John chapter 19 and verse 28. We've been looking now at the
seven things that the Lord Jesus said while He was on the cross.
Those seven things. The first thing He said was,
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And I
don't know which one was next, but next He spoke to His mother,
Mary, and to John, the apostle John. and told Mary, behold your
son, and to John, he said, behold your mother. He took care to
take care of his mother on earth. And then the third thing we looked
at last week was when he cried with that anguish in his voice,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And now here we
are at this fourth fourth thing, where the Lord says in verse
28 of the book of John, it says, after this, Jesus, knowing that
all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled,
saith, I thirst. So that's what we're going to
look at today. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would
show us our Savior, show us the thirst that he had. and show
us our own need for Him, that we might thirst for Him and find
in Him all that you have for sinners. And we pray, Lord, that
you would do this for us today, for your mercy's sake, for your
grace, the goodness of who you are, the praise of your glory.
Save us, O Lord, for your name's sake. In Jesus' name we pray,
amen. So there's really three things
I want to consider with you today from this verse. The first one
we see here is the thirst of the Savior, the thirst of our
substitute. The second one I want to look
at is the thirst of a sinner for his Savior. And then the
last one is the thirst of the Savior as our husband, Redeemer,
for his own. So if you remember those three
things, the thirst of our Savior as our substitute, the thirst
of a sinner for his Savior, and the thirst of the Savior as our
husband, Redeemer, then you'll understand the structure of where
we're looking here. The Bible is full of comparisons
of our condition as sinners And some of the things you'll read
in scripture are about how sin is like a plague in our heart.
Sin is like a disease. Or sin is like the bite of a
poisonous serpent. It's like having leprosy. It's
like being lame and unable to walk. Or having your hands that
don't function properly. It's like being paralyzed and
can't move. Or being blind and can't see.
Or being feverish. or even half dead, or possessed
by devils. And finally, sin is compared
to being dead, to being actually without life at all. But one
of the things that the Lord does is He shows us that sin, our
condition, is like being thirsty and hungry. And so, So when we
look at these things this morning, I want you to think about your
own condition. Are you thirsty? I remember when
I was going to another church in the Bay Area, we had a lot
of people who would come by and ask for help one way or another.
And a lady came to me because I was a teacher there. And so she was directed to me
and she came to me and she asked me for some help. And I said,
I didn't know what to do. I really didn't have an answer.
So I asked the Lord for some guidance. And I, you know, as
I'm sort of praying and asking the Lord to help, I asked her,
I said, what do you really need? What do you really want more
than anything else? What's the one thing that you
need? And she described the situation in her home, how her adult children
were taking advantage of her. And she just said, I really want
to be respected by my children. I told her, well, I really can't
help you. I don't have that kind of help
here. The only one thing I have is
the help that God gives to sinners from the scripture. So another
analogy that I thought of too is when I was completely, completely
different kind of thing. When I was young, about the third
or fourth grade, maybe eight or nine years old, I remember
my dad had, there were some horses on our property. We lived in
Redding and it was very hot and dry there. And we didn't have
a well at the time. He had to go to the creek and
siphon the water into a big barrel. And he took the barrel up to
the horse to drink. And this is a big barrel, you
know, that they water animals with. I'd never seen a horse
drink before. And that horse stuck his nose
down in that water, that barrel of water. And I could actually
see with every time the horse took a draw from that water,
the level in the tank went down a couple of inches. And I was
amazed that the horse could drink so much in such with almost effortlessly. I looked at his belly. I thought,
man, he must have a large capacity for water. He's thirsty. Well,
those two things are given to you by illustration because the
Lord wants us to understand the condition of our soul. All these
things that describe our situation as sinners in a physical sense,
the plague, The disease, our lameness, our blindness, our
being half dead, possessed by devils, or even dead. All those
things really only go so far. Our true condition in our soul
is so bad that God uses those things with which we're very
familiar in order to teach us our condition. Now when we look
at this verse here in John chapter 19, we're really looking at the
Lord Jesus Christ who cried to his father, I thirst. Remember,
he had been with his disciples at the Last Supper in the upper
room somewhere in the evening. And I don't know what time it
was when he left there, but that was the last time he ate or drank
in his physical body. Perhaps it was 10 p.m. The rest
of the night, first he went to the garden. There he sweat. And
his sweat was as great drops of blood falling to the ground.
His body was covered with sweat and blood. Then the soldiers
came and led him away to Annas and Caiaphas, the high priest.
And they questioned and interrogated him. And finally they condemned
him themselves. They spit in his face. They hit him. They put a rag
over his face and punched him in the face. And then they led
him away to Pilate very early in the morning. It had to be
probably before 6 a.m. Pilate interrogated him, and
being frustrated and not sure what to do, trying to get rid
of the whole problem, he sent him off to Herod and his men.
And Herod and his men also interrogated him and mocked him. All this
time he didn't have anything to eat or drink. They sent him
back to Pilate. The Jews demanded that they crucify
him, but before that, with Pilate reasoning with them about his
innocence and finally saying, okay, I'm going to beat him.
