Dennis Tuuri

You’ll notice we sang a different psalm than we read. Psalm 62, the responsive reading was Psalm 69, which some people see in relationship to our scripture text today. That is Psalm 69:21 being related to the thirst of our Savior on the cross. I bring it up to ask you to pray again that we would mature in our worship. Our goal, great desire as a church is to learn all 150 psalms to some tune setting that we believe is good and profitable for God’s people.

So there’s an opportunity, and when you see that happen, it’s an opportunity for you to pray that we would continue to mature. We’re in a tracking system now of what psalms you know and which ones we need to learn. And that is what we’d ask your prayer for among other things in terms of the maturation of our worship. As I said, many people see in Psalm 69 the prophecy that may be fulfilled in our text today. Our text is John 19:28–30. We’ll read through verse 30 for continuity sake, but we won’t deal with verse 30 until I return here in about 5 weeks to the pulpit. I’ll be in church. But so let’s stand and I’ll read John 19:28–30.

“After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished that the scriptures might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst.’ Now a vessel full of sour wine was standing there, and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop and put it to his mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.”

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for the Holy Spirit. We thank you for the work of our Savior delivering over his spirit to us. We thank you for this filling of the Spirit and we pray now that the Spirit would move upon us, Lord God, as your word is preached. Yet be faithful to your scriptures. May you use the power of the preaching of your word to transform our lives, Lord God. Help us to understand the text that we might be transformed by it, that we might give you praise for it. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. I’ve said before that I probably get a little more out of the worship service, the opening area part of it than maybe some of you because I know what’s coming in terms of the sermon and I know why we’ve chosen particular songs for that purpose. You could however prepare to hear the preaching of the word and how the songs relate by reading the scripture text and I know many of you do the week before, and as you read that text and meditate upon it and then hear these songs sung that we sing, you’ll notice the connections I’m sure as we’re preparing to hear the word and the words that we’re using to praise God with in the songs.

You know, we read, we sang earlier about the choicest wine that Christ might give us, that we come here to receive the choicest wine of heaven, our Savior’s nurturing blood, as it were. We sang about the danger of idolatry and food and drink can be idolatrous things. We’ll talk a little bit about that today. We just sang also “Speak God and I will hear.” We’ve come to a portion of the gospel of John where the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ is kind of the heart of the matter.

You know, what I kind of look for as I do my studies is this: does the text take us to a center that can give us kind of a heart of the matter perspective on understanding the rest of the text? And I’ve given you this same first portion of your outline now for several weeks. This is probably the fifth or sixth sermon or so on this particular section. We’re slowing way down. We’re looking at these component elements. We’re knowing Jesus Christ crucified. We’re thinking of what occurs on the cross and the great truths that John is giving to us there and it’s been very informative. I’ve delighted, I hope you have, slowing down a little bit, seeing the overall narrative, but then how the individual parts play together—how the piano and the organ and the guitar and whatever else instruments, the trumpets, cello, whatever you can think of—the symphony is playing and it’s beautiful, and in its component parts it’s beautiful as well.

We are trying to learn how to love the triune God, trying to increase in our love for the triune God and transform the fallen world on the basis of our love and our worship. I found out this week that I think this Lutheran deal with the circle and the cross in front of the circle is a representation of the work of the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ covering the whole world. So the circle in the Lutheran perspective is meant in a sense to describe the world and so the cross covers it. And that’s what we’re seeing here—is the work of the Savior having these profound cosmic effects described to us in John’s gospel.

You know, we’re moving from Golgotha to the garden, from the beginning of this text to the end. We’re moving from a couple of ethical rebels, zealots who wanted, you know, they wanted relief from oppression, but they sought it by means of physical rebellion as opposed to trust and service. So we see two ethical rebels on either side of Jesus at the beginning of the narrative, and by the end, we see two disciples loving the Lord Jesus Christ requesting permission of the authorities that God has established—as godless as they are, Pilate, who condemns our Savior to death knowing he’s innocent—still the picture is the disciples now lovingly carry the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. So now he’s between two men, two disciples. The world is being moved from Golgotha to the garden. The world is being moved from ethical rebellion to devotion and service to the Savior and submission to the authorities that he’s ordained.

We’ve seen Pilate and the soldiers fulfilling the prophecies of God. We even saw Pilate herald forth the full gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the good news that in our religious perspective, but also in our social and political perspective, Jesus Christ is king of all of that—Aramaic, Latin, Greek, all of it. Jesus Christ claims it all for himself, and he is in the work on the cross of affecting change in each of those areas and bringing each of those areas to its fulfillment.

You know, I mentioned at Feast Day the other night that we’re going to get to another five weeks. This last saying of Christ, “It is finished.” And see, everything on the cross is accomplished. We’ll see in our text today that’s stressed. Again, not obvious at first, but it is stressed. And so really, we can do our work in the spirit of the Sabbath. We can do our work the rest of the six days with a sense of ease about it.

We want to be diligent, but you know, it’s not as if the upbringing of our children, the removal of pornography places in Oregon City, the maturation of our worship—it’s not as if all that won’t happen. It will happen. It’s already happened in a sense. The Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished and finished everything on the cross 2,000 years ago. Now, he’s our model to us of our diligence and work. And we’ll see that today.

The work of the Savior loving the Father—but you see that work is set in the context of the completion of everything on the cross 2,000 years ago. And I think at the heart of this narrative, the way it flows from my perspective at least, are these three sayings of the Savior. And I don’t know, I’ve broken them up so that you got one, this one we’re dealing with today, at the very center. But I think the most important thing from the text is to see again the centrality of the voice of our Savior at the center of the narrative.

