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♪ Does glory in the glory hour ♪ ♪ And here, the very host of us there ♪ ♪ Does glory in the glory hour ♪ ♪ I am on my way to the fair's road fair ♪

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♪ Does glory in the glory hour ♪ ♪ Dare to seek God's praise and His glory ♪ ♪ Just over in the glory I am ♪ ♪ Just over in the glory I am ♪

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♪ I'll try to walk the path of right ♪ ♪ Just over in the glory I am ♪ ♪ Just for the people of New York ♪ ♪ And we will ride across the street ♪

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♪ Just for the people of New York ♪ [ Music ] ♪ Just walk with the glory, and ♪ ♪ Just walk with the glory, and ♪

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♪ Just walk with the glory, and ♪ ♪ Just walk with the glory, and ♪ ♪ There will be no more pain or sorrow ♪ ♪ God's hope will be the glory evermore ♪

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- Amen, amen. Let all the people say amen. - Amen. - We come today to consider the 75th Psalm,

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Psalm number 75. I shall read verses seven and eight and then nine and 10. So seven through 10. It is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another.

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For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he will pour out of the same, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. But I will rejoice forever, I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. All the horns of the wicked he will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted."

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The subject of the message, the cup in the Lord's hands. The cup in the Lord's hands. The cup in scripture is symbolic of the kind of life experience which God the host pours out to the world. In our everyday existence, the cup is frequently used. We think of a

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cup of coffee or a cup of tea. We may say to the one who serves us, "Fill my cup." Or someone else may say, "I only want a half a cup." The psalmist envisions a cup in the Lord's hands. It's a cup of wine mingled with myrrh to stupefy the senses. The cup is a symbol of divine fury. It represents God's wrath. The psalmist begins his song

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by giving thanks for the judgment of God. Judgment, divine judgment, is sure, it's certain. You can depend on that. It's going to happen. We can be fully confident that there is a divine judgment. God is the judge. There are many kind of judges. There are unjust judges who accept bribes and misinterpret the

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law. There are unscrupulous judges who have no compassion, but God is the just judge. In a world where there is so much injustice and oppression, it is comforting to know that what God does is right. We can be thankful that God comes to us in judgment. And so first of all,

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Let us consider the fact that God descends in judgment. You see God is present in human history. Oh it's true that God has his throne in heaven but he comes down to earth. He encounters us in every dimension of human existence. He speaks to us in judgment, he judges every one of us, he judges our thoughts,

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he judges our actions, he judges our purposes, he judges our institutions, he judges the church, he judges the home, he judges the school, he judges the political order, he judges our communities, he judges the economic order. In fact, God judges the whole world. To be sure, there is a last judgment which

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occurs after all is said and done, but God does not defer everything to the last judgment, to some future time in the far off by and by. God judges us in the here and now. You've got to stand your test in judgment. You've got to stand it for yourself. Nobody else can stand it for you. You've got to stand it for

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yourself. These words may be applied to everything and everybody in creation. We can be grateful that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Now the cup envisioned by the psalmist in the Lord's hands contains foaming wine

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mingled with myrrh the cup in the Lord's hands is The cup of God's fury It is the cup of God's wrath expressed in the judgment of the wicked

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You see God sustains this world the psalmist says that the universe is

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sustained by God's pillars of justice. The pillars of justice sustain the world. So it matters not how strong injustice may appear in the world. It matters not how arrogant may be the wicked and how prosperous the wrongdoer.

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This world is sustained by pillars of justice. So the moral order is present. We may seek to destroy it, but it is firm. It is established by God.

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So when the earth seems to be tottering on its foundations, and people are uncertain and fearful about what's going to happen next. One thing is sure,

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God's justice is steady and strong. And after saying this, in this particular song, there is the word "seala," which is a musical rest. In other words, pause for a moment

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and think about that. That this world, in spite of all of the injustice that may occur, is sustained by God's pillars of justice. And that's something that we can rest on.

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It's something that's certain. The psalmist says to the wrongdoer, "Do not boast. "Don't think you have gotten away with your misdeeds."

