Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us here today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope,
Speaker 1: the audio broadcast ministry of Pastor Rick Warren. Today we
Speaker 1: continue in a series called the Seven Greatest Words of Love.
Speaker 2: There are seven.
Speaker 1: Words in particular that Jesus spoke during his final hours
Speaker 1: on the Cross that hold the keys for finding fulfillment
Speaker 1: in your life, relationships, and even your career. Right now,
Speaker 1: here's Pastor Rick with part two of a message called
Speaker 1: the Word of Humanity.
Speaker 3: It says that when Jesus says I thirst, they took
Speaker 3: a hissop stick, They put a sponge on it, they
Speaker 3: dipped it into pasca, this vinegary water, and they hold
Speaker 3: it to his lips so he can slay his thirst
Speaker 3: and cool his parched lips. Now, what is the significance
Speaker 3: of a hissup stick? Any Jew standing around the cross
Speaker 3: would know the meaning of that, because fifteen hundred years earlier,
Speaker 3: when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt
Speaker 3: and they had the passovernight, and remember all the firstborn,
Speaker 3: we're going to.
Speaker 2: Die in Egypt.
Speaker 3: And God said, I want you to take a lamb,
Speaker 3: and I want you to go, and I want you
Speaker 3: to spread the blood on the doors of every Jewish family,
Speaker 3: and then we'll pass over. That's where the word passover
Speaker 3: comes from. Will pass over these homes and they'll go free,
Speaker 3: and they won't be touched by the death and the destruction.
Speaker 3: And in Exodus twelve, this is fifteen hundred years earlier.
Speaker 3: Here's what it says. God tells Moses, and Moses tells
Speaker 3: the people. Take a branch of the hissip plant, same plant,
Speaker 3: dip it into the bowl filled with blood, and then
Speaker 3: wipe the blood on the sides and top of the
Speaker 3: door frames.
Speaker 2: And that's the symbol.
Speaker 3: This is not an Egyptian family, this is a Jewish family.
Speaker 3: This is a believing family. They're the ones that are
Speaker 3: going free, and they get passed over from the death
Speaker 3: and destruction. Now, when the Roman soldiers do this, they
Speaker 3: don't have any idea the symbolism's going on. But they
Speaker 3: take the same hissip stick, dip it in the water,
Speaker 3: and when they hold it to Jesus's mouth, every Jew
Speaker 3: around the cross knew what that meant. It was a fulfillment,
Speaker 3: It was another symbol. It was another metaphor that the
Speaker 3: passover Lamb who saved the lives many years before.
Speaker 2: Because of its blood.
Speaker 3: Jesus blood was going to save them with a very
Speaker 3: powerful symbol. So through these two words I thirst, we
Speaker 3: know Jesus is truly a man. And to second, we
Speaker 3: know Jesus is truly God. He's the Messiah, He's the
Speaker 3: anointed one. He's the one that all these three hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty predictions, even that one comes down to being
Speaker 3: fulfilled in the last seconds.
Speaker 2: But there's a third one. This is important.
Speaker 3: It shows how much Jesus loves me. It shows how
Speaker 3: much Jesus loves me. That Jesus Christ would go through
Speaker 3: all of this pain for me is an amazing thing.
Speaker 3: Have you ever gone thirsty to save the life of
Speaker 3: somebody else?
Speaker 2: I kind of doubt that, but Jesus did.
Speaker 3: And Jesus, what he's doing here, the suffering he's going
Speaker 3: through on the cross is called redemptive suffering. He hadn't
Speaker 3: done anything wrong, he didn't deserve to be punished, he
Speaker 3: hadn't sinned, He'd lived a perfect life.
Speaker 2: So what is he doing.
Speaker 3: He's suffering for the benefit of somebody else. You, He's
Speaker 3: suffering for you. He's suffering for you. This is redemptive suffering.
Speaker 3: He's paying for your ticket to heaven, and this shows
Speaker 3: how much God loves me. Romans five eight says, this
Speaker 3: God demonstrates his own love for us, and that while
Speaker 3: we were still sinners, we're still rejecting God.
Speaker 2: Christ died for.
Speaker 3: Us, dying on the behalf of somebody else. You know.
Speaker 3: Back in nineteen eighty seven, there was a young man
Speaker 3: in our church named Rhett Wherette was a.
Speaker 2: Friend of mine.
Speaker 3: He had just graduated from high school at Mission Video
Speaker 3: High School. He's nineteen years old. He was going to
Speaker 3: start sattle Back College in the fall, and he went
Speaker 3: back east to make a visit of some family. And
Speaker 3: in August of that year, August sixteenth, he was got
Speaker 3: on a flight and he started flying out of Detroit.
