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Study 2
The
Full Cup Principle
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God’s Love Poorly
Understood
The Bible declares that
God is love, but God’s love is poorly
understood today. (1 John 4:7,8) The meaning of love
is so distorted by sin that many people do not
understand what love is! When God sends His
judgments upon the nations of Earth, one of the
most difficult things the 144,000 will have to
explain is that God is love! How will people
reconcile “God is love” when the
smoldering evidences of His wrath are lying all
around?
God’s love is
revealed in a perfect balance between justice and
mercy. Because of sin, man’s sense of
balance between justice and mercy has become
distorted and inadequate. We cannot see
everything that God sees and our limited view
makes trusting an infinite God very hard
sometimes. God understands our limitations, but
He requires His children to trust Him implicitly.
He alone knows the best way through the corridors
of life to eternity. His laws reflect His
infinite knowledge. Few people spend time trying
to understand God’s laws, mercy, justice,
authority, glory and power, but this will change
when God releases His wrath. Stunned by chaos and
destruction, people will open up their Bibles and
discover a diary of God’s actions covering
thousands of years. God’s policies are
changeless because God does not change. It is
ironic, but during the time of God’s wrath,
many people will learn what divine love is all
about and, for the first time, experience a
saving relationship with God. (Jeremiah 29:13)
God allowed the prophet
Isaiah to see certain aspects of His glory, yet
Isaiah was amazed at God’s reluctance to
show Himself to the world. He wrote, “Truly
you are a God who hides himself, O God and savior
of Israel.” (Isaiah 45:15) God’s apparent
silence in the affairs of humankind is a
consequence of sin. Most people know that
inappropriate behavior can separate friends and
family members from each other. The same is also
true of God. Sin is so offensive to God that it
has separated us from His presence. As
generations come and go, the reality of God
becomes dimmer. As knowledge about God becomes
faint, and the longer we go without renewed
evidence of God’s authority and glory, the
more silent He appears to be. In the vacuum of
this silence, sin becomes more attractive and
less offensive. Wicked people become bold and
defiant in their transgressions. Violence, sorrow
and suffering spring up like dandelions after a
spring rain. Every night, the evening news
confirms the human race is wallowing in the slime
of depravity. Degenerate, even hideous sins are
either glamorized, justified or treated as
inconsequential on television. Sin is like the
drug Novocain – it deadens our sense of
fairness. Sin causes us to minimize the suffering
that results from our deeds and to avoid, at all
costs, any penalty for wrongful behavior. (How
many people in prison falsely maintain their
innocence? How many people in prison would be
willing to stay in prison and pay the full price
for their deeds if they had the option to get
out?) Because of sin’s deadening power,
people can commit a horrible deed and then
convince themselves they did not do it or justify
their behavior for doing it. Such is the power of
sin. From the very beginning, sinners have been
reluctant to accept their responsibility for sin.
Lucifer blamed God. Our parents, Adam and Eve,
also deflected their responsibility for sin in
the Garden of Eden. (Genesis 3:12,13) Even though
sin has great control over sinners, the power of
sin can be broken. Whenever a sinner is
“born again” by the Holy Spirit, the
first thing a saint wants to do is to take
responsibility (and provide necessary
restitution) for his or her sin.
God Will Not Be Silent
Forever
The Bible confirms that
God breaks His silence from time to time by using
one or more of His four deadly judgments to limit
the growth of sin. (Ezekiel 14:21) The four
judgments He uses are sword, famine, plague and
wild beasts. (Revelation 6:8) In His infinite
wisdom, God allows a nation to have power until
it fills up its cup of iniquity, and when it
does, the bible says He removes that nation from
power. (See Daniel 2:21; 4:17; Leviticus
18:24-28.) What makes this process so remarkable
is that God, even within the chaos of sin, always
accomplishes His plans and purposes on Earth! We
may try to explain the outcome of earthy events
by analyzing the actions of the players, but this
remains a limited view. Do not be naïve and
think that things just happen in the universe
without God’s knowledge and permission. Even
though we are not able to see god on His throne,
we can know that He reigns over the kingdoms of
man. God is Sovereign. We may not see all that He
is doing, but the evidence is right before our
eyes. The Bible is crystal clear. God is in
control. (Job 38) How He maintains control is a
mystery. That He does it without showing Himself
is His silence.
