(Compilation) the Cup - Part 3

Then came, and they came to him, the mother of Zebedee's children, who were they, James and John. God is worshipping him and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She said unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on the right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom.

But Jesus answered and said, Do ye know not what ye ask? Well, she asked a big thing. In the other gospel it says that they asked, that John and his brother asked. Here it says his mother asked.

I guess there's a collusion in this. They'd agreed together to try and give Jesus, who they believed he was going to have a kingdom, and they wanted to sit on the right hand or the left hand when he came into his kingdom. But notice they came worshipping him.

And yet in their worship it was begging. It wasn't pure. They had an ulterior motive.

They were trying to bargain with him. Jesus answered and said, Do ye know not what ye ask? Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with? Again, verse 49, I am come that sent fire on earth. What was that fire? Why didn't he, what hindered him from giving them the fire at that moment? A baptism.

Of what? Sorrow. A baptism of anguish. A baptism we call Gethsemane.

You see, there's no place in the whole wide world where you can put, the upper room before the cross. The cross comes before the upper room. We try and turn that round.

As I said sometimes, very often now we're asking people to tarry in the upper room who have never knelt at the cross. They get a false experience. And it evaporates.

We shun the cross. I have a baptism to be baptised with. But I want you to receive a fire that will change that degraded will of yours.

It will endue you with power. It will give you energy. It will give you life.

He says, I want to do that, but I'm straitened. I wish it could be accomplished, but it cannot be done yet. Now he rubs the noses in the dust.

You're looking to sit on my right hand, on my left, in my kingdom? He could have said, aren't you prepared to go, are you prepared to go through hell to get there? You can't show me a revival in history that hasn't been born of travail and pain and loneliness and dark weary nights. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. But when it pleased the Lord to bruise you, what do you do? Ring for help? Call to somebody? Call the church? Or do you get along with him who alone is able to heal? He who alone has a balm in Gilead.

See, God isn't training boy scouts. He's training soldiers. I think I'm going to talk about that next week.

No man that warreth and tangleth himself with affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.