So he took him out and had him whipped. And then after that,
he did, he gave him over to their will, and he sent him off to
be crucified. And his soldiers took the Lord Jesus, and they
stripped him of his clothes, and they spit in his face also.
And they took a reed and put it in his hand, and they first
put a crown of thorns on his head, and they took that reed
out of his hand like a scepter, and they beat him on the head
with it. And then they gave him a cross to carry and made him
march with that cross on his back. They called another man,
Simon, who was there, Simon of Cyrene, and they made him carry
the cross to the hill. And there they stretched him
out and nailed him to the cross. This was about noon when they
nailed him to the cross. So all that time, all night,
and all that day, all the blood and all the sweat, and the tears,
he was crying in his soul out to God. All that time, he didn't
have anything to drink and there he hung on the cross. But after
he was there on the cross, though he was thirsty in his body, that
wasn't the real thirst that he experienced. Really, it was just
an outward representation of the thirst that he had in his
soul. Just like our diseases and the things that come against
us in our body are just really a reflection of the condition
of our souls before God. And so the Lord hangs on the
cross, and after the sky went dark for three hours, remember
that, from noon till 3 p.m. the sky was dark, middle of the
day. And at the end of that, out of
the darkness, the Lord cries, as we looked at last week, my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Here the Lord who had done
no sin, had no sin, knew no sin, was without sin. He cries out,
why have you forsaken me? He trusted God, he obeyed his
Father, yet he was forsaken. And why? Because God imputed,
charged him with the sins of his people. And he bore them
as his own. He owned them as his own. He
confessed them as his sins before God and felt the guilt before
God in his conscience and the shame of them. All of his outward
afflictions were afflictions God determined to bring upon
sinners and punished him in the place of his people. So everything
that happened to him was precisely what God wanted to have happen
to him because it was the penalty of God against sinners for their
sin. And these were the sins of God's
people. As the Old Testament priest would confess the sins
of the people over the head of the goat, transferring their
sins to the goat and send that goat off into the wilderness.
The Lord Jesus confessed the sins of his people as his own. He, the Lamb of God, and he bore
the penalty for those sins in his own self on the cross. Now,
at the end of that three hours of darkness, having cried, My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? There was still some scriptures
that needed to be fulfilled, and he knew those scriptures,
and he came to do the will of God, and so in fulfillment of
that scripture, he himself cried out, I thirst. Because it was
written in Psalm chapter 69 and verse 21, they gave me also gall
for my drink and vinegar for my thirst. That's what he said. He realized they hadn't done
that yet, so he cried out, I thirst. And that cry was a real cry.
He really did thirst in his body. But more importantly, he thirsted
in his soul. And you know what thirst is,
and we've all experienced thirst. There's nothing more satisfying
than taking a glass of water when you're thirsty and just
drinking it down. On a hot day, you've been working,
maybe you've been without water, or you've been on a long walk
in the hot sun and just been away from water. When we were
kids, we would drink out of stagnant pools of water because we were
so thirsty. We didn't care that there was moss on it. You're
thirsty, it's hot. In Psalm chapter 42 it says this,
God draws several comparisons in scripture to this matter of
thirst. And this one in Psalm 42 is actually
the prayer of the Lord Jesus as He hangs on the cross. Because
the Psalms really are an account of what our Lord Jesus did and
suffered, and all the glory that followed that. He says in Psalm
42, verse 1, as the heart, or as the deer, panteth after the
water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. That's the
thirst he had. My soul thirsteth for God, for
the living God. When shall I come and appear
before God? My tears have been my meat day
and night. And while they continually saying
to me, where is thy God? Because He hung on the cross
and they mocked Him. If you really are the Son of God, if you really
are the Chosen One of God, the Christ of God, if you truly trust
Him as you say, where is He? He's allowed you to be taken
by us, and put on the cross, and made a mock, and made a scandal,
really. And so, he says, this is what
they would say, where is thy God? And so he's crying out here,
as the deer pants for the water brooks. Now, if you've seen those
movies where deer in Africa, they go to the water tentatively,
knowing that there's lions and other things around that would
take them and eat them, and yet they're thirsty. And they go
there at the time of day when they get water. But they go there
very carefully. But they pant after the water,
and then the deer is satisfied. And he lies down in the cool
of nearby that water knowing that he has all he wants to drink.
And here the Lord Jesus is saying, my soul pants after God, the
living God. My soul thirsts for Him because
God had forsaken him. He had felt in himself the forsaking
of God. Look at Psalm chapter 32 with
me. There's a reason for thirst, and the Lord Jesus experienced
this reason. This thirst for this reason.
We experience it, so we know something about it. We know something
about physical pain and suffering. We know something about this.
But you know that people, all of us, grow up in this world,
live in this world, and we seek after things. In seeking after
things, we don't realize it, but it's because we have a thirst.
