The Overflowing Cup

“*My cup runneth over.” — PsaLM xxiii. 5.

My cup runneth over! Such is the measure of the bountiful hospitality of God. There is no leanness or meanness in His feasts. His provision is never scanty. His resources never come short of our necessity. Nor are they just level with our needs, leaving no margin of grace. The Divine Host welcomes His guests to overflowing bounty. ‘In My Father’s house there is bread enough and to spare.’ My cup runneth over. This magnificent fulness dwells in every promise of the Lord and it gives radiant distinction to all the ministries of His love. I look at my sin. It is the biggest thing I know. It is piled up like some gloomy, barren mountain in the landscape of my life. I can do nothing with it. If I set myself to the task of removal it is like yoking my weakness to the removal of a mountain, spadeful by spadeful, a helpless and a hopeless labour. And nobody else can do anything with my sin. My friends can pity me, but their pity does not redeem. They can ease my outer circumstances, but the ease is not the mother of vital peace. The awful mountain remains, and it mocks the finest resources of human friendship. It is the biggest thing I know, and I stand before it as impotent as a broken reed. I am like the Psalmist, ‘“‘ My strength faileth because of my iniquity.” But if the good Lord mercifully draws near to my sin, how then? Then my biggest thing is vanquished by something bigger, even by the wonderful grace of the Most High. ‘‘ Where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound.”’ It is like some parochial hillock set in the presence of the Himalayas. Nay, that comparison is ill suited to express the glorious might of the grace of God. I find a better comparison on some sandhill which children have been piling up on the shore throughout a long day; and God’s great sea rolls in, wave upon wave, depth beyond depth, and in its majestic advance the hillock crumbles away, and is levelled with the sandy plain. Where the hill abounded God’s vast sea doth much more abound. Sin finds its master in grace. The big thing can be buried in the bigger thing. And Divine grace is the only bigger thing that can ever be found. But the grace is so wonderful and so abounding that our sin is lost in its infinite depths as an unclean thing can be dropped in mid-atlantic and buried in the depths of the sea. God’s grace does not just measure up to our sin, it rises above it in overmastering grandeur. We are more than conquerors.

And how is it with my common necessities — the care that pinches me, the sorrows that beset me, the lean circumstances which touch and chill me as with fingers of ice? How is it with human grief and pain? They-are big things, the only bigger thing is sin. But these are big and far stretching. They journey with man wherever man travels and wherever he dwells, whether it be among arctic snows or in the burning sun of the tropics. The gloom of sorrow is like the natural darkness, its circuit engirdles the globe. And where is the antidote of human suffering and sorrow? Who has the magic touch jwhich can wipe away bitter tears? Where is the physician with wines and cordials in his wallet which can remove the heavy stuff that weighs upon the heart? Where do our doctors of sorrows live, the skilled practitioners who can dispel heartache, and chase away the grief that saps the mind? Who deals in the secret virtue that is the master of sorrow? Who has the bigger thing? Only Christ has the bigger thing. ‘‘ Our consolations also abound in Christ.”? Llove -the-fulness-of-theword “‘-abound.”’ Christ’s consolations are not ministries which may or may not be equal to our griefs; they over-top them like great waters. Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. There is no grief standing in insolent pride outside and beyond the consolations of grace. Our sorrows may abound, but Christ’s consolations more abound. Thus it is that our sorrow is transfigured, and thus it is that ‘* at midnight

Paul and Silas, flogged and bleeding, sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them.’ Our Lord’s ministries are always abounding. In His grace our cup always runneth over.