Proper 19
15th Sunday after Pentecost
Ordinary Time 24 Year C
September 12, 2004
I THIRST—GIVING DRINK TO THE THIRSTY
John
19
28 After this, Jesus, knowing[1]
that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be
fulfilled, said, "I thirst!"
INTRO
I.
Last week, we began a new Sunday sermon series
entitled, “Blessed Are the Merciful.”
·
We defined mercy last week:
lovingkindness, compassion, or forbearance shown to one who offends.
Remember that when you are offended.
·
We also learned last week about the two types of works
of mercy—corporal and spiritual.
II.
This sermon series is one of the results of a season
of prayer asking God for direction—where do we go from here at St.
Patricks—I hear God saying “Be merciful as your Father in heaven is
merciful.”
·
The mercy God shows us is His kindness, and it is
God’s kindness and compassion shown to us as sinners that leads us
to God. When we fail God, and yet He does not
judge or condemn but forgives, we love him more and more.
·
Today, we hear the call of Jesus from the cross as he
bore the sin of the world in His own Body—I thirst.
·
Because Jesus has taken our place before the Father by
fully becoming a man and bearing our sin in his own body, he has
tasted to the depths of his own being the spiritual thirst of every
human being parched by sin in the desert land of this word.
·
In every thirsty human being, in our physical thirst
and our spiritual thirst, the Lord Jesus cries out “I thirst.”
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO THIRST?
1.
THE NATURAL WORLD TEACHES US ABOUT THE INVISIBLE
SPIRITUAL WORLD
·
In the wisdom of God, God uses the physical creation
to make known to us the invisible world of the spirit.
·
The Bible is full of metaphors of how the physical
world makes known the spiritual world to us. The
truth of the physical then builds to a greater truth of the
spiritual world; the earthly reveals the heavenly.
·
Human beings are embodied spirits.
Our bodily need for fresh, clean, good water in order to continue
our physical existence becomes a picture of our need for spiritual
water to give us eternal spiritual life.
·
50-70% of the weight of our bodies is composed of
water. Water is the essential medium of all body
fluids which keep our bodies working. As we lose
water, we need to take more water in to live.
·
PHYSICAL THIRST IS A CONDITION OF DRYNESS IN THE MOUTH
AND THROAT TELLING US WE NEED TO DRINK TO STAY ALIVE. It is the same
spiritually.
·
There is spiritual drink we need if we are to live.
When we get dry spiritually, it is time to get a drink if we
are to live. JESUS SAYS HE IS OUR SPIRITUAL FOOD
AND DRINK, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT IS OUR LIVING WATER!
54Whoever eats My flesh and
drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the
last day. 55For My flesh is food indeed,[8]
and My blood is drink indeed. John 6
WHAT DOES SPIRITUAL THIRST FEEL LIKE?
John 4:5-15
·
At Sychar in
Samaria
, Jesus meets a woman at the well.
St. Johns
tells us Jesus was physically thirsty and asks for the woman to give
him a drink. At the cross, Jesus also would feel
this woman’s spiritual thirst.
·
The woman at the well is a good example of spiritual
thirst:
1.
She had been married many times and was currently living with
a guy—her life was full of pain and broken relationships
2.
She was rejected by the Jews because she was Samaritan—kind
of like some Christians in the ancient churches reject other
Christians as not being the true Church
3.
She was rejected by her own neighbors because of her living
in sin as evidenced by her coming at the hottest time of day when no
one else would be at the well drawing water.
4.
This is a woman searching for real meaning, purpose,
understanding, and true love.
5.
When Jesus tells her that there is a water she could have and
never thirst again, she understands he is talking about spiritual
drink and wants it badly.
·
How many of you have seen people in your neighborhood
who are thirsty and dry in need of this spiritual water Jesus
promises? What do they look like? JESUS SAYS “I
THIRST.”
·
Tongues parched with thirst look like this—divorce,
sexual sin, materialism-credit card debt-bankruptcy, addictions,
counseling offices full of people with what the world calls
disorders but we know are the effects of evil and sin in need of
mercy not judgment JESUS SAYS I THIRST.
HEAR THE CALL FOR MERCY!
·
Parched tongues are people are our Catholic and
Orthodox priests have abused boys sexually but make it a point to
say it is not pedophilia though because they were teens—what does
that matter? JESUS SAYS I THIRST. HEAR THE CALL
FOR MERCY!
