Platform Your Anointing and Assignment Weekly Audio/Text Suggestions Note there is only one message. I have provided different links to the same message. There is a free text, audio, and video. Description: This is a powerful sermon on "drinking the cup" and baptism of the holy spirit in a way far different from the meaning that is often heard. It's a long sermon but it's worth the hour. Luke 12:49-50 "I have a baptism..." "I am come to send fire on earth." Ravenhill speak in this video of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the Baptism of Christ sufferings. This lecture was spoken at last days ministries to a crowd of students. This is a very convicting and passionate video of Ravenhill it is highly recommended.
Are We Willing to Drink His Cup (video low) by Leonard Ravenhill
Are We Willing to Drink His Cup (video) by Leonard Ravenhill
Are We Willing to Drink His Cup? by Leonard Ravenhill
Are We Willing to Drink His Cup? (video) by Leonard Ravenhill
Are we willing to drink His cup? Luke chapter12, verses 49 and 50. I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! I’ve been going to meetings for over seventy years all over the world—Pentecostal conferences, Methodist conferences, all kinds of conferences. I heard the baptism of the Holy Spirit preached, I think, fifty different ways. In seventy years, I’ve never heard anybody preach on this text where Jesus, speaking of Himself says: "I have a baptism..." Charles Wesley gave us that lovely children’s hymn. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Look upon the little child. Some people never get past "gentle Jesus." But Jesus is associated with fire. The next time He comes, says 2 Thes. 1:7, He’s coming with flaming angels—thousands of them! Here He is saying to these disciples, "I am come to send fire on the earth..." Again, the symbol of the church is fire. I was preaching last Sunday night in a big church with a big cross for Jesus and one for the thieves. I reminded them: "The cross is no symbol of Christianity. The symbol of Christianity is the tongue of fire that sat on the head of each of them." Our God is a consuming fire. Wesley has a wonderful hymn on this. He says, See how a great a flame aspires, kindled by a spark of grace. Jesus love the nations fires; sets the kingdoms all ablaze. To bring fire on earth He came, kindled in some hearts it is. Oh that all might catch the flame; all partake the glorious bliss. When He first the work began, small and feeble was its flame. Now the word doeth swiftly run; now it wins its widening way. More and more it spreads and grows, ever mighty to prevail. Sin’s strongholds it now o’throws and shakes the trembling gates of hell. Sons of God, your Savior praise; He the door hath opened wide. He hath given the word of grace; Jesus’ word is glorified. Saw you not the cloud arise, little as a human hand? Now it spreads along the skies, hangs o’er all the thirsty land. You see the idea: a spark begins and gradually it blossoms to go out through the whole world. Wesley wrote that in 1776, I think, and prophetically. More and more it spreads and grows, ever mighty to prevail. Usually with the expansion of a thing there is a weakening, but when the Church truly expands, there is a strengthening. God never planned any failures for us. ...how am I straitened till it be accomplished! Now I want to bear this out from the gospel according to Matthew 20:17-22. And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again. Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask... She asked a big thing. In the other gospels it says that they asked it—John and his brother asked. Here it says his mother asked. I guess there was a collusion in this. They had agreed together. They believed that Jesus was going to have a kingdom. They wanted to sit on the right hand and the left hand when He came into His kingdom. But notice they came worshipping Him. Yet in their worship there was begging. It wasn’t pure. They had an ulterior motive. They were trying to bargain with Him. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? (v 22) Now, in Luke 12:49 He said, "I am come to send fire on the earth." What hindered Him from giving them the fire at that moment? A baptism. A baptism of sorrow. A baptism of anguish. A baptism that we call Gethsemane. You see, there is no place in the whole wide world where you can put the Upper Room before the Cross. The Cross comes before the Upper Room, but we try to turn that around. Very often we’re asking people to tarry in the Upper Room who have never knelt at the Cross. They get a false experience and it evaporates. We shun the Cross. "I have a baptism to be baptized with. But I want you to receive a fire that will change that degraded will of yours. It will endue you with power. It will give you energy. It will give you life." He says, "I want to do that, but I am straitened. I wish it could be accomplished, but it cannot be done yet." There are people who think that God is only around to help us. We have a great utility God, they think. You pray, and He does this! You pray, and He does that! You pray, and He sends you money. You pray, and He gets you out of a jam. He’s not somebody you worship in speechless adoration, but He’s a utility God! And some on TV are exploiting that to the maximum. Let’s go back to Matthew 20. What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able. (v 21,22) So, He took them at their word. "I want my sons to enter thy kingdom, sitting on thy right hand and on