God’s silence is not
impossible to penetrate if you really want to see
and hear Him. The evidences of His handiwork are
all around us if we want to acknowledge Him.
However, if we choose not to give Him respect, we
can easily ignore Him and deny the recognition He
is due. Thus, His silence compliments our power
of choice. God can either be the greatest and
most wonderful Being in all the universe, or if
we choose, we can deny His existence. What a God!
Perhaps the least understood element within
God’s character is His reluctance to awe His
creatures with His power and presence. His
silence will be a topic of eternal discovery!
Very Important Point
God will soon break His
silence with the first global earthquake.
(Revelation 8:5) When Earth’s inhabitants
experience God’s coming judgments,
God’s love and His purposes will be grossly
misunderstood and misrepresented. The religious
leaders of the world will encourage politicians
to enact laws “honoring and appeasing the
god of heaven.” However, mandating
righteousness cannot accomplish what God wants!
God is more interested in true repentance and a
submissive attitude from His children. He wants
men and women to recognize His sovereignty, not
for who He is, but for what He is and what
He represents. God is love. He calls for men and
women to live a life free from the damning power
of sin. Even more, He will grant His power to
everyone so they can be victorious over sin. He
wants us to overcome our carnal nature and
rebellion against His boundless ways of life.
Inconceivable as it may seem, Revelation predicts
that the majority of men and women will reject
God’s terms and conditions for salvation
during the Great Tribulation. Hardened by
lifelong rebellion, the hearts of many people
have become so numbed by sin that even God cannot
reach them. If a person’s heart cannot be
reached through love and patience or through
redemptive judgments, how can God produce a
broken heart and a repentant spirit within a
sinner?
Revelation describes how
wicked people will be filled with a spirit of
hatred when confronted with the truth about God
and His will. God will initiate this
confrontation when he selects and anoints 144,000
servants –prophet to speak on His behalf.
These spirit filled people will proclaim the
gospel to the inhabitants of every nation. Evil
men will punish and torture God’s servants
because their message will openly reveal
man’s rebellion against god. God’s
messengers will be in direct conflict with those
who govern a world that currently belongs to
Satan. (Luke 4:5-6) The persecutors of God’s
servants will think, like Pilate, that they can
wash their hands from the guilt of these acts.
Yet, God never ignores evil, even though
He may allow it to flourish for a time.
Eventually, God will avenge every evil deed and
He will be sure that wicked people receive a
double portion of pain in return for the pain
they have inflicted. (See Revelation 18:6, 2
Corinthians 5:10 and Obadiah 1:15.)
In the context of His
coming judgments, God’s character and His
behavior will be grossly misrepresented and
misinterpreted. This is the heart of
Revelation’s story. It is a story of a
patient God visiting a planet in deep trouble. It
is also a story about rebellious people and a
world gone astray. Most people, when put to the
coming test, will openly and willfully reject the
clearest evidences of God’s truth and
God’s sovereignty. They will unite
themselves in rebellion against the laws of the
Most High God by first obeying the laws of the
land and then, the laws of the radiant being, the
antichrist – the devil himself. About two
and half years after the Great tribulation
begins, God will allow Satan to physically appear
before the people of Earth because “they
refused to love the truth and be saved.” (2
Thessalonians 2:10-11) Jesus said, “This is
the verdict: Light has come into the world, but
men loved darkness instead of light because their
deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the
light, and will not come into the light for fear
that his deeds will be exposed.”(John 3:
19-20)
The Full Cup Principle
The Bible says that God
is love. (1 John 4:8) The Bible also says that
God has wrath. (Colossians 3:5,6; Revelation
15:1) Because God’s character has both
properties, it is sometimes difficult to
reconcile these two attributes. So, let us
consider how the perfect balance works between
God’s love and God’s wrath. Bible
history reveals that God follows a consistent
principle when dealing with humanity. I call this
principle the “full cup principle”
because the Bible often uses the metaphor of a
cup to indicate fullness of an experience. For
example, consider the words of Jesus just before
He was arrested and crucified, “…My
Father, if it is possible, may this [bitter] cup
be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you
will.” (Matthew 26:39, insertion mine) Jesus
did not want to endure the experience of a bitter
death on the cross, but He was willing to do it
if this was the only way to save the human race.
