Savior: The Human Experience | Part 4

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

This thing.

These things have caught fire, or literally didn't catch fire.

I guess that's the point.

They got well Stanley, Stanley cups, right?

Okay, I know some of you are judging me, you're looking at it, you're like, that's not a Stanley Cup, that's a fake.

You're right.

We don't have a Stanley Cup.

Thank you very much.

Someone last service was like, I have a couple of them, but they were gifts.

Okay, I didn't pay for them.

I'm like, it's fine.

You can own a Stanley Cup.

That's great.

They caught fire.

They're wildly, uh, wildly popular.

They caught fire.

Well, they didn't catch fire.

That's the story is um a car caught on fire, but this did not.

Well, not this one, you know what I mean.

Uh, and it was the rage.

I mean, it was uh the I don't know what it is about this generation, but one thing we know for sure is you will not be dehydrated.

Okay.

I mean, you have everyone's carrying, these are heavy, you're gonna have buff arms too, uh, but you're carrying this thing everywhere, they're out of stock, people are waiting in line, camping out, uh, shelves completely annihilated for a stainless steel water container.

In fact, uh one article I read said, why in this world of seemingly endless things do we yearn for multiple indestructible drinking vessels?

That is the question, isn't it?

Um by the way, uh, did anybody does it, did anybody no shame.

I mean, awesome.

Did you bring your Stanley cup with you?

Anyone?

No?

How about Hydroflast?

Anybody like, hey, I'm a Hydro Flask?

There you go.

Okay.

They're a little bit more bold.

I don't know why.

They hold up their thing.

We crave things, don't we?

And there's something about scarcity that causes us to um really crave it.

If you got it, I want it.

And not everybody can get it.

And there's things that happen and come and go that we just crave, that we want, we desire, we we we run after, we pursue, um, we'll wait in lines, endless lines, we'll get up early, we'll camp out, we'll spend our hard-earned cash on because we crave, we desire.

Let me ask you, what do you really want?

Not maybe a stainly, maybe you do.

Um it's green, by the way, and that was accidental too for St.

Patrick's Day.

Um, but what do you really want?

You know, it's interesting, there's a few times where Jesus is talking, and before he heals someone, he asks him that question.

Like, what do you really want?

At one point he looks at him and says, Do you really want to be well?

Because sometimes we actually don't want to be well.

We are so identifying with our hurt, with our brokenness, with who we are, that that we we love it, we hold on to it, we are not ready to let go of it.

But what do you really want?

What is the deep desire of your heart?

We live in this world and we're distracted by so many things, and we're caught up in running after whatever this is that I don't think we fully take the time, and these are wonderful and nice, but we don't fully take the time to like identify like what my deepest desire actually is.

Because we're chasing, we're running, we're we're thirsting, really.

The human experience is we thirst.

We crave.

We're parched.

We thirst for belonging.

We long to belong, we thirst for acceptance, we thirst for approval, we we we thirst for meaning and importance, we thirst just for peace life and power or justice.

We thirst for justice, we thirst for the human experience because we just thirst, isn't it?

And the question is, can anyone or anything fully satisfy that soul craving, that thirsting?

And then you step foot here, and maybe a different question: how does a crucified God make any difference in the human experience?

To my thirst, to this craving, this longing that I keep trying to fulfill, but never can quite quench.

We're in the series Savior, we're actually uh looking at Jesus' final statements from the cross.

It's the cross, his pulpit.

He he has seven sayings.

On Easter Sunday, we'll finish out the series with it is finished.

On Good Friday, we'll be going through Jesus' saying and unpacking this saying of Jesus where he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Today we're looking at just two words.

Surprising words, pain-filled words, incredibly powerful for us in our human experience.

Where Jesus simply says, I thirst.

I thirst.

In John chapter 19, we pick up the full story.

John 19 · chapter mention

Begins this way in verse 28.

Later, later, by the way, later, we don't really fully understand what that means.

If you remember Jesus the night right before, right, and midnight mob comes, grabs him, seizes him, he has a complete corrupt trial.

