Know Refills | Psalm 23:5c

Have you ever thought about how redundant redundancy is?

What is redundancy?

Well, it depends on what category of conversation you are in. 

From a British standpoint, redundancy might be describing how a factory worker is no longer employed because there is no longer any work available in the factory.

In the world of engineering, redundancy might refer to extra components being put in place in case initial components fail.

Generally speaking, though, redundancy describes something that is an unnecessary extra.

Something that is superfluous. 

For example, imagine you are standing in a shop with one of your snack buddies and you say:

“There seems to be a lot of doughnuts in this doughnut shop full of doughnuts.”

Even though this feels very philosophically wrong for me to say out loud, that is way too much doughnut.

That is redundant.

It would be enough for you to just say:

“They sure have a lot of doughnuts here.”

You don’t need to use lots of words to be redundant, either.

I came across this sentence:

“The army marched forward.” 

Have you ever seen an army of ants marching backward?

Marching forward is kind of redundant. 

So, the main definition of redundant carries the meaning of:

• Not needed
• No longer needed
• No longer useful
• Superfluous

There is another category of conversation where the idea of redundancy is nothing short of amazing. 

A conversation where redundancy is:

• Desperately needed
• Always needed
• Always useful
• Just plain super

What kind of redundancy is that?

Let’s find out.

Listen to Psalm 23, verse 5:

5 My cup overflows.

David is writing a song of praise and comfort and challenge and confidence in the Lord.

He is ecstatic to be a sheep in the flock of the Good Shepherd.

Which makes this part of his song a little strange.

Have you ever seen a sheep carrying around a Yeti cup?

But that three-letter word is a great way to help us see that this isn’t just a pretty shepherd poem from the Bible. 

When my youngest daughter turned 1, she had a special sippy cup at her party.

It was a white cup with handles on either side and a blue lid with a curved sippy spout on top and written across the side in bright colors it said “1^st Birthday”.

Now she could have had her birthday juice from any cup, but on that day, she had a special cup. 

But what if she didn’t have a cup at all?

What if we just poured it out on the tray of the high chair and told her just to lick it up like a puppy. 

Or what if we told her:

“Well, we have some special berry birthday juice to give you but if you don’t have a cup you can’t have any.”

Or:

“Maybe you can use some of your birthday money to buy a cup and then you can have some of your special birthday juice.”

That kind of stuff won’t win you any gold medals at the parenting Olympics.

Or imagine being an Allied soldier on mission in the desert regions of North Africa during WWII with a hole in your canteen.

Or imagine being a refugee or stranded by a natural disaster and walking through a soup line only to discover the cups ran out with the person in front of you.

An average cup is full of power because of what it can do.

So, don’t miss this picture:

When a person repents and turns to Christ and receives his salvation, one of the first pieces of equipment that person gets is a cup. 

• Not a Yeti
• Not a birthday sippy
• Not a canteen
• Not a soup cup

But a spiritual cup for your mind and your heart and your soul. 

A cup that can be filled up when a waterline to your house busts and creates a lazy river for your neighborhood.

Yep, that’s how my week ended.

A cup that can be filled up when your accountant tells you were about $1900 dollars off what you guesstimated you would owe on your taxes.

Is it bad that I’m using personal illustrations?

This spiritual cup is a cup that can transform your attitude and your demeanor on the hardest days and in the hardest moments of life.

How?

This is what Paul told the folks at a place called Ephesus:

Ephesians 2:12

…remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Remember!

Some of us who grew up in church have either forgotten or maybe in a sense never really grasped what it means to be lost.

We didn’t come to Christ because we became desperately aware of our need for Christ.

We came to Christ because it was a natural part of growing up in the church. 

And that’s great and there’s nothing wrong with that…if you actually came to Christ!

But if your response to the gospel was because that’s what all the other kids did at camp or because your parents told you that joining the church was the right thing to do or because the preacher said, “Jimmy Jay, don’t you think it is about time you get baptized”, then you might not be in Christ. 

That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to question your salvation, but it does mean those words from Paul should bring you low every now and then. 

