This series of meditations on the seven utterances made by our Lord Jesus in the hours when he was hanging on the Cross were originally given at Communion services, and subsequently produced as booklets.
This is the link to the Audio version of the meditation: CR 5 – “I thirst” – Audio
“I thirst”
Later knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.” 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 (John 19:28).
The Lord Jesus was nearing the end of his time on the Cross. Shortly he would commit his spirit to God his Father and die. Before then he uttered three further cries the first of which is our consideration in this meditation. In Greek it is just one word “dipso” – I thirst.
Some people may be tempted to pass quickly over this the fifth of our Lord’s cries from the Cross. Perhaps some might think it not very important. When we read the other utterances we are immediately impressed with their richness.
You will recall that his first cry was a prayer for forgiveness for those engaged in this brutal deed. The second was a word of assurance to a fellow sufferer who asked to be remembered in the Kingdom. The third was a tender instruction committing his mother to the care of his beloved disciple, John. The fourth was the most significant and yet most mysterious cry ever to pass through these divine-human lips, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
But what of this cry? Does it bear examination? Does it have any special significance? Does it have a message of relevance for us today? It most certainly has. It is full of both significance and relevance.
By this cry we are reminded in the first place,
Of the HUMANITY of Jesus
Thirst is an expression of human need, is it not? Phantoms are not thirsty. Angels are not thirsty. God is not thirsty. God has no needs whatsoever. He is El Shaddai, the Almighty, the All-sufficient One.
Now someone may be thinking, Well, I thought that Jesus was God. So how can he have a need? Answer: because he was also a man. The Lord Jesus Christ was two natures in one Person. I say, was, but I ought to say, is, because he has carried his (glorified) humanity to Heaven. When Jesus came to earth, he never ceased to be what he had always been – God. But he became what he had not been before – man. He became flesh and blood. He was born of a woman, grew through childhood, learned to walk, and talk, attended school and learned to read. He also learned a trade from his foster-father, Joseph, and succeeded him as the carpenter of Nazareth. Having worked at his trade until he was about thirty years old Jesus then left home and became an itinerant preacher and healer.
He shared every aspect of our humanity save our sin. He grew hungry and so he ate; tired and so he slept; thirsty and so he drank. His thirst on the Cross must have been intense. Dehydration was one of the worst aspects of crucifixion. When Jesus last had anything to drink, I do not know. Perhaps even hours before in the guard house or even the evening before at the Last Supper. This cry, “I thirst” is a reflection of his very real humanity and a timely reminder of it.
There has always been a tendency to phantomize Jesus. It surprises some people to learn that the earliest heresy in the church was not that Jesus was never God, but that Jesus was never really a man. It was given the name Docetism from a word that means, “to seem.” Said the Docetists, Jesus only seemed to be a man but really, he was an “appearance”. If you touched his (apparent) body your hand would pass through him. He was immaterial. When he walked his footfall left no print in the sand. The Johannine literature of Gospel and Epistles, reflect an answer to that again and again. Yes, says John, the Word was with God, and the Word was God, but the Word became flesh and lived for a time among us, and he is the One we have seen and even handled. Those that deny that Jesus came in the flesh are not from God (John 1:1,14; 1 John 1:1-2; 4:1-3).
Still today there is a tendency to phantomize Jesus. There are those people who say it does not really matter what you believe about Jesus. He can be whatever you want him to be so long as it is helpful to you to picture him in a certain way. So, they say, imagine him in whatever way you find comfortable and useful and that is your Jesus. Authors and film-makers assume the liberty to portray Jesus in any way they choose. He might be a mystic confused about his identity, or a political radical who died a martyr for pleading the cause of the down-trodden and the poor; or he was a great rabbi; or, in one stage show, a superstar and in another even a clown.
In recent years we have had the feminist Jesus, the liberationist Jesus, the androgynous Jesus, and even Jesus the magician who ran off with Mary Magdalene and survived the cross by drinking snake poison. So, it goes on. Some write books wherein they remove from the Gospel record everything they would rather not believe about Jesus – usually the supernatural and Jesus’s teaching about the afterlife – and then give their books titles such as “The Jesus of History”! Such Christs are phantoms created in the imaginations of their authors.
The Christ of our Christology must be the Christ of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, because those are the records of the real, historical Jesus. No more and no less.