Speaker 3: Interestingly enough, on the flight right behind him there were
Speaker 3: planes backed up in Detroit was my brother. And my
Speaker 3: brother watched this flight take off. It was called Northwest
Speaker 3: Flight one fifty five, some of you remember that. And
Speaker 3: it took off, but in a few mon minutes later
Speaker 3: in the horizon, all of a sudden, it stalled and
Speaker 3: it plummeted and it crashed and it killed one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty five people just out of the Detroit airport.
Speaker 3: And my brother was on the plane right behind it,
Speaker 3: watched it happened, and Rhett was killed.
Speaker 2: I did his funeral at Mission Jeo High School.
Speaker 3: But on that flight, when they started going through the
Speaker 3: wreckage and one hundred and fifty five people killed, they
Speaker 3: found one lone survivor. It was a four year old
Speaker 3: little girl. The little baby girl, her name was Cecilia.
Speaker 3: She was from Tempe, Arizona, and they couldn't figure out
Speaker 3: how she had lived through this flight one fifty five crash,
Speaker 3: only one four year old girl, and they didn't know
Speaker 3: until they asked her, and she explained in her own
Speaker 3: terms how her mommy, her mother, and her father and
Speaker 3: her brother were all killed in the crash. How her mommy,
Speaker 3: when they real they were going down, took off her
Speaker 3: seat belt, turned around in front of her, got down
Speaker 3: in front of her seat and wrapped her in her
Speaker 3: arms like this to protect her. And the only reason
Speaker 3: she was saved because it's her mother gave her life
Speaker 3: for her.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what Jesus did for you on the cross.
Speaker 3: He covered you with his love, he covered you with
Speaker 3: his blood, He covered.
Speaker 2: You with his arms saying I love you this much, and.
Speaker 3: He gave his life for you, so that you didn't
Speaker 3: have to die for your sense. You know this theme
Speaker 3: I first. I don't know if you know it, but
Speaker 3: it was the life theme of Mother Teresa. It was
Speaker 3: in fact, in every one of the homes for the
Speaker 3: dying that Mother Teresa opened in her lifetime, and everyone
Speaker 3: hung a picture of Jesus on the Cross with simply
Speaker 3: the words underneath it, I thirst. It was in every
Speaker 3: home that Mother Teresa started, I thirst because she said,
Speaker 3: that is the goal of our ministry. That is the
Speaker 3: goal of our ministry, even every home for dying. Let
Speaker 3: me show you what she said about this. Watch this
Speaker 3: on the screen.
Speaker 4: The m of our congregation, the am of our existence,
Speaker 4: is not just to do that work them is to
Speaker 4: satiate the tust of God, the tirst of Jesus on
Speaker 4: the cross for love for souls. And so who are
Speaker 4: the nearest to him, the poorest, on the poor, that
Speaker 4: hunger of Christ on the cross, the test of Christ
Speaker 4: on the cross. We say sheiate by our love in action.
Speaker 3: That thirst on the cross. We associate it with it
Speaker 3: through our love in action. When you go to work
Speaker 3: on Monday, people all around you are going to be
Speaker 3: spiritually thirsty. When you go home to your house, the
Speaker 3: people who live next door to you are spiritually thirsty.
Speaker 3: When you go to the grocery store, or you go
Speaker 3: to the soccer game, and everywhere you go, everybody around
Speaker 3: you is spiritually thirsty. Now, they don't ever use that term.
Speaker 3: Nobody ever says I'm spiritually thirsty. So let me give
Speaker 3: you a few synonyms for spiritual thirst. I'm really unfulfilled.
Speaker 3: I'm bored with my life. I'm super frustrated right now.
Speaker 3: There's gotta be more to light than this. I'm in
Speaker 3: over my head. I'm hanging on by a thread. I'm
Speaker 3: about to go under. I'm ready to throw in the towel.
Speaker 3: I don't feel like this is all there is to life.
Speaker 2: I'm unfulfilled. My life lacks meaning.
Speaker 3: I don't know what's missing, but I still haven't found
Speaker 3: what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: I can't get no satisfaction.
Speaker 3: Everybody on this planet is spiritually thirsty and they don't
Speaker 3: know it, and they're looking to fill the void in
Speaker 3: their heart with things that aren't going to satisfy them.
Speaker 2: Then aren't going to quench their thirst.
Speaker 3: They're bored, they're dissatisfied, they feel empty, they're unhappy.
Speaker 2: They want more.