A thirst that can only be satisfied in a spiritual sense. And yet
we don't realize it's a spiritual thirst. We don't know how to
satisfy that thirst. And so we go about doing everything
in a physical sense in order to satisfy it. And it actually
leads to no satisfaction at all. We seek for things. We seek for
money. We seek for pleasures. We seek for the philosophies
of men. We seek for comfort. We seek
all these things. And at the end of it all, there's
something in our souls that's completely unsatisfied. Because
physical things, all that are in this world, can never satisfy
our deep unmet need of soul. But there's something else that
causes thirst in our souls. And this is what David experienced.
Remember his sin with Bathsheba? He committed adultery with this
woman. It wasn't his wife. It was another man's wife. In
fact, it was the wife of his faithful servant Uriah who was
out fighting the wars for the king. And so after the adultery,
David committed with her. He wants to cover it up. So he
puts Uriah in the foremost part of the battle in order that he
might die. And he died. He murdered Uriah. That was a
great sin, wasn't it? Murder and adultery by the king,
the one who was a man after God's own heart, who was a picture
of Christ, and yet he committed this great sin. That's what this
psalm is saying here. Chapter 32, verse 1, it says,
David, now this is spoken by David after the prophet was sent
by God, Nathan the prophet was sent by God to David to open
up to him that he was a sinner. He, even though he had done this,
he still wasn't confessing his sin to God. He thought it was
hidden. And he had suppressed it. And he was feeling the pain
of that. And that's what he says here
in Psalm 32 verse 1. He says, First, blessed is he
whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed
is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. Doesn't charge
him with sin. And in whose spirit there is
no guile. No deceit. Verse 3. But here's David's experience. When I kept silence, my bones
waxed old through my roaring all the day long. Because as
the bones are the structure of the body, so the soul is really
the substance of a man's life. God breathed into Adam and he
became a living soul. The breath of God in us The spirit
that's given to us by God is that part of us that lives. When
we die in our bodies, our soul is separated from our body. We
have no life. We're just like an empty shell, a glove with
no hand. But here David says, my bones.
My bones, Wax told. He's describing the experience
of his soul and he uses this analogy. In verse 4, "...for
day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned
into the drought of summer." What was moist, because he had
an open access to God, David had this, until he sinned he
realized that he was estranged from God, only he didn't acknowledge
it. And yet he felt in himself this
separation because that's what sin does. It separates us in
our conscience and in all that we are. We don't pray because
we know we're sinners. We're afraid to come to God or
we think that He won't hear us. And we don't know how to come.
We don't know the way. And we have no light and we feel in
our souls what David felt here. His bones were dried up. His
soul was famished. It was like in a drought in a
wilderness where there's no water. He didn't know the way, like
a man on the Sahara Desert, sand in every direction, wind blowing,
dry, no water, no strength to get water from, you don't know
where to start, where to start looking or where to start digging.
You're just without it. And so, the Lord Jesus, when
He hung on the cross, it says in 2 Corinthians 5.21 that He
was made sin for us. He was made sin. So He felt here
what David felt when that sin was charged to him. The moisture
that he formerly knew was dried up in him. And he felt the forsaking
by God and he himself cried out for God as we just read in Psalm
42. My soul thirsteth for God. Why
didn't he have the sense of God's presence? It was because of the
sin that he was charged with. He had to feel it. He had to
bear it in Himself, in His own body on the tree. He bore our
sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins,
might live to righteousness. That's the thirst of our substitute. Look at Psalm chapter 22. Here
is a psalm that's a prayer of David. I mean, it's a prayer of our
Lord Jesus Christ. It was spoken by David, but it's a prayer of
our Lord Jesus Christ. You can see in verse 1 of Psalm
22, the very words he spoke on the cross. My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me? And why are you so far from helping
me and from the words of my roaring? But look down in verse 14. He says, I am poured out like
water. And all my bones are out of joint.
It means that the strength that was there before is just like
water. It has no strength. It just pours
out all over the ground. That's what he felt like. I'm
in despair. I poured out like water. All
my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted
in the midst of my bowels." In other words, the heat, the fierce
heat of God's wrath in his soul made his heart melt and he felt
like he was without strength. And verse 15, my strength, my
strength is dried up like a potsherd, like a piece of pottery out in
the baked sun. And my tongue cleaveth to my
jaws, and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. That's
what the Lord Jesus experienced on the cross. That famished thirst
of soul for God, because he felt God's forsaking in himself. And
why did he feel that way? Because he was made sin for us.
He who knew no sin. The just suffered for the unjust
that he might bring us to God. And then remember that account
that Jesus gave in Luke chapter 16 of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man lived all his life
sumptuously, dressed in purple. He had everything he wanted.
