Now may I encourage you to turn
with me in your own Bibles to the Gospel of John, the Gospel
of John and the 12th chapter. Now will you follow as I read,
beginning in verse 20, The immediately preceding context describes what
we have come to know and designate as our Lord's triumphal entry
into Jerusalem, and immediately following his account of that
triumphal entry, John writes, Now there were certain Greeks
among those that went up to worship at the feast, These, therefore,
came to Philip, who was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying,
Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip comes and tells Andrew. Andrew comes and Philip, and
they tell Jesus. And Jesus answers them, saying,
The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the
earth and die, it abides by itself alone. But if it die, it bears
much fruit. He that loves his life loses
it, and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto
life eternal. If any man serve me, let him
follow me, and where I am, there shall also my servant be. If
any man serve me, him will the Father honor. Now is my soul
troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto
this hour. Father, glorify thy name. There came therefore a voice
out of heaven, saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify
it again. The multitude, therefore, that
stood by and heard it, said that it had thundered. Others said,
An angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered and said, This
voice has not come for my sake, but for your sakes. Now is the
judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this
world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from
the earth, will draw all men unto myself. But this he said,
signifying by what manner of death he should die. The multitude
therefore answered him, We have heard out of the law that the
Christ abides forever. And how do you say the Son of
Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man? Jesus
therefore said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among
you. Walk while you have the light,
that darkness overtake you not. And he that walks in the darkness
knows not where he goes. While you have the light, believe
on the light, that you may become sons of light. These things spoke
Jesus, and he departed and hid himself from them. Let us pray
that in this communion meditation, the Lord Jesus will be pleased
by His own Spirit through His own Word to display Himself to
us and to draw out our hearts in fresh actings of faith and
love towards Himself. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we have confessed
together in the hymn we have just sung that we trust you for
all things. And we would even now, in a very
focused way, acknowledge that we have no native ability to
understand your word, that left to ourselves, our minds will
be darkened and clouded, our hearts dull and unresponsive,
Come by Your Spirit and give us light and make us to know
the heat of fresh actings of love to Your person. Speak to
us now, we plead, and prepare our hearts for the precious privilege
of coming to the table of remembrance. Hear us, for Your name's sake. Amen. Now, as we have already noticed,
the passage read in your hearing follows John's account of the
triumphal entry in which we could say that the king comes to Jerusalem
in order to die. And in this, the last recorded
public discourse of our Lord in John's gospel The fact that
he was about to die was obviously very much filling our Lord's
mind, and the implications of that death were causing what
he himself describes as a troubling of his own soul. Verse 27, Now
is my soul troubled. And the very form of the verb
used means that from a point beginning in the very near past
and continuing right on until that trouble and the cause of
that trouble is over, now is my soul become and remains troubled. The very thing He said should
not be the experience of His disciples, just two chapters
over in John 14. Let not your hearts be troubled. And yet here the Lord Himself
says, now is my soul troubled. And then the Lord Jesus gives
us, as it were, the opportunity to put our ear to the very chambers
of his soul and to understand something of the depth of that
agitation and trouble that he acknowledges in verse 27. Having
said, now is my soul troubled, he lets us in to his own inner
thoughts that are striving one with another. What shall I say?
