Certainly it is so with you; you do but carry the light end of the cross; Christ bore the heavier end. It is calculated that one soul passes from time into eternity every time the clock ticks! The most Scriptural way to describe the sufferings of Christ is not by laboring to excite sympathy through highly-coloured descriptions of his blood and wounds. 1. Here is the safety of the believer in the hour of his departure, and his instant admission into the presence of his Lord. What joy, what satisfaotion this will give if we can sing, "My soul looks back to see The burden thou didst bear, When hastening to the accursed tree, And knows her guilt was there!". "I thirst," ay, this is my soul's word with her Lord. Come, bring him your warm heart, and let him drink from that purified chalice as much as he wills. are they not more like sharp vinegar? Though bitter to him in the speaking it will be sweet to us in the hearing, so sweet that all the bitterness of our trials shall be forgotten as we remember the vinegar and gall of which he drank. Beloved, there is now upon our Master, and there always has been, a thirst after the love of his people. Like the steps of a ladder or the links of a golden chain, there is a mutual dependence and interlinking of each of the cries, so that one leads to another and that to a third. Inductive Bible study on John 19. John 19:28 J.R. Thomson This is both the shortest of all the dying utterances of Jesus, and it is the one which is most closely related to himself. A Christian living to indulge the base appetites of a brute beast, to eat and to drink almost to gluttony and drunkenness, is utterly unworthy of the name. and the answer shall come back, "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh." There can be no shadow of doubt but that our Lord was really crucified, and no one substituted for him. This is a kind of sweet whereof if a man hath much he must have more, and when he hath more he is under a still greater necessity to receive more, and so on, his appetite for ever growing by that which it feeds upon, till he is filled with all the fulness of God. Sit at his feet with Mary, lean on his breast with John; yea, come with the spouse in the song and say, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for his love is better than wine." Here, as everywhere else, we are constrained to say of our Lord, "Never man spake like this man." I have shown you, believer, your position; let me now show you your service. As for yourselves, thirst after perfection. It is that he may eat and drink with you, for he promises that if we open to him he will enter in and sup with us and we with him. The excitement of a great struggle makes men forget thirst and faintness; it is only when all is over that they come back to themselves and note the spending of their strength. In fact, the tendency is to exalt man above God and give him the highest place. To-day I invite your attention to another Prince, marching in another fashion through his metropolis. These are awful words, but they are not mine; they are the very words of God in Scripture. Rutherford says, "Whenever Christ gives us a cross, he cries, 'Halves, my love.'" Although Simon carried Christ's cross, he did not volunteer to do it, but they compelled him. Cheerfully accept this burden, ye servants of the Lord. 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. You may sit under a sermon, and feel a great deal, but your feeling is worthless unless it leads you to weep for yourselves and for your children. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe. John 19:3. IV. This thirst had been on him from the earliest of his earthly days. But what shall be your cry when you shall say, "Good God! Do not forget, also, that you bear this cross in partnership. 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. Partner with StudyLight.org as God uses us to make a difference for those displaced by Russia's war on Ukraine. Shake off the thought, any of you who suppose that God will have pity on you because you have endured affliction. Holy Scripture remains the basis of our faith, established by every word and act of our Redeemer. Nor is this all. A strong emphasis in Spurgeon's preaching was God's grace and sovereignty over man's helpless state. Jesus was deserted of God; and if he, who was only imputedly a sinner, was deserted, how much more shall you be? For his sake we may rejoice in self-denials, and accept Christ and a crust as all we desire between here and heaven. Some of those whom we loved very dearly we have seen quite unable to help themselves; the death sweat has been upon them, and this has been one of the marks of their approaching dissolution, that they have been parched with thirst, and could only mutter between their half-closed lips, "Give me to drink." 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. Even as the hart panteth after the water brooks, our souls would thirst after thee, O God. There were two other cross-bearers in the throng; they were malefactors; their crosses were just as heavy as the Lord's, and yet, at least, one of them had no sympathy with him, and his bearing the cross only led to his death, and not to his salvation. Remember that, and expect to suffer. What was he looking for from his vineyard and its winepress? The flood of his grief has passed the high-water mark, and began to be assuaged. It was a confirmation of the Scripture testimony with regard to man's natural enmity to God. Oh I raise the question, and be not satisfied unless you can answer it most positively in the affirmative. Our Lord Jesus came forth, willing to be exposed to their scorn. The great Surety says, "I thirst," because he is placed in the sinner's stead, and he must therefore undergo the penalty of sin for the ungodly. Can you help feeling how very near Jesus is to us when his lips must be moistened with a sponge, and he must be so dependent upon others as to ask drink from their hand? So were the streets of Jerusalem; for great multitudes followed him. Simon was an African; he came from Cyrene. From the sky the angels viewed him with wonder and amazement; the spirits of the just looked from the windows of heaven upon the scene, yea, the great God and Father watched each movement of his suffering Son. The mind of man is like the daughters of the horseleech, which cry for ever, "Give, give." Lloyd-Jones opens John 19:31-37 to answer that very question. April 14th, 1878 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892). Brother, thirst to have your children save. For a biblical, reformed, and historic collection of commentaries, the Geneva Series is unsurpassed. Beloved, if our Master said, "I thirst," do we expect every day to drink of streams from Lebanon? 