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To the impious, he says, "Never flaunt your power because of your contempt for the holy. Don't think that you have gotten by." To the arrogant and boastful, he says,

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"Deal not arrogantly, do not boast." And to the wicked, he says, "Do not lift up your horn of personal aggrandizement. Stop tooting your own horn,

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for judgment awaits you. God has the cup of wrath in his hands and those who are victims of God's displeasure must drink from this cup.

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The foaming red wine in the cup, I say, is mingled with myrrh. You see, wine is a symbol of joy. joy. But you see here this wine, the symbol of joy, is mingled with myrrh, which is a

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symbol of sorrow. So you see the sweet in this cup is mixed with the bitter. And in this cup, we may say that when we look at the wicked, and here the psalmist is portraying what's going to happen to the wrongdoer, to the person who is estranged from God, who's not rightly related to him, that there is a cup in the Lord's hands mingled with wine

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It has some sweetness in it, but yet there is some bitterness in it, and there are some dregs that are in that cup. And the wicked somehow are to drink all of it. All of it.

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You know, when you drink coffee, when I was a boy, I'd say that my, I drank coffee around my house and I can remember that the dregs would be left at the bottom of the cup. You don't want those. The dregs, that's something you'd like to get rid of and yet here is the bitter and

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the sweet all mixed together. You know sometimes you see someone that seems to be having such a good time but mixed up in all of that goodness is pain and sorrow because the judgment of God is also a part of human history. And so when one enjoys the wine and becomes drunk

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many times intoxicated one often thinks that he's having fun but he awakens the next morning and discovers that he has a terrible hangover. And so the psalmist here is saying that those who become intoxicated with themselves must drink the wine from the cup of the Lord's hands along with its drigs, with

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all of its bitterness, with all of the pain, with all of the discomfort and displeasure that is associated with it we must drink it. So there are those who live in worldly comfort but while they live in worldly comfort and are not rightly related to God they are in spiritual misery. The wine is mingled

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with bitterness. There are those who succeed in this world but they do not succeed in the right way. So they must drink from this cup and this cup is mingled with bitterness, sweetness and bitterness. There are those who are on their way to hell and love their journey well. The wine is mixed with myrrh. The

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sinner must drink from the cup of God's wrath and somehow every person who is not rightly related to the eternal, everyone who violates the moral law of God has to drink from this cup. Has to drink from this cup. It's a cup of God's fury. That's the cup that is in the Lord's hands. Jesus who takes our place,

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who comes and walks among us, who lives our life, we see him as he prays in the garden of Gethsemane, he says to the Father, "Remove this cup." "Remove this cup!" And one of our hymns expresses it that he says, "Father, remove this bitter cup." It's a bitter cup. Sin involves a bitter cup and Jesus who becomes sin for us and who

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suffers for us accepts this cup. He says in the end, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." This is the cup that's in the Lord's hands. Though it was customary in ancient times, and we still carry on custom similar to that, when the host at a feast would fill the cup of each guest, going around the table filling that cup. So God is the

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host and he has a cup in his hands and that cup is mingled, says the psalmist, with wine, wine mingled with myrrh, for all of those who boast in themselves, who have contempt for the holy, this is the cup of the judgment of God. And we need to be reminded that there is no way to avoid the judgment of God. Psalmist goes on to say in this particular song that we may look

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east and we may look west but it will avail nothing for no help comes from the desert or from the high hills for God is the judge he's in charge he puts down one and lifts up another he's a judge there's nothing like being in the hands of an angry judge.

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I remember some time ago I was on my way to Dallas and I received a traffic ticket and I decided to go on to the judge's chambers and make my statement regarding that ticket.

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And when I got into the chambers, there was some young fella that was ahead of me. And when I listened to the judge talk to that fella, I didn't want to go before the judge.

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I had changed my mind. When I listened to him talk about, that I don't want to ever see you in it again, you shouldn't have done this and that.

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And I listened to the tone of his voice, I said, my goodness, I shouldn't have come here. That there's nothing, nothing, nothing like being in the hands of an angry judge.

