While other religions create what appear to be worship-filled gatherings, they are empty and void of fact. Oh, wondrous substitution of the just for the unjust, of God for man, of the perfect Christ for us guilty, hell-deserving rebels. I am ashamed of some professed Christians, heartily ashamed of them! III. " And having said this, He breathed His last. Dear fountain of delight unknown! Is not this a fertile field of thought? John preached a sacrificial Saviour, a sin-bearing Saviour, a sin-atoning Saviour. It is said that a German regiment was at that time stationed in Judea, and I should not wonder if they were the lineal ancestors of those German theologians of modern times who have mocked the Savior, tampered with revelation, and cast the vile spittle of their philosophy into the face of truth. what a black thought crosses our mind! John 19 He preached in the same church as C. H. Spurgeon over one hundred years earlier. O souls, burdened with sin, rest ye here, and resting live. And what makes him love us so? 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? I have already told you that such was our Lord's mystical desire; let it be ours also. He ran and filled a sponge with vinegar: it was the best way he knew of putting a few drops of moisture to the lips of one who was suffering so much; but though he felt a degree of pity, it was such as one might show to a dog; he felt no reverence, but mocked as he relieved. John 19:28 . This cross was a ponderous machine; not so heavy, perhaps, as some pictures would represent it, but still no light burden to a man whose shoulders were raw with the lashes of the Roman scourge. If you will look, there is the mark of his blood-red shoulder upon that heavy cross. 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. According to the sacred canticle of love, in the fifth chapter of the Song of Songs, we learn that when he drank in those olden times it was in the garden of his church that he was refreshed. 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." We gave him our tears and then grieved him with our sins. Among other things methinks he meant this "If I, the innocent substitute for sinners, suffer thus, what will be done when the sinner himself the dry tree whose sins are his own, and not merely imputed to him, shall fall into the hands of an angry God." May the Holy Ghost work in you the complete pattern of Christ crucified, and to him shall be praise for ever and ever. 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. John, the gospel of faith by Harrison, Everett Falconer, 1902- from Everyman's Bible Commentary series. 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. I do not think we should seek after needless persecution. Exposition of the Gospel according to John by Hendriksen, William, 1900-1982 (1953) 526 pages 19 ratings The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. How they led him forth we do not know. 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." Christ does exempt you from sin, but not from sorrow; he does take the curse of the cross, but he does not take the cross of the curse away from you. That impenitent thief went from the cross of his great agony and it was agony indeed to die on a cross he went to that place, to the flames of hell; and you, too, may go from the bed of sickness, and from the abode of poverty, to perdition, quite as readily as from the home of ease and the house of plenty. Whether a disciple then or not, we have every reason to believe that he became so afterwards; he was the father, we read, of Alexander and Rufus, two persons who appear to have been well known in the early Church; let us hope that salvation came to his house when he was compelled to bear the Savior's cross. For several Sabbath mornings my mind has been directed into subjects which I might fitly call the deep things of God. They are these Weep not because the Savior bled, but because your sins made him bleed. There have been times, and the days may come again, when faithfulness to Christ has entailed exclusion from what is called "society." No man dare call him friend now, or whisper a word of comfort to him. Calvary was like our Old Bailey; it was the usual place of execution for the district. Shall the servant be above his Master, or the disciple above his Lord? January 1, 1970 A Plain Answer to an Important Enquiry "Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." John vi. "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." John 19:30. May the Holy Ghost help us to hear a fourth tuning of the dolorous music, "I thirst." (John 19:11) Jesus answered, . The words, "I thirst," are a common voice in death chambers. Nor is this all. London shall see the glory of the one: Jerusalem beheld the shame of the other. 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." If we weep for the sufferings of Christ in the same way as we lament the sufferings of another man, our emotions will be only natural, and may work no good. 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. I claim for the procession of my Lord an interest superior to the pageant you are now so anxiously expecting. It showed that he had laid down his life of himself. I am not the One anointed of God to save mankind. John 1:21. 1089 - The Man Greatly Beloved . July 2nd, 1882 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892) "I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." John 17:26 . 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. He also knew well the terrible joy that comes only through suffering as he lived quite afflicted (both by illness and slander). 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. Even as the hart panteth after the water brooks, our souls would thirst after thee, O God. The power to suffer for another, the capacity to be self-denying even to an extreme to accomplish some great work for God this is a thing to be sought after, and must be gained before our work is done, and in this Jesus is before us our example and our strength. 