This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. When we think about coming together
as the body of Christ, I'll reiterate a few things that, of course,
I say often, but for a way of reminder that we might remember
and not be downtrodden. It's very easy to recollect on
the week that we've had, and this is the first day of the
week. It's a new week. We give, in Christian practice,
the first day of the week to the Lord in assembly. We look
at our week and we think to ourselves, wow, I'm just not prepared to
worship. I'm not prepared to live for
Christ. I'm not prepared to come and
pray and to sing and to celebrate. See, see what kind of confusion
that we've done to our culture by thinking that that is the
purpose of our assembly. Can that take place? Absolutely.
But is our preparedness to do so have anything to do with doing
so? And if we are reflecting adequately,
if we have gone all six days without intimacy with the body
of Christ and any real way of worship and the word and prayer,
but we've done so in spirit, but not in the flesh, how else
should we feel but unprepared? So we should come back together
in truth and worship in spirit and worship in song. And we sing
songs this morning, those songs that we just got through singing
were just an echo of what we just heard out of the scripture
reading this morning, the second Corinthians. Just an echo. And they teach us. And we've
come this morning and some of us would think, well, you know,
I'd rather be at home. I'm not spiritually well today. Great. Then you are with the
people that you should be with. And the same thing that you struggle
with throughout the entirety of your week and the way you
feel sometimes is thinking, well, I'm just, I'm just down. I'm
spiritually weak. I'm spiritually malnourished.
I'm spiritually your pastors, your elders feel the same way,
but we too are in the same flesh. We too are struggling with the
same temptations. We too are hearing the same accusations
in our spirit. We're dealing with all of the
exact same things that each one of us deal with. Maybe not technically
in a direct way, but all the feelings and the emotions and
the drama and the spiritual war that each of you feel, we all
individually feel. Whether it just be, I don't want
to write a paper as a student, to I don't want to go to work.
to I wish I didn't have to live this life, to I wish I had a
different place in life, I wish things weren't so hard, I wish
I had a better attitude. And we can live there. And we
can live there culturally, and we can live there defeated, or
we can live in the gospel, by the gospel, for the gospel, through
the gospel. We can live because Christ is our life. And that's
why we've gathered here this morning. Because that which God
commands of us is perfectly capable of providing the joy that He
promises us. Everything that God has given
us is in Christ. So the greatest way for us to
be encouraged is to be together on the Lord's day and worshiping
through all the means to which God has established in his absolute
sovereign supremacy as a promise for our joy and for our equipping
and for our working in the ministry. More people. More believers in
this world or in the work of the ministry, not vocationally. than there are genuine, true
pastors and missionaries. I'm going to say that an easier
way to understand. In the scope of humanity, there's a small
number of people who are born again, who belong to God. And
in that small number of people, there is a minute number of people
who are called to shepherd the flock and to plant churches as shepherds of the flock. That's
the only work of the ministry there is for those vocational
ministers. Listen, everything else that's
done in the name of Christ is done by the body. And this is the place, this is
the appointed time, this is the appointed tool through which
God has promised that that work will be done for your sake. and not just for you and to you,
but through you, that you would also minister to others. So the
worst thing that we could ever do, the worst act of unbelief
in our doubt, as a Christian, as a believer, as a true child
of God, is to consider that something else but the assembly of the
saints will provide for us what God has promised for us in this
traverse, this traversing of life. It doesn't happen. God is not a schizophrenic reaction. He is a sovereign. An immutable
father. He doesn't change and he's not
going to change and he's not going to change his promises.
They are yay and amen and nothing will thwart. So beloved, you
are gathered for that purpose to be equipped for the work of
the ministry. We're not here today as Brother
Trey preached some Wednesday nights ago about polemics. We're
not here today to tear down all the errors because that's not
written in the Bible today. It's not there. So we're not
going to do it because it's not there. So if I did it, I'd be
putting polemics in God's mouth. God have mercy on my soul. And
that's a polemic in itself. For those of you who can catch
it. So moving along, we are going to see something this morning
that's going to have implications that I don't have time for today.