He's asking a question of himself. Shall I say on the one hand,
Father, save me from this hour? And apparently there's a pause,
and he reflects upon the question he's asking of his own soul,
and he responds in this way, saying, For this cause came I
unto this hour. And then he turns from disclosing
the inner troubling of his own soul, and he is wrapped up in
communion with his father, and he prays to his father in these
words, Father, glorify your name. And no sooner does the Lord pray
that, but that the Father speaks out of heaven, obviously in a
voice that was audible, if not fully discernible by all who
heard. The Father speaks and says, I
have both glorified it and will glorify it again. And the multitude,
having heard something that was more than a barely distinct noise,
stood by and said, it had thundered. Apparently the voice spoke with
tremendous power. And though they did not fully
understand and comprehend it, and some said, it has thundered,
and others say, the voice of an angel has spoken, the Lord
Jesus responds and says, this voice, verse 30, has not come
for my sake. but for your sakes, probably
now speaking especially to the disciples. And as the Father
spoke out of heaven, when our Lord identified Himself with
His mission and with sinners for whom He had come from heaven
in His baptism, the Father spoke out of heaven, saying, This is
My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And then again in that
mysterious event of the Mount of Transfiguration, again the
Father speaks out of heaven, this is my beloved Son, hear
Him. And now on the very eve of His
suffering, the very eve of His laying down His life for His
own, He says to the Father in the presence of His disciples,
Father, glorify Your name. Now remember the context. It's
the context in which He acknowledges, My soul is troubled. so troubled that we have almost
an anticipation of the language repeated three times in Gethsemane
a short time later. Father, shall I say, save me
from this hour? The language of Gethsemane, if
it be possible, let this cup pass from me. And it is in that
very setting that the great passion of our Lord's soul transcends
all of the darkness of the gathering storm clouds that He sees and
feels and the rumblings of those clouds of divine wrath that will
break upon His head. And His great passion in life
will be His passion in death. Father, glorify Your name. The Father responds, saying that
He will, as He has in the past, yet glorify it. Jesus says, most
likely to His own, that this voice has come not to assure
Him, for He knows that He is always heard by the Father, but
it has come to validate that what lies before these disciples
is not contrary to the overarching purpose of their Lord and Savior,
namely, that He would glorify and reveal the Father. And now
in that setting, and this is the focal point of our meditation,
Jesus gives us these insights with respect to what will transpire
in the next hours as the very thing that has caused this disruption,
this tumult in his soul, comes to pass in his actual experience. He says, now is the judgment
of this world. Now shall the prince of this
world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from
the earth, will draw all men unto myself. But this he said,
signifying by what manner of death he should die. As our Lord
faces the ordeal of the cross, the very now of verse 27, now
is my soul troubled. He faces this trouble in the
confidence that his crucifixion will constitute a decisive blow
at two great enemies of both God and man. Our Lord is confident
that His impending crucifixion will constitute a decisive blow
at two great enemies of God and of man. First of all, he is confident
that is to be a judgment of this present world system. Look at the text. Now is the
judgment or a judgment of this world. What lies before our Lord
in His apprehension by the chief priest and the scribes and the
temple guard that we read about earlier this evening? What will
follow in the spittle and the buffeting and the crown of thorns,
His being impaled upon the cross, Jesus faces all of this in the
confidence that it will be a judgment of this present world system. This present world system. with its people absorbed in their
values, in their standards, in their goals, in their perspectives,
all in direct opposition to God, Jesus says that the cross and
all that surrounds it will constitute a judgment, a divine sentence
upon this present world system. And how does the world bring
itself into a decisive judgment in connection with the crucifixion
of our Lord Jesus? I answer this way. When this
system, this world system, had incarnate deity in its hands,
what did it do with Him? When it had incarnate deity in
its hands, what did it do? the combined political and religious
systems, the Jewish and the Roman powers that were of this world,
put the incarnate God upon a cross as though he were a common criminal
of the lowest class of society. And in so doing, The world has
judged itself. It has shown its true colors. Whether it is pagan worldliness
represented in the Roman authority, or decadent religious worldliness
represented in the Jewish religious system, the world stands judged. by the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ. It shows, as James says, its
utter, deep opposition to God. Whosoever will make himself a
friend of this world, James says, makes himself an enemy of God. This world system, under the
power of the enemy, under the influence of the devil itself,
is opposed to all that Christ is and all that Christ stands
for. And that comes to its clearest,
undeniable expression in all of the events that surround His
crucifixion. And our Lord is confident of
that. He is confident that as he faces this hour, this hour
