April 23, 2017 PM Service Humanity And Deity In A Single Word ny Pastor Josh Sheldon

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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John's Gospel in chapter 19. John 19.

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And we'll attend ourselves this afternoon to verses 28 and 29.

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Pardon me. After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the

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Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there, and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hissop, and put it to his mouth.

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The title of this message this afternoon is Humanity and Deity in a Single Word.

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And God willing, we will see as we look at this single word, I thirst.

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We'll see both of these in Jesus Christ as he was on the cross.

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We will see in this his humanity, he was fully man. We will see in this single word also some measure of his deity, because as he was fully man so much, so also was he fully

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God. He said, I thirst. In the Greek, it's only one word.

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It's dipso in the Greek. The man Jesus, as would have been any man after what he had endured even up to that point, was thirsty.

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He had hung now for some three hours. His life was about to expire. Better said, actually, he was about to let it expire.

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His humanity, his deity here are both on full display just in this one simple word.

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The one who hung there on the cross, you have to remember, was like us. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh.

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He came in the likeness of you and me. He was a man.

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That's just as important as the other side of that same coin, his deity. And the scriptures demand that we give equal attention to both of these aspects.

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Exactly how it is he could be fully man as we are, yet remain fully

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God as we most definitely are not, that's a mystery worthy more of acceptance than explanation.

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We accept it because the scripture teaches it. To explain it has really defied men's attempts for many, many centuries, but it is a truth that we hold dear, that our

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Savior God came as a man and as a man lived and tolerated, if you will, all that we do in just the same way we do because he came in the likeness, the likeness of sinful flesh.

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Without fanfare, John actually opened this gospel with these words, the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

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John 1, verse 14. The word, of course, he says the word, none other than Jesus Christ, taking us back to the first verse of this gospel, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was

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God. God entering into the human experience by becoming what we are. And not just John says this.

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Romans chapter 8, verse 3. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.

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By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

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Philippians chapter 2, verses 6 and 8. Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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There's one more. Hebrews chapter 2, verse 17.

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Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

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We need to understand, we need to hold on to, we need to glorify God for this simple fact, that God in Christ came in the flesh, came as a man, came in the likeness of everything you and I are, yet without sin.

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It's the completeness of his humanity in some sense is all wrapped up in this one word, or dipso,

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I thirst. I mean, God cannot thirst, can he? Psalm 50 says, if I were hungry,

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I would not tell you. And we could extrapolate from that, if God were thirsty, he would not tell us either.

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But what is the meaning of that? Certainly, God cannot become hungry.

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God cannot thirst. He can't do either. But on the cross, here we have our savior,

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I thirst. There's nothing in the human condition, there's nothing that we go through, nothing you went through this morning, will go through this afternoon, or tomorrow at work.

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Nothing happens in our state as humans that he, that Jesus Christ, did not encounter and experience to the full.

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Think back to the beginning of his ministry, Matthew chapter 4,

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Satan's temptations, they were real, they were intense. It wasn't that he fasted for 39 and a half days and on the final day,

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Satan came to him. It was 40 days of temptation, 40 days being assaulted by our enemy.

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Some say Jesus, because he was God, was incapable of sin.

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He was impeccable is the word. Others say that because he was in human form, though he never sinned, sin was in some way possible, but he didn't.

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In other words, he was peccable, able to sin, though didn't.

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Well, I'm quite satisfied that he was impeccable, that sin was impossible for him.

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It was impossible for God to lie. Jesus Christ not only did not sin, he could not sin, and yet that does not decrease the intensity of the temptations that came upon him, nor in any way his humanity, because they're on the cross.

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We have humanity saying, I thirst. This does not say resisting the temptations was in any way easy, because he was tempted as we are.

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It's not as though he simply said, well, that's a very interesting and alluring thing that I'm seeing, but since I am

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God, I think I'll just ignore it, as if he could just shrug his shoulders. There's nothing in our human condition or experience, whether you are young or old, man or woman, you may be a boy or a girl, whatever or wherever we are from, the

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Lord lived it. Our great high priest, when he hears our confessions, when he hears our repentance, he knows firsthand how hard it is for us.