That’s what accomplishes Golgotha to a garden, disciples—you know, rebels to disciples. It’s what accomplishes God’s sovereignty even over the worst of men, soldiers and Pilates. See, the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, his word, the word of God is what’s at the heart of the narrative for us. And we saw that word last week in the restoration of communion of community. And this is what is the first of the three sayings of Christ that John describes for us.

But understand the great significance of hearing the voice of Christ. It’s at the center of the narrative. And in our worship service, the word and sacrament is what’s presented to you. I almost decided, but I did not—I don’t want to disturb the decorum of the pulpit—but I almost decided to in the middle of the sermon right now stop saying “we’ll be back in just a minute” because I want to go on downstairs, see if there’s anybody in the fellowship hall, see if there’s anybody out drinking coffee, seeing if there’s people that are trying to do this or that or the other thing and not attending to the preached word.

Now, I know there’s usually good reasons why people go out and sit. But let me ask you, would you miss the administration of the table because you had to go to the bathroom? No. You go to movies, you sit there for two hours, you don’t go to the bathroom. Here, all of a sudden, you got to go to the bathroom. All of a sudden, you’re too tired to pay attention. You got to get a cup of coffee. Well, gee, it’s the thing to do. I’m trying to attend to the sermon. And now there are speakers set up down there, you know, for emergency situations. They happen, you know, or difficult times. But if you need coffee to stay awake for the sermon, well, in the providence of God, I’m here. I’m the guy you got. I’m not probably going to change all that much. So you probably just need to get to bed a little earlier, right?

So you know, there are speakers, and if I went downstairs, I’d want to see, are they diligently hearing the word preached? You see, because we believe—and I can’t get into all the—I’ve done this before in the Gospel of John—the voice of Christ sounds through the ministers of the church as they declare forgiveness of sin to you as Elder Wilson did, as they call you to praise. It’s Jesus saying, “Praise the triune God.” It’s Jesus speaking as I’m faithful to the text. It’s the voice of Jesus. The Bible doesn’t say you’re supposed to hear the voice of Jesus primarily through a contemplation in your heart and listening to your own little voice in your head. No, Jesus comes from outside of you almost always to give you guidance and direction.

Preaching of the word is the picture of that, but it continues on into the rest of our lives as well. You hear Jesus by listening to each other and being transformed by the word of Jesus. Remember Jesus told his mother, “Behold your son lives.” Your son, Jesus, is to be beheld by the disciples of Christ in other disciples, you see, in the words and actions of other disciples. Jesus, you know, today’s text—Jesus says, you know, you give somebody a glass of cold water who’s thirsty in my name. So you’ve done it to him. He wants us to see that dimension. We all know that here, but it’s so important to stress it again.

Now, the text begins today by saying “after these things.” So it’s a link. All these sections I’ve talked about are all kind of linked together. It’s like a chain. And this chain goes back and wants to remind us. It says “after these things.” So what happened? What was the thing that was just as following? Well, the first word of Jesus—he gives this great gift, the height of the gospel of Christ. And I was going to say this for later, but now it says that all scripture might be fulfilled. The word or that scripture might be fulfilled.

And people say, well, when he says “I thirst,” there must be a fulfillment of a particular scripture in the Old Testament. But in actuality, the word “fulfilled” there in the text today is not the normal word used of a scripture being fulfilled. It’s a word meaning completeness. Everything’s happened. And it says it twice: “after these things,” “after everything had been accomplished, that all of the word of God might find its culmination and fulfillment in what we are discussing, reading about and thinking about and praying about in the narrative before us.” You see, that’s what it says. And then it says he thirsts for a particular reason. We’ll get to that in a minute.

But again, this narrative text tells us that, you know, in Jesus’s last word—what he said first on this cross, the restoration of community—the text then moves on to say that everything’s been done. Now Jesus is dying. We think of death as point action, but there’s a dying going on. It all is on the basis of his death. But this is what he came to do. He came to roll back the division of community, the separation not just of men from God, but of men from men. You see, and that’s the significance of this central event that I preached on last week, the restoration of community. That’s the great gift.

From one sense, we go from the gift of Christ in the first word to now the service demanded of us toward Christ in the second word. He expresses a need, a bodily function: “I thirst.” And it calls for someone to give him the cup, to give him the wine. You see, but first there’s gift and then there’s response on our part.

And what is the gift in summary form in John’s gospel? The great culmination. All scripture, all the Old Testament, all the gospel accounts have hit their height and crescendo and climax—that all the scriptures might be completed, fulfilled, everything accomplished. And what is it? It’s the gift of restored community. You know, you’ve heard me talk about three great despairs in the last 2,000 years. The first: can we be right with God? Will he love me? I’m such a sinner. And the Reformed confessions address that by focusing on assurance of salvation, restoration of relationship with God. And our great question—we know all of that. Some people, that’s all they ever want to keep talking about.

But what God is doing is moving history along to address our great problem that we have in our culture today. And the great difficulty we have is: can we experience Christian community? Can I have a wife who will be faithful to me? Can I have a husband who will love me the rest of my life? Will I have a dad who’s the same dad all my life? Will the guy in the pew next to me be a Judas again, like I’ve experienced so many times at the churches I’ve gone to? This is what the experience is of people. Will my neighbor, you know, end up lusting after my wife in my house and kill me somehow or strike out at me?

