn’t be too bad, compared to the terrors of the sword, famine, and plague. But it’s a serious image of God’s judgment.

Think of it: when someone brings us a cup—maybe a glass of lemonade on a hot day, or a mug of coffee—we’re expecting something good. We assume that we’re taking this cup from a generous host. But what if there’s poison in that cup? What if we find something disgusting at the bottom? We’ve swallowed it down and now we have to deal with the results.

This is what God will do to sinners: He gives them the cup filled with his fury, then watches as they drink, as they lose control and become utterly confused. The results of drinking God’s cup are terrible: not just a hangover, but the stupor of drunkenness in which there is shame, misery, even death.

Read More