• Remember that you were separated from Jesus
• Remember that you were separated from true grace
• Remember that you were separated from true mercy
• Remember that you were separated from true love
• Remember that you were excluded from God’s family
• Remember that you were a lost, desperate orphan
• Remember that you were a stranger to heaven
• Remember that you had no hope for when you die
• Remember that the Lord was not your Shepherd

And remember even if you don’t remember that the Bible proclaims that the Spirit quickened your heart and soul and mind to see and know and hear the gospel and to see and hear and know that you fell short of the glory of God!

Remember that you were chained to sin even if you can’t remember feeling those chains or hearing those chains!

And remember that those chains are gone!

1 Peter 2:10

…for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Think deeply about that reality:

Without Christ, we are nothing! 

Even if in your mind you can’t remember anything more than being a pretty good kid who went to church, remember that the Scripture says that before Christ you were dead in your sin.

Your soul was a filthy, dead carcass of sin and rebellion lying in a canyon of darkness.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us made you alive together with Christ!

He brought you out of the darkness and into His marvelous light!

And guess what that means?

I love the powerful simplicity of how Spurgeon puts it:

C.H. Spurgeon

You have a cup.

Don’t miss how incredible and stunning that is!

You have a cup!

• You are no longer separated!
• You are no longer excluded!
• You are no longer desperately lost!
• You are no longer a stranger to heaven!
• You are no longer a sheep without a Shepherd!

Believers can wake up every morning and go to bed every night and keep whispering and shouting to ourselves:

“I have a cup!”

And how is our cup possible?

Because of another cup.

A few hours before he was arrested and crucified, Jesus was praying in a garden on the eastern side of Jerusalem and this is what he prayed:

Matthew 26:39

“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”

Jesus was not primarily distressed about dying. 

He wasn’t primarily grieving about having to die on the cross. 

His death was the plan from before the foundations of the world. 

So, why was he on the ground crying out to God the Father?

Because:

• He was no longer in the manger
• He was no longer in the carpenter’s shop
• He was no longer teaching from village to village
• He was no longer preaching about the kingdom of God

That time had passed. 

Now, the time had come for him to be crucified. 

Now, he was about to be brutally executed on a wooden cross. 

We cannot imagine the pain that Jesus was about to endure. 

His hands and his feet were going to be nailed with railroad spikes to the timbers. 

Crucifixion was designed to suffocate.

Jesus would have to keep pushing up with his feet just to breathe.

And every time he did that the nails in his hands and his feet would shoot excruciating pain throughout his body.

Add to that the inch-long thorns pressed deep into his head. 

Add to that the spear that was eventually shoved into his side.

The picture of brutality is beyond our comprehension.

And he suffered through all of this alone. 

His friends abandoned him. 

People he loved and created shouted “Crucify Him!”

But it wasn’t the loneliness that drove him to his face pleading for the cup to pass.

And it wasn’t the tortuous death itself that grieved him most.

It wasn’t the cross itself that threw him on the ground in that garden in prayer.

It was what was going to happen on the cross.

He would have to drink the cup of God’s wrath. 

He was going to feel the full force of being the one and only universal scapegoat for sin.

Our curse was going to fall on him!

Lig Duncan

He looks into this white, hot volcano of the justice of God, and He realizes that He is the one who will stand in between for His people.

Lig Duncan

And He feels something of the weight of the penalty for that sin…He was becoming overwhelmed with the curse…

Christian, can you remember and realize and embrace what Christ did for you?

Jesus did not just die as our example!

He died as our penal substitute!

He took our place!

We deserved that place!

He took it!

He separated himself from the smile of his Father to rescue selfish, wretched, sinners like you and like me. 

Isaac Watts rightly asked:

Isaac Watts

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?

No.

Never. 

On the cross, Jesus drank the cup of the curse completely dry so that we can keep whispering and shouting to ourselves:

“I have a cup!”

And what does God do with your cup?

5 My cup overflows.

What does that mean?

Let’s try to answer that by saying what it doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean that your favorite coffee joint is going to give you free refills on Machochinnos for the rest of your life because you are a Christian.

It also does not mean that the water lines at your house will not bust and force you to shampoo what little hair you have left in the sink at your office.

It does not mean that you will not guestimate wrong on your taxes.

