874. The Overflowing Cup

A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, June 6, 1869, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

My cup runs over. (Psalms 23:5)

1. The fault of being too happy, if it exists anywhere, must be a very scarce one. A far more prevalent vice is that of dwelling upon the dark shades of life, to the forgetfulness of its brighter lights. We drink our wormwood in ostentatious publicity, but eat our honey behind closed doors. It is noteworthy that if a man’s life is prosperous, it glides away rapidly, and leaves little trace upon his memory. We write sorrows in marble, and mercies in the sand. The history of nations becomes dull and unromantic when it flows happily, so that it has been wisely written, “Blessed is that nation which has no history.” When affliction comes, there is an event to mark, a notch to be scored on the tally: war, famine, pestilence, these are landmarks of history; but when nations continue in an even flow of peace, history is like a vast unbroken dead calm. Our mind tenaciously retains the memory of its sorrow, but human nature is so constitutionally ungrateful, as to forget its mercies without an effort. How much of the theme of our conversation consists in complaint! It is so cold for the season, it is so intolerably hot; there is too much dampness, or the rain is perfectly awful; business is shocking; the young wheat is turning yellow for lack of dry weather, or the turnips are just good for nothing for lack of moisture. We are greatly adept in finding reasons for murmuring; like ill humoured curs, we bark at everything or nothing; and I suppose if we should fail to discover any reasons for discontent, we should think it quite sufficient cause for utter weariness of this mortal life. More or less we are all bitten with this madness. It comes so natural to us to relate our grievances and hardships in detail, and only by mere accident, or as a conscientious duty, do we relate the story of the Lord’s goodness towards us. Come, my brethren, let us see if we cannot strum a sweeter string this morning; let us lay aside the sackbut, and try the dulcimer. With Christians, a cheerful countenance should be the rule. Of all the men who live, we are the most suited to rejoice; we have the most reasons for it, and the most precepts for it; let us not lag behind in it. Heaven is our portion, and the thoughts of its amazing bliss should cheer us on the road. Christ has given to us such large and wide domains of grace and glory, that it would be altogether unseemly that there should be a poverty of happiness where there is such an affluence of possession. In considering our own portion, which must be a blessed one, since “the Lord is the portion of our inheritance and of our cup,” let us see if we cannot find themes for song, and abundant cause to stir all that is within us to magnify the Lord.

2. I. Our privileged lot is described in the text as a cup, and a view of that happy portion will, I trust, be suggestive of gratitude. I shall invite you, in the first place, TO SURVEY YOUR PRIVILEGED PORTION.

3. You have a cup. There is not an insignificant privilege implied in the use of such a term as that to describe your lot. Remember you were once (and not so long ago but what your memory may well carry you back to it) wandering in a dry and thirsty land, where no water was. Hungry and thirsty, your soul fainted within you. You hurried to the broken cisterns, but they held no water. All your former confidences were as deceitful brooks which evaporate before the hot breath of summer. The wells of pleasure were empty, and you were in a parched land, where hope did not smile. Your former delights proved to be only a mirage, fair to look upon, but unsubstantial as a dream. You crouched at the foot of Sinai, and even presumptuously attempted to climb its rugged sides, but you failed to find a drop of water there. Do you remember when Christ said to you—

   Behold, I freely give
      Living water, thirsty one,
   Stoop down, and drink, and live?

Oh, what a change for you! You thirst no longer, for within your soul Jesus has an ever springing well of living water. You believe in him, and all the cravings of your nature are supplied. Think of the full cup which Jesus holds to your lip; contrast it with your former poverty when you were ready to perish in despair, and rejoice this morning that you have a royal cup to drink from which will never fail you. There was a time, too, when you were in something more than need—you were in a degradation whose memory crimsons your cheek. Your riotous living ended in a mighty famine, and you gladly would have filled your belly with the husks that the swine ate. A trough was then far more your portion than a cup. Many of us remember with shame and confusion of face, to what excess of riot we ran; and wonderful indeed it is that the cup of a holy God should be at our lip. In many cases blasphemy defiled the lip, and lustfulness polluted the body; but they are washed, renewed, and sanctified; and now, with rags removed, and a fair white robe wrapped around their body, they are permitted to sit at the table of the banquet, where music and dancing make the heart glad, and the wines on the lees well refined refresh the guests. From such lack to such abundance, from such shame to such honour, what a change? Our portion is no longer that of the forlorn or the degraded; we do not pine in despair or wallow in pollution, but we sit as children at the table, drinking with joy from our allotted cup.