thy left." There is only one way to enter the kingdom: through death. You know not what ye ask. Are ye able...? Yea, we can drink the cup. All right, lady— I wonder if she was living when her son was brutally put to death? And James, the brother of John, was killed with the sword. (Acts 12:2) It was Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great, a terrible butcher. A man who could be linked up with Pharaoh that liquidated all the Israeli babies in Egypt—an ancient Hitler. Jeremiah had more conflict than any other prophet of old. Immediately when he was raised up he was in conflict. He was in conflict when he was dying. What was the secret of his power? It is very obvious; he states it: "Thy fire burned within my heart. While I mused the fire burned." Do you know that forty one times he mentions fire? They put him in a pit, but it didn’t burn the fire out of him. There is a hymn with a verse that says: Waters cannot quench it, floods can never drown Substance cannot buy it, love’s a priceless crown. Oh, the wondrous story, mystery divine I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. The fire is unquenchable. The fire of hell is unquenchable. The fire of the Holy Ghost is unquenchable. I know there is a lot of opposition against the second blessing. I challenge you to find a man that has made history in God’s kingdom who somewhere didn’t have a second crisis after he was born again in the Spirit of God. One of the Quakers said he found something in him that wouldn’t keep peace. He wanted to get rid of the thing in him that was always troubling him. William Booth said, "I found that I ebbed and flowed until one day the Holy Ghost came in his fullness." Then he wrote that marvelous battle hymn that today’s church doesn’t know. The Salvation Army was a penniless organization that went into seventy countries in ninety years. Not seventy cities, but seventy countries! Men and women left their castles in England. Professors left their professions. Why? Because they could see that fire as clearly as Israel could see that pillar of fire at night. The Holy Ghost was there! And old William had them going down the streets at night marching and singing: Thou Christ, the burning cleansing flame, send the fire! Thy blood-bought gift today we claim, send the fire! Look down and see this waiting host Give us the promised Holy Ghost We want another Pentecost. I’m not sure we want it. We need it! You see, the thing between where you are now and this baptism of fire is a "cup." Jesus said to her, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? He’d been baptized in the Jordan, but He wasn’t talking about that. The man who introduced Him to the world said, "I baptize you with water." That baptism was external. When He comes He will do something internal. He’ll baptize you—the literal Greek says—"with Holy Ghost fire", not "with the Holy Ghost and with fire." You can’t separate them. God is a consuming fire. He shall baptize you with Holy Ghost fire. But you see, there is something between here and there. The Church never had more equipment that she has now, but she Never had less power! Never less anointing. Never less of the miraculous. Never less from the omnipotent God. As I’ve said before, When did you last tip toe out of church Sunday morning breathless, awed by the awesomeness of God’s majesty? God’s glory? God’s omnipotence? "Ye know not what ye ask." I wonder how often God says that to us. As I’ve said many times, and I say privately in my prayers, I don’t want to get to the judgment seat with maybe trillions of eyes looking on me, seeing me come up for trial and have God say to me in that day, "Son, I had many things to tell you, but you couldn’t bear them." When are we going to get serious about being serious about revival? Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? What’s the cup? Skip to chapter 26 of Matthew. Here’s the baptism for you. And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. (Matt 26:39-42) What was the cup? Well, I’ll tell you one ingredient it had: It had betrayal in it. The men who had sworn allegiance to Him, when it came to a crisis, quit. Can He drink of the cup? What’s in the cup? I believe in that cup there was Internal suffering, Mental suffering, and Spiritual suffering. Do you want to drink the cup? I am straightened, He says. I cannot do anything now. There is a baptism through which I have to go. The Holy Ghost cannot come down until I go up. I cannot go up until I have done the will of the Father. And so He goes through the agony of Gethsemane. He goes through the lonesomeness. He drank of that cup. I say it was internal because in Isaiah 53:11 it says He travailed. Isn’t that internal? Deserted by others in the darkest hour, not only by men, but by God. Can you drink of that cup? Do you want to travail? You see, what people are seeking today is a painless Pentecost. There isn’t such a thing. What happened immediately after Pentecost? They prospered—yes? No! -- They went to jail! It wan’t prosperity; it was prison, pain, privation, and persecution. Jesus goes on to say in Matt 6:19, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. There are a lot of wealthy Christians that will get to heaven bankrupt. And there are a lot of Christians who are almost bankrupt, living in poverty, who will be super-millionaires when they get into eternity. We read elsewhere that if you’re going to follow the Lord, it means division in the family. Your father and mother will hate you. Jesus came