I'm going to be honest with you pastorally. But as we see the teaching of
God's Word, it is not about information. You can get information by yourself. You can get information, listen
to much better preacher teachers than me. Let's change hands. You can get information from
almost any source you want, but you can only get shepherding
through the word of God by the elders of this church. Why? Because when we live our
lives every day, fighting the war of our flesh, resting in
the spirit of God, God purposes, especially in my heart, and I
know the other elder brothers as well, that we are considering
you in the battle. We are prepared in our lives
for the sake of your joy. for the sake of your equipping,
by name, not generally. You know, God has not elected
generally a large glob of people. Yeah, just some of those people.
That's where the error of improper understanding of God's election,
God's election is seen. Of course, we see a general shadow
of that election through Abraham's offspring generally. but we see
explicit pictures everywhere in the narrative of the Old Testament
and in the teaching of the New Testament where God elects people,
individuals. You are passionately and intimately
elected by God to receive the propitiatory work of Jesus Christ
as yours. And that's the only reason you
sit here today with the hope and the faith in the faithfulness
of Christ. John 12. Last week, we looked at verses
12 through 19. At the end of that narrative
there, this crowd that had come to see
Jesus, he comes into Jerusalem, Hosanna, Bring salvation, Lord. Bring
salvation. They honored him as a king and
he took that honor, even though they did not fully understand
who he was in his kingdom. Now, I want to say this because
it's necessary. When I say the word hermeneutics
or hermeneutic, That word applies to anything written in the world
in any language that ever existed. But it's very few times that
we're reading Plato, which I don't recommend, but if you enjoy that
stuff, go ahead. And you're reading it in English
and you're trying to understand what Plato was trying to say. When you try to interpret what
he said grammatically, through the syntax, you are practicing
the science of hermeneutics. When you read a poem, you are
practicing hermeneutics. When you read a letter, or a
Facebook post, or a tweet, or a hand signal, or a facial
expression, in some way, you're practicing hermeneutics. But
when it comes to the written word, that's where hermeneutics, it's
the science of interpretation of writing, of language, written
language. And there's no place that it's
used more in our lives than the Bible. Now there's two ways of interpreting
the Bible. One way is let the Bible interpret
itself through the grammar and the syntax of what is written.
That is how we know what the Bible teaches. That is why we
preach and do not skip any verse in any book that we're dealing
with. Even if we move fast like we do on Wednesday nights through
Romans, we're cutting about six years off that teaching. Because
we're moving very fast. But even then, we're not going
to skip anything. Because if we skip something, then we're going to
miss what's happening next. We're going to miss why it's
important. The same is true in narratives. Hermeneutics, there's
two ways. I can let the text expound on
itself, and then out of the text, I can see what it says. That's
called exegesis. Or I can come with all of my
thoughts and philosophies and cool human wisdom, and I can
read the text and go, aha, now I can make, like Plato, a snake
and make my own version of what it says based on what I want
it to say, ignoring the context. That's called eisegesis. And
that is 99.999999% of almost everything you hear in the world
of Christendom today, eisegesis. And the first father of it is
who? Lucifer. It's not a plausible interpretive
practice. Why is that important? Because
there are many people who think about the kingdom of God and
the kingdom of heaven. And because of their improper
hermeneutic of thinking about some kind of weird philosophy
that some satanically influenced group of people have thought
about for years, they read into the text of scripture that which
the scripture is not actually saying in its context. So when
the Jews looked at Jesus and saw him as their king, they were
not worshipping him as the king that he was. They were worshipping
him as the king they wanted him to be. So they isogeted Jesus'
words rather than exegeted Jesus' teaching. And the only thing
that stands between us An error in understanding and
exegeting scripture is our death in our sin. Because only by the
Spirit of God, and this is a tall claim I'm about to say here,
but it's the claim of the apostles. Only by the Spirit of God will
you ever get it right. Only by the Spirit of God will
I ever get it right. You could have more letters after
your name than there is in the alphabet. And it doesn't mean
anything except that you're a smart dummy when it comes to the knowledge
of the truth of Christ. And I know a lot of them. That's not a valid... Your credentials are not a valid
statement of the authenticity of your interpretation. God the
Holy Spirit is not divided. He will not teach two people
two different things from the same text. Those two people could both be
wrong, but there is only one truth. His disciples were confused. They could not grasp. I get this
now. These were raised Jewish men. Worshiping as they were
taught, the scripture taught them to worship, learning about
Messiah, the way their spiritual leaders had for millennia been
taught to teach about Messiah. And yet here he was in the fullness
of all of his glory, the exact imprint of God standing in the
flesh in all magnificence. And they're like, we're so confused.
