After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, “I thirst.” John 19:28.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Today we continue with the conversations of Jesus on the Cross. We are considering His Words addressed to Me and today we are on the third sentence or Word of the conversation of five Words. There are five sentences but there is also the loud cry of victory that He proclaimed as He died once for all and that was the celebration of victory before the resurrection but knowing it was for sure. I had already had it all written out in Psalm 2 by My servant David.
In our prior Life Lesson, we considered “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Matthew 27:46.
Today we consider His words, “I thirst.” I tell you that He sais these words to fulfill the Scripture.
Jesus had lost a great amount of blood and had gone through extreme physical suffering and exertion. He had been beaten, whipped, crowned with thorns, carried the cross, and now He hung on that cross with nothing to drink from 9:00 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon. He was so thirsty His tongue was cleaving to His jaws.
After He spoke these words, that set a few of the bystanders into motion. There was a jar full of sour wine standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth and gave Him a drink.
If you recall when they first crucified Him at 9:00 a.m., they gave Him wine to drink mixed with gall; and after tasting it, He was unwilling to drink. Gall was to deaden the pain. Matthew 27:33-34.
At the 3:00 hour in the afternoon, however, He did drink the sour wine (vinegar).
Jesus was fulfilling Scriptures released long ago by the prophets that had to be performed once spoken from Me through them. But there was more to this Word as well. He was also expressing His thirst for righteousness, that is, His desire to give you the gift of righteousness.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Matthew 5:6.
Remember Jesus asked the Samaritan woman by the well to give Him a drink but when she questioned that request, He told her that if she knew My gift and who He was she would have asked Him for a drink and He would have given her living water that would well up in her like a fountain leaping up to eternal life. And this had to do with His thirst for accomplishing the work I gave Him to do, which was bringing all of you the life-giving water of the Holy Spirit once your sins were taken care of by Him.
For the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.” Revelation 7:17.
But above all it had to do with His great thirst for My presence again with Him, which as He had just stated prior to this Word, I had forsaken Him because I had made Him to be sin for you so that you could be made the righteousness of God in Him. I turned My face away from Him to you. So His heart sought Me as David had expressed a thousand years before.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God? Psalm 42:2.
O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1
But now let us look at the Scripture He fulfilled. I am speaking of Psalm 69, again a Psalm of David.
Reproach has broken my heart and I am so sick. And I looked for sympathy, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They also gave me gall for my food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Psalm 69:20-21.
This prophecy is exactly what took place. The betrayal by Judas and the rejection by the priests, who knew My Word and were My portion, as well as the scribes and Pharisees who were known to be experts in My Word and My Law who purportedly loved Me with all their hearts, broke the heart of My Son.
And one will say to Him, “What are these wounds between Your hands?” Then He will say, “Those with which I was wounded in the house of those who loved Me.” Zechariah 13:6.
And He carried and took away all your sickness and pains, grief and sorrows. There was no sympathy or comfort for Him in His trials before the Sanhedrin, before Pilate, and before Herod. The very people who had heard Him preach, been healed, and fed were among those who called out to crucify Him. And even His disciples ran and hid in fear except for John. Peter denied Him three times.
Because for Your sake I have borne reproach; dishonor has covered my face. I have become estranged from my brothers and an alien to my mother’s sons. For zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me. Psalm 69:7-9.
Jesus restored to you what the devil had stolen. He restored what He did not steal.
My eyes fail while I wait for my God. Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. Those who would destroy me are powerful, being wrongfully my enemies; what I did not steal, I then have to restore. Psalm 69:3-4.
When He was crucified they tried to give Him gall to help with the pain as food, but He would not take it, He bore your pains. But when they gave Him the sour wine at the time of the evening hour of sacrifice in the Temple, He took it. Why?
The prophet Jeremiah prophesied the New Covenant, that is the amendment and restatement that updated My everlasting Covenant which began with Noah and was been amended many times as My living trust with you, and this prophecy is tied in with the taking of the sour wine that Jesus drank right before His sacrificial substitutionary death for your sins.
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast. As I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to overthrow, to destroy and to bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the LORD. “In those days they will not say again, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge. Jeremiah 31:27-30.
Jesus took the sour grapes for you all. Only He had to die the death once for all. You have been righteous and your sins and offenses I remember no more. For, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD, “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Jeremiah 31:31-34.
He was ushering in the new Covenant, where He took the sour grapes for all of you.
Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, ‘The fathers eat the sour grapes, but the children’s teeth are set on edge’? As I live,” declares the Lord (Adonai) LORD (Yahavah), “you are surely not going to use this proverb in Israel anymore.” Ezekiel 18:1-3.
No more. There is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus for He took it all.
But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises. Hebrews 8:6.
I love you. Do you thirst for Me? I thirst for you.
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost. Revelation 22:17.
“I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished! Luke 12:49-50.