19:1-18 Little did Pilate think with what holy regard these sufferings of Christ would, in after-ages, be thought upon and spoken of by the best and greatest of men. It showed that he had laid down his life of himself. We would fain lift thy name on high in grateful remembrance of the depths to which thou didst descend! Then I will thirst with him and not complain, I will suffer with him and not murmur." 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." Yes, he loves to be with his people; they are the garden where he walks for refreshment, and their love, their graces, are the milk and wine which he delights to drink. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. 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? 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." His most fruitful years of ministry were at the New Park Street and later the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit in London. Can they be compared to generous wine? There have been times, and the days may come again, when faithfulness to Christ has entailed exclusion from what is called "society." There is bread upon your table to-day, and there will be at least a cup of cold water to refresh you. 1 So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. 1089 - The Man Greatly Beloved . He came to save, and man denied him hospitality: at the first there was no room for him at the inn, and at the last there was not one cool cup of water for him to drink; but when he thirsted they gave him vinegar to drink. It was pain that dried his mouth and made it like an oven, till he declared, in the language of the twenty-second psalm, "My tongue cleaveth to my jaws." Brother, thirst I pray you to have your workpeople saved. How near akin the thirsty Saviour is to us; let us love him more and more. The sinful find our conversation distasteful; in our pursuits the carnal have no interest; things dear to us are dross to worldlings, while things precious to them are contemptible to us. There are more unlikely things than that you will be dead before next Sunday. After our Lord Jesus Christ had been formally condemned by Pilate, our text tells us he was led away. Christians, will you refuse to be cross-bearers for Christ? Come hither, ye lovers of Immanuel, and I will show you this great sight the King of sorrow marching to his throne of grief, the cross. Universal manhood, left to itself, rejects, crucifies, and mocks the Christ of God. John 1 Resources - Multiple Sermons and Commentaries; John 1:12 Multiple Older Commentaries on this verse; . "I thirst, but not as once I did, The vain delights of earth to share; Thy wounds, Emmanuel, all forbid That I should seek my pleasures there. These are silken days, and religion fights not so stern a battle. Jesus paused, and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me; but weep for yourselves and for your children." You must consider Jesus, and not yourself; turn your eye to Christ, the great substitute for sinners, but never dream of trusting in yourselves. This is man's treatment of his Saviour. The sorrow of these good women was a very proper sorrow; Jesus did not by any means forbid it, he only recommended another sorrow as being better; not finding fault with this, but still commending that. He is greatly to be commended and admired, for his sin is said to be seeking after God, and his superstition is a struggling after light. Did I not describe last Sabbath the knotted scourges which fell upon the Saviours back? O my hearers, beware of praising Jesus and denying his atoning sacrifice. Jesus is therefore hunted out of the city, beyond the gate, with the will and force of his oven nation, but he journeys not against his own will; even as the lamb goeth as willingly to the shambles as to the meadow, so doth Christ cheerfully take up his cross and go without the camp. Weep not for him, but for these. Christ was always thirsty to save men, and to be loved of men; and we see a type of his life-long desire when, being weary, he sat thus on the well and said to the woman of Samaria, "Give me to drink." As for yourselves, thirst after perfection. See, it has been blackened with bruises, and stained with the shameful spittle of them that derided him. "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." The last word but one, "It is finished." Even as the hart panteth after the water brooks, our souls would thirst after thee, O God. The Church, the bride of Christ, was there conformed to the image of her Lord; she was there, I say, in Simon, bearing the cross, and in the women weeping and lamenting. Christ was spit upon with shame; sinner, what shame will be yours! Do not let us forget the infinite distance between the Lord of glory on his throne and the Crucified dried up with thirst. He also knew well the terrible joy that comes only through suffering as he lived quite afflicted (both by illness and slander). Amen. 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. Oh, shame that men should find so much applause for Princes and none for the King of kings. One would have said, If he were thirsty he would not tell us, for all the clouds and rains would be glad to refresh his brow, and the brooks and streams would joyously flow at his feet. It is done. 'Tis his cross, and he goes before you as a shepherd goes before his sheep. Lloyd-Jones opens John 19:31-37 to answer that very question. Will your Prince be decorated with honors? ( John 19:1-4) Pilate hopes to satisfy the mob by having Jesus whipped and mocked. 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. Well, beloved, the cross we have to carry is only for a little while at most. You have blessed company; your path is marked with footprints of your Lord. I have sometimes met with persons who have suffered much; they have lost money, they have worked hard all their lives, or they have laid for years upon a bed of sickness, and they therefore suppose that because they have suffered so much in this life, they shall thus escape the punishment of sin hereafter. 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. (1-4) Pilate hopes to satisfy the mob by having Jesus whipped and mocked. It is so with each one of you? Mine is adorned with garments crimsoned with his own blood. Now recollect, if Jesus had not thirsted, every one of us would have thirsted for ever afar off from God, with an impassable gulf between us and heaven. "Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing." He thirsted to pluck us from between the jaws of hell, to pay our redemption price, and set us free from the eternal condemnation which hung over us; and when on the cross the work was almost done his thirst was not assuaged, and could not be till he could say, "It is finished." We ought not to forget the Jews. Say not that the comparison is strained, for in a moment I will withdraw it and present the contrast. We gave him our tears and then grieved him with our sins. 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. He saith, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." The Christian faith and motives for Christian worship are based on the certainty of facts. The spear broke up the very fountains of life; no human body could survive such a wound. 