Over and over and over and over again. And in the day of Paul,
there were people who came along and decided that they could use
certain tactics of apologetics and certain tactics of evangelism
and certain tactics of all of these interpretive things to
make sense for humanity so they could see what they could not
grasp. And then when they said, oh,
I get it, then they would count them as born of God. An epiphany is not regeneration. Remember the commercials back
some years ago where the dude's dragging, you know, and he can't
have any energy and he goes to work and he sees this guy that's
working and he's just bouncing off the floor. Man, why are you
so much? Well, I had a V8 and the guy
goes, duh, I could have had a V8. That's not what it was like to
come to the truth of Christ. I see it. It's a supernatural
and divine work of God the Spirit that without which no man can
see. And these crowds could not see
Jesus, though they were looking at him. His disciples could not
see him, though they spent time with him. Because their hermeneutic was
completely askew. The way they interpreted everything
about Jesus, everything that was said, every action. No, we
do not need to go near Jerusalem, Master. Because you're going
to die. We don't need to go there because
you're going to be arrested. We don't need to do this. People
hate you. Look what you're doing. Imagine what they were thinking
when Jesus is going to march into the city. They have a little
bit of confidence here because there's so many people clamoring
with joy around Jesus that the Pharisees are outnumbered. Reminds me of the movie Bugs
Life. Remember that one? where the
ants are oppressed by the grasshoppers and they finally realized there's
like a bajillion of us. What are we scared of? When that
metaphor put it into play, the Jews were fearful that the number
of people who were coming in celebration of this man named
Jesus, this Nazarene, was disturbing. He's got to die. Why did it happen? Remember what
I said last week? Because it was God's appointed hour. The very second that Jesus was
arrested was the very second in the time that He created before
the foundations of the world that He purposed that Jesus would
be arrested. And the very moment that Jesus
said it is finished and expelled and gave up His spirit is the
very moment that God eternally determined that Jesus the Son,
the God-man, would die. And no human being had anything
to do with it, except that God used all the natural sense of
humanity to put it into perfection. And then people were coming,
anxious to see, anxious to learn, anxious to hear, to try to just
get a glimpse, to hear a little bit of something about this man
named Jesus. And look at verse 19. So the Pharisees said, look
what, see that you have gained nothing. Look, the world has
gone after them. Verse 20. Now among those who
went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. That's confusing to some of us,
right? Greeks? Now this isn't Hellenists, this
aren't Greek speaking Jews. These aren't people who are converted
and circumcised and became Jews. These are Greek people. These
are people who are not ethnic Jews. They're not Israelites. They're not Jacobites. They are Gentiles. And there
were sections in certain sections of the courts, the outer courts.
gates in which Gentiles were allowed to come and worship because
some of them changed from polytheism to monotheism. That means from
worshiping many gods to worshiping one God. And the crazy thing
is, is they went from worshiping many gods of their own creation
to worshiping a single God of their own creation because they
weren't worshiping Christ. Let me remind you all. Anyone
who says that people who worship a monotheistic God or the God
of The Old Testament scriptures is worshiping the true God, just
like we do are liars. They lie and they do not speak
the truth where they speak the truth of their own father, the
devil, and the devil has been lying from the beginning. If we think we know the God of
the scripture, but we do not know Jesus Christ, we do not
know the God of the scripture. That's why Jesus tells the Pharisees
that they don't worship God, that they don't know God and
that the word of God is not in them. But yet they had memorized
most of it. These Greeks were allowed to
come and worship. These Greeks were allowed to come and tithe.
These Greeks were allowed to come and exchange their money.
These Greeks were allowed to have a positive influence on
the Jewish economy. And there's nothing greater.
We do it. We do it in our culture, ethnically. When we go on these
little mission trips to people that don't look like us or talk
like us or live like us, and we think of them as these blind
and dumb people who just can't see the truth. And when then
they follow us around and act the way we act and sing the way
we sing and quote the things we quote, they go, look at what
we've done. We've got the pagans into the Lord. We call it evangelism. It's not. Felt real fundamental
right there. I could have. Oh, wow. I could
have really just, you know. It's not. Because truth be known in the
true gospel, more of the ethnos of the world need to come to
America and evangelize the Christian world. who continually adds works
and false assurance and false hope and abuse of the gospel.
