"I Thirst" | John 19:28-29 | Famous Last Words | 3/17/24 | Rob Hurkmans

Our reading this morning is from the Gospel of John,

John 19 · chapter mention

chapter 19, starting at verse 28.

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished,

and so that the scriptures would be fulfilled,

Jesus said, I am thirsty.

A jar of wine vinegar was there,

and so they soaked a sponge in it.

They put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant

and lifted it to Jesus' lips.

The word of the Lord.

Grace had mentioned that this time of year,

some families go away on a bit of March break vacation,

and we were one of those families that went away

this past March break, and we went actually to Cuba,

and when we were in Cuba, we kind of traveled around a bit,

and we stayed a couple nights in the city of Havana.

We spent a couple nights in a small little seaside

fishing town called Boca de Camarroca,

and then we went to this rural part of Cuba,

which was called Vinales, and when we were in Vinales,

we took this little tour through this subterranean cave,

and it was just the eeriest, weirdest thing.

It was this huge cave underground.

Water was flowing through the cave,

and you got to go down and get in a boat,

and they would take you through the cave.

It was like you were in Indiana Jones.

You were just waiting for the boulder to come rolling down

in Indiana to come running out with the idol in his hand,

but it was when we were down in the cave,

I think Sally said to me, she said,

well, wouldn't it be great to live here?

I was like, it's a cave.

Why would I want to live in a cave?

She said, no, it's just, it's beautiful, it's peaceful.

I was like, it's a cave, right?

Human beings haven't lived in caves in like 10,000 years.

It's cold, it's wet, and anyways,

I guess we had a difference of opinion

about whether it would be a good idea

to live in a cave or not,

but I just thought I'd throw it out there

that we are now in the market for a cave.

So if any of you in your neighborhood notice a cave

sitting around that's uninhabited by people or wildlife,

maybe let us know, we're just curious.

At this point, we actually,

we'd consider even a good size sinkhole

or maybe even a nice ditch.

That would, we'd be willing to give that a try.

But no, when we were down in this cave,

one of the things that you can't help but notice is echoes.

This noises, whether it's a paddle in the water

or someone clapping their hands

or even a water droplet dripping into the water,

it creates an echo.

It bounces off of all of these hard surfaces

and comes back to you in a myriad of different ways.

Today, we're gonna talk about a couple words

that Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago,

but they have been echoing ever since.

These are some of Jesus' famous last words,

as we have said.

We've been going over these famous last words

for a number of weeks now.

This is the fifth week we've been into it.

And the words, the two little words

that we're gonna look at today are simply this.

Jesus said, I thirst, I thirst, or I'm thirsty.

Actually, in Greek, it's not two words at all.

It's actually just one word and it's dipsou.

Now, I wanna acknowledge the fact

that some of us might say this seems rather insignificant,

at least compared to some of the other famous last words

that Jesus has shared with us.

For example, Jesus says,

today you will be with me in paradise.

I mean, that's pretty powerful.

Or Jesus says, please take care of my mother.

It's pretty compassionate, right?

That's amazing.

Or Jesus says, my God, my God,

why have you forsaken me?

Or father, forgive them.

They do not know what they are doing.

These are profound.

And these are powerful final words of Jesus from the cross.

And in comparison, when you look at this one, I'm thirsty,

seems kind of insignificant

and a little bit meaningless in comparison.

But today, what I want to share with you

is that these words, when Jesus spoke them,

created countless and very profound echoes,

echoes that we need to hear

as they bounce off different parts of the Bible

and as they bounce off different parts of our lives.

You see, these words,

they actually only appear in John's gospel.

And the thing about the gospel writer, John,

is that even though something may appear simple

and mundane, it's not.

There is always something deeper going on

with the gospel writer, John.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke,

they write as if they're reporters on the scene,

cataloging what they're seeing.

But John, he writes more like a poet.

Every word is carefully chosen.

And when you come to a statement like,

I'm thirsty or I thirst,

it is definitely not meaningless.

