Two Reasons for the Cup

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

My wife and I visited a pastor friend at his church this past Sunday and his sermon was on John 14:1-18. As usual, I always learn something new from him every time, which still surprises me. I mean, gee, after earning a bachelors, a masters and a doctorate, shouldn’t I know everything there is to know about the Bible? Hardly, and I’ll be the first person to admit that. I’m simply saying that I’m very glad when I learn something that I had not previously known or understood because that tells me that I am teachable and still have more to learn. That’s hopefully true of all of us.

I won’t reiterate my friend’s entire message here, but I do want to point out some truths that are especially important for all believers today. It helps to understand the way the ancient Jewish wedding happens. It’s not a one-time event. It has numerous stages and happens over at least a year. Also interesting as a side note is the fact that in Israel today, in many communities of Jewish people, this wedding ceremony process continues.

The 14th chapter of John opens with Jesus telling His disciples in verse 1, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.” The word “believe” in the Greek there means to literally trust in the integrity of the one making the statement. He is not talking about believing unto eternal life here. He is talking about trusting in His Word; what He says and what He promises.

Immediately after this verse, Jesus refers to His Father’s “house” and the NKJV version says, “In My Father’s house are many ‘mansions’…” In Greek, this word “mansions” literally means rooms or dwellings. That makes sense. We all know what a mansion is – a large home with many rooms. This is what Jesus is talking about and this also ties beautifully into the Jewish wedding process.

When a Jewish groom goes to his future Jewish bride and proposes marriage to her, if she accepts his proposal, they are, at that point, considered married even though there is a good deal of things to accomplish before the actual public ceremony. Normally this promise by the bride to accept the groom’s offer is sealed with both drinking from a cup of wine. This serves two purposes. First, drinking of the wine is for the bride to remember her groom’s intentions in marriage. She will always look back on the day and remember the groom asking her for her hand in marriage. Second, it is a constant reminder to the bride that her groom will return to her at some point in the future to take her to his home. Both of these two facts are extremely important for believers today. On one hand, we are extremely grateful for what Jesus did for us so that we have eternal life. On the other hand, we remember to look ahead during communion to the time Jesus will return for His Bride (that’s us!). How many believers do that? How many consider His return as “imminent” (at any moment)?

This is very important for believers today. Normally, when we partake of communion, we usually do so in a way that reminds us to think only of the fact that Jesus died for us, which of course, is extremely important, as it is the foundation for our salvation. His life was literally poured out for us in order that we might gain eternal life.

But what we do not normally consider is the fact that drinking of the cup during communion is also to remind us of Jesus’ promised future return to take us to the many rooms in His Father’s house He has created for us. This whole situation and description could not be more centered on the Jewish wedding process. Jesus also promised that He will also drink from the cup of wine when we are altogether in eternity at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Matthew 26:29; Mark 14:25). However, we are commanded to partake of the bread and the cup signifying the things mentioned above and to do so often.

Once the Jewish bride accepts the groom’s marriage proposal and seals it by drinking from the cup, the groom will then leave his bride and go to his father’s house. There, he will put himself to work adding a room onto his father’s home. When the marriage ceremony actually takes place, the bride will then become part of the groom’s family, as the two go to enjoy their new room that the groom has built onto the groom’s father’s house.

This is exactly what Jesus is doing now and it is what He was telling His disciples. The latter half of verse 2 states, “if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Just like the groom who is betrothed to his bride, that groom goes off and builds an addition on his father’s home for the two of them to live in and Jesus is saying that this is exactly what He was planning on doing.

It is interesting to me that at times, the disciples seem clueless, yet I’m sure that, to an extent, they did not miss the Jewish wedding references in what Jesus was telling them. He was telling them, “I’m going to leave you for a while, but I will be back. While I’m gone, I’m preparing a place for you in my Father’s house. Then, I will come back to take you where I am.” (verse 3). Is this fascinating or what?