We're just going to take us back to Rome. Constantine was not
a Christian. OK, folks. These Greeks were there at the
festival, they came to worship. It's not something that should
be out of our grasp to realize. Look at the ecumenical movements
of today, the ecumenism of today, where many people of many faiths
could even get together. How often do we see that? These
are my brothers. These are my sisters in one God. No, they're not. One that doesn't
believe the same gospel as us is not our sibling in Christ.
They may be our brothers in genealogy. They may be our brothers in blood.
They may be our brothers in culture. They may be our brothers in arms.
They may be our brothers in some certain way, but they're not
our brothers in Christ and sisters in Christ. If they don't confess
the same truth that we believe, they are not. And I don't care what label they
take. We got to stop being so childish to try to put myopic
labels that don't historically make sense. Unbelievers and false
believers are unbelievers no matter what label they take. Believers confess the true gospel.
Unbelievers do not. Well, here we have these people
who are Greeks. They are not Jews, but they worship
with the Jews. And they wanted to see Jesus
as well. But Jesus what? Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was called
rabbi. And he had these 12 men who walked
the world with him and did his ministry all through this region
for three and a half years. And what happens? These Greeks
want to see Jesus. They just want to look at him
and gawk at him, point to him. No, that's not what it means.
They want an audience with him. They want to talk to him. They
want to have him answer their questions. They want him to teach
them. But can they go into the inner
courts? No. Can they go where the rabbis
teach? No. I mean, so the rabbis would have
to come out to where they were. And I don't know where Jesus
was in this particular day, but they had enough sense to know
the traditions of Judaism and knew that the only way they could
have an audience with this man, this teacher, this rabbi, this
Jesus who claimed to be Messiah, the Christ. Was that they find
the people closest to him and they go to him and they say,
hey, we want to talk to this guy. So they go to the most Greek
of. The disciples, Philip, Greek name. Andrew had a Greek
name. And they go to them, they say, Philip. They call him Kyrios,
Sir, which is the word for Lord. Context determines what? Meaning. They're not calling Philip God. We wish to see Jesus. So Philip's
thinking, I'm not taking these people. I don't know what to
do. How is this supposed to work? What are we going to do now?
So what does he do? Goes to Andrew. Andrew, what are we supposed to do? These
people want an audience with Jesus. They want to talk to Jesus. They want to see him, they want
to hear from him. You see, I've heard people preach
this this way, that all these Greeks were converted and they
they all believe. Is that true? Just because someone
wants to hear about Jesus, does that make them converted? One of the questions I had tonight
is the same question I had three weeks ago and then two weeks
before that. How do I know that I'm saved? I keep getting that
same question. I mean, if I get 20 questions
this week, two or three of them will be, how do I know that I'm
born again? Some way of having an assurance.
And I say it over and over again. So now I've gotten smart. Keep
up with where I put that stuff and send them to a link to listen
to it again. Just not smart, but I mean, I'm going to try
to catalog a little bit. And you'd be surprised how many
people will answer that question and say, well, you have a desire
to know more about Jesus. You've got a desire to learn
the Bible. You've got a desire to study. You've got a desire
to be in church. Well, these are all good things.
Great. It's something that pastorally I try to encourage you in, isn't
it? But if the assurance of your salvation is directly related
to, and I want to say this before we get to the verses 25-26, directly
related to how you're feeling and doing in the context of your
desires, then where is your hope? It's in you. And beloved, our
hope can't be in us. And these Greeks, there's nothing
here to say anything about them salvificly being drawn to Christ
or redemptively being transformed by the Spirit. There's nothing
here that that's not the purpose of this narrative. If you notice,
there's nothing about what Jesus said to them. Are they to Jesus
that has anything to do with this text? It's omitted. What
happened is omitted. It's not there. Why? Because
it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if Jesus went and met
with him. It doesn't matter if Jesus taught with him. It doesn't
matter if they pose questions. God, just like he sovereignly
ordained for Jesus, but for thousands of years before there was time
to write in on the phone of a donkey. Just like he ordained for him
to die on the cross. He ordained for these people
to inquire about Jesus so that Jesus would say these words to
the disciples so that we would see them. What does he say? They came and
says, Jesus, these guys want to see you. They want to talk
to you. They want to have an audience with you. And Jesus answered
them. Now, the words that John uses
here are important. There's a comparison between
two groups of people, as we often see in John's gospel. the masses of Jews and the masses of Gentiles. Then out of those in large groups,
we see in John's gospel that we don't see in the synoptics
where Jesus begins to talk to individuals. So he talks to the
priests, he talks to Nicodemus, then he talks to the woman from
Sychar. And there's a stark difference
between how he was received in Jerusalem to how he was received
in Samaria. In Jerusalem, the very ones who
knew everything there was to know about Messiah. And there
he stood and said, destroy this temple. And in three days I will
rebuild it. And they thought he was insane, for they've been
working on the temple for 48 years and it was yet to be completed. And then one single woman in
Sychar is granted salvation and then the whole of the city becomes
interested in hearing more. The same thing's happening here.