He stepped over Lazarus on the way out of his door, who sat
there begging with sores all over his body. The dogs licked
his sores. The rich man just went his way. And then the rich
man died. People were surprised when he
died. And in hell, he waked up. He woke up. And he cried. He was fully cognizant at that
point of what sin was and who God was. And in verse 24 of Luke
chapter 16, this is what he said. He said, he cried and he said,
Father Abraham, which is just another phrase for God the Father
in the parable. He says, have mercy on me. And
send Lazarus, this beggar, because Lazarus also died. Lazarus died
just like the rich man died. Send Lazarus, because he saw
Lazarus was in the bosom of Abraham. He says, would you just send
that beggar, Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger
in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. You see, that's what the thirst
that the Lord Jesus is describing. It's the wrath of God in his
soul. This man felt it in hell, and
all he wanted was just put the tip of your finger in water and
bring it to me. What he's really saying spiritually
is that I need a word from God because the word of God is compared
to water in scripture. It's compared to water and that
word is the gospel. And so this man had no word from
God, no gospel. He was separated. He couldn't,
he had no hope. He was without hope, without
support, like in a bottomless pit. The flames of the torment
of his conscience in hell made him so sensitive to all that
and he was in torment and there was nothing that could be done.
He was left there. Abraham told him, you can't cross
over. No one can cross from here to there or from there to here.
And so, the Lord Jesus Christ experienced this in His soul
when He hung on the cross. This is the thirst of our substitute. The thirst of our substitute.
But there's a thirst that He experienced. The thirst that
He experienced was a thirst that He experienced for a short time,
that we might not thirst for everlasting time. There's no
such thing as everlasting time. It just means there's no end
to it. Christ suffered thirst then, that we might not suffer
thirst now, but might drink from the rivers of the water of life.
And that's what I want to look at next, is the thirst of a sinner
for his Savior. Many places in Scripture speak
about this. The first one that I found in
Scripture was in Exodus chapter 17. In Exodus chapter 17, if
we read this, which we're not going to do, but I'm going to
take you there and read a little bit from it. Moses, God commanded Moses
to lead the children of Israel in the wilderness from the place
called the Wilderness of Sin, S-I-N, to a place called Rephidim. Well, you know what sin is. Moses
was to lead them from sin to Rephidim, which means rests.
Plural. Rests. The word rest in the plural. But they went to Rephidim and
when they got there, there was no water. And so the people all
complained that there was no water. They couldn't find any
water there. And so they actually accused
Moses, and I'll read this to you in verse 2. It says, "...wherefore
the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water, that
we may drink." And Moses said to them, Why chide ye with me?
Wherefore do you tempt the Lord? A little later it says, They
tempted him by saying, Is God among us, or no? In other words,
they completely doubted God. They had no faith in the Lord. And they said, Is he even among
us? After he had brought them out
of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and into the wilderness, and
here they are, and he's leading them along by Moses. And they
said, Is the Lord among us? They tempted God. And the people
thirsted there for water. And the people murmured against
Moses and said, Wherefore is it that thou hast brought us
up out of Egypt to kill us with our children and our cattle with
thirst? This is the reason you brought
us out here? To kill us with thirst? They had no appreciation
for the fact that God had saved them from the bondage of Egypt,
from the rule of Pharaoh, and actually had delivered them to
serve Him. They had no interest in that.
All they could see was their immediate thirst. They didn't
trust Him, like Jesus did on the cross. And Moses, in verse
4, cried to the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people?
They be almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses,
Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders
of Israel, and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take
it in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee
there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock,
and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.
And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And
he called the name of the place Massa and Meribah, because the
chiding of the children of Israel, because they tempted the Lord,
saying, Is the Lord among us or no? In 1 Corinthians chapter
10, the Apostle Paul says the rock represents Christ. Moses,
we know, represents the law. And so the law led the people,
by God's command, from sin to Rephidim, the rest, place of
rest. But there was no water there,
because God's law What is God's law? It's that covenant by which
we, by our own personal obedience, make ourselves righteous before
God. Acceptable to God. And God blesses
us by what we do. That's what the law represents.
You do this and then you live. If you break the law, you die. You're under the curse. That's
what the law represents. Nothing wrong with the law. Unless
you're a sinner, and we're all sinners, so the law is actually
a ministration, a service of death to us. But Moses, God commanded
Moses to lead the children of Israel, and the children of Israel
represent all those the Lord saves, the Lord's people, this
nation. And when they got there, they
all complained because by nature we don't believe Christ. And
Moses could lead them to this place of rest, but he couldn't
actually give them water. that water had to come from Christ. But Moses hit the rock showing
that Christ had to suffer the curse of God's law in order for
us to receive salvation and life. And so Moses hits the rock, the
water flows out, waters the entire nation and their cattle too.
