John chapter 12. Now, the beginning of this chapter is a Sabbath day. Six days before
Passover. Now, to be quite honest, Bible
chronology can sometimes be confusing. trying to pin down just what
day is this. There are some people who believe,
and most people believe, that Passover was on Saturday, which
would have normally been a Sabbath day anyway, but it was
a special Sabbath because it was also Passover. Some people
believe that Passover was Friday, and actually I read somewhere
that there were two days that were called Passover, by the
Jews. And when I say, it's not like
any one Jew said there were two Passover days, just some of them
when they were talking about Passover, they were talking about
one day and some were talking about another. So like I said,
it can get confusing. But if we take this, that Passover
was on Friday, then this would be on a Sabbath day that our
Lord arrived in Bethany, and he was at the home of Martha
and Mary and Lazarus, whose names I'm sure you recognize. These
were special and dear friends of his. And in the previous chapter,
and I don't know how much time transpired between chapter 11
and chapter 12, but in the previous chapter, the Lord had raised
Lazarus from the dead. But now our Lord has arrived
in Bethany, so some time has passed because he raised Lazarus
in Bethany, so he must have gone away, and now he's come back.
And he has come back to observe one of the feasts that it was
required of the men to go to Jerusalem to observe. So he's
there in fulfillment of his legal obligations. That's one of the
reasons he's on the way to Jerusalem. Now, Bethany was just like a
couple of miles away from Jerusalem. And if you do read in other passages
of Scripture regarding this entire final week of what we might call
our Lord's natural life, it would seem that He would go to Jerusalem
during the day, but He went back to Bethany each night and stayed
with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. But this is a very special week. A week after our Lord arrived
in Bethany, he was in the grave. You know, we're shocked when
someone dies unexpectedly, particularly younger people. You know, I said
to some of my friends, you know, like my high school alumni Facebook
page and college and things like that, I said, you realize that
we now are part of the generation where it's not really a big surprise
if somebody dies. But if someone dies, and maybe
dies in an auto accident or something, you know, one goes, boy, just
a week ago, or just this morning, I was talking
to that man. Now they're gone. Well here comes
our Lord into Bethany and He's told them what's going to happen.
He's told His disciples what's going to happen when He gets
to Jerusalem but they don't, they either don't understand
it or they reject it because they don't like it. But nobody, nobody really thought
that one week from this day our Lord would die and they would
be scattered and things would be very, very dark for them. And so, we have here the beginning
of this final week of our Lord's natural life. On Sunday, He went
in to Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Now, that was not because he
was humble and rode a donkey instead of a horse. He rode a
donkey because that's what everybody rode. That was the four-footed
beast that people rode around on at this time. And they call
that the triumphal entry of Christ in Jerusalem. And in some way
it was because as he came in, people who recognized him, began
to sing Hosanna, which is from a Hebrew word that simply means
save. You know, like you're calling
out to someone to save, but it got used as kind of an exclamation
that one would give toward a king or someone who you want to praise
and honor. So they were saying, Hosanna,
blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord Blessed is the
King of Israel. Now, to my knowledge, and someone
may be able to correct me, but I'm thinking here, and I cannot
recall a time that our Lord said, I am the King of the Jews. I'm the King of Israel. Now,
I'm sure he said things, that would inevitably lead you to
that conclusion. Because that's the conclusion
these people came up with. They had heard about him, they'd
heard about his message, they'd heard about the miracles that
he did. Some of them had seen him withstand
their enemies, that is the religious leaders of the day. They wouldn't
stand up against them. They knew what would happen to
them if they took any kind of stand against the Pharisees,
the Sadducees, and the teachers of the law. They'd get kicked
out of the synagogue. They'd be ostracized by family.
