Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Living Hope. We're glad that you chose to join us this morning. John, chapter 12 is where we're going to start today. And if you've been with us the last few weeks or even the last almost over a year, we've been going through the Book of John. And so this series, just looking at Jesus, his life in the Book of John, and the call to believe and trust in him. Last week, if you look in your Bibles, you could just look up a little bit. Verse 12 through 19 is where we were last week. The triumphal entry has just occurred. And. And so Jesus came into the city and it was a major occurrence. And we unpacked that last week. And so today, really, we'll be looking at something that happened maybe a day or so later, most likely. And just the interaction that Jesus has with some people there and to the point, we're gonna look at today, Jesus communicating very clearly his purpose, not just for the coming week, this last week of his life, but also the ministry, the last three and a half years of his life and his goal to honor, to glorify, to magnify his Father. So let's just read together this morning the passage, verses 20 through 36, the first part of that, and then we'll pray and we'll unpack that together. So in your Bibles, John, chapter 12, verse 20 is where we'll start.
[00:01:21] And it's important to note right before that we see the Pharisees have just said the world is going after him. There's so many people that are going after him. And so we see even not just the Jews, but also some Gentiles or some Greeks, as my Bible says, verse 20 says, now, among those who went up to worship at the feast that is Passover, which we saw earlier in this chapter, were some Greeks, those were some people who were not Jews, but people who were honoring and celebrating this major feast in Israel. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee and asked him, sir, we wish to see Jesus. Philip went and told Andrew. Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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 fruit. Fruit. Unique parable metaphor that he's using there. Verse 25 goes on. Whoever loves his life, loses it. And whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me. And Where I am, there will my servant be. Also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. So that's kind of the first section there. Jesus talking about what it's going to look like for him to be glorified. And we see here that's going to include his. Now, those listening picked up on what he was talking about. And so we read this in verse 27 and following, Jesus says, now my soul is what troubled.
[00:03:01] That's going to be important. We'll come back to that.
[00:03:04] And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour.
[00:03:09] But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven. Wouldn't that be cool? You start praying and a voice comes from heaven. Immediately after that, a voice came from heaven. I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. The crowd stood there and heard it. The crowd that stood there heard it and said, it has thundered. Another said, an angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered, this voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of the world will be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So the crowd answered him. We have heard from. They're picking up that he's talking about him dying. We've heard from the law that the Christ that is the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man? Jesus often uses this phrase to reference himself specifically and particularly in the Book of John. Verse 36 goes on. Jesus answered. So Jesus said to them, the light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the what? The light. Lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.
[00:04:31] While you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of the light. Let's pray together. Well, Lord Jesus, we are grateful this morning. Firstly, that your mercy is more than we can imagine. Whatever weight that we may be carrying this morning, we can lay before the cross. And I pray that you would help us in this room to do just that. You would help me to do just that. That whatever is on our hearts and minds that are pulling us away from what you want to say to us this morning, Lord, you would help us to focus in, to lean in this morning to the mercy and the grace that we can experience at the cross.
[00:05:13] For those here Maybe this morning, who have never experienced that grace at the cross, who have never believed in you as this passage is talking about, Lord, today you would open their eyes. Your spirit would work powerfully this morning and that you would be honored in what we do and what is said here. The things that I say would be honoring and glorifying to you in Jesus name. Amen. All right, so Jesus purpose to glorify God. You can see in your outline that there's some outline, there's some things you can fill in there. And so I encourage you to pull out a pen. You'll underline things, maybe take notes as we go through this passage. So in this passage, Jesus is talking about how he will be glorified. Can we say glorified together? Glorified. Glorified. That's a key word throughout this passage is you're gonna see Jesus is talking about glorifying both him being glorified and God the Father being glorified. And so Jesus leans into this, and what this means is this is to magnify or how many of you have used a magnifying glass before? Probably most all of us. That's taking something small and being able to see it in a bigger light. And it's not to say that God or Jesus is small and we need to make him bigger, but rather, we often make God small.
[00:06:24] And we needed to be reminded through our actions and through the word of God and through what he calls us to do, to see him as he truly is. Which is that small?
