They're inspired, but they have
learned a lot of things. Many of them are true to the
Word of God. They've learned some things,
and they can be of help to those of us who seek to study the Scriptures. And most of the men who write
commentaries on the Gospel of John, most all of them say that
the latter section of John chapter 12 isn't, beginning with verse
44 that is, that it isn't really a specific message that the Lord
Jesus brought to these people, but it's more of, this is John,
by the leadership of the Spirit of God, he kind of takes in the
summary, everything, all the Lord's messages, and gives it
forth. And I think those men are correct. And those are men that we would
have some great confidence in, in what they had to say. And
that being, I believe, that being accurate, that which we have
before us this evening is the last message of the Lord Jesus,
that is, to the public. Now he's got some things he's
going to say to his own disciples in chapters 13, 14, 15, and 16. And we'll get into that in two
or three weeks. But as far as the general public
is concerned, this is his last message to them. He's been preaching
for, oh, somewhere around 36 months, give or take. And all of his messages were
wonderful and instructive and edifying to the people of God,
rebuking to those who didn't believe him. He certainly preached
in such a way as to direct attention to coming to him for life, for
salvation. He did that. And now this is
his last message to these people. And it's significant. It's significant
what the theme is because he takes them back to the message
of substitution. He takes them to the gospel.
And let every message that ever goes forth from this pulpit,
let it always be filled with the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Let it be about his death and his resurrection. Let it
be about who He is and what the Savior did, the reason that He
did it, and then to set forth His exaltation, that is, where
He is now. Alright, with that understanding
that this is the Savior's last, very last sermon, we'll go into
this, and that which leads into it, and we've already dealt with
this quite a bit, is what these Greeks have to say. These Greeks,
they came to Philip and they said, sir, we would see Jesus.
And of course, he goes and he speaks to Andrew and then he
and Andrew both go to the Savior and tell him about these Greeks
or these Gentiles who want to see him. Now, let me emphasize
once again the necessity of a hard sight of Christ. Not just seeing
Him with these eyes. There were a lot of people who
saw Him literally, physically, and didn't do Him any good at
all. Here's what we needed. We need to see Him in the Scriptures. We need to see Him on His exalted
throne. We need to see Him as the Lamb
of God smitten for sinners. We need to see Him as the Savior.
We need to see Him within our own hearts as that one that we
need. The one we need. Where can we
find forgiveness? It's only in Christ Jesus. Where
can we find righteousness? It's only in Christ Jesus. Is
there everlasting life to be found? Yes. Where is it? It's
in Christ Jesus. So, let us look to Him. That's what we want to do. And
every time we come together, every time we gather for a service,
I always ask God this, show us Christ Jesus. We want to see
Him. And those of you who teach your
Bible classes, as you stand or sit, as the case may be, before
your students, This is what you always want to do. You always
want to set before them Christ Jesus, and you ask God, Lord,
show us the Savior. We want to see Him. I want to
see Him in His beauties. I want to see Him in His glories.
I want to see Him in His majesty. I want to see Him as that one
who is exalted. I want to see Him as that Savior
that I need. I don't want just some theories
about Him, and I don't want just a philosophical knowledge about
Him. I want to see Him, I want to
see Him in my soul, as the one I need. Do you see Him that way?
I hope you do, and I hope that we see Him that way tonight.
So this is what they said, Sir, we would see Jesus. And with
that, the Lord Jesus begins this last message. Verse 23, and Jesus
answered them, and He says, and this begins His last message. Now, here's what He has to say. The hour has come that the Son
of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
except a corn of wheat, fall into the ground and die, it abided
alone. But if it died, bring it forth
much fruit. Now, I don't know, and we've
mentioned this, I've mentioned this before, I don't know what
the motivation was of the Greeks in coming to Christ. It says
there were certain Greeks, so I hope and pray that they had
a genuine interest in the salvation of the blessed Savior, but I
know how other people were seeing Jesus. Other people, they saw
him as the great physician of diseases, of literal diseases. Well, we talked about that this
past Lord's Day. Our Savior, three days, three
days, he just healed people, thousands of people, as we studied
in Matthew chapter 16. Thousands of people came to him,
maimed, mutilated, and whatever their ailment was, he corrected
it. I was telling the Sunday school
class, it says those who were maimed. That means mutilated.