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He knows what it means to have the temptation come at us, and because he's God, because he's a compassion, a sympathetic high priest, he knows what it is for us to give in to sin, because he knows the temptation of it in a way that we will never know, because he is so far and so distant and so other than sin.

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Remember that word from Hebrews.

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He's our merciful and faithful high priest, and that because he knows how hard it is for us because he walked among us.

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Wherever you're at, wherever I'm at, whatever comes at us, he, our

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Lord Jesus, thirsting on the cross, he had been there, yet without sin, but he was there.

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We're also taught that his suffering on the cross was very real. Deity didn't overshadow humanity and somehow remove the torture.

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Just as he faced our temptations, so also he felt the same pain, the same physical pain that any crucified man would feel.

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He said, I thirst. Our Savior, you see, came as a man in order to save men.

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We get that in this one word, I thirst. We also find in that single word that he was

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God. John gives us an analytical statement just before Jesus' words. He says, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled.

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All things refers both to the complete emptying of the Father's wrath at our sin. We discussed last week how

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God turned away from him. He said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is when

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God poured out his final fury at all the sins for which Jesus was at that point paying for, your sin,

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God willing, my sin. All things were accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, he said this.

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Jesus, the very word of God, would leave none of the word of God to fall on the ground.

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All things by him would be fulfilled. And this, dear ones, brethren, this has to give us greater confidence in the salvation we have, because nothing that we need to bring ourselves before God in the name of Jesus Christ, our

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Savior, was left undone. There's nothing we add to the cross. There's nothing we add to the sufferings of Christ.

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There's nothing we bring except our need. Jesus knew and insisted and lived that all things would be fulfilled.

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And if he came to save men, this is exactly what this means on the cross when John says that.

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Knowing that all things were fulfilled, he, Jesus, the man, God who came as man, ensured that everything needed for our salvation was done, was complete.

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He did it. The Lord said of the scriptures, I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

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And after his resurrection, he said, these are the words which I spoke to while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the

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Psalms concerning me. And between these two, the Lord was fulfilling the prophetic word, all of which testified of him.

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Think of his virgin birth, his parents' protective flight to Egypt and their return, Herod's massacre of the children,

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Jesus' rejection by the Jewish leaders, his betrayal by a friend, all of this directly in fulfillment of the word of God.

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Remember what he told John's disciples, go and tell John the things which you hear and see. The blind see and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, pardon me, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

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By which he meant that what Isaiah had prophesied in hope was then being seen in history, being fulfilled point by point, all fulfilled in the person of Jesus.

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Even on the cross, even on the cross,

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Jesus fulfilled the word of his father. Psalm 22 anticipated his suffering, it graphically described a way of death that was still centuries away from being invented.

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The same psalm foretold of his temporary rejection by the father as Jesus did not feel, didn't just feel

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God's wrath, though he certainly did that, but he became sin for us. Only this, only

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Jesus actually becoming that could justify his punishment for only sin deserves what Christ endured and this also fulfilled the word of God.

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So he said, I thirst. I thirst. A final scripture left open.

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Psalm 69, 21. They also gave me gall for my food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

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Jesus knew this verse. He was the very word of God in fact. The Lord knew he would receive nothing that would in any way even temporarily give him any comfort.

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He got vinegar and he knew he would because the word of God said so. Abraham told the rich man that it was not allowed for him to so much as dip his finger in the water to cool his tongue with even that little bit of moisture, but so also with Jesus.

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No relief as he suffered on the cross. Well, he knew he wouldn't get a drink of water, yet he asked.

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The man had the chance to do a small, a minuscule act of mercy, but chose instead to continue to add to his torment.

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But see how our Lord, see how our Jesus stayed true to the end. See his regard for the unalterable word of God.

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He made just this one complaint, I thirst. He made it fully aware of what must happen because God's word declared that it not only would happen as it did, but it must happen exactly that way.

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Can we look at that? Can we wish that if we were there, if I were there at the cross, could we just dream for a moment and hope that we would have had the courage, courage enough to give him just a little bit of fresh water as he called out for it?

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Now, like most men, I would have been too frightened of the soldiers and what they might have done to me.