And this is what God is teaching us. Even though Moses obeyed
God and led them to this place, until Moses pointed them to Christ
and Moses, by the law, cursed Christ on the cross, then we
could not be saved. Look at Isaiah chapter 12. That's
what this Old Testament event is meant to teach us. The Apostle
Paul tells us that in a very short outline in 1 Corinthians
10. But look at Isaiah chapter 12. This is an amazingly comforting
chapter. Isaiah chapter 12, it says, "...and
in that day..." That day he's speaking of is the day when we
are saved. The Lord saves us, each one individually. This is the experience of every
believer when the Lord shows us like David, shows us our sin,
the thirst of our soul, and leads us to Christ. This is what he
says, "...in that day thou shalt say, O Lord..." I will praise
thee. Though thou wast angry with me,
thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me. Behold, God
is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid,
for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song, and he also has
become my salvation." Look at verse 3. Therefore with joy shall
you draw water out of the wells of salvation." Now what God says
in scripture is that to a thirsty sinner, salvation is like a well
of water. It's like a fountain. It's like
a river of water of life. Salvation in Christ is that to
a thirsty sinner. A sinner whose conscience has
been seared Not seared, but has been made to feel the heat of
God's wrath. Knowing he's guilty. Knowing
he can't do anything to bring to God the obedience God requires. And he has no hope. And he's
left thirsty in his soul. And he's left as a sinner before
God. Except he's been brought to that
by God. When he's been brought to that
point, then the Lord opens up this well of salvation and teaches
us that salvation is in Christ. That's what Moses did when he
hit the rock. That's what happened here. But
look on. There's other places in Scripture.
Look at Isaiah chapter 43. These are amazing. How God satisfies the thirst
of sinners from His Word. In Isaiah 43, beginning at verse
18, he says this, "...remember ye not the former things..."
It's not a question. It's telling them, don't remember
the former things. "...neither consider the things
of old." Don't remember the former things.
In other words, don't remember... That former way that you came
to God by your own works. Don't remember the things that
would separate you and God. Those sins that would separate
you. He's going to tell them why. Verse 19. Behold, I do a
new thing. A new thing you've never seen
before so that when you see it you'll recognize it. This is
new. This is amazing. The new thing is this. In verse
19. He says, Behold, I will do a
new thing, now it shall spring forth, shall you know it? I will
even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. So,
what God is telling them is, forget the former things, I'm
going to make a new thing. away in the wilderness. The way
in the wilderness is something that you need because unless
you have a compass or something, you're just in the middle of
a sand, sand, I mean it's just sand everywhere. The wind is
blowing, you can't see half the time. You don't know where to
go. And God says, I'll make a way in the wilderness. What is the
wilderness? It's the wild country. It's the place where there's
just these wild animals and there's no way, there's nothing to eat,
nothing to drink. You can't live there. And He
says, I'll make rivers in the desert. In other words, what
God is saying here is that where there is no way, He's going to
make a way. Where there is no water, He's going to bring rivers
in the desert. This is what the law never could
do. The law told us you have to obey
in order to have life, but the gospel tells us where you've
disobeyed. God has given a gift, a gift
of righteousness, worked out by Christ, and now that righteousness
is rewarded by God for what Christ has done to sinners with everlasting
life. That's an amazing thing, isn't
it? That's called a river of life. And so it's everlasting
salvation, like we just read in Isaiah chapter 12. He says
in verse 20, "...the beasts of the field shall honor me, the
dragons and the owls, because I give waters in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert to give drink to my people, my chosen."
What are these wild beasts of the field? What are these dragons
and owls? Well, the Jews considered the
Gentiles to be beasts. Wild, ignorant, stupid, made
to be taken and destroyed beasts. That's what the Jews thought
of Gentiles. In Psalm 72, or 73, I think the psalmist says,
I was like a beast before thee. He compares himself to that,
knowing his sin. And here, God is saying that
he's going to save, actually save, those, the Jews, considered
to be beasts. Dragons and owls and these wild
beasts. That's what we are. We're wild,
untamed beasts. We're unbelieving, we're sinful,
we're idolaters, we're everything that would cause God to cast
us off. And He says, the wild beasts
and dragons and owls are going to do what? They are going to
honor Me. Because when God shows us His
salvation in Christ, what does it cause us to do? Worship God
in our spirit, in the truth He has revealed to us in the Gospel.
This is the story of salvation here. God is going to make known
Christ and Him crucified to His people. That's what it says here.
His chosen. My people. And they're going to see it and
they're going to say, amazing grace. That there's grace for
sinners in Christ. Life everlasting. With no contribution
from me, He's done it all. The one who thirsted on Calvary's
cross, thirsted there in order that I might have the water of
life freely. And so he says, I'm going to
do this, in verse 21. This people have I formed for
myself, they shall show forth my praise. That's what all, the
Lord, when the Lord saves someone, they always show forth His praise.
They're objects of His grace. How could they not? He saved
a sinner. Every sinner in the scripture
that the Lord saved. You look at that and say, amazing.
The thief on the cross. David, who sinned with Bathsheba,
we just read about. Whoever it is in scripture, it's
amazing, isn't it? The woman out of whom seven devils
were cast. The man out of whom a legion was cast. All these
people become trophies of God's grace on a shelf as jewels in
His crown. These are the ones the Lord saved.
