I Thirst

Welcome to this edition of PowerPoint with Jack Graham. A t And then in that moment of spiritual separation on the cross when God cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And in that moment, Jesus was experiencing not just physical suffering but the eternal suffering of separation from God as this foreboding darkness encroached upon the cross and the land around and in that darkness Jesus was dying and he was experiencing for us on the cross the one who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God. But now this fifth word of Jesus, it is near the middle of the afternoon Jesus was crucified at 9 a.m. and now is at afternoon and near the end of Christ's experience and death on the cross. He refers to himself and simply says with one word, I thirst. He cries out for the first time in physical anguish and pain and suffering.

Incredible, isn't it? The one who was the creator of the heavens and the earth and the waters of the deep. The one who made the rivers and the oceans. The one who made the universe says I thirst. The one who causes the rain to fall from the heavens now says I thirst. There are some powerful spiritual lessons to be learned from this passage. Let's read it together in John chapter 19 beginning at verse 28. After this, Jesus knowing that all was now fulfilled said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood there so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, it is finished and he bowed his head and he gave up his spirit.

In these words, I thirst, just one word, I thirst in the language of the Bible. Jesus was expressing both his humanity as well as his deity. His suffering as well as his sovereignty. We see the nature of Jesus here vividly displayed at the cross. He is totally God and yet totally man.

He is undiminished deity and yet true humanity. No wonder the apostle Paul, the most brilliant mind the Christian faith has ever known, wrote writing under the authority of scripture, said great is the mystery of godliness. That God was manifest in the flesh.

That God showed up in the flesh. It's impossible for the human mind to grasp the idea that God could become a man. That is why in evangelical Christian faith through the years, the first heresy, the first major era of the Christian faith was not regarding the deity of Jesus, denying the deity that Jesus was God, but the very first heresy in the Christian faith was a denial of the humanity of Jesus. It is called Gnosticism and a number of the New Testament passages are written to counteract this idea of Gnosticism which was saying, well God cannot take on a human body, therefore Jesus was God but He only appeared to be human. He was just a spirit being in a body and that was the first heresy. We were pretty strong among Christian believers, certainly among conservative Bible believing Christians on the deity of Jesus and we should be.

We should be. We must be that Jesus is God. But we must also remember that Jesus is man, the son of God is also the son of man.

And that's critical to the Christian faith because the God-man, Jesus, bridged the gap between the holiness of God and the humanity of man and made it possible for sinful man, though he was not sin, he became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God. So Jesus was a real man. When He became a man, He did not cease to be God. But as God, He did not cease to be man.

He was real man. He was the perfect God and also the perfect man. And we see proof of His humanity throughout the Scriptures when He was a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger and dependent upon His mother. When He increased as a young man in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man, that means He was human. As a boy, we find Him asking questions. As a man, He became tired and needed rest, fatigue. He was hungry.

He slept. Jesus was a man. Now remember, Jesus was God's man and He was also a man's man. The kind of man that could fast for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert and be tempted by the devil. The kind of man who just before the cross would take a whip and drive the religious phonies out of the temple.

He was a man and He took His sufferings like a man. Jesus would have been without water approximately 18 hours. From the time of the Lord's Supper to this moment on the cross when He is dying, He is without liquid. He is without fluid.

Now think about this. Just in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He is pouring out His soul before God and the small capillaries of His skin, this is an actual physical condition. It is rare but can it happen that the small capillaries of the skin burst and the sweat glands actually begin to ooze blood. He was sweating drops of blood. He was sweating like drops of blood and therefore all the time losing liquid, losing bodily fluids. He is arrested. He is taken in the middle of the night to the house of Caiaphas where He is kept in a hole in a dungeon. He is brought before a religious trial, several of us, six trials in all, both religious and Roman trials, six trials in all.

So He's in a hole, He's standing on His feet, He's up and down, He's standing before the cathedron, He's standing before Pilate. In the midst of all of this He is being scourged by soldiers. He's led to Herod's judgment hall and then back to the judgment of Pilate. He's handed over to the soldiers where He is mocked and a crown of thorns as He is stripped down, a crown of thorns is placed upon His head.

They thought He was a victim, they didn't know He was wearing the victor's crown. But He's truly bleeding and truly suffering. They take a cat of nine tails, a lictor, which was a long whip in which bone and glass was laced through the laces of this whip and they stripped the skin from His back. And so He's bleeding profusely and ultimately carries the cross, falls beneath the weight of the cross from exhaustion. Simon the serene helps Jesus carry the cross and then He is nailed to the cross and now is lifted up between heaven and earth and He is exposed to the heat of the sun for those hours and He is bleeding and He's losing fluids and He's dying.