4. Remember too, beloved, and the contrast will, I hope, inflame your gratitude, that another cup was once set at our place on the table, and from it we should have been compelled to drink had it not been for the interposition of the Surety of the covenant. That deep and direful cup of the Lord’s wrath, into which he wrings out the wormwood and the gall until its bitterness is beyond degree, was once ours. You and I must have been made to drink of that black cup for ever and ever—for we could never have emptied it, but must eternally have been filled with the horror and amazement which are its dregs. Now, as we showed you last Sunday morning, our divine Redeemer has drained that cup on our behalf, for he was made a curse for us, and now we have to bless God that our portion is not with the wicked whom the Lord shall destroy, but with the chosen whom the Lord accepts in the Beloved. (See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 873, “Christ Made a Curse for Us” 864) Ours is not the cup of damnation, but the cup of salvation; not the vial of wrath, but the flagon of consolation. We have nothing to do with that cup, the dregs of which “all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them,” but ours is a golden goblet, which to the last drop is full of bliss and immortality. From the depths of condemnation to our present standing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, what a change! As we think of the portion of our inheritance this morning, how shall we sufficiently admire that amazing love which brought us from the jaws of gaping hell, and set our standing on a rock at the very gates of heaven!

5. To make this cup, which represents our present privileged position, stand out even more brightly before you, let me now speak of it at length. The intention of the psalmist was to picture himself as a favoured guest in the house of the Lord. When you are entertained in an Oriental house, a portion of food is served out for you, which constitutes your mess or portion. To highly esteemed and welcome guests, a further honour is given, oil is poured upon the head; and yet further, a certain cup is placed before the favoured one containing the portion which he is to drink. Now, David felt himself to be not a beggar knocking at the door of mercy, receiving a crust and a sip by the way, but he felt that he had been received by the great Master of the feast, and permitted to sit down to receive the supply for all his needs, and what was more, to receive the luxuries of the feast as one who was thoroughly and heartily welcomed to all that was provided. Brethren, a little while ago, you and I were among the blind, and the halt, and the lame, lurking in the hedges and the highways, far off from the heavenly banquet, but eternal mercy has brought us, by living faith, to sit down at the feast which mercy has prepared. Ours is the lot today of those who are saved, ours is a portion with the justified. We sit at the table today with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, being made children and heirs of God, even as they were. We participate in the pardon, the justification, and the security, which God gave to his saints in the olden times, and which Christ clearly revealed to his apostles in the latter days. All heavenly things are ours; we are denied none of the luxuries of the banquet of mercy. Whatever belonged to any child of God belongs to me; whatever was enjoyed by the brightest of the saints may be enjoyed by us, if by faith we are sitting at the table of grace. Today we are no more strangers and foreigners, no more excluded and shut out; but we are brought near by the blood of Jesus, and our portion today is like that of the ewe lamb which ate from its master’s food and drank from his cup.

6. In David’s use of the term “cup,” far more is included, for I take it he refers to accepted worship. In some of the rites of the Jewish law, you will remember that after the sacrifice, the worshippers and the priest together sat down and partook of the remainder of the thank offering. God had received his portion of the grain offering and the drink offering, poured or laid upon the altar, and then the worshipper himself, in token of God’s acceptance, was permitted to eat and drink of the same. Now, beloved, at this moment every believer here is accepted in the Beloved. That precious Christ, who has satisfied God on our behalf, has now become our satisfaction too. He who offered himself to God an offering of a sweet smell, has become to us our food indeed, and our drink indeed: what God feeds upon, we feed upon too. As he feels an intense satisfaction in the life, and work, and death of his dear Son, we find the very same kind of satisfaction after our measure and degree. Is it not most delightful to think that it is a part of my life’s privilege, as a child of God, to live as an accepted worshipper, dear to the heart of God? It is a high joy to know that my prayers and praises, my soul’s high desires to honour her God, her sighs, her tears, and her works, are all accepted by God. Oh! greatly blessed is that life which is so honoured. He has made us priests to God, and we drink from the bowls before the altar with holy joy and reverent exultation.