You kind of know that principle. It's happened to some around
here, if they leave the church of their upbringing. That's what
would have happened to them. But they called him the King
of Israel. They recognized, at least on
a natural level, that this Jesus is the Messiah. He is the one
God has sent, they think, to be the Savior of the Jews. They
think he's gonna come and fix things in Jerusalem, get rid
of that nasty King Herod, who isn't really even a Jew, throw
off the yoke of Roman bondage, silence the mouths of the critics,
the hypocritical Pharisees and all them, and restore a time
of true worship such as they imagined may have occurred during
the reigns of David and Solomon. Though when you read the histories
of the times of David and Solomon, it wasn't that good then either. They misunderstood Him and we
don't judge them for that because our Lord spoke in such a way
that most of the time not even His disciples understood what
He meant. It was kind of like one of these messages His life
was like one of these messages, you don't know what any of it
means until the final sentence. And then you say, oh, now I understand. None of what our Lord said could
be understood until he accomplished what he was going to Jerusalem
to do that week. Because the explanation of everything
that God has ever said Seriously, you don't understand
anything that God has said or done until you hear it or perceive
it in light of the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I say substitutionary, I
was raised on that word. And it's one that religious people
like to roll off. It just means that Jesus Christ
died as the substitute for sinners. He died in their place. Sometimes
they say vicarious. That means exactly the same thing. But he comes into Jerusalem.
And verse 16 says, At first His disciples did not understand
all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that
these things had been written about Him and that they had done
these things to Him. See what I mean? Not even the
disciples understood what was going on. So I think it's so
remarkable and such a testimony of sovereign grace that the disciples
who were beholding the events of our Lord's crucifixion did
not understand what was going on and despaired saying, we thought
that he was going to be the king of Israel. The disciples didn't
see, but a thief, who so far as I know had never heard him
speak anything, a thief nailed to a tree right next to him,
understood, this is a king. Well, because of Lazarus, because of, well, let's
just say it this way, because of the jealousy of the religious
leaders who felt threatened by what we might call our Lord's
rising star among the people, they felt threatened by him and
they wanted to eliminate him And they even sought Lazarus
to kill him, because you can't have a notable miracle like that
walking around. And so our Lord goes through
this final week, and I don't know whether the events here
in the middle part of this chapter happened on the same day because
John doesn't give us a detail of each day we just know that
it was Sunday he went in to the city on triumphal entry but I
think in all but one day of the remainder of that week he went
into Jerusalem and taught in the temple and we read that there
were some Gentiles now these were people who weren't Jewish
by birth, but they were Jewish by religion. That is, they weren't
of the Jewish nation, but they had heard of the Jewish God,
so they would come to Jerusalem and worship. The common name
for them was God-fearers. And they heard about the Lord
Jesus, so they went to one of His disciples and said, We'd
like to see Him. and the Word got back to the
Lord, and the Lord had some things to say to them. Now, our Lord
has appeared on the earth on many occasions, but there are
three notable times when He appeared on the earth, or shall appear,
to do remarkable things. First of all, in six days, He
created the heavens and the earth, and everything in it. This world, this universe came
into being at the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
All things were made by Him, and there is nothing that has
been made that was not made by Him. That's kind of a convoluted
sentence, but that comes in John chapter 1, and John wanted to
make sure that we understood that there is not a THING in
this universe which is not the product of our Lord's creative
work. And so He's here right at the
beginning to create. His second great appearance.