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I would have been afraid of garnering the wrath of the Jewish authorities. We can't go back and give

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Jesus that drink. We can't give him drinks now, in a sense.

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Matthew 25, Jesus says, then they will also answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison?

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And did not minister to you. Then he will answer them, saying, assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.

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Yeah, I think of Jesus on the cross just asking for a sip of water.

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It reminds me of that scene in Ben -Hur. We've talked about this before, but you know when Ben -Hur is being led away in the chain gang to go on to the galleys, and it's hot in the

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Mediterranean sun, and they stop for a break, and they feed all the prisoners some water, and the

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Roman soldiers, the guards, get some water except Ben -Hur. Because of his offense, he's not allowed any water.

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And you see a man come up to him, and you only see him from the back. He takes a ladle of water and pulls it into the back of the head and feeds it to him.

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And the Roman guard, of course, tries to stop it, but he couldn't. But then, of course, that man that you see only from the back is meant in that story to be

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Jesus. Would that someone would have done for him what at least in that movie is depicted as him doing for someone else.

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But no, he said, I thirst, and the cross remained that place of unimaginable suffering.

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And this gains us something. It gains us a sympathetic high priest, one who is sympathetic because he himself suffered.

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We don't suffer as he did. We don't even suffer close to that, but we do suffer. And when our suffering is taken to Jesus, who also suffered for us, who suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, they're taken to the right place because he knows what we are going through.

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Whatever our situation might be, he knows what it is. He enters into our sorrows because as man, he entered into our sorrows.

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When we say to him,

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Lord, I thirst, he in his sympathy gives us what we need, what he did not get, but what we ask for, which is a refreshing drink, not necessarily of water, for which we will have again need, but of himself, of living waters.

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And this must, as was not done for him, make our suffering somewhat more bearable.

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Arthur Pink says here, there is a sense, a real one, in which Christ still thirsts.

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He is thirsting for the love and devotion of his own. He is yearning for fellowship with his blood -bought people.

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Here is one of the great marvels of grace. A redeemed sinner can offer that which satisfies the heart of Christ.

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He's satisfied when his thirsty people seek a draught from him. When we go to him in faith, when we repent and restore ourselves, or are restored by him back to the

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Father, when he hears true repentance and the confession of his people, I believe that is pleasing to the heart of our

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Lord. He's satisfied when his thirsty people seek him out.

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The table we have before us this afternoon is one means that the

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Lord gave us to find our refreshment in him, to find our strengthening in him.

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1 Corinthians 10 .16 says, The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

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The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? This word participation is koinonia, koinonia, where we get fellowship, and to participate in something, to share in something.

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What is shared here? As we take the broken bread representing his body, the wine or grape juice representing his blood, his life poured out, what is shared here is

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Christ himself. He commanded us to drink and eat at this table regularly.

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Now the table is not in the strictest sense our participation in Christ. That's a work of the

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Holy Spirit applying the redemption that we have in him to us. It is symbolic.

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The bread is just bread. In the final analysis, the wine is just wine. But what it represents is so much more.

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The cross where Jesus hung and said, I thirst, is what we remember when we come to these elements.

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The table is an emblem of our communion, an emblem of our communion, our participation with Christ.

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All the times in Romans chapter 5 and 6 when Paul speaks of this representative headship, we were in Christ when he redeemed us from our sin.

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And it is here that the physical wine is the sign and emblem of the refreshing drink that we get regularly in Christ.

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It reminds us that when we call out to our Father and say, I thirst, he makes sure that we are not given vinegar, but given what?

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Jesus Christ, his son. So as we take of the elements this afternoon, as we consider the blood and body of the

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Lord, consider this afternoon how this one word, I thirst, shows us the man

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Jesus Christ suffering as you and I would suffer if we were in his place. Think also of God the

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Son ensuring that scripture would be fulfilled because of his faithfulness to the

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Father. And his love for the people that the Father elected to be in him, to be redeemed by him, that he would leave nothing undone, nothing incomplete in the salvation at the table we celebrate, that it's all been done.

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And I think the simple word dipso, I thirst, can fortify us in this.