Community has been totally broken down in our day and age. There is no community. Jesus says that this is temporary. He says that he’s done everything required to build community. And it is my belief that in our day and age, there is a great reformation going on, building upon the great Reformed documents assuring us of reconciliation with God. And now the doctrine of the covenant is coming to fullness. It’s all focused on the triune life of God and the implications for what we do in our home, our families, our neighborhood, and our church are now being developed.

Scares people. Sounds like new weird stuff. It isn’t. It’s the progression of the gospel. Jesus atones for our sins, brings us reconciliation with the Father, but he also reconciles us here. And John in describing the new creation actually focuses on the restoration of Adam and Eve. You see, that’s what the great height—that’s Christ’s gift at the center of this narrative.

Now, this has implications—I talked about him some last week, but there’s more. We have this agape here, we have this love feast, this common meal. And you don’t have to come if you’re visiting with us or even members. You don’t have to go to that. Nothing required about it. But in the province of God, we’re almost 20 years old as a church. Not we’re still teenager, almost adult. God has used that meal to build community. People come here, most people come here, and biggest reason why people want to be here is because it’s fun. It’s a good group of people. It’s great community. And only after that do we then usually start talking about the doctrine that underlies it, and that can bother you or you can say that’s the way God has made people.

That’s the great gift that Jesus says he does give—is community together in him—and that’s the crying need of our day. So praise God people are here for community. Now you got to understand the basis of community is loving that triune God who is sovereign, who is choosing some people and sending others to hell. You got to understand all that at the base. People can stumble over those doctrines. That’s the base for Christian community.

We have this agape to practice immediately this service in community that this text talks about. We rejoice. We come into the worship service, receive great gifts from God that culminates in the gift of community at the table, rejoicing life together. And we go downstairs and take it out, begin to take it out into the world, right? And you know, we—God commands joy to his people. He says, “Take some of that tithe money and buy whatever your heart likes. If it’s a good bottle of wine, great. It’s a good steak, you bring that on the Lord’s Day.”

See, he says to use part of your tithe to finance those rejoicing times together. And all those Old Testament feasts are all wrapped up now. Christian Sabbath, Lord’s Day, first day of the week—it’s all wrapped up here. So we think it’s proper as a church to encourage you to take a portion. You got to support the Levitical ministers, but take a portion of your tithe that you owe to God. You know, it’d be like the civil state saying, “Oh, by the IRS, get a letter from the IRS. Okay, take maybe 10–15% of your taxes and instead of giving them to us, go buy something you like to eat that’s really good and tasty.” You see, that’s the kind of yoke Jesus lays on us. It is easy. It’s a delight. He commands us to rejoice. And the agape is a picture of that. And he causes us to rejoice in community. You see, we share that stuff with each other. It’s not just for ourselves. We share it. We rejoice together.

We’re going to have a baptism here next week. I’ll be here. Doug will be preaching. Have a baptism of Megan Walter’s baby. I don’t remember the name of the child. Howard L., some of you know. We’re going to have a lot of people here extra. Maybe 20, maybe more. I don’t know. But I’m asking you to bring more food than you normally bring. And I’m asking you to reconsider what this agape means in terms of the great climax of John’s gospel—that it produces community in the church. You got to get along together.

Got a lot of work to do to put this thing on every week. Some people say, “Well, if you got a weekly agape, what you need is sergeants at arms. You need guards down there and policemen rather than, you know, deacons.” But we do just fine because we understand Christian community. That’s what it’s all about.

So please next week try to apply immediately what I said this week. Think about what you’re bringing to the agape. Use a portion of your tithe to finance some of that. Bring something that you think is really tasty, well prepared. Cause yourself to rejoice in community here if you’re going to stick around for the meal next week. And particularly, we need a little help next week in terms of quantity.

I’ll get to the text in a minute. I know I’m kind of taking a long time here, but that’s the advantage of going slowly through the text. We can think about the implications. We don’t have a lot to deal with today in terms of Jesus’s thirst. Another important exhortation I would give you in terms of community is visitors at our church. You know, we have these cards they can fill out and they can turn that into me and that’s good, fine. But, you know, greet people that are visitors here. Go out of your way—not because we want them to stay, that too—but because you want to be the extension of Christ’s community. That’s the height of what being a Christian is about—this reconciliation we talked about last week, height of the gospel.

Right. Some of the scriptures, reconciliation of mankind, do that. Put that into practice. When Jesus told the beloved disciple what to do, the specific task—boom—took Mary into his house from that day and did it forever. You’re the beloved disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re not here because you chose God. You’re here because he chose you. He has his foreknowledge, his for-love. He has loved you from before the foundation of the world. You are the beloved disciple in that sense. And in response to that great love, you should immediately act to extend hospitality, to build community in the context of this church, your home, your neighbors, etc.

So look for visitors, look for outcasts—not outcast outcasts, but you know, some people just naturally can kind of work in community better than others and other people have a hard time integrating into community. Look for the people on the fringe. Look for the people who aren’t quite in. You know, there’s two ditches here. You know, one ditch which is likening everybody the same. That’s not what I’m talking about. Jesus differentiated, right? There was this beloved disciple and the rest of them weren’t in the same way beloved. I don’t know what that means. But what the application to us is—I’m not saying everybody—you have certain friends, close friends. That’s good. So we’re not trying to go to some communistic socialistic scheme over here where your extension of grace to others in community is the same or manifests itself in the same way.

