He was innocent, and yet he thirsted; shall we marvel if guilty ones are now and then chastened? Beloved, there is now upon our Master, and there always has been, a thirst after the love of his people. We ought all to have a longing for conversions. A refined and heavenly appetite, a craving for our Lord. He wants you brother, he wants you, dear sister, he longs to have you wholly to himself. "Women, behold thy son!" Great and worshipful being that he is, truth is to be altered for him, the gospel is to be modulated to suit the tone of his various generations, and all the arrangements of the universe are to be rendered subservient to his interests. We care, however, far more for the fact that he went forth carrying his cross upon his shoulders. My well beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein." "And he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes," vinegar, and not wine; sourness, and not sweetness. This was the act too of man at his best, when he is moved to pity; for it seems clear that he who lifted up the wet sponge to the Redeemer's lips, did it in compassion. How near akin the thirsty Saviour is to us; let us love him more and more. Commentators like Thomas Manton and John Calvin are represented in this series. No longer sink below the brim; But overflow, and pour me down A living and life-giving stream.". This added to his shame; but, methinks, in this, too, he draws the nearer to us, "He was numbered with the transgressors, and bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." I know he loves to receive from you, because he delights even in a cup of cold water that you give to one of his disciples; how much more will he delight in the giving of your whole self to him? Oh! He saw its streets flowing like bloody rivers; he saw the temple naming up to heaven; he marked the walls loaded with Jewish captives crucified by command of Titus; he saw the city razed to the ground and sown with salt, and he said, "Weep not for me, but for yourselves and for your children, for the day shall come when ye shall say to the rocks, Hide us, and to the mountains, Fall upon us." The Holy Spirit took special care that each of the sacred utterances should be fittingly recorded. You do suffer. May we not be half ashamed of our pleasures when he says, "I thirst"? "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" is the first. Cheerfully accept this burden, ye servants of the Lord. Oh, wondrous substitution of the just for the unjust, of God for man, of the perfect Christ for us guilty, hell-deserving rebels. Think, dear friends, there are some in this congregation who as yet have no interest in Jesu's blood, some sitting next to you, your nearest friends who, if they were now to close their eyes in death, would open them in hell! Jesus is formally condemned to crucifixion, but before he is led away he is given over to the Praetorian guards that those rough legionaries may insult him. He thirsted to pluck us from between the jaws of hell, to pay our redemption price, and set us free from the eternal condemnation which hung over us; and when on the cross the work was almost done his thirst was not assuaged, and could not be till he could say, "It is finished." I invite your attention to CHRIST AS LED FORTH. Those pictures which represent our Lord as wearing the crown of thorns upon the tree have therefore at least some scriptural warrant. Romanists of all ages have wrought upon the feelings of the people in this manner, and to a degree the attempt is commendable, but if it shall all end in tears of pity, no good is done. Mark you, the ransom of men was all paid by Christ; that was redemption by price. Conceal your religion? Every word, therefore, you see teaches us some grand fundamental doctrine of our blessed faith. We should love the cross, and count it very dear, because it works out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. The sufferings of Christ should make us weep over those who have brought that blood upon their heads. While other religions create what appear to be worship-filled gatherings, they are empty and void of fact. A strong emphasis in Spurgeon's preaching was God's grace and sovereignty over man's helpless state. Alas, my brethren, I cannot say much on the score of man's cruelty to our Lord without touching myself and you. He is not allowed to worship with them. Once again, as we think of this "I thirst," which proves our Lord's humanity, let us resolve to shun no denials, but rather court them that we may be conformed to his image. So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. What whips of steel for you, what knots of burning wire for you, when conscience shall smite you, when the law shall scourge you with its ten-thonged whip! Yet most people today have never heard of John Gill. That man is a fool and deserves no pity, who purposely excites the disgust of other people. Yet his language teaches us not to worship her, for he calls her "woman," but to honor him in whom his direst agony thought of her needs and griefs, as he also thinks of all his people, for these are his mother and sister and brother. This is what the Apostle meant when he said, "I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the Church." You have, then, no true sympathy for Christ if you have not an earnest sympathy with those who would win souls for Christ. It is the opinion of some commentators that Simon only carried one end of the cross, and not the whole of it. We shall by the assistance of the Holy Spirit try to regard these words of our Saviour