The metaphor of a cup can be used to indicate a
joyful experience. Consider David’s well
known words, “You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head
with oil; my cup [of joy] overflows.”
(Psalms 23:5, insertion mine) King David uses the
metaphor of an overflowing cup to express joy
beyond containment! From these two examples we
see that a cup represents an experience. The
contents of the cup indicate the type of
experience.
Notice how God used the
metaphor of “the cup” in
Jeremiah’s day: “This is what the Lord,
the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my
hand this cup filled [to the brim] with the wine
of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I
send you drink it. When they drink it, they will
stagger and go mad because of the sword I will
send among them.’ So I took the cup from the
Lord’s hand and made all the nations to whom
he sent me drink it.” (Jeremiah 25:15-17,
insertion mine) Now compare Jeremiah’s words
with the warning words of God’s servants,
the 144,000 in Revelation 14: “…If
anyone worships the beast and his image and
receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand,
he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s
fury, which has been poured full strength into
the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with
burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels
and the Lamb.” (Revelation 14:9,10) This
text points forward to a time during the Great
Tribulation when people will be warned about
worshiping the Antichrist. Everyone who submits
to the laws of the devil will have to drink from
the cup of God’s wrath.
The full cup principle is
based on the idea that God measures the
actions of mankind. Every time we do wrong, we
add a sin to our cup of grace. When all of
God’s grace has been displaced by willful
sin, our cup becomes full of bitterness and we
have to drink the consequences of our actions.
When god forces people to reap what they have
sown, He is returning to them what they deserve.
(Galatians 6:7) The golden rule is an ironclad
rule. It says: As we do unto others, the same
will be done to us. (Matthew 7:12; Obadiah 1:15)
Because God acts on this principle, He is said to
have vengeance. (Romans 12:19; Revelation 2:23)
In a similar way, God measures
the actions of nations. Do you remember the words
Daniel spoke to King Belshazzar the night he saw
the handwriting on the wall? Daniel said,
“This is what the words [on the wall] mean:
Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and
brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been
weighed on the scales and found wanting. Peres:
Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes
and Persians.” (Daniel 5:26-28) Babylon had
filled its cup and God responded. God’s
patience with man’s arrogance and defiance
has limits. When the cup of transgression is
nearly full, God breaks His silence by sending a
warning through His selected messengers. If the
warning does not work, He then uses one or more
of His four deadly judgments (sword, famine,
plagues and wild beasts – Ezekiel 14:21;
Revelation 6:8). If the situation goes beyond
redemption, His judgments are very destructive.
Remember, the coming events predicted in
Revelation will be divided into two groups of
seven. The first seven plagues (seven trumpets)
will be redemptive. The seven last plagues (seven
bowls) will be very destructive.
Many people currently
interpret God’s silence or passiveness with
evil to mean that He is either nonexistent or
indifferent to what we do. Others see His
permissiveness as proof that He is not interested
in each person’s day-to-day activities. For
this reason, a growing number of people
committing horrible, evil deeds, thinking that
God does not see them and will not hold them
responsible for their actions. Many people do not
realize the strict accountability that each of us
must give to God for every action! Solomon said,
“…Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man. For God will
bring every deed into judgment, including
every hidden thing, whether it is good or
evil,” (Ecclesiastes 12:13,14, italics mine)
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