On the other hand, however, we don’t want you buddying up with people so much that you ignore the rest of the community. That’s cliques. Cliques can form in a church. It’s a natural thing, right? Just praise God that we’ve got some quite different people at this church sociologically. You, you know, the illustration always uses music and guys like power instruments and some guys like acoustic instruments. Praise God. Unity and diversity. See, it’s a good thing. Sometimes I like to see those two bands play a number together. That would be really good. Be real interesting.

So you know, you want to look for people on the fringes, you know, and you want to have a little carefulness about being too restrictive in the friendships you form. I mean, friendships are great, but understand your obligations to the extended community—unity and diversity. Okay. So your place in the body is another implication of this. Jesus restores community by giving people service to one another. You know, Mary will provide service to John of some sort. She’s now his son. So she’s going to love him like a son and take care of him the way she tried to take care of Jesus. And John—this is your mother. He’s got motherly responsibility, or responsibilities as a son to his mother.

And here at RCC, we’re a body of people and we got a lot of things we’re doing, a lot of ministry opportunities, etc. We need a lot of help. You know, I have said in the past—two, three hours a week probably would be a good amount of time to think of how you’re adding to community, how you serve here. I know some of you’re saying, “Gee, I can cut back. I’ve been doing 10 hours a week of doing this, that, and the other.”

Bob Evans—two or three hours a week. Not last week. So he really was used by God to enhance our Feast Day. What a wonderful celebration. Community is based on rejoicing for the great gifts of the Lord Jesus Christ. But, you know, everybody should have a part in the body. The deacons surveyed the church this last year, year and a half, finding out, you know, what you are you good at? What would you like to do here? Step up. If we don’t go to you, come to us. Say, I’d like to help out in this way, or I don’t know how to help out, but I want to be part of the community in some serving sort of way.

The implications of the gospel crescendoing here is that we all have a role in the body life of the church. It’s not always formalized. You know, it’s not as if we got to have everybody have something to do formally, but you know, there’s a lot of it to that. So I would just encourage you in that.

Now, let’s get to the text itself, then. And what I want to do here is do just what I did last week. Remember, Pilate after he scourges Christ brings him out to the Jews and says, “Behold the man.” This is in the Mel Gibson trailer. Ecce Homo. Behold the man. And then afterwards at the end of the whole trial before Pilate on that stone pavement representing the throne of God, right?

Who’s being judged? Not Jesus. He’s not on trial. The Jews are on trial. And the final declaration from them is: “We have no king but Caesar.” That’s a response to Pilate saying, “Behold your king.” Divine king, of course, from the Old Testament. So we can look at Jesus in these accounts and say, “Behold the man. Behold the king.” Pilate is a herald of the gospel of Christ unwittingly, unknowingly, but that’s what he is. And Jesus is the man. It’s God become incarnate, but it’s God. He’s God king as well.

So first, behold the man—his physicality and suffering. Okay. So clearly what’s going on here is you’ve got thirsty. He’s been hanging on the cross. It’s the middle of the day, probably pretty warm out. And so he has tremendous exhaustion, bleeding profusely, no doubt, from the horrible scourging he received, dying there. And the thirst must have been incredibly intense. And we look at that first. You look at John’s gospel, things that are said that mean a lot more than just the surface. But you don’t want to deny the surface. And the surface is Jesus Christ is a man.

You know, the Gnostics said that Jesus was just a spirit, a phantom. And they said that when he walked, for instance, if you could have seen him walk, he wouldn’t have left any footprints on the sand because he’s really a phantom. Well, no. This text clearly affirms the physicality and with that the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. God affirms the goodness—in a sense we could say—of the created order here.

You know, again, one of the things we’re trying to counteract in the reformation in our day and age is this neoplatonic view: the spirit is good, the flesh is awful, just something to be put up with. And what’s really important is this spiritual stuff devoid of creation component. Well, the Bible says God created the world. He gave you bodies and he said it’s good. Your body’s a good thing.

I was at somebody’s house yesterday and the plunger broke. And some couple of the young guys had to go down and buy a plunger. And I think they actually used, you know, the automatic scanning thing so they wouldn’t have to go through the checkout. And we need a plunger. What do you need that for? Well, you see, we’re a little shy about these things—the body. But God says the body is a good thing. Nothing wrong with understanding these things. Jesus suffers in his body. He’s a real man. He’s taken on real human flesh, and he’s redeeming real human flesh. Our bodies are good. You see, now I know the other ditch is all the toilet humor we hear, fourth-grade boy stuff that so many of our PG-13 movies have in them. And that’s not good. But it’s also not good to be so ashamed of all—to be ashamed of the body that God has given to us and the normal functions that God says that we’re to engage in. It’s all good by God’s standard.

So let’s understand that we have here the real humanity, the physical creation of the Lord Jesus Christ, his incarnation. That is, Psalm 69, you know, says that they gave me vinegar for my drink. And some people see that being fulfilled here. Psalm 69:3 says, “My throat is dry.” Jesus had a real throat. That throat was really dry. And the body is a good thing. That’s the first thing we want to take away from the text here before us. We see: behold the man. Jesus Christ is suffering in his body, which is a good creation of God, but he’s suffering sin for us in that body that God had given to him.

Secondly, however, is Jesus’s also—I should say—is Jesus’s dependence on the use of means. And this is where the text has to be talked about a little bit in terms of the Greek that I’ve mentioned already. But you see it says: “after this Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished… that the scriptures might be fulfilled. So fulfilled is the special word I just mentioned to you earlier. It’s actually a derivative of this same word for accomplished. So, and we’re going to see Jesus—the next word on the cross we’ll get to in five weeks—will be “It is finished”—same basic idea.

