Christ’s Desire to Save Men
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
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
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
Appetite Swallowing Up Itself
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. – Genesis 3:6
“I thirst.” – John 19:28
We know from experience that the present effect of sin in every man who indulges in it is thirst of soul. The mind of man is like the daughters of the horseleech, which cry for ever, “Give, give.” Metaphorically understood, thirst is dissatisfaction, the craving of the mind for something which it has not, but which it pines for. 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. Now Christ standing in the stead of the ungodly suffers thirst as a type of His enduring the result of sin. 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. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” points to the anguish of His soul; “I thirst” expresses in part the torture of His body; and they were both needful, because it is written of the God of justice that He is “able to destroy both soul and body in hell,” and the pangs that are due to law are of both kinds, touching both heart and flesh. See, brethren, where sin begins, and mark that there it ends. It began with the mouth of appetite, when it was sinfully gratified, and it ends when a kindred appetite is graciously denied. Our first parents plucked forbidden fruit, and by eating slew the race. Appetite was the door of sin, and therefore in that point our Lord was put to pain. With “I thirst” the evil is destroyed and receives its expiation. I saw the other day the emblem of a serpent with its tail in its mouth, and if I carry it a little beyond the artist’s intention the symbol may set forth appetite swallowing up itself. A carnal appetite of the body, the satisfaction of the desire for food, first brought us down under the first Adam, and now the pang of thirst, the denial of what the body craved for, restores us to our place. ~ C.H. Spurgeon
https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm
A Solemn Lesson of Patience
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
The Sympathy of Christ
“I thirst.” – John 19:28
Let our thoughts also turn with delight to His sure sympathy: for if Jesus said, “I thirst,” then He knows all our frailties and woes. 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. Neither in torture of body nor in sadness of heart are we deserted by our Lord; His line is parallel with ours. The arrow which has lately pierced thee, my brother, was first stained with His blood. The cup of which thou art made to drink, though it be very bitter, bears the mark of His lips about its brim. 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. Let the sympathy of Christ, then, be fully believed in and deeply appreciated, since He said, “I thirst.”
How great the love which led Him to such a condescension as this! Do not let us forget the infinite distance between the Lord of glory on His throne and the Crucified dried up with thirst. A river of the water of life, pure as crystal, proceedeth to-day out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, and yet once He condescended to say, “I thirst,” before His angelic guards, they would surely have emulated the courage of the men of David when they cut their way to the well of Bethlehem that was within the gate, and drew water in jeopardy of their lives. Who among us would not willingly pour out his soul unto death if he might but give refreshment to the Lord? And yet He placed Himself for our sakes into a position of shame and suffering where none would wait upon Him, but when He cried, “I thirst,” they gave Him vinegar to drink. Glorious stoop of our exalted Head! O Lord Jesus! we love Thee, and we worship Thee! We would fain lift Thy name on high in grateful remembrance of the depths to which Thou didst descend! ~ C.H. Spurgeon
https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm
He Hath Said 