that causes him trouble in his soul, he says, now is the judgment
of this world. And it is for this reason that
whenever the Spirit of God gives to a worldling, someone held
in the grip of this world system, living by its values, its standards,
its goals, its ambitions, its view of Christ and of truth and
heaven and hell, whenever the Spirit of God breaks in upon
a worldling, shows that worldling his or her sin, shows something
of the glory of God reflected in the face of Christ, and unveils
to that hitherto darkened heart Christ's glory in His death upon
the cross, what always happens? Galatians 6.14, the Apostle Paul
says, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by which The world is crucified unto me, and
I unto the world. The cross by which our forgiveness
is secured is always the cross that unmasks the world and shows
the world for what it really is. And if you are a true believer,
you can say, Galatians 6.14, God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which I not
only have the forgiveness and the pardon of my sins, but by
which I too have come to see now in the cross is this world
standing under judgment, exposing itself for what it is. And in
faith union with Christ, I too have been crucified unto the
world and the world unto me. Our Lord says His crucifixion
constitutes this decisive blow at this first enemy of God. and of man. But then, secondly,
our Lord says it will be a casting out of this present world's usurper
monarch. It will be a casting out of this
present world's usurper monarch. Again, look at the text. Now
is the judgment of this world. Now, in the events that lie before
me in the next hours, now shall the prince of this world be cast
out. Ech! Follow! Thrown out! Now shall the prince of this
world, the one who is behind this world's system, pressing
people onward to sell their never-dying souls to its painted joys and
to its unsatisfying wells and driving it onward seeking to
find fulfillment in everything and everyone. But the one who
alone can meet the deepest yearnings of the human heart behind that
is the God of this world. And Jesus says, it is a casting
out of this present world's usurper monarch in conjunction with his
death. A major aspect of the power of
the Lord Jesus is manifested in doing that to the devil in
his death, which is called in our text a casting out of the
prince of this world. This is the dimension of the
death of Christ that I confess for many years I have not given
its proper place. And here in this text, Jesus
brings it forward as a major dimension of his own conscious
awareness of what his death will accomplish. In John 14 and verse
30, our Lord alludes to it again. I will no more speak much with
you, for the prince of the world cometh, and he hath nothing in
me. He's conscious that in the next
hours there's going to be this intensified engagement with that
one whom he calls again the prince of this world, that usurper monarch
called the devil. Chapter 16 in verse 11. When
He speaks of that ministry which the Spirit will have when He
comes subsequent to the death and resurrection of the Lord
Jesus, of His own death and resurrection, when the Spirit comes, He will
convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.
Verse 9 of John 16, of sin, because they believe not on Me, of righteousness
because I go to the Father and you behold me no more, of judgment
because the Prince of this world hath been judged, not shall be,
but has been. Speaking of that which he will
accomplish in his death by the time the comforter is sent on
the day of Pentecost, Jesus said the judgment of the prince of
this world has been an accomplished reality. He is to be thrown outside. And this is why John can say
in 1 John 3, 9, for this purpose was the Son of God manifested
that He might destroy the works of the devil. And Colossians
2, 15 speaks of our Lord triumphing over these principalities and
powers in His death. And I am persuaded that this
is the true meaning of those opening verses of Revelation
chapter 20. that they do not point to some
future day when the devil will be literally put on a literal
chain, but they point to the triumphs of our Lord Jesus, when
in His death He fulfilled what He says in our text in John chapter
12. Now, not only is this world judged,
but now, in conjunction with my death, the prince of this
world, is to be cast out. But then our Lord goes on to
state not only that His crucifixion will be a decisive blow at these
two great enemies of God and of men, but secondly, His crucifixion
will secure the salvation of a vast multitude of sinners from
the whole world. Verse 32, and in conjunction
with this, in the same flow of thought and eye, if I be lifted
up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself. Now this text, because of its
lovely, almost poetic sound, is often used as a text pleading
with God that Christ would be lifted up in preaching, and if
he's lifted up he'll draw all men to himself. Now that's a
wonderful thought, but it's not based on a responsible understanding
of this text. Bishop Ryle says of this use
of the text, The idea of some that the verse may be applied
to the lifting up or exalting of Christ by ministers in their
preaching is utterly baseless and a mere play upon words. That
the preaching of Christ will always do good, more or less,
and draw souls to Christ by God's blessing is no doubt true, but
it is not the doctrine of the text and ought to be dismissed
as an unfair accommodation of scriptural language. If there's
any truth in it, the truth will be taught better and more clearly
and more responsibly in other texts. Because you read the next
verse and it tells us what the significance of the words is.