7. But by the cup was meant even more than loving entertainment and sacrificial acceptance, for the psalmist speaks of taking the “cup of salvation.” (Psalms 116:3) Such a heavenly cup belongs to every believer throughout the world. It is a part of your heritage today, beloved, that your sins are forgiven, that you are justified through the righteousness of Christ, that you are saved from the wrath of God; so saved as to be preserved in future, and to be ultimately brought into the kingdom and the glory; you have, at this hour, salvation as your portion. Some of God’s people only hope that they are saved. Such can scarcely sing that their cup runs over; others conceive that they are saved for the present, but are not saved eternally by it. Oh, but those who have come to know that God never plays fast and loose with us, that if he has saved us once, our salvation is secured beyond all risk; that the love of God is everlasting love, and cannot be removed; that the blood of Jesus Christ does not in part redeem, but effectually redeems; those, I say, who have come to understand the fulness, the infinity, the immutability, the eternity, of the mercies of God in Christ Jesus, those are the ones who can rejoice in an overflowing cup; for the lines have fallen to them in pleasant places, and they have a goodly heritage. The lot of the saved is a lot to be envied; theirs is a very royal heritage.

8. Jeremiah further mentions a “cup of consolation,” and that cup of consolation, oh believer, is also yours this morning. You have your trials: but, oh, what a comfort to know that your trials work your lasting good! You are vexed with adversities, but what bliss to learn that they last only for a moment, and end in eternal glory! We do not mind the black clouds of trouble, when we learn that light is sown in them for the righteous. It is true we are sometimes, if need be, in heaviness through various temptations, but our mourning ends in the morning. Our dark nights will soon be ended, and then a daylight comes, of which the sun shall go down no more for ever. The cup of comforts, which the Holy Spirit fills and brings to us, is so rich, so suitable, so operative upon our nature, that we may well rejoice as we think of it this morning. The saint’s lot has its blacks, but it also has its whites; drops of wormwood are ours, but milk and honey are not denied to us. We mourn at Mara, but we sing at Elim. Bochim still stands, but Bethel is ours too. The lion roars, but the turtledove also yields her cheering note. Clouds are above us, but the stars smile on. Our sea has its ebbs, but, by turns, it comes to the flood. Winters bluster and freeze, but summer comes immediately, and blossoms with merry joys, and autumn follows with its mellowness. We are cast down, but we are not destroyed; indeed, we are not even injured, for if for a little while we seem to be losers by our castings down, we before long discover our greater gain. Happy are the people who are in such a case, yes, blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. The cup of tried David is far better than that of proud Belshazzar; no one is so comforted as those to whom the Holy Spirit is their Comforter.

9. Still let us dwell for a minute or two longer upon the portion of the righteous. We read in the New Testament of the “cup of blessing,” and although that alludes to the cup at the Lord’s Supper, yet without wresting the words, we may say, that the whole portion of God’s saints is a cup of blessing. You are blessed in all respects, believer. Just as last Sunday morning it was our painful duty to remind the unconverted that they were cursed everywhere, in basket and in kneading bowls, in their home and abroad, in all that they had and did, so now with joy we remind you, that those who love the Lord, are blessed in all respects; their cup, that is to say, their lot in life, is all blessing. Even what you like least is fraught with blessing. You are blessed by every morning’s sun—its beams speak benediction. You are blessed with every setting sun—the darkness is only a curtain to screen your rest. You are blessed in your poverty, contentment shall cheer you; you are blessed in your abundance, grace shall consecrate it. Every way are you blessed. Your cup has not a single drop in it from the surface to the bottom, but what is sweetened with the unchanging love of your divine Father.