On the other hand in an attempt to portray his divinity and/or his perfection, artists of old – and often moderns also – frequently depict Jesus as looking very different from those mere mortals around him. He might be portrayed as shining with light or his head surrounded by a halo. We see examples of this in paintings and in the stained-glass windows of churches. Such depictions may be well intentioned but tend to obscure his real manhood.
Jesus did NOT generally appear any different from other human beings. In fact, when he preached for the first time in his home synagogue in Nazareth the people who knew him well and had grown up with him were astonished. They said, “Isn‘t this the carpenter? Isn‘t this Mary‘s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”
Comments Mark, “And they took offence at him” (Mark 6:1-3). I think that had he walked around wearing what appears to be a space helmet someone would have noticed, don’t you?
Sometimes even Evangelical people phantomize the Lord Jesus. I recall a church member being horrified at my suggestion that Jesus would have had to deal with the same temptations as any other man. I hastily assured this person that Jesus never gave in to such temptations for he was “without sin.” However, I suspect that the mere suggestion that Jesus was fully human and had natural desires was somehow offensive to someone whose Jesus was never truly human. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin” (Hebrews 5:15).
When I was a boy, the BBC broadcast a series of plays on sound radio by Dorothy L. Sayers depicting the life of Christ entitled, “The Man Born to be King.” As I recall, most of the dialogue – and especially the words spoken by Jesus – was taken directly from the Gospels. We were riveted week after week as we listened and, for me, Jesus became a real, actual, historical person for the first time. But some were offended and letters were published in “The Times” newspaper. Evidently Miss Sayers had the murderer Herod utter a bad word – no doubt mild by today’s crude standards. Someone wrote that it was disgraceful to hear such utterances come from the mouth “of someone so closely connected to our dear Lord!” Thus, even the evil Herod was sanitized and phantomized.
Concerned though I am to preserve the true humanity of our Lord I must confess to my own scruples. For example, attempts to portray Jesus on film, even when reverently and carefully done by Christian believers, leave me uneasy. For one thing, since Scripture chooses never to give us a physical description of Jesus, such portrayals must inevitably be inaccurate. The only reference to Jesus’ physical appearance that I know of is that in the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 53:2, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” A verse which, you will agree, has not been the principal guide of Hollywood’s casting directors.
Also, and even more problematic, since Jesus was perfect manhood, even the best portrayal must be inadequate and the worst blasphemous.
Nevertheless, it is important that the Jesus we love and worship is “the MAN, Christ Jesus” and anything which as accurately as possible helps that must be at least considered. In this regard, I am told, the “Jesus Film” used by Campus Crusade does great good, especially as a missionary aid.
The important thing to remember is this: Christianity is based on facts not fantasies. Is your Jesus real?
When Jesus cried, “I thirst,” we are reminded in the second place:
Of the HUMILITY of Jesus
a) Because he came from HEAVEN, a place of which it is said regarding those who go there, “never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them nor any scorching heat” (Rev 7:16).
Many have left their homes and material comforts to live in deprivation in a Third World country to help suffering humanity. Many have done so – and do so today – in the Name of Christ. May God bless them all. But never in the history of the world has such a Person left such a Home to bear such a Burden as did Jesus.
b) Because he went to the CROSS. Cicero called crucifixion the lowest and worst punishment of a slave. Jesus humbled himself when he allowed the authorities to subject him to the farce of an illegal trial and be found guilty of offences he never committed. Jesus of Nazareth, the only totally innocent Man. Jesus humbled himself when he was abused by Temple guards and Roman soldiers and when he was lashed with the scourge – a whip with pieces of bone or metal fastened into the ends.
Jesus humbled himself when they stripped him of every stitch of clothing, nailed him to a cross and lifted him up in a public place for all the world to gaze upon and mock. The victims of crucifixion were crucified naked as part of their punishment and humiliation. In man’s inhumanity to man he knows that to take away every last shred of a person’s covering is to strip them of even basic human dignity. It is degradation.
