What whips of steel for you, what knots of burning wire for you, when conscience shall smite you, when the law shall scourge you with its ten-thonged whip! Add to Cart. First, they teach and confirm many of the doctrines of our holy faith. Ah, that I cannot tell, except his own great love. This thirst had been on him from the earliest of his earthly days. Our glorious Samson had been fighting our foes; heaps upon heaps he had slain his thousands, and now like Samson he was sore athirst. So were the streets of Jerusalem; for great multitudes followed him. These solemn sentences have shone like the seven golden candlesticks or the seven stars of the Apocalypse, and have lighted multitudes of men to him who spake them. "And they took Jesus, and led him away." This is unfortunate, since his works contain priceless gems of information that are found nowhere except in the ancient writings of the Jews. He had been all night in agony, he had spent the early morning at the hall of Caiaphas, he had been hurried, as I described to you last Sunday, from Caiaphas to Pilate, from Pilate to Herod, and from Herod back again to Pilate; he had, therefore, but little strength left, and you will not wonder that by-and-bye we find him staggering beneath his load, and that another is called to bear it with him. Today! Come, bring him your warm heart, and let him drink from that purified chalice as much as he wills. Oh! We can never forget the painful scenes of which we have been witness, when we have watched the dissolving of the human frame. Christ did but transfer to Simon the outward frame, the mere tree; but the curse of the tree, which was our sin and its punishment, rested on Jesus' shoulders still. The words, "I thirst," are a common voice in death chambers. Will your Prince be decorated with honors? Jesus, being a man, escaped none of the ills which are allotted to man in death. Was not the Redeemer led thither to aggravate his shame? I show unto you a more excellent way. May the Holy Spirit often lead us to glean therein. We shall by the assistance of the Holy Spirit try to regard these words of our Saviour in a five-fold light. Largest collection of Spurgeon resources online, including a complete 63 volume set of sermons, audio sermons, books, and quotes. 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. It was the common place of death. This added to his shame; but, methinks, in this, too, he draws the nearer to us, "He was numbered with the transgressors, and bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Alas, my brethren, I cannot say much on the score of man's cruelty to our Lord without touching myself and you. John Chapter 19 - In-depth, verse-by-verse commentary and Bible study of John chapter 19 in plain English. Oh, shame that men should find so much applause for Princes and none for the King of kings. 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. Next Saturday all eyes will be fixed on a great Prince who shall ride through our streets with his Royal Bride. I have heard sermons, and studied works by Romish writers upon the passion and agony, which have moved me to copious tears, but I am not clear that all the emotion was profitable. A second mode of treating these seven cries is to view them as setting forth the person and offices of our Lord who uttered them. I cannot say that it is short and sweet, for, alas, it was bitterness itself to our Lord Jesus; and yet out of its bitterness I trust there will come great sweetness to us. One word: transformation. 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. Remember that, and expect to suffer. Though Simon had to bear the cross for a very little while, it gave him lasting honor. Mark then, Christian, Jesus does not suffer so as to exclude your suffering. Alas poor African, thou hast been compelled to carry the cross even until now. While thus we admire his condescension 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. We may therefore come before him, with all the rest of our race, when God subdues them to repentance by his love, and look on him whom we have pierced, and mourn for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. Thoughtful men have drawn a wealth of meaning from them, and in so doing have arranged them into different groups, and placed them under several heads. Grant me only thus much of likeness: we have here a Prince with his bride, bearing his banner, and wearing his royal robes, traversing the streets of his own city, surrounded by a throng who shout aloud, and a multitude who gaze with interest profound. After our Lord Jesus Christ had been formally condemned by Pilate, our text tells us he was led away. John and Herod 1549 - Good News for Thirsty Souls 1550 - The Unspeakable Gift 1551 - Today! Even now to a large extent the true Christian is like a Pariah, lower than the lowest caste, in the judgment of some. 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. John 18:19-40 - Glory on Trial A. April 14th, 1878 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892). "I thirst, but not as once I did, The vain delights of earth to share; Thy wounds, Emmanuel, all forbid That I should seek my pleasures there. We are not sure that Simon was a disciple of Christ; he may have been a friendly spectator; yet one would think the Jews would naturally select a disciple if they could. "Weep for yourselves," says Christ, "rather than for me." London shall see the glory of the one: Jerusalem beheld the shame of the other. Here is the safety of the believer in the hour of his departure, and his instant admission into the presence of his Lord. Dear fountain of delight unknown! Yet his language teaches us not to worship her, for he calls her "woman," but to honor him in whom his direst agony thought of her needs and griefs, as he also thinks of all his people, for these are his mother and sister and brother. Simon was an African; he came from Cyrene. Usually the crier went before with an announcement such as this, "This is Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, who for making himself a King, and stirring up the people, has been condemned to die." In the multitude there was a sparse sprinkling of tender-hearted women, probably those who had been healed, or whose children had been blessed by him. A strong emphasis in Spurgeon's preaching was God's grace and sovereignty over man's helpless state. And now, brethren, our blessed Lord has at this time a thirst for communion with each one of you who are his people, not because you can do him good, but because he can do you good. As you look at the cross upon his shoulders does it represent your sin? John 19:4-5. A few times the sun will go up and down the hill; a few more moons will wax and wane, and then we shall receive the glory. 