The Jews That's the sense of the Sanhedrin, the leading people
of the Jews and many people who followed them. They hated Christ.
Now he was going to be put to death. Then all of a sudden at
the festival of the Jews, here are the Greeks now looking for
Jesus. So when the Greek, when the Pharisees
say the whole world has gone after him, they're including
this in their understanding. Context defines meaning. The
word world has only and only, every time you see it, to do
with two things. What are the two ways in which
the world, or three things, but two things in the context of
people. There are two ways in which the Bible uses the word
world. Most of the time, it is referring to the plurality of
people groups. That's one. How do we know that?
Through context. And the second thing is the the way of the world
or the sinfulness of the world. Like 1 John 2, do not love the
world. Do not love the things of the
world. Never has it ever in any use
of the New Testament meant every single person in the world. The
world has gone after even the Gentiles are coming after Christ. Now what? He's gotta die. We have failed. And then we see,
we see that statement. And just like in John two, many
people believe in this name that day when they saw the signs that
he did, but Jesus in himself did not believe in them for he
knew what was in man. No one had to tell him what was
in man. Now there was a man, see large,
broad people believing example individuals. So large statement,
the world. Now it's explained, this is context. Now it's explained the Greeks.
Gentiles, in the worship of the temple is what world meant. We're looking and now Jesus answers
them. That them there is Andrew and
Philip. That's all we can see in the
syntax. Unless I'm just too dumb to notice it. Antecedent of that pronoun. is
Andrew and Philip told Jesus, and Jesus answered them. He says,
the hour has come. The hour has come. How many times have we already
seen the hour has not come? The hour has not come. The hour
has not come. Let me give you some examples
of improper hermeneutic. Oh, you know, the hour of the
kingdom of God is at hand. Isn't that what John the Baptist
says? They think there's some physical
kingdom. Some people think there's some
physical kingdom that was manifested right then. What is that talking
about? What's in view here? How do we
know what Jesus is talking about when He talks about seed dying?
That's how we know. When He talks about Him being
glorified. The hour has come. Remember in John 2, at the wedding
of Canaan? When Jesus is asked by His mother,
do something? And Jesus says to her what? My
dear woman, my hour has not yet come. Remember when we taught that?
What is Jesus doing? He's saying I'm not going to
respond to what you want and then be glorified in my actions.
I'm only going to be glorified in what I do when the hour has
come. And then he obeys the father
giving glory to the father and a private miracle for the sake
of the strengthening of the of those closest to him of their
faith that he is from God. He is from the father. That's
what he wanted to show. The death of Jesus is going to
be that which glorifies the father. The resurrection of Lazarus gave
glory to the son. And that it exposed him for who
he is. That's what it means to be glorified,
to see the fullness of who he really is. Jesus says who the hour has come
for the son of man to be glorified. Now imagine that. They were already
confused about, get this, they were already confused. They were
sort of not understanding what was going on with this Maranatha,
with this king parade type reception. And now they're thinking, wow,
Jesus has changed his mind. Maybe, maybe. Now this is conjecture. Jesus is going to be glorified.
Man, he's going to take us back from Rome. He's going to push
out the oppressors. We're about to rally up, hand
out spears, We're going to war. I mean, could have been the Bible
doesn't teach that, though, does it? Why? Because it's not important. It's not important for us to
think of the hypothetical or the philosophical or or or any
other. Sense of conjecture where we
imply or impose what could be or should be or might be on the
text of Scripture and teach it as though God revealed it. It's
not good to do that. It's not wrong to contemplate,
but it's not good to do that. What we need to see here, knowing
full well what Jesus is talking about, is that he is going to
be glorified for the hour has come and everywhere we see the
hour referred to in Jesus ministry is talking about his crucifixion,
his death. That's what he's talking about.