This is what the Lord does. He saves sinners who don't deserve
to be saved. Who in themselves are the enemies
of God. And He brings them out because
of His grace. Go on, He says. Verse 22. But
thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob, but thou hast been weary
of me, O Israel. Thou hast not brought me the
small cattle of thy burnt offerings, neither hast thou honored me
with thy sacrifice. I have not caused thee to serve
with an offering, nor wearied thee with incense." He's saying
that even though you should have worshipped me, What you did in
bringing those Old Testament sacrifices was just superficial
outward external worship. In your heart you didn't understand
that it was speaking of Christ and Him crucified. So you never
loved God. You never really brought to Him
a sacrifice from the heart. In fact, in verse 24, Thou hast
bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast Thou filled
me with the fat of Thy sacrifices, but Thou hast made me to serve
with Thy sins. Thou hast wearied me with Thine
iniquities. The people were idolaters, so
they would actually take the sacrifices God said to bring
to Himself and they would offer it to idols. You've made me to
serve with your sins and your iniquities. They were immoral.
They were idolaters. These are the people that the
Lord is going to save. Look at verse 25. After describing
them like this, complete heathen, he says, I, even I, am he that
blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not
remember thy sins. How does he do that? In the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ, it says
in 1 John 1.7, through the blood of His Son, we are cleansed from
all sin. Through the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. There is no remission of sins apart from blood, and
only Christ's blood could cleanse us from sin. And so He says here,
to those people described in these verses who didn't know
Him, who didn't call upon Him, who were like the children, who
didn't have water, who complained and didn't believe God, those
are the ones God says, find nothing in you worth saving. And yet
I'm going to do it for my own sake. I've chosen you. I've chosen
to bless you. And the blessing I'm going to
bring upon you is I'm going to give you the water of everlasting
life. Salvation in Christ. I'm going
to wash away your sins. Blot them out so there's no accounting
of what you've done. I'm going to release you from
the charges. I'm going to set you free. I'm
going to forgive you. I'm going to pardon you. I'm
going to actually give you The obedience, credit you with the
obedience of Christ so that His righteousness becomes yours and
you stand before me holy without blame, reconciled to God in peace,
His justice satisfied in the death of His Son. I'm going to
do that for my own sake. For my own sake. Because there's
no other sake for which I should do it. God did it for his own
sake. For the praise of the glory of
his grace. In verse 26 he says this to us. These sinners, the Lord says,
he says, put me in remembrance. Let us plead together. Declare
thou that thou mayest be justified. What is he saying here? Take
the gospel that God has given us of Christ and Him crucified
and bring it back to Him in your heart now. On your lips with
words. And take His word and ask Him
to do what He's promised to do. Put me in remembrance. God doesn't
need to be put in remembrance. But He tells us to bring His
own message. The truth He's told us. And bring it to Himself. Because
this is what he loves to hear. He loves to hear about what his
son has done. And for his son's sake he forgives
sinners. Takes all their sins from them
and washes them. That's water, isn't it? Doesn't
that quench the thirst of a sinner? Doesn't that lift somehow the
thirst in your soul and cause you to think, could it be that
God would actually forgive me of all my sins and receive me
as holy and just and righteous before Him for the sake of Christ? Is that possible? Now look at
John chapter 7. John, the Gospel of John, chapter
7. Here, the Lord Jesus answers
that question. Is it possible that me, a guilty and condemned sinner,
one who can never do right, I can't bring to God a payment for my
sin? I can't bring to Him an obedience
that He can accept? If I were to Every attempt on
my part to try to make up for my sins would only be an affront,
an insult, to God for killing His Son. But here he says in
John 7, verse 37, the context here in John 7 is the Feast of
Tabernacles. or the Feast of Booth. There
were three feasts in the year that Israelites were supposed
to attend. Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast
of Ingathering, which was Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles,
or the Feast of Booth. You can read about that in Leviticus
23. But here they are. This is the Feast of Tabernacles.
And on this day, the seventh month of the year, the end of
the harvest had happened. All the Israelites were to dwell
in these in these things called booths that were made out of
palm branches and tents to remind them that God brought them out
of Egypt and when they came out of Egypt they dwelt in these
tents. Now all these feasts really picture our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Passover, that's when God saw the blood. and passed over
those in the house, because he looked at the blood and didn't
account to them the destruction, the sins and the destruction
that went with it, but he looked at the blood and was satisfied.
That's the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the first Feast. The second
Feast was the one where they took the first fruits from the
field, the first sheaf of the first fruits from the field and
waved it before the Lord. And fifty days later, was called
Pentecost, the feast of ingathering, because God would gather in His
people 50 days after Christ rose from the dead. He's the first
fruit. And by the Spirit of God sent to preach the gospel, God
would bring His people, who were redeemed by Christ's blood, to
life and faith in Christ and save them. They were gathered
in. And then the Feast of Tabernacles
here is the one where it represents our dwelling in Christ and therefore
we rest in Him. But here, in verse 37, you know
what a feast is. Plenty to eat, plenty to drink,
right? People all around, the crowds. And in this chapter,
you see that the Pharisees, led by the Pharisees, are against
Christ. They're trying to kill Him. They're trying to find a
way to kill Him. His own brethren tell Him, go up to the feast
if you want to be known. They didn't understand Him at
all, didn't believe Him at all yet. But in verse 37, in the
last day, that great day of the feast. Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. What an amazing thing. In the
middle of a feast? Who's thirsty? I'm not even hungry. I can't even think about it.