Jesus lived on this earth physically. He died a horribly brutal death to pay for our sins. He rose again and spent time with His disciples and eventually was taken up to heaven physically. In Acts 1, we learn that the men who were staring up into the sky watching Jesus being taken up to heaven were told that this same Jesus would return in the exact same way. What way was that? He was taken visibly and physically from this earth. We can then rightly conclude that when Jesus returns, He will be seen visibly as He returns physically. People who believe Jesus “returned” in AD 70 in a spiritual sense are fully mistaken and guilty of changing God’s Word to mean something it does not mean.

If we keep in mind the scenario of the Jewish wedding, we see much more clearly what Jesus is telling us here. If we jump down to several other verses in John 14, we learn more things about the Jewish wedding. But before we do that, let’s take a quick look at verses 12 and 13. These two verses state, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also and greater works than these he will do because I go to my Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” Then there’s verse 14: “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.”

What is Jesus telling His disciples and us? I believe the intent and context of the Greek word ‘greater’ refers to quantity not quality. In other words, is Jesus promising that we, as His followers, will raise people from the dead or heal people? I mean, those are pretty awesome works that Jesus did, right? How do you do greater works than those? I know of no one who has raised anyone from the dead outside Acts or the New Testament (and the Old Testament). While there are those who have claimed to have done so today, they have not.

So Jesus is basically saying, “I’m one Man doing the works of my Father. My followers who will number into the millions+ will do a tremendous quantity of works because I will empower them through the indwelling Holy Spirit after I am ascended into heaven.” The Church is made up of millions+ believing people who mirror Jesus’ love toward the world.

Again though, what kind of works is Jesus referring to here? I believe He is ultimately speaking of the works that every believe is supposed to live on a daily basis. Our marching orders are listed throughout the entirety of the New Testament in the Gospels and the writings of Paul and the others. We are to love as Jesus loved. We are to be His hands, His feet, His mouth and have His heart. How do we do that? By submitting to Him on a daily basis, exchanging our will for His. We come to understand that in and of ourselves, we are incapable of loving as He loves because we are too often guided by self and selfish interests. In order to love as He loves, we must be willing to go to Him and literally ask Him to love others through us. That requires us to submit to Him and His authority over us, just as the husband is the head of the home.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I have a tough time forgiving people. It’s a fault I am fully aware of and for me to overcome that fault, I have to be willing to actively go to Him asking Him to understand the need to forgive others as He forgives me. This is part of loving people. Jesus put up with a tremendous amount of sin He experienced from other people who were hurtful, proud, evil and angry. Yet, He did not react in kind, but continued to extend love to them. He even prayed that the Father would forgive those who hung Him on a cross because they really did not have the awareness of who He was/is and what they were doing. That’s how rich and full of grace Jesus’ love is to this day.

Corporately, the Church, Christ’s Bride, will do greater works (in quantity), as a group of people because if you compare millions+ to just one (Jesus), it is clear that more can literally do more than just one person. Certainly, Jesus did all that He was able to do and that was a great deal. However, He was still only one Person at the time. It is His followers as a group over the last 2,000+ years who will do so much more (quantity), because believers will be all over the world fulfilling God’s will for them through loving their neighbors. Jesus never acted as a foreign missionary. He remained in Israel. His followers go into all the world preaching the Gospel to the lost.

When Jesus said, “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it,” (verse 14), He is not saying He is our genie and if we simply use the tag line “in Jesus’ name” on the end of our prayers, then God is somehow obligated to do whatever we ask. This is not only nonsense but it is anathema because it simply makes God our servant. God forbid!

That short sentence really means that as we deepen our relationship with God in Christ, we get to know Him. As we get to know Him, we learn His ways and His will for our lives. As we then choose to submit to His will in all areas, He brings things to pass according to His own purposes. WE are the servant of Christ. WE are to live for Jesus and fulfill His will. We are not to live for ourselves. This is the sanctification process we have entered into because of our salvation.

