Christian Life

Christ’s Desire to Save Men

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, “Give Me to drink.”…In the mean while His disciples prayed Him, saying, “Master, eat.” But He said unto them, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” – John 4:7,31-32

“I thirst.” – John 19:28

I cannot think that natural thirst was all He felt…”I thirst” meant that His heart was thirsting to save men. This thirst had been on Him from the earliest of His earthly days. “Wist ye not,” said He, while yet a boy, “that I must be about My Father’s business?” Did He not tell His disciples, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?” He thirsted to pluck us from between the jaws of hell, to pay our redemption price, and set us free from the eternal condemnation which hung over us; and when on the cross the work was almost done His thirst was not assuaged, and could not be till He could say, “It is finished.” 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. Thou wast still straightened till the last pang was felt and the last word spoken to complete to full redemption, and hence Thy cry, “I thirst.”

Christ was always thirsty to save men, and to be loved of men; and we see a type of His life-long desire when, being weary, He sat thus on the well and said to the woman of Samaria, “Give Me to drink.” 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.” He derived spiritual refreshment from the winning of that women’s heart to Himself. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm

Man’s Treatment of His Saviour

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life Leave a comment

They gave Me also gall for My meat; and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink. – Psalm 69:21

They gave Him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when He had tasted thereof, He would not drink. – Matthew 27:34

According to modern thought man is a very fine and noble creature, struggling to become better. He is greatly to be commended and admired, for his sin is said to be seeking after God, and his superstition is a struggling after light. 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. Justice must fly the field lest it be severe to so deserving a being; as for punishment, it must not be whispered to his ears polite. In fact, the tendency is to exalt man above God and give him the highest place. But such is not the truthful estimate of man according to the Scriptures: there man is a fallen creature, with a carnal mind which cannot be reconciled to God; a worse than brutish creature, rendering evil for good, and treating his God with vile ingratitude. Alas, man is the slave and the dupe of Satan, and a black-hearted traitor to his God. Did not the prophecies say that man would give to his incarnate God gall to eat and vinegar to drink? It is done. He came to save, and man denied Him hospitality: at the first there was no room for Him at the inn, and at the last there was not one cool cup of water for Him to drink; but when He thirsted they gave Him vinegar to drink. This is man’s treatment of his Saviour. Universal manhood, left to itself, rejects, crucifies, and mocks the Christ of God… See how man at his best mingles admiration of the Saviour’s person with scorn of His claims; writing books to hold Him up as an example and at the same moment rejecting His deity; admitting that He was a wonderful man, but denying His most sacred mission; extolling His ethical teaching and then trampling on His blood: thus giving Him drink, but that drink vinegar. O my hearers, beware of praising Jesus and denying His atoning sacrifice. Beware of rendering Him homage and dishonouring His name at the same time. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm

Our Glorious Samson

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, “I thirst.” Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, “It is finished” and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost. – John 19:28-30

It seems to me very wonderful that this “I thirst” should be, as it were, the clearance of it all. He had no sooner said “I thirst,” and sipped the vinegar, than He shouted, “It is finished”; and all was over: the battle was fought and the victory won for ever, and our great Deliverer’s thirst was the sign of His having smitten the last foe. The flood of His grief has passed the high-water mark and began to be assuaged. The “I thirst” was the bearing of the last pang; what if I say it was the expression of the fact that His pangs had at last begun to cease, and their fury had spent itself, and left Him able to note His lesser pains? 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. The great agony of being forsaken by God was over, and He felt faint when the strain was withdrawn. I like to think of our Lord’s saying, “It is finished,” directly after He had exclaimed, “I thirst”; for these two voices come so naturally together. Our glorious Samson had been fighting our foes; heaps upon heaps He had slain His thousands, and now like Samson He was sore athirst. He sipped of the vinegar, and He was refreshed, and no sooner has He thrown off the thirst than He shouted like a conqueror, “It is finished,” and quitted the field, covered with renown. Let us exult as we see our Substitute going through with His work even to the bitter end, and then with a “Consummatum est” returning to His Father, God. O souls, burdened with sin, rest ye here, and in resting, live. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm

