Holy Father,
I ask that You order my steps in Your Word; that you temper my temperament as I teach the text; that You pace my passion as I pull and promote proven principles from this powerful passage; and that You allow my proclamation to be powered by purpose. I offer this petition in the Almighty Name of the Amen, Jesus Christ, Your Only Begotten Son. Amen.
My hearers, I invite you to open your Miracle Book, the Bible, to the Gospel According to John the Theologian, Chapter 19 verses 28-30. (Read).
I want to highlite this headline: “When Water Thirsts”
Let us be prepared to take off our feet of clay our shoes of sensuality, pumps of pride and loafers of luxury for we are about to stand on holy ground. Jesus the Just is hanging on the Cross of Calvary dying, uttering His Seven Last Sayings before He bows His head and gives up the ghost. Let’s de-shoe ourselves for the ground is truly holy. Grandma would say, “Oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, to tremble, to tremble!” So, trembling yet believing we approach this sacred spot on which The Living Water Thirsts.
Now I acknowledge the fact that in the natural order it sounds foolish, even funny to talk about Water being Thirsty! Who ever heard of water getting dry and needing a drink? That does sound funny, doesn’t it? We are not in the habit of attributing thirst to water. To animals and plants, yes. To the soil and crops, yes. To ourselves and other human beings, yes. But we are not known for expressing thirst in relation to water! We think of water as quenching thirst and not of water as being thirsty itself. And if we did think in terms of water being thirsty, then the question would eventually arise: What could quench the thirst of water? If water got thirsty, what would it ask for? What would satisfy its thirst?
But let me dismiss this issue as being foolish and a waste of good time. Let me remind you that we are not dealing with the natural order of things. We are dealing with the eternal and actual. We are not to look at, as believers, the things which are seen but at the thing which are not seen. Why? Because the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Therefore, we are dealing with the eternal, the things not seen with the natural eye. The unseen truth, then, is that WATER DOES THIRST. For we have it recorded and revealed right here in our Text in verse 28; for it says that Jesus said, “I Thirst.”
Wait a minute, Brother Harris! Are you trying to equate Jesus to Water? Yes I am! You do recall that among the I Am Sayings of Jesus that He expressly called Himself that. Included in the ‘I Am Sayings of Jesus’ of “I Am the Light of the world, I Am the Bread of Life, I Am the Door of the Sheep, I Am the Good Shepherd, I Am the True Vine, I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life” is also His Saying “I Am the Living Water.” Said He, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Said He to the Samaritan Woman at the well, “If thou kneweth the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.” Yes, I am equating Jesus to water; for in a very real sense, He is water in dry places. Because in the wilderness the children of Israel “did all drink that same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ Jesus.” Said David in Psalms 42:1-2, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God.” And in Psalms 63:1 said David, “my soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is …” And then it is prophesied of Christ in Psalms 72:6 that “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.” Yes, I do contend that JESUS IS LIVING, LIFE-GIVING, LIFE-SUSTAINING WATER EVEN IN A DRY, BARREN LAND IN WHICH THERE IS NO WATER!
So I believe we need to examine this Statement of Jesus very closely for it just might yield some truths about His Person and Work that we haven’t as yet considered. Perhaps considering the thought “WHEN WATER THIRSTS” just might yield some seasoned meat and sincere milk. I wonder, Are you interested?
I would that you tuck this revealed truth in the folds of your renewed minds: The Sequence of Events, Seven Sayings of Jesus plus the sights, sounds and acts of all those around Him on the Cross of Calvary Were PRE-PLANNED or PREMEDITATED. Which is another way of saying that GOD WAS IN CONTROL! The Script had already been written by God and so there was no ad-libbing, no editing on anyone’s part. So much so that Peter said to the Jews in Acts 2:23, “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain ….” Sinful soldiers, wicked religious leaders and the ignorant crowd were just following the Script God Had Written Before He created the world.
Thus the Seven Sayings of Jesus “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do; Verily I say unto thee, Today shall thou be with Me in paradise; My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Woman, behold thy son! Behold thy mother! I thirst; It is finished” and “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit” plus the Sequence of Events in which they happened WERE PRE-PLANNED, PRE-MEDITATED! My hearers, even on the Cross dying, Jesus was in Control; He was Lord! His Sayings, you see, were not Reactions to or a Response to the words and actions of men or demonic powers; they were Purposed and Planned in Advance. Yes, God in His Sovereignty, Orchestrated The Whole Thing!
I. Note First that JESUS’ THIRST WAS CONTROLLED BY HIS KNOWLEDGE - Verse 28 a.
The first part of verse 28 says, “After this, Jesus Knowing that All Things Were Now Accomplished ….” Now what’s remarkable about that statement is that even while dying even at the end of breathing His last breathe, JESUS HAD PERFECT KNOWLEDGE, was fully aware of all that was going on and what had taken place; HIS MIND WAS CLEAR AND MARKING!
