COVENANT PULPIT Living expressions OOF DEATHBED CCONFESSIONS THIRST JOHN 19:28 March 29&30, 2014 Pastor Bob Petterson Covenant Church of Naples PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples FL 34108 (239) 597-3464 www.covenantnaples.com
Thirst is the first cry of the unborn in the womb. It s the last physical desire of the dying. In between, thirst is unquenchable. Cicero said, The thirst of desire is never fully satisfied. The English poet, Lord Byron wrote, Fame is the thirst of youth; power the thirst of middle age; and security the thirst of old age. The thirst never goes away. It only changes. Jesus encounters a woman at a well in Samaria. She comes there every morning. Like that woman, each of us comes to wells to satisfy our thirsts. The fact that we keep coming back only proves that our thirst is never quenched. An Irish proverb says, As good as a drink is, it always ends in thirst. But Jesus knew that this woman repeatedly visits another well: Romance. Five times she s been divorced. After six failed marriages, she simply lives with a sixth guy. But Jesus knows that she can t quench her emotional thirst at the well of romance anymore than she can satisfy her physical thirst at Jacob s well. All the wells in the world can t satisfy her thirsts. Nor can they satisfy yours! Some 750 years before, the Sons of Korah defined our ultimate thirst: My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God. [Psalm 42:2] Blasé Pascal wrote, There is in every person a God-shaped vacuum. God is infinite in size. If we try to fill an infinite space with the finite like that Samaritan women did with men they will satisfy for a moment and then be sucked away into the black hole of our God-sized vacuum. Call it a God-sized thirst! Jacob s well is not deep enough to quench it. Nor can any marriage, or man [even six of them] satisfy the deepest longings of a woman thirsty for the only love that satisfies. But Jesus stands before you today, just as he did that Samaritan woman 2,000 years ago, and says, Everyone who 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. John 4:1
The 17 th Century Spanish philosopher Baltasar Gracian wrote, He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well. Once that woman tastes the Living Water, she never has to go back to the old wells again. There is a lesson for all of us with unquenchable thirsts for something more: If your thirst is living, then your source had better be. Jesus is the Living Water. But outside Jerusalem, the person that the Samaritan woman met some two years earlier hangs on a cross. In one of the supreme ironies of all time, the Living Water cries out in John 19:28, I am thirsty! In that cry we hear an echo of a prophet s words describing his crucifixion some 700 years before: Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. [Isaiah 53:4] Thirst is the curse of sin the first cry of the unborn baby, and the last moan of a dying person. The thirsty in hell will cry out for someone to put a drop of water on their tongues. If Jesus is to take up our pain, and bear our suffering, surely his anguish on the cross must include our unquenchable thirsts. I see three thirsts in our Lord s cry: 1. THE RICH MAN S THIRST. Right after Jesus cries out in thirst, verses 29&30 say, A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus lips. When he had received the drink he said, It is finished. With that he bowed his head and gave up the spirit. Early accounts of crucifixions tell us that this wine vinegar was usually laced with narcotics to deaden pain. Earlier, Jesus refused to take it when it was offered. He wouldn t deaden the pain. He had to experience the full extent of the agony so that he could pay the full extent of our penalty for sin. But now, with those words, I am thirsty! he has completed his descent into hell and back again. He sucks in the narcotic-laced wine vinegar and whispers, It is finished! St. John uses the Greek word
tetelestai for finished an ancient banking term that means Paid in Full. Jesus has now paid the full penalty for our sin and the full price for our salvation! Nothing can be added! After he shouts, Tetelestai! John says, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. [verse 30]. What was the price he paid? That cry, I am thirsty! echoes a story that Jesus told two years earlier [recorded in the 16 th chapter of Luke s gospel] about a rich man who had been to the wells of this life, and found them overflowing. He lacked nothing, having drunk the cup of goodness to its last delectable drops. Lying in the gutter outside the gates of the rich man s mansion was a homeless beggar named Lazarus a halfnaked, diseased man, covered with running sores. His only hope in life was that the rich man might throw him some table scraps [he never did]. Lazarus had gone to the wells of life too, but they were dry leaving him thirsty, hungry, naked, sick, homeless, imprisoned in his sick body, and a stranger to all who looked away as they passed by. Only the street dogs took pity on this loathsome beggar by coming to lick his oozing sores. But Jesus identifies with Lazarus. Listen to his words in Matthew 25:35&36. For I was hungry I was thirsty I was a stranger I needed clothes I was sick I was imprisoned Jesus says that, at the Final Judgment, both the righteous and the wicked will ask, Lord, when did we see you that way? Certainly we do when he is on the cross! He is everything that Lazarus ever was, and more: hungry and thirsty. As surely as Lazarus was a stranger to all who looked away as they passed by, so was Jesus. Isaiah 53:4 says, Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised and we held him in low esteem. He hung there as naked as Lazarus, his body covered with oozing sores only not even the dogs came to lick Jesus wounds. He was imprisoned on that cross more than Lazarus was by his sufferings. In every way, Jesus identifies with Lazarus, and all who are afflicted in this world of sin.