I remember after WWII seeing photographs of Nazi guards at a concentration camp forcing Jewish and other prisoners to walk naked past them. The poor wretches – men and women – were trying as they walked to use their hands to hide their shame, whilst the guards leered and mocked them. Jesus’s hands had spikes driven through them.
c) Because of who Jesus IS. The one crying out for water is the One who MADE the water. He made all things. Nothing was made, or has ever been made, except through him. He made the oceans. He made the lakes. He made the rivers. He made the springs. He made the clouds. He made the wells. He made the rain. He made the water, and yet he is thirsty.
Behold the MAKER of Heaven and Earth with parched lips.
In the third place, by this cry:
We are reminded of the SYMPATHY of Jesus
Jesus knows what it is to suffer pain. He shares our hurts and our sorrows.
Crucifixion, as I have said, is a very terrible and painful death. We do not need to dwell upon that. There have been those who have focused almost entirely and exclusively upon the physical pains of crucifixion, but the New Testament emphasis generally speaking, is upon the deeper pain that Jesus suffered as our sin-bearer, the pain of his heart and of his soul. Spiritual pain. Nevertheless, God wants us to know that his Son felt the physical pain also. He knows every kind of pain.
Six hours and four cries have gone by and we might have wondered, Does he not feel the nails? Does he not feel the physical pain? Is his throat not on fire and his tongue swollen and his lips bursting? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. “I thirst.”
There are people we know who have severe physical pains and our love goes out to them. Constant and/or severe pain is a dreadful burden to bear. But we know that there are other pains which are equally dreadful – or even worse – but which are often hidden from view. I refer to heart pains, emotional pains. Physical pain is illustrative of all pains. We speak of hurting when sometimes we mean inward hurt. We speak of being stabbed in the back, when we are thinking of some kind of verbal, or emotional, or social betrayal. We speak of being knocked down, when so far as our body is concerned, we have never been more upright. We talk about bleeding wounds, or tender scars. Is there someone reading this meditation and you may appear to be in very good health, but your heart is breaking? Only God can see that.
On my right arm I have a long scar, a physical scar. The injury which caused it happened when I was a little boy. So, it has been there for a very long time. When we went to live in America – and drove on the right side of the road – that arm, with its scar, was very exposed to my passenger. Sometimes when we were driving along my wife would accidentally knock that scar in the wrong way and it was, and is, still very painful, I can tell you. That scar is tender.
But I have other scars … and you will not see them. They are more painful still. Internal scars. Things that happened in the past. Do you have scars like that? Oh, you have been healed somewhat. You are looking forward now. You do not want to dwell on those things from the past. With God’s help they have been put behind you. Nevertheless, sometimes somebody may touch them and it still hurts. Something may be said. Something you read. Something you see. Some reminder. I am just pausing for a moment to speak of this because, dear friend, I want you to know that Jesus knows all about that pain. And he knows it not only because of omniscience, but because of experience.
Have you been wrongly judged? Not so wrongly as he was. Have you been misunderstood? He was misunderstood. He was misunderstood by his parents when he was a little boy. He was misunderstood throughout his ministry by his brothers and sisters who thought that he had gone mad. He was misunderstood by his disciples one of the best of whom tried to dissuade him from going to the Cross. Have you been betrayed by a friend? So was he. Have you been deserted by family, by friends or by one who vowed to love you “until death do us part?” Well, your Saviour was deserted too. “Then everyone deserted him and fled” (Mark 14:50).
Do you know the pain of loneliness? Jesus knew what it was to be desperately lonely. He was going to the greatest trial and the greatest event, and the most painful experience that any man or any woman ever has, or ever could experience, and nobody, not even his own mother, knew why he was going and what was really happening. He went to the cross alone, that you might never bear any cross alone.
Says the writer to the Hebrews,
We have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are and yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:15 and 16).
This refers primarily to the temptation to sin – as the context will show. It is relevant here because we are so often tempted to sin when we suffer. It might be the sin of self-pity, or bitterness, or resentment. We might be tempted to want revenge or we might even bear a grudge against God. Sin is more to be feared than suffering. Job suffered so much that he became a byword for it but the Scripture commends him by saying, “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22).
