Sermon

April 13, 2001
Good Friday
John 19:28

I AM THIRSTY

(John 19:28) Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty."

In Christ Jesus, the God-man who endured the agony of the cross on behalf of all sinners, dear fellow redeemed,

It is a little more that two weeks ago that I underwent outpatient surgery. My doctor scheduled the procedure for 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. In preparation, he told me that I was to eat no solid food after midnight prior to the surgery. That would be no problem there. I can certainly afford to miss a meal or two. But when the doctor told me I was to drink no liquids after 7:00 a.m., I knew I was in trouble. Dreading my day of drought, I got up at 6:00 a.m. and starting drinking large glasses of water. I drank water for an hour. In fact I drank so much water that I thought I'd never want another drop and I didn't for about two hours. By 9:00 a.m., however, all I could think about was water. I was so thirsty.

But my thirst was nothing compared to that of Jesus as he hung dying on the cross. Just think, it had been the better part of a day since Jesus had last had something to drink. That fact alone would have explained his great thirst. But there was so much more that contributed to his anguish. Think of the sweat that poured out of him in Gethsemane as he contemplated the dreaded torments of hell he would face for us and our world the very next day. Think of the blood he lost when the soldiers flogged him, when they crowned him with thorns and when they pierced his hands and feet with nails. Think of the energy he had to spend each time he lifted himself up on that cross to breathe or to speak. His body must have been in shock from dehydration alone. No wonder Jesus said, "I am thirsty."

Of the seven words Jesus spoke that Friday, it is this fifth word that gives us the greatest insight into the intensity of his physical suffering, suffering the Scriptures had prophesied he would willingly endure for sin that was by no means his own. In fact it was the Son of God himself, a thousand years before his birth as man who used the pen of King David of Israel to record in Psalm 22 the horrid toll that crucifixion would take on his body: "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death" (Psalms 22:14-15).

The Savior's thirst is a reminder to us all of the punishment we deserve for our sins. As people who have offended the Holy God of heaven by the sin we were born with, as people who have rebelled against our Maker with the sinful things we think and speak and do every day, we deserve to have him withhold every blessing of life, including the very water that we must have to live. But this is only a part of the punishment we deserve and so it is only a part of the punishment that our gracious Lord bore for us.

You may recall that our thirsty Savior had been offered a drink of wine mixed with myrrh earlier in the afternoon. It had been offered to Jesus by soldiers not because they were concerned for him but because they wanted to make their job easier. You see, a victim who been drugged with this narcotic mixture tended to offer far less resistance while being nailed to a cross. But Jesus, as thirsty as he was, refused to drink. He wouldn't even take a sip of the soldiers' brew because he had promised to drink from another cup, the one his heavenly Father had put to his lips-the cup of bitter suffering.

Jesus refused the soldiers' drink because Jesus refused to dull the pain he had come to endure as the perfect substitute of sinners. He refused to be spared any of the agony that God, the righteous Judge, had ordained as the ransom price for sinners. Jesus came to pay that price in full so that there would be not even the smallest debt of sin left for any one of us to pay. The Savior's thirst assures us that he was fully conscious to endure all the pains of body and the most bitter pangs of soul in hell for us. Only when his suffering was completed, only when sin's wages had been completely paid did Jesus say, "I am thirsty." Only then did he drink.

Jesus went thirsty on that Good Friday so that you and I will never have to thirst as he did. Oh there may be hours when for one reason or another we must go without a drink of water. But thanks to Jesus there need never be a moment when we must thirst for God's love and forgiveness. There need never be an hour when we must toil under the life-draining heat of God's wrath. There need never be a day when we must live with the fear that eternity will find us suffering the unquenchable thirst of hell. For Jesus has endured all our suffering for sin and in so doing has brought us peace with our God now and forever. Therefore, as often as our sin threatens this peace, so often does our Lord Jesus say to us: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life" (Revelation 21:6). The Bible's good news is that spring and the forgiveness it promises us is the water of life. Drink up my friends and thirst no more, for Jesus' sake. Amen.