I Thirst
Notes
Transcript
As we continue this morning walking through the words of Jesus on the Cross, in a series I have entitled, Words from the Cross, we are looking at some of Jesus’ most mistranslated words on the cross. The first week we talked a little bit about forgiveness as Jesus said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” and two week we looked at Jesus words, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” and we discussed Good people don’t go to heaven, Forgiven people do. Last week we looked at Jesus’ words, “My God, My God why have you forsaken Me” and we spent a lot of time talking about how this wasn’t God turning his head away from Jesus and abandoning him and leaving him alone. If you didn’t hear that message I want to encourage you to go back and listen to it. But instead we discussed how this groaning from the cross was an invocation to the people to look to Psalm 22 and know the words of the Psalm. What is important to remember, is we didn’t have chapters in the Bible until the 12th century, and we didn’t have the verses we see in the Bible until the 16th Century. So Jesus couldn’t tell the people now remember Psalm 22. Instead, he did what they had to do, they would quote the first line of scripture they wanted you to remember, and the last line and they wanted you to recall everything in between. So In essence as Jesus is hanging there and people are hurling insults at him, mocking him, claiming he cannot be the person he says he is, he wants them to look to Psalm 22 as he is declaring the same victory in that moment we see in that Psalm. Jesus is saying, I am that man, I am about to win, you don’t have anything to worry about, you’re about to see it.
And we are going to pick today’s story up with the next words of Jesus on the cross, and let me just say it has been a hanging thought in my mind all of this time to show the passion of the Christ so we can truly see what is going on and we can rouse up our emotions and get some feels going on. However, I don’t want to get us to a place of emotion where we can’t engage our minds, I want the scripture to bring about the emotion we need. So, just remember Jesus is hanging on the cross, almost unrecognizable, and there is a thief on each side of him and we see the next words in John 19:28 And what you need to know and what we will see as we continue these words, are how much all of this was in relation to Psalm 22. Jesus was fulfilling the prophecy all of this is related and its important to know Jesus was declaring victory, and he’s going to show us all of that.
28 Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”
And I love this, because John is giving us a ton of information here in this one verse. And I am not sure if most of the time we even catch it, but John tells us the entire reason Jesus was saying He was thirsty - to fulfill scripture. So, the question is easily, what scripture is Jesus fulfilling here, and we look to the invocation he announced last week, calling people’s minds to Psalm 22 with his words, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” and we see exactly the scripture he is referring to in Psalm 22. Look at Psalm 22:15
15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.
My tongue sticks to my jaws. He is thirsty! You have to understand this is some serious thirst he is talking about in these moments. I remember when I ran my first half marathon. We had trained running hills and everything was great, we were further north at the time, and it was an early May race, and we get to the start line and it was the hottest day of the year so far. And it was my first marathon and I was super excited, and maybe overly so, so I took off in this half marathon like I would in a 5K race, in fact at the 5K split I had almost beaten my fastest 5K time, the problem you ask? That’s too fast for a long distance race. At the 5K split I still had 10 miles left and I was parched. I mean really dry and I knew then I was in trouble. I was in bad trouble. And this is the kind of thirst Jesus is pointing to.
And Jesus is fulfilling the scripture of the Psalmist here. There is more, look at how the Psalmist describes the scene.
16 For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet—
17 I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
And you can see this same thing in a few verses in John 19:23-24
23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom,
24 so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.” This was to fulfill the Scripture which says, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” So the soldiers did these things,
Just so you know, all of these things are pointing to the same place, and you can see clearly the disciples knew Jesus was pointing to this Psalm, this victory place as what Jesus was talking about. And so here this morning we see he says, “I am thirsty” and not only was he fulfilling scripture, and I want you to understand he wanted them to clearly know this is what is going on here. He wants them to see scripture coming to life before their eyes and making it all happen. But maybe the question you are looking to, is why thirst? We know he fulfilled the scripture, but why the thirst, what was its purpose and meaning?
The answer ultimately is, Jesus has provided for our thirst, but to see that we have to look at the OT. Remember in the very beginning, God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden. In that garden they had the ability to commune with God, to have this intimate physical relationship with him, he walked with them, he talked with them, and they had everything they needed. They had all the food they would need, and they had the river that was the source of all the great rivers. They were set. This was life and this was what God had planned and wanted - to commune with his creation. That was until they sinned and disobeyed God’s command and ate of the fruit of the tree they were not supposed to eat of. And because of this sin they were cast from the garden and because of the separation from his presence they would now experience death, hunger, pain, sorrow, sickness, and even thirst. All things they had lost in their separation from him. All things we experience today because of our separation from him.
Fast forward to Abraham, and God promises to make him into a great nation if they would follow the commands he gave them. Amongst those, they were commanded to be faithful to only him, to worship only him. And if they kept all the commands there would be blessings, but if they did not, it would lead to curses. Look here
48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.
Here, God tells his people if they break the covenants they made with him they will be sent into slavery almost, and because of this their enemies will make them hunger and thirst.