He's then brought before the Roman authorities, he's falsely condemned, he's flogged, his back is ripped open, gaping wounds.

Later means actually at this point, he has been hanging on the cross for about six hours.

You can only imagine, we can only try to imagine the agony, the anguish.

And he says this, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, I'm thirsty.

I thirst.

A jar of wine, vinegar was there, and so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.

When he had received the drink, Jesus said, It's finished.

With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

The human experience is we thirst, we crave, we seek fulfillment and belonging and freedom and meaning.

And at the center of Christianity, if you've been around a bit, you you get this, you know this, but but if you haven't, or maybe you've just kind of been around church, you may not realize this.

At the center of Christianity is not a philosophy, it's not a dogma, it's not a set of rules, it's not a sacred script or text, even.

At the center of Christianity is a person, a crucified man.

At the center of Christianity is Jesus himself.

And in this moment, we see something incredibly profound for our human experience and condition, and the pain and the suffering and the thirsting that we all go through.

Jesus.

Jesus is the God who suffers.

Jesus is the God who suffers.

Now okay, let me explain Jesus real quick to you.

You're like, don't we already know this?

Actually, the other day uh I had somebody, a friend of mine, ask me, he's like, so Jesus, and he he grew up in the church.

He grew up kind of in, you know, like going to church and some of these sort of things.

He like, like, okay, when Jesus, do we do we pray to Jesus?

Is Jesus God?

Like, how does God and Jesus work out?

I mean, do we like use Jesus to get to God?

Like, like, how is all of that?

And in Christianity, we we actually believe in something called the Trinity, that there is uh God, one God that's revealed in three distinct persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, fully God, fully distinct.

And Jesus is God the Son.

He is not just a good man, he's not just a godly man, he's not just an incredible wonder worker and nice teacher.

He was fully and is fully God and fully man.

He's not like part God and part man, he is fully, completely God and man at the same time.

In the ancient day, around Jesus' time, there was uh a little bit later after Jesus, there was this religion popping up called Gnosticism.

And Gnosticism fundamentally believes that the spirit is good and the flesh is bad.

And so as Jesus took off, his you know, people began to follow Jesus, uh, Gnosticism came alongside and said, guess what?

Jesus actually wasn't really human, he was just spiritual because to be physical is bad.

And so there was this uh belief that people were starting to buy into, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no.

Jesus actually is fully human and fully God.

Today we flip it.

Today we kind of believe, oh, Jesus is fully man and kind of godlike.

Jesus and the truth and the reality, Jesus is God who suffers.

There's a there's an old PBS special called The Christian.

It says this Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central focus the suffering and degradation of its God.

Never in the history of humanity did anyone ever conceive of worshiping a crucified man.

In fact, John Austin Baker says the crucified Jesus is the only accurate picture of God the world has ever seen.

Philippians 2, 5 and 8 says this about Jesus.

In your relationships with one another, had the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

This is the Apostle Paul talking about Jesus, this God man.

See, God stepped fully into the human condition.

Not partially.

He didn't just kind of dip his toe in it.

God stepped fully into the human condition, and here's why.

Someone once wrote, he said, A love that does not suffer with the suffering of the beloved is not love at all.

And as parents, we get this.

When you see your kid in pain, especially you know when they're babies and they're helpless and they can't do anything.

Like you suffer with your kid, and you would do whatever it takes and whatever you could to trade their place, to take their pain.

And God says, I've done that.

I was not content to just be a distant deity that kind of looked at you and stepped back and went, like, oh wow, you really messed this whole thing up, didn't you?

Oh gosh, that looks really bad down there.

But you're getting what you deserve.

You made all these poor decisions, you really ruined this incredible place that I made for you.

Distant, apathetic.

God says, no, no, no.

I suffer.

Experience the same suffering that you're experiencing.

Which means, see, I need, whether you need it, when you ask, what is your need, what do you really need?

We need a God that suffers.

We need a God that suffered.

