Covenant Series P9 : Drink This Cup by Daniel Yordy

9. Drink This Cup

God is not finished with Gethsemane; God will never be finished with Gethsemane.
If I could but lift back the veil just a bit for us somehow to see that which is most holy inside the heart of God, revealed within a broken man upon His knees. I hardly know how to do that.
Some may think that I repeat myself, saying the same things over and over. I do that sometimes as a teacher, yes, but much of the time I am sharing something brand new, something I've never seen or heard before. Yet the human words I use seem to be almost the same as the words I used last time. However, when I look back at what I said before, I know I did not see then what God is showing me now.
Why has God not lifted the veil before now? That's easy. What kind of a mess would Christians make of the Holy if they believed that what God says is true? By relegating the fulfillment of the Covenant off to “heaven,” Christians have kept themselves from making the same mess out of the Holy of Holies as they have out of the Holy Place and the Outer Court.
Right now, God has many “David's” across the earth, many little, out-of-the-way sons and daughters with whom He has been dealing for years, teaching them of Himself, battering their hearts, proving Himself true.
They have fallen in love with Him. And He is coming upon them with a grace never before released upon this earth.
That grace does not bring something “new”; it releases what has always been true.
Let me work our way now to a glimpse of something so holy and profound.
Paul and the writer of Hebrews built the gospel of Jesus Christ on two or three phrases from the interactions between God and Abraham. Let me continue in the same vein with another such phrase.
“Because you have done this thing,” God, speaking to Abraham after he had willingly offered up Isaac.
In the ages to come there will continue forever a little clique of two individuals who have each done something that no other persons, created or divine, have ever done: God the Father and Father Abraham. Even Jesus is not included in this company.
Abraham offered up his only begotten son to God; God offered up His only begotten Son to Abraham and his seed.
The strength of the communion and Covenant between these two is forever. By the strength of that communion, God reached out and included Isaac and Jacob. By the strength of that communion, God reached out and included Jacob's natural descendants. And by the strength of that communion, God reached out and included you and me who are of Abraham's faith.
God is no respecter of persons, except one. God honors Abraham's flesh: “For the sake of the father's.” He honors no one else's natural man.
Because you have done this thing.
Let's look at another “clique” based upon these words.
Of all humans living upon this earth until now, only two have “done” something God not only recognizes, but honors above all. All other human “doing” is an abomination to God. We are received into Jesus only when we abandon our doing and live only in His.
Those two are Abraham and Jesus. Yet I say, “Up until now,” because I suspect that God's purposes call for a third man, a third “Because you have done this thing.” But how that works itself out in the manifestation of the sons of God and the ministry of the second witness of Christ, I will not explore here.
I want to look, now, at the second time God says those words. Here is how He phrases it in Philippians 2.
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Yet Jesus did not “do” the cross. The cross was something done to Him from outside of Himself. All He did was not resist. Rather, the “Because You have done this thing” belongs at the close of Gethsemane.
“I will drink Your cup.”
To see what these words mean is to weep with all humility and with all joy.
We will never know the salvation of God until we accept the Lord Jesus through these words.
Here are Jesus' exact words as recorded by Luke.
 Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.
“I will drink Your cup.”
What did Jesus drink?
God did not honor Jesus because He was killed violently. Millions of people have been killed violently; thousands were crucified. Being crucified carries no special distinction.
God honored Jesus because He drank the Father's cup.
What did Jesus drink?
I would like to show you from the New Testament and by the Spirit of revelation the extent to which He drank you and me, your flesh and my flesh.
Let's get a good look at real human flesh (not the imagination of separation called “the carnal mind”).
Human flesh is first the physical body. Second, human flesh is all the characteristics and traits of each individual human person. Some of those characteristics come from our spirits, and thus the human spirit is part of “the flesh.” Inherent in the physical body is the weakness of the earth, the weakness of dirt. God made us that way.
Rebellion is to hate and reject our weakness.
Rebellion is to get our human weakness solidly under our feet.