was when he came into the world to save the world. John the Baptist said of him,
behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then thirdly, and this one
is yet to come, he will come again and judge the world in
righteousness, destroy this creation, that He has made and make a new
one. Now we are generally taken up
with the second of those, aren't we? When He came in that mysterious
and miraculous way, God appeared in the flesh, the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory
of the only begotten One of God. And we emphasize that and it's
a good thing we do. It's only appropriate that we
emphasize that because we live in the time between that second
appearance of our Lord and what we might call the third one at
the end of the age. And what he did when he was here
some 2,000 years ago is the central point of all history the very
turning point, and it occupies our thoughts, it occupies our
faith, it occupies our worship, it occupies my preaching. It's
what he did at this time. Now we like, at least I like
stories, you know, where some event happens that seems insignificant,
but proves to be the most important part of the story. And when it
happened, nobody realized the significance of what was happening. Well, that was never more true
than with these events. When our Lord was spent that
last week there, when he was crucified, nobody really thought
much anything of it. I mean, the ones who loved him
were sad, Everybody else was pretty much, meh. Rome got another
one. They didn't realize what had
happened. They didn't realize that the
ground had shifted under their feet, so to speak. Our Lord spoke of the necessity
of His work. Why did He have to do what he
said he was going to do. Now he described what he was
going to do beginning in verse 24. These Greeks wanted to see
him and he didn't say well yeah tell them come on over. He just
started talking. Our Lord often did that because
the information that people were looking for was not the information
they needed. And so he says, I tell you the
truth, unless the kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many
seeds. The man who loves his life will
lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep
it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow
me where I am. My servant also will be. Now,
they didn't understand what he meant. Maybe later they did. But what he had just told them
is, I'm going to die. I must die. I must fall to the
ground like a grain of wheat and die because if I don't there's
not going to be a harvest. Not only that and this was what
he was pointing at these Gentile people he was saying to them
that's what I've come to do and if you want to be my follower
you have to have the same attitude that I do. Not that we are going
to actually die in order to save other people. There is no more
requirement that anybody else die in order that men might be
saved. The Lord Jesus is the only one
who could do that. What he's talking about is that
we lay down our lives because we no longer focus on our life. We no longer love it. Now, when
he talks about, again, I enjoy my life. I mean, I enjoy parts
of it. I'm not looking to die. But those who would be followers
of the Lord Jesus Christ must release their grip from their
life. And it doesn't mean just the
fact that you're alive. It means your life as how it
goes on day by day. Now, it might not ever change.
But God has made big changes in some people's lives. And those who believe the Lord
Jesus Christ, who follow Him, they are those who have in their
heart of hearts said, yeah, I like this, but I count it all rubbish
for the sake of the excellency of knowing Christ my Lord. You know if you've got something,
now if you're a child of God, if you've been born again by
the Spirit of God and there's something that you would be unwilling
to give up for the sake of Christ, you know what's gonna happen?
And this is for your good, God'll take it away. Now that doesn't
mean every time God took away something from you, it's because
you were holding too tightly on it. Just our Lord is jealous
of His people, jealous of the affections of His people, jealous
of the devotion of His people. And He's not going to let something
take the place that belongs to Him. And so when it says, we must
not love our lives, but hate it, it means we're willing to
abandon it. to give it up for the sake of
knowing Christ. So he has come to die. He has
not loved his life. He has said, I've come to do
the will of him who sent me. And if that means that I lose
my life, so be it. And such an attitude ought to
be in the heart of all of us. But he has come to die. And he says, he mentions in verse
27, excuse me. I gotta find it. Ah, verse 31. He tells us three things that
He is going to accomplish. Now is the time for judgment
on this world. Now the prince of this world
will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all men to Myself. Three things, judgment,
expulsion, and attraction. And all these things are gonna
be accomplished by His death as a substitute for God's people. Now, what do these three things
mean? He says, well, now is judgment on this world. So I thought the
judgment didn't happen till the end. Well, that's just when the
sentence is carried out. But judgment has already been
passed on this world. When our Lord Jesus Christ died,
His death was a judgment upon the religious world of His day. First of all, it showed them
for what they are because it was their HATE for Him that motivated
them to crucify Him. So His death was a indictment
of the kind of people they were, but it was also a spiritual indictment
of them. They were the builders, but they rejected the stone,
the foundation stone, that God sent. The stone the builders
rejected has become the chief cornerstone, says the Scriptures.