This present knowing of Jesus meant that He had Direct and Complete Insight Into Divine Things. His knowledge was not Conjecture; He wasn’t guessing about any thing. Neither was His knowledge derived from other folk; no one had told Him what had happened as He hung dying. No, no! He was seeing with His mind’s eye. His knowledge of events was Perfect and Absolute. He knew “all things were now accomplished.” Yes, His knowledge is the same at the end of His life and ministry as it was at the beginning and middle of His ministry. Yes, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today and for ever.
During His earthly ministry, He spoke what He knew and testified what He had seen. He had clear and direct insight into what God was doing; for He said (John 5:19-20), “The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth.” Jesus knew and saw things not from the perspective of earth but from the perspective of
eternity. He saw that what the Father was doing in heaven was being done on earth.
So, Jesus’ Knowledge was Complete - “Knowing … all things.”
Knowing all things in details;
Knowing every thing there was to know about all things;
Knowing the order of all things and the time-sequence of all things;
Knowing all of the people involved in all things;
Knowing the effect and outcome of all things.
He knew that every thing that God had purposed and planned to happen that day had been accomplished thru the working of God’s mighty power in providence. I tell you, the Knowledge of Knowing that All Things Have Been Accomplished according to God’s Will, Will Give You A Restful Hope and Power to Endure Unto the End! I tell you, the Knowledge of God and What He Is Doing Will Control and Command the Appetite of these Bodies of Clay!
Thus, JESUS’ THIRST WAS CONTROLLED BY HIS KNOWLEDGE! It was knowing that all things were now finished and that nothing further remained for Him to do or to suffer that he said, “I Thirst.” With Jesus, the Doing of God’s Will was First and Primary in His Life. It was only after He had attended to His Father’s Business that he turned His attention to the needs of His Body.
It was after Jesus had done the will of God in fasting for 40 days in the wilderness that afterwards He hungered, showing us that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
It was after Jesus had ministered to the woman at the well that He ate bread saying to His disciples, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” Said He, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.” With Jesus, doing the will of God came first and then came consideration of His life.
And so to us He says, “Take no thought saying What shall we eat? Or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? … For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Only after taking care of everyone else did Jesus think about Himself.
First, He took care of the need of the crowd: “Father, forgive them.”
He ministered to the thief on His right hand: “Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise.”
He took care of His mother: “Woman, behold thy son; behold thy mother.”
He ministered to those suffering the pains of alienation from God: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”
And now after ministering to the needs of others first while dying, He turns to His own needs and said, “I thirst.”
Yes, He told us when He began His ministry that “the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Therefore, It was His Perfect Knowledge of God’s Will for His Life and Ministry that Controlled His Thirst; for “knowing that all things were now accomplished” He then said “I Thirst.”
II. Second, Realize that HIS THIRST WAS REAL!
Jesus had no food or drink the last day of His life. The last time He had any food or drink was the day before at evening around 3 p.m., when He ate the Passover Supper with His disciples. In between then and our text, Jesus had been arrested, beaten, questioned and ridiculed all night long. Then taken early in the morning before Pilate to be condemned, at which time He was beaten and ridiculed again. Then between 7 and 9 a.m., He was led thru the city streets of Jerusalem to Golgatha bearing His Cross. Already tired, hungry and thirsty He falls to the ground under the weight of the Cross.
The morning sun is now up and hot. Finally around 9 a.m. they make it to Calvary and His suffering and pain intensifies, for they nail both His hands and feet with long spikes to the cross, before which they stripped Him of His clothes while the crown of thorns is still embedded in His head. Blood is now running down His forehead into His eyes, His hands and feet are bleeding, throbbing with unbearable pain. The cross is raised into the air and then dropped suddenly and violently into the ground causing His flesh to tear as His body weight pull down on those spikes. The soldiers offer Jesus some medicated wine to dull His senses, but He refuses it. Now for about 6 hours, from the third to the ninth hour, Jesus has been hanging from that cross in agony, suffering a slow death without any water or anything to drink now for over 24 hours. I tell you, HIS THIRST WAS REAL!
REAL AND VIVID - Psalms 22:14-15
This was the Thirst of a Sacrificial Death: the Lamb of God who takes away our sins:
A Burnt Offering - Totally Consumed in Fire
Offered with Salt - Leviticus 2:13; Ezekiel 43:24
a) Salt Makes you Thirsty!
b) Heat, Fire Makes you Thirsty!
III. Third, Note that HIS SAYINGS STIMULATED THE SCRIPTURE’S FULFILLMENT - Verse 29.
He Said, and They Set - 29a
He Said, and They Filled - 29b
He Said, and They Put - 29c & d
He Said, and They Fulfilled the Scripture - Ps. 69:21b
“In My thirst they gave Me Vinegar (Sour Wine) to drink.”
So by now, I’m sure you are asking: WHAT DOES HAPPEN WHEN WATER THIRSTS?