Speaker 3: They go, I gotta have more. I got money. I
Speaker 3: gotta get more.
Speaker 2: I gotta get more. I gotta get more. I gotta
Speaker 2: get more.
Speaker 3: Now, what do we learn from the thirst of others,
Speaker 3: the people around us? Well, the Bible talks about this
Speaker 3: emptiness and spiritual hunger. The Book of Amos, chapter eight
Speaker 3: says this. The time is coming, God says, when I
Speaker 3: will send a famine on the land, and people will
Speaker 3: be hungry, but not for bread. And they will be thirsty,
Speaker 3: but not for water. They will hunger, and they will
Speaker 3: thirst for a message from the Lord. And people will
Speaker 3: stagger everywhere, from sea to sea, from the Atlantic to
Speaker 3: the Pacific, searching for the word of the Lord. Running here,
Speaker 3: going there, But they will not find that. They're on
Speaker 3: this big search. Beautiful girls and fine young men will
Speaker 3: grow faint and weary, thirsting for the Lord's where. It's
Speaker 3: like Hollywood celebrities. They are beautiful people, but empty lives.
Speaker 3: They look good, they feel good, they have the goods.
Speaker 2: But they're not living good. And they're hungry, and.
Speaker 3: They're thirsty for spiritual things. And they don't know what
Speaker 3: they really want, so they try to find it in
Speaker 3: sex They try to find it in fame. They try
Speaker 3: to find it in drugs, they try to find it
Speaker 3: in sports, they try to find it in a hobby.
Speaker 3: They try to find in all kinds of other things
Speaker 3: which are very good or very bad, but neither of
Speaker 3: them are going to satisfy that hunger. Now, there are
Speaker 3: two things you need to remember this week when you
Speaker 3: go back to work or you go home, or you
Speaker 3: go out in the community. Two things you need to
Speaker 3: remember about everybody you see. Write these down. Number one,
Speaker 3: I serve Jesus by serving others. They're hungry, and they're thirsty.
Speaker 3: And when you serve their spiritual hunger and their spiritual thirst,
Speaker 3: it's like you serving Jesus on the cross. I serve
Speaker 3: Jesus by serving others. The Bible tells us that one day,
Speaker 3: on the judgment day, we're going to stand before God.
Speaker 3: And in Matthew twenty five it says this, Lord, we'll
Speaker 3: say to Jesus, when did we ever see you hungry
Speaker 3: and feed you? When did we see you, Lord thirsty
Speaker 3: and give you something to drink? And he will tell them,
Speaker 3: I assure you that when you did it to the
Speaker 3: least to the one of the least of.
Speaker 2: These, my brothers. You were doing it to me.
Speaker 3: Now think about the irony of this fishth word on
Speaker 3: the cross where Jesus, in this final moment, is saying,
Speaker 3: I thirst Who invented water?
Speaker 2: God?
Speaker 3: Every single drop of water was created by Jesus. He
Speaker 3: invented every rain, every river, every every every lake, every pond,
Speaker 3: the ocean, ice. God invented h two O, the inventor
Speaker 3: of water, the creator of water, every drop on the universe,
Speaker 3: God created. Now he's hanging on the cross, and he's thirsty.
Speaker 3: He certainly could have just done a miracle and given
Speaker 3: himself water, you know, caused it the rain. He could
Speaker 3: have done any kind of miracle he wanted to to
Speaker 3: quench his thirst, but instead get this important Jesus God,
Speaker 3: at this point asks for human assistance.
Speaker 2: Is I'm thirsty? Is that a mind.
Speaker 3: Blower that the God of the universe, who creates water,
Speaker 3: invents water, made all the water, says I'm thirsty.
Speaker 2: Can anybody help me out here?
Speaker 3: I'm a little busy right now, I'm a little tied up.
Speaker 3: His hands are nailed to the cross. He can't even
Speaker 3: get a drink himself. Somebody's gonna have to put it
Speaker 3: on a sponge and stick it to his mouth, and
Speaker 3: he's asking for human assistance. Now, imagine you, two thousand
Speaker 3: years ago being the guy who gives Jesus a drink
Speaker 3: of water. This guy, in all likelihood, was not a believer,
Speaker 3: followed Jesus Christ. He's just a Roman soldier and takes sponge,
Speaker 3: sticks it on a hissup stick, dips it in someipaska,
Speaker 3: and he offers water to the Son of God.
Speaker 2: He realize, what a privilege that would be.
Speaker 3: What a privilege to be the person who, when the
Speaker 3: Son of God says I'm thirsty, you meet that need.