in a five-fold light. Secondly, we shall regard these words, "I thirst," as THE TOKEN OF HIS SUFFERING SUBSTITUTION. You must consider Jesus, and not yourself; turn your eye to Christ, the great substitute for sinners, but never dream of trusting in yourselves. We are to reckon upon all this, and should the worst befal us, it is to be no strange thing to us. John and Herod 1549 - Good News for Thirsty Souls 1550 - The Unspeakable Gift 1551 - Today! Our Lord is the Maker of the ocean and the waters that are above the firmament: it is his hand that stays or opens the bottles of heaven, and sendeth rain upon the evil and upon the good. And now, brethren, our blessed Lord has at this time a thirst for communion with each one of you who are his people, not because you can do him good, but because he can do you good. V. Lastly, the cry of "I thirst" is to us THE PATTERN OF OUR DEATH WITH HIM. Though bitter to him in the speaking it will be sweet to us in the hearing, so sweet that all the bitterness of our trials shall be forgotten as we remember the vinegar and gall of which he drank. Ah, beloved, our Lord was so truly man that all our griefs remind us of him: the next time we are thirsty we may gaze upon him; and whenever we see a friend faint and thirsting while dying we may behold our Lord dimly, but truly, mirrored in his members. The Via Dolorosa, as the Romanists call it, is a long street at the present time, but it may have been but a few yards. What but for the juice of the vine that he might be refreshed? This was the homage which the Son of God received from men; harmless and gentle, he came here with no purpose but that of doing good, and this is how mankind treated him. Fix your hearts upon some unsaved one, and thirst until he is saved. What learn we here as we see Christ led forth? (1-3) Jesus enters the garden, followed by Judas and his troops. Oh! The "I thirst" was the bearing of the last pang; what if I say it was the expression of the fact that his pangs had at last begun to cease, and their fury had spent itself, and left him able to note his lessor pains? O souls, burdened with sin, rest ye here, and resting live. Let us exult as we see our Substitute going through with his work even to the bitter end, and then with a "Consummatum est" returning to his Father, God. July 2nd, 1882 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892) "I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." John 17:26 . Then I will thirst with him and not complain, I will suffer with him and not murmur." But my Prince is hated without a cause. Our text is the shortest of all the words of Calvary; it stands as two words in our language "I thirst," but in the Greek it is only one. 1. Romish expositors, who draw upon their prolific fancy for their facts, tell us that he had a rope about his neck with which they roughly dragged him to the tree; this is one of the most probable of their surmises, since it was not unusual for the Romans thus to conduct criminals to the gallows. Let this mind be in you also. No, no; we must not make a cross of our own. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, they cannot spare him the agonies of dying on the cross, they will therefore remit the labor of carrying it. He said, "I thirst," in order that one might bring him drink, even as you have wished to have a cooling draught handed to you when you could not help yourself. He did not spare his Son the stripes. It is so with each one of you? You have been ill, and you have been parched with fever as he was, and then you too have gasped out "I thirst." John 19 Commentary John chapter 19 commentary Bible study. He is thirsty still, you see, for our poor love, and surely we cannot deny it to him. Oh! Let the sympathy of Christ, then, be fully believed in and deeply appreciated, since he said, "I thirst." I pray you, lend your ears to such faint words as I can utter on a subject all too high for me, the march of the world's Maker along the way of his great sorrow; your Redeemer traversing the rugged path of suffering, along which he went with heaving heart and heavy footsteps, that he might pave a royal road of mercy for his enemies. Can you help feeling how very near Jesus is to us when his lips must be moistened with a sponge, and he must be so dependent upon others as to ask drink from their hand? The most Scriptural way to describe the sufferings of Christ is not by laboring to excite sympathy through highly-coloured descriptions of his blood and wounds. The woes which broke the Savior's heart must crush theirs. Jesus thirsted, then let us thirst in this dry and thirsty land where no water is. "I thirst, but not as once I did, The vain delights of earth to share; Thy wounds, Emmanuel, all forbid That I should seek my pleasures there. Our Lord, however, endured thirst to an extreme degree, for it was the thirst of death which was upon him, and more, it was the thirst of one whose death was not a common one, for "he tasted death for every man." Nor does the grief end here, for have not the best works we have ever done, and the best feelings we ever felt, and the best prayers we have ever offered, been tart and sour with sin? As you look at the cross upon his shoulders does it represent your sin? This thirst had been on him from the earliest of his earthly days. Last Sunday the remark was made to me "If the story of the sufferings of Christ had been told of any other man, all the congregation would have been in tears." Pilate, as we reminded you, scourged our Savior according to the common custom of Roman