And so He says, I thirst. There were two times in which Jesus was offered a drink. Earlier according to Matthew's gospel, the soldiers offered Him a sedative. It was gall and mixed, a mixed drink, a kind of drug that they would give to prolonged death. Yet Jesus at that point refused it.

He refused to be drugged. He wanted not to be delirious in this moment but to bring His full faculties of bear, His full deity and His full humanity to bear upon the sins of the world. So Jesus kept a clear head rather than a foggy, drugged head and therefore He's dying but now He is thirsty, thirsty.

So what's the point? When we suffer in our humanity, we can know that God cares, that Jesus has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, that the pain that we experience is very real pain. So when we pray, we are not praying to a distant deity who could never understand what we go through but rather has accepted suffering and surrendered to that suffering. He identifies with us. He empathizes with our pain. He knows.

He knows what you're going through and it's important to know that God understands. You are listening to Power Point with Jack Graham and his message, I Thirst. Pastor this month we have a special gift for our listeners who give a gift to Power Point. It's your book, Heaven.

What can you tell us about this powerful resource? I wanted to encourage God's people for life today by providing a biblical glimpse from God's Word of the life that comes. Unfortunately there's so much misinformation in our culture about what Heaven is like and that many people don't even find it appealing. After all, who wants to think about spending eternity sitting in the Heaven somewhere playing a harp on a cloud? Not me.

And probably not you either. But God's Word reveals a very different picture of Heaven. It's vibrant. It's exciting. It's a beautiful vision of a real place where you and I will have real experience in eternity with Christ forever. The biblical description of Heaven is far from boring.

It is thrilling and triumphant. More than that, it has the power to energize you as a believer to live every day filled with hope. That's why I believe my book, Heaven, would be such an encouragement to you in these challenging days. So please be sure to request your copy of Heaven when you give today.

And I pray that it will fill you with hope and love and life for all that God has in store for you in the future and that it inspires you to live boldly for Jesus today. Call today and get Dr. Graham's book, Heaven, as our thank you for your gift. Call 1-800-795-4627. That's 1-800-795-4627.

Or text the word PowerPoint to 59789. Now let's get back to today's message, I thirst. Jesus said, I thirst.

Why did He say it? I thirst. Well, as I said, to reflect His sufferings but also to show something very wonderful and very powerful to the Christian. And that is that He is fulfilling the scripture. That this terrible experience, excruciating, exhausting experience of the cross is not meaningless pain and suffering but for a purpose.

That there is purpose in the passion of Christ. When Jesus spoke these words, I thirst, it is in direct fulfillment to the prophecy of the Messiah who would come, Jesus, given in Psalm 69 21. Psalm 69 21, they gave me also gall for my meat and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Reproach has broken my heart, I am full of heaviness, the psalmist went on to say.

My throat is dry, my eyes fail while I wait for my God. Everything that Jesus did was according to divine plan including the fulfillment of prophecy. Remember the cross was not a terrible human accident but planned in the eternal counsels of God, the lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. The cross is not plan B for the world.

This has been God's forever plan. Knowing the sinfulness of man to give himself through his son on the cross. And so throughout the pages of scripture and Old Testament scriptures there were predictions, prophecies related to the coming of the Messiah, who he was, what he would be like, what he would do including such things as what we just read. What would happen to him on the cross. Some people skeptically, cynically would say Jesus just arranged all these prophetic fulfillments that he just, you know, put himself, ran himself in to fulfill the role of the Messiah.

Will be reasonable. There's no way a dying man on a cross could erase this, right? What Roman soldiers were doing as it was predicted, gambling for his tunic and beating him and mocking him and placing on a crown of thorns and a man who would cry out I thirst on the cross. These things and the giving of sour wine to satisfy his thirst as predicted in the Old Testament.

This, you say well it was arranged, yes it was arranged before the foundation of the world. And Jesus surrendered his will to the will of the Father to do the perfect will of God. And so when he fulfills this prophecy, this is just one among over 300 prophecies from the Old Testament that identified Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. Now the odds of that happening accidentally or circumstantially are astronomical. The whole laws of probabilities are, come into play here. There was a scientist by the name of Stoner who several years ago just took the eight most central key prophecies concerning Jesus being the Messiah and ran the numbers on what the probability of one man fulfilling this prophecy or these just eight, not the 300, but just eight what the probabilities would be.

To give you an idea of what one chance in that many numbers would be, it would be like taking silver dollars and stacking them two feet deep all across the state of Texas, taking one of those silver dollars and marking it in some way, throwing it in the pile two feet deep all across Texas, then mixing it all together, and then blindfolding a man and say, go pick the silver dollar that is marked. That's one to the 19th power. So when Jesus fulfills these prophecies, it is a declaration of His sovereignty, of His deity that while things seem to be out of control, His disciples are running, people are crying, soldiers are shouting, religious leaders are jeering, people are staring. When everything seemed to be so out of control, King Jesus is under the authority and the assurance that He is doing exactly what the Father sent Him to do.