Now of all the people who should have been able to recognize Jesus
as the Messiah, you'd think it'd be those guys that had their
nose in the Bible all the time. Those teachers of the law, the
Pharisees who memorized vast portions of scriptures, the Sadducees
not so much because they were actually just, they were Jews
who were enamored of Greek philosophy is what they were. And they would
be what we would call liberals today. But these people should have
recognized him. And him nailed to a tree is an
indictment against them for their blindness, for their stubbornness,
and for their hatred of the God that they claim to worship. I remember hearing a fellow,
he lived across the street from my parents and we were talking
at one point and he mentioned the Jews and he said, I have
a heart for them. They love the father, they just don't love
the son. I said, that can't be. They don't love the father. If
they love the father, they love the son. The Bible says that
rather plainly. Your entire attitude towards
God is revealed in your attitude towards the Lord Jesus Christ
and our Lord in his crucifixion. That was an indictment of all
the Jews who had rejected him. It showed they really didn't
worship the God they claimed they worshiped. Also, in his death, he condemned
the world because he became the only way by which men would become
free of condemnation And yet the world, for the most part,
rejected him. It says of Noah, that by building
the ark, he condemned the world. Why? Because there was one way
of safety in Noah's day, and they wouldn't get in it. Now's come the judgment of this
world. It means also that by our Lord's
death He was going to bring an end to that whole old covenant
system which had been in place for about 1,500 years in which
men had misunderstood it, they had twisted it and made it into
a system of works whereby they thought they were gaining the
blessings of God But the Old Covenant was only for a time,
and as much as they found their own righteousness in that Old
Covenant, and sought to establish their righteousness by that Old
Covenant, Jesus Christ came to put an end to it. And He did. The night in which
He was betrayed, which was of course the night before He was
crucified, He said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. And the book of Hebrews says,
in establishing the second, he made the first obsolete and that
which is obsolete is fading away. And finally, our Lord in as much
as said, I've had enough of this fading away. They don't seem
to be the one to give it up. So he sent Rome's army in there
to destroy Jerusalem. Now has come, now has come the
time for judgment on this world, the world of the Jews, the world
of the old covenant, the world of a temple made with hands.
It's all coming down. And he says, now the prince of
this world will be driven out. So it's a judgment of the world
and the prince of the world will be driven out. Now we know who
that is, that's Satan. So that sounds kind of funny,
because I know, well, later Peter said, be sober, be vigilant,
for your adversary, the devil, goes about as a roaring lion,
seeking who he may devour. Doesn't sound like he was cast
out. It was beginning. It was beginning. When our Lord died on the cross,
the kingdom of Satan was broken. He no longer had the whole world
in darkness. The light was shining in darkness,
and the darkness could not overcome it. Men loved darkness rather
than light because their deeds were evil, but they could not
stop the light. Something that was pointed out
to me, oh, just a little bit before I moved here, I was listening
to a visiting preacher in another church in our town, but he pointed
this out. that wherever the gospel goes
and is well received, cases of demon possession and
such things as that go away. Now, I wouldn't know how to recognize
somebody if they were demon possessed. I don't know that I've ever seen
one, but there is such a thing. There is such a thing. But if
it's going on in the United States, if it's going on in public, then
the demons are acting pretty good for demons. What has happened
here is in the United States, and I know our history isn't
all good, but the people, the Europeans that settled here brought
the gospel with them. And they maintained it more or
less for centuries. And therefore, the prince of
this world couldn't gain a footing. Now you go places where the gospel
does not hold sway, and you will find all kinds of superstition.
You will find things like voodoo priests, and you'll find folks
that will fall on the ground and froth at the mouth, and even
speak in languages you don't know, and you'd probably say,
well, that guy's demon-possessed. But he's saying the prince of
this world is cast out. He's no longer on the throne.
He's being driven out by Christ. And you know, when our Lord comes
to one of His chosen people, there He is in a very real sense,
one residing in that person's heart with a dominating power. The God of this age, He's called,
has blinded the hearts of unbelievers. At one time, you were blind. And you were held in the darkness
of blindness by this evil spirit called here the prince of this
world. And Jesus Christ came to you and he brought with him
the power of the work that he did on that day. And he sent
that fella running. And he's not been able to hold
you in darkness since, has he? You might not have been demon
possessed in the traditional sense of the word, but you were
being held captive. And our Lord came and set you
free of that captive and told him to leave you alone. He said,
this one's mine. You can't have him. And then he said, and if I be
lifted up, I will draw all men to Me." What does he mean by this? Our
Lord, when He came and gave Himself a ransom for many, died the righteous
for the unrighteous. That brought down the old covenant
which made distinctions among people. There was Jew and there
was Gentile. But once he died, it put an end
to that old covenant. And therefore, our Lord is not
just the Savior of the Jews. He is the Savior of the world.