His death. His death. The hour has come for the Son
of Man to be glorified. It's important to understand,
to be reminded why Jesus used that title more than anything.
He claimed to be the very essence of God as the Son of God, the
very nature of God as the Son of God. Jesus claimed to be God
throughout, strongly throughout the scriptures, strongly. but just as strong. Jesus claimed
to be fully and more importantly, truly human. So Jesus is about to be glorified
and explains that. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless
a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much
for you. Now let's think about that for
a second. Jesus is saying the time has
come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Jesus is going to
be glorified in His death. And the obvious is that if we
see there in verse 25, I mean verse 24, is that The glory of Jesus' death is
seen in the fruitfulness of it, right? As the seed falls in. I mean, what good is a seed?
Somebody gives you a seed. You can't really get much out
of it. But a seed goes into the ground,
it dies, it germinates, it produces a crop. This crop can grow and
produce more seeds and grow and produce more seeds. The point
here in this agrarian society, they understood it. You didn't
eat seeds, you didn't buy seeds. You planted them and you produced
a harvest. The fruit of Jesus' death is
not a possibility, beloved. We need to understand the reality
of God's glory in the death of Jesus is that it is not a possibility
that it will produce the fruit that it was intended to produce.
It is a certainty. Why do I make that so emphatic? Because that's one of the false
gospels of the enemy is that the gospel Or that the death
of Christ, this false gospel, is that the death of Christ actually
provides the opportunity for eternal life for any person. When Jesus has already said over
and over again, his death is going to secure the salvation
of his people. Which do you want, beloved? Do
you want the opportunity to get your life right and come to Christ?
Or do you want the certainty of God saving you? with all hope. Which one is gracious? There's an option for you, but
you're too sinful to see it. That is maniacal. Verses, here's
what I did for mine. They shall never be lost. See how backward the American
false gospel is? And I know that it's tough. Some
of you are like, you pick up these cues. Those of you who
create a little file drawer of things that I say, you hear them. You've got a whole big file drawer
now of me continually dealing with the false gospel and false
assurance of the American culture. And somewhere down in the 50s
when things were really still surging in a way of deism after
World War II, Christianity became the thing
and anybody who was patriotic was Christian. Because how dare
you not give God credit for bringing us through a world war? As I said last week, the devil
stamped his name on our money and God we trust. He stamped it at the end of our
Pledge of Allegiance. United under God. It's not the
God, it's not Jesus Christ. And then this entity was created
and that entity was created in the mission boards were created
in the Sunday school boards were created and the publishers were
created and evangelistic associations were created. And next thing
you know, the world is Christian. No, it's not. No, it's not. And everybody can see that. No,
the world's not crazy. Look how these people look what they're doing.
Look how they speak. Look what's going on. Where is
the heart and the desire? For truth. See, I talked about
this already, but here I'm going to close it out, putting that
in its proper place. I know what we need to do. We
need to assimilate people into a transformative schooling. And so let's teach them what
the Bible teaches. And then that became let's teach
them to do what they should be doing. Then that became Judaism,
Romanism all over again. That's all it is. Different labels. It's fleshly, self-righteous,
cultural religion. Jesus' death did not happen to
produce that garbage. Say that again, in case you didn't
get it. Jesus' death did not happen to
produce that garbage. Jesus' death secured eternal
life for His people alone. It is a finished work. And God, the Son, is glorified
in his crucifixion. Now some people say, I don't
get that. Of course, he'll be glorified in the resurrection.