John has intentionally put that there

to teach us something.

John wants those words to echo in our ears

in new ways.

And when we listen, we can hear there's a lot more going on

than two simple words whispered from the cross.

Today, I want to share with you

what I'm going to call four echoes that these words make.

And it's a little confusing,

but you'll understand as I go along.

But these are what I will call, first of all,

the affliction echo,

then the connection echo,

the satisfaction echo,

and finally, the redemption echo.

Let me explain by getting started

and talk about how when Jesus says, I thirst,

it creates an echo that speaks to us

about suffering and affliction.

John, I think, would expect us to understand

that when we heard Jesus say, I'm thirsty,

we would immediately say, well, wait a second,

wait a second, just a few pages earlier in the Bible,

didn't Jesus get offered something to drink

and then he turned it down?

I mean, if Jesus was so thirsty,

why didn't he drink

when something was offered to him?

And now here he is on the cross

and he's saying that he is thirsty.

Come on, Jesus, make up your mind.

I'll give you what I'll tell you what I'm saying.

So in Mark chapter 15, we read that they,

Mark 15 · chapter mention

and it was probably the women who were around Jesus,

offered him wine mixed with myrrh,

but he did not take it.

He didn't drink it.

And then in Matthew, Matthew kind of maybe corrects

or improves upon Mark's version by saying,

they offered Jesus wine to drink

and it was mixed with gall,

but after tasting it, he refused to drink it.

So why wouldn't he drink something

if he were thirsty?

Here's what's going on.

It appears that somehow some of these women managed

to get a glass of wine through to Jesus

amid all the confusion,

but what it was was actually no ordinary drink.

What they had done is they had taken a glass of wine

and they had put poison into it and mixed it together.

And they said, well, why on earth

would they offer Jesus a poison cup of wine?

Well, here's the reason why,

because they knew the point of crucifixion

was to make you suffer as much as possible

for as long as possible.

And they loved Jesus and they did not want

to see him go through that.

So they created this concoction and they gave it to them

and they said, Jesus, just drink it.

Just drink it, Jesus, and it'll all be over.

There is some precedent for this.

400 years earlier, a philosopher by the name of Socrates

was convicted of some crime that was punishable by death.

And I believe he was able to choose the manner of his death

and so what he decided was to drink a poison,

a poison called hemlock.

And the hemlock worked this way in Socrates.

It would deaden the nerves in his legs first.

His legs became very heavy and then eventually

he couldn't even feel his legs anymore.

And then finally he had to sit down

and then finally he would lay down

and then he just went to sleep and he never woke up.

He died in his sleep.

Now, if he had to die somehow, if you're being executed,

that actually sounds like a pretty good option.

These women are offering Jesus, in essence, hemlock.

They say, Jesus, just drink it and soon you'll just,

you'll go numb and soon you'll just fall asleep

and you'll never wake up and you'll die.

And Jesus takes one sip of it

and he knows what they've done

and he refuses to drink it.

Now why?

I think there can only be one explanation as to why.

And it must be this, that Jesus came to this moment

by his own free will and his own decision to suffer.

Somehow suffering was an essential part of his mission

as he understood it.

To show the human race the costliness of their sin and grace.

To show that he was willing to take the fullness

of the punishment upon himself.

To go to the very depths, to go to the darkest place,

to go to the very end of the cave where no one ever goes.

He is not gonna go to sleep for this.

He is not gonna go numb for this.

This is the greatest moment.

This is moment when he gives everything for us.

You know, we live in a day

when if there's an easy way, we'll take it.

We don't have to suffer, then we'd rather not.

You know, even when we were down in Cuba,

Sally got a little cold and I was like,

hey, take some, here's some Tylenol, take some Tylenol

or take some Advil.

And Sally was like, no, I wanna know how my body feels.

I don't wanna mask it, I don't wanna cover it up.

Well, as you can probably hear,

I've now caught that cold a little bit.

And so, as soon as I started to feel

like I was coming down with something,

I was like popping Tylenol and Advil

like they were gummy bears, right?