So here, some people, most commentators say well, this is fulfilling the prophecy that Psalm 69—”they gave me vinegar for drink.” But you know, there’s a couple of problems with that. One: the text that says “that the scriptures might be fulfilled” could point either back or forward. Now most commentators say it’s pointing forward—but the scriptures might be fulfilled. He said, “I thirst.” So that they would give him vinegar to drink. But more likely, because of this word that’s used, this special word, it’s saying that all things have been accomplished, that all the scriptures have been brought to completion in what has been described at this point.

In other words, it’s parallel with the previous phrase: “all things were now accomplished.” The scriptures are totally fulfilled. It’s parallel to that and looks back at this declaration of restored humanity that Jesus has just made. And I think that because of the term “fulfilled” used here, a special term that’s more likely—now the second reason I think it’s more likely is that Psalm 69, after it says “they gave me vinegar to drink,” is the imprecatory part of that psalm begins, then, and you noticed it as we read along. Probably some of you are uncomfortable with reading that stuff that God says we’re to pray for his judgment on rebels.

You know, “let their table be a snare. They gave me awful stuff to eat and drink. Let you an eye for eye hand for tooth judgment, Lord God. Let their table be a snare to them. Destroy them. Take away their inheritance. Judge them.” See? And so the implication is that the giving of the wine, the vinegar to drink, is a mean thing they’re doing. But there’s nothing in the text before us that indicates that. There’s nothing that indicates it. And in fact, we know that the custom was to have cheap wine. That’s what you might think of this as—vinegary, sour wine, kind of like the wine here at communion last week. I don’t know. I didn’t notice. But the guys that are in charge of it say that if it’s sitting here, you know, for 4 hours or whatever it is, and it’s a hot day, it starts to break down. See, when wine breaks down, it kind of goes vinegary.

Well, so when they had these crucifixions, they’d put a pot there with this vinegary wine in it. And it wasn’t a punishment. The soldiers would drink that same wine for their thirst. Now, there’s nothing in the text that indicates this was somehow bad, you know, they were trying to be mean to Jesus. Now, you may get this confused. In the Synoptics earlier in the day in the crucifixion scene, they had attempted to give Jesus wine mixed with a compound that was a dopant that would reduce pain. And they gave this to prisoners commonly. Jesus tasted that wine and then says, “No, he’s not going to, you know, detach himself from the suffering God is going to have him to go through. He’s going to be clear-minded in his trial.” You see, that was earlier. This is a whole separate incident. This is not that. This is just he’s thirsty and they give him some wine—cheap vinegary wine, but wine nonetheless.

So I don’t think really that this is so much at all them giving him something that he didn’t want. I think it represents the service to Christ on the part of someone—maybe the soldier who acknowledged that Jesus was the Son of God—but it looks to me like he gives a gift to us and then he expects us to minister to him. And that’s what’s going on.

Now, the outline I’ve got here says “he makes use of secondary means.” Lenski—I don’t normally mention commentaries, but Lenski is the great Lutheran commentary commentator—and he makes this point about the analysis of the text. Lenski says, and I think he’s right, I know it’s unusual, but I think he’s correct that what Jesus is doing—everything’s been done. See, it’s all over. And that’s going to the result of it all being over is he’s going to yell out that victory cry talked about Friday night: “Finished. Accomplished.” But you see, he can’t yet because his throat is dry. He’s parched. The text says what he’s doing is getting a little liquid on his lips so that he can throw that head back and make this great victory cry that John will give us at the very end of this text.

And see, I read through verse 30 because verse 30 ties the reception of the sour wine to then Jesus saying, “It is finished.” And we know from the Synoptics, it’s not just Jesus saying it. It’s shouting forth this victory cry. One word in the Greek: accomplished, finished. Okay. So the text seems to draw the reception of that wine agent to the mouth to the uttering forth of the declaration that what we’ve just read—everything’s accomplished. The scriptures have all been brought to their culmination and completion. Jesus announces that with his third word in John’s narrative.

So Jesus makes use of means—if this is the right understanding of this, he uses the thirst and the wine as a means to make the declaration of what God has accomplished and to be able to shout it forth. And what we see here, point three of “behold the man”—he affirms his creaturliness, God does, and his suffering. He uses secondary means in the context of his body. If you’re too tired on Sunday, get a little more sleep or get a good meal or whatever it takes. Use secondary means to attend to Christ and to do his will.

And third, the end result of all this is that he’s doing the Father’s will. He is so intent on completing the task and doing the will of the Lord, of his Father in heaven, that you know, this is why he’s engaged in this endeavor. Psalm 69 has been definitely quoted earlier in John’s gospel when he cleanses the temple the first time. And Psalm 69:9 says, “Because zeal for your house has eaten me up.” Jesus is motivated—the text tells us early in the Gospel of John—by a zeal for the Father’s house. Jesus says in John 4:34 that “my food, my food and drink, by implication, food—my food is to do the will of the one who sent me to finish his work.” You see, Jesus’s drinking is to the end that he might fulfill the Father’s purpose for him.

His love for God, his devotion to the Father’s task he’s been given to do—this is what fuels him to say, “I thirst”—to receive the wine so that he can shout forth the completion of his work that he has done for the Father. This is what we’ve seen throughout John’s gospel. He’s doing what he does in loving submission to the Father.

Matthew 5:6 says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Ultimately, Jesus is the picture of the man who is committed and devoted to God, whose thirst—ultimately, he certainly has physical thirst—he uses physical means, but ultimately he understands that his thirst is a picture of what his true thirst is, which is a thirst for almighty God, for his justice, his righteousness, his goodness to be demonstrated in the earth.

