Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

If you have your Bible, you can open it to John 19. This is message #5 in our Dying to Live series. We’re listening to the seven statements that Jesus made as he hung on the cross. In each of these statements, we find that Jesus was inviting us into the life that God had planned for us. He really was dying for us to live.

Today we’re focusing on a statement that, honestly, seems pretty insignificant at first glance. Let’s pick it up in John 19:28. “Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.” (John 19:28-29, NIV)

We need to unpack some of the elements in this story so that we all understand what was going on. First of all, John writes that Jesus knew “that all was now completed.” This gives us an idea of the timing of this scene. The crucifixion of Jesus was almost over. Jesus hung on the cross for six hours. Jesus knew it was all completed, which tells us that we are now in the last few minutes of Jesus’ life.

John also tells us that Jesus asked for a drink “so that Scripture would be fulfilled.” We talked last week about the prophecies in the Old Testament that gave great details about what Jesus’ death would be like. When Jesus asked for a drink, it fulfilled at least two prophecies in the book of Psalms.

“My strength has dried up like sun-baked clay, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.” (Psalm 22:15, NLT)

“They…gave me vinegar for my thirst.” (Psalm 69:21, NIV) It’s easy to see how our scene was a fulfillment of both of these Old Testament prophecies.

After Jesus said that he was thirsty, someone went and got him a drink. Most likely it was a Roman soldier. This soldier soaked a sponge in wine vinegar, or a better translation may be vinegary wine. Then he put the sponge on the stalk of a hyssop plant, which was a plant with long branches. The solider then lifted the sponge up to Jesus’ mouth. Don’t let the word “wine” fool you. This was not a fine drink for the elite. This wine vinegar, or vinegary wine was a drink for the masses. A large portion of the drink was just plain water. This diluted the vinegar which helped lessen its kick. It also allowed people to stretch the drink a long way. This rather unappealing drink was very common and it was very, very cheap, which was rather fitting in the crucifixion story considering how Jesus had been degraded on the cross.

This should give all of us a better idea of the setting of this scene. And you may now be thinking, “So what?” What is the point of all of this? Keeping all of this background info in mind, let’s get on to the “so what?”

The fifth statement Jesus made from the cross was, “I am thirsty.” I did a lot of background study on this statement this week. I was amazed at how many people want to infer all kinds of things about this statement. They want to read some grand, spiritual truths into this statement. We need to be careful about doing that. Let’s not force Jesus into saying something that he never intended to say.

Jesus’ thirst doesn’t need to be over-spiritualized. When Jesus said, “I am thirsty,” it wasn’t theological code language that we have to decipher. Let’s not overcomplicate the issue. Think about what was happening. Jesus had been beaten and tortured. He had hung on the cross for six hours in the blazing Palestinian sun. He was thirsty, pure and simple.

We don’t have to go searching for some hidden truth in this statement. Instead, why don’t we just talk about the truth that is obvious? What is this obvious truth? Jesus was experiencing incredible physical pain and suffering. His mouth was so dry that his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He desperately wanted a drink. All because Jesus was a human being experiencing real human thirst. The fact that he was thirsty proves that Jesus was an actual, real person. He was fully God, but he was also fully human.

In other words, Jesus became like us. The summer after my senior year of high school, I needed a job to make a little money before I headed off to college. Just something for a couple of months. I found out that a local construction company was hiring, so I applied and I landed a job. My job was to do whatever they told me to do at any particular moment. I thought, “Well, I’ve never really done construction work before, but I’ve seen it done. It can’t be that tough. Now I’ll get to experience it for myself.” And what an experience it was. I worked for this construction company for less than two months. I went to the emergency room three times! I’m not necessarily a clumsy person, but you put me on a construction site, and it’s like you dropped me in the middle of a Three Stooges episode. I’m falling down. I’m dropping things on myself. I’m cutting myself. I found ways to hurt myself. I still have some of the scars to prove it. After my third trip to the emergency room, my youth minister told me, “The only thing you haven’t done this summer is drop a steel girder on your head. When are you going to do that?” Thankfully I didn’t do that because my third visit to the ER convinced me that construction work wasn’t for me. Kindly remember that before you ask me to help you remodel your house or something like that. I’m a walking worker’s comp claim.

As tough and painful as it was at times, I experienced what it was like to work on a big construction site. I learned things I would have never learned otherwise. It’s one thing to drive by and see a construction site. It’s quite another to experience the construction by getting your hands dirty.

Jesus chose to get his hands dirty. It’s one thing to simply observe humanity from a heavenly throne. It’s quite another to leave that throne and live among us.

Philippians 2 says it this way: “Though [Jesus] was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal's death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8, NLT)

Jesus became like us. He was a person. We know from our story that he got thirsty. During his lifetime, Jesus also got hungry. He got tired. When he was a baby, his parents changed dirty diapers. When he was a teenager, he probably had zits. Jesus caught colds and endured the flu. Jesus knows what it is like to have financial hard times, considering that he literally had no money at times. Jesus laughed and Jesus cried. Jesus was a blue-collar carpenter who worked with his hands, probably without going to the emergency room. On hot days, he would sweat. On cold days, he would shiver.

The point is that Jesus walked through every human experience. He felt every human emotion. This means that, whatever is happening in your life, whether it is good or bad, Jesus understands. He gets it. He understands because he has been there.

