SERMON MANUSCRIPT
[John 1:1–3, 14] God the Son, having existed eternally as God and with God, in the incarnation, added humanity to his divinity. This he did without diminishing or compromising either nature.
On one hand, from eternity past to eternity future, Jesus Christ is truly and fully God. Scripture is clear on this point. The names of God are applied to Jesus—“Mighty God,” “Everlasting Father,” and “Immanuel: God with us.” He’s described as eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present, and unchangeable, characteristics uniquely true of only One being. Jesus was worshipped, an activity strictly reserved for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He did things that only God can do, promised things that only God can promise, and claimed things that only God can claim. He taught his disciples to pray in his name, claimed that he and the Father were one, that to know him was to know the Father, to see him was to see God, to receive him was to receive God, to believe in him was to believe in God, to honour him was to honour God, and to hate him was to hate God.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, the Bible is even more explicit. Upon seeing Jesus resurrected, Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). Paul writes, “To [Israel] belong the patriarchs, and from them, by human descent, came the Christ, who is God over all” (Rom. 9:5 net). To Titus, the same writer says believers are “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Christ Jesus” (Tit. 2:13). The author of Hebrews: “But of the Son, [God] says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Heb. 1:8). (That’s God calling the Son, “God,” in case that wasn’t clear!)
The Bible is consistently clear: Jesus was, is, and always will be fully divine. That’s why we’re here. It’s what we’re about. He rose from the dead, saved us, forgave us, purchased us, keeps us, and is coming on the clouds to claim us. We sing together, “In Christ alone, who took on flesh / fullness of God in helpless babe.” Or, even more magnificently: “Christ by highest heav’n adored / Christ the everlasting Lord / Late in time behold him come / Offspring of the virgin’s womb / Veiled in flesh the Godhead see / Hail th’incarnate Deity / Pleased as man with men to dwell / Jesus our Emmanuel / Hark the herald angels sing / Glory to the newborn King.” We gather here week after week because of and united by the truth that Jesus Christ is truly God.
At the same time, from conception on, Jesus Christ is truly and fully human. Sometimes we forget or downplay that reality. Sometimes, it gets buried by our lofty adoration. I wonder if also it’s that our day-to-day sample of humanity isn’t always that glowing and so we hesitate to apply that same label to our precious Lord, as though it’s too beneath him to wear. But, as unsettling or irreverent as it may seem to us, Scripture is clear on this point as well.
The Apostle John knew and loved both of these realities. As I read earlier, he opened his gospel account by pointing his readers to the beginning to celebrating Jesus’s deity. But he then opens his first letter by pointing his readers, again, to the beginning but, this time, highlighting his humanity: [1 John 1:1–3].
Yes, Jesus was in the beginning with God and as God. Yes, he’s high and lifted up, creator of all things, transcendent, and holy. But he became touchable, seeable, huggable, and smellable. Yes, our Lord was, is, and always will be truly and fully God. But he became and remains forevermore, truly and fully human. And, while on earth, along with that human nature, came limitations, weakness, frailty, fatigue, temptation, pain, and death.
THE HUMANITY OF JESUS
In fact, as we look at John 19 this morning, and a one-word statement from the lips of our Lord, that is what’s most obviously on display: the humanity of Jesus. [19:28–29]
This is the same man who offered Israel a perfect kingdom and sinners perfect forgiveness. This is the same man who walked on water, who shushed the wind, and who, with a word, sent demons running for the hills. This is the same man who attracted massive crowds, challenged national bureaucracy, wielded unearthly authority, and fulfilled ancient prophecy. This is that man.
Now look at him. Battered and broken, naked and disfigured. He whose power knows no bounds can’t even get himself a drink. The Alpha and the Omega is seen here depending on the charity of unnamed sinners. He who is the King of kings isn’t offered fine wine in a jewelled goblet brought by a royal cup bearer but given servants’ swill from a dirty sponge on a dead stick. How pathetically human.
And then there’s his specific request, a single Greek word no doubt offered with a groan of pain: “I am thirsty.” Have you ever been thirsty? I mean really thirsty? If you have you’ll know it’s all you can think about. Your mouth is sticky and your skin is dry. Your head is pounding and your mind is foggy. Your heart is racing and your muscles are aching.
Our need for water is one of the most base human instincts. In fact, someone can be hungry, lonely, sleepy, or anything else but if they’re thirsty, those other needs get shoved to the back burner. Why? Because, generally, we’ll die of thirst before starvation, fatigue, exposure, or pain. It’s our body’s God-given way of prioritizing its needs. It’s physiological triage.
And here we find Christ reduced to that basic need. Yes, he’s in pain. The many whip wounds on his back have gotten worse as they’ve been rubbed up and down against the rough wood of the cross. The thorns in his head and the nails in his limbs are throbbing and demanding attention. Yes, most of his friends have abandoned him and, yes, the nation mocks him and death approaches him. But all of those needs, for a moment, are eclipsed by one more pressing and foundational: “I am thirsty.” How truly human.
THE SUFFERING OF JESUS
And, it’s already come up, so let’s talk about the suffering of Jesus. The physical pain was brutal. The emotional pain, incredible. But, as we were reminded last week, it’s the spiritual pain that makes Jesus’s suffering incomprehensible. Who can fathom what he meant or endured when he screamed, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:26).
When Jesus bore on his sinless shoulders the sins of the world, he experienced a mysterious and unprecedented estrangement from his Heavenly Father, the one with whom he is inseparably united. And it was excruciating.
Perhaps this added to his “thirst,” something like what the rich man experienced in Luke 16 when, finding himself separated from God in Hades, “lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame’” (16:23–24). Perhaps, in the darkness of the cross, Jesus was similarly and agonizingly parched for our sake.