Satan, who has no pity, will seek to exploit our weakness and attack us when we are hurt. So, we must fly to Christ for strength. Those who are deserted and misunderstood; those who are weary and exhausted and do not know how to keep going any longer; those who are bereaved and grieve. Those who are unjustly treated. He knows your pains. He wept at the grave side. Do you cry yourself to sleep sometimes? He knows. He weeps with you. Someone reading these words may wonder, “Does God care about me?” Yes, he does. “Does he know what I am going through?” Yes, he does. He has been there. Look up 1 Peter 5:7; the literal translation is: “to him it matters concerning you.” Underline it. Believe it.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “If Jesus said, ‘I thirst,’ then he knows all our frailties and woes. The next time we are in pain or suffering depression of spirit we will remember that our Lord understands it all. For he has had practical personal experience of it. Neither in torture of body, or sadness of heart are we deserted by our Lord. His line is parallel with ours. The arrow which has lately pierced thee, my brother, was first stained with his blood. The cup of which thou art made to drink, though it be very bitter bears the mark of his lips around its brim. He has traversed the mournful way before thee and every footprint thou leavest in the sodden soil is stamped side by side with his footmarks. Let the sympathy of Christ be fully believed in, and deeply appreciated since he said, ‘I thirst.'”
Since we are discussing the REAL Jesus of history and Scripture, allow me to add this. Commentators have tried for years to portray Jesus as a fun-loving person who laughed a lot. I don’t find that in the Gospels. They comb Jesus’ parables and parabolic metaphors for jokes that are supposed to have had the crowds rocking in the aisles. I don’t believe it. I think that is all another fantasy because that is what we want him to be, or so they think.
I do not mean that Jesus was a misery or that he had no joy. He rejoiced in God his Father and saw divinity in a flower. He rejoiced in the praise of little children and in the electing grace of God. But, my friends, Jesus was the “Man of Sorrows” who “bore our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). As Jesus looked out upon suffering humanity – the sick, the blind, the paralyzed, the outcast, the poor, the oppressed, the orphan, the widow – he didn’t see much to laugh about. He saw a world in pain. And as he contemplated man in his sin headed for Hell, it made him weep.
So, we see, first, his humanity, then his humility; thirdly his sympathy.
But now, in the fourth place;
I turn to his SOVEREIGNTY.
A Work Accomplished
Consider again our text, “Later knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” Is it not quite clear that despite everything Jesus is in complete control.
I say this firstly because of the word “completed.” In the original language it is the word “tetelestai” and it occurs again in our Lord’s next cry, “It is finished” (tetelestai – accomplished). To be strictly grammatical – and it has significance – it is in the perfect passive. The perfect tense and the passive voice, “Later knowing that all has been completed . . .” Jesus is looking to something which has been accomplished.
Now we shall have a lot more to say about that in our next meditation in this series. Clearly Jesus had come to this earth to do something, to accomplish something. The cross was the great culmination of that assignment but now the work was finished. There is just one final Scripture to fulfil and then, having cried his triumphant “Tetelestai,” our Lord can commit his spirit to his Father and lay down his life. He would not die until all was completed, for he had always said, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:18). That is sovereignty.
Jesus was not being swept along by misfortune and problems over which he had no power or control, like a piece of flotsam on the river. At the Supper he is in control. In the Garden he is in control. Before Caiaphas he is in control. Before Pilate he is in control. Pontius Pilate was the representative of the most powerful political and military force the world had ever seen. Exasperated by the silence of Jesus, Pilate asked him, “Don’t you realize that I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” And Jesus gave him this memorable reply, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:10-11). Awesome!
Do you not think there was something about this man, this seemingly helpless carpenter from Nazareth, which made Pilate know he was looking at a greater than himself? I do. Jesus was a King who, notwithstanding that he had delivered himself to his tormenters, was always in sovereign control. And when Pilate sent Jesus to Herod, in an attempt to rid himself of the problem Jesus had not one word to say to that petty tyrant, the Tetrarch of Galilee. Some people have forfeited the right to hear anything from the Savior. They are already judged. Their eternal destiny is already sealed. O how dreadful.
In those six hours Jesus has been to the darkness and the depths of hell, and now it is almost all over. His work of atonement has been accomplished, and now he will take some of their drink. Let me pause just to tell you that at crucifixions there were usually two barrels of wine. One was provided for the soldiers, a kind of cheap, household, vinegary type of wine. They could drink of it and forget their woes and the unpleasant job they had to do. The other was a drink that was provided by some kindly women who always turned up at a crucifixion and in their lovely, generous, and tender way, would offer to the prisoners, this mixture, this wine mixed with gall, as a kind of pain killer. No doubt, similar to the way before the invention of anaesthesia, that surgeons would often give liquor to a man who had to have an amputation, to try to deaden the pain.