You know your flesh. You have lived every moment with yourself lo these many years! You know every nuance of every voice and clamor of your body and your personality. You know exactly how your human weakness trips you up and brings you down. You know to the furthest extent possible how your human weakness “prevents” you from “doing” all the things you read in the Bible a good Christian is supposed to do.
Before rebellion and the hatred of human weakness took control of Christianity and created “Christian” theology, Paul said that every man loves and cherishes his flesh.
And you do; you know that you do.
Let's “decree” over ourselves. Let's grant ourselves two “gifts.” Let's give ourselves the strongest “Christian” discipline we could contemplate – with God's help, of course, and let's give ourselves 10,000 years of our present human life.
Will we bring our flesh in submission to God? Is our problem that we don't have enough time or that God did not grant us a sufficient gift of discipline?
And out of this dilemma, Christianity has concocted one of the most evil, anti-Christ concepts there is: “Not on this earth! It's all only for heaven AFTER we die!” And I say “evil” because this is the argument that puts God to death when He shows up in the earth.
Here's what you will find if you come across a person who has been given an iron will and 10000 years to “subdue the earth.” You will find a person that has so wrapped himself with layers of pretending that it would likely take Jesus another thousand years just to break through all the facades and lead that person out into being simply and joyfully real inside of love.
Let's bring in some things God says in the gospel. First from Luke, just before Gethsemane.
Then He said to them, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” Luke 22:15-20
Then Paul's version.
For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-29
Then three critical words that tie this incredible truth all together.
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. John 6:53-56
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 2 Corinthians 4:7-11
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:29-32
I have included a lot of Scripture here because we must be grounded in what God actually says. Those of us who teach the revelation of Jesus Christ are accused of bringing in a “new” gospel, things God never said. The problem, of course, is that we teach contrary to Augustine, not that we teach contrary to the New Testament.
God says these things. Few have ever believed Him.
In Gethsemane God the Father and Jesus the Son entered into a Covenant with one another. That Covenant is the New Covenant in His blood. That Covenant is the Covenant we enter when we agree to the terms hammered out between the Father and the Son.
Most Christians, and ourselves until now, reject those terms.
What did Jesus drink?
God sent Jesus into the likeness of sinful flesh for thirty-three-and-a-half years.  Jesus had walked that time faithfully and had proven Himself faithful and true in all things.
In Gethsemane, the Father asked Jesus to do it again, only this time for 2000 years and for millions of individuals.
It was the will of the Father that Jesus drink you and that Jesus drink me.
Every seven years, the physical body completely exchanges atoms for atoms. All of the atoms in your body that make up your physical expression right now will be gone in seven years – every last one of  them. And they will be replaced by a whole new set of atoms. The new atoms that will be the makeup of your physical body seven years from now are mostly in the ground right now. Some of those atoms are deep under the earth in petroleum deposits right now. Some are inside soil nematodes and worms. Some of those atoms are blowing around in the atmosphere right now; some are caught deep in ocean currents. Maybe some atoms that will be your body seven years from now are right now being blasted against Mt. Everest. Maybe some atoms of your future body are part of the flesh of one of those funny-looking creatures in the depths of the Mariana trench.
All the atoms of your future body are scattered across the entire earth at the present moment, mostly separated from one another, though some are bound together in molecules that will not break. Do you know where you are?
And how do all those atoms that will be your body seven years from now make their way to find their place inside of you? Every single one of them will come into you either through the food you eat or the liquids you drink or the air you breath or the chemical drugs you allow some doctor to inject into your flesh or into your blood.
You become what you eat – literally.
The Father's Cup contained you and me. The Father's Cup contained the flesh of every individual person who would believe in Jesus.
And thus we speak these words:
“Jesus, this shame is Your shame. This flesh is Your flesh. This weakness is Your weakness. This inability is Your inability. This darkness is Your darkness. This sin is Your sin. You have become me. I am Your flesh. I am the cup and the dregs which You have drunk.”