10. The cup of our life is moreover, a cup of fellowship. The entire Christian’s life ought to be fellowship with Jesus. What the cup is at the Lord’s table, that our entire life should be. If we suffer, we suffer with Christ; if we rejoice we should rejoice with him. Bodily pain should help us to understand the cross, and mental depression should make us apt scholars at Gethsemane; while the high joys which our soul sometimes partakes of should conduct us to Tabor, and lead us upward even to the place where the Conqueror sits aloft high on his Father’s throne. It is a great blessing for a child of God, whatever happens to him, if he can see it overruled to the conducting of him in the footsteps of his Master, into fellowship with his covenant Head.

11. I shall notice only one more matter about this cup, though, indeed, the phrase seems to me to be rich even to repletion, with suggestions for thought. Our life cup is distinctly connected with the covenant. “This cup,” said the Lord at the table, “is the new covenant,” and so our entire life, which is compared in our text to a cup, reveals the covenant faithfulness of God. Nothing happens to a child of God except what was in the covenant. The entire Christian life is studded with God’s fulfilment of the covenant. You have your trouble, but it was promised that you should have it; in your sadness you are revived with consolation, for it was promised to you that God would set the rainbow in the cloud, so that you might look upon it and see that he was still faithful. Oh! yes, if you only knew it, the smallest event of your history as well as the largest incident in your biography, all would fit together like pieces of mosaic, and when all fitted together you would read clearly, “Covenant love and covenant faithfulness.” To come back to our simile, all the wine of the cup of human life is to the believer warm with the spices of eternal faithfulness; there is not a single drop in all the contents which is not aromatic with the unchangeable, immutable veracity and faithfulness of our covenant God. Will you, dear hearers, put these things together, which I have poured from the cornucopia of the text! Look upon your entire life, oh Christian, in that light now cast upon it, for life is a very sacred thing with us; and though many say death is a very solemn thing, we have learned that life is equally so. Regard a Christian’s life as sublime, reaching far beyond the level of the unbeliever’s barren existence, because the spiritual is elevated, pure, heavenly; it is God in man struggling with Satan, the Christ of God fighting with evil: heaven and hell in the believer’s life find a battlefield where hottest warfare rages. Our life in Christ is a sublime thing, a thing that angels look down upon with wonder and astonishment. The cup which is set on our Master’s table for us is no common cup, it is a celestial chalice for solemnity, it is a royal bowl for dignity, a golden cup for richness. The portion of every believer, when it shall be seen by clearer eyes, and understood by loftier intellects, will be perfectly amazing in its rare displays of the lovingkindness and faithfulness of God.