Not just a God out there somewhere, but a God in the middle of the mess with us.

Because Jesus is the God that suffered, and as a result, he's the God who understands.

He actually understands what you're going through.

Not in like that, you know, oh, oh, I can imagine that.

That sounds so difficult.

He understands because he's walked through it.

You know, it says something interesting here that it says a jar of wine vinegar was there, so they sucked it in a sponge and uh put that sponge on a stalk of hyssop plant and lifted it to his lips.

Now, in the ancient day, a sponge was used for two things predominantly.

Uh, one was for the wealthy to wipe their rear end.

Um, it was it was toilet paper.

The other was for soldiers, they would put it on their head uh and it would keep the sweat uh off of them and it would help keep their head cool.

So in this moment, Jesus hanging on the cross, surrounded by people who are mocking at him and jeering at him, and he's calling out and crying, think about this.

This is, I thirst, like the God who created all there is is then experiencing the pain of just unquenchable thirst.

And a soldier takes a sponge filled with his dirty, sweaty mess, dips it in this vinegar-ish thing, and puts it up to his lip.

This is about the size of a cross.

It wasn't that high.

The last taste that Jesus had on his lips was that.

God understands.

Psychologists tell us that understanding is a basic element of intimate uh connection and is what allows us to feel emotionally safe.

To the extent that we feel accurately and emphatically understood, we can trust and feel close to one another.

Goes on, says it may well be that the feeling that feeling understood is a prerequisite for our other desires to be satisfied, satisfyingly fulfilled.

Jesus, the God who understands.

He's not like um hijacking the conversation, nothing worse than that.

You begin to tell with somebody like, oh man, this has been so bad.

Well, let me tell you about me.

Let me tell you about what I went through.

That's not that bad.

He's not giving advice.

Let me tell you what you should have done, what you need to do.

He's not negating the pain.

He's not, you'll be fine.

He's not giving you, oh, I'm sorry for you.

He says, I'm with you.

I don't know what it was growing up.

I don't know if it was um, I'm a middle child.

So I had kind of that middle child syndrome of like not really belonging, not feeling like I was apart, uh, maybe overlooked a little bit.

I don't know if it was when we I was born in Texas and moved to Santa Cruz when I was uh nine.

And then, you know, as this hick kid in Surf City, Santa Cruz, I did not fit at all.

And then I had three schools in four years in that time frame.

I I'm not exactly sure, but but I distinctly remember as a kid nobody understood me.

I remember feeling that stayed with me far longer than I ever dared wish that I just really didn't belong or fit.

I remember we had this dog, his name was Spike, or her name was Spike.

I didn't know it was a girl when I named it.

Um we found we found her uh it was uh at church in Texas, uh it was pouring down the rain, and there's this little shivering dog under a van.

And I'm like, Dad, can we keep this little shivering dog?

We thought it was a puppy, it wasn't.

Um it was full grown, it was just a mutt terrier, uh, and I named him Spike because it had spiky hair from the water, you know, the rain.

It just I'm like, Spike.

And so Spike's with me in California.

I remember sitting in the backyard and just pouring my heart out to that dog.

They don't get me.

They don't understand me.

When we think about the cross, we think of our view of the cross.

But we don't always or often think of Jesus' view from the cross.

Like what he was seeing and what he was experiencing.

And we know that like while he was on the cross, he was actually quoting Psalms.

By the way, when you're going through life's hells, you need to lean in and hold on to the Psalms.

They are anchors and they are guides for us.

He quotes Psalm 22, it's a messianic psalm.

It's a psalm of David that uh he's praying, but also later on began to foreshadow this coming Messiah.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And many scholars believe he quotes Psalm 69, another messianic psalm.

As he's quoting it, you just you can see this is Jesus' view from the cross.

He says, You know how I'm scorned, disgraced, shamed.

All my enemies are before you.

Scorn has broken my heart and left me helpless.

I looked for sympathy, but there was none.

For comforters, but I found none.

I put gall in my phone and gave vinegar for my thirst.

