Principle: The Cup of Staggering

Context: Recently I was reading through Isaiah again. It contains perhaps the most beautiful literary excellence in all of Scripture. Many of the psalms, of course, could easily lay claim to the same description. But In Isaiah 51 and 52, for example, God is speaking through his prophet Isaiah about the nation’s spiritual and moral condition:

17 Wake yourself, wake yourself,
    stand up, O Jerusalem,
you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord
    the cup of his wrath,
who have drunk to the dregs
    the bowl, the cup of staggering.
¹⁸ There is none to guide her
    among all the sons she has borne;
there is none to take her by the hand
    among all the sons she has brought up.
¹⁹ These two things have happened to you—
    who will console you?—
devastation and destruction, famine and sword;
    who will comfort you? (Isaiah 51:17-19 ESV)

The imagery is straightforward enough. The nation is morally wretched. Rotten. The people are in a stupor, as if drunk. They are drunk with sin. They cannot stand upright. Their balance is taken from them due to what’s controlling them. The people tend to think that it’s the other nations who are to blame for their condition. But it’s not other nations’ fault. It’s their own moral corruption, and God is using foreign armies, invasions, and their own state of being conquered as divine judgments for their sin and moral dissoluteness.

That is the power of Scripture; it does not sugarcoat what people and nations are like. It reveals not only what has happened, what will happen, but what always happens. God judges sin. We either bear the penalty ourselves or we flee to the one who has borne it for all who will come: Christ.

Segue and Encouragement: The cup of staggering, you see, was God’s judgment upon people for their sin, but it was designed to lead them to repentance and to a return to the one who ultimately redeems: Christ. Listen to God speak through his prophet Isaiah:

Thus says your Lord, the LORD,
    your God who pleads the cause of his people:
“Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering;
the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more” (Isaiah 51:22 ESV)

You see, God himself would ultimately drink the cup of staggering. It was the cup of God’s wrath against sin. You remember Jesus’s words to Peter, right? “[S]hall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:11 ESV) Christ did drink the cup of wrath. It’s called the cross. It’s where justice and mercy meet. It’s the demonstration of the cup of staggering being poured out upon the one who didn’t deserve it but became sin and the sin-bearer for all who will trust in Christ alone for redemption. All of Scripture coheres, you see. It’s telling one unified story of what God has done to both judge sin and offer reconciliation to us sinners.