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto myself, but this he said, signifying by what manner of
death he should die. The Spirit of God through John
tells us that Christ is speaking of the lifting up being fulfilled
in the manner of His death. And he wasn't speaking in code
language here because the multitude answered him. The unbelieving,
hardened, sin-darkened multitude to whom he is speaking in the
next few verses, calling them to leave the darkness and come
into the light. That multitude said, wait a minute,
wait a minute. We have heard out of the law
that the Christ abides forever. that the Christ is the eternal
Messianic King. How do you say the Son of Man
must be lifted up? They understood that He was talking
about lifted up in crucifixion. And they said, wait a minute,
our perception of Christ is that He comes and in the power of
everlasting and eternal life, He sets up an eternal throne
and governs and rules. How do you say, who is this Son
of Man that is lifted up? Who is this Son of Man? Our concept
of Son of Man has no lifting up. It has no cross. It has no
death. It has no shame. It has no rejection. But the
Lord Jesus, the Son of Man, knew that this was the way to His
throne. He had to ascend His throne by
way of the cross, the shame, the rejection. And so in this
passage, the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus secures by His own
word the salvation of a vast multitude of sinners from the
whole world. Look at the text. And I, if I
be lifted up, there's the condition, here is the result, will draw
all men unto myself. His lifting up infallibly secures
the drawing of an indefinite all. And I, if I be lifted up,
will draw all men unto myself. It cannot mean by the analogy
of Scripture and by a tracing out of the use of all in Scripture
that in being lifted up Christ is pledging that He will draw
to Himself in saving mercy and power every single man, woman,
boy or girl of the human race. We know that that is not the
teaching of Scripture. But it is that all of biblical
universalism that He, in virtue of His death, will secure the
salvation of a vast multitude out of every kindred, every tribe
and tongue and nation, whom He will have as the reward of His
sufferings. For Isaiah said, He shall see
of the travail of His soul, and He shall be satisfied. And the drawing to himself is
the fruit of the lifting up. I, if I be lifted up, will draw
all men unto myself. And what I want us to see in
the text, and this I trust will help us as we draw our thoughts
into a sharper focus in preparing to come to the Lord's table,
notice from this text that the drawing is always unto his person
as crucified. The drawing is always unto His
person as crucified. And I, if I be lifted up from
the earth, will draw all men to Myself. This He spoke, signifying
by what death He should die. Our Lord envisions that those
whom He will draw unto Him are drawn to Him as the crucified
one. They are not merely drawn to
His cross, they are drawn to His person. And I, if I be lifted
up, will draw men to myself. Not to myself as the embodiment
of all human virtue, as a good man, a wise man, a noble man,
a compassionate and benevolent man. No, I will draw them to
my person as lifted up, as crucified. You see, it is the liberal and
the mystic and the romantic who would have a Christ who in His
person captivates our fascination and our imagination, and we are
drawn to Him for all the noble qualities that are seen in Him.
But they want no lifted-up Christ, for a lifted-up Christ immediately
forces us to reckon with that little three-letter word called
sin. Sin. Why does this noble, why
does this beneficent, why does this glorious person who did
nothing but good, why is he lifted up? And the only answer of Scripture
is, God the Father was making him who knew no sin to be sin
for us. Here's the teaching of the Gospel.
Here's the Gospel, Paul says, which saves that Christ died
for our sins according to the Scriptures. Again, the Scripture
tells us He died for us, the just for, in the room, in the
stead of the unjust, that He might bring us to God. And the
drawing to himself in saving grace and power will always be
a drawing to his person as crucified. My dear friends sitting here
tonight, if the thought of remembering this central redeeming act of
Jesus does not excite you, does not fill you afresh with a sense
of wonder and privilege that you can remember, not because
some people thought it would be a good idea to do so, but
because the one who spoke these words said, do this in remembrance
of me. And you say, yes, Lord, all the
blessing I know flows from your cross. I delight to remember
your dying love, to take the bread that symbolizes the body,
beaten, bruised, immolated, hung up upon a cross. I delight to
take the cup symbolizing your life, your blood poured out in
a violent death as a sacrifice, offering yourself both as priest
and offering without spot unto God in the power of the eternal
Spirit. You see, the cross becomes the
touchstone of the genuineness of our professed Christianity.