But there is something even more astounding. He experiences what awaits the rich man. The story goes on to say that this man dies and ends up in Hades a temporary place of suffering for the damned after death, before they face the Final Judgment and are cast, along with death and Hades, into Hell [Revelation 20:14&15]. There, in the torment of Hades, he cries out, Have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire. Luke 16:24 But, as awful as this place called Hades is, it s still only a foreshadowing of hell. The rich man can still look into heaven and see Lazarus cuddled in Abraham s arms. Some light from heaven filters into this temporary place called Hades. But Jesus went to the place that Hades foreshadows: hell itself. He s the only one who has ever gone to hell. After he came out, the doors were shut again, awaiting the Final Judgment. As horrific as Hades is, at least the rich man can look up and see heaven. But no one in hell will ever see anything of heaven. The door will be shut, and it will be outer darkness forever. Jesus went there while on the cross. God at least took pity on Lazarus and sent the dogs to lick his wounds. He absolutely abandons and forsakes Jesus. Why did he go to hell? He did it so that Lazarus, the woman at the well, and countless millions of others could go to heaven. Lazarus was a sinner, like all the rest of us. The only reason that the angels could carry him on their wings to heaven was that Jesus carried his sins to the cross. You don t have to experience what the rich man in Christ s story experiences. Jesus experienced it for you. By his descent into hell, you can be set free. Have you put your trust in his work on the cross for your own salvation? 2. THE RIGHTEOUS MAN S THIRST. There s something else in the anguish of I am thirsty. Though Jesus takes on our sins, and even becomes sin itself while on the cross, he is the only totally righteous
person to ever face the final curse of sin: death and hell. He is fully God, the Second Person of the Trinity. But he is also fully man a perfectly righteous man without sin. Yet he still has all the struggles, temptations, and even fears that we possess. Like us, he desperately needs to know his Father in heaven. He thirsts for that deep fellowship that we all need with God. St. Augustine wrote, God has made us for himself, and we will be restless until we find our rest in him. We will also be crazy with thirst, until we drink at the well of his fellowship. Again those words from the Sons of Korah: My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God. [Psalm 42:2] The Sons of Korah were praise singers and worship leaders in the Jewish temple. They have been carried off by an enemy king, and are imprisoned in Northern Israel as hostages. They write their song of lament from this place of exile. Surely the Omnipresent God of the Universe is everywhere, and can be worshipped in all places, including a mountain prison. But the Sons of Korah have worshipped him in the holy places in the temple in Jerusalem. They have been part of the praise music of his people as they gather on Sabbaths to worship God. There is a sense where God is present unlike any other time in the Holy Places where his people gather together for public worship and the partaking of the sacraments. The Sons of Korah long to be in that place. They cry out, As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. Psalm 42:1 This is the God-thirst of the righteous. What Jesus is experiencing is infinitely worse than the pain of the Sons of Korah. The door to heaven has been shut up to him. God the Father has turned his back on God the Son. For all eternity past, God the Son has never had a millisecond when he hasn t been face to face with his Father, one in substance, the same in power and glory. It was terrible enough when he had to tear himself away from his Father and somehow fit the fullness of his Deity
into a two-celled fetal zygote in the darkness of Mary s womb. There wasn t a day that he didn t wake up early and go off by himself to be alone with his Father in prayer. In every situation, he sought his Father s presence. Imagine the horror of now being separated totally from his Father in heaven. No one not even Satan, or the demons, or the most ardent atheist has ever experienced that. God s sun still shines on our faces, and his rain still falls on our heads. But Jesus has just spent an eternity of hell [concentrated in six hours] in a place where no molecule of God s presence filters in. Now he comes out of this godless desert called hell with his Spirit swollen in agony and burning like fire for a taste of his Father. He cries out, I am thirsty! this is physical thirst, but infinitely more: a spiritual thirst. He whispers, It is finished! Then he gives up his Spirit with those last words, Father, into your hands I give my Spirit. As his body collapses in death, his Spirit leaps into the waiting arms of his Father in heaven. Like a thirsty deer that has come to the streams, he drinks in his Father s presence in gulps. We cannot imagine the unspeakable, boundless, amazing, spectacular, gargantuan joy of this moment when God the Son is reunited with God the Father. Earlier he had said to one of the thieves next to him, Today you will be with me in Paradise. [Luke 23:43]. Now all of heaven is rejoicing: after 33 years, and an eternity of hell, Father and Son are reunited in full preincarnate fellowship! Do you thirst for such fellowship with God? Only the truly righteous know of such a thirst! 3. THE POOR MAN S THIRST. Maybe you say to me, I don t thirst for God like Jesus did. I don t even thirst for him like King David or the Sons of Korah did. I wish I had a passion for God, but I don t. Perhaps, like the Samaritan woman, you are still going to the wells that you think will satisfy the thirsts of your life. Or, like the rich man, life is quite nice, thank you very much! Or maybe you feel more like Lazarus, still waiting
for someone to come by and give you and handout. Your passion for God has dried up. You re in a desert place. Don t despair. Jesus speaks to those who have a poverty of spirituality. In his Sermon on the Mount he says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 5:3] Literally, Blessed are the spiritually bankrupt If you admit that you are so lacking in spiritual life that you aren t even thirsty or passionate for him, that s at least a good beginning. The kingdom of heaven isn t far off from you. He goes on, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. [Matthew 5:4] Are you sad at your lack of thirst? Do you at least feel a sense of loss? Are you sorry for your condition? Does it even cause you to shed a tear? Jesus is waiting to comfort you. He goes on, Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. [Matthew 5:5] Have you come to the place where you see that you are a nobody spiritually? Has it stripped you of all spiritual pride, so that you are brought low in meekness? Jesus wants to give you everything. Jesus goes on, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. [Matthew 5:6] When you suddenly realize that you are spiritually bankrupt, mourn over that fact, are reduced to humility about your wretched condition, then you will begin to hunger for that which you cannot produce from your own dried-up well of righteousness. And Jesus will be there to give you Living Water, just like he did that broken woman at the Samaritan well. In the book Vampireville [don t ask me how I know about this], Luna Maxwell, a vampire says, I m looking for someone to quench my thirst for all eternity. Jesus says of those who, with Lazarus go over into an eternity with God, They will never thirst again. Have you come to the well of Living Water? Copyright March 29&30 by Covenant Church of Naples, FL / PCA