But here the Lord Jesus Christ stands up at the end of this
third feast, representing all the ceremonies that God required
the Israelites to keep. He stands up. If you're tired,
and empty. You've tried religion and all
the ceremonies that it requires of you, even from God's law,
and yet in your soul you're thirsty. Then come unto me and drink."
What does that mean? Come unto Him and drink. Verse
38. He that believeth on me As the scripture has said, out of
his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spake
of the spirit which they that believe on him should receive
for the Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus was
not yet glorified. When the Lord Jesus rose from
the dead and He had obtained eternal redemption for His people,
they were released by God from the charges of His law and from
the bondage of it. The law was fulfilled and satisfied
and honored by Christ in His death and obedience. Then Christ,
on His throne in glory, sent His Spirit in order to give His
people that salvation. Life in their souls, faith in
Him. And He describes that faith in verse 38 when He says, "...he
that believeth on Me." That's coming to Him and drinking from
Christ. You who thirst. You who are in
your souls without God. You feel the pain of your sin
and the drought in your souls because of it. And you have no
way out and you think there's no hope for a sinner like me.
There's no hope. Because all that I've tried to
do, I've failed at. And my sins rise up and condemn
me before God. Christ says, come unto me and
drink. And drink. And the fountain,
the river, the well of salvation. There's so much water that you
can never exhaust it. It's a river in the wilderness.
There's so much, there's an abundance. And you know what water is, what
it does? It refreshes, doesn't it? It's
just so satisfying. You drink and it's like, oh man,
that felt so good. And then it also gives life.
It gives life to herbs, it gives life to trees, it gives life
to the deer. Everything depends on water.
The water of life. And so the Lord says, come unto
me and drink, because sinners find all that they need in Christ. This is God's command. This is
the Lord Jesus Christ saying, you who are thirsty, if you think,
could God actually receive me for Christ's sake? Could He actually
forgive all my sins? Could He give me eternal life? I don't deserve it, and I don't
know if I can have it. Jesus says, come to me and drink. Take of the water of life freely."
Revelation 22, look at this. Take of the water of life freely.
He says in Revelation 22, verse 17. I want you to see this. Because
the other thing about water, not only is there an abundance,
but water is free. It's free, isn't it? It's free. Here he says, verse 17. Revelation
22 17 and the spirit that's the spirit of God and the bride that's
the church of God those those who have been saved by the Lord
say come and let him that heareth say come I heard that there's
a I heard that there's salvation in Christ for sinners and I feel
myself to be the worst of all sinners God says you say come
And let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take
the water of life freely. Freely. There's no cost here. Isaiah 55 says, Ho, every one
that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money,
come ye, buy and eat, yea, come, buy wine and milk, without money
and without price. That's what the Lord says to
do here. Hear, hear that your soul may live. Hear the gospel,
what God says. Everything God requires to be
satisfied with sinners, to save them from their sins, has been
accomplished in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now come, look upon Him,
take, drink, and find in your own soul full satisfaction. God
is satisfied with His Son. He delights in His Son. Therefore,
you can find satisfaction in Him as a sinner. But don't look
somewhere else. Don't go back to the feasts.
Don't look to the law. The law points you to Christ.
The law smoked Christ that you might have water. And God opens
up those rivers in the desert for sinners. He's the one, for
His own sake, who has blot out our sin. Now, one last place.
Look at John chapter 4. You know the story in John chapter
4. I'll give you the outline. A woman, Jesus was on his way. The disciples had left to go
another place to get food. And Jesus is sitting on the well
in a place called Samaria. A place of ill repute. The Jews hated the Samaritans
because the Samaritans were really a half-breed people. made up
of idolaters that the king in the Old Testament had brought
out of these idolatrous countries to populate that land after he
took Samaria from the king of Israel. But in any case, here's
Jesus. He's thirsty. He's weary from
his journey. He sits on a well in this desert-like place called
Samaria, hot and tired. And then a woman comes, a woman
of Samaria happens to come. It was about the middle of the
day. And she comes with a water pot to get water. Strange. Most
people come to the water, to the well, in the morning or the
evening when it's cooler. But she came in the middle of
the day when no one else would be there. But she found Christ
there. She saw Him. And when he saw
her coming to the well, he said to her in verse 7, look at this. He said, "...there cometh a woman
of Samaria to draw water." Jesus said to her, "...give me to drink."
Can you imagine that? The Lord of Glory, sitting on
a well, thirsty, because in his human body he was suffering just
like we suffer. All the weaknesses of a sin-infected
body, he had to bear those. He was without sin in himself,
but his body was subject to the weaknesses that we are subject
to. He was thirsty. But he looked at this woman and
he said, give me to drink. She got all strange with him. She came to this well for water. She thirsted in her soul, but
she didn't know that thirst was in her soul. So she came for
water. She had all kinds of problems.