They lost an arm, lost a leg, and all of a sudden, He just
touches them or says a word, and all of a sudden, they got
a new arm. They got a new hand. They got a new eye. Maybe they
lost an eye. They get a new eye. The Savior
did this. He did this for three days. And
there were lots and lots of people who wanted to see the great physician
of the body. But that's not how you need to
see Him. It is wonderful when He does that. Well, sure it is. And we ask God on behalf of those
who are sick, those who are ailing, Lord, if it's Your will, You
are the Great Physician. You can do anything. You've never
met a disease You couldn't conquer. If it's Your will, You can heal
them. But as the great physician of our bodies, that's not how
the Greeks needed to see him. Others, when they looked at Jesus
of Nazareth, here's what they saw. A great prophet. They said, no man teaches like
this. He teaches with authority. He's
not like the scribes. He doesn't go back and quote
the old rabbis and he doesn't need all of that kind of backup
and all that kind of support for what he teaches. He just
has a knowledge of the Word of God and he teaches. Wow, what
a teacher he is! And indeed he was a great teacher,
but really these Greeks, they didn't need to see him as a great
teacher. And then others said, this is
the king. Well, he's our ticket to liberation. He's the King. Back in John 6,
when He fed 5,000 men plus women and children, He knew that they'd
come and take Him to be King, force Him to be the King. Hey,
we want you to take a seat on the throne of David and run all
these Gentiles all the way out of this land and restore us to
the glory days of David and King. Solemn. But these Greeks, they
didn't need to see Him that way either. You know how they need to see
Him? As the Savior. That's how men need to see Him.
You know, you listen to preachers today on radio or TV, most of
them, they present Jesus as He's the solution to all your problems.
Right? You got a problem? Bring it to
Jesus. He'll heal your marriage, your
bank account, whatever it is. He's the one who'll restore everything
to you. That's not how you need to see
Him. That's not how the Greeks or the Gentiles needed to see
Him. They needed to see Him as the
Savior of sinners who saves sinners by His death. That's the reason
He majored on this. That's the reason He goes right
into that subject. Here's the question. Sir, we
would see Jesus. And here comes Andrew and Philip
and said, Lord, the Gentiles, we've got some Gentiles over
here, they're interested in you. I believe you get some more followers. I don't know exactly what they
said, but they told him. And here was his answer. Except
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. In other words, he told them
about The necessity of His sacrifice. The necessity of His death. This
is the way we need to see Jesus. We need to see Him as the only
Savior. As the only Mediator. We need
to see Him as the only one whose death could satisfy the justice
of God. That's how we need to see Him.
You can see Him any other way and it may be accurate to the
letter But it won't meet the needs of your soul. Yes, he is
the great physician of ailments and literal diseases. Yes, he
is a great teacher. Yes, he's a great preacher. All
of these things are accurate, but the reason he came into this
world was to die, to die, to give his life a ransom for many. And so when this question is
put to him, immediately, that's the subject he goes to. And that's
the subject we need to always go to as well. Watch this, let me show you several
things. He says in verse 23, Purposed hour. It gives you seven
things. Here's a purposed hour. What is this hour? Well, it's
the time of his death. It's arrived. It's just a few
days away. He's in the last week of his
life before his substitutionary atonement. The hour has come. And he said the same thing, and
I read that in John chapter 17 in his high priestly prayer.
The hour has come. That hour marked out in old eternity. He didn't die by accident. He
died by appointment. He died by predestination. God
ordained for him to die. The only way we could ever be
saved was for the Son of God to lay down His life to save
His own people. He said the hour has come, and
this is what's going to happen. The Son of Man is going to be
glorified. He's going to be glorified. How's
He going to be glorified? By dying. By dying. The greatest glory is in the
way He saves sinners by His own sacrifice. He's the sin offering. All of those offerings in the
Old Testament of animals on Jewish altars, they all pointed to Him. And now He's the Lamb of God. The hour has come. He's going
to die and remove all of the indebtedness, all of the sin
of all of His people. for all time. That's what he's
going to do. It's a purposed hour. Tell you something else I see,
secondly in verse 24, the necessity of his death. In verse 24, except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone. But if it die, it brings forth
much fruit. Here's a farmer. Let's say there's
a farmer. He's got a lot of grain, got a lot of corn. He can do
whatever he wants to do with that corn. It's his corn. If
he wants to, he can just feed his family on it for the next
year. Or he can give it to the hogs. He can fatten up a steer,
make good steaks, do whatever he wants to with it. But if he wants to have more
corn, he's going to have to make a commitment of that corn to
the ground. And you men and ladies, you know
about that. You know about gardens. You put
a seed, a kernel of corn, for instance, into the ground, it
dies. It rots. It germinates. Now, you don't have to put it
in the ground. You can go buy your seed corn and then decide,
well, I'm not going to let go of it. I'm just going to keep
it. Well, you can do that, but I'll
tell you this, you won't have a harvest. But you will still
have your seed corn. The only way you're ever going
to have a harvest is put the seed in the ground. And this
is what the Savior is saying. He said, except this seed gets
put into the ground unless it dies and germinates, it abides
alone. Listen, if Christ, if He doesn't
die, He's okay. He's still God. But He will abide
alone. That's His teaching. But if it dies, it bringing forth
much fruit. This is the necessity of his
death. You see, how is it that we can have life? I want life,
don't you? I want life. I want life. I want
everlasting life. I want eternal life. I want spiritual
life. I want to live forever. I want
to be with Christ Jesus. I want to know God, which is
eternal life, and to know His Son, the Lord Jesus. I want life. Well, how can I have life? The
only way I can have life is by His death. That's how I get it. If he doesn't die, I won't live. If he dies, I'll live. And this
is what the Savior is saying. He's teaching the necessity of
his death. The necessity of his death. And then he talks about commitment
to himself in verses 25 and 26. Here's the third thing, commitment
to himself. In the same way, Now he's talking to these Greeks,
talking to these disciples, and talking to all these other people
who are listening. Here's what he says in 25 and
26. He that loveth his life shall lose it. He that loveth his life. Now, each of us has a life. You got a life. Do what you want to with it. You can love it, love this physical
life, protect it. You can pamper this physical
life. You can live for the enjoyment
of the world so that this physical life enjoys the world. But if you do that and neglect
Christ Jesus and his gospel, ultimately you'll lose your life.
