John 19:28


Sermon preached on May 28, 2006 by Laurence W. Veinott. © Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Other sermons can be found at http://www.newlifeop.org/.
Everyone has been thirsty. We all know what it's like. I think that most of us have a tendency to underestimate thirst. Usually we think that it's something that not too bad, because in our experience we've never experienced unsatisfied thirst. But I got a glimpse into unsatisfied thirst when I had a ruptured appendix a few years ago. There are many things I remember about that experience. I remember the pain. I remember as I was admitted to the hospital they were taking me up to a room in a wheelchair and you know there's a little bump as you enter and exit the elevator. I remember those bumps. It was before they gave me any pain medication. When we went over those bumps it was just like someone taking a knife and thrusting it into my side. That's what it felt like. I remember the pain being so bad that it caused me to break out into a sweat and I wondered if I was going to pass out. But strange as it may seem, those aren't the most horrible memories of my ordeal. My most horrible memory is one of thirst. I was admitted to the hospital around 10:30 in the morning and because they knew I was going to have abdominal surgery, they wouldn't give me any water—not even a sip, not even an ice chip. But they didn't get to the surgery until 9 at night. At times my thirst was unbearable. It was worse than the pain. I remember thinking that I would give everything I owned for a sip of water. I never thought that about the pain. I never thought, "I would trade everything I owned if I could get rid of this pain." That never entered my mind—but it did about thirst.

On the cross Jesus complained of thirst. John wrote,

"Later, knowing that all was now completed,
and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled,
Jesus said,
'I am thirsty.'"

The main thing I want you to see is that

this cry gives you a glimpse into the depths of Jesus' love for you.

What love Jesus has for you His people! His sufferings reveal the depths of that love. Last week we saw how He was abandoned by the Father on our behalf. He went through that because of His great love for you. Here we see something similar. It relates to Jesus' thirst. Part of Jesus' sufferings on our behalf was thirst. We even see this in the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus. In Psalm 22:15, just before the reference to the soldiers dividing His clothes, we read,

"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."

There's also a reference to it in Psalm 69. In verse 3 we read,

"I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched."

Then in verses 20-21 we read,

"Scorn has broken my heart
and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy,
but there was none,
for comforters,
but I found none.
They put gall in my food
and gave me vinegar for my thirst."

For Jesus' thirst to be predicted in at least two places in the Old Testament is noteworthy. It must be significant. Thirst can be terrible. Indeed, in some places in the Old Testament it's used as a curse. For example in Psalm 137:6, the Psalm written by the rivers of Babylon, the Psalmist says,

"May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy."

It's also one of the things that is used to denote the agony of hell. It's noteworthy that in Luke 16:24, in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, that the request that the rich man had when he found himself in hell, in torment, had to do with thirst. He called and said,

"Father Abraham,
have pity on me and send Lazarus
to dip the tip of his finger in water
and cool my tongue,
because I am in agony in this fire."

Thus it seems likely that in complaining of thirst on the cross Jesus was showing that He was undergoing the pains of hell for us. Last week we looked at his cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" and considered the torments of being abandoned by God. Here, too, we get a glimpse into the horrors that Jesus suffered on the cross. One of those torments was thirst.

But to see the scope of what is going on here we need to consider another remarkable fact.

Who suffered thirst?

It was Jesus. But who was He? Sometimes Scriptures present us with a contrast that is so strange and unusual, so amazing and astounding—that it should cause us to pause and ponder what it tells us. That's what we have here. Who was thirsty? It was

Jesus, the source of living water.

In John 7:37 we read,

"On the last and greatest day of the Feast,
Jesus stood and said in a loud voice,
'If anyone is thirsty,
let him come to me and drink.
Whoever believes in me,
as the Scripture has said,
streams of living water
will flow from within him.'"

You'll also recall that Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, (John 4:10)

"If you knew the gift of God
and who it is that asks you for a drink,
you would have asked him
and he would have given you living water."

Then a little later he said to her about the water from the well, (John 4:13-14)

"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
but whoever drinks the water
I give him will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give him
will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life."

Then in 1 Corinthians 10:2-4 the apostle Paul wrote about the Israelites who left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. He wrote,

"They were all baptized into Moses
in the cloud and in the sea.
They all ate the same spiritual food
and drank the same spiritual drink;
for they drank from the spiritual rock
that accompanied them,
and that rock was Christ."

Jeuss, the source of living water—suffered thirst on the cross. Such a contradiction! Lord willing, in two weeks we're going to look at Jesus' death. One of the remarkable things about it is stated by Peter in his sermon in Acts 3. Peter said to the Jews, (verse 15)

"You killed the author of life,
but God raised him from the dead."

How strange those words! For Jesus, who created all things, who gives life to all things—for Him, the author of life—to be killed—how incongruous, how amazing and astounding. What a contradiction. Yet it's a contradiction of love.

Here we have a similar contradiction. The source of living water suffers thirst. There is symbolism here. W. Bauder writes about Jesus' teaching on Him being the bread of life and the source of living water, (NIDNTT)

"Hunger and thirst in the Johannine writings have a double meaning. Natural thirst (Jn. 4:13) and physical hunger (6:1ff.) convey the longing for life in general. Jesus seizes upon this longing in order to show that it is only through contact with himself, the life-giver, that it is satisfied (4:14f.; 6:35, 'I am the bread of life'; alluding to Exod. 16:3ff., 7:37)."



Hunger and thirst convey longing for life, for true, satisifying life. Jesus is the bread of life. He is the source of living water. He has come to provide His people with abundant life, resurrection life, heavenly life. As He put it in John 10:10,

"I have come that they may have life,
and have it to the full."