courts. By contrast, the Christian faith is built on the . Did we not do so years ago before we knew him? Then they said, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And they struck Him with their hands. (7) Luke 23:46 And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, INTO THY HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT. There can be no shadow of doubt but that our Lord was really crucified, and no one substituted for him. "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." One word: transformation. Among other things methinks he meant this "If I, the innocent substitute for sinners, suffer thus, what will be done when the sinner himself the dry tree whose sins are his own, and not merely imputed to him, shall fall into the hands of an angry God." One would have said, If he were thirsty he would not tell us, for all the clouds and rains would be glad to refresh his brow, and the brooks and streams would joyously flow at his feet. The Christian faith and motives for Christian worship are based on the certainty of facts. Our Lord felt that grievous drought of dissolution by which all moisture seems dried up, and the flesh returns to the dust of death: this those know who have commenced to tread the valley of the shadow of death. There are many other ways in which these words might be read, and they would be found to be all full of instruction. For a biblical, reformed, and historic collection of commentaries, the Geneva Series is unsurpassed. Now Christ standing in the stead of the ungodly suffers thirst as a type of his enduring the result of sin. Your path runs hard by that of your Master. If not, bestir yourselves at once. Now, I am not sure that we ought to blame ourselves for this. Spurgeon left this earth for his heavenly hope in 1892. Either Christ must die for me, or else I must die for myself the second death; if he did not carry the curse for me, then on me must it rest for ever and ever. Simon was an African; he came from Cyrene. Shall carnal appetites be indulged and bodies pampered when Jesus cried :I thirst"? Separately or in connection our Master's words overflow with instruction to thoughtful minds: but of all save one I must say, "Of which we cannot now speak particularly." As Spurgeon puts it "Faith is described as 'receiving' Jesus. Come, bring him your warm heart, and let him drink from that purified chalice as much as he wills. That thirst was caused, perhaps, in part by the loss of blood, and by the fever created by the irritation caused by his four grievous wounds. May the Holy Spirit often lead us to glean therein. and the answer shall come back, "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh." But such is not the truthful estimate of man according to the Scriptures: there man is a fallen creature, with a carnal mind which cannot be reconciled to God; a worse than brutish creature, rendering evil for good, and treating his God with vile ingratitude. If we be true to our Master we shall soon lose the friendship of the world. He who stood in our stead has finished all his work, and now his spirit comes back to the Father, and he brings us with him. There was nothing behind in the price, but there is something behind in the manifested power, and we must continue to fill up that measure of revealed power, carrying each one of us the cross with Christ, till the last shame shall have been poured upon his cause, and he shall reign for ever and ever. As for myself, I would grow more and more insatiable after my divine Lord, and when I have much of him I would still cry for more; and then for more, and still for more. Therefore while he thirsts give him to drink this day. Even now to a large extent the true Christian is like a Pariah, lower than the lowest caste, in the judgment of some. Barrabas may go free; the thief and the murderer may be spared; but for Christ there is no word, but "Away with such a fellow from the earth! II. Did not the prophecies say that man would give to his incarnate God gall to eat and vinegar to drink? High in the air ye bid your banners wave about the heir of England's throne, but how shall ye rival the banner of the sacred cross, that day for the first time borne among the sons of men. Shall it ever be a hardship to be denied the satisfying draught when he said, "I thirst." Next Saturday all eyes will be fixed on a great Prince who shall ride through our streets with his Royal Bride. Angels cannot suffer thirst. This is unfortunate, since his works contain priceless gems of information that are found nowhere except in the ancient writings of the Jews. What, then, dear friends, should be the sorrows excited by a view of Christ's sufferings? And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou ? It was one of Death's castles; here he stored his gloomiest trophies; he was the grim lord of that stronghold. He must love his chosen whom he has once begun to love, for he is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Fathers and confessors, preachers and divines have delighted to dwell upon every syllable of these matchless cries. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. I suppose that the "I thirst" was uttered softly, so that perhaps only one and another who stood near the cross heard it at all; in contrast with the louder cry of "Lama sabachthani" and the triumphant shout of "It is finished": but that soft, expiring sigh, "I thirst," has ended for us the thirst which else, insatiably fierce, had preyed upon us throughout eternity.

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