IV. Well When Water Thirsts:
1. God’s Justice Has Been Quenched. God’s Justice was satisfied thru the Substitution of our blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. When man sinned, the law demanded that man must be punished. The first offence of man was committed by Adam who was the representative of the race. When God would punish sin, in His own infinite mind, He thought not of punishing His people, but of punishing their representative, the covenant head-the second Adam. It was by one man, the first man, that sin entered into the world and death by sin. It was by another man, the second Adam who is the Lord from heaven, it was by this Man that this sin was borne. By Him its punishment was endured; by Him the whole wrath of heaven was suffered. And thru that second representative of manhood, Jesus the Second Adam, God is now able and willing to forgive the vilest of the vile and justify even the ungodly, and He is able to do so without the slightest violation of His justice. For when Jesus the Son of God suffered on the cross, He did not suffer for Himself. He had no sin either natural or actual. He had done nothing whatever that could bring Him under the ban of heaven or subject to His holy soul and His perfect body to grief and pain. When He suffered it was as a Substitute. He died “the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God.” Had His sorrows been personally deserved they would have had no power in them. But inasmuch as for sins not His own he died to atone; inasmuch as He was punished not for any guilt that He had done or could do, but for the guilt incurred by others, there was a merit and efficacy in all that He suffered, by which the law was satisfied and God is able to forgive.
Man had sinned, but Jesus the eternal Son of God, very God of very God who had been hymned thru eternal ages by joyous angels, who had been the favorite of His Father’s court, exalted high above principalities and powers and every name that is named, He himself condescended to become man, was born of the Virgin Mary, was cradled in a manger, lived a life of suffering and at last died a death of agony.
It was as very God of very God, King of angels, Creator, Preserver and Lord of life that He Thirsted. If God had consumed the whole human race, if all the worlds that float in ether had been sacrificed as one mighty holocaust to the vengeance of the law, it would not have been so well vindicated as when Jesus thirsted. For the deaths of all men and angels would have been but the deaths and sufferings of creatures. But when Jesus died, the Creator Himself underwent the pain, it was the Divine preserver of the world hanging on the cross thirsting.
And when He stooped to suffer, when He bowed His awful head, cast aside His diadem of stars to have His brow girt about with thorns; when His hands which once swayed the scepter of all worlds were nailed to the tree; when His feet that previously had pressed the clouds, when these were fastened to the wood, then did the law receive an honor such as it never could have received if a whole universe in one devouring conflagration had been blazed and burned forever.
When the Living Water Thirsted upon the Cross of Calvary, then Was Justice Satisfied, sheathed it sword and said nothing against the pardon of the penitent. When Water Thirsted then was justice angry no more whose brow was lightning and whose voice was thunder, then became the sinner’s advocate and with its mighty voice pleads with God that whoever confesses his sins should be pardoned and cleansed from all unrighteousness!
2. When Water Thirsts not only is God’s Justice Quenched but Finally, THE END IS NEAR. For when the Thirsting Water had received the vinegar he said, “It is finished: and He bowed His head and gave up the ghost.”
Now you need to understand that more than the death of Jesus is implied in that statement. Yes, He did lay down His life when He bowed His head and gave up the ghost. But also you need to understand that THE END OF DEATH WAS ALSO NEAR WHEN WATER THIRSTED and said “IT IS FINISHED!” For it was from the side of Jesus that Death sucked its death. Jesus did hang upon the cross, and death thought it had the victory. But in its victory, it destroyed itself. For there were Three things in Christ that Death had never met with before, all of which were fatal to it.
There was in Christ INNOCENCE. Now, as long as man was innocent, he could not die. Adam lived as long as he was innocent. Now Christ was about to die; but Death sucked in innocent blood; death sucked in its own poison and it died.
There was BLESSEDNESS in Christ. Blessedness is that which takes away the sting of death. Now Christ, even when He was dying, was “God over all, blessed for ever.” All that death had ever killed before was under the curse. But this Man was never by nature under the curse, because for our sakes he was not born into this world a cursed man. Yes, He was the seed of a woman but still was not of carnal generation. He did come under the curse when He took upon Himself our sins, but not for His own sins. He was in Himself Blessed. Death sucked in Blessed Blood; it had never done that before - all others had been under the curse - and that slew Death. It was Innocence combined with Blessedness that was the destruction of Death.
And there is one more thing. Death had never met with any man before who had LIFE IN HIMSELF. But when Death drank Christ’s Blood, it Drank Life! For His blood is the life of the soul and is the seed of eternal life. Wherever it goes it gives life to the dead. And Death, finding that it had drank life into its own veins in the form of Jesus’ blood gave up the ghost. And Death itself is dead for Christ has destroyed it by the sacrifice of Himself. He has put it away. He said, “Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?”
Now since it was from His INNOCENCE, BLESSEDNESS and LIFE IN HIMSELF that Death sucked in its own death and that Hell was destroyed, then we ought to Celebrate the fact that HE BOWED HIS HEAD AND GAVE UP THE GHOST! Celebrate the fact that WHEN WATER THIRSTS, THE END OF ALL THINGS IS NEAR:
SICKNESS, SORROW, PAIN, TROUBLE, TEMPTATION,
CRIME, VIOLENCE, POVERTY, CORRUPTION;
HUNGER, HOMELESSNESS, HATRED, PREJUDICE;
DISCRIMINATION, DISAPPOINTMENT, SIN AND
WORKERS OF INIQUITY;
TO ALL OF THESE, THE END IS NEAR BECAUSE THE LIVING WATER HAS THIRSTED!