·
Our Evangelical pastors have cheated with their
secretaries, had sex with women who came to them in crisis,
or gotten greedy for money with their begging on TV and in
fund raising appeals, or are drowning in debt seeking relief in sins
of all kinds as are the parishioner congregants. JESUS
SAYS I THIRST. HEAR THE CALL FOR MERCY!
·
Our Mainline Protestant pastors are now openly gay and
redefining love and the family—THE CHURCH IS PARCHED—like it or not
we need the waters of life as bad as the world around us! JESUS SAYS
I THIRST. HEAR THE CALL FOR MERCY!
·
Will we respond like the Pharisees? Will we walk by
on the other side of the road in apathy as the bleeding and dying
lay there in need of mercy and help? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT WILL YOU
DO? THANK GOD YOU ARE NOT LIKE THEM, THOSE WORLDY SODOMITE
EPISCOPALIAN NO GOODS! WILL YOU CONDEMN AND
JUDGE OR SHOW THEM MERCY AS ONES CAUGHT IN A SIN NEEDING TO BE
RESTORED GENTLY? Have you wept for the broken?
Have you cried out? Have you offered drink to those whose tongues
are swollen as they die in dehydration?
·
Parched tongues are people who need the Lord, and we
have the water flowing in us if we will only ask for it
WHERE CAN JESUS GET A DRINK? HOW CAN
THE THIRSTY BE REFRESHED?
1. The most
basic drink we can give is a cup of cold water
·
Giving drink to the thirsty is to give life itself. At
the most basic level of showing mercy is giving a cup of cold water
to the physically thirsty. Giving physical water
as Christians also gives people a drink of God’s spiritual love and
mercy with which the water is given.
·
Here in the northeastern US, we do not think so much
about the need for water, but it is not this way in most of the
world.
·
In
Florida
where we lived, water was managed carefully, priced high, and even
restricted in its uses. IN many parts of the
world such as the
Caribbean , central America, the middle east,
and other locales, thirst and the need of water are central
concerns. Right now in hurricane ravaged
areas—we need to give drink…
·
In the 1960’s in the
USA
, the availability of clean non-polluted water became a priority
when our water systems became filled with chemical, biological, and
physical hazards threatening our lives.
·
Water was, and still is a major social, economic, and
environmental issue. Christians need to be involved!
·
Clean water Acts, water treatment facilities and
standards, and many other water-related laws came to be in order to
protect human life which needs clean water to stay alive.
·
Giving drink to the thirsty is a pro-life activity.
We need a clean water act for spiritual water today! Our wells and
rivers of living water are not flowing with clean water in the
Church today—polluted with sin. Lord Jesus… Have
mercy.
2.
The Church is God’s River of Life and Wellspring That
Turns the Desert World Into An Oasis Where Thirsty Souls Can Come
and Never Thirst Again
·
Jesus, now risen from the dead and living forever
lives within the midst of the Church. Jesus said
to the Samaritan woman that everyone who drinks of the living
spiritual water that flows from Him would also have a wellspring of
fresh spiritual water flowing within them so they will never thirst…
13Jesus
answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst
again, 14but whoever drinks of the water that I shall
give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will
become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting
life."
·
Jesus says to us that everyone who is thirsty for real
meaning, understanding, and purpose in life should come and drink
HIM into themselves like a thirsty person drinks water.
·
Ultimately, what quenches the deepest thirst of our
human being is when God gives us his gift of friendship, protection,
and love. When we are most alone, most helpless,
most in need, and when the future looks the most bleak, God comes to
our rescue when we call out to Him.
·
All human beings were created by God and intended to
live in a life where we would never lack or suffer. But our desire
to be god rather than submit to God caused us to lose that life long
ago. This has left us with a deep spiritual
hunger and thirst.
·
Isaiah the prophet prophesied to God’s people who had
broken the covenant by cheating on God with the prostitution of the
pagan gods of the world. After repeated
warnings, spiritual captivity to sin became physical captivity in
the mother of all prostitutes—
Babylon
. Here is how Isaiah gives us a picture of our
spiritual thirst because of sin:
Isaiah 41
17
"The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their
tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I,
the God of
Israel
, will not forsake them.
18 I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs
within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and
the parched ground into springs.