A crossless Christianity is a misnomer. Jesus said, if I be lifted up,
I will draw all men unto myself, unto myself as the lifted up
one, the one who subsequently taken down from the cross was
buried and rose from the dead and lives at the right hand of
the Father. But now look at the flip side.
Jesus did not say, and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all
men to my cross. There are people who say, and
this is the peculiar danger of those of you reared in a Christian
home and under sound biblical preaching, to think that because
the doctrine of Christ crucified is something that came to you
with your mother's milk and isn't as much a part of you as any
other thing that's been imparted in your upbringing, Yes, I have
no doubt that Christ died for sinners. Ah, the question is
this. Have you seen the glory and the beauty in Him that's
drawn you into saving, loving, irrevocable attachment to His
person? When the cross becomes the means
of drawing you to the person of Christ, to the place where
you say concerning mother, Father, brother, sister, friends, peers,
guys on the block, gals in the office, Christ shall have the
place of supreme affection and attachment in my heart, and there
will be no one who's a close second. Jesus said, if any man
come to me and hate not father, mother, brother, sister, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. You see, this
text shows us that the Lord Jesus, in securing the salvation of
a vast multitude, in applying that salvation based upon His
cross, never, never confers the benefits of His cross without
drawing people into loving, trustful attachment to His person. And
as surely as a noble Christ without a cross exposes the shallowness
of liberalism and a romantic notion of Christ and mysticism
that has no doctrinal foundation, so a professed attachment to
the benefits of the cross without any real evidence of attachment
to the person of Christ exposes nine-tenths of easy-believism.
Decisionism, where people are walked down an aisle or led into
an inquiry room and are given three or four verses and are
told to parathum and pray a prayer. And they're told, now do you
trust the finished work of Christ? Yes, I do. It's all taken care
of. And out they go. The heart's
never been ravished with a sight of the glory of God in the face
of Christ. The heart has never been broken
before this Christ. The will has never been brought
under the yoke of Christ. And they go out told, you've
made your decision, as we heard in the first hour this morning,
and you're safe forever because you now have an attachment to
the cross by means of your decision. No, no, my friend. Jesus said,
if I be lifted up, I will draw all, all on whose behalf I'm
lifted up, I will draw unto myself, not to be my buddy. not to be
the one who gives me orders, not to be some who will call
upon me simply when they've got gross and obvious financial and
physical needs, and for the rest of the time they live their lives
unto themselves. No, Paul said in 2 Corinthians
5 that he died for all that they who live. should no longer henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died
and rose again. This principle exposes the shallowness
of decisionism, easy-believism, and it does strike a nerve that
you of the second generation need to come to grips with. As
I've said from this pulpit on more than one occasion, many
of you reared in a context of solid Christianity in your mom
and dad, at the family worship, in your general education, Christian
school, homeschooling, in the Sunday school, in this place,
in the preaching of the Word. You will, many of you, never
know when you pass from death unto life in terms of being able
to point to a crisis conversion. Some of you may, many of you
will not. But this is the acid test, as Jesus drawn you to himself,
so that as the crucified one, there's no one who has a close
second in your affections. And if God brought you there
in a way that's imperceptible, like the rising of the sun, when
does the night end and the day begin? At what precise point? I don't know. But when the sun's
overhead like that and beaten down on my head, I know it's
daytime. And I'm not going to trouble
myself that I can't find a sun rose at 642. I'm just enjoying
the sun on my head. And you who've been reared in
Christian homes, troubled about this whole matter, may I say
lovingly, don't be troubled about when the sun arose. Ask yourself,
has the sun of righteousness arisen in my heart? And have
I come to see in Jesus, Jesus crucified for sinners, the one
worthy of all my trust and of my unrivaled affection and the
utter, unreserved commitment of who and what I am for time
and eternity into His hands. I'm not asking do you perfectly
work out that commitment every moment of every day of every
week and every month. But I'm asking, is that the fundamental
baseline disposition? Have you gone out of the God
business and joyfully welcomed Jesus to be God to you? That's the question. That's the
question. And you see, for you to try to
snatch at the benefits of His cross without attachment to His
person is to break up what Christ has joined in this text. And
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men, not
to my cross or to my cross work, but to myself as crucified."
