Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 2, 2021 | True Story - Good Friday Message

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April 2, 2021 | True Story - Good Friday Message · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is Good Friday.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is the afternoon of our Lord's crucifixion.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: John described it this way, as you read, carrying his cross.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus went out to the place of the skull called Golgotha.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here they crucified him, and with him two others.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: When the soldiers crucified him, the four of them took his clothes and divided them up.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I cheated a little bit.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: It said the soldiers divided his clothes up into four parts for each of them.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there were four soldiers and four women at the base of the cross and three people getting crucified.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Later, Jesus said, I'm thirsty.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thirsty, he said.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: God the Son said, I'm thirsty.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Seven times Jesus spoke from the cross, from the pulpit of the cross, as some call it.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Seven times he gasped out short phrases.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: They are famously called the seven words from the cross.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: The first was, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Eloy, Eloy, Lama Sabakhtani.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Able to just get that out.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: The last word was it is finished.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tatalesti.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The fifth word was I'm thirsty.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The most ordinary, the most human, the most common of all.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: We get thirsty all the time.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: No wonder we skip over this word.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: No wonder we're going, nothing here.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Done that all the time.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Said I'm thirsty often.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: You said I'm thirsty too, so I said, I'll get us a couple bottles of water.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thirsty.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: In the Greek, the word's only four letters long.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to say this word.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a funny sounding word.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dipso.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So say it, but say it more like Jesus would have said it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of croaking it out, gasping it out.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Say dipso.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Dipso.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of whispered it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thirsty.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't look at this word much.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, why should we?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's so ordinary.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, the key that unlocks any passage of scripture is asking it the right question.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And sooner or later, someone asks the question, hold it, what was he thirsty for?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, was he really thirsty for that cheap wine that they allowed him to suck out of a sponge?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Was he thirsty for that sour vinegary stuff that soldiers and field workers chugged by the court?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when you stop to ask and answer the question, but what was he thirsty for?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: You find that it opens a door to a whole nother world, a whole nother understanding, and really a whole nother life.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, it's a simple question.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: What was he thirsty for?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are really only two options.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And turns out it the answer is not an either or, it's a both and.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was, you might say, thirsty on two different levels.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: On a fundamental level, of course, he was thirsty for water.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I told you it was a simple question.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: He was thirsty for water because he was dying for a drink.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: We should probably stop, though, and think about that for just a second.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because water, thirst for water is something God has created us all with, and physically it's pretty much the center of existence for every human being.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Doctors tell us, right, that most of us live.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Doctors say that many of us live in a sort of semi-dehydrated state because we only drink three to five cups of water a day instead of the 15 or 20 a day that we're supposed to drink.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I confess to you, I'm doing really well right now because this sermon has got me running to the sink for dozens of glasses of water this week.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So right now I'm doing really well.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I may have to no, I wouldn't say that.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, Jesus said, I'm thirsty because he was dying for a drink.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is that we're thirsty from the cradle to the grave.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: From your very earliest days, kids, are kids, don't kids always want to drink, especially when they are going to bed?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: This week I came across some notes I'd written way back when my youngest child was five years old.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the notes are pretty extensive.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd gotten frustrated.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they read, Every night I hear the same words.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every night I'm sitting in the living room, and from down the hall comes the plaintiff cry, I'm thirsty, from my five-year-old.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm convinced it's part of the sleep-delaying ritual that preschoolers practice when we adults aren't around.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Every night, as I move as I move my youngest son towards his bed, there is a series of hurdles that I have to cross over.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I need to use the bathroom.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good idea.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, hold it, Bob.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I have to brush my teeth.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's also a good idea.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Will you wheelbarrow me to bed?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not tonight.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then despite the fact that I just escorted him into the bedroom, my darling little boy hides under the covers, and so I have to pretend that I don't know where he is, and I can't find him until he whips the covers down and says, says, surprise.