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. 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." You have seen Jesus led away by his enemies; so shall you be dragged away by fiends to the place appointed for you. May we not be half ashamed of our pleasures when he says, "I thirst"? John 19:16 . IV. We are to reckon upon all this, and should the worst befal us, it is to be no strange thing to us. It is the opinion of some commentators that Simon only carried one end of the cross, and not the whole of it. That thirst was caused, perhaps, in part by the loss of blood, and by the fever created by the irritation caused by his four grievous wounds. But ye ask me where is the spouse, the king's daughter fair and beautiful? It seems to me very wonderful that this "I thirst" should be, as it were, the clearance of it all. It was the common place of death. Then the goat was led away by a fit man into the wilderness, and it carried away the sins of the people, so that if they were sought for, they could not be found. John 1 19-51 Spurgeon's Bible Commentary John 1:19-51 John 1:19. Who among us would not willingly pour out his soul unto death if he might but give refreshment to the Lord? I cannot think that natural thirst was all he felt. And yet he placed himself for our sakes into a position of shame and suffering where none would wait upon him, but when he cried, "I thirst," they gave him vinegar to drink. 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! Amid all the anguish of his spirit his last words prove him to have remained fully self-possessed, true to his forgiving nature, true to his kingly office, true to his filial relationship, true to his God, true to his love of the written word, true to his glorious work, and true to his faith in his Father. Jesus is formally condemned to crucifixion, but before he is led away he is given over to the Praetorian guards that those rough legionaries may insult him. He sipped of the vinegar, and he was refreshed, and no sooner has he thrown off the thirst than he shouted like a conqueror, "It is finished," and quitted the field, covered with renown. He wants you brother, he wants you, dear sister, he longs to have you wholly to himself. To-day I invite your attention to another Prince, marching in another fashion through his metropolis. Here you see how the mortal flesh had to share in the agony of the inward spirit. Romanists pretend to know; in fact they know the very spot where Veronica wiped the blessed face with her handkerchief, and found his likeness impressed upon it; we also know very well where that was not done; in fact they know the very spot where Jesus fainted, and if you go to Jerusalem you can see all these different places if you only carry enough credulity with you; but the fact is the city has been so razed, and burned, and ploughed, that there is little chance of distinguishing any of these positions, with the exception, it may be, of Mount Calvary, which being outside the walls may possibly still remain. (John 19:11) Jesus answered, . We do not know what may have been the color of alimony face, but it was most likely black. Oh! Oh! We see in Simon's carrying the cross a picture of what the Church is to do throughout all generations. For him they have no tolerance. But further, my brethren; this, I think, is the great lesson from Christ's being slaughtered without the gate of the city let us go forth, therefore, without the camp, bearing his reproach. 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. He calls for that: will you not give it to him? Every word, therefore, you see teaches us some grand fundamental doctrine of our blessed faith. We may therefore come before him, with all the rest of our race, when God subdues them to repentance by his love, and look on him whom we have pierced, and mourn for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. The Church must suffer, that the gospel may be spread by her means. 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 . I think that Roman soldier meant well, at least well for a rough warrior with his little light and knowledge. and they smote him with their hands. He is indeed "Immanuel, God with us" everywhere. John 18:19-40 - Glory on Trial A. The last expiring word in which he commended his spirit to his Father, is the note of acceptance for himself and for us all. 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. 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. Commentary on John 19:31-37 (Read John 19:31-37) A trial was made whether Jesus was dead. Jesus, being a man, escaped none of the ills which are allotted to man in death. March 1st, 1863 by C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892). Coming fresh from the country, not knowing what was going on, he joined with the mob, and they made him carry the cross. 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." 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. 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." 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. The reed was no mere rush from the brook, it was of a stouter kind, of which easterns often make walkingstaves, the blows were cruel as well as insulting; and the crown was not of straw but thorn, hence it produced pain as well as pictured scorn. We ought all to have a longing for conversions. There were, as you know, seven of those last words, and seven is the number of perfection and fulness; the number which blends the three of the infinite God with the four of complete creation. "I reckon that these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." I tell you, sirs, that yonder malefactor carried his cross and died on it; and you will carry your sorrows, and be damned with them, except you repent. The world has in former days counted it God's service to kill the saints. I cannot say that it is short and sweet, for, alas, it was bitterness itself to our Lord Jesus; and yet out of its bitterness I trust there will come great sweetness to us. My well beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein." 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." He is not allowed to worship with them. I do not know how far it was from Pilate's house to the Mount of Doom. Secondly, we shall regard these words, "I thirst," as THE TOKEN OF HIS SUFFERING SUBSTITUTION. Amen. He pitied the sufferer, but he thought so little of him that he joined in the voice of scorn. It is not sorrow over Rome, but Jerusalem. 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. 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. 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. 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. A second mode of treating these seven cries is to view them as setting forth the person and offices of our Lord who uttered them. Then they said, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And they struck Him with their hands. You carry the cross after him. 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. 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