• It does not mean that the new school year will please you
• It does not mean that gas prices will please you
• It does not mean your restaurant order will please you

• It does not mean your surgery will go as planned.
• It does not mean your disease will disappear with treatments
• It does not mean you will never have a wreck

• It does not mean that your spouse will honor their vows
• It does not mean that your kids will honor their parents
• It does not mean your politicians will honor their promises

Imagine you are sitting in a Bible study and someone shares:

“Ya’ll, we just bought our new house and our old house sold 93 seconds after we put in on the market for $3,000 more than we were asking and the builder painted the guest bathroom in our new house blush instead of bashful so to make up for it they built us an inground pool in the backyard with a slide. We are just so blessed!”

Something like that happened fairly recently to wife and mom and nurse Sheila Dougal. 

Sheila Dougal

…owning a nice house with a spacious kitchen, or driving a shiny car with no dents, or basking in financial abundance and easygoing circumstances are not reliable evidences of God’s blessing in this age.

Sheila Dougal

The formula might look attractive in a movie, but it contradicts both the Bible and the real-life experience of many struggling saints who are faithful in the challenges, insecurities, and pains of everyday life.

Sheila Dougal

God’s common kindness reaches us all, but it takes saving grace to turn to Jesus when marriage is hard, when my friend loses three babies, or when a young missionary is told he has end-stage cancer.

Sheila Dougal

The Bible doesn’t offer a formula, but points us to a Savior – a battered, crushed, beaten, bruised, bloodied Savior.

Sheila Dougal

And the special blessing of God’s presence is with those who are walking in suffering, the same road Jesus himself walked. He is present in the path of pain and trial and heartache.

That’s what it means to have your cup overflow!

Not that everything will go peachy keen, but that you will never be separated from the Perfect King!

That in every moment of life you can look to the cross of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus as spiritual and historical realities and you can hold up your empty cup and you can sing at the top of your soul:

• “You stay the same through the ages”
• “Your love never changes”
• “And there may be pain in the night”
• “But joy comes in the morning”

“And one day that morning will come after I die, and I will never care about the color of my bathroom again because I will be with you!”

Dear Christian, you have a cup!

She had been in and out of failed relationships her whole life.

Not just one marriage failed, but five. 

And the man she was with at the time was not her husband.

She was gossiped about and no one in town would have anything to do with her.

• She was hurt
• She was confused
• Her heart was dirty
• And her heart was broken

And along comes this stranger with an odd offer:

John 4:14

…whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst…

She had never heard anyone say anything like that and before she knew it she was gasping out loud to Jesus:

• “Sir, please give me this water!”
• “I am so broken!”
• “My life is full of failure!”
• “I am so thirsty!”
• “Please, please give me this water!”

For the first time in her life she knew that she had just heard words of:

• Real hope
• Real life
• Real love
• Real joy

And what happened after she talked with Jesus?

John 4:28-29

So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done…”

At first glance, this may not seem like that big of a deal. 

But this woman went to the well at a strange time of day because the other women in the city despised her. 

She avoided them.

Some men in the city looked at her as a sinful, unclean, immoral woman.

Other men in the city might have looked at her as their next wife.

She was not respected or loved in the city. 

But where did she go after she met Jesus?

The city!

She went straight to those folks that didn’t love her and didn’t respect her and despised her for the things that she had done and the things that she was doing. 

Why in the world would she go to them?

Because she put down her waterpot.

Why?

Because Jesus gave her a cup. 

And her cup was so overflowing with the love and truth and grace and mercy and hope of Jesus that it drowned out her hurt and her pain and her shame and spilled out with joy and peace and satisfaction into the lives of the people who hated and rejected her.

She walked into the city with a spring in her step whispering to her soul:

“I have a cup!”

C.H. Spurgeon

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.

C.H. Spurgeon

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.

Do you have that allotted cup?

If not, please know that Jesus has not changed his promise:

Turn to him and come and drink and never thirst again.

And if you have already turned to him, then please know this:

Your cup is designed to overflow with the hope of salvation!

So, drink, and enjoy the redundancy of your hope!

Dow Welsh | August 6, 2017

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