12. II. Secondly, I invite every believer here to REJOICE IN THE ABUNDANCE OF HIS PRIVILEGE. “My cup runs over.”

13. Two or three thoughts about this as far as it may relate to temporals. A small number of believers are entrusted with much of this world’s goods, so that their cup runs over with wealth. Here is cause for thankfulness, for God has never taught us to deprecate riches, nor to wring our hands in sorrow if they happen to fall to our lot. Be thankful to the bountiful Lord for your abundance. At the same time, here is a note of danger. Our Lord Jesus once said, and he has never retracted the saying, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” That is to say, in plain language, it is impossible for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, unless something more than ordinary is done. Our Lord has told us, however, that while it is impossible with man, it is possible with God; and we rejoice to constantly find a slender line of these camels going through the eyes of needles. Rich men are led into the kingdom of heaven—the human impossibility becomes divine fact. Still, riches are no small hindrance to those who would run in the ways of truth. The danger is, lest these worldly goods should become our gods, lest we should set too great a value on them. Andrew Fuller one day went into a bullion merchant’s, and was shown a mass of gold. Taking it into his hand, he very suggestively remarked, “How much better it is to hold it in your hand than to have it in your heart!” Goods in the hand will not hurt you, but the goods in the heart will destroy you. Not long ago, a burglar, as you will remember, escaping from a policeman, leaped into the Regent’s Canal, and was drowned—drowned by the weight of the silver which he had plundered. How many there are who have made a god of their wealth, and in striving after riches have been drowned by the weight of their worldly substance! Notice a fly when it alights upon a dish of honey. If it just sips a little, and flies away, it is fed, and is all the better for its meal; but if it lingers to eat again and again, it slides into the honey, it is bedaubed, it cannot fly, it is rolling in the mass of the honey to its own destruction. If God makes your cup run over, beware lest you perish, as too many have done, through turning your blessing into a curse. If your cup runs over, take care to use what God has given you for his glory. There is a responsibility attaching to wealth which some do not seem to realise. Among our great men, how few use money as they should! Their gifts are nothing in proportion to their possessions. Alas! things are even worse than this with some who are miscalled honourable and noble. Some of our hereditary legislators are a dishonour to their ancient houses, and a disgrace to the peerage, from which they ought to be ignominiously expelled. What right have gamblers to be making laws? How shall we trust those with the affairs of the nation who bring themselves down to poverty by their gambling, and set an example which the poorest peasant might well scorn to follow? God will visit our land for this. Wickedness reigns in high places, and there the reckoning will begin. Oh that our great men would remember that they are responsible, and that wealth is not given to them to lavish upon their passions, but to employ for God and for the common good. If your cup runs over, call the poor to catch the drops, and give an extra spill so that they may have all the more. Moreover, the church of God needs your substance. Thank God, some of us can say, with regard to our churches, there is not so much a lack of grace, or a shortage of men, or of anything, as of the monetary means; and the gold and the silver are somewhere. God has given it to his church—it is somewhere; but there are very many church members who hold back the wealth which they ought to consecrate to the cause of God: and if they do this, their overflowing cup will witness to their judgment, and will not be to their honour and glory in the day when God shall judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ.

14. But I do not intend to dwell on that. I shall speak rather of spirituals. I want each believer here now to look at his lot in a spiritual light, and to feel that in it his cup is running over.

15. Our cup overflows because of the infinite extent of the goodness itself which God has bestowed. The spiritually good things which God has given to us, are so many, that we never can contain them all. If the capacity of our mind could be enlarged a thousand fold, yet such are the exceeding riches of God’s Christ, that we never could contain all that God has laid up in him as the portion of his people. Think for a minute: the Lord God has given to every believer here, a whole Christ, a full Christ, an everlasting Christ, an exalted Christ, to be his portion eternally. Now who can hold all of Christ? Behold his matchless Godhead, his immaculate manhood, his power, his wisdom, his beauty, his grace! Look at his works, his life of innocence, his death of disinterested affection; his triumph over hell and the grave; his second coming, and the splendours of his millennial reign. Now all these belong to us if we belong to God. And how shall we encompass them all? Must not our cup of necessity run over?

16. Remember next, that God has made with every one of you who love him, even the poorest and the weakest, a covenant of grace of which the beginning is beyond all human comprehension; for that covenant was made long before the earth ever was, a covenant which is ordered in all things and sure, and which will never expire, because it is an everlasting covenant, and will stand as long as eternity endures. In that covenant all things are yours. God has given over to you even himself. “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” God the Father is yours, God the Son is yours, God the Holy Spirit is yours. Oh, what can you say if all this is yours! Your soul cannot hold them all, your cup must run over.