·
Ever since the fall of man, God has been giving us
water to quench of thirst for God. Jesus knows our thirst and is
willing for the rivers to flow, the springs to burst forth, and for
pools to form in the desert!
·
Oh
Church of
God
, I pray you will see and understand the cry of Jesus today—“I
thirst!”
·
When sin became so bad, Noah and his family were put
into the
Ark
of grace and passed through the waters of death as God baptized the
world to purge it of sin.
·
St. Paul
tells the Corinthian Christians that in the days of Moses that the
manna from heaven and the water that flowed from the spiritual rock
in the desert when Moses struck it with the rod were the same
spiritual food and drink we have today in the Lord’s Supper and the
Holy Spirit living in us.
·
Jesus commanded the Church as part of our Great
Commission to baptize people with water in order to cleanse them
spiritually and receive new birth being born of the water (baptism)
and Spirit (conversion through repentance, faith, and belief)
·
Jesus commands us to celebrate Holy Communion in
remembrance of Him so the hungry and thirsty may be satisfied.
·
Every time we walk into Church, Holy water is the
reminder of our baptism as we make the sign of the cross.
·
To Jesus Christ, water is a means of making real to us
the ultimate drink of eternal life that we receive in Christ to
quench our ultimate spiritual thirst for redemption from sin,
darkness, and despair.
·
THIS IS THE CRY OF JESUS, I THIRST.
HE TASTED THE THIRST OF MAN IN SIN, AND NOW THIRSTS FOR OUR
THIRST TO BE FOREVER QUENCHED!
THE LESSON GOD WANTS
US
TO LEARN IS OUR PHYSICAL THIRST IS A SIGN AND SYMBOL OF OUR
ULTIMATE THIRST FOR GOD
·
When Jesus cried out “I thirst” from the cross, not
only was he physically dehydrated, he spiritually dehydrated as her
bore our sin. His cry rings through the ages—I thirst—Now he lives
to quench that thirst in every human heart.
·
At the heart of our being as the
Church of
Jesus Christ
is the ongoing capacity to be a well of life giving spiritual water
where all who are thirsty can come and drink to their heart’s
content!!!
·
All of us in this church, people made from the dust
of the earth, and who have trusted in Christ and been baptized have
a spring of living water gushing up out of us that is drink for a
world thirsting for meaning, and truth, and real life.
·
We have a mission to carry this water that is bubbling
up out of the dust of the earth as a wellspring of everlasting life!
Oh brothers and sisters, you are the well and God is the living
water in you flowing out of you to the desert places of this world
where people are dying from thirst.
·
In our homes, our families, our workplaces and
communities, God is releasing springs and pools and rivers of water
through us to flow out to those who thirst.
Everytime you share Christ with someone, the well is flowing…
·
The baptism in the Holy Spirit and subsequent
re-fillings are meant not just to quench your thirst! We are
filled to overflowing —Acts 1:8—so that life may flow out of us to
the world that is hungering and thirsting for God!
HOW CAN WE LET THE RIVER FLOW TO THE THIRSTY?
a.
REALIZE YOU HAVE A NEVER ENDING SUPPLY OF GOD’S LOVE
FLOWING OUT OF YOU.
b.
LET THAT RIVER OF LIFE IN YOU FLOW OUT TO OTHERS BY
PARTICIPATING IN THE LIFE OF THE WORLD AND POURING OUT CUPS OF COOL
WATER IN JESUS’ NAME AT THE POINT WHERE PEOPLE ARE THIRSTING
·
This means we must make sharing our lives with others,
coming alongside them as Comforters and Counselors because the
Comforter has come and is in us. This is what witnessing and sharing
our faith is all about.
·
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEAD SEA AND SEA OF GALILEE…One has
an outlet.
·
The effects of being American on our experience of the
Holy Spirit has caused us to be selfish—we want the Holy Spirit to
make us feel good, not for God’s intended purpose which was to fill
His disciples with power for the mission of taking the Gospel to
every person on earth. Do you have the urgency that Paul had?
Romans 10
14How,
then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how
can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can
they hear without someone preaching to them?
·
In every thirsty human being, in our physical thirst
and our spiritual thirst, the Lord Jesus cries out “I thirst.”
Matthew 25:31-46—Jesus calls us to mercy to quench his
thirst for all men to never thirst
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