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- Yes, sir. And the psalmist somehow is portraying the fact that it's a terrible thing to fall into the hands of an angry God.

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For the judgment of God is sure. God pours from the cup of his fury upon the wicked of the earth. And so for the righteous, for the righteous,

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that's a source of comfort. It's not comfortable. Not a source of comfort if you're not in right relationship with God. We don't like to talk much about the judgment of God when we're going to be victims of the

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judgment of God. But for the righteous, for the righteous that's a source of comfort. And that's why when you read the close of this psalm, the psalmist says, "But I, I will sing praises to the Lord. I'll praise God for his judgment. I'm glad that God is a

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just judge and that somehow he has compassion upon those who fear him. I'm glad. He said I will declare forever and I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. But let me go on to say that while God has in one hand a cup of wine mingled with myrrh, that he has also a cup in another hand. And this is a cup of

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salvation. It's a cup that contains everything that we need in order to make our lives meaningful. It's a cup that gives us strength. It's a cup that gives us hope. It's a cup that gives us holiness and that cup is in the Lord's hand. That's a cup of salvation. It's a cup of blessing. We celebrate that fact

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every first Sunday when we come to the Lord's table. Some have the custom of drinking from a common cup and they take the cup and everyone comes to the altar and everyone drinks from the same cup. And that has some symbolic significance because every one of us who's saved by the grace of God must drink from the same cup.

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Somehow it is the same Lord, it's the same faith, it's the same commitment to him that every one of us must have and all of us have a common memory and that common memory as we drink up from that cup is that God has met us somewhere along life's way. God has encountered us and we all share a common memory and

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And somehow we drink of this cup of salvation because it is a cup of blessing. It's the blessing of God. That somehow when we drink of this cup,

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that God blesses our lives, even in the midst of all of the adversities that we face, that God blesses our lives when we drink of that cup. >> Amen.

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>> We have many people on certain occasions when we're celebrating some particular event or some particular relationship, We'll say, "Well, I'll drink to that."

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Well, the psalmist is saying, "I'll drink to God." - Yes. - I'll take the cup of salvation because when I consider all that God has done for me,

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when I consider how he has blessed me and how he has lifted me and how he has brought me, how he has led me and fed me, take the cup of salvation. I'll take the cup of salvation. So when we commune at

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the table of the Lord, it's symbolic of the fact that we are drinking from the cup of God's love. It's symbolic of the fact that we are drinking from the cup of God's grace. It's symbolic that we are drinking from the cup of that eternal hope that is expressed in Jesus Christ. I'll take the cup, no matter what the

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price may be. God has two cups in his hands, the cup of his wrath, the cup of his love. He has a cup of blessing and the cup of cursing. I will take the cup of salvation and I will sing praise unto the Lord forever. You know the wonderful thing about it is that in Jesus Christ we have that eternal fountain to which

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all of us can go and we can bring the little cup of our lives and he feels it and it never runs dry. He just feels it. We get weak, we hunger, we become faint, but we can always come there and He'll fill our cup. David says, "My cup runneth over." So that whatever your experience, whatever your

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lot may be in life, you can come to the Lord's table, you can take the cup of salvation. He fills your cup. Fills it with joy so that your cup runneth over. And so tonight, today we can say, "Fill my cup, Lord. Fill my cup. Give me what I need, the strength I need, the blessing I need, the hope I need, the love I need for the

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journey I face. (piano music) (piano music) [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [ Music ] I was seeking for the things that could not satisfy.

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And then I heard the Savior speaking, "Draw from the well that never shall run dry." There are billions in this world who are craving for the pleasure earthly things can't afford. But none can match the wondrous treasure That I find in Jesus Christ, my Lord.

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Fill my cup, Lord, I lift it up, Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my soul Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole

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So my brothers, if this things this world gave you Leaves hungers that won't pass away The blessed Lord will come to save you If you kneel to him and humbly pray

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Feel my calm, I lift it up, Lord I'm at quench this thirsting of my soul Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more. Fill my cup and make me whole.

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