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then each of us gets to kiss the other one, I wrote, a certain number of times, depending on how many times we beat the other one in Uno that evening.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: I get to kiss you three times, Daddy, and you only get to kiss me once.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Will you tell me a story?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not tonight.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's late.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Will you play the piano?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, if you'll be quiet.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, am I right?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do all of you recognize this scene exactly.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually, though, the piano playing is over, and I'm sitting in the living room, and I've got the book, and I'm reading and I'm relaxing.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's about 20 minutes later, so I nearly jump out of my skin when the voice comes down the hallway.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Daddy, I'm thirsty.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Can I have a drink?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I ignore that voice, hoping that it'll go away and I can go to sleep.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Or he will go to sleep, which has that ever worked, by the way, in the history of mankind?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not once, no.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So seconds later, the voice comes back louder.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then even louder.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And confess that being an ogre, I have often said, no, go to sleep.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm ruined anyway because I am suffused with guilt, because I always remember the famous story of the boy that kept crying for a drink, and his and his father finally said, If you say, if you ask one more time, I'm coming in there to spank you, and the boy remembers goes, When you come in to spank me, would you please bring me a cup of water?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I always felt thinking, maybe he really does need a drink.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, anyway.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, my point is that from cradle to grave we need a drink.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Little kids are always wanting water, but isn't it also true that at the end of life?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, many of us have been in a hospital room as grandma was in her last days, slipping the straw in through her lips so that she could get a drink, right?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or over at the hospice here, where they have that swab, and you dip the swab in water and you put it on grandpa's tongue and lips to give them a give them a little bit of moisture relief.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: From the beginning of life to the end of life, water is something that God has built into us that we need.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus needed water that badly because this was none of those, this wasn't this easy, quick sort of death that we have today by lethal injection or by electric.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: This death stretched on for hours in front of a gaping, jeering crowd, and it involved beatings, and it involved torture and spikes and suffocation and loss of blood, and an uncontrollable raging thirst.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: For we are told that one of the side effects, medical people told us in Jam at JAMA magazine, one of the side effects of crucifixion is a terrible raging thirst.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, of course, to make it even worse, had probably gone, I don't know, 18 hours since he'd had a drink since the Last Supper.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And since then he'd been in the Garden of Gethsemane, and it said he sweated out great drops, like great drops of blood, and then the Romans had had shoved a crown of thorns into his head, which caused him to bleed and whipped his skin off of his back, so he's lost a lot of moisture.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: That way, now he's hung nearly naked under the hot sun for three hours with the with the pores of his skin just leaching out water.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, he's developed a high fever.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's no doubt that his skin is hot, his head is throbbing, his eyes burn in their sockets, his lips are parched and cracked.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: We know his mouth was dry as cotton because an Old Testament prophecy, Psalm 22, says that Messiah, in Messiah's death, his tongue would stick to the roof of his mouth.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: His tongue is swollen, his throat can only croak out one four-letter Greek word, dipso, thirsty.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was literally dying for a drink of water.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just the first and least important level because there's another level, too, it seems to me, on which Jesus said, I thirst.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because it is possible to thirst for things other than drinks of water, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about people or a man who thirsts for fame or someone who thirsts for power, right?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about someone who thirsts for money or someone who thirsts for love.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So on one level, yes, Jesus is burning up with thirst for H2O water for his mouth, but on a higher level, Jesus is consumed with a thirst for something more for water for his soul.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let me put it another way.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus' cry, I'm thirsty, was more than just one man's dying cry for water for his throat.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was the cry of a dying world, in whose place he hung there, of a dying world for the water of life for the soul.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: For Jesus, having taken on the sins of the world so much so that his father turned his face away and severed their relationship, now cries with the thirst of the world for something greater than water.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something he's been speaking about for the last three years of his ministry.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's been talking about thirst and water in a higher way.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Once, remember, he fed 5,000 famished people in a desert northeast of Galilee, performs this great miracle, and as they're eating the food, he announces, I am the bread of life.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Come to me and you'll never hunger.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Believe in me and you'll never thirst.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And later he's all the way down in Jerusalem and he's in the temple, and as he and a huge crowd of people are watching the priest take that huge barrel of water from the pool of Siloam at Passover and pour it out on the pavement.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus can't stop himself.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: He cries out in a loud voice, If any of you is thirsty, come to me and drink.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not meaning water, but something far greater, right?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And most famously once, when sitting by a well in Samaria, right, a person whose life was a mess, a total mess of marriages and divorces, came to draw water.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And knowing all things, Jesus knew that she'd been trying to quench her thirst for life at the failing fountain of romance.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And for her it had been like drinking salt water.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: The more she drank, the more thirsty she became.