Because we live in this age of the quick fix, right?

Give me a quick fix for my health,

a quick fix for my marriage,

a quick fix for my finances, my career.

Give me some comfortable way out of the problem

that I am in.

And yet Jesus, what he's showing us is that sometimes

you have to take the uncomfortable way.

Sometimes the inconvenient way,

the way you don't wanna go is the way you need to go.

Now, I have to be very careful how I say this,

but sometimes suffering and sometimes discomfort

can actually be transformative or redemptive.

I would never say that's always the case,

but the apostle Paul, he said that suffering produces

something in us, perseverance.

And the perseverance produces character in us

and character produces hope, and that sounds pretty good.

Or as Oswald Chambers once wrote,

"'The way of the cross is the only way to spiritual growth.

"'The way of suffering is the only way.'"

So all this is to say, when Jesus says,

"'I'm thirsty,' it's creating this echo

"'we're supposed to pick up on, this echo that reminds us

"'that yes, Christ was offered that drink

"'and he didn't take it, and it reminds us

"'that Christ calls us sometimes to take

"'the uncomfortable, dangerous, and risky route

"'and to go through things that we don't wanna go through,

"'but in going through them, we bring glory to God

"'and we ourselves are transformed in the process.'"

So that's the first echo, the echo of affliction.

The second echo that we hear in Jesus's words today

is what I will call the connection echo,

the echo of connection.

Because when Jesus says, I am thirsty,

it is a way of saying, I am thirsty, just like you.

I am connected, just like you.

We are, I am a human being, just like you.

Jesus says, I am thirsty, it's just another way

of saying Jesus is really human.

Now today, we don't have such a hard time

believing that Jesus is human.

We struggle to believe that Jesus is divine,

but actually, in that day, it was the opposite that was true.

In fact, the first couple centuries of the church,

people accepted the idea that Jesus was divine,

that Jesus was from God.

The thing they struggled with most

was the idea that Jesus was a human being.

And I'll just give you an example.

Right around the year AD 70,

there was this group of Christians

that became known as the Docetists, okay?

And Docetists believed that Jesus only seemed to be human.

Like, he wasn't really human.

He only appeared to be human.

In fact, the word Docetism comes from the Greek word

dakeo, which is the verb to seem.

Jesus only seemed human.

He only maybe even pretended to be human.

But really, he was divine.

Really, he was immune from all kinds of suffering.

So when Docetists saw Jesus hanging on the cross,

suffering, they were like, wait, God cannot suffer.

The Son of God cannot go through pain and death and agony.

Oh, I know what's going on.

It just seems that way.

It just looks that way.

It just appears that way.

But really, Jesus is untouchable.

No pain can touch him.

No death can take hold of him.

And some of them went so far as to say

that actually it wasn't Jesus on the cross at all.

I mean, it couldn't be Jesus on the cross.

He was God.

He couldn't suffer.

And they actually said it was actually Simon of Cyrene.

Do you guys remember how in week one of the series,

we talked about how Simon of Cyrene was this fellow

who got enlisted to carry the cross of Jesus?

And some Docetists believe that actually in that process,

there was a mix up and Simon of Cyrene ended up being

the person who was crucified.

And again, the reason is because the Son of God

could never suffer.

I believe that Muhammad 500 years after the time of Christ

also taught that Jesus wasn't actually crucified.

Or if he was crucified, he didn't actually die on the cross

because it's impossible for God to suffer.

And I actually think, I'm not sure,

but I think some Muslims also believe that Simon of Cyrene

was the one who was on the cross

and that Jesus himself was immediately whisked off

to heaven.

But here, listen, Jesus cries out, I'm thirsty.

It's an echo of his humanity.

And John is saying, look, I was there.

I was at the cross.

I looked at him.

It was him.

And I heard him say, I am thirsty,

which is really important

because it points to his humanity.

And in so doing, it points to his connection

with our humanity.