If you try to keep it, just, I just want to enjoy life, preacher.
Well, I mean, I enjoy life. But I'm not going to enjoy life
at the expense of discarding the Gospel. Right? We're not
going to do that. Just how important is the Gospel
to you? If this, the Gospel of the Lord
Jesus, in fact, the Lord Jesus Himself, should be so vital to
you and so important to you, and you should love Him so much
that in comparison, everybody else is hated. That's what He
said. You've got to hate your father
and your mother. He doesn't mean literally hate them. But He's
saying, listen, when it comes to your father or your mother
or me, it's me. It's me. It's like, let's say
I have a a good friend, just as a hypothetical illustration. I had a good friend and he said,
then I come to the knowledge of the gospel. And my friend,
he doesn't come to the same knowledge of the gospel. And he says, now,
you've done got religion on me. I said, well, no, it's not religion. This is Christianity. I know
Christ. I love Christ. I've seen His
glories and I believe Him. I want you to believe Him as
well. And he says to me, listen, if that's the way you're going
to be, if you keep bringing this up, we're going to have to part
ways. Now, if I say to him, well, I won't bring it up anymore,
and I'll just set it aside so we can remain best friends. Well,
you know what? I'm going to lose my life. Because
that relationship is more vital to me than my relationship with
Christ Jesus. What must I be willing to do?
If there's an individual who would seek to come between me
and my Lord, I must say to them, and here's the attitude I must
have, listen, I love you and I enjoy being around you, but
I'm not going to compromise the gospel to get along with you.
If you're saying that I can't say anything, you don't want
me to go to church, you don't want me to hear the Word of God,
if that's what you're saying, we go on our separate ways. Because
I'm not going to lose my life to satisfy you. In other words,
I'm not going to compromise my belief in Christ Jesus and the
glory of the gospel in order to get along with somebody on
this earth. And this is what the Savior is saying to these
Greeks. If you love your life and neglect
me, you'll lose your life. And he that hates his life in
this world, He'll keep it in the life eternal. He says in verse 26, if any man
serve me, let him follow me. Here's what He's saying to those
Gentiles. Follow me. Follow me. And you know, if they're
His sheep, They will, right? They will. He said, my sheep
hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. He says to
them, let him follow me. You gonna follow me? And I'll tell you what, you follow
me where I am, that's where my servant will be. Where is he? He's in the Father's bosom. He's
in everlasting glory. That's where we'll be. If we
follow Him, we believe Him, we love Him, we adore Him, we worship
Him, where He is, that's where we gonna be. He says, if any man serve me,
that's who my Father will honor. You wanna be honored by God.
Would you like for God to honor you? Then you honor His Son.
Because God honors those who honor His Son. That's a steadfast
rule in this book. Now, we get down to a very special
cause, a very special cause in verse 27, the first part of 28.
Now is my soul troubled, the Savior said. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. He's already indicated back in
verse 23, the hour is come. He's mentioned this hour. several
times in his public ministry. Now he says, the hour has come.
And he gets down here and he says, my soul is troubled. And
what am I going to say? Am I going to say, Father, save
me from this hour? Save me from this hour you appointed
for me? Save me from this hour I volunteered
for? He said, this is why I came into
the world, for this hour. It's the reason He came, was
to die. He came to give His life a ransom
for many. And then He says, Father, glorify
Thy name. You see, He's the absolute perfect
servant of Jehovah. This is what He wanted. The Father's
name to be glorified. I think we're beginning to understand
something about the greatness of the gospel, and the greatness
of the God we worship, when that which is vital to us is this,
I want God to be glorified. I want Him to be glorified in
my life. I want Him to be glorified in my ministry. I want Him to
be glorified in my family. I want Him to be glorified in
my actions, in my works, in my words. I want the Father to be
glorified. The Lord Jesus said, Father glorify
thy name. Now watch this. Here's the answer
from heaven number five. Here's the answer from heaven.