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. There are some who in company hold their tongues, and never say a good word for Christ. We do not know what may have been the color of alimony face, but it was most likely black. If not, may that picture of Christ fainting in the streets lead you to do so this morning. In the same song he speaks of his church, and says, "The roof of thy mouth is as the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak." As you look at the cross upon his shoulders does it represent your sin? Will your thoroughfares be thronged? Let each of us say "Tis all my business here below To cry, Behold the Lamb!" John 1:30-31. John 19:3. They are created in the minds of men. A refined and heavenly appetite, a craving for our Lord. 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. Think of that! Spurgeon's Bible Commentary John 19 John 19:1-16 John 19:1. 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. See, brethren, here is a picture of what we may expect from men if we are faithful to our Master. The Redeemer's cry of "I thirst" is a solemn lesson of patience to his afflicted. Glorious stoop of our exalted Head! His great love makes him thirst to have us much nearer than we are; he will never be satisfied till all his redeemed are beyond gunshot of thee enemy. 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. You may die so, you may die now. Next time your fevered lips murmur "I am very thirsty," you may say to yourself, "Those are sacred words, for my Lord spake in that fashion." Oh! Some of them have no objection to worship with a poor congregation till they grow rich, and then, forsooth, they must go with the world's church, to mingle with fashion and gentility. So numerous has the family of man now become, that there is a death every second; and when we know how very smell a proportion of the human race have even nominally received the cross and there is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved oh! "I thirst," ay, this is my soul's word with her Lord. 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. I have shown you, believer, your position; let me now show you your service. I cannot think that natural thirst was all he felt. Did he not tell his disciples, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?" Rutherford used words somewhat to this effect, "I thirst for my Lord and this is joy; a joy which no man taketh from me. Some of us, indeed, confess that, if we had read this narrative of suffering in a romance, we should have wept copiously, but the story of Christ's sufferings does not cause the excitement and emotion one would expect. 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. The conquest of the appetites, the entire subjugation of the flesh, must be achieved, for before our great Exemplar said, "It is finished," wherein methinks he reached the greatest height of all, he stood as only upon the next lower step to that elevation, and said, "I thirst." 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. Beloved, can you say he carried your sin? Here is the forgiveness of sin free forgiveness in answer to the Saviour's plea. Will ye raise a clamor of tumultuous shouting? He derived spiritual refreshment from the winning of that women's heart to himself. "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." He is not allowed to worship with them. He died in less time than persons crucified commonly did. Fathers and confessors, preachers and divines have delighted to dwell upon every syllable of these matchless cries. I show unto you a more excellent way. If we be true to our Master we shall soon lose the friendship of the world. Let there be nothing but your religion to object to, and then if that offends them let them be offended, it is a cross which you must carry joyfully. Let us magnify and bless our Redeemer's name. He who stood in our stead has finished all his work, and now his spirit comes back to the Father, and he brings us with him. Will your Prince be decorated with honors? It is not likely that we shall be able to worship with their worship. 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. 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? We read, "The soldiers also mocked him, offering him vinegar." They prefer a ceremonial pompous and gaudy; the swell of music, the glitter of costly garments, the parade of learning all these must minister grandeur to the world's religion, and thus shut out the simple followers of the Lamb. Who among us would not willingly pour out his soul unto death if he might but give refreshment to the Lord? It began with the mouth of appetite, when it was sinfully gratified, and it ends when a kindred appetite is graciously denied. And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. There are more unlikely things than that you will be dead before next Sunday. 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. The most careless eye discerns it. Let me show what I think he meant. Do not let us forget the infinite distance between the Lord of glory on his throne and the Crucified dried up with thirst. Let all your love be his. For him they have no tolerance. Romish expositors, who draw upon their prolific fancy for their facts, tell us that he had a rope about his neck with which they roughly dragged him to the tree; this is one of the most probable of their surmises, since it was not unusual for the Romans thus to conduct criminals to the gallows. Perhaps they are your children, the objects of your fondest love, with no interest in Christ, without God and without hope in the world! 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. And well they may; the son of such noble parents deserves a nation's love. Lectures to My Students - Charles Haddon Spurgeon 1889 Lessons from the Apostle Paul's Prayers - Charles Spurgeon 2018-02-19 Why study and pray the prayers of the Apostle Paul? Now we see Jesus brought before the priests and rulers, who pronounce him guilty; God himself imputes our sins to him; he was made sin for us; and, as the substitute for our guilt, bearing our sin upon his shoulders for that cross was a sort of representation in wood of our guilt and doom we see the great Scape-goat led away by the appointed officers of justice. 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. 