The Thirst Trap
I stumbled upon this sermon the other day and immediately thought it would be perfect for this weeks sermon notes. Pastor Steven Furtick starts the sermon by talking about how he and his wife Holly were at a restaurant one day, when he goes out to eat he drinks a crazy amount of diet coke. During this particular outing, he found himself apologizing to the waitress for all that refills and promised to tip her well. After he apologized Holly told the waitress ”he's just a thirsty man” which causes the waitress to laugh uncontrollably because to us the word ”thirsty” can have a very different meaning.
We are all thirsty or thirsting for something. The question is, What are you using to fill your cup? At one point in time I was using the wrong things to fill my cup, now I only want Jesus.
I connected with this sermon because of how practical it is and how well Pastor Furtick explained thirst, and how Jesus thirsted on the cross.
Favor flows from strange places.
God wants to challenge our attachments.
Some things in your life that you sowed in the last season are going to come out of the ground when you least expect it.
Faith means not knowing why you are going through something but trusting the one who makes a way when there is no way.
John 19: 28 (NIV) Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”29 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. 30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.”With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
How can God be thirsty?
Sometimes we are thirsty, sometimes we need too much from the wrong place.
The same God with the power to flood the earth thirsts.
The fullness of God is hanging on the cross in the form of man and they give him vinegar to drink for his thirst. And they put it in his mouth, the same mouth that spoke them into existence.
How could God struggle with a human sensation like thirst?
Struggle
To understand why he said that he thirst, you have to start in the Garden of Gethsemane. Which is where he went to pray before he drank the cup of suffering.
What will you do with the cup?
Jesus prayed if there is any other way let this cup pass from me.
Jesus struggled.
Not my will but yours be done, is what he said to God in prayer.
Jesus was trapped between what he wanted and God’s will.
Shame
Shame will make you thirsty.
It will make you forget who you are.
It’s not a sin to be thirsty. It’s just where you get your fix that determines whether your soul will be satisfied.
John 4 (NIV) 4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 6 Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.
Satisfaction
Jesus told the woman at the well if you drink from this water you are going to stay thirsty.
If you put your validation in other peoples hands you will have to go them for it.
Jesus is saying you will always have somewhere to drink from. Not that you won’t have a need.
God doesn’t need anything from you, he wants to set you free.
Jesus sent a thirsty woman to transform an entire region.
Setup
John 19:28 scripture at top of notes
The cross was a setup.
Jesus suffered like a criminal so he could reign like a king.
When Jesus said “I thirst” they thought he wanted water. So they gave him vinegar to mock him. The thing they used to mock him was actually the thing he used to finish the work God sent him to do.
Sometimes you’re in a wilderness and you don’t know why.
Jesus looked trapped but he wasn’t.
Death didn’t trap Jesus. Jesus trapped death.
Jesus said “I thirst” to fulfill the scripture.
Jesus has a purpose for every thirst in your life.
Psalm 69 (NIV) 20 Scorn has broken my heart
and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy, but there was none,
for comforters, but I found none.
21 They put gall in my food
and gave me vinegar for my thirst.
22 May the table set before them become a snare;
may it become retribution and a trap.
In this Psalm David described what would happen to Jesus on the cross centuries before it happened.
You can get to a place where you feel trapped, but you can’t stay there.
Jesus was setting the trap for death.
If he didn’t die, he couldn’t rise.
God bought us here so our doubt could die and our faith can live.
The trap became the triumph.