A Solemn Lesson of Patience

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises Leave a comment

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. – John 19:28

Beloved, if our Master said, “I thirst,” do we expect every day to drink of streams from Lebanon? He was innocent, and yet He thirsted; shall we marvel if guilty ones are now and then chastened? If He was so poor that His garments were stripped from Him, and He was hung up upon the tree, penniless and friendless, hungering and thirsting, will you henceforth groan and murmur because you bear the yoke of poverty and want? There is bread upon your table to-day, and there will be at least a cup of cold water to refresh you. You are not, therefore, so poor as He. Complain not, then. Shall the servant be above His Master, or the disciple above his Lord? Let patience have her perfect work. You do suffer. 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. In your chamber let the gasp of your Lord as He said, “I thirst,” go through your ears, and as you hear it let it touch your heart and cause you to gird up yourself and say, “Doth He say, ‘I thirst’? Then I will thirst with Him and not complain, I will suffer with Him and not murmur.” The Redeemer’s cry of “I thirst” is a solemn lesson of patience to His afflicted…May we not be half ashamed of our pleasures when He says, “I thirst”? May we not despise our loaded table while He is neglected? Shall it ever be a hardship to be denied the satisfying draught when He said, “I thirst.” Shall carnal appetites be indulged and bodies pampered when Jesus cried “I thirst”? What if the bread be dry, what if the medicine be nauseous; yet for His thirst there was no relief but gall and vinegar, and dare we complain? For His sake we may rejoice in self-denials and accept Christ and a crust as all we desire between here and heaven.  Henceforth, also, let us cultivate the spirit of resignation, for we may well rejoice to carry a cross which His shoulders have borne before us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm

A Mournful List of Honours

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

“O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn My glory into shame?” – Psalm 4:2

An instructive writer has made a mournful list of the honours which the blinded people of Israel awarded to their long-expected King:

(1.) They gave Him a procession of honour, in which Roman legionaries, Jewish priests, men and women, took a part, He Himself bearing His cross. This is the triumph which the world awards to Him who comes to overthrow man’s direst foes. Derisive shouts are His only acclamations, and cruel taunts His only paeans of praise.

(2.) They presented Him with the wine of honour. Instead of a golden cup of generous wine they offered Him the criminal’s stupefying death-draught, which He refused because He would preserve an uninjured taste wherewith to taste of death; and afterwards when He cried, “I thirst,” they gave Him vinegar mixed with gall, thrust to His mouth upon a sponge. Oh! wretched, detestable inhospitality to the King’s Son.

(3.) He was provided with a guard of honour, who showed their esteem of Him by gambling over His garments, which they had seized as their booty. Such was the body-guard of the adored of heaven; a quaternion of brutal gamblers.

(4.) A throne of honour was found for Him upon the bloody tree; no easier place of rest would rebel men yield to their liege Lord. The cross was, in fact, the full expression of the world’s feeling towards Him; “There,” they seemed to say, “Thou Son of God, this is the manner in which God Himself should be treated, could we reach Him.”

(5.) The title of honour was nominally “King of the Jews,” but that the blinded nation distinctly repudiated, and really called Him “King of thieves,” by preferring Barabbas, and by placing Jesus in the place of highest shame between two thieves. His glory was thus in all things turned into shame by the sons of men, but it shall yet gladden the eyes of saints and angels, world without end. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Our Lord’s Thirst

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises Leave a comment

“I thirst.” – John 19:28

Our Lord endured thirst to an extreme degree, for it was the thirst of death which was upon Him, and more, it was the thirst of one whose death was not a common one, for “He tasted death for every man.” 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. The nails were fastened in the most sensitive parts of the body, and the wounds were widened as the weight of His body dragged the nails through His blessed flesh and tore His tender nerves. The extreme tension produced a burning feverishness. 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.” It was a thirst such as none of us have ever known, for not yet has the death dew condensed upon our brows. We shall perhaps know it in our measure in our dying hour, but not yet, nor ever so terribly as He did. Our Lord felt that grievous drought of dissolution by which all moisture seems dried up, and the flesh returns to the dust of death: this those know who have commenced to tread the valley of the shadow of death. Jesus, being a man, escaped none of the ills which are allotted to man in death. He is indeed “Immanuel, God with us” everywhere.

Believing this, let us tenderly feel how very near akin to us our Lord Jesus has become… 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?…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. How near akin the thirsty Saviour is to us; let us love Him more and more. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm

Sing!

Sherry Christian Life Leave a comment

O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. – Psalm 95:1

When you can say, “I feel like singing all the time,” then sing; and when you say, “I do not feel like singing,” make a point of singing then, just to let the devil know that he is not your master. It is a good thing to praise Christ in the presence of His friends; it is sometimes a better thing to extol Him in the presence of His enemies. It is a great thing to praise Jesus Christ by day; but there is no music sweeter than the nightingale’s, and she praises God by night. It is well to praise the Lord for His mercy when you are in health, but make sure that you do it when you are sick, for then your praise is more likely to be genuine. When you are deep down in sorrow, do not rob God of the gratitude that is due to Him; never stint Him of His revenue of praise whatever else goes short. Praise Him sometimes on the high-sounding cymbals, -crash, crash, -with all your heart and being; but when you cannot do that, just sit, and mean His praise in solemn silence in the deep quiet of your spirit. To be redeemed from a dying world, to be fetched out from a condemned world, to be brought out from slavery, to be made a child of God, is enough to make you emulate the angels, and even to excel them. They cannot rise to so high a pitch of gratitude as you ought to reach even now, and ought to keep up all the days of your life, and then “for ever and ever “in the presence of the King. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2483.cfm