That's what he was fulfilling was this song.

And the beautiful, powerful, life-changing truth is God understands from the inside of your world.

From the inside of your experience.

You know Jesus was a refugee.

You know Jesus lost one of His parents, probably around his teenage years, his father died.

You know, he was falsely accused.

He had a corrupt and unjust trial.

He was betrayed by a close friend.

He was abandoned by his friends.

He was beaten and abused and lied.

God understands from the inside of your world.

Hebrews 4.14 says this.

Therefore, since we have such a great high priest who's ascended into the heaven, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

And here's why.

For we don't have a high priest who's unable to empathize with our weakness.

We don't have a high priest who's like, I don't really get what you're going through.

But we have one who's been tempted in every way just as we are, yet did not sin.

He even gets what you're going through in the temptations and the internal battles that you're struggling with.

Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Like whatever you're walking through, whatever you're going through, whatever you're struggling with, the doubts that are surrounding you, the hurt that has a hold on you, the bitterness that has strangled you, whatever it is, he says, come, come to the throne of grace.

You don't have to pour your heart out to a little dog.

That little dog doesn't even know what you're saying.

I love dogs, honestly.

Side note.

When you can pour your heart out to the suffering God who suffered for you and understands everything you're going through.

And he says, you know what I have?

Mercy and grace in my hands.

Mercy and grace.

That's what I'm meeting you with.

See, we need we need a God who suffered.

Because we desperately needed a God who understands.

And it's better than that.

Because Jesus is the God who fulfills.

Because we desperately need a God who can do something about the brokenness and the pain and all the things that we're walking through, the human condition.

We need a God who can do something about the thirst.

You notice he said.

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished.

We'll talk more about that Easter Sunday.

I can't wait.

So that scripture would be, read this with me.

Fulfilled.

Isn't that amazing wherewithal, by the way, that Jesus is on the cross, he's in excruciating pain, and yet he never lost sight of why he was there and what was happening?

Jesus said, I am thirsty.

And it goes on, a jar under of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked up the sponge in it and sponged on a stalk of the hyssop plant.

You ready for a little Bible geekiness?

Hyssop plant.

You're like, why is John so like specific?

Like, who cares what kind of plant it was?

You know?

A hyssop plant?

In fact, there's like all these little Easter eggs in the Gospel of John that are really fun and really fascinating.

Uh, in fact, like if you want to do one, it's uh charcoal.

Charcoal's really cool.

So uh Peter denies Jesus three times, and you know where he's standing?

Around a charcoal fire.

When Jesus restores Peter, uh, you know where Peter, uh Jesus restores him?

John's real specific.

Sitting around a charcoal fire.

Sitting around in the moment where you had your biggest defeat, your greatest embarrassment, Jesus takes them right back to that moment and says, You're mine.

And that no longer gets to define the way you see yourself.

There's all these incredible Easter eggs in the Gospel of John.

Hyssop plants one of them.

Much to kind of get it up there, but for a Jewish person, immediately they know what John's talking about.

Hyssop was used for two purposes in ancient Judaism.

The first was for ritual cleansing, ceremonial cleansing.

They would take uh the bush side of it, and then whether it was water or blood, and then they would use it to sprinkle all around.

This word David, after his you know, great sin uh where he, you know, raped Bathsheba, killed her husband, and then he's crying out for mercy.

Psalm 51 is that cry.

And he says, Cleanse me, O Lord, with hyssop, and I'll be clean.

And the truth is we need somebody to clean up the mess inside of us.

We try to cover it up, we try to ignore it, we try to distract ourselves and chase after things uh that make us feel fine in the moment, but we need somebody just to clean up here.

And Jesus is the God who fulfills, the God who cleans, the God who purifies.

I love how the script psalmist says it, as far as the east is from the west, so have you removed my sin from me.

The second, the second is even more like um more apparent to the Jewish people.

The day that Jesus is being executed on is the preparation day for the Passover festival.