They had offered this drink to Jesus at the very beginning but he refused it because of the drug effect (see Matthew 27:34). Jesus knew that during the next six hours every mental faculty must be sharp and he must remain alert. He must feel every pain, physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, every pain. He must drink this cup to its very dregs. He must take all the sorrows of mankind upon his body on the tree. So, he would not take of that which was kindly offered to him at the beginning.
Now that great work has been accomplished and so when he cries, “I thirst,” and they come again with the drink he takes it. He takes it because there is no special atonement in the physical pain. He has done what he had to do. He has been in Hell that you and I need never be. And now he is ready to go to Heaven. He is sensing victory now, but he will not die in a coma induced by dehydration. He will die ON the cross, but not OF the cross.
A Prophecy Fulfilled
I am reminded of the sovereignty of Jesus, not only by the word “completed” but by the reference to a prophetic Scripture. “Later knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said “I thirst.”
The Scripture to which John refers is Psalm 69:21. Apologist Josh McDowell has counted sixty-one major prophecies fulfilled by Jesus, twenty-nine of them on the last day of his life on earth. Did Jesus take the drink in order to fulfil this prophecy or because he was dehydrated and thirsty? Answer: both. He took the drink to reveal the reality of his humanity, his humility, and his sympathy, but also the power of his sovereignty.
See what respect our Savior had for the Scriptures. All must be fulfilled. That is because the Bible is the Word of God. Jesus declared, “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him…” (Matthew 26:24). When Jesus was tempted by Satan he fought with the weapon of Holy Scripture. The Book was his authority and his infallible guide. He said, “The Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).
Friend, are you also guided by the Bible? Do you believe it to be the inspired and authoritative Word of God? There are some who say, “I believe in Jesus but not in the Bible.” That is an impossible position. If you believe that Jesus was the Incarnate Son of God and therefore infallible in all his utterances, then clearly his respect for Scripture must be yours. If you reject the Bible then you reject the Saviour who endorsed the Bible. Your Jesus is a phantom, just like the others. Worthless.
But those of us who claim to believe the Bible and share with the Psalmist that it is, “a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path,” (Psalm 119:105) must ask ourselves, Do we read it? Do we yearn to hear it preached, being satisfied with nothing less? Do we know its truths and precepts so well that it is our sword against temptation and our guide through life. All these things were true of our Lord Jesus. He was soaked in the Word of God.
Here on the Cross the Messianic Psalms filled his mind and he remembered one yet to be fulfilled. How important it is for us to know the Word so well that in the day of our crisis we are ready. Has there ever been a time when Christians have said so much about the Bible but known so little of it? Let us be a people of the Book, as was our Saviour.
But, last of all;
We see his LOVE
Yes, we see his humanity, his humility, his sympathy, and we see his sovereignty. But we see more than anything else his love. If Jesus went voluntarily to the cross, why did he do so? Why did he give his life? These physical pains, these nail wounds, this thirst, this dreadful torture and agony, the outward representation of the awful broken heart within; why did he do it all?
Answer: it was all for you and it was all for me. The Bible says “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18), and, “God made him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are all sinners and “the wages of sin is death,” (Romans 6:21) yet, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
The well-known hymn, “Amazing Grace,” was written by a man called John Newton. In eighteenth century England John Newton had become a midshipman in the British navy. He hoped to become an officer and have a career in that Service, but he fell in love. His heart was captured by a young woman called Mary Catlett, and he was always jumping ship to go and see Mary. If he was granted any shore leave or furlough he always stayed longer than he was supposed to. He was A-W-O-L again, and again, and again. First it was a reprimand. Then he was reduced in rank and stripped of his commission. Next he was cast in irons, and finally he was lashed at the masthead until his back was bleeding and torn to ribbons. Yet still he would go and see his Mary, and stay too long, knowing he was going to get lashed again to within an inch of his life. She never knew.
Eventually they were married and the story is told that on the morning following the wedding John Newton got out of his bed and went over to the basin to take his wash. He stripped off his nightshirt and his beloved saw his back for the first time. It was cris-crossed by ugly red and purple welts. Mary leapt out of bed and ran over to him crying out, “John, John, what are these scars on your back?”