17. Look again, beloved, at the promises which are given to us in Holy Scripture. Why, any one promise is more than enough for us. “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Why, there is a meal for a man for the next twelve months if he will never read another verse. “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, they may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraven you upon the palms of my hands.” Oh! only do let that lie under your tongue like a wafer made with honey. Take only one such promise, and you shall be like Ruth, who ate and was satisfied, “and left,” for you cannot receive it all. But then take the range of the promises from Genesis to Revelation. How is this book like a beehive filled with ten thousand cells, and every cell distilling virgin honey, such as enlightens the eyes of the man who tastes it. Oh! who can hold the fulness of the promise, who can contain all the words which the Holy Spirit has written, full of consolation to the mourning children of God. But suppose you could by some enlarged capacity grasp all the promises, yet, beloved, how would you be able to receive God himself, and yet he is yours! The infinite God is the portion of the faithful. You have enjoyed sometimes the visitations of the Holy Spirit; you know what it means for the Holy Spirit to be at work in your soul. Now, I am sure you will bear witness that at such times you have been conscious of the narrowness of your soul; you have felt “Oh that I could hold my God.” This sweet love of his, of which I am now conscious, is more than a match for me. Holy Spirit, how can you come to dwell with such a poor one as I am? I am only a bush and you a fire, and matched with you, I am like a glowing, burning bush. How can I bear such glory? I tremble lest I am consumed with excessive bliss and love. Many of God’s saints have been ready to die while they have had vivid impressions of the love of God, and of the glory which God had prepared for his elect. Their joy has been too great; one heart could not palpitate fast enough; one soul could not hold one tithe of the bliss which God was pleased to pour into them. By reason, then, of the greatness of the blessings themselves, the infinity of their number, it often happens that our cup runs over. Oh you who are sad today, and yet believers, you who are poverty stricken today, and yet heirs of all this wealth, I would lovingly chide you, and ask how you can thirst when your cup can no more contain all that God provides for you, than the hollow of an infant’s hand can hold the wide, wide sea?

18. Furthermore, does our cup not often run over because of our sinful contractions of its capacity? I have already hinted at the necessary narrowness of our capacity because we are mortal, but how often you and I fill up our soul with carnal joys and cares, and then if God’s love does come into us, it must soon run over, for there is so little room! How often, too, are we sadly constrained in our longings after divine things, so that when they come to us we do not have room enough to receive them! I must confess that I have enjoyed more of God than my desires had previously aspired to. Oh, what stinted desires we have! He has said, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it”; but we scarcely open our mouths at all. Men who are eager after wealth, stretch their arms like seas to grasp in all the shore; but we win a little of divine grace, and then we sit down basely content. We do not have the consecrated ambition we ought to have. Oh that our desires were like the horseleech, so that concerning God they should always cry, “Give, give.” Oh that we never felt we had attained, were always dissatisfied with ourselves, seeking to do more, to know more, to love more, to kill self more, and to be more consecrated to our dear Lord! Oh, our flat desires! I have heard that in the olden times in England, on Christmas morning, the poor villagers were accustomed to call at the house of the lord of the manor, each one with his basin, which it was the custom to fill to the brim. I warrant you the basins grew visibly larger every year, until one would think they had rather brought the bushel basket from the barn than the basin from the cupboard. It was wise of the poor folk, for his lordship could not do less than fill whatever they brought. Alas! we are not so wise, but we rather lessen our vessels than increase their size. You do not have because you do not ask, or because you ask amiss. God has done exceeding abundantly above what we have asked for, or even thought. Mind how you read that text, it does not say, “above what we can ask”—no, no, we can ask for what we wish, and can think of boundless things, and God can make us think of as great things as he can do, but above what we have asked, or do think, God frequently gives to us.

19. Beloved, I will ask you a question now. How would it be with you if God had filled your cup in proportion to your faith? How much would you have had in your cup? Alas! I lament to say, while my God has never once failed me, but has been very faithful, constantly faithful, abundantly and richly faithful, yet my poor faith, if it were unusually tried, would hardly be found to his honour and glory, unless he should be pleased greatly to enlarge and graciously to sustain it. Shame that we should have to make such a confession, but we do, with shame. Is that not the confession many of us must make? If it were only to us according to our faith, and God did not in sovereignty step beyond his own rule in the kingdom, how poor would we be, measured by our faith! Our cup runs over indeed. Suppose, my brethren, our portion were to be measured by the returns that we have ever made to God for mercies we have so far enjoyed! Ah! should we not be starved from this day forth? What have I done for him who died to save my wretched soul? Will you dare turn to the page in which memory records the service you have rendered to your Lord in thankfulness for his great love—ah! cover it up, it is not worth remembering. You have taught a child or two, you have preached to a congregation, you have offered a few prayers. Oh, our teaching, how feeble! Our preaching, how little in earnest! Our praying, how heartless! Our giving, how scant and how grudging! Oh, how little are our returns compared with what we owe to him from whom we have received all we possess! We are, indeed, unprofitable servants. If our portion of food were measured out according to our labour and devotion, long fasts would be our lot, and feast days would be few and far between. But the Lord’s thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are his ways our ways, for such is the abundance of his forgiveness and longsuffering, that our cup still runs over.