And maybe you've been with a loved one in hospital

and they're dying and eventually as they're dying,

they can't eat and they can't drink anymore.

And so then usually what the nurse does

is the nurse brings in like a big styrofoam cup

with a straw and you try to help them take sips of water.

And then sometimes even that doesn't work.

And so they'll bring in like a cup with like chipped ice

and you put the ice on that person's lips

because they need it, but they can't drink it.

Dallas Willard said, in Jesus,

we see God's ultimate act of identification with humanity.

He became one of us.

He experienced our joys and our sorrows

and ultimately suffered and died for us.

Through his humanity, we find hope, healing and redemption.

Like every other dying human being, Jesus was thirsty.

He was just like us.

And we need a God who is just like us in every way,

even a God who knows what it's like to suffer.

So that is the second echo.

So far, when Jesus says, I'm thirsty,

we hear the echo of affliction.

He refused to take the easy way.

And then we hear now the echo of connection.

Jesus really was human, just like you and me.

But now I wanna talk to you about the echo

of satisfaction.

You see, I have to believe the gospel writer, John,

by putting these words, I'm thirsty there,

wants us to hear the echo of the only other time

I can find in the gospels that Jesus ever said,

I am thirsty.

And I wonder if you guys can even remember,

if you know your Bibles,

well, do you know the only other time

that maybe Jesus said, hey, I'm thirsty?

The woman at the well, that's right, John chapter four.

In John chapter four, Jesus sends his disciples into town

and he sits down at a well with a woman

and a woman shows up.

And this woman was divorced

and she had been remarried like five times.

And now she was living with a man who wasn't her husband.

And it was clear to Jesus

that this woman was searching for something.

She was thirsting for something to satisfy her.

And she thought that maybe that husband would have done that,

but that didn't work out.

And so she tried another and then another,

and then there was another husband,

and then there was another.

And now the person that she's living with

maybe won't even marry her at all, I don't know.

But it seemed that nothing could satisfy

this woman's thirst in her heart.

And so Jesus waits for her.

And then Jesus says to her,

he says, woman, will you give me a drink?

And that's just another way of saying, I'm thirsty.

And she fetches him a drink from Jacob's well

that was there and she hands him the drink.

And as he drinks it, he says to her,

if you knew the generosity of God and who I am,

you'd be asking me for a drink

and I would give you living water.

It's interesting, because what Jesus does

is he uses his own thirst as a way of offering living water

to a woman who had not found satisfaction anywhere.

I believe we're supposed to hear this echo.

So then now on the cross, once again, Jesus says,

I'm thirsty.

And could it be once again, he's using his own thirst

as a way of offering living water,

this time not just to one woman, but to all of us.

Tim Keller says that we are all like the woman at the well

thirsting for something that will truly, truly satisfy us.

Only Jesus can quench our thirst.

Say, what are you thirsting for in life?

What is it that you think,

oh, if I could just get my hands on that,

I would truly be satisfied.

Maybe it's a better wardrobe or if I had some better friends

or if I had a better career, bigger car, a bigger house,

a bigger cave.

If I could just get my hands on a bigger cave,

a better paycheck or a promotion.

But Jesus hangs on the cross.

In his dying breath, he reminds us

that only the water he offers us can quench

the deepest thirsts that we all have.

And that brings me to the fourth and final echo

I wanna talk to you about today.

There's probably a hundred more,

but we'll talk about this one to end.

And to understand this one, you have to remember again

that in John's gospel, nothing is there by accident, okay?

So this is the echo of redemption.

Now, John not only tells us that Jesus was thirsty, yes,

but he also tells us they offered him wine vinegar to drink.

Okay, I like balsamic vinaigrette

as much as the next person,

but I'm not sure I would wanna drink it.

But that's what they was offered and Jesus did drink it.

But they tell us that he dipped the sponge

into the wine vinegar, put it on a stick.

But then John offers like this weird detail.

He tells us the type of stick that they used

and that it was a hyssop branch.

Now that's interesting.

What is John into botany or something like that?

