"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I am ashamed of some professed Christians, heartily ashamed of them! 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. V. Lastly, the cry of "I thirst" is to us THE PATTERN OF OUR DEATH WITH HIM. What if the bread be dry, what if the medicine be nauseous; yet for his thirst there was no relief but gall and vinegar, and dare we complain? Shake off the thought, any of you who suppose that God will have pity on you because you have endured affliction. I have shown you, believer, your position; let me now show you your service. Did we not do so years ago before we knew him? This was intended at once to proclaim his guilt and intimate his doom. Let there be nothing but your religion to object to, and then if that offends them let them be offended, it is a cross which you must carry joyfully. If we weep for the sufferings of Christ in the same way as we lament the sufferings of another man, our emotions will be only natural, and may work no good. Perhaps, dear sister, you carry about with you a gnawing disease which eats at your heart, but Jesus took our sicknesses, and his cup was more bitter than yours. It is not likely that we shall be able to worship with their worship. As for myself, I would grow more and more insatiable after my divine Lord, and when I have much of him I would still cry for more; and then for more, and still for more. 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. The last of his last words is also taken from the Scriptures, and shows where his mind was feeding. Though bitter to him in the speaking it will be sweet to us in the hearing, so sweet that all the bitterness of our trials shall be forgotten as we remember the vinegar and gall of which he drank. John 19:1 Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. O to be enlarged in soul so as to take deeper draughts of his sweet love, for our heart cannot have enough. Who among us would not willingly pour out his soul unto death if he might but give refreshment to the Lord? Save your tears for them; Christ asks them not in sympathy for himself. Yet his language teaches us not to worship her, for he calls her "woman," but to honor him in whom his direst agony thought of her needs and griefs, as he also thinks of all his people, for these are his mother and sister and brother. Weep not for him, but for these. Then thy sin lies not on thee; not one single ounce or drachma of it lies on thee; it has all been transferred by blessed imputation to Christ, and he bears it on his shoulder in the form of yonder heavy cross. She craved full flagons of love though she was already overpowered by it. From the sky the angels viewed him with wonder and amazement; the spirits of the just looked from the windows of heaven upon the scene, yea, the great God and Father watched each movement of his suffering Son. There are more unlikely things than that you will be dead before next Sunday. The cup of which thou art made to drink, though it be very bitter, bears the mark of his lips about its brim. (7) Luke 23:46 And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, "Father, INTO THY HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT. Such a greeting had the Lord of glory, but alas, it was not the shout of welcome, but the yell of "Away with him! Of the many benefits we have in learning from Paul, a few stand out:1. Methinks Death thought it a splendid triumph when he saw the Master impaled and bleeding in the dominions of destruction; little did he know that the grave was to be rifled, and himself destroyed, by that crucified Son of man. V. I close with THE SAVIOR'S WARNING QUESTION "If they do these things in the green tree, what will they do in the dry?". They would be very proper, very proper; God forbid that we should stay them, except with the gentle words of Christ, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me." How they led him forth we do not know. 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." 1. All this is a blessed clog upon us, and a means of keeping us more near the Lord. Dear friends, we must remember that, although no one died on the cross with Christ, for atonement must be executed by a solitary Savior, yet another person did carry the cross for Christ; for this world, while redeemed by price by Christ, and by Christ alone, is to be redeemed by divine power manifested in the sufferings and labors of the saints as well as those of Christ. Christ was spit upon with shame; sinner, what shame will be yours! We would fain lift thy name on high in grateful remembrance of the depths to which thou didst descend! Our first parents plucked forbidden fruit, and by eating slew the race. 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. May the Holy Ghost work in you the complete pattern of Christ crucified, and to him shall be praise for ever and ever. This is unfortunate, since his works contain priceless gems of information that are found nowhere except in the ancient writings of the Jews. IV. Our Lord is the Maker of the ocean and the waters that are above the firmament: it is his hand that stays or opens the bottles of heaven, and sendeth rain upon the evil and upon the good. Oh! Some of you will! It was, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!" How truly man he is; he is, indeed, "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh," for he bears our infirmities. It is a blow at the fable of purgatory which strikes it to the heart. 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. Shall the servant be above his Master, or the disciple above his Lord? He knew once how to turn water into wine, and in matchless love he has often turned our sour drink-offerings into something sweet to himself, though in themselves, methinks, they have been the juice of sour grapes, sharp enough to set his teeth on edge. Angels cannot suffer thirst. Fix your hearts upon some unsaved one, and thirst until he is saved. All nations gathered about my Lord, both great and mean men clustered around his person. He goes forth, then, bearing his cross. Take up your cross, and go without the camp, following your Lord, even until death. The high places of earth's worship and honor are not for us. 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. While other religions create what appear to be worship-filled gatherings, they are empty and void of fact. I saw the other day the emblem of a serpent with its tail in its mouth, and if I carry it a little beyond the artist's intention the symbol may set forth appetite swallowing up itself. I like to think of our Lord's saying, "It is finished," directly after he had exclaimed, "I thirst"; for these two voices come so naturally together. Home; Origin; Birth; John; Acts; About; JOHN 19 COMMENTARY . Rutherford says, "Whenever Christ gives us a cross, he cries, 'Halves, my love.'" Barrabas may go free; the thief and the murderer may be spared; but for Christ there is no word, but "Away with such a fellow from the earth! If he was so poor that his garments were stripped from him, and he was hung up upon the tree, penniless and friendless, hungering and thirsting, will you henceforth groan and murmur because you bear the yoke of poverty and want? 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." More solemn still is the reflection that according to our Lord's own teaching, thirst will also be the eternal result of sin, for he says concerning the rich glutton, "In hell he lift up his eyes, being in torment," and his prayer, which was denied him, was, "Father Abraham, send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame." Alas, man is the slave and the dupe of Satan, and a black-hearted traitor to his God. "His way was much rougher and darker than mine; Did Christ, my Lord, suffer, and shall I repine?". In the fourth place, one or two words upon CHRIST'S FELLOW-SUFFERERS. They put on him his own clothes that the multitudes might discern him to be the same man, the very man who had professed to be the Messias. Christians, will you refuse to be cross-bearers for Christ? There is one way by which you can tell whether he carried your sin or not. Have you prayed for your fellow men? Do not let us forget the infinite distance between the Lord of glory on his throne and the Crucified dried up with thirst. It is the way whereby many shall be brought to Christ, when this blessed soul-thirst of true Christian charity shall be upon those who are themselves saved. 1 So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. He loved the Gentile, but still Jerusalem was the city of the Great King. You are not, therefore, so poor as he. Thoughtful men have drawn a wealth of meaning from them, and in so doing have arranged them into different groups, and placed them under several heads. You do suffer. It is not sorrow over Rome, but Jerusalem. In the multitude there was a sparse sprinkling of tender-hearted women, probably those who had been healed, or whose children had been blessed by him. The spear broke up the very fountains of life; no human body could survive such a wound. If not, may that picture of Christ fainting in the streets lead you to do so this morning. For several Sabbath mornings my mind has been directed into subjects which I might fitly call the deep things of God. Alas, my brethren, I cannot say much on the score of man's cruelty to our Lord without touching myself and you. (John 19:11) Jesus answered, . Metaphorically understood, thirst is dissatisfaction, the craving of the mind for something which it has not, but which it pines for. Let all your love be his. Our Lord says, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink," that thirst being the result of sin in every ungodly man at this moment. He also knew well the terrible joy that comes only through suffering as he lived quite afflicted (both by illness and slander). , they are empty and void of fact the thought, any of you who suppose that God have... Christ was spit upon with shame ; sinner, what shame will dead. 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