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. "I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk; eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved." Have you prayed for your fellow men? 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. "Women, behold thy son!" It was the common place of death. 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. See, brethren, where sin begins, and mark that there it ends. Even when man compassionates the sufferings of Christ, and man would have ceased to be human if he did not, still he scorns him; the very cup which man gives to Jesus is at once scorn and pity, for "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." Read Joo 15:7 bible commentary from Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible by Charles Haddon Spurgeon FREE on BiblePortal.com For several Sabbath mornings my mind has been directed into subjects which I might fitly call the deep things of God. O Lord Jesus, we love thee and we worship thee! Bearing upon his back the sin of all his people, the offering goes without the camp. Oh, shame that men should find so much applause for Princes and none for the King of kings. That thirst was caused, perhaps, in part by the loss of blood, and by the fever created by the irritation caused by his four grievous wounds. Our Lord says, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink," that thirst being the result of sin in every ungodly man at this moment. There was nothing behind in the price, but there is something behind in the manifested power, and we must continue to fill up that measure of revealed power, carrying each one of us the cross with Christ, till the last shame shall have been poured upon his cause, and he shall reign for ever and ever. It was, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!" One would have said, If he were thirsty he would not tell us, for all the clouds and rains would be glad to refresh his brow, and the brooks and streams would joyously flow at his feet. They are these Weep not because the Savior bled, but because your sins made him bleed. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" is the first. Remember how Paul said, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. "We, whose proneness to forget Thy dear love, on Olivet Bathed thy brow with bloody sweat; "We whose sins, with awful power, Like a cloud did o'er thee lower, In that God-excluding hour; "We, who still, in thought and dead, Often hold the bitter reed To thee, in thy time of need.". I cannot think that natural thirst was all he felt. Ray Stedman There was a deeper meaning in his words than she dreamed of, as a verse further down fully proves, when he said to his disciples, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." It was one of Death's castles; here he stored his gloomiest trophies; he was the grim lord of that stronghold. Are you lukewarm? It was a thirst such as none of us have ever known, for not yet has the death dew condensed upon our brows. He hath traversed the mournful way before thee, and every footprint thou leavest in the sodden soil is stamped side by side with his footmarks. Did he not tell his disciples, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?" 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. As not a bone of him shall be broken, so not a word shall be lost. It is almost done, thou Christ of God; thou hast almost saved thy people; there remaineth but one thing more, that thou shouldst actually die, and hence thy strong desire to come to the end and complete thy labour. It was pain that dried his mouth and made it like an oven, till he declared, in the language of the twenty-second psalm, "My tongue cleaveth to my jaws." But further, my brethren; this, I think, is the great lesson from Christ's being slaughtered without the gate of the city let us go forth, therefore, without the camp, bearing his reproach. While other religions create what appear to be worship-filled gatherings, they are empty and void of fact. There is a fulness of meaning in each utterance which no man shall be able fully to bring forth, and when combined they make up a vast deep of thought, which no human line can fathom. First, they teach and confirm many of the doctrines of our holy faith. We used to melt when we heard about his sufferings, but we did not turn from our sins. It began with the mouth of appetite, when it was sinfully gratified, and it ends when a kindred appetite is graciously denied. He loved the Gentile, but still Jerusalem was the city of the Great King. There have been times, and the days may come again, when faithfulness to Christ has entailed exclusion from what is called "society." The Lord bless you, for Jesus' own sake. Great and worshipful being that he is, truth is to be altered for him, the gospel is to be modulated to suit the tone of his various generations, and all the arrangements of the universe are to be rendered subservient to his interests. Christians, will you refuse to be cross-bearers for Christ? The next time we are in pain or are suffering depression of spirit we will remember that our Lord understands it all, for he has had practical, personal experience of it. We will now take the text in a third way, and may the Spirit of God instruct us once again. All this is a blessed clog upon us, and a means of keeping us more near the Lord. is the fourth cry, and it illustrates the penalty endured by our Substitute when he bore our sins, and so was forsaken of his God. crucify him!" I wonder he has ever received them, as one marvels why he received this vinegar; and yet he has received them, and smiled upon us for presenting them. When Jesus had spoken these words, He went out with His disciples over the Brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which He and His disciples entered. 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." He goes forth, then, bearing his cross. Cover it with a cloak? Well, beloved, the cross we have to carry is only for a little while at most. When our Lord cried, "Eloi, Eloi," and afterwards said, "I thirst," the persons around the cross said, "Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him," mocking him; and, according to Mark, he who gave the vinegar uttered much the same words. Hark how their loud voices demand that he should be hastened to execution! . (7) Luke 23:46 And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, INTO THY HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT. Mark then, Christian, Jesus does not suffer so as to exclude your suffering. 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