According to modern thought man is a very fine and noble creature, struggling to become better. 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. No man dare call him friend now, or whisper a word of comfort to him. Certainly it is so with you; you do but carry the light end of the cross; Christ bore the heavier end. Perhaps, dear sister, you carry about with you a gnawing disease which eats at your heart, but Jesus took our sicknesses, and his cup was more bitter than yours. As you look at the cross upon his shoulders does it represent your sin? "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Dear fountain of delight unknown! He knew once how to turn water into wine, and in matchless love he has often turned our sour drink-offerings into something sweet to himself, though in themselves, methinks, they have been the juice of sour grapes, sharp enough to set his teeth on edge. "Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing." The more manifestly there shall be a great gulf between the Church and the world, the better shall it be for both; the better for the world, for it shall be thereby warned; the better for the Church, for it shall be thereby preserved. We will now take the text in a third way, and may the Spirit of God instruct us once again. Then I will thirst with him and not complain, I will suffer with him and not murmur." 1. I cannot say that it is short and sweet, for, alas, it was bitterness itself to our Lord Jesus; and yet out of its bitterness I trust there will come great sweetness to us. Our great hero, the destroyer of Death, bearded the lion in his den, slew the monster in his own castle, and dragged the dragon captive from his own den. Universal manhood, left to itself, rejects, crucifies, and mocks the Christ of God. 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. Yet most people today have never heard of John Gill. Dear friend, if you think that you suffer all that a Christian can suffer; if all God's billows roll over you, yet, remember, there is not one drop of wrath in all your sea of sorrow. And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou ? What was he looking for from his vineyard and its winepress? He did not spare his Son the stripes. 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." Hail, everlasting King in heaven, thou dost admit to thy paradise whomsoever thou wilt! Christians, will you refuse to be cross-bearers for Christ? I will give you one of his thirsty prayers "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory." "The sea is his, and he made it," and all fountains and springs are of his digging. Oh, wondrous substitution of the just for the unjust, of God for man, of the perfect Christ for us guilty, hell-deserving rebels. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. III. Add to Cart. How harshly grate the cruel syllables, "Crucify him! O thou blessed Master, if we are indeed nailed up to the tree with thee, give us a thirst after thee with a thirst which only the cup of "the new covenant in thy blood" can ever satisfy. I invite you to meditate upon the true humanity of our Lord very reverently, and very lovingly. Well might the Master say, "Weep not for me, but for yourselves." It is the opinion of some commentators that Simon only carried one end of the cross, and not the whole of it. 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! Yet, dear friends, to some eyes there will be more attraction in the procession of sorrow, of shame, and of blood, than in you display of grandeur and joy. The Christian faith and motives for Christian worship are based on the certainty of facts. (1-3) Jesus enters the garden, followed by Judas and his troops. Well, then, what means this cry, "I thirst," but this, that we should thirst too? "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." I. He goes forth, then, bearing his cross. He derived spiritual refreshment from the winning of that women's heart to himself. Jesus said, "I thirst," and this is the complaint of a man. The great agony of being forsaken by God was over, and he felt faint when the strain was withdrawn. This cross was a ponderous machine; not so heavy, perhaps, as some pictures would represent it, but still no light burden to a man whose shoulders were raw with the lashes of the Roman scourge. That little rising ground, which perhaps was called Golgotha, the place of a skull, from its somewhat resembling the crown of a man's skull, was the common place of execution. And yet again in the eighth chapter the bride saith, "I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate." Although Simon carried Christ's cross, he did not volunteer to do it, but they compelled him. (7) Luke 23:46 And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, INTO THY HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT. It was a thirst such as none of us have ever known, for not yet has the death dew condensed upon our brows. C.H. Always was he in harmony with himself, and his own body was always expressive of his soul's cravings as well as of its own longings. Oh! II. I have touched that point very lightly because I want a little more time to dwell upon a fourth view of this scene. She craved full flagons of love though she was already overpowered by it. As Spurgeon puts it "Faith is described as 'receiving' Jesus. But my Prince is hated without a cause. Here we behold his human soul in anguish, his inmost heart overwhelmed by the withdrawing of Jehovah's face, and made to cry out as if in perplexity and amazement. ye unregenerate men and women, and there are not a few such here now, remember that when God saw Christ in the sinner's place he did not spare him, and when he finds you without Christ, he will not spare you. 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." Let us magnify and bless our Redeemer's name. You have seen Jesus led away by his enemies; so shall you be dragged away by fiends to the place appointed for you. O Lord Jesus, we love thee and we worship thee! I have heard sermons, and studied works by Romish writers upon the passion and agony, which have moved me to copious tears, but I am not clear that all the emotion was profitable. Our sinful tongues, blistered by the fever of passion, must have burned for ever had not his tongue been tormented with thirst in our stead. He cried, ere he bowed the head which he had held erect amid all his conflict, as one who never yielded, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." He poureth out the streams that run among the hills, the torrents which rush adown the mountains, and the flowing rivers which enrich the plains. 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. Did he not tell his disciples, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?" All nations gathered about my Lord, both great and mean men clustered around his person. See, brethren, here is a picture of what we may expect from men if we are faithful to our Master. May the Holy Ghost help us to hear a fourth tuning of the dolorous music, "I thirst." The last word but one, "It is finished." 