So Jesus is behold the man who affirms not just creaturliness and secondary use of means but tells us that as men our thirst is to be to do the Father’s will, to complete it. Our thirst is supposed to be to see the righteousness of God exalted in our community. We should hunger and thirst after the elimination of sweethearts. And we should do it confident, knowing that God is in the process of bringing Oregon City, whether it takes a year or 50 years, into a more righteous place than it is today. You hunger and thirst for that. I know Prentice organizes this all the time as a community. You hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God in your own life.

You see Jesus? This “behold the man” teaches us that our thirst ultimately is, whether we understand it or not, a thirsting for obedience to the Father. And I’ve got a quote here from—I think it’s Leslie Nuechterlein. I couldn’t remember the author’s name of the commentary called “The Light Has Come.” He says the terrible physical thirst of a man hanging on a cross in the fierce heat of the afternoon disappears into the thirst of the Son to complete the work for which he has come. And of course we would say it disappears into an understanding that his thirst is to do the will of his Father whom he loves.

You see, behold the man. This is what man we want to be. And this is the man that God is making us into. But see, in Jesus, it’s not just “behold the man.” Jesus is “behold your King.” God is at work in Jesus fulfilling the accomplishment of the task that no man, mere man, could do.

So we see in Jesus’s thirsting and receiving the sour wine, Jesus in snapshots of who he is as our divine King as well. And first, we recognize that he’s our substitute. We know this intuitively, but there’s a nice little picture of this given to us here. If you think of what the scriptures have to say about sour grape, sour wine, you at least with me, it immediately drew to mind Ezekiel 18. Ezekiel 18 says, you know, you shouldn’t say this proverb that the fathers eat sour grapes and the kids’ teeth are set on edge by the sourness of them.

And I think that we see here—I saw intuitively that this is another thing that we’re supposed to meditate on—is Jesus takes the sour wine. He drinks the bad wine, the not-so-good wine, that we might have the best of wine, right? And so Jesus is our substitute. Matthew Henry—I was glad to see this—made the same point in his commentary. Let’s see, Matthew Henry says that we have taken the sour grapes and thus his teeth are set on edge. The proverb is—the whole point of the proverb in Ezekiel 18 is that every man stands and falls on the basis of his own obedience or disobedience to God. Whether you’re the son of somebody or the father, Father may do everything right, child may turn out reprobate. Election of God, not natural privilege. Father may do everything wrong. Child may end up righteous. Ezekiel 18 says all those circumstances can occur because ultimately God is sovereign over every individual.

But Matthew Henry says, “Yeah, that’s true except for the Lord Jesus Christ because he is our substitute. We’re the ones that did wrong and he’s the one that suffers the punishment for our doing wrong, for our sin.” And so he says, “We took the sour grapes and thus his teeth were set on edge. We had forfeited all comforts and refreshments and therefore they were withheld from him, from the Lord Jesus Christ. When heaven denied him a beam of light, earth denied him a drop of water and put vinegar in its stead.”

So we have here Jesus as the substitute. Our King is the King who substitutes his punishment for the punishment justly deserving to us. I should have mentioned one other thing and I will forget it if I don’t. I know I’m interrupting the flow here a bit, but I wanted to mention in terms of the agape—that if you’re visiting with us and you’ve noticed how crowded it is downstairs and the extension of our community based upon the work of the procedure—as of today we’re also eating in an even larger Sunday school room in the basement of the educational wing. So the end result of that is please understand that there will be more room now for our agape feast downstairs. So feel encouraged to come to that, to rejoice with us in the completed work of Jesus the man, Jesus the King, who through taking upon himself our punishment allows us to eat tasty food downstairs because he drank the sour wine.

Secondly, Jesus is the victor as God here, right? Behold the man. Behold the King. Jesus is the victorious King. And you see, if you understand how this—the way this text is laid out and the specific Greek words that are used—that really it appears that what Jesus is doing with the first statement is to wet his mouth for the declaration of victory. Then you see that even here we have the victory of Jesus Christ pictured for us as he thirsts and is then given wine, sour wine, albeit, for his thirst.

It’s interesting that in Leviticus 10, we talked about Jesus doing the work of the high priest, putting aside the robe of glory, seamless tunic, and then eventually being wrapped in linen. The priest would put off the robe of glory as he lay for the Day of Atonement once a year and he’d have linen garments in there. So we’ve seen that in the clothing of Christ. It’s also true that God told Aaron and his sons that the high priest could not drink wine nor strong drink when he went in to do, into the tabernacle of meeting, or they would die.

So the high priest couldn’t drink wine or strong drink as he went about doing his work—for instance on the Day of Atonement. So here you see the text is telling us that the great victory has already been accomplished. And now Jesus actually receives wine. You see, he didn’t—while he’s on the cross doing his work. But because things are now from this perspective accomplished, Jesus takes upon himself wine. The reception of wine is the picture in the Bible of victory accomplished. They couldn’t do it then. Ultimately Jesus could after he makes atonement. Now wine is restored. Wine is mature, kingly drink. And Jesus on the cross is drinking mature kingly drink.

And you noticed as we read Psalm 69, the same thing we’ve seen in Psalm 22—the description of the suffering and passion of the man Christ on the cross changes as we go to the end of Psalm 22 to a great declaration of victory. Psalm 69, that talks about the incredible thirst of the Savior on the cross goes on to say in verse 30: “I will praise the name of God with a song. Will magnify him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bull which has horns and hooves. The humble shall see this, be glad and you who seek God. Your hearts will live for the Lord helps the poor does not despise his prisoners. Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them, etc.”