“Oh,” he said, “I got those in the navy. I was beaten.”
“But why did they do this to you? All these wounds, these scars. Why did they do this to you?”
“Well Mary,” said the sailor, “you know how I used to come and surprise you. You did not think I had leave, but I would suddenly be on your doorstep. I did NOT have leave. I jumped ship. I just could not keep myself away from you. And you know when I had three days and I used to stay two weeks……This is what happened to me when I got back. They used to lash me.”
And Mary Catlett began to weep, Mary Newton began to cry, and the hot tears of love and gratitude coursed down her cheeks. She pressed her face tenderly, and wetly, to that strong back and began to gently trace the scars and the lines with her fingers.
“Oh John,” she breathed, ” you did this for me. You did all this for love of me.” And she kissed those wounds again and again.
Christian brother and sister: One day you and I are going to see our Saviour, and we are going to see his wounds. Every other body in Heaven will be perfect save the body of Jesus. God has permitted the glorified body of our Lord to retain those marks. They are the marks of his love for you and for me. And when we see those wounds we shall say, “Lord Jesus it was for me, you suffered for me.”
THREE QUESTIONS by way of APPLICATION
Do WE heed the cry of the suffering?
O how kind were those brave women who stood at Golgotha to minister to the poor wretches who died. Theirs was not to determine innocence or guilt, nor the nature of the offences. Theirs was simply a ministry of compassion.
As I write the close of this meditation I cannot get out of my mind those words which the Lord Jesus spoke which are recorded in Matthew 25, commencing at verse 31:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?“
The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.“
Do you heed the cry of the suffering as they cry “I thirst”?
The Stranger
Some who cry, “I thirst”, are unknown to us – as were the crucified felons to these sisters of Mercy. Each of us must ask ourselves: Do I heed the cry of a suffering world? Or do I pass by on the other side, averting my eyes and saying, “They are no responsibility of mine. Let the Government take care of them.”
The growth of the Welfare State may make us think our responsibilities are no more. Not so. Some cry out in literal hunger and thirst. Some cry out in homelessness. Some cry out in sickness and pain; some in loneliness. Some are in hospital. Some are alone with their little children or with their memories. Some are in countries far away but we can help them through agencies such as World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, TEAR Fund and others. But some may be our neighbours
How careful we Evangelicals must be not to use our rejection of the old, so-called, Social Gospel as an excuse to ignore the social implications of the true Gospel. In the past wherever the saving Gospel of Christ has gone so has the hospital, the leprosy clinic, the school, the orphanage. And so it should be. Christians should be to the forefront of those who care. We care in the Name of the Saviour who cared. Was there ever anyone so caring for the sick, the poor, the oppressed, the bereaved, the widow, the orphan?
The Family
Some who cry, “I thirst”, may even be in our own families.
Do your children cry, “I thirst”? Mummy and daddy, I know you are busy but I thirst for just some of your time. I thirst for your approbation when I try hard, and I thirst for your love at all times.
Do your parents cry, “I thirst”? Do they feel neglected, unloved, perhaps unvisited. Do they crave for some return for the affection and attention they gave to you when you were a child? But, you say, Harry they are old and crotchety and difficult. Yes, well, maybe they are. But make allowances because you were once young and crotchety and difficult but they still loved you. Do you have a brother or a sister who cries, “I thirst?” Or a grandparent or an aunt? I can tell you there are no more precious encouragements and contributions that come to June and me now than those sent by our grown up and gone children.
The Church
Yes: some who cry, “I thirst”, are in our churches.
Do you know I believe that churches can be the loneliest places on earth. Why? Because they should be the very opposite. Could it be possible that the visitor you sit beside next Sunday in church – or for that matter the church member – is, behind their Sunday smiles, nursing a broken heart and crying out, “I thirst.” Thirsty for friendship, for fellowship, for love in the Name of Jesus.
Many of our churches have a little ceremony in the middle of the service when worshipers are asked to stand and greet those around. I used to do it myself sometimes when I pastored a church. I now have my misgivings. June and I have worshiped with many churches since we retired and the custom is almost ubiquitous. The problem is: it is so forced and formal; and then when the service is over those who greeted you cannot disappear fast enough to meet their friends, or to hasten home.
