If not, bestir yourselves at once. Then came, "Women, behold thy son!" As Spurgeon puts it "Faith is described as 'receiving' Jesus. 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." Will your thoroughfares be thronged? We see how the Holy Spirit wants us to pray. It is so with each one of you? "And they took Jesus, and led him away." For his sake we may rejoice in self-denials, and accept Christ and a crust as all we desire between here and heaven. As for myself, I would grow more and more insatiable after my divine Lord, and when I have much of him I would still cry for more; and then for more, and still for more. Is not this a fertile field of thought? Sit at his feet with Mary, lean on his breast with John; yea, come with the spouse in the song and say, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for his love is better than wine." " And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit. Our great hero, the destroyer of Death, bearded the lion in his den, slew the monster in his own castle, and dragged the dragon captive from his own den. Beware of rendering him homage and dishonouring his name at the same time. IV. 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." 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 is not allowed to worship with them. See, it has been blackened with bruises, and stained with the shameful spittle of them that derided him. And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. Includes cross references, questions, verse by verse commentary, outline, and applications on John chapter 19 for small groups. Last Sunday the remark was made to me "If the story of the sufferings of Christ had been told of any other man, all the congregation would have been in tears." 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." He is indeed "Immanuel, God with us" everywhere. 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. III. A phantom, as some have called him, could not suffer in his fashion: but Jesus really suffered, not only the more refined pains of delicate and sensitive minds, but the rougher and commoner pangs of flesh and blood. Either Christ must die for me, or else I must die for myself the second death; if he did not carry the curse for me, then on me must it rest for ever and ever. 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." Rutherford used words somewhat to this effect, "I thirst for my Lord and this is joy; a joy which no man taketh from me. But power is wanted to dash down those idols, to overcome the hosts of error; where is it to be found? 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. Did not the prophecies say that man would give to his incarnate God gall to eat and vinegar to drink? 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. He bears a cross, not that you may escape it, but that you may endure it. Next Saturday all eyes will be fixed on a great Prince who shall ride through our streets with his Royal Bride. Oh! For him they have no tolerance. No man dare call him friend now, or whisper a word of comfort to him. He wants you brother, he wants you, dear sister, he longs to have you wholly to himself. John 19:7-8. Dear friends, we must remember that, although no one died on the cross with Christ, for atonement must be executed by a solitary Savior, yet another person did carry the cross for Christ; for this world, while redeemed by price by Christ, and by Christ alone, is to be redeemed by divine power manifested in the sufferings and labors of the saints as well as those of Christ. It began with the mouth of appetite, when it was sinfully gratified, and it ends when a kindred appetite is graciously denied. Hate sin, and heartily loathe it; but thirst to be holy as God is holy, thirst to be like Christ, thirst to bring glory to his sacred name by complete conformity to his will. Universal manhood, left to itself, rejects, crucifies, and mocks the Christ of God. While other religions create what appear to be worship-filled gatherings, they are empty and void of fact. 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." Lloyd-Jones opens John 19:31-37 to answer that very question. 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. Your Prince is surrounded by a multitude of friends; hark how they joyously welcome him! This hint only. And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou ? Hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled. 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. How they led him forth we do not know. 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." We gave him our tears and then grieved him with our sins. Let us muse upon the fact that Jesus was conducted without the gates of the city. who would stand in your place, ye richest, ye merriest, ye most self-righteous sinners who would stand in your place when God shall say, "Awake O sword against the rebel, against the man that rejected me; smite him, and let him feel the smart for ever!" Remember how Paul said, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. Others think that Simon carried the whole of the cross. Then they said, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And they struck Him with their hands. Some of you will not be baptized because you think people will say, "He is a professor; how holy he ought to be." John and Herod 1549 - Good News for Thirsty Souls 1550 - The Unspeakable Gift 1551 - Today! 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. How has it been with you? Our Lord, however, 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." First, we shall look upon them as THE ENSIGN OF HIS TRUE HUMANITY. Well, beloved, the cross we have to carry is only for a little while at most. 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. "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" What was he looking for from his vineyard and its winepress? See, brethren, where sin begins, and mark that there it ends. As for yourselves, thirst after perfection. Pilate, as we reminded you, scourged our Savior according to the common custom of Roman courts. "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise" this is the Lord Jesus in kingly power, opening with the key of David a door which none can shut, admitting into the gates of heaven the poor soul who had confessed him on the tree. 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. This was intended at once to proclaim his guilt and intimate his doom. Though bitter to him in the speaking it will be sweet to us in the hearing, so sweet that all the bitterness of our trials shall be forgotten as we remember the vinegar and gall of which he drank. Simon was an African; he came from Cyrene. If we be true to our Master we shall soon lose the friendship of the world. How truly man he is; he is, indeed, "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh," for he bears our infirmities. The voice of sympathy prevailed over the voice of scorn. There are no passages in all the public ministry of Jesus so tender as those which have regard to Jerusalem. 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. As these seven sayings were so faithfully recorded, we do not wonder that they have frequently been the subject of devout meditation. Bearing upon his back the sin of all his people, the offering goes without the camp. "His way was much rougher and darker than mine; Did Christ, my Lord, suffer, and shall I repine?". 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. In the Lord of Hosts, who shows his power in the sufferings of Christ and of his Church. That is very possible; Christ may have carried the heavier end, against the transverse beam, and Simon may have borne the lighter end. Let me show what I think he meant. You must consider Jesus, and not yourself; turn your eye to Christ, the great substitute for sinners, but never dream of trusting in yourselves. Trust in the Son of God and you shall never die. Once again, as we think of this "I thirst," which proves our Lord's humanity, let us resolve to shun no denials, but rather court them that we may be conformed to his image. Then I will thirst with him and not complain, I will suffer with him and not murmur." He also knew well the terrible joy that comes only through suffering as he lived quite afflicted (both by illness and slander). Coming fresh from the country, not knowing what was going on, he joined with the mob, and they made him carry the cross. 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