I am Your flesh.

I am the cup and the dregs which You have drunk.

It was the Father's will that Jesus drink ALL of me. It was the Father's will that Jesus drink ALL of you.
Jesus agreed to drink the Father's cup and thus entered into a binding Covenant with God.
By drinking you and me, Jesus became us.
If Jesus had not become us, then His death on the cross would have meant nothing more than any other innocent death down through history.
Now, the intention of God for us on this earth is found in 2 Corinthians 4:11. This verse is so very important, yet many have made the context to mean the very opposite of what it says. That the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
This word is absolute. Does anyone dare to make it partial, sort of, maybe, maybe? Listen, when we take a word like this and attempt to make it anything less than Absolute and Today, then we are doing the same thing to Jesus that the Pharisees and the Roman soldiers did.
This is the same commission God gave man in the beginning, “Subdue the earth.” Yet, as you can see, it goes way beyond that original word.
Let's start with the subject – the life of Jesus. The life is  in the blood – except you drink My blood. This is the cup of the New Covenant in My blood – drink of it.
Then, what is the verb, the action?
Apocalypsed – unveiled – manifested. The apocalypse of Jesus Christ.
Finally, what is the object? Our MORTAL FLESH!
Paul's choice of words is absolutely critical for the final showdown upon this earth.
We have no idea of the hatred of the serpent and of all mankind, including most Christians for God when He dares to show up on this planet.
God in the flesh cannot survive the hatred and violence of men. They put Him to death.
God up in heaven is fine for most. God yet to come is acceptable for many. But God in my MORTAL flesh is not tolerated. Christians have been putting God to death since AD 385, the year that the darkest darkness of the church age began.
WHATEVER you do to the least of these My brethren, you ARE doing it to Me.
Whatever you type into the comment box under the most aggravating and deceived Christian on Facebook, you are proclaiming those words upon the housetops AT Jesus Himself. How quick even we are to put Jesus in His place.
Yes, we wash His feet in utter awe and with tender love. But to wash the dirt off the feet of God is to engage in a daring of humble boldness that few possess. It scares the tar out of me.
Maybe my disability is the grace and goodness of God.
That brash thing that goes around “correcting” Jesus as He messes up once again – what a jerk He is – as one whom He drank in Gethsemane is not the ministry of Christ. It is a “ministry,” but it goes by a different name.
Now let's look at Communion.
Jesus said, Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has the life of the age to come – to know the Father and to know Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
This word is the center and the foundation of the Catholic church – they call it “trans-substantiation,” or “the mass.” The Catholics take these words of Jesus literally. The Protestants, in overthrowing Catholic “idolatry,” take these words symbolically. The Protestants believe that when we partake of the bread and the wine of communion, those elements are only symbols of Jesus' flesh and blood as it was back then. There is no place in Protestant, evangelical thought for Jesus to be flesh today. I have never heard anyone else mention the plain truth of Ephesians 5. Everyone has the un-Biblical notion that Jesus and flesh are forever divorced when God says they are forever married.
Although both Catholics and Protestants understand the communion elements wrongly, they each got one small part of the equation right.

The Catholics are correct that Jesus becomes literal flesh and blood today, and the Protestants are correct that the communion elements are symbolic of Jesus' flesh.
And both groups will have nothing to do with us when they discover that we believe what God actually says.
Let's look a bit more closely at Catholic transubstantiation. First the short version, then a longer version from Matt Slick at http://carm.org/transubstantiation.
Transubstantiation: The doctrine that the (metaphysical) substance of the bread and wine changes into the substance of the body and blood of Christ when consecrated in the Eucharist.

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Transubstantiation is the teaching that during the Mass, at the consecration in the Lord's Supper (Communion), the elements of the Eucharist, bread and wine, are transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus and that they are no longer bread and wine, but only retain their appearance of bread and wine.
The "Real Presence" is the term referring to Christ's actual presence in the elements of the bread and the wine that have been transubstantiated.
Paragraph 1376 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states,
    The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation (CCC, 1376).