Starting in John 14:15, Jesus explains what He means in verse 14. He tells His disciples that if they actually love Him, they will keep His commandments. Is He talking about going back to the Mosaic Law first revealed in the Old Testament? No, He is talking about the law of Love; the Love that Jesus Himself always lived. What He is essentially stating here is that if we say we love Jesus but ignore His will, then we are liars, deceiving ourselves into thinking we love Him when we may actually not. This does not mean that we are not actual believers or lose our salvation. It means we have failed to comprehend the reality of what it means to be a believer in the active sense, day to day.

Our obedience to God’s will should be the desire and outflow of every believer’s life. We should come to be more loving every day, more and more mirroring Jesus’ love for the world. There is so much in just the New Testament about how Christians are supposed to live. If believers rarely or never read His Word, they will never learn the truth. If we know that God wants us to love others in a way that will lead them to Him for salvation, then that’s what we need to be doing. It may mean that we serve them in some capacity. It does NOT mean that we just go along with the world’s view of how they see the LGBTQ+ community for instance to not offend those in that group. If we did, then we would never go out on a limb to help them understand they are deceived. Too many pastors in pulpits have abandoned the truth of the Bible because they seem more concerned with the world labeling them “concerned and caring” as a badge they openly love to wear. In those instances, they care more about how the world views their opinions rather than whether or not they offend God with their opinions.

John 14:16 starts another interesting section that also corresponds with the Jewish wedding process. In verse 16 Jesus says that He will ask His Father to give His disciples a Helper. The clear reference is to the Holy Spirit who poured out onto the 120 disciples gathered in the upper room in Acts 2 as a start. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is literally to help us live the way Jesus wants us to live so that we also glorify the Father as Jesus did. Too many get caught up in the tongues and miracles aspect of the Holy Spirit. While initially those were certainly remarkable manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence, the overriding power given to believers is to live out the will of God in life.

In the Jewish wedding process, when the groom was to go away to add a room onto his father’s home, he would leave someone with his betrothed wife. That someone was the groom’s best man. It was the best man who would be there for the bride to help her through the process over the next year or so as the groom was absent adding a room onto the father’s home. The best man would stand in for the groom as a helper giving aid to the bride in whatever she needed (and she had a lot to accomplish in preparation for the upcoming wedding). The goal was that she was also working to finish up her part of the Jewish wedding process and could rely on the groom’s best man to help make that happen. Without the best man, the bride would have to rely solely on her own strength to get things done, an exhausting situation for her!

The disciples understood this imagery completely because they understood the Jewish wedding ceremony process completely. It’s why Jesus did not have to remind them of it by saying, “Hey guys, remember the Jewish wedding process? Well, that’s exactly what I’m referring to here.” No, Jesus didn’t have to say that because they knew instinctively what He was talking about. We are the ones who are often clueless and need to be reminded of it because in our own cultures, the wedding process looks so completely different to us since we were not born and raised into orthodox Jewish families.

Verse 18 is a promise by Jesus not to leave them (and us) orphans. He promised to come back to them or to return to this world especially for them (and us, His Bride). This whole section in John 14 is fascinating in my opinion. We learn of His ascension and His physical return in it and how it connects with the Jewish wedding process as well.

We are here on this earth for the purpose of fulfilling God’s will, as He lives in and through us to complete it. We cannot do it in our own strength. We must submit to Him and ask to receive His strength to live as He would have us live. We need to learn to forget ourselves and focus on Jesus alone.

As a young woman goes through the Jewish wedding process, she is focused on the day her groom will come back to take her to the newly finished room in his father’s house. After his father tells him it’s time, the groom will walk through the streets with his groomsmen behind him approaching the bride’s home. He will call out to her as he gets closer. She will come running out to meet and greet him and will be swept up in his arms. They will then turn and go to the room that has been set up for their ceremony and dinner. She will forever remain with her husband as his wife in his father’s house.

So often, we American Christians are too unaware of the Jewish nature of His Word. We miss so much when we miss that.

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

Source: https://studygrowknowblog.com/2026/08/11/two-reasons-for-the-cup/