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. It was the common place of death. So he was thirsting then. John 1 19-51 Spurgeon's Bible Commentary John 1:19-51 John 1:19. You young believers, who have lately followed Christ, should father and mother forsake you, remember you were bidden to reckon upon it; should brothers and sisters deride, you must put this down as part of the cost of being a Christian. John 19 Commentary John chapter 19 commentary Bible study. 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. "Weep for yourselves," says Christ, "rather than for me." 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? Volume 19, Sermons 1089-1149 (1873) Hide. One word: transformation. Nor dost thou set a time for waiting, but instantly thou dost set wide the gate of pearl; thou hast all power in heaven as well as upon earth. "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" It does not often happen that five or six thousand people meet together twice; it never does, I suppose; the scythe of death must cut some of you down before my voice shall warn you again! He cried, ere he bowed the head which he had held erect amid all his conflict, as one who never yielded, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." The utterance of "I thirst" brought out A TYPE OF MAN'S TREATMENT OF HIS LORD. 1. 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. This thirst had been on him from the earliest of his earthly days. The sharpness of that sentence no exposition can fully disclose to us: it is keen as the very edge and point of the sword which pierced his heart. What was he looking for from his vineyard and its winepress? He saith, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." I cannot give you more than a mere taste of this rich subject, but I have been most struck with two ways of regarding our Lord's last words. The Christian faith and motives for Christian worship are based on the certainty of facts. He would have sacrificed himself to save his countrymen, so heartily did he desire their eternal welfare. As he commends his spirit into the Father's hand, so does he bring all believers nigh to God, and henceforth we are in the hand of the Father, who is greater than all, and none shall pluck us thence. Do we not see here the truth of that which was set forth in shadow by the scape-goat? See, brethren, where sin begins, and mark that there it ends. Shall it ever be a hardship to be denied the satisfying draught when he said, "I thirst." Those pictures which represent our Lord as wearing the crown of thorns upon the tree have therefore at least some scriptural warrant. Can they be compared to generous wine? John Chapter 19 - In-depth, verse-by-verse commentary and Bible study of John chapter 19 in plain English. Remember, dear friends, that what Christ suffered for us, these unregenerate ones must suffer for themselves, except they put their trust in Christ. There are no passages in all the public ministry of Jesus so tender as those which have regard to Jerusalem. Amen. 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. I suppose that the "I thirst" was uttered softly, so that perhaps only one and another who stood near the cross heard it at all; in contrast with the louder cry of "Lama sabachthani" and the triumphant shout of "It is finished": but that soft, expiring sigh, "I thirst," has ended for us the thirst which else, insatiably fierce, had preyed upon us throughout eternity. Revelation: The Lectio Continua Expository Commentary on the New Testament (Beeke) $30.00 $40.00. Yet, dear friends, to some eyes there will be more attraction in the procession of sorrow, of shame, and of blood, than in you display of grandeur and joy. Yet most people today have never heard of John Gill. Your noble Prince is preparing for his marriage: mine is hastening to his doom. 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. The more manifestly there shall be a great gulf between the Church and the world, the better shall it be for both; the better for the world, for it shall be thereby warned; the better for the Church, for it shall be thereby preserved. We do not read that they removed the crown of thorns, and therefore it is most probable, though not absolutely certain, that our Savior wore it along the Via Dolorosa, and also bore it upon his head when he was fastened to the cross. As for yourselves, thirst after perfection. I am glad the world expects much from us, and watches us narrowly. Even if I may not come at him, yet shall I be full of consolation, for it is heaven to thirst after him, and surely he will never deny a poor soul liberty to admire him, and adore him, and thirst after him." We may well remember our faults this day. It came from the parched lips of the Divine Victim towards the close of his agony, and after the darkness which endured from the sixth to the ninth hour. And yet, though he was Lord of all he had so fully taken upon himself the form of a servant and was so perfectly made in the likeness of sinful flesh, that he cried with fainting voice, "I thirst." Add to Cart. Did not the high-priest bring the scape-goat, and put both his hands upon its head, confessing the sins of the people, that thus those sins might be laid upon the goat? 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. 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 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. After preaching his first sermon at the age of 16, he became pastor of the church in Waterbeach at the age of 17. "'Twere you my sins, my cruel sins, His chief tormentors were; Each of my grimes became a nail, And unbelief the spear. As Christ went through the streets, a great multitude looked on. Here is the safety of the believer in the hour of his departure, and his instant admission into the presence of his Lord. NOTICE the connection, or you will miss the meaning of the words; for at first sight it looks as if our Saviour taught us that it John:6:29 The Marvellous Magnet When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid: It shows he was afraid all along the coward the vacillating coward and now a fresh superstition seizes upon him. The woes which broke the Savior's heart must crush theirs. "He that taketh not up his cross and followeth not after me," says Christ, "is not worthy of me."