But here Jesus testifies that He is experienced the opposite of that. On the cross, Jesus experienced abandonment by God, an existence of emptiness, of unfulfilled longing, of the misery of being totally and utterly unsatiated. That's what we see in Him being thirsty.

How remarkable it is. What a demonstration of love. Jesus experienced that for you. He endured the pangs of hell for you Christians. On the cross His complaint was similar to the rich man in hell. He complained of thirst. He experienced that for you.

Now there are six lessons for us here.

First, this shows us the true nature of sin.

Sin promises much. It promises to satisfy. It promises pleasure, joy and happiness. But it does not deliver. Do you want to see where sin leads, what sin delivers? Look at Jesus on the cross suffering for our sins. He is there and He is not experiencing joy, happiness, pleasure. No, He is there for our sin and He cries out that the result of that sin is to be totally and utterly unsatisfied. Sin brings misery. It brings sorrow. It brings unfulfilled longing. It most definitely does not satisfy.

Don't be fooled by sin and temptation. It promises to satisfy but it fails to deliver. It leads to emptiness and misery.

Secondly, this means that

you should hate sin and fight against it with everything in you.

Christians, Jesus suffered because of your sin. He cried out, "I thirst," because of your sin. Jesus suffered the pains of hell for your sins.

Never look lightly on your sin. It cost your Savior so much. Hate sin. See it for what it is—something that desires to have you suffer in hell, being unsatisfied forever and ever.

Thirdly, this passage shows us

the true humanity of Jesus.

Jesus took our nature upon Himself. He was truly a man. As we read in Hebrews 2:14f,

"Since the children have flesh and blood,
he too shared in their humanity
so that by his death
he might destroy
him who holds the power of death—
that is, the devil—
and free those who all their lives
were held in slavery by their fear of death."

Besides being truly God, Jesus was truly man. W. Bauder writes,

"The description in the gospels of Jesus himself having to suffer hunger and thirst serves to show the Son of God in his humanity…"



There is no place where this is more true than our text. Jesus' suffering on the cross was not easy for Him. Never think that. In the Garden of Gethsemane He was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. He pleaded with the Father that if it was possible that that cup pass from Him. There was nothing easy about Jesus' suffering on the cross.

Fourthly, Jesus here shows you how far your obedience to God should go.

Our text reads,

"Later, knowing that all was now completed,
and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled,
Jesus said,
'I am thirsty.'"

Jesus obeyed until everything was completed. On the cross Jesus was obedient. In the midst of unbelievable suffering, hour after hour—He suffered. Hour after hour He was obedient. Hour after hour He drank the cup the Father had for him.

Remember how He wouldn't take a drink at first. Why? William Lane writes, (Mark, p. 564)

"According to an old tradition, respected women of Jerusalem provided a narcotic drink to those condemned to death in order to decrease their sensitivity to the excruciating pain (TB Sanhedrin 43a). This humane practice was begun in response to the biblical injunction of Prov. 31:6-7: 'Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more.' In the first century A.D. the army physician Dioscorides Pedanius, who made an intensive study of almost 600 plants and 1,000 drugs, observed the narcotic properties of myrrh (Materia Medica I. lxiv.3). When Jesus arrived at Golgotha he was offered, presumably by the women since this was a Jewish rather than a Roman custom, wine mixed with myrrh, but he refused it, choosing to endure with full consciousness the sufferings appointed for him…"



Hour after hour Jesus suffered. He drank the full measure of the cup of wrath. He was obedient to the end. It wasn't until all was completed that He asked for a drink, presumably to moisten His throat for His final cry of victory. John Calvin writes,

"Now, it ought to be remarked, that Christ does not ask any thing to drink till all things have been accomplished; and thus he testified his infinite love towards us, and the inconceivable earnestness of his desire to promote our salvation. No words can fully express the bitterness of the sorrows which he endured; and yet he does not desire to be freed from them, till the justice of God has been satisfied, and till he has made a perfect atonement."



In all this Jesus points the way for us.

You are to obey to the end.

Israel's first king, King Saul, began well. He served God with humility, with zeal and fervor, with kindness and mercy. How well he began! But he didn't remain faithful. It's not enough to begin well. It's not enough to persevere to the middle of something. Be obedient to the end, till your duty is done.

But Jesus was obedient to the end. John Calvin writes,

"And so by His example He instructs us in perfect obedience, that it may not be hard for us to live according to His will, even though we must languish amid the worst sorrows."



You Christians may go through great hardship and suffering. During it, the thought may come to you,

"Okay. I've suffered enough. I've learned my lesson, Lord. You can stop this now."



But He doesn't. It goes on.

Don't lose heart. Don't give up. At such a time draw close to Jesus. He knows all about unrelenting sorrow and agony. Go to Him for strength to bear till the end.

And oh, what an end it will be!

You will never thirst again. In Revelation 7 one of the elders asked John who the ones in white robes were. John replied, "Sir, you know." The elder replied, (verse14f)

"These are they who have come out
of the great tribulation;
they have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Therefore, they are before the throne of God
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
will spread his tent over them.
Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat upon them,
nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd;
he will lead them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

Lastly, for those of you who are not Christians,

this passage ought to give you great concern.

The horrors of hell are so terrible. In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the rich man in hell called and said, (Luke 16:24)

"Father Abraham,
have pity on me and send Lazarus
to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue,
because I am in agony in this fire."

Don't go there. Instead listen to the invitations in Revelation. In Revelation 22:17 we read,

"The Spirit and the bride say,
'Come!' And let him who hears say,
'Come!
Whoever is thirsty,
let him come;
and whoever wishes,
let him take the free gift of the water of life.'"

Again, in Revelation 21:6 Jesus says,

"It is done.
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."

Go to Jesus. Ask Him to save you. He surely will.