Speaker 3: What a privilege that would have been. You have that
Speaker 3: privilege every single day of your life, Jesus said, inasmuch
Speaker 3: as you've done it under the least of these my brothers,
Speaker 3: you did it to me. And when you help somebody
Speaker 3: in pain, when you help somebody across the street, when
Speaker 3: you give somebody some kind of answer to their need,
Speaker 3: any little thing, Jesus said, you're doing it to me.
Speaker 3: I serve God, I serve Jesus by serving others.
Speaker 2: That is the privilege.
Speaker 3: You have the same privilege that man had at the
Speaker 3: foot across You have every day. When you help an
Speaker 3: elderly person, a young person, a mentally ill person, a
Speaker 3: confused person, a homeless person, when you help anybody, it's
Speaker 3: the same thing, Jesus said. The second lesson we learned
Speaker 3: about spiritual thirsty people around you is that Jesus notices
Speaker 3: the smallest service. Jesus notices the smallest of services. It
Speaker 3: could be so minor by comparison. In Matthew ten forty two,
Speaker 3: Jesus said this, if you give even a cup of
Speaker 3: cold water to one of the least of my followers,
Speaker 3: you will surely be rewarded, even if you're just giving
Speaker 3: water to somebody thirsty. The Bible calls that ministry. See,
Speaker 3: we often think ministry is oh, teaching the Bible, leading worship. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: ministry is here. Can I give you drink? Is like
Speaker 3: to sit down, put your feet up for a minute?
Speaker 3: Can I help you out? Can I do an errand
Speaker 3: for you? Can I bring you a meal? A cup
Speaker 3: of cold water? Jesus says, that's ministry. He said, You're
Speaker 3: gonna be rewarded in Heaven for that. For slaking somebody's thirst,
Speaker 3: emotional thirst, physical thirst, mental thirst, spiritual thirst. Doing these
Speaker 3: simple things. Jesus notices the smallest service you see. What
Speaker 3: I've discovered today is that everybody wants to do great
Speaker 3: things for God. Stop trying to do great things for God.
Speaker 3: The greatest things are actually the smallest things. It's not
Speaker 3: the big things, it's the little things that God noticed.
Speaker 2: He says, that's my girl, that's my boy.
Speaker 3: You're feeding people, you're helping people, You're taking care of
Speaker 3: their emotional, physic, mental, spiritual needs. Nobody's ever going to
Speaker 3: know about it. But God says, I saw that. I
Speaker 3: saw you help that person across the street. I saw
Speaker 3: you do that kind word. I saw you give the
Speaker 3: pat on the back. I saw you take a moment
Speaker 3: when you didn't have a moment.
Speaker 2: I saw you do that.
Speaker 3: It's not the big things they are going to get
Speaker 3: the credit. It's do I care about somebody in pain
Speaker 3: in that moment and you're never going to know about it.
Speaker 3: Do I show kindness in the little things to a child,
Speaker 3: to an elderly person, to a lonely person, to a
Speaker 3: hurting person, to an irritating person.
Speaker 2: Now we're meddling.
Speaker 3: Jesus notices the smallest of services.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I read this a while back, Doug Nichols.
Speaker 2: He was an.
Speaker 3: American Christian and he was living in India, and he
Speaker 3: was trying to share the Gospel with people. He's trying
Speaker 3: to tell people in India the good news of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: Didn't speak a word of any of the Indian dialects,
Speaker 3: and he wrote this Doug Nichols. When I got tuberculosis
Speaker 3: in India, I was forced to stay in a sanitarium
Speaker 3: for several months. I didn't speak the language, but I
Speaker 3: tried to give Christian literature in their language to the
Speaker 3: patients and to the doctors and the nurses, and not
Speaker 3: a single person accepted. Everybody politely refused my Christian literature.
Speaker 3: The first few nights I was there, I woke up
Speaker 3: around two am coughing from my tuberculosis. And during one
Speaker 3: of my coughing spells, I noticed an older, sicker patient
Speaker 3: across the room trying to get out of bed. He'd
Speaker 3: sit up on the edge of the bed. He'd try
Speaker 3: to stand, but in weakness, he'd fall back into the bed.
Speaker 3: I didn't understand what he was trying to do. He
Speaker 3: finally gave up, exhausted, but I could hear him crying
Speaker 3: softly through the night. The next morning, I realized that
Speaker 3: he'd been trying to get out of bed to go
Speaker 3: to the bathroom, and the stench in our ward was awful.
Speaker 3: Other patients yelled insults at this man who'd soiled himself.
Speaker 3: Angry nurses moved him roughly as they cleaned up the mess.