Why is he telling us a hyssop branch?

And here's the problem.

This is what hyssop looks like.

Now, again, I'm no expert, but I can't for the life of me

figure out how you could take a branch of hyssop,

put a soaked sponge on it and then hold it up to somebody

so that they could drink from it without it going,

and just bending over.

Like how on earth would that even work?

But I think what John is saying,

hey Rob, you're missing the point.

You're asking the wrong question.

Remember, I'm not a botanist, I'm a poet.

Remember, listen with your heart and not with your ears.

Listen to what I'm trying to tell you.

And so when we realize that,

and when we listen with our hearts,

we start to see the real meaning behind this hyssop.

And let me just give you a quick little rundown here.

But remember, Jesus is being crucified

during the Jewish festival of Passover.

Passover celebrates the fact that 1,500 years earlier,

God had delivered all of his people from slavery in Egypt.

You remember how the story went?

He sent Moses, he said,

"'Moses, go set my people free.'

And Moses went up to Pharaoh and he said,

"'Pharaoh, let my people go.'

And Pharaoh said, "'No way.'

And so Moses said,

"'Well, he said, no way.'

And God said, "'Well, then tell Pharaoh

some pretty nasty things are gonna happen

if he does not let my people go.'

And Pharaoh said, "'Still,

I'm not gonna let your people go.'"

And so then that's when the 10 plagues

came forth upon all the people of Egypt.

They were horrible things.

They were like the Nile turning to blood,

the animals that were dying.

There were small little bugs everywhere.

There was like sickness that broke out on people.

And it was dark, darkness covered the whole land.

Like living in a cave, your whole life,

darkness covered the whole land.

And then by Pharaoh kept saying,

"'No, no, no, no, no, I'm not letting the people go.'"

And so God says,

"'All right, fine, I'm gonna send the 10th

and most deadly plague at all.

And this will do the trick.

I'm going to send the angel of death

through the land of Egypt.

And the angel of death will kill the firstborn child

in every family.

They're gonna die.

But my people, Israel, they will be spared if they do this.'"

Here's what you gotta do.

Take a lamb, slaughter the lamb,

catch some of the blood from the lamb and put it in a bowl.

Now roast the lamb and eat the lamb

because you're gonna need the energy

because tomorrow you're gonna be gone.

You're gonna be free.

But then there's this instruction.

Take a bunch of hissop, dip it in the blood in the basin

and put the blood on the top

and on the sides of your doorway.

And when the angel passes through the blood of the lamb

from the hissop on your doors,

when it sees that, it will pass over you

and you will be safe and your family will be free.

John uses the hissop plant to create an echo,

an echo of redemption.

In Jesus, you are being delivered.

You are being saved from death.

Holding up the hissop plant,

you are being set free from whatever it is

you're here today that is oppressing you.

He is the lamb of God that was slaughtered.

He is the one who has come to redeem you.

So do you see how, look, these two simple words,

I'm thirsty, they echo through the scriptures and our lives.

They got so much to teach us today

and we're still just scratching the surface.

When Jesus says, I'm thirsty,

we're meant to hear the echo of affliction.

Jesus refused to drink poison, to numb and avoid his pain,

but he chose the path of suffering.

When Jesus says, I'm thirsty,

you're meant to hear the connection echo.

Jesus was human, just like you.

And just like me, he knows everything that we go through.

When Jesus says, I'm thirsty,

we need to hear the satisfaction echo.

Only Jesus can give us the living water

that truly satisfies.

And finally, when Jesus says, I'm thirsty,

we need to hear the redemption echo,

that by his blood, by his death,

we are saved from death.

So as we hear Jesus say, I'm thirsty,

I'd say let's respond to him with the same words.

Jesus, we're thirsty.

Let's acknowledge our own spiritual thirst,

our own spiritual longing for his presence in our lives,

knowing that he alone can quench the thirst of our souls.

Thanks be to God, amen.

Knowing that he alone can quench the thirst of our souls.

Thanks be to God, amen.