Then there came a voice from heaven saying, I have both glorified
it. I'll glorify it again. I've already
glorified my name through your life. And I'll glorify it again
through your death. That's how God is glorified. Would you glorify God? Then make
much of Calvary. Right? Make much of the Gospel. This has got to be our message. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Because God's glory is always
attached to the sacrifice. Verse 29, it says here that the
people therefore that stood by, they heard and they just said
it thundered. Others said an angel spake to
them. That's the way the natural man is. God begins to speak and
they say, what is that noise? Or they say, wow, what an angel!
My, what a preacher! I tell you what the people of
God say. I hear the voice of God in that message. The Lord
spoke to me this morning. The Lord spoke to me tonight. Well then, Jesus answered and
said, this voice came not because of me, but for your sakes, it
proves that he's the Messiah. And he leaves these people that
excuse. Then we get to number six, here's the accomplishment
of his death. And he says, now, now is the
judgment of this world. Here's a three-fold accomplishment.
Number one, now is the judgment of this world. Number two, now
shall the prince of this world be cast out. Number three, and
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all of my people
unto me. That's a threefold accomplishment
of his death. It's the judgment of this world.
It's the judgment of the world of the elect because our sins
were judged in Christ Jesus. Here's the judgment of the world
at large, the world of the non-elect. They're sealed in their doom.
Here's the judgment of the world of the Jews. They rejected him,
they despised him. This is the last message they're
going to hear from Him. So that's the first thing. Now is the judgment of this world.
Secondly, now shall the Prince of this world be cast out. Who's
that? That's Satan. This is when our Lord Jesus bound
him. He bound him at the cross. That's when He defeated him.
That's when He earned the victory. And thirdly, when He's lifted
up, He draws all of His people unto Himself. What kind of drawing
is it? It's an effectual drawing. His
death is like a magnet to His people. And when the Spirit of
God sends the gospel to our hearts in effectual power, we're drawn
to Christ crucified. He's like a magnet to us, and
we come to Him. He draws us. That word, draw,
work on something that's absolutely passive. It's like when Peter,
he drew his sword out of the sheath to cut off, and he cut
off the high priest's, he cut off the high priest's servant's
ear, Malchus' ear. The sword didn't do anything. Simon Peter, he's the one that
acted on it. He drew it out. That's what the
Savior does. He draws people who have no will to come to him,
have no desire to come to him, and he effectively pulls us in
like a fisherman would pull a net of fish in unto himself. That's
what the Savior does. Well, what's he talking about?
Verse 33, this he said signifying what death is should die. And
then here's the last thing. Here's the great responsibility
of these people. People answered Him. We've heard
out of the law that Christ abided forever. And how do you say that
the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man? Well, He's told them so many
times. How can you say the Son of Man
must be lifted up? Who is the Son of Man? Here's
two things they didn't understand. It's two things the natural man
will never understand apart from revealing grace. They'll never
understand who Christ is and what He did. They just won't
understand. They won't see it until the Lord
shows it. They won't understand that this
Son of Man is the Son of God, and He had to be lifted up, lifted
up on a cross, lifted up by God, lifted up in our preaching. You
see, as we lift Him up in our preaching, He draws all of His
people unto Himself in His own time. Well, Jesus says this to them,
yet, yet a little while is the light with you. He's the light
of the world. He says, walk while you have
the light, lest darkness come upon you. But he that walketh
in darkness knoweth not whether he goeth. While you have the
light, while I'm here, right before you preaching to you,
while you have the light, believe in the light, that you may be
children of light. And these things spake Jesus,
and then he left them. He departed. And you look at the Scripture.
He did hide Himself from them. And if He hides Himself from
you, you won't find Him, will you? He can't be found if He
hides Himself from you. Walk in the light God gives you. That's what we say. Walk in the
light God gives you. Walk in the knowledge God gives
you. He'll give you more light, give you more knowledge. Lord,
I don't know. Well, what do you know? Well,
you don't have all the answers, but you know a few things, don't
you? Do you believe what you have heard? Believe that? Give
you some more. Walk in the light you've got. Otherwise, and I know salvation
comes by revealing grace, but also we have a responsibility
to believe this gospel. And if we don't believe this
gospel, we hear it over and over and over again. Lord may just
hide himself from, that's judicial blindness. That's exactly what
that is. And that's what he did to these people. We'll see it
in the next few verses, which he takes out of Isaiah. We'll
see that next Wednesday night. All right.