So the suffering of Christ is immediately connected in Psalm 69 and 22 to the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see Jesus in this text drinking wine, preparing himself to speak forth the great cry: “Accomplished.” We see Jesus as the victor, as the one who wins, and as the one who destroys death.

Another picture of this kind of thirst is given to us in Judges 15:16–20. And some of you know the story. It’s a story of Samson killing all the Philistines at the jawbone of an ass. And Samson, you know, destroys all the enemies, right? Kills all kinds of guys. And then in verse 17, he sees he’s finished. He throws away the jawbone out of his hand. And that place was then called Ramath Lehi to remind them of the victory of God there. And then in verse 18, he was very thirsty. He called upon the Lord and said, “You have gained this great salvation by the hand of your servant. And shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi.

Jesus is the great Samson. Jesus is the great warrior. Jesus is on the cross accomplishing the conquering of principalities and powers, conquering the power of death. And so again, as he’s done with it all and it’s all over, he drinks wine. He refreshes himself like Samson, sore thirst after the great battle that he accomplishes for us in terms of the cross. With his drink, the Lord Jesus Christ shows his victory. Behold the man, yes, but behold your King, your victorious King who has spoiled principalities and powers.

Psalm 110 is another picture of thirst and victory. The most often quoted psalm in the New Testament, the cause of great delight to people of this church—that the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ is proclaimed there. The last half of the verse says this: “The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall wound the heads over many countries. He shall drink of the brook in the way. Therefore shall he lift up the head.”

Well, Samson destroying kings and then taking the drink, having God split open the rock that he can take the drink, lifting up the head to praise God for the victory—Jesus conquering death and all of his enemies on that cross, given to us in John’s narrative, completes it by pausing by the brook, by thirst. He’s given wine to wet his mouth and then he lifts up the head. Remember when we get to the text, like I said Friday night, says he bowed his head, but it means to recline your head in some way. And you could be to lift up the head. And in any event, symbolically, that’s what’s going on because Jesus shouts forth the victor’s cry at the end of his suffering in the narrative of John’s account of the crucifixion: “Finished, accomplished.”

The Lord Jesus Christ drinks and then proclaims the accomplishment of the warfare. He drinks by the brook, having destroyed death and principalities and powers. And then he lifts up the head in victory. It’s a victory that is a guarantee of the destruction of all enemies of the King. Remember in Psalm 69, what I said—”let their table become a snare.” The victory of the Lord Jesus Christ is not accomplished by the conversion of every last person in the world at this point in time. It’s accomplished by the redemption of his people, but also by the destruction of those who refuse to bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The imprecatory part of Psalm 69 that speaks of the curse of our Savior says that the victory of Christ is also the curse, the judgment and the temporal destruction of all his enemies as time goes on. And then finally, the recreator. John’s gospel is all about the new creation. Jesus says in John chapter 7 that you know that “I am here’s the I am the living water. I’m the water of life. I’m the life-giving water and anyone that drinks of me out of the very center of his being will flow rivers of living water.” The Holy Spirit is going to go into the earth which has sunk into disorder as a result of the fall and will affect the new creation by filling, forming and lighting the new world this side of the cross of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is ushering that in. And that recreation is pictured to us over and over again in the gospel of John. And I’ve got a little outline there for you on the back of the outline from Leviticus 14. It’s a little—it’s not all that complicated. It’s really the procedure—the text, this just the text I’ve got for you here, not my words—the text, the procedure for the cleansing of a house. So you’ve got a house that’s become unclean. It reflects the effects of the fall. It manifests the effects of the fall. It’s dead and it has to become clean. All the death rolled back away from the house. It’s a picture of the world. The world is God’s house. The world became unclean in Adam and the world is now cleansed definitively in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It moves from here to here.

The interesting thing that kind of connects us with what we’re looking at is that what’s used to feed Jesus that wine is a hyssop branch. Interesting because it means he was nowhere near as tall as that. Just a few feet off the ground. Apparently hyssop was about a foot and a half long—is all, tall. It’s a bush. So they put a sponge on the bush, lifted up to him. So not up there very far.

But why does the text bother to tell us hyssop? Because it wants us to bring in all these Old Testament associations where hyssop is involved, called in recreation. And here in this right to move the world from the fallen sense to the recreated new sense, so to speak, by being cleansed—the work of God, the substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ is pictured. And this text tells us about that.

So it begins and ends by the cleansing of the house and it relates then the hyssop mentioned in the first part of the narrative to then the atonement for the house at the second part. We know that intuitively too. We know the hyssop is what they used to mark Passover. It’s it’s what atonement’s all about. The blood on the hyssop branch. So here in how the world moves from fallen to recreation, it does that in terms of the application of the work of Christ in atonement, related to the use of a hyssop branch.

And here we have all of that coming into our narrative account. And then there’s the substitution. You got two birds. One is killed, one is alive. One is old creation, old house. The other is the new creation, new house. And that dead bird represents the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has slaughtered the one bird in verse 50 and then at the end you let the live bird go free. Jesus dies that we might have recreation life in him. Jesus dies that the atonement affected by relationship of the hyssop involved in this story might produce the new world, the new creation.

And you can look at the text later yourself, but the text draws our attention to the atoning work of the one that died in our stead—the man and the King who dies for us.