29. And what makes him love us so? Christ was spit upon with shame; sinner, what shame will be yours! 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. No, no; we must not make a cross of our own. Fix your hearts upon some unsaved one, and thirst until he is saved. Have you repented of sin? I invite you to meditate upon the true humanity of our Lord very reverently, and very lovingly. When you are molested for your piety; when your religion brings the trial of cruel mockings upon you; then remember, it is not your cross, it is Christ's cross; and how delightful is it to carry the cross of our Lord Jesus? This very plainly sets forth the true and proper humanity of Christ, who to the end recognised his human relationship to Mary, of whom he was born. We know from experience that the present effect of sin in every man who indulges in it is thirst of soul. He wants you brother, he wants you, dear sister, he longs to have you wholly to himself. Think of that! In the former cry, as he opened Paradise, you saw the Son of God; now you see him who was verily and truly born of a women, made under the law; and under the law you see him still, for he honours his mother and cares for her in the last article of death. I tell you, sirs, that yonder malefactor carried his cross and died on it; and you will carry your sorrows, and be damned with them, except you repent. Jesus is formally condemned to crucifixion, but before he is led away he is given over to the Praetorian guards that those rough legionaries may insult him. The Redeemer's cry of "I thirst" is a solemn lesson of patience to his afflicted. John 19:1 Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. (6) John 19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, " It is finished! We should love the cross, and count it very dear, because it works out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Jesus said, "I thirst," and this is the complaint of a man. I have now a third picture to present to you CHRIST AND HIS MOURNERS. Ray Stedman Thus have I tried to spy out a measure of teaching, by using that one glass for the soul's eye, through which we look upon "I thirst" as the ensign of his true humanity. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Our Lord is the Maker of the ocean and the waters that are above the firmament: it is his hand that stays or opens the bottles of heaven, and sendeth rain upon the evil and upon the good. Let patience have her perfect work. V. I close with THE SAVIOR'S WARNING QUESTION "If they do these things in the green tree, what will they do in the dry?". Your path runs hard by that of your Master. He is not allowed to worship with them. That is very possible; Christ may have carried the heavier end, against the transverse beam, and Simon may have borne the lighter end. You do suffer. But ye ask me where is the spouse, the king's daughter fair and beautiful? I will not say it is because we are unfaithful to our Master that the world is more kind to us, but I half suspect it is, and it is very possible that if we were more thoroughly Christians the world would more heartily detest us, and if we would cleave more closely to Christ we might expect to receive more slander, more abuse, less tolerance, and less favor from men. Jesus paused, and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me; but weep for yourselves and for your children." May God deliver you! O my hearers, beware of praising Jesus and denying his atoning sacrifice. It is so with each one of you? 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. Let each of us say "Tis all my business here below To cry, Behold the Lamb!" John 1:30-31. More solemn still is the reflection that according to our Lord's own teaching, thirst will also be the eternal result of sin, for he says concerning the rich glutton, "In hell he lift up his eyes, being in torment," and his prayer, which was denied him, was, "Father Abraham, send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame." " And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit. See, it has been blackened with bruises, and stained with the shameful spittle of them that derided him. To-day I invite your attention to another Prince, marching in another fashion through his metropolis. We will now take the text in a third way, and may the Spirit of God instruct us once again. We may well remember our faults this day. Remember, dear friends, that what Christ suffered for us, these unregenerate ones must suffer for themselves, except they put their trust in Christ. I do not know how far it was from Pilate's house to the Mount of Doom. Your Prince is surrounded by a multitude of friends; hark how they joyously welcome him! I will give you one of his thirsty prayers "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory." Now Christ standing in the stead of the ungodly suffers thirst as a type of his enduring the result of sin. O Lord Jesus, we love thee and we worship thee! I differ from them greatly, but I will say this, that next to the actual enjoyment of my Lord's presence I love to hunger and to thirst after him. He calls for that: will you not give it to him? How truly man he is; he is, indeed, "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh," for he bears our infirmities. "After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst." the people saw him in the street, not arrayed in the purple robe, but wearing his garment without seam, woven from the top throughout, the common smock-frock, in fact, of the countrymen of Palestine, and they said at once, "Yes, 'tis he, the man who healed the sick, and raised the dead; the mighty teacher who was wont to sit upon the mountain-top, or stand in the temple courts and preach with authority, and not as the Scribes." He must love, it is his nature. He died in less time than persons crucified commonly did. "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." All this is a blessed clog upon us, and a means of keeping us more near the Lord. Dear friend, if you think that you suffer all that a Christian can suffer; if all God's billows roll over you, yet, remember, there is not one drop of wrath in all your sea of sorrow. Certainly it is so with you; you do but carry the light end of the cross; Christ bore the heavier end. 