Yeah, he's vindicated, just like a seed is vindicated when it
does what it's supposed to do and grows. The fullness of who Christ is,
is the Lamb of God to take away his people's sins. Now the context of world the
sins of the world. You see why John the Baptist
was such an enigma. What's this Jewish isn't? Isn't
this Zacharias son? Is it this? The fruit of the
womb of Elizabeth. And he's talking about Messiah
saving Gentiles. Now he's baptizing people. What
a weirdo. He's confused. They would say Messiah only came
to save his own people, and that's a true statement. But they were
mistaken to think, they were mistaken to think that just because
they had the right ethnos, that they were God's people. Isaiah 52, in that text where
it talks about him being pierced for our transgressions, verse
13. of Isaiah 52 says, Behold, my
servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up
and shall be exalted. He shall be glorified. He shall
be glory. He shall be worshiped. In that
prophecy there, it's about the crushing of Jesus Messiah. So the fruit of Jesus death is
a guarantee of an explicit harvest. But his death in itself is also
glorious. He is glorified in the revelation
of his purpose to save his people through his death. Don't miss that. And then doubly
glorified to produce the fruit of saving his people through
his death. So Jesus reveals Himself in His
death and also reveals His work as sent by the Father to give
glory to the Father who is pleased in His death because the Father
in the death of Jesus set apart, what? His people for Himself. And now we're at verses 25 and
26. These are some of these verses
that pretextually, pretextually, we could really get to dancing. We could turn the music up, turn
the beat fast, and start counting off measures, start calling out
turns. I just went the whole gamut,
didn't I? Dubstep, disco, square dancing. Lawrence Welk could conduct this.
How many more can I put in there? It could be easy for me to tell
you that you better hate this world and you better do what
Jesus says or you're in trouble. Because that's what that pretext
says. Let me tell you something. Listen,
beloved, I hate to say this and I'm not indicting any of us because
We have to cultivate our understanding and that's why I talk a little
technical about hermeneutics in the beginning. We have to learn
to see the scripture through the right hermeneutics. The gospel
of free and sovereign grace. Through the finished work of
Christ, through the sufficiency of the hope we have in the finished
work of Christ, whether we ever do anything else or not, Christ
saved us and by faith we are the children of God. Whoever
loves his life, loses it. and whoever hates his life in
this world will keep it for eternal life. Those are conditional statements.
Whoever loves, loses. Whoever hates, keeps for eternal
life. And then verse 26, If anyone
serves me, he must follow me and where I am, there will my
servant be also. Anyone serves me, the father
will honor him. I don't think I have enough time to finish
this today, but let me give you the gist. Contextual. What is at work here in this
narrative is that there are people throughout all of Jerusalem,
both Greeks and Jews who are clamoring to see and understand
and get a glimpse and hear from Jesus. He is all the raid. He is the buzz about Christ or
about Jesus. They didn't call him the Christ
except when they knew who he was. The buzz about Jesus was
so important that it was actually derailing the proper protocol
of preparation for worship of what God of the Passover lamb. And it bothered the very people
who were what those who guarded the truth of God for so long,
the Jews. And then when the Jews got the
self glory we saw in chapter six through 10, and as we'll
see here in the end of John 12, Jesus or the evangelist says
it this way, they love the glory that comes from men. And they
see all of this and now the very glory that they received it.
It feels good to have other people follow you who aren't your people. And now they're wanting to see
and have an audience with Jesus. All of this is clearly. A statement
referring to the finished work of Jesus in comparison to the
passion that religious people have for their own lives. This
is not about debauchery and grave sinfulness and all that kind
of stuff. It's not about that. It's not about working and doing
and having a set protocol of following one's pattern. It's
not about any of those things. It's not about having, as Jonathan
Edwards would so, you know, juvenilely, can I use that as an adverb,
say and state about how much our affections need to change. It's good. They should. That's
not what Jesus has in view here. What Jesus has in view here is
the context in which he's teaching. Whoever loves his life. Loses it. Now put the put the disciples
in this picture because that's who he's talking to. If you love
your life, Andrew. You lose it. If you love the
life that you have with me on this earth, you lose it. If you
love this ministry that you think is just so amazing, you lose
your life. Because it is your life. And
you will lose it. So everything that you think
is yours, that you love, that you think is life is going to
be taken from you and you will not have anything, so you will
lose it. It is your biggest passion to have me walking with you.
It is the Jews biggest passion to have people glory in them.