More to that point, this isn’t the first time John has talked about thirst in his gospel account. In fact, it’s kind of a theme he develops to illustrate a deeper need. Let me show you.
Turn to John 4. [4:7–15] Humans need physical water or we physically die. We also need spiritual water or we will spiritually die. The latter is a gift from God obtained by asking Jesus for it. And, unlike H2O, this living water brings perpetual satisfaction.
[6:35] John adds that living water is obtained by believing in Jesus.
[7:37–39] The living water being offered is actually God’s Spirit, the presence and power of God to be given to those who believe in Jesus when Jesus departs in glory, “a Helper to be with you forever” (14:16), as he would later tell his disciples.
Jesus claims this is “as the Scriptures said.” This isn’t new. The OT said this would happen. [Isa. 44:3; 55:1; 58:11] This living water that Jesus is offering is God’s Spirit, the presence of whom brings blessing, power, maturity, guidance, fruitfulness, and satisfaction.
Now, pause for a moment and think with me: did Jesus, in his humanity, enjoy the presence of God’s Spirit? Absolutely! At his baptism, “John testified saying, ‘I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon [Jesus]” (1:32). Jesus was anointed by the Spirit (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38), baptized in the Spirit (John 1:33), cast out demons by the Spirit (Matt. 12:28), and taught in the power of the Spirit (Matt. 12:18).
Jesus lived his life in close communion with the Father and the Spirit. I think we can say that he drank from the well of living water. So, isn’t it appropriate to wonder that when he said, “I am thirsty,” it was more than just physical thirst? Could it be that it was also an expression of his agonizing separation from the Father and, perhaps the Spirit. Maybe he wasn’t only physically dehydrated, but spiritual dehydrated, tormented and parched in the temporary absence of the living water. This is the suffering of Jesus: separation.
We all know what it’s like to endure separation from someone we love. Children grow up and go off to university. A close friend moves to another country. A loved one goes to be with the Lord. In all cases, we’re confident that we’ll be reunited at some point, but the pain still comes, the tears still flow, the heart still aches. There’s a sense in which we thirst for their presence.
I wonder if that’s what Jesus was enduring for us. Our Lord went thirsty—physically and spiritually—so that we don’t have to. Instead, he wants us satiated, filled to the brim with the Spirit of power and truth, overflowing with the sealant of our salvation.
THE DESIRE OF JESUS
This is the desire of Jesus, the desire that sent him and held him to a cross until he knew “that all things had already been accomplished.” He finished the job, as agonizing and suffocating as it was.
Prophecy had to be fulfilled. The Father’s will had to be realized. Justice had to be satisfied. Sacrifice had to be offered. Atonement had to be made. Death had to be conquered. All of this had to be accomplished so that eternal life could be given to rebels like you and me, so that dehydrated and hell-bound sinners like us could taste and enjoy living water. The desire of Jesus was that humanity would never have to be thirsty again.
Listen once more to Jesus’s words recorded in John 7, and hear clearly the longing of his heart: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
Maybe you’re here today and you’re thirsty. Before now, you didn’t know what to call it—it was more of a nagging in your heart, a splinter in your mind, a general unsettledness in your life. Something’s bothering you. Something seems missing, seems empty, seems hollow, or seems meaningless. You’ve tried to scratch that itch but it remains. You’ve come to wonder if there’s more to life than what the world has promised, than what you’ve been chasing, or what you’ve settled on. Or, maybe you’ve had a brush with death—a reminder of your mortality—an experience so real that it’s made you wonder with urgency about what comes next.
You’re thirsty. God knows that. That’s why he’s brought you to hear from him today. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is calling to you right now: “Come to me and drink.” That’s his desire for you. Be satisfied forever by accepting the satisfaction only comes through a right relationship with God, your Creator. He loves you. He sent his Son to suffer and die for you, for your sins. They’ve been paid for. Come to Jesus. Believe in Jesus. Drink deeply and be satisfied.
This desire of Jesus is a good reminder even for those of us who, perhaps long ago, took that blessed swig. God’s Spirit is in us, bubbling, leading, empowering, and assuring.
But sometimes life gets in the way, sin gets in the way, cares get in the way, and we forget to live like we’re satisfied. Are you satisfied, brother? Are you satisfied, sister?
To us, Jesus is restating his desire: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). Those are the words of the glorified Jesus, recorded by John in the book of Revelation. Jesus is trying to get the attention of his church, of his people, explaining that he wants to keep dining with them, keep fellowshipping with them, keep enjoying hydration with them.
Brothers and sisters, let’s not settle for anything less than what our Saviour desires for us. Confess sin, obey God, love one another, worship always, prioritize what matters, suffer well, guard truth, bear fruit, share the gospel. Simply put: abide in Christ. We’ve drank the living water. Let’s live like it.
Here we see the humanity of Jesus. He’s broken, vulnerable, helpless, and alone. Here we see the suffering of Jesus, and it’s beyond physical. It’s a spiritual separation the likes of which we’ll never understand (praise God!). Here we see the desire of Jesus, that all would drink and none would be thirsty, that all would enjoy eternal life and none would perish.
Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, experienced thirst so we don’t have to. Let’s thank him for that now.
Josiah has served the Oakridge Bible Chapel family as one of its elders and one of its pastoral staff members since September 2018, before which he ministered as an associate pastor to a local congregation in the Canadian prairies. Josiah's desire is to be used by God to help equip the church for ministry, both while gathered (edification) and while scattered (evangelization). He is married to Patricia, and together they have five children—Jonah, Henry, Nathaniel, Josephine, and Benjamin.