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. He bears a cross, not that you may escape it, but that you may endure it. We would fain lift thy name on high in grateful remembrance of the depths to which thou didst descend! We do not thirst after the old manner wherein we were bitterly afflicted, for he hath said, "He that drinketh of this water shall never thirst:" but now we covet a new thirst. Well, then, what means this cry, "I thirst," but this, that we should thirst too? The Church, the bride of Christ, was there conformed to the image of her Lord; she was there, I say, in Simon, bearing the cross, and in the women weeping and lamenting. Nor does the grief end here, for have not the best works we have ever done, and the best feelings we ever felt, and the best prayers we have ever offered, been tart and sour with sin? It was a confirmation of the Scripture testimony with regard to man's natural enmity to God. 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. Read Joo 15:7 bible commentary from Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible by Charles Haddon Spurgeon FREE on BiblePortal.com Call to mind his complaint in the fifth chapter of Isaiah, "Now will I sing to my well beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" is the first. I cannot roll up into one word all the mass of sorrows which met upon the head of Christ who died for us, therefore it is impossible for me to tell you what streams, what oceans of grief must roll over your spirit if you die as you now are. Some of these were persons of considerable rank; many of them had ministered to him of their substance; amidst the din and howling of the crowd, and the noise of the soldiery, they raised an exceeding loud and bitter cry, like Rachel weeping for her children, who would not be comforted, because they were not. 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. A refined and heavenly appetite, a craving for our Lord. He is exiled from their friendship, too. Shake off the thought, any of you who suppose that God will have pity on you because you have endured affliction. While other religions create what appear to be worship-filled gatherings, they are empty and void of fact. "I thirst" meant that his heart was thirsting to save men. Alas, man is the slave and the dupe of Satan, and a black-hearted traitor to his God. The flood of his grief has passed the high-water mark, and began to be assuaged. "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 thirst," is his human body tormented by grievous pain. In the Lord of Hosts, who shows his power in the sufferings of Christ and of his Church. The utterance of "I thirst" brought out A TYPE OF MAN'S TREATMENT OF HIS LORD. 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. If you will look, there is the mark of his blood-red shoulder upon that heavy cross. Then thy sin lies not on thee; not one single ounce or drachma of it lies on thee; it has all been transferred by blessed imputation to Christ, and he bears it on his shoulder in the form of yonder heavy cross. 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. The soldiery mocked and insulted him in every way that cruelty and scorn could devise. 1 So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. (1-3) Jesus enters the garden, followed by Judas and his troops. The sufferings of Christ should make us weep over those who have brought that blood upon their heads. 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. I have sometimes met with persons who have suffered much; they have lost money, they have worked hard all their lives, or they have laid for years upon a bed of sickness, and they therefore suppose that because they have suffered so much in this life, they shall thus escape the punishment of sin hereafter. Think, dear friends, there are some in this congregation who as yet have no interest in Jesu's blood, some sitting next to you, your nearest friends who, if they were now to close their eyes in death, would open them in hell! I am not the One anointed of God to save mankind. John 1:21. Brother, thirst to have your children save. Volume 19, Sermons 1089-1149 (1873) Hide. Thirst is a common-place misery, such as may happen to peasants or beggars; it is a real pain, and not a thing of a fancy or a nightmare of dreamland. The spear broke up the very fountains of life; no human body could survive such a wound. These are silken days, and religion fights not so stern a battle. "It is finished" is the last word but one, and there you see the perfected Saviour, the Captain of our salvation, who has completed the undertaking upon which he had entered, finished transgression, made an end of sin, and brought in ever lasting righteousness. Will your Prince be sumptuously arrayed? For him they have no tolerance. Weep not for him, but for these. John 19:3. Shall the servant be above his Master, or the disciple above his Lord? "'Twere you my sins, my cruel sins, His chief tormentors were; Each of my grimes became a nail, And unbelief the spear. Perhaps they are your children, the objects of your fondest love, with no interest in Christ, without God and without hope in the world! I think that Roman soldier meant well, at least well for a rough warrior with his little light and knowledge. Spurgeon left this earth for his heavenly hope in 1892. What doth he say? The Church must suffer, that the gospel may be spread by her means. Rutherford says, "Whenever Christ gives us a cross, he cries, 'Halves, my love.'" Shall carnal appetites be indulged and bodies pampered when Jesus cried :I thirst"? As Christ went through the streets, a great multitude looked on. My Lord is not altogether without his espoused one. And yet again in the eighth chapter the bride saith, "I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate." 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 must not make a cross, he cries, 'Halves, john 19 commentary spurgeon God my. Them that derided him forget the painful scenes of which we have been witness, when we have the! Mount of Doom is saved as a type of man 's natural enmity to God how far was! 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