It is their life and they will lose it. The kingdom of God is like a
treasure hidden in a field and a man who works for the owner
of the field is doing his job and he finds a treasure and he
covers it up and he with joy goes and sells immediately everything
that he has that he may buy the field for the worth of the treasure
is greater than all that he ever was. It's like a pearl of great
price for the man continues to seek and he finds See. These are explanations,
these are things that help us to grasp the certainty of what
Christ is going to do, that which we think is our life and that
which we think is worth living and that which we think is absolutely
awesome. When we see Christ for who he
is, it's no longer the case. And even though we fight that
fight, we work like crazy to sustain this when it comes to
spiritual matters, when it comes to the life that is only found
in Christ, all that we have, listen, this preaching ministry
and this congregation in the day of Christ will not even be
a blip on history. There will not be a word about
Grace Truth Church or James Tippins in the annals of the New Kingdom.
There will not be a written thing down about Sandeman or Spurgeon
or anybody but Jesus Christ. The life of Paul was insignificant
in the comparison of what Christ became for him, which is life. This isn't something that Jesus
is teaching for us to make practical application with. This is an
expression of the fact that when Jesus dies, he will give us the
life that does not get lost. That's what it means. And the enemies of the cross
will argue that with me. And some of them will try to
take you away from this teaching. There's plenty of instruction
to the beloved church through the apostles, we don't need to
try to worm into what the gospel is works. Do you hate your religion? Do
you hate your self-righteousness? Do you hate the works of your
heart when it comes to trying to give glory to God? There is
no way in which a man can do anything to give glory to God
unto salvation. It is only the work of Jesus
Christ that provides for him the finished atoning work. Grace. The seed does its work. And the
glory of Christ is directly opposed to human glory. That's what he's
teaching us here. The glory of Jesus death for
his people is directly opposed to self-righteousness, is directly
opposed to the world, is directly opposed to how people view him
and how people follow him and everything they do. And the way
we serve Christ. Is to believe in his word. Do
you hear that? Rich young ruler, this is the
fifth time in two weeks I've used him as an example. Devout Jew. High morality. In our day, he'd
be the poster child of Christianity. Every woman say to him, this
man is a man of God. Look how he lives. The furthest
lie from the devil's tongue. And he comes to Jesus and says,
what must I do to inherit? Without going through all the
details, we have to remember that Jesus says these words in a paraphrase,
your righteousness must be impeccable. For those of you who want to
see how I relate the righteousness, I know how Paul teaches the righteousness
of God. Listen to last Wednesday night
sermon. It is Jesus Christ. Unless you, young ruler, are
as perfect as God, you cannot inherit eternal life. And this man says, I have kept
this holiness since my birth. And Jesus proves to you And to
me and to his disciples during that day that that man was blind
and unable to see and he loved his life. He did not love the
life that Christ came to give. Why? For he had not been born
of God. And it's a spiritual thing. And
this man sought after salvation. And thought himself able to attain
it. through the works of the law. Jesus sort of says, well, that's,
that's good. Glad to hear it. Um, before you
get eternal life, would you go sell everything? I mean, go give
everything you have away. Now, was that a prescription
for what? No, Jesus said you must be completely righteous
in order to inherit eternal life. How can we could be completely
righteous through a righteousness, not of our own? Jesus righteousness
given to our account, it's called imputation, not impartation,
not transformation. There is no such thing as impartation
and transformation. God is not in the business of
making James Tippins truly righteous through transformation. A lie. He has declared me truly righteous
through imputation. It's a big difference. All the
cults teach the other. Only the gospel teaches the sinner. You must be as righteous as God.
It is only through Jesus Christ and His finished work. The only
way God can forgive you, beloved, is that you've been given to
the Son before the foundations of the world. And then when God,
the father glorified the son and crushing him on the cross,
your sins were paid for. And then the goodness and the
perfection and the impeccability of the righteousness of Jesus
in his humanity was settled on your account. And God looks at
you and says, holy is my child for Christ. Perfection is his
righteousness. That's how we serve Christ. by faith in the work that He
completed. That's it! So no matter what
we're doing, we serve Him by faith. And this is such a contrast with
the self-righteous of this day, isn't it? See, that's what's
in view. The Jews, Greeks, everybody in
between, they want to come to Christ in their way. They want
Christ to fit into their life. They want Christ to fit into
their religion. They want Christ to take a seat at the top of
their kingdom. But Jesus is telling them there
is no kingdom. I am the kingdom. And that's the point here. We don't want to go any further. For your own sake, beloved, trust
in the sufficiency of Christ. For as we see the very next word,
Jesus says, now my soul is troubled. The hour has come, see, for Christ
to complete the work for which He was sent to save you from
your sins. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.