"Words from the Cross: 'I'm Thirsty'"
John 19:28-30
Have you ever been really, really thirsty, but there was no water or even soda to be found?
When I'm really thirsty and I am not able to have a drink, I have a hard time thinking about anything else.
I might fantasize about an icy cool glass of lemonade, as if there is nothing better nor more important in all the world.
Or perhaps all I can think about is a freezing cold bottle of Coke...
...and not the kind that comes in aluminum cans or 2 liter plastic bottles--the kind that comes in those old fashioned glass Coke bottles, sitting in a cooler of ice.
Really, though, there is nothing like clean, clear, cool water to quench your thirst.
What do you think about when you are really, really thirsty?
(pause)
As the hours crept by, and the pain and agony continued to race through His body on the Cross Jesus became more dehydrated than any of us can even begin to imagine due to the loss of blood and sweat.
He hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the Last Supper the night before.
As the flies buzzed at His head and the buzzards hungrily awaited His death Jesus' mouth was completely parched.
But He carried on toward completing the mission He came to fulfill.
Back when Jesus was arrested Jesus said: "do you think I'm not able to ask my Father and he will send me more than twelve battle groups of angels right away?"
And yet, with His life ebbing away...
...With spikes driven through His hands and feet...
...having been stripped naked, with all His bodily parts and functions exposed for the humiliating gaze of the public...
...being mocked by the onlookers: "He saved others, but he can't save himself"...
...and the thirst, the thirst...
...can you imagine the temptation that the God of this universe must have been dealing with?
He could have come down from that Cross in an instant.
He could have killed those who were crucifying Him with a wave of His hand.
He could have drunk all He wanted.
Instead, Jesus endured all this, for you and for me.
Remember what Jesus had said a few chapters earlier in John 15:13: "No one has greater love than to give up one's life for one's friends."
Yes, Jesus was going to see it through.
Because Jesus IS LOVE.
And there is no one who loves you and I and the entire human race more than Jesus Christ.
Do you believe this?
(pause)
Remember that in John's Gospel everything is written at at least two levels.
And so, Jesus' Words for this morning have both a surface meaning and a deeper one.
Jesus was living in a human body.
He was dehydrated, painfully thirsty; His tongue was sticking to the roof of His mouth...
...but John is writing down these words of Jesus for another reason as well.
We are to remember other times that Jesus spoke about water.
Remember the long talk Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well in John Chapter 4?
Jesus offered her "living water."
For many years she had been thirsty for love, but none of her five husbands had satisfied this thirsting in her soul.
She was thirsty for more than water.
"Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty," Jesus said.
"The water I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
Water is essential for life.
We can live for weeks without eating but only 3 to 5 days without drinking.
When Jesus uses this metaphor of thirst and living water, He's talking about what is essential for life.
As human beings, we need both physical water and living water--spiritual water.
This spiritual water is what our hearts yearn for; it is joy and hope, meaning and purpose, peace, friendship and love, forgiveness and mercy.
And Jesus is the only Source of this "living water."
In John chapter 7, Jesus said to the crowds: "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink."
In light of this, do Jesus' Words: "I am thirsty" pierce your heart?
What exactly does it mean that the One Who offers living water was now thirsty?
For one thing, Jesus was fully human.
Before His death, He thirsted as we thirst, and then He died as we die.
Jesus chose to suffer in order to save us.
His suffering on the Cross is a picture of God's pain due to the brokenness and sinfulness of the human race and how much it cost God to save us.
In His suffering, God was able to identify with the suffering we face in this life.
He faced sin, evil, despair, death and the devil head on.
This was His mission, and thirsting was a way that Jesus had used to describe His suffering to His disciples.
At the Last Supper, Jesus took the cup and said, "This is the blood of the new covenant."
In Matthew Chapter 20, Jesus asked James and John, who wanted to sit at His right hand and His left Hand, "Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?"
And in John 18:11, as Jesus was being arrested, Peter pulled out his sword; but Jesus told him, "Put your sword away! Am I not to drink the cup the Father has given me?"
Each of these times, Jesus used the metaphor of drinking as a way of describing the suffering He would "drink" as He suffered and died on the Cross.
And so, when Jesus, hanging from the Cross...
...His body torn to shreds...
...said, "I am thirsty," He was pointing to the fact that His mission was nearly finished--the cup was nearly empty.
As a matter of fact, verse 28 read in full goes like this: "After this, knowing that everything was already completed, in order to fulfill the scripture, Jesus said, 'I am thirsty.'"
Jesus had completed His mission to suffer and die for you and for me.
So that, through faith in Him--we can live--and drink from the Spring of Living Water, never to thirst...
...never to have to go through what Jesus went through for us.
He died the death we deserve so that we don't have to!!!
"Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink."
"For God so loved the world..."
What are you thirsting for this morning?
What do you hope will satisfy you?
Is it a bigger pay check?
A new house?
A fancy sports car?
How about youth or beauty?
Maybe you think that winning the lottery will satisfy your soul's thirst.
Or what if you were married to someone else?
Do you think your thirst would be satisfied?
We sure do have a tendency to get hung up on things we think will bring us satisfaction, but those things don't make us satisfied for long.
As a matter of fact, they make us even more thirsty, even more parched.
Jesus' death on the Cross for you and for me calls us to thirst only for Jesus.
And when we drink from Him, then and only then can we be satisfied.
(pause)
After Jesus said, "I am thirsty," we are told that the soldiers soaked a sponge in a jar full of sour wine.
They placed the sponge "on a hyssop branch, and held it to his lips."
It was Passover when Jesus was crucified.
And Passover was when the Jews remembered God's greatest act of salvation--He delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
On the last night of their slavery, the angel of death passed through the land of Egypt.
And in order to protect the Israelites, God told Moses to have the people kill a lamb.
Before cooking and eating the lamb, they were instructed to take the blood of the lamb and, using a hyssop branch, sprinkle the blood over their door posts.
When death passed through the land that night it passed over the homes which were protected by the blood of the lamb.
Another name for Jesus is the "Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world."
And the hyssop branch points to Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God, whose blood was shed on the Cross for you and for me.
In telling us about the hyssop branch, John is not giving us a needless piece of information; he is showing us the meaning of Christ's death.
Through His death on the Cross Jesus made a new covenant with God and humanity.
Everyone who trusts in Jesus as Lord and Savior is cleansed by His blood and is saved from slavery to sin, death and hell.
Do you trust in Jesus as Lord?
Have your sins been washed away by the blood of Jesus--the Lamb of God?
Is Jesus your Passover Lamb?
Will death pass you over because you have been marked by the innocent blood of Christ?
In Psalm 42, which we read together at the beginning of the worship service the Psalmist writes about the human condition as we live in this lost and broken world.
It reads, "Just like a deer that craves streams of water, my whole being craves you, God.
My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God."
Whether we know it or not, this is what we are all thirsting for.
Although we were created to live in intimate relationship with God, in this sin-soaked world we live in alienation from God.
We sense that something is missing.
We all know that our world is broken.
We all know things aren't as they should be.
We all thirst for God.
Jesus came and died the most horrible death on the Cross in order that we might be able to drink from the everlasting wells of God and receive what our hearts yearn for: joy, hope, meaning, purpose, relationship, love, forgiveness and mercy.
Jesus said to the multitudes in Jerusalem and Jesus says to you and me this morning: "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink."
Won't you come?
Won't you come?