He's the only Savior the world has. And he has a people from
every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation. And he draws them
to himself. And here's the thing, and here's
how you know and can tell If you've been brought under the
convicting and drawing power of the Holy Spirit, or it was
just a religious thing, He draws His people by the reality of
His crucifixion. That's what He means by being
lifted up. Now, I've heard this preached, you know, people have
said, yes, we got to lift up Jesus, meaning lift Him up in
praise. And then that'll draw people
to Him. That's not what He's saying. He said, in fact the comment
here is that he said this, verse 33, he said this to show the
kind of death he was going to die. And they went on to challenge
him on this, saying, we have heard from the law that the Christ
will remain forever, so how can you say the Son of Man must be
lifted up? Lifted up was just a euphemism for being crucified,
that's all. Even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up. As Moses lifted up the serpent
in the desert, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. He was lifted up, nailed to a
cross. He was lifted up because it is
written, cursed is he that is hanged upon a tree. And he became
a curse for us. He does these things because
it was the MEANS of His glorification. Verse 23 says, "...the hour has
come for the Son of Man to be glorified." What strange glorification! Death on a cross! Crucifying
is what they did to people that they wanted to disgrace. It was
the ultimate form of capital punishment, for it not only killed
you, it exposed you to humiliation. And it was at least the world
of the powerful saying you are worthless. They literally spit
on our Lord, but a crucifixion is, as it were, a worldwide spitting
in the face upon the one who is crucified. It is a way to
say, you don't count, you don't matter, you're not even worthy
of a swift death. And it was also, when he was
hanged there, he was cursed by God. How then can this be to
His glory? It shows the glory of His person
that He could die for others and put away their sin. It shows
the glory of His love. I stand amazed in the presence
of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder how He could love me a sinner,
condemned, unclean. He took my sins and my sorrows. He made them his very own. He bore the burden to Calvary
and suffered and died alone. Now, if that doesn't make your
heart glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, It means that it wasn't
done for you. We look upon a cross and we don't
see shame, we see glory. We see the righteous Son of God
take upon Himself all the sin of the unrighteous sons of God,
bear those sins before the Father, bear all that God, a holy God
can do against sinful men and survive it and save them. He
didn't make them savable, He saved them. He didn't make them
redeemable, He redeemed them. When our Lord said, it is finished,
it really was. The world won't glorify Him in
the Cross, but God's people do. And then of course because of
this, God glorified Him to His right hand. It was needful that
He do this because if He does not do this, none can be saved. Verse 27, it was needful that
he do this because it's what the Father sent him to do. Now
my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me
from this hour? No, it was for this very reason
I came to this hour. And he must do this because this
is how the Father is glorified. Behold how God commended us commended
his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. All these things right there
on Calvary. Recently, I talked to someone
who is very bitter, bitter against God. because of a couple of young
people who'd been killed in an automobile accident. And I tried to explain that God
is God, and this is his world, and he's allowed to do with it
what he wants. I wish that I had had the mind
and heart to say, you know, his son never did anything wrong,
and he killed him. and it was a great act of love
toward us. And when we see what the Father
did in our behalf, he spared not his own son, but freely delivered
him up for us all, we glorify him. And we say if he would do that
for us, How can we find fault with anything he does to us? We know of a certainty that he
gave his son in our behalf. Would a God like that ever do
anything harmful to any of his people? Oh, he does things that
are hurtful, but nothing that's harmful. Now is the time for the judgment
of this world. Our Lord has passed judgment
on this world by His crucifixion. Now is the time for the Prince
of this world to be driven out, and He's being driven out by
the preaching of the gospel. Everywhere He goes and confronts
the gospel, He loses, and He's sent out. And now the Lord Jesus Christ,
as the gospel goes out and He's presented as one who was lifted
up to die, He draws all kinds of people to Him, people from
every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation. And He is glorified
in all of this, as the hymn says, lifted up was He to die. It is
finished was His cry, now in heaven, exalted high, hallelujah. What a Savior. Well, God add
His blessing to the Word.