to the place where his brothers said, "He’s insane." People say, "I want to be like Jesus." Well, I doubt it. Do you want to get kicked out of your family because you love God? Do you want to be so true to God that a Thomas comes and doubts you? That a Judas sells you? Do you really want to be like Jesus? Well then, why don’t you practice it? Why don’t you have forty days and forty nights of fasting? Forget all the paperwork. We make such rash vows when the temperature is running high in a meeting. I say, the pain was internal. He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. (Isa 53:11) I’m sure it was not only internal, it was also mental pain. I’m sure it was bodily pain. It says in Isaiah 50:6, "I gave my back to the smiters." We don’t do that. We fight back. We don’t like somebody to carve us up, scorn us, ridicule us, humiliate us, misrepresent us. He got the whole works! Yet He never muttered once. When it came to the agony of the cross it says that men shot out the lip. "If God’s Your Father, then let Him deliver You." I say again, the perennial challenge to a Christian, is "Come down from the cross and save yourself." You made a decision in a missionary meeting: "I’m going to give more money to missions." Then something came up and you backed off. "I’m going to spend more time with God." You didn’t do it. Before Elijah called down the fire, he rebuilt the old altar. We don’t want to go back to old altars, to old vows, to old commitments. We always try to make new things. God knows they’ll be brought down in a few weeks! Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting. It’s being tried, found difficult, and rejected! It’s too tough. There’s no part-time service. "Leave all and follow me." I was going down the street in Oldham, which is nine miles outside of Manchester. I was in my early twenties. I pastored the largest church in town; in fact, the largest Holiness church in England. I was going down the street one day. As I passed a house, the lady opened the door, "Hi! You’re the pastor at the Tabernacle. I often come to your church. I sit on the back seat. I’m very poor. I can’t give anything in the offering, but I want to do something for you. Would you come into my house and drink a cup of tea?" Well, usually, of course, I want tea, so I said, "Yes." I went in, and boy! did that house smell. I got in there and she had finger nails clogged up with dirt. The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes. There was a plate with some old bacon covered with mold. That fuzzy horrid looking stuff. She reached into the kitchen sink to a stack of cups and picked one. You know, the tea had dried on the outside. Oh, mercy on us! It looked as though it had about a hundred bugs at the bottom: dried, dirty, rotten old tea leaves. In fact, some were moldy. "Well, now" she said, "I’m going to get you a cup of tea." I said, "All right." She poured the tea into the cup. It was as black as my shoes, and I don’t like black tea. "Do you take cream?" "Yes." "Well, I have none." "Do you take sugar?" "Yes." "I have none." With that dirty hand shaking, I saw the black stuff that was supposed to be tea, cold as ice. I hesitated. I felt like tipping it up. But I knew I was on trial. She held the cup up, "Drink it!" As she handed me that cup of dirty tea, my mind went 2000 miles away to a place called Gethsemane, 2000 years back. The Father gave a cup of all the dregs of impurity and wickedness. He didn’t give it to Gabriel. He didn’t give it to Michael the Archangel. He gave it to his Son! This is what He’s come to do. He’s come to consume iniquity. He’s going to do it in the Garden of Gethsemane—by Himself, when everybody has betrayed Him, when His nerves are down, and He can hear the enemy coming! He’s thinking of all the years He’s demonstrated His power, shown that He was the Son of God. He’s walked on the water. He’s raised the dead. He’s cleansed the leper. He’s healed insane people. And they didn’t believe on Him! So what’s the difference today? Do we believe on Him? Remember that there wasn’t one of the twelve disciples that had a Bible. Not even the Apostle Paul had one. Don’t boast too much about your Bible knowledge. It’s going to face us at the Judgment Seat. I don’t have a big library, but I have a few nice books. I wonder sometimes, will these books rise up in judgment against me? I say with all my heart, we’re looking for a painless Pentecost. We want to invest a dime and get a million dollars back. Can you drink of the cup? "We are able," and so they drank, and were crucified. Today it is considered sadistic if you even say that people have to take up their cross. "Don’t tell young people about the cross—they’ll be discouraged." Are you suggesting that Jesus wasn’t smart? "If you’re going to be my disciple, kiss the world goodbye." You see, when people are born again these days, they don’t get separated from the world. Most likely their pastor is the most worldly guy around! But if you’re going to get what He wants to give, if you’re going to get the true baptism of the Spirit, you have to drink of that cup. They said, "We are able." And He said, "You shall drink indeed of that cup, and be baptized of the baptism that I am baptized with, but to sit on my right hand and my left is not mine to give. The Father is going to do that." Verse 24 says that when the other ten disciples were around listening they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. |
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