Yes; even couples can yearn for fellowship but what of those who are single? What of those who live alone? O I know we can say they should join the Sunday School or a Singles Group, the choir or the softball team or whatever. But maybe some of us just need to have eyes of compassion a bit more than we do and ears to hear their silent cry.
“Then the King will say . . . I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink . . . Lord, when did we see you thirsty? . . . Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:34,35,40)
Do we heed the cry of the lost?
There are those who cry, “I thirst”, because their lives are empty. They are thirsty for God even though they may know it not. They have thought that money or success or pleasure will satisfy their empty hearts but none of these things have done so. Man was made in the image of God to have fellowship with God. No material things can bring this about. We each have a “hole in the heart” which only God can satisfy. Until we find him and know him we shall be restless and thirsty and empty.
Jesus once before asked for a drink of water. He asked it of a woman at a famous old well. He was hot and tired and thirsty and needed to drink. He had, however, another purpose in his request. She was a very immoral woman with a thirsty heart. Jesus offered her living water with these unforgettable words: “Whoever drinks the water that 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 4:14).
When Jesus cried, “I thirst,” he was just emerging from the darkness of the soul when he was forsaken of the Father as he became our sin-bearer. This we considered in the fourth cry. No doubt beyond his thirst for water Jesus thirsted again for a restoration of that sweet fellowship which the Son had enjoyed with the Father for all eternity past. Even here he reflects the heart-cry of man’s deepest need, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1,2).
Eternity
There is another way that we should hear the cry of the lost. The cry of those for whom it is too late to be saved. The cry of the damned. Just now I quoted some words of Jesus found in Matthew 25. But I stopped at verse 40. However, the passage continues:
Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.“
They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?“
He will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.“
Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
The Lord Jesus speaks of “eternal punishment.” It is not fashionable to speak of that, is it? Neither is it pleasant. I confess that it is a subject which fills me with horror. But there is life after death and it is simply not true that all are going to Heaven – or Jesus was a deceiver.
Some say, I believe in Jesus but I do not believe in Judgment and Hell. Once again, I have to say that their Jesus is a figment of their fantasies. The real Jesus spoke of these things unambiguously. Do you know that Jesus spoke more about Hell than any other person in the Bible? Why? Because he knows how real it is. He knows how terrible it is.
Let me quote just one example. In Luke 16:22-24, Jesus said, “The rich man also died. In Hell where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.” Jesus goes on to teach that there is no opportunity to pass from Hell to Heaven. This life is decisive.
I have not made up this teaching. I have to be faithful and tell it as it is. Popular or not.
Should we Christians not hear this cry from Hell? It has been said, “‘I thirst,’ is the groan of the damned.” I cannot disagree with that awful conclusion. It is all the more poignant because it is taught by Jesus Christ, the most loving, tender, forgiving Man that has ever lived.
Let us then redouble our efforts to warn the lost and offer Christ, before it is too late?
This leads me to my final question which is addressed to any reader without assurance of sins forgiven and a home in Heaven.
Do you heed the cry of the Savior?
Is someone reading this meditation who is not saved? Are you still in your sins? O, dear friend, hear the cry of the Saviour. There is a sense in which he is still thirsty, thirsty for lost sinners to come to him and put their trust in him.
Listen to his cry from Heaven. “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” (Revelation 22:17).
Will you not receive that offered gift today? Right now.
Notice how he says, “Whoever”. That is an open invitation to all to come to him. However old you are, or young; however bad you are; whatever your nationality or the colour of your skin, Jesus invites you to come. You may have been brought up Protestant or Catholic, Muslim or Buddhist, or you may have had no religion; Jesus invites you to come.
Did you notice how he speaks of the gift of the water of life? Have you received that gift? He offers it to all who will take it by faith.
Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no-one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Jesus came from Heaven and went to the Cross to bear the punishment for sins which should have been ours. Had there been any other way of salvation he would not have come and would not have died.
Will you come to him and trust in him and him alone as your Savior?
He is ready to receive you. I implore you, do not die in your sins. We all must die one day. It will then be too late to turn to Christ. NOW is the Day of Salvation. “Today, if you hear his voice, harden not your heart” (Hebrews 3:15).