When Jesus arrived on the planet, it wasn’t an upgrade. It wasn’t like getting your ticket for coach upgraded to first class. Just the opposite. Jesus left the heavenly kingdom of God to come to a world that people had royally messed up. But it was the only way. God in human form. God with skin on. An all-powerful God who chose to limit himself to human space and time. A God of perfection who was willing to join imperfect people. It was an amazing plan, but it was also the only plan. It was the only way. Jesus was willing to do it because it was the only way he could win us back from the mess that we ourselves had made. He became like us…

…so that we might become like him. When we were kids, we all had dreams of what we wanted to be. Oftentimes those dreams were shaped by other people we met. I remember one family vacation when I was a kid. We went to Sea World. I was absolutely in awe as I watched the shows and performances of all the whales and dolphins and sea lions and all the other critters they have at Sea World. It was great. I left Sea World determined that I was going to do that one day. I wanted to perform with Shamu. I didn’t know anything about killer whales, or how to train them, or anything like that. All I knew is that these trainers had the coolest job I had ever seen and I wanted to be like them.

And these types of plans and dreams don’t stop after childhood, do they? We still see certain people and say, “Man, I want to be like him.” “I’d give anything to be more like her.” This happens to me all the time. One of the ways I try to improve myself and my ministry is by listening to other guys’ sermons. These guys on the screen are my preaching heroes. They are the select few that I listen to very consistently. They’re some of the best speakers on the planet. I listen to them to try to keep learning and improving because they’re a lot better than me. That’s why I listen; because they’re better than me. And I try not to do this, but as I listen to them, I always think, “I wish I could preach like that. I wish I was more like him.”

This is a natural thing that we all do. Dreaming about being like somebody else. But here’s the deal: if these dreams and plans do not cause us to be more like Jesus, they are pointless. They are worthless.

Jesus became like us so that, in turn, we might become like him. This is the dream that matters. It is Jesus’ dream that we become more like him. It’s ok to have people we look up to. Role models are fine. But if becoming more like them takes us away from being more like Jesus, then something is messed up in that equation.

Throughout this series, we have encountered the cross through the words of Jesus. We have talked about how the cross has freed us from our sin because Jesus died in our place. He took the punishment for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to. I hope you have come to a deeper appreciation of how much it cost God to forgive you and me. But we can’t just stop there.

Jesus became like us. He became a person. He died a violent, torture-filled death to forgive us for our sins. But he didn’t just die to forgive our old, messed up life; he died to give us a second chance to get life right. He died to give us another shot to get it right. And getting it right means becoming like Jesus.

The Bible says it this way. “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” (1 John 2:6, NIV) In other words, if we claim to follow Jesus with our words, we have to back it up with our lives. There may be nothing more detrimental to our faith than people who claim to follow Jesus with their words, but their lives tell a very different story.

There was a Christian leadership conference being held at a particular hotel one weekend. The hotel was filled with church leaders from all over the nation who had come together for this huge conference. During this weekend conference, the hotel management said that the orders for pay-per-view pornographic movies skyrocketed. It was way over their normal number of orders for a weekend.

“Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” (1 John 2:6, NIV) Our world is watching us. Your co-workers are watching. Your family and friends are watching. Your neighbors are watching. They’re all watching to see if you really believe this Jesus stuff, or if it’s just all talk. They’re watching to see how you react when you get passed over for a promotion. They’re watching to see if a Christian marriage really looks any different than a non-Christian marriage. They’re listening to see if your words match up with your faith, or if you’re willing to gossip and run people into the ground. They’re watching to see if there is really anything different about you at all. They’re watching to see if this hope you claim to have could possibly work for them as well. Jesus was a person. He was God with skin on. And he has now passed that challenge on to us. He is calling us to be God with skin on. Not that we are God like Jesus was, but instead that we are God’s representatives. We are his witnesses.

When a lot of Christians talk about evangelism, sharing their faith with their friends, they start him-hawing around. “I don’t know enough Bible. I’m not a good enough Christian to do this.” We are simply called to be witnesses for Jesus. In a courtroom, what does a witness do? He simply tells what he knows. That’s what we’re called to do. You can be a witness for Jesus by simply telling people what you know about him. What you know that he has done in your life. We’re not called to be the judge, jury, or executioner. We’re simply called to be witnesses. That’s what it means to be God with skin on to our world.

Paul Harvey tells a story that you may have heard entitled, “The Man and the Birds.” It was Christmastime, but the man in our story wouldn’t attend the Christmas Eve service with his wife and kids. He just couldn’t believe all this incarnation stuff. It just didn’t make sense to him and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus story, about God coming to Earth as a man.

So his wife and children left for the church without him. Shortly after his family drove away, the man looked out his window and noticed that a heavy snow had started to fall. A few minutes later, as he was sitting in his fireside chair reading the newspaper, he heard thump from outside. Then another. Then another. At first, he though someone was throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he looked out, he saw a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They’d been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, they were trying to fly through his large landscape window.

Well the man couldn’t just let them freeze to death, so he bundled up and hurried outside. He tried to move the birds into his warm, dry barn. He opened the barn doors and turned on the light, but the birds would not come in. He figured he could entice them with food, so he sprinkled a trail of breadcrumbs leading to the barn, but the birds ignored the breadcrumbs. They were still flopping around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them…He tried waving his arms to shoo them into the barn…nothing worked. Every time he moved, the birds would scatter in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.

He began to realize that the birds were afraid of him. He began thinking, “To these birds, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…that I’m trying to help them, not hurt them. But how? If only I could be a bird and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, hear, and understand.” And at that moment, he heard the church bells begin to ring and all of a sudden, the story of Jesus made perfect sense.

Jesus became like us so that, in turn, we might become like him. It’s the truth of God that is so simple a child can understand it, yet it is so incredible an adult can hardly comprehend it. But it is the truth. Jesus came to earth as a man…a man with a mission. He came to die. To free us from our sin and give us a second chance at life. If you’ve never accepted this second chance God offers, we want to invite you to accept it today. Jesus became like us so that we might become like him.

Mike Edmisten