So here's the lesson. When you choose to obey God as Jesus obeyed God and fulfill His plan and His purpose for your life, when you do what Jesus did in view of His suffering in the garden and pray not my will but your will be done, oh Father, when you surrender your life to know and to do the will of God and fulfill His purpose, then you are living up to the very thing that God made you and designed you to be and to do. And it's not just a way, it's the best way to live. And that's why we should get up every day and say, Lord, I live under the authority of Your Word, under the assurance of Your will that Your will is good and perfect and acceptable to me and though I may suffer and though there may be circumstances that lead to a cross, I know that in surrendering to Your ways and Your will and to Your Word in my life that You've got all of this. Can you say that?

Can you say, God, I know You've got this. We know that all things God is working together for the good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. So when there are experiences in your life when you cry out, I thirst, I hurt, I suffer, I cry. When you are walking in the will of God, you can know it is not without meaning but it is with real purpose.

And that's a comfort, that's an assurance, that's a confidence that we have in Christ. One final word and that is this is not only a word about suffering and surrender but it's a word about salvation. When Jesus cried out, I thirst.

Remember what He's just experienced, the pain, the suffering, the darkness, the separation from God the Father, my God, my God, why have You forsaken me? The bleeding, the torture, the alienation, the desolation, the aloneness and now the unquenchable thirst, you say sounds like hell to me, exactly. The hell of hell is a separation from God and this existential and eternal alienation from God and eternal thirst, no satisfaction. We are made thirsty and we try to fill our lives with other things that may satisfy or hopefully satisfy the thirst of our souls and yet nothing satisfies except the water of life. Jesus tasted death according to the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 2. Jesus tasted death for everyone. He cried out, I thirst so that we could never thirst. He experienced the wrath of God so that we would not experience the judgment of God.

He experienced darkness so that we could no light. He bore our sins so that we could be forgiven and the last invitation of the Bible in the book of Revelation is whoever is thirsty, let him come and drink of the water of life freely and because Jesus bore our death and tasted death and drank the cup, the bitter dregs of our sin so that He might offer us the cup of salvation, He is able to say to every one of us today, I stand at the door and knock and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him. The old King James says, I will suck with him and he with me. You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and today's message, I thirst. No matter what struggles you're facing today, you have hope in the promises awaiting you in heaven and God calls you to share that hope with others today. That's why we want to encourage and inspire you today by sending you Pastor Graham's book, Heaven. This exciting book takes you straight to scripture to help you see all that awaits you in the life to come and how it impacts your life today.

You'll find hope for today and courage to share that hope with others. So don't wait to request your copy. Heaven is our special thanks for your gift to help boldly proclaim God's word through PowerPoint. So request your copy when you call today. Call 1-800-795-4627, that's 1-800-795-4627. You can also text the word PowerPoint to 59789. And don't forget to visit JackGraham.org where you can shop our e-store, give a gift online or sign up for Dr. Graham's free daily email devotional.

Our website again is JackGraham.org. Pastor what is your PowerPoint for today? Just two simple words, I thirst, Jesus wept. But they say a great deal about who Jesus is and his deep love for people. How Jesus identifies with us in our humanity. Whether it is our thirst or our tears, Jesus cares. In John chapter 11 we read about the death of one of Jesus friends by the name of Lazarus. And I hope it doesn't surprise you to discover that the death of Lazarus brought tears to the eyes of Jesus. He wept when he saw the pain and the suffering that the family members and friends of Lazarus were experiencing. He also felt it very deeply, the need to cry and to open up with tears in his love for Lazarus. And just like on the cross, Jesus knew the big picture.

He knew that death was not the end. But in his own love, because he cares so deeply, he expresses through tears comfort in the face of death and difficulties. He does this for all of us. There's an old song that I love, does Jesus care? And the answer is yes, Jesus cares. And here's something wonderful about the care and the comfort that Jesus brings to each of us. And that is with the comfort that we are comforted, we comfort others. That's right out of the scripture in First Corinthians, that we can comfort one another. And because God has graced us and loved us and helped us through some tough things in our lives, we can turn around and share his love and his grace with others. So sometimes when the tears flow, that's the biggest message of all.

Sometimes when we cry out to God on behalf of others, that does the most good because it directs them to a cross and to a Savior who said, I thirst and who wept when people suffered. And that is today's Power Point. Remember when you give a gift to Power Point, we'll send you Dr. Graham's book, Heaven as our thanks. Call 1-800-795-4627. That's 1-800-795-4627. You can also text the word Power Point to 59789. Join us again next time as Dr. Graham brings a message about why this one word Jesus spoke on the cross is so significant to you. That's next time on Power Point with Jack Graham. Power Point with Jack Graham is sponsored by Power Point Ministries.