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." Beloved, let us comfort ourselves with this thought, that in our case, as in Simon's, it is not our cross, but Christ's cross which we carry. He must love his chosen whom he has once begun to love, for he is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Next Saturday all eyes will be fixed on a great Prince who shall ride through our streets with his Royal Bride. The sinful find our conversation distasteful; in our pursuits the carnal have no interest; things dear to us are dross to worldlings, while things precious to them are contemptible to us. It began with the mouth of appetite, when it was sinfully gratified, and it ends when a kindred appetite is graciously denied. He believed, as a Roman in gods many. Complain not, then. With "I thirst" the evil is destroyed and receives its expiation. Betrayal and arrest in the garden. It showed that he had laid down his life of himself. What a cataract of immortal souls dashes downwards to the pit every hour! The Church must suffer, that the gospel may be spread by her means. Shall the servant be above his Master, or the disciple above his Lord? The reed was no mere rush from the brook, it was of a stouter kind, of which easterns often make walkingstaves, the blows were cruel as well as insulting; and the crown was not of straw but thorn, hence it produced pain as well as pictured scorn. That impenitent thief went from the cross of his great agony and it was agony indeed to die on a cross he went to that place, to the flames of hell; and you, too, may go from the bed of sickness, and from the abode of poverty, to perdition, quite as readily as from the home of ease and the house of plenty. "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise" this is the Lord Jesus in kingly power, opening with the key of David a door which none can shut, admitting into the gates of heaven the poor soul who had confessed him on the tree. He thirsts to bless you and to receive your grateful love in return; he thirsts to see you looking with believing eye to his fulness, and holding out your emptiness that he may supply it. His wounds unstaunched and raw, fresh bleeding from beneath the lash, would make this scarlet robe adhere to him, and when it was dragged off; his gashes would bleed anew. And well they may; the son of such noble parents deserves a nation's love. 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. A few times the sun will go up and down the hill; a few more moons will wax and wane, and then we shall receive the glory. You are not, therefore, so poor as he. The platted crown of thorns, the purple robe, the reed with which they smote him, and the spittle with which they disfigured him, all these marked the contempt in which they held the King of the Jews. "Women, behold thy son!" . V. I close with THE SAVIOR'S WARNING QUESTION "If they do these things in the green tree, what will they do in the dry?". Some of you will not be baptized because you think people will say, "He is a professor; how holy he ought to be." Shall carnal appetites be indulged and bodies pampered when Jesus cried :I thirst"? Oh! We see in Simon's carrying the cross a picture of what the Church is to do throughout all generations. John 19:1-16 - Glory Mocked and Condemned John 19:17-30 - Glory Crucified John 19:31-42 - Glory Buried A. Jesus is condemned to crucifixion. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" is the first. There are many other ways in which these words might be read, and they would be found to be all full of instruction. Rutherford says, "Whenever Christ gives us a cross, he cries, 'Halves, my love.'" A new edition of Spurgeon's classic devotional using the ESV. It is the way whereby many shall be brought to Christ, when this blessed soul-thirst of true Christian charity shall be upon those who are themselves saved. They take matters very gently; they think it unnecessary to be soldiers of the cross. See, it has been blackened with bruises, and stained with the shameful spittle of them that derided him. Even now to a large extent the true Christian is like a Pariah, lower than the lowest caste, in the judgment of some. Thirst is a common-place misery, such as may happen to peasants or beggars; it is a real pain, and not a thing of a fancy or a nightmare of dreamland. Angels cannot suffer thirst. III. But ye ask me where is the spouse, the king's daughter fair and beautiful? We ought all to have a longing for conversions. 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." Secondly, we shall regard these words, "I thirst," as THE TOKEN OF HIS SUFFERING SUBSTITUTION. Christ did but transfer to Simon the outward frame, the mere tree; but the curse of the tree, which was our sin and its punishment, rested on Jesus' shoulders still. You may die so, you may die now. Let us muse upon the fact that Jesus was conducted without the gates of the city. A second mode of treating these seven cries is to view them as setting forth the person and offices of our Lord who uttered them. Remember that, and expect to suffer. the people saw him in the street, not arrayed in the purple robe, but wearing his garment without seam, woven from the top throughout, the common smock-frock, in fact, of the countrymen of Palestine, and they said at once, "Yes, 'tis he, the man who healed the sick, and raised the dead; the mighty teacher who was wont to sit upon the mountain-top, or stand in the temple courts and preach with authority, and not as the Scribes." We shall perhaps know it in our measure in our dying hour, but not yet, nor ever so terribly as he did. Amen. Brother, thirst I pray you to have your workpeople saved. While thus we admire his condescension let our thoughts also turn with delight to his sure sympathy: for if Jesus said, "I thirst," then he knows all our frailties and woes. For his sake we may rejoice in self-denials, and accept Christ and a crust as all we desire between here and heaven. Pilate, as we reminded you, scourged our Savior according to the common custom of Roman courts. You have, then, no true sympathy for Christ if you have not an earnest sympathy with those who would win souls for Christ. He calls for that: will you not give it to him? He pitied the sufferer, but he thought so little of him that he joined in the voice of scorn. "'Twere you my sins, my cruel sins, His chief tormentors were; Each of my grimes became a nail, And unbelief the spear. Come to him in prayer, come to him in fellowship, come to him by perfect consecration, come to him by surrendering your whole being to the sweet mysterious influences of his Spirit. So were the streets of Jerusalem; for great multitudes followed him. `` it is finished. gives us a cross, he did not volunteer to do throughout generations! 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