YOU CAN'T DRINK FROM TWO CUPS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

1 Corinthians 10:14, 18-22

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever tried to drink from two cups?

It sounds crazy just suggesting it let alone trying it, right?

This fact lends support to today’s message and the words of the Apostle Paul as he continues to advise, mentor, and guide the church in Corinth. Look at his words found in the tenth chapter of 1 Corinthians:

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Vv. 14, 18-22

Here we find Paul applying the analogy of trying to drink from two cups to a person’s spiritual life in Christ. For when we accept Jesus as our personal Savior, we choose to leave the world and its sinfulness behind, the world in which we once lived in spiritually, and move into a new world, a world where living as Christ lived is the only acceptable behavior. And since Jesus lived a perfectly sinless life, then we can and will move further and further away from living in wickedness while drawing closer and closer to righteousness.

Now, note that we can’t have it both ways. We can’t have the world’s ways and the ways of Jesus at the same time. There is a line drawn and we step over onto the Jesus side when we receive Him as Savior. The scriptures tell us we become a new creation in Christ and that means we leave the old behind. We might live in the world but we are no longer of it anymore.

We can’t have one foot in the world and one foot in Jesus anymore than we can drink from two cups. We can no longer drink from the cup of sin, the cup of Satan and the demons, the cup filled with iniquity. This is because we drink from a new cup as a Christian, the cup that Paul talks about in verse 16 of this chapter, the cup of remembrance shared during the Lord’s Supper.

You’ll remember that this cup is symbolic of the blood Jesus shed on Calvary’s cross, the blood we should have shed as a penalty for our sinfulness. Jesus willingly took the punishment we deserved to spare us from it. He saved us through His amazing sacrifice of love. We need to count the cost of His suffering each and every day as Christians but at least once a month we are to drink from the cup He called us to drink from and break the bread He called us to break, sharing in the remembrance of what He did to bring us new life now and forever.

Each and every day, we should dedicate ourselves to Jesus and Jesus alone as we grow as Christians to be more and more like Him. We need to know and carry out His commands so we know we are doing what He has told us to do. When we do that, when we fully commit our lives to model Him, then we can be sure that we are only drinking from the cup of Christ each and every day. There will be no room to drink from the cup of demons because you can’t drink from two cups at the same time.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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