The Gospel Of John – Jesus’ Last Hour – Final Words from the Cross (Part Two)

We are now at Golgotha, the place of the skulls, the hill upon which Jesus was crucified.  Consistent with His ministry and instructions, Jesus’ final words were words revealing the word of redemption, and of comfort and instruction and faith and forgiveness.

In the last approximate 6 hours of Jesus life, on the cross, a second saying from him was his shortest:

‘I Thirst’

Reference: John 19:28

It’s Meaning from the Old Testament:  First, it was a prophetic fulfillment of the experiences and life of David, which we understand had a future application for Jesus and His crucifixion.  Psalm 69:20-21 where David says, ‘Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy but there was none, and for conforters but I found none.  They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for thirst’.  It is that last phrase as vinegar for thirst that we apply to Jesus’ words.

A second application of these words shows the extremis and human suffering of Jesus in his beatings, at trial, and now by crucifixion on the cross.  Isaiah has one of the best descriptive summaries in 12 verses of the physical suffering and the spiritual work of Jesus in His redemptive work.                                                                                                                                                                                            1 Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
³ He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
⁴ Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.
⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
⁸ By oppression^[a] and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.^[b]
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
    and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
    nor was any deceit in his mouth.
¹⁰ Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes^[c] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
¹¹ After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of life^[d] and be satisfied^[e];