And in Hosea, God pleads with his people through the prophet to turn back to their covenant, and if they don’t he will be forced to afflict them:
2 “Plead with your mother, plead— for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband— that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts;
3 lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst.
And we see this idea go deeper in Isaiah 1:30
30 For you shall be like an oak whose leaf withers, and like a garden without water.
And if you follow the story through Jeremiah and Lamentations you will see the prophet describe the judgment of God upon the people by highlighting their thirst. However, Isaiah tells of a servant who will come and look what it says about the people who follow Him Isaiah 32:2
2 Each will be like a hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.
And so the point in all of this thirst on the cross, other than fulfilling prophecy, is thirst was a sign of judgment. Thirst is what showed our broken relationship with God, and we see this physical representation in Jesus where he is saying he is showing our need for spiritual hydration - our need for salvation. He was showing our need for someone to bear our thirst who could give us living water. And that is exactly who Jesus is.
And in this moment, while he is calling for his desire for water, he is actually pointing to a bigger need. And he is reminding us of our larger need - spiritual thirst. Remember, if we weren’t separated from God, if sin hadn’t entered the world we wouldn’t even know thirst because we would be communing with God and having all of our needs met. As we talked about our physical thirst is a pointer to that broken relationship; its a pointer to our spiritual thirst and Jesus is saying he is the only thing able to fulfill it.
And I want to point out the language we already talked about when it comes to our spiritual thirst; he said my tongue cleaves to my jaws. He is talking about an amazingly horrible dryness when it comes to our spiritual lives, we really need help, we really need water. He will soon say it is finished, and we will get to that next week, but he is pointing to the fact he will satiate that thirst inside of us.
However, most of us find ourselves like the woman at the well. We think we are in need of one thing and Jesus is trying to pointing us to our real needs.
The story is Jesus meets this lady in the middle of the day getting water, and we have to remember she is doing this midday because she is avoiding the crowd and doesn’t want them talking about her. And Jesus is in this Samaritan town which is a no-no for Jews anyway, and he is sitting at the well and he asks her for water which astonishes her. Eventually, he tells her if she would have asked him he could have given her living water and she decides that is exactly what she wants. But she can’t imagine how he can get it for her so she starts to question him and ask him how he plans to give it to her. And I think sometimes this is where we find ourselves. Jesus is offering us what we need in our lives but we cannot understand what he has to offer, because we, like her have preconceived notions on what he can do for us. And when she asks how Jesus plans to get her some of this water, he really doesn’t even answer her question but digs deeper and says
You may be familiar with the story from John 4:13-14
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
What we need to see, is the physical water, will not take care of the need. Maybe for a moment, but it will come back because that is not ultimately what we need in our lives. What we really need is what he is offering us for our spiritual thirst… HIM
And we can see him going even deeper with that thought in John 6:35
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
What Jesus was trying to get the woman at the well to see, and the 5000 he fed for that matter, was that he was what they needed the most. CS. Lewis displays this so well in the second book of the Chronicles of Narnia Series, The Silver Chair. In the series, it may be helpful for you to know, Aslan, the lion, is representative of the Godhead in the series. In the excerpt….
Jill Pole, has entered a strange wood in the land of Narnia with her friend, Eustace Scrubb. Due to poor judgment, she finds herself alone and separated from Eustace. She is very thirsty and is walking in search of water. She finds a stream, but stops dead in her tracks. Lewis writes,
But although the sight of water made her feel ten times thirstier than before, she didn’t rush forward and drink. She stood as still as if she had been turned into stone, with her mouth wide open. And she had a very good reason: just on this side of the stream lay the lion.
…“If I run away, it’ll be after me in a moment,” thought Jill. “And if I go on, I shall run straight into its mouth.” Anyway, she couldn’t have moved if she had tried, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. How long this lasted, she could not be sure; it seemed like hours. And the thirst became so bad that she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the lion if only she could be sure of getting a mouthful of water first.
“If you’re thirsty, you may drink.”
…For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink.”…It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.
“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
And this is basically the question Jesus asked the man at the pool of Bethesda, do you want to be well? This is the question we can hear him asking us as well.
“May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl.
…The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
…“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.
And friends, when it comes to our desires, there is no other stream, but Jesus. All of your longing in this life, your hunger, your thirst, your concerns with everything, are there because of our broken relationship and are supposed to point us back to Jesus. And while the troubles of this world are real, and can be overwhelming, the only thing that will ever satisfy the discomfort, or the hole you are feeling in your heart is Jesus. There is no other stream, there is no other source for that longing.
Look at how CS Lewis describes what happens next.
It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion – no one who had seen his stern face could do that – and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once.
Church, when we drink of the stream that Jesus has to offer it will be the most refreshing water you have ever consumed and it doesn’t take much of it. Charles Spurgeon once said, “All you can possibly need, is in Jesus.”
The question, have you accepted him as your savior? Do you realize in those moments of weakness when the world comes against you that what you need most is him?
