To Encourage You

John 19:28-30 “After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’  A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

In the passage above is the shortest of the statements that came from Jesus’ mouth on the cross: “I thirst.”  How amazing that the very Fountain of Living Waters should experience thirst. The Creator of all the rivers, the oceans, and the rain, thirsts. The One Who promised the woman at the well that if she would but ask Him, He would give her water from which she would never thirst again, thirsts.  How do we make sense of this?  What does this tell us about Him?  

For one thing, although He was indeed God, He was also a man, and as such, He experienced all the same physical needs that we do.  The One who was Living Water incarnate, condescended to us to such a degree that He suffered thirst – Incredible!  But the thirst He experienced was of such an intensity that only those like the rich man who suffered in hell (Like 16) could know it.  It was a thirst that will accompany all those who die without Christ. This is a thirst that was so intense that the rich man cried out for just a drop of water to be placed on his tongue, but to no avail.  This is the thirst of sin-bearing on the cross. There Jesus experienced the intense wrath of God poured out on all the sin of the world.  It’s a thirst that can never be satisfied by anything on earth.  Anything the world has to offer is like the vinegar the soldiers offered Jesus, something that will do nothing more than intensify thirst, never satisfy it.  The world’s remedies do little more than “set our teeth on edge,” irritating rather than satisfying, like smoke blown in our eyes (Proverbs 10:26).  

But Jesus’ thirst went far beyond that for water.  Jesus’ thirst demonstrated on the cross at his lowest moment, just before His death, was a thirst for God. He longed to be with the Father, a fulfillment of these words from Psalm 143:6: “I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land”.  And He longed to take us with Him.  He longed for these things in the face of all the world has to offer to the righteous – mocking rejection and death.  He so longed for these things that He was willing to endure the cross to acquire them.  Jesus’ heart at this moment is so wonderfully expressed in these words from Psalm 73: 25-26: “Whom have I in heaven but you?  And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  

What about you and what about me?  What do we desire?  Do we long for the things that can never truly satisfy?  Do we long for things that, like vinegar, will prove worthless to quench our thirst, things that will, in the end, lead to eternal unquenchable indescribable thirst?  Or do we realize that it is only God that has the Living Water, water that, once we receive it, will quench our deepest longings so that we’ll never thirst again?  This is the water that only Jesus can give.  It is the water of His Holy Spirit (John 7:37-38), poured out for us on the cross.  It’s available to us for the asking.  As Jesus said “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13)!”