It's a festival that the Israelites had uh held ever since they were delivered out of Egypt.

Uh and it goes all the way back, if you want to read it, and it's in Exodus chapter 12.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

Uh, is the people had been in bondage and slavery under the tyranny of Egypt, and Moses is trying to liberate them.

They're unwilling to negotiate, and eventually it becomes to this point where God says, the destroyer, the angel of death, is gonna pass over the land.

And as he passes over the land, the firstborn child will die.

He says, but if you take a hyssop plant, you dip it in blood, you kill a lamb, dip it in blood, and paint it on the sides and the threshold, the destroyer, the angel of death, will pass over your house.

Death will pass over your house.

And Jesus is the fulfillment of the foreshadowing that we all need death to pass over us, and there is a sacrificial Passover lamb, and he says, I am the ultimate lamb, the deliverer.

I long to bring deliverance into your life.

I long to deliver you from that addiction.

I long to deliver you from that incessant thirst that you keep striving after others' approval.

I long to deliver you to purpose and meaning in life.

The human experience is we thirst.

And in John's gospel, there's actually a lot of talk about water and thirsting.

The irony of Jesus saying, I thirst, is three other times we'll find in John chapter 4, 6, and chapter 6, and I believe chapter 9, Jesus says, I am the living water.

John 4 · chapter mention

Whoever comes to me and drinks of me will never thirst again.

In fact, the first time is with the woman at the well.

He's meeting a Samaritan woman who's coming out to draw water from a well to quench her thirst.

And Jesus is thirsty in that moment.

He says, Could you give me some water?

And because they were supposed to be enemies, she begins to give some, you know, playful pushback.

And Jesus says, If you knew who I am, you would ask me for water.

And I give you water that will satisfy your soul.

And she's looking at him, going, like, you don't even have a bucket, you don't have a rope.

How does this thing work?

And he answered her.

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Eternal life doesn't mean just life later after you die, which it does.

It means life to the full now, like the quenching of your deepest need and thirst now and forevermore.

North African bishop St.

Augustine of Hippo writes this.

She first found him thirsting in order that he might drink of her faith.

And when he was on the cross, he said, I thirst.

Although they did not give him that for which he was thirsting, for he was thirsting for them.

Augustine would later on go to say, Our hearts are restless.

Our hearts are striving until they find the rest in thee.

What do you need?

What's the deep longing of your soul?

We're all thirsty.

We're all looking for something to satisfy.

Interesting though is I think a lot of us just have a lot of knockoffs.

Jeremiah would call it broken cisterns.

There are things that were intended to hold water, but because there's cracks in them, it just pours through.

We look for substitutes.

And we still thirst.

We still crave.

I think there's some you've never the belonging, the hope, the purpose, the approval, all the things, the fulfillment, I am it.

I will satisfy.

And we're looking after fitting in to fill it.

We're looking after being successful to fill it.

We're looking after to date the prettiest guy or girl.

We're looking after whatever it is.

And aren't you just tired of being parched?

And what we kind of do if you're in church world is we go, yeah, I got Jesus, but I got this too.

Because we're not sure he'll fully satisfy.

And would you just simply call out to him?

Where are you disappointed?

Where are you struggling?

What's the internal world that you are wrestling with that you haven't even said to anyone out loud?

The longings, the things that you're like, if I said it, I'm not sure anybody I thirst.

And what if today?

What if today you just simply put that one down?

Instead of pouring your heart out to your dog.

What if today in this moment you simply come to Jesus and say, I thirst?

Jesus, I'm thirsty.

I mean, he said I'm thirsty from the cross.

The God of the universe said it, you can say it too.

Gotta pray for my friends.

And in this moment, for the first time, maybe in a long time or even ever, we're just honest with you and ourselves.

About the longings and the desires, the thirstings, the craving, the stuff that we have tried that just doesn't really fulfill.

And we call to you and just say, I thirst Jesus made me.

You answer that prayer every single time.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

Take a next step by filling out our virtual connection card at awakeningchurch.com slash card.