And so when Jesus said this to her, He said, She said to him, in verse 9, Then said the woman
of Samaria to him, How is it? that thou, being a Jew, askest
drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have
no dealings with the Samaritans, and the men had no dealings with
the women either." So she's really surprised. What are you talking
to me for? Jesus answered and said to her,
If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
Give me to drink, You would have asked Him, and He would have
given you living water." What is the gift of God? Well, God
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That's the gift of God, is Christ.
In 2 Corinthians, He says, Thanks be unto God, chapter 9, verse
15, he says, thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift. God gave His Son, He gave His
Son that we might live through Him, 1 John 4, 9. He gave His
Son to be the propitiation for our sins, to make satisfaction
for them in Himself. God gave His Son. If you knew
the gift of God, you would have asked me, Jesus said, and I would
have given you living water. Well, without reading through
the rest of the chapter, what you'll see here is that there's
this interaction between the woman and Jesus. And all the
time, she says to him, well, how are you going to give me
living water? Are you greater than Jacob, our father, who dug
this well? You don't even have anything
to draw with. And Jesus said, whoever drinks of this water,
shall thirst again." Now, this water really reflects everything
that we as sinners go to in order to satiate our thirst. Everything
in this world, whether it be pleasure, or money, or things,
or power, or prestige, or philosophy, or intellectual exercises, or
whatever it is, acceptance by men, all those things leave us
without anything. It's like there's an indelible
heading over every well in this world that says this, whoever
drinks of this water is going to thirst again. But the water
that I give shall be in him a well of water." So that's what the
Lord is speaking about here. Himself. Himself. And so He goes
on discoursing with her. And at the end of it, at the
end of the discourse, look what happens. In verses, chapter 4,
He says in verse 28. Actually, go back up in verse
25. The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah cometh, who is called
Christ. When He has come, He will tell
us all things. In verse 26, Jesus said to her,
I that speak unto thee am He. I'm Christ. I'm the one. Christ,
the Son of God, reveals Himself to this woman. And you know what
she did? She had come there for water. And she left. But she left her water pot. She
wasn't thirsty anymore for that water. She didn't even think
about that water. She only thought, I have just
seen and heard from the Son of God, Christ, the Chosen of God,
the Savior of the world. And He had given her everlasting
life in her soul. She was satisfied, believing
Christ. That's what Jesus said in John
7, whoever believes on me. But notice here, this is the
thirst of the Savior for His beloved people. Because in John,
in verse 7 where we read, remember what Jesus said to her first?
He said, give me to drink. Now look at verse 34. The disciples
had come to Him and said, Master, we went away to get this food.
We know you haven't eaten or drank. Eat! And Jesus said in
verse 34, my meat, I'm sorry. He says, in verse 33. I'm sorry, verse 31. In the meanwhile,
his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat. But he said to them, I have meat
to eat that you know not of. Therefore said the disciples
one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat? Someone
else must have brought him some food. Verse 34, no. Jesus said to them, My meat is
to do the will of Him that sent Me and to finish His work. And
what is that will? Well, look at chapter 6 and verse
37. He says this, Chapter 6, verse 37, "...all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven,
not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me,
and this is the Father's will which has sent me." that of all
which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise
it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that
sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth
on him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up
at the last day." So here's what I'm saying. This is what scripture
is saying. When Christ said to this woman,
give me to drink, it corresponded... To that proverb in Proverbs 5.15
where it says, drink water out of your own cistern. A cistern
is a well. He's exhorting men, don't go
to another woman seeking satisfaction that God has intended for you
to have only from your wife. That intimacy is for you and
your wife alone in marriage. Don't go there. Drink water out
of your own well, your own cistern. The Lord Jesus asked this woman,
give me to drink. Why would he ask her to drink?
Because she was one of his. He desired a drink from her.
But what was that drink? It was this, when the Lord Jesus
Christ made himself known to her. and gave to her eternal
life by himself, enduring the thirst on the cross, so that
she might not thirst, but have this water of life, in satisfying
her, in giving her life, in giving himself for her, in giving himself
to her. It gave Him drink in His soul.
What satisfies the Savior is saving His sinners. Those He's
chosen. Those He redeemed. And bringing
them to Himself. Remember what He says in John
17. He says, Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given
Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which
Thou hast given Me. This is our Savior. He says to
His beloved bride, He says, Thou art all fair, My love. All fair. I see no spot in thee. He desires
His people. He desires them and He has them
when He saves them. This is how He drinks. The thirst
of the Savior was as our substitute, that we might drink as thirsty
sinners from Him, and that He might be satisfied in giving
us this salvation. Let's pray. Father, thank you
that our Savior cried from the cross, I thirst. And thank you
that in his substitution, he has made a well of salvation
for us to drink from. And thank you, Lord, that we
see His delight is with the sons of men to save His people from
their sins. Let this be an encouragement
to us. Give us your own spirit that
we might go to Him in faith, believing Him only, not trusting
in ourselves, but resting in His finished work and delighting
in it. And like those wild beasts of
the wilderness, honoring him, worshiping him, because he's
worthy and he alone is worthy. Thank you for this gospel that
saves us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.