20. I shall only detain you with one more remark on this point. Note the supreme excellence of every blessing which God has given, for this tends to make the cup overflow. Every covenant mercy which the child of God enjoys has this distinguished excellence in it, that it is eternal. The sinner’s best lot is only for a time; ours, if it were slender, would far exceed the sinner’s, because it lasts for ever. Better that a man only has a shilling a day for ever, than that he has a gold piece only once in his life, which, being spent, he has no more. If the Lord pardons you, it is for ever; if he adopts you, it is for ever; if he accepts you, it is for ever; if he saves you, it is for ever. There is eternity set as a divine stamp upon every mercy. Believer, does this not make your cup run over, to think that everlasting love is yours. Moreover, your portion whatever it may be, is received directly from God. Ishmael was sent into the desert with a bottle, but the bottle was used up, and Ishmael was thirsty: but we read of Isaac that he lived by the well Lahairoi. There was always an abundance for Isaac, for he lived by the well. You have seen a rustic lad lie down at full length at the spring head on a summer’s day and drink; behold in him a picture of the believer’s life. The saint does not drink from the stream far down in the valley, warmed by the world’s sun, and mired by the world’s sin, but he drinks at the wellhead, where the current leaps up all cool and living from the great deep.

21. There is another quality about the sovereign gifts of grace, that they come to us in living union with Christ. If I get a mercy apart from Christ, it is like a rose plucked from the bush—it delights me with its perfume and appearance for an hour, but soon it withers, and I throw it away; but a spiritual mercy is like a living rose on the bush, it blooms and lasts, and we smell it again, and again, and again. Our blessings are dear indeed, as they come to us through Christ Jesus.

22. And what is best of all, every one of these blessings in the covenant are best for us, because they are brought home to the heart by the Holy Spirit. You know a table may be well spread, and yet a man may not be satisfied, because he has no appetite, or he cannot reach the food; but the Holy Spirit has a way of making our cup run over, because he gives us an appetite, he brings the food to us and helps us to receive it, enables us to digest it and inwardly to be satisfied as with marrow and fatness. The mercies of the Infinite are the more choice, because the Holy Spirit understands how to break the bread for us and feed us. He makes us to lie down in green pastures, we should ruin the mercies and spoil them like bad cooks that spoil good meat; but the Holy Spirit knows how to bring up the meat ready dressed for us, and to give us the appetite, and to make us feed upon his dainties with spiritual palates and refined tastes.

23. IV. Now to close, I call upon those who have this cup, to RESOLVE ON SUITABLE ACTION, seeing that this is their position, “My cup runs over, then let me, at any rate, drink all I can. If I cannot drink it all as it flows away, let me get all I can.” “Drink,” said the spouse, “yes, drink abundantly, oh my beloved.” The Master’s message at the communion table always is, “Take, eat!” and again, “Drink, drink all of it.” Often when the Lord says to us, “Seek my face,” we answer, “But, Lord, I am unworthy to do so.” The proper answer is, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.” If you bring a man to a table, and he is not hungry, you tell him to eat, but he may be bashful, and he does not like to help, and cut, and carve for himself, and he takes very little. I warrant you, however, if his hunger becomes very vehement, he will not wait for two permissions, he will cut and carve for himself after a mighty rate. Oh that our spiritual hunger were greater, for Christ never thinks believing sinners presumptuous in applying the promises, or laying hold upon the provisions of grace. The worst form of presumption is not to take what Christ offers. I know some in this house today who are very presumptuous, for they might have peace, but they will not. God has provided comfort for them, but they will not receive it, and they write bitter things against themselves; month after month, and week after week, their cup runs over, and yet they do not drink. There are promises exactly suitable to their case, but they think they are too humble to drink. It is not so, it is always proud humility—wicked, base, bastard humility, rank pride, that makes us think Christ is unwilling to forgive, or accept, or bless us. Oh dear heart, never be hungry for lack of will to come and take. Let God’s invitations be your persuasions. Let his precepts to believe be accepted over the head of your unworthiness. Say to yourself, “I know these things are too good for me, and I am not worthy of them; but if he does not shut me out, I certainly will not shut myself out. If he asks me to come and take and believe, he means it: he offers like a king, and I will take as a needy one should take from one so rich, who cannot miss it, but who will be glad to bestow it.” Well, that is my first piece of advice; your cup runs over—drink!