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Thus the Catholic priest administering communion dares not allow the recipient to touch the “holy” blood and body of “God the Son” and must carefully, with consecrated hands, place that blood and body only upon the recipient's tongue.
They miss the whole point. They don't understand that the recipient is the one who becomes what he or she eats.
I believe absolutely in transubstantiation just as it is laid out here by the Catholics. ONLY, it is not the elements of the communion that are transformed into the literal blood and body of Jesus, but the very flesh of the one receiving those elements.
The elements are symbolic of the flesh and blood of Jesus, as the Protestants teach, yes, but I am the one who is transubstantiated into the elements of Jesus' flesh.
Jesus now appears as me and He now appears as you.
We are His flesh, His blood, His bones.
Yes, that is what God actually says.
It is an amazing thing that the Catholic priest can transubstantiate Jesus' Flesh into present reality, and then treat that flesh with such disrespect. It is an amazing thing that the Protestant minister can honor the Flesh that the elements are only symbols of and then treat that flesh with such disrespect.
The way I treat you IS the way I am treating God.
In Gethsemane, Jesus did this thing.
Because You have done this thing.
By drinking the Cup of the Father, Jesus initiated the Covenant between the Father and Himself. By drinking the Cup of the Father, Jesus drank you and me. He became our present flesh.
I have no right to call Jesus' flesh “my own.” I have no right to prate some sort of “authority” by which I am to bring Jesus' flesh under my control. I have no right to stake some sort of claim that I am responsible for Jesus' body. When I “sin,” when I “disobey,” I have no right to tear those actions away from Jesus dead upon the cross and claim them as “my own.”
I have no right to break the Covenant.
Someone shared with me recently, “The flesh is evil. I will never believe that I can just 'let the flesh' go.”
Here are the brass tacks.
If God is real, then He can really fill my weakness and make my flesh pure and holy. And if God, filling me full, cannot take responsibility for all of my human weakness, then is there really a God, is there really any salvation?
Christian doctrine wants to require of us to pretend with all our might now and wait for some future day that is not Today before we will ever know God for real.
They simply do not believe that God is real today.
The other day the lusts of my flesh rose up inside my body. I said something to God I have never before put into words. I said, “This flesh is Your flesh, God. You are fully responsible for it.”
Not for want of trying, but my mind could not find that lust. I could not connect with it to do it. It simply danced into oblivion beyond my reach and I no longer knew it.
Is God real? We are His proof.
A dear sister wrote these words, “He opened my hears to hear Him, to know His Voice, exhorted me to be obedient, and never once was I misled, shamed, at a loss for counsel, came short of any good thing (healing, provision, wisdom, power) or any such thing for myself and my immediate family and friends and those the Lord wanted me to minister to. Quite the opposite are true of the times when I disregarded His voice and word!”
I gently shared with her – because God put me into a corner and I had to, that, while she is most definitely speaking Christ, sometimes separation comes through “Christian” phrases. God must change our very talk. The last statement carries just a hint of the rebellion of Adam. “I obey; I disobey; God You must now curse me.”
When we “obey” His voice, we imagine that the things that come to us are blessings because of that obedience. And when we “disobey,” we imagine that the difficulties that come to us are because of that disobedience.
No. We are His flesh. All things that come our way are part of God reconciling the world to Himself. He with us bends all things to unfathomable blessing.
So – having “defended the truth,” where did I immediately find myself? In a double “disobedience,” and suffering in both body and spirit because of my foolishness. The temptation to believe that calling everything inside of me “Christ” is just a pack of lies and that I am, in fact, in trouble because of my “disobedience,” and that maybe I am, after all, a teacher of deception, came upon me overwhelmingly.
I did not yield to that temptation. This morning, He arose in me brand new, as He always does, an ever bubbling spring of living water, and I understood how I was to share this incredible truth.
Our weakness belongs utterly to Him; we dare not ever take it back upon “ourselves.”
We were never meant to “subdue the earth.” When God said, “Subdue the earth,” He was speaking to man completed. Man completed, by definition, is God in Person in the flesh of our humanity. God was speaking to Himself; God in Person is the largest part of Man, His Person inside of our person.
Our surrender to the Covenant of Gethsemane is the greatest surrender we could ever know. We must allow Jesus to BE our flesh. We must allow God to be real in us.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is not, then, a free-for-all, to do whatever the “flesh” desires. And yet ALL things are lawful for me. I can do anything I want. Yet God Himself is real; and He Himself really takes responsibility for all of my weakness. Those who “keep their flesh under their own control,” act like Christ should look like, yes. But they are so fake. Their flesh cannot belong to both Christ and themselves; it's all of one or all of the other.
If I take responsibility for my own flesh, then God is prevented from being what He asked Jesus to drink.
Why don't I pursue the “pleasures” of this world? That's easy. They do not interest me. I am set on pursuing pleasure that my neighbors don't even know exists. Take all the pleasures of this life in this world, roll it all together in one big package, and it doesn't even come close to the pleasures I pursue – at the right hand of the God who fills me full.
I pursue glory.
And if we really want something of this world other than God, who are we kidding when we “pretend” to act against that desire. We do not pretend for God; we pretend for our own face in the face of other humans. Is Christ our life real?
Probably the favorite and most recurring theme in Christian mythology is the pursuit of the “Holy Grail.” The holy grail is the cup from which Jesus drank the last supper – the Cup of the Covenant. The myth claims that whoever finds that cup will then have in hand the power to command and to transform the world.
I have found the Holy Grail. I, really and truly, have found the very cup that contains the Blood of Jesus, the Son of the Living God.
Indeed, I have possessed the Holy Grail, now, for 56 years. That Cup, the Holy Grail, is my body, my mortal flesh, the dwelling place of Almighty God.
Because Jesus drank of me, I became an essential part of Him. Because Jesus drank of me, the Father is now free to come Home, the Father fills me with Himself in Person.
Because I drink of Him, I am become Him, literally, substantially, and forever. I become what I eat; I become what I drink.
This is the entrance into the  Holy of Holies. The gospel has never been anything else.
We boldly enter in.
Because You have done this thing – That the life of Jesus also may be apocalypsed in our mortal flesh.
For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.” And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil . . . Hebrews 6:13-19