Now, what does all this mean to us? Behold your thirst. Behold yourself and your thirst. The Lord Jesus Christ showed us what man is supposed to be like. Not denying bodily functions, accepting his creaturliness with thanksgiving from God, using secondary means, but using them to an end. To simply rejoice in the secondary means without what they’re a picture of—this is the road to idolatry. Thirst is good. Thirst develops and the sense of delight in the wine that we have is good. But it all is to be seen in relationship to the great thirst we’re supposed to have, as the deer about to falter looks to Christ, looks to God as the only thing that can really ultimately slake our thirst.

How about you? You may thirst for various things right now in your life. Money, work, restored relationships, better house, food, glory from your neighbors—all kinds of things that we thirst for. What are you thirsty for today? At the bottom of your soul, right? What are the dissatisfactions in your life? Where do you feel thirsty? What has God done to you this week to bring you to a point of need, of joy, sustenance, whatever it might be? There’s something in there, and all of several somethings right now that you’re thirsting after that you want in the worst way and can’t seem to quite get it right now.

Well, I think that this text is a reminder that Jesus—behold the man, behold yourself. I don’t want you to thirst for something different. I want to reawaken in you what that thirst is really all about. Jesus did not hope to change your life. He has changed your life. You’re that sprinkled house in Leviticus. You see, you’re the one that’s been moved into the new creation. You’re the one who is now the man.

Behold your thirst. Your thirst is ultimately a thirst for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and a thirst for God. Now, you know, that’s ministered through secondary means. And I’m not denying the reality of those nor your desire for them. But our problem is that so often we can forget that’s what we’re really thirsting after—is relationship with God in a heightened way because of whatever it is that we feel a lack of. God wants us to focus our thirst on him today.

And as we look at him, one of the reasons he denies us resolution—what we want—one of the reasons he makes us thirsty is to get us to think about him, behind all the representations of him to us, whether it’s our community, our families, our work, our job, our house, our money, our bank account, whatever it is, all representations of the value of God to us, and we get hung up in them. We get idolatrous with them. You can be idolatrous with your children. The driving thirst you have is, “Will my son be okay? Will my daughter be okay?” And that’s all you think about.

But ultimately you want to say, “Hey, of course my child’s okay. Jesus brought about the new creation. My child is baptized, walking with him. Why am I worrying? Why don’t I recognize that ultimately my thirst is to see God reflected in my child?” And my prayers and my work become toward that end, then.

You see, God wants us to behold our own thirst today, to repent of idolatrous thirst and to seek in what we’re desiring the gifts of God himself. Abraham said, “You are my shield, my exceeding great reward.” All our thirsts are met here at the table. And on the basis of those, everything else becomes worked out. Psalm 84: “My soul longs, even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out to my God.”

Is that what you want? What I’m saying is that is what you want, people of God. Jesus has made you into his people. You are the ones. Jesus went to the woman at the well. What are you thirsty? “Give me a drink,” he said. She tried to give him the drink. Well, he says, “You know, you drink this water, but I have better water for you to meet your thirst. Drink from this water, which is myself, and everything will be better for you forever.”

Jesus tells us today that whatever it is we’re thirsting for ultimately can only be met in relationship with him, with him at the heart and the focus of it. The very heart of the narrative today is Jesus instructing us on true thirst.

But there’s a secondary aspect that I mentioned at the beginning of the discernment. Not only should you behold your own thirst, evaluate it, repent of deceit in thinking you thirst after something other than what it represents—the person of God—but the second thing you want to do is behold your thirsty neighbor. And I think at the center, Jesus has restored community. And then at the center is our response to that gospel. And our response is to give Jesus wine to drink.

And we can’t do it to him personally, but you can do it to him, as I mentioned earlier, by serving one another. What does your neighbor thirst for? You know, marriage’s biggest problem in marriages is you feel so thirsty, but what you’re focused on is your own thirst instead of what your part, your spouse is thirsting after. And until you break through that—and then it’s your responsibility to break through that—until you start thinking of how you can serve Jesus by serving your wife what she’s thirsty for and direct her in some way to God. You know, I know it’s all time and maturation, all that stuff, but that’s the answer to relationships.

Same with your children. You see, observe around you. What are people thirsty for? And I would say that they’re reflected in these gifts we speak of every Lord’s Day: glory, knowledge, rejoicing, life. This is what people thirst for. And you’re called to minister to the body of Christ. Observe and evaluate your own thirst, recenter on God as you bring your tithes and offerings to him. But recenter also on your correct response to the wonderful gift of new creation life that Jesus has given to you by recognizing that at the center the heart of the narrative is really an implied call for response to you in faith of what Jesus has accomplished.

You will not die by giving your life to someone else. You will live. You could say the only way you live as a Christian is to give your life to somebody else, trying to meet their thirst. And Jesus says when you bring that refreshment—glory, knowledge, life, physical sustenance, whatever it is—when you bring that, you know, to your neighbor, to your wife, to your children, to your husband, to other people at this church, you are giving water to the Lord Jesus Christ. You are responding in faith to his call to love him and to serve him with all that we are and have.

Let’s pray. Father, forgive us for so often thinking that the things around us are what are going to take care of our thirst. Help us, Lord God, to refocus on you as we come forward. Help us to repent in our hearts of thinking somehow that we can be satisfied with the secondary means. We thank you for them. We delight in them, Lord God. Please forgive us for being idolatrous with them.

And help us, Father, also to think of people. Lay it upon the hearts of us, Lord God, each one of us knowing of thirsty people around us, how we can minister to the Lord Jesus Christ by ministering to one another in community. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.