24. The next is: if your cup runs over, Christian, and you drink of it, share with others. We too much neglect the comforting of those who are bowed down. Should it not be a part of the duty of every church member especially to be a pastor to others who may be dispirited and sad? In such a church as this, of course, the pastorate of one man is something even less than nominal, for I will not even accept the name if it is intended that I am by it to carry out the duty. We can never have in a church of four thousand members proper oversight unless every member exercises oversight over the other, bearing one another’s burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ. I charge you to do this. I know many of you are diligent in this duty, but be more so. Look after the sad and disconsolate, and let the telling of your experience be as the holding of the bottle of cooling water to their thirsty lips.

25. Again, if God has made your cup to run over, then seek to serve him, not after the order and measure of mere duty, but according to the enthusiasm of gratitude. I mean, give to God, you who have it; if he has given much to you, give much to him. Depend on it, there is great wisdom in this, even from a selfish point of view; good measure, pressed down, and running over, will God return into your hearts. If you cannot give money, then give your time, your talents; and believe me, the more you do for God, the more you can do, and the more happiness you will have in the doing of it. It is your lazy Christians who grow rusty, it is your unused keys that lose their lustre. You who rot away in inglorious ease, you do not know the joy that belongs to the child of God. The Christian should feel, “I shall do all I can do and a little more, getting more strength from God than I had, so that I may do a little still in excess. I will not measure my duty by what others would say I ought to do, but consider that if I might draw back, I would not; if I might make some reserve, I could not; if I might deny my Lord something, yet I dare not, would not think of such a thing; the love he plants in my heart will not permit me.” If your cup runs over, let your service run over; be “fervent in the Spirit, serving the Lord.” Let your generosity run over—give without stinting. Let your prayers run over—pray without ceasing. Let your hymns run over—praise him as long as you have any breath. Let your talk of him run over—tell the universe what a good God he is to you. Praise him! You can never praise him enough. Exaggeration will be impossible here. Let the loftiest accolades be heaped upon the head of Christ, and he will deserve something better. Let the angels make way for him, and let them pile their thrones one upon the other. Let them conduct him to the seventh heaven—even to the heaven of heavens, and let him fill a lofty throne there, yet, even then, he is not so high as his Father has set him. Words cannot describe his glory—it bows down all language beneath its weight. Metaphors, similes, although they were gathered with the wealth of wit and wisdom from all quarters of heaven and earth, cannot reach even to the skirts of his garments. Your love, and your fidelity, your diligence, and your zeal, are not fit even so much as to unloose the latchets of his shoes, he is so great and so good. Oh talk much of him then! Let your talk run over like the language of Rutherford in his letters, where he seems sometimes to break through reason and moderation to glorify his Lord. Let your language of Christ be like the apostle Paul, where he puts aside all syntax, grammar, speech, and all else, and makes new words, and coins fresh expressions, and confounds tenses and moods, and I do not know what else besides, because his soul could not express itself after the common place language of mankind. Oh let your praise run over to your Lord and King. Love him, praise him, exalt him, magnify him, live out his life again. You can only praise him like this; die in his arms, that you may for ever extol him in the upper skies. May God grant us to be Christians rich in spiritual wealth, spending our strength and substance like princes as we are, for him who is more than a prince and greater than a king.

[Portion of Scripture Read Before Sermon—Psalms 23; 30]