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now she's disillusioned, now she's bitter, now she is lonely, and so as she lowers her bucket down into the well, Jesus, pointing at the well, says, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: But whoever drinks of the water that I give will slake their thirst forever, will never thirst again, because the water I give becomes a well inside of you, and the water in it wells up into eternal life.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let me say it again.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: God the Son came to earth to introduce himself as the source of living water, water of life for a dry and thirsty world.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Come drink of me.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never thirst again, he said.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But today, this afternoon, everything is flipped.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's no longer a thirst quencher.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: He now represents and hangs there representing the thirsty world, taking the place of mankind on the cross.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus takes on the infinite thirst of mankind and croaks out, I thirst.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let me review.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: On one level, on the lowest level, Jesus said, I'm thirsty because he was thirsty, like we are, physically.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was dying alone without H2O, without water.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: But on the more important level, Jesus said, I'm thirsty because he was thirsty spiritually, dying in our place without the water of life.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And this is interesting, isn't it?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've been to a lot of places in the world and seen a lot of important headquarters of the different religions.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Every religion seems to reveal itself in its art.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: In its art.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Buddhists have fat, round, contented saints with their hands on their laps.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hindus instead, their gods and goddesses are much thinner, and they have sensuous gods and goddesses with their arms always in the air expressing some kind of life pleasure.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Muslims have no people at all, just perfect Arabic calligraphy on geometrically precise mosques with elaborate mosaics and domes.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then you come to Christianity.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity has far and away the weirdest, strangest artistic image of all at its center.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: A pale, glimmering, bleeding body hanging in the dark on a cross, and a face in pain croaking out the word dipso.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thirsty.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about it, of those four religions, therefore, Christianity is the one and only faith that addresses the world as it really is, both on the physical and the spiritual level, on the physical level, instead of like the others, ignoring the pain and suffering in the world, Christianity says, you want to know where God is in the middle of pain and death?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's hanging right here.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: He knows the world's pain.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: He took on himself the world's pain, so that one day pain will be no more.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And on the higher level, the spiritual level, to a world dying of sin and far from God, Jesus says, Are you thirsty for something more for the water of eternal life?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Of course you are.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Look here.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking that thirst in order to slake your thirst forever.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Come to me and drink of eternal life.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some years ago, a uh a combat crew had to ditch their bomber in the vast wasteland of the South Pacific Ocean.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: The five survivors clambered aboard a rubber raft.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And day after day they bobbed up and down on the salt water under a hot sun.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Day after day, there was ne'er a sign of rescue.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: The sun scorched and burned their skin, and as their food and their water ran out, they became dehydrated.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Their flesh shrank and shrank until they were little more than skeletons.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Their thirst was all that they could think about.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Their lips cracked, their tongues swelled until they felt like hugs of dry leather in their mouths.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Two of the five of them went mad and leapt overboard.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: One died quietly and they rolled him into the sea.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just two of them were left.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, one morning, marvelously, miraculously, wonderfully, a rescue ship appeared on the horizon.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But when that ship lifted the two men on board, only one of the two was alive.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the sole survivor wept as he told of the death of his friend.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Last night, he said, it rained.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: It rained, and the raft caught a pail of fresh water.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to give some to my buddy.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to coax water through his lips.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: It would have saved his life, but he was going mad, and he thought I was trying to give him seawater in order to poison and kill him.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he fought me, and he wouldn't drink, and I wasn't strong enough to force him.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the soldier beat his pillow in frustration and he said, If only, if only he had drunk the water that I offered him, he would have lived.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And on Good Friday afternoon, there's a man who hangs on a cross, and through dry and parched lips, he whispers, If only you drink the water that I offer you, you could live.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: For I've become thirsty in your place so that you need thirst no more.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're dry, I know you're parched, I know you're thirsty for something more than water.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Won't you come to me and drink the water of life?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: For you.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I thirst.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me in prayer.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: We think of your Son, the Lord Jesus, Heavenly Father.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: We think of what He went through for us.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now we approach the Lord's table.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: We remember that He asked us, He pled with us to remember Him and His death by taking the bread and drinking the cup.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do that.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do that now.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for what He did for us in Jesus' name.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Take your cup, take the bread.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any time all year long when it is more appropriate to share the Lord's table than on this afternoon?