Don’t Drink from a Filthy Cup | Rt. Rev. David H. Lindrooth

The Lord said hypocrites were people who cleanse the outside of their cups but not the inside. The cups look beautiful but are filthy and poison anyone who drinks from them. This teaching reminds us that we need to pay attention to our thoughts and intentions, and not just our actions or external appearances.

Readings: Matthew 23:25-28, 37-39

Minister: Rt. Rev. David H. Lindrooth

Delivered April 19th, 2026 at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral in Bryn Athyn, PA.

The Bryn Athyn Church is a congregation of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, located in Bryn Athyn, PA. We are committed to helping each other draw closer to the Lord God Jesus Christ through lives of love and useful service, guided by the Old and New Testaments and the Heavenly Doctrine for the New Church (contained in the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg). Please join us for worship on Sunday mornings; services and times can be found at brynathynchurch.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

And good morning, everybody. Especially good morning to those of you who join us online today. My prayer for you is that during worship, sometime the Lord will come to you and you'll hear his voice. Our first lesson comes from a portion of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 23. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and uncleanliness. Even so, you outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. I'm going to continue our reading with a portion of the final chapter in the Bible. This is from Revelation chapter 22. Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me to give to everyone according to his works. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are you who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and that they may enter through the gates into the city. And then a little bit later, I am the spirit or the spirit and the bride say come, and let him who hears come, and let him who thirsts come, and whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely. Our final lesson comes from the Arcana Celestia, passage number 10,243. That also is found in your brochure. The cup does not just relate to the truth in the word, it also means the truth. A cup relates to wine, and wine means truth. A plate relates to food, and food means goodness. Therefore, cleaning the inside of their cup and plate means using the word to purify the inner things in the mind related to their will and to their thought. So that the outside may be clean as well means that by doing this, the outer aspects, their actions and their conversations would be purified. Because the essence of actions and conversations comes from within. Amen. Here end our lessons, and blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it. Amen. The Lord has an amazing teaching that I think a person can think about their entire lives. And that teaching is He created each of us to be vessels. Do you know what a vessel is? Vessel is like a cup or it's a dish. That we receive the Lord's life. And that's all we are is receivers of life. That's what the Lord wants us to be throughout our lives. Interestingly, the Lord has given us the feeling that all of that life feels like it's our life. And that is a gift to us because that gift, allowing us to feel like the life that He gives us, all of the life, our heart beating, our lungs working, everything. He allows us to feel that life as if it's our own because that is the key to being a human being. But the reality is that all of that life comes from the Lord alone. It all comes from the Lord. That is an amazing thing to think about. And that's probably what the Lord had in mind when he was on earth and he was talking to the Pharisees. He was talking about cups and plates. And here this morning I have some cups and plates as well. So I have a cup and a saucer. Very fancy cup and saucer. Do you see that? It's fine China. You see the gold? There's gold actually on the outside of that. I think that's 24 karat. Pure gold. It's beautiful. Must be worth something. Beautiful cup. And then I have another cup which comes from the thrift shop. Well, this cup is old. It's been used lots and lots of times. The person who owned that cup maybe bought it, gave it to the thrift shop, and we bought it, and we've used this cup for years. It's not so fancy, is it? So the question I have today would be: which cup would you like to drink from? The fancy, beautiful cup? Or the cup that comes from the thrift shop? And I have some water here. I could even serve water. Well, let's talk about this cup for a little bit. So beautiful, it's shiny, clean as a whistle on the outside. But let's take a look at the inside. You all see that? That is a dirty cup. It is filthy. If I look in there, oh, it looks like garbage in there. And sure enough, if I pour water in this cup and serve it to you, would you like to drink that water? No, of course not. Do you know what would happen if you drank the water in this cup? What do you think would happen? It would make you sick. Exactly. It would make you sick. So, no, let's not drink from the fancy cup. But what about this cup? Here is the cup from the thrift shop. It has been used hundreds and hundreds of times. And you look inside, it's clean as a whistle. It is one clean cup. It's beautiful. It's not beautiful on the outside, but it's clean on the outside, and it's clean on the inside. So if you were to choose which cup you were gonna drink from, one cup, beautiful, shiny, fancy, but disgusting on the inside, that when I pour water in it, it's going to make you sick. Or the not-so-fancy cup that is clean inside and out. I think everybody would say, thank you, I'll take this cup. That's right. So the Lord teaches us again that we are like cups. We are simply vessels, and we are designed to receive that life from the Lord just like if I were to fill this cup with water. And then we would be able to enjoy that. And we could share that life with others without making them sick. Without making them sick. So what is the message here? Sometimes we in our lives look shiny and clean on the outside. We look like we are doing everything right, and we want everybody around us to know, while we are doing everything right, aren't we important and aren't we special? And we're so focused on being important and special that we forget that our thoughts inside might not be so clean. We might not be thinking special thoughts about the people around us. We might be thinking, well, I just want to be better than all those people around us. I just want everybody to think how important I am, as if they're not so important. I want, and I might, you could even say this, I want to think about myself so much that I forget about who the Lord is, and I wind up forgetting that I am just a vessel. Just a vessel designed by the Lord to receive his life. And if you think about that, what's the special stuff in that combination? What's the really special stuff? It is what the Lord is giving us. The stuff that flows into our vessel that we can share with others. And so what does the Lord say? He says, first, cleanse the inside of the cup. If you start by cleansing the inside of the cup, then that cup will be clean, and the outside will be clean as well. That advice works for us as well. So when we start thinking too much about us and too much about how important we are, and we forget about the other people around us, the Lord is reminding us, turn back to Him. And we can do that in various ways. One special way is what the Lord gave us in His prayer. In the Lord's Prayer itself, he says, as in heaven, so upon the earth. As in heaven is a reference to that stuff that is flowing into us. So upon the earth, the earth is a reference to the cup itself. And when we're saying the prayer at night or in the morning, the Lord is reminding us, pay attention to your thoughts, pay attention to what's going on, and ask the Lord to purify. Ask him to come to me and purify me. Ask him yourself that he may come to you and purify your thoughts. So the things that you are thinking are from heaven. And what you're thinking and doing and living on earth is mirrored by the things that he teaches about in his word in heaven. And in that way, the Lord will come to you. He will be with you, and he will ensure that your cup, your cup, which is beautiful beyond description, will be clean on the outside and on the inside. Amen.