And as we come to the table, what are we saying? Among the
many things we say, we're saying we've come to understand that.
Remember the words that will be read to us at the table? What
did the Lord say in instituting this supper? This do in remembrance
of what? My cross or me? This do in remembrance
of what? Me, me, my person. Then he went on to say, as often
as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show, proclaim,
preach the Lord's what? Not person, but his death till
he comes. You see how beautifully it's
fused in the table? Do this in remembrance of me. The assumption is you have a
love relationship with me. You have a trust relationship
with me. You will delight to remember
my person. My person has become precious
to you. But not my person detached from
my cross, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this
cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. You proclaim
that the lifted up Christ has become the object of your sole
trust for salvation, for the forgiveness, the pardon of your
sins, for liberation from the dominion of sin, for the gift
of the Spirit, the pledge of eternal life, the certainty of
ultimate glorification. We are remembering the Lord's
death in the context of remembering His person. And may God grant
that as we come to the table, if He has never become to you
what He says He will always become, when the Spirit of God is ushering
anyone into the kingdom. Those two parables, the kingdom
of heaven is like unto a merchant seeking goodly pearls, who when
he finds one precious pearl, sells all that he has that he
may obtain it. The kingdom of heaven is like
a man who finds a treasure in the field, and he sells all that
he has to get enough capital to buy the field that he might
have the treasure. Whenever the kingdom of God comes
in saving power, Christ is always the pearl of great price and
the treasure in the field. Is He that to you? Then the kingdom
has come. The kingdom has come because
the King has taken up His place in your heart, the place which
the Spirit of God always shows Him to be infinitely worthy of. If He's that to you, then coming
to the table surely it will be your delight to remember Him
and to proclaim His death. And if He's not that to you,
what better place than here and now in this place tonight To
say, Lord Jesus, I've never seen it before, but I see it now. Yes, I've been blind to this
simple, straightforward reality. But surely, Lord Jesus, if you
died to turn away the wrath of God from the likes of me, and
you stand before me in the word and promise of the gospel, invite
me to come to you, surely you are worthy. of the unreserved
trust and homage and devotion and submission of my heart to
Lord Jesus, I come to you in that way. What better place to
come than here and now while the very divinely ordained emblems
of His broken body and His blood poured forth will pass before
your very eyes There is no saving merit in the bread and in the
cup, but in the Savior whom they proclaim to you. As the bread
is passed, say, Lord Jesus, I take you as bread of life crucified
for sinners. As the cup is passed, Lord Jesus,
I take you as the one whose blood alone can cleanse me from my
sins. I take you to be my Savior. May God grant that some tonight
would see Christ in all His beauty and lay hold of Him by faith. And we who are His children,
may our hearts know a fresh infusion of true Spirit-wrought love to
our Savior and a fresh commitment of our all to Him who is worthy
of all we are. Let us pray. Our Father, we again thank You
for Your Word. Thank You for this record of
our Lord's troubled soul. And yet in the midst of that
troubled soul, His confidence that His work would not be in
vain. Thank You, Lord Jesus, that You
have come and You have done what You said You would do in bringing
judgment upon this world and casting out the prince of this
world. And many of us sitting here are
the living monuments that the devil does not have unrivaled
claim over the souls that he once possessed as his slaves.
We thank you, Lord Jesus, for the triumphs of your cross and
of your open tomb, and we pray that you would this night go
forth in triumph in the hearts of yet more Bless your dear people
as we together come to the table. May we know an increase of love
and faith directed to you. May we know the stirring of our
affections towards you. Lord Jesus, be present with us
at your table for your glory and for the good of our souls,
we pray. Amen.