Speaker 3: One nurse even slapped him. The old man curled up
Speaker 3: into a ball and he wept. The next night, I
Speaker 3: woke up again coughing, and I noticed the same man
Speaker 3: trying to get out of bed, and like the night before,
Speaker 3: he fell back into his bed whimpering. So I got
Speaker 3: out of my bed and I went over to him.
Speaker 3: When I touched his shoulders, his eyes opened wide with fear,
Speaker 3: but I smiled, put my arms under him and picked
Speaker 3: him up. He was very light due to old age
Speaker 3: and advanced t b and I carried him to the toilet,
Speaker 3: which was just a filthy small.
Speaker 2: Room with a hole in the floor.
Speaker 3: I stood behind him with my arms under his armpits
Speaker 3: as he took care of himself, and after he finished,
Speaker 3: I carried him back to bed. As I laid him down,
Speaker 3: he kissed me on the cheek. He smiled and said
Speaker 3: something an Indian I didn't understand. The next morning, another
Speaker 3: patient woke me up and handed me a steaming cup
Speaker 3: of tea. He motioned with his hands that he wanted
Speaker 3: a gospel tract that I'd been trying to give out.
Speaker 3: As the sun rose, other patients approached me, and each
Speaker 3: of them indicated that they also wanted the Christian booklets
Speaker 3: that nobody had been interested in before. Throughout the day,
Speaker 3: nurses and interns and doctors asked for my booklet about Jesus.
Speaker 3: Weeks later, a pastor came who spoke the language, and
Speaker 3: he visited me, and he told me that several people
Speaker 3: in the hospital had put their trust in Jesus Christ
Speaker 3: as a savior as a result of reading those booklets.
Speaker 3: So what did it take for me to reach these
Speaker 3: dear people with the good news? Not my ability to
Speaker 3: speak their language, not my ability to give a persuasive presentation.
Speaker 3: I simply helped an old man to the bathroom. What
Speaker 3: are you willing to do to get people into heaven?
Speaker 3: Let's just pause on that for a minute. What are
Speaker 3: you willing to.
Speaker 2: Do to get people into heaven?
Speaker 3: What kind of love do you really have for other
Speaker 3: people who are physically spiritually and emotionally thirsty?
Speaker 2: Is anybody going to be in heaven because of you?
Speaker 3: Are you willing to pick up an old man and
Speaker 3: take into the bathroom?
Speaker 2: What are you willing to do?
Speaker 3: Jesus said, inasmuch you've done it under the least of
Speaker 3: these my brothers. You did it to me? Have you
Speaker 3: done it to anybody? Will you do it to anybody
Speaker 3: this next week? Will you show that kind of love?
Speaker 3: Are you so insolated in self centeredness and my life
Speaker 3: and my joke goals, and my problems and my needs
Speaker 3: and my family that I don't have time to notice
Speaker 3: the people who saying I'm thirsty around me? We learn
Speaker 3: in the thirst of others that I serve Jesus by
Speaker 3: serving others. And we learn that Jesus notices even the
Speaker 3: smallest service. And the third thing, this is the hardest
Speaker 3: one of all. Write this down. The most christ Like
Speaker 3: service is to enemies. Oh come on, you know, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: but this is the Jesus way to live. The most
Speaker 3: christ Like service is to enemies. I am most like Jesus.
Speaker 3: You are most like Jesus when you're helping people you
Speaker 3: totally disagree with.
Speaker 2: You don't like their lifestyle.
Speaker 3: You don't like their politics, you don't like their breath,
Speaker 3: you don't like the way they look, you don't like
Speaker 3: their culture, you don't like the way they talk, and
Speaker 3: on and on and on. You are most like Jesus
Speaker 3: when you respond with kindness to the people who don't
Speaker 3: like you, when you're building bridges to people like that.
Speaker 1: Pastor Rick Warren says that every word Jesus spoke was
Speaker 1: important and has life changing power. The words that Jesus
Speaker 1: spoke during his final hours on the cross hold the
Speaker 1: key to finding fulfillment in your life, career, and relationships.
Speaker 1: That's why Rick put together a powerful seven session study
Speaker 1: kit called the Seven Greatest Words of Love. Get it
Speaker 1: now and unlock the full meaning and amazing blessings of
Speaker 1: Jesus's last words before his resurrection words of forgiveness, assurance, love, trust,
Speaker 1: and more. And this is a life changing Bible study
Speaker 1: with seven video sessions and a workbook. Request your copy
Speaker 1: today by calling eight hundred, six hundred five thousand and four.
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