[00:06:34] No, it's rather huge, massive. So as we think about even this morning, as we look at this passage glorifying God, we're not saying that God is small and we need to try to make God bigger, but rather God already is big and we need to see him for who he truly is. Amen. That's what we want to do. Because in our life, we have the tendency to shrink down things that don't edify us and to make big the things that do. If someone speaks highly of us, if something makes us look good, we like to lean into that or to emphasize that. And if something makes us seem small or insignificant, we like to push that away. As we consider God, though, He is not one who seeks to just make us small, but rather to show us valuable, to show us important, as he loves us, as he cares for us, as we're going to see, and as we already have, he dies for us. So in this passage, we discover how Jesus glory and God's glory work in tandem by the way. Jesus is glorified, not because he's trying to elevate himself, but he's going to lay himself down, he's going to die. There's a. In the Westminster Shorter Catechism, it says this. Maybe you've heard this phrase, thinking about glorifying God. It says to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And it's a statement that describes the purpose of human existence. It's also a reminder that God created us to worship Him. First Corinthians 10:31 says this. Maybe you know this. Do all things for the glory of who, of God. And this phrase, instruction that we have throughout Scripture to glorify God with our lives is common in church life and throughout Scripture. But what does that actually look like? And that's the question I hope to answer today. What does that actually look like? How do we put that into practice? What does it mean to glorify him with all of our life? Does that mean we sing songs all of the time?
[00:08:30] We could. I guess that'd be interesting for everyone else. If we're just going around singing all of the time, does that mean that we're to pray all the time? Everywhere that we go, we're just always getting on our knees and we're praying. Is that what that looks like, to glorify God? Does it mean that we just tell everybody all the time about Jesus? Does it mean we just open the Bible and we read it everywhere we go? What does it mean to glorify God at all times in our life? Now, firstly, you can write this in here we see Jesus pointing out something that's of historical importance, contextual importance, before he even gets into what it looks like to glorify God. And we see this in verses 20 through 22.32b speaks of this as well. And you can write this in. This is not just an invitation to the Jews to glorify God or to make God to magnify God. It's an invitation to all. So maybe just write that in at the first point. There. It's an invitation to all to glorify. Look what it says, verse 20 and 21.
[00:09:35] There are some non Jews that go to Passover. We saw earlier that it says the Pharisees say that the world is going after him. Because remember, Jesus is the sensational person. He's just raised somebody from the dead. He's done all sorts of major things in his ministry. And so these Greeks, they go off to, as it says there, they. They go off and they come and find Philip now why Philip? Why Philip?
[00:10:02] Does he just seem more welcoming? He has a smile on his face. He's just ready to welcome people. Well, he's from, we see from Bethsaida in Galilee, perhaps a town that is more open to interacting with people who were non Jews. Also, maybe you knew this or didn't Philip, he's the only one of the 12 disciples who has a Greek name or a gentile name. Everybody else has Jewish names. And so as maybe someone outside of the Jewish world looks in and says, who can we go and talk to? Let's pick somebody who has a gentile name. That would be Philip. And so Philip goes and he goes and grabs Andrew and they go to Jesus and they say, jesus, we have these people who want to see, to see. You notice at the bend, verse 32. He also says, jesus speaking, he's going to draw all men to himself. Jesus, though, doesn't ask what they want to know and he doesn't go into a time of sitting and chatting with them. Wouldn't that be cool? We just see Jesus come and sit down with some Gentiles and Gentiles begin to have a conversation with Jesus. What would they be talking about? But Jesus doesn't do that.
[00:11:08] He begins to shift the attention actually completely from what maybe their questions might have been. But why? Why does he shift? And I think we're going to see the importance of his shift because it's this. The questions that they have on their heart are secondary to what Jesus has to talk about.
[00:11:26] The things Jesus is about to say here, he's like, I don't know where these folks come from. We don't see. We don't even get their names, how many of these people there are. But we see they come and Jesus says, we're going to pause whatever might be on your mind, because what I have to say is more important than whatever might be floating around on, on your mind. We see this, though. Jesus doesn't dismiss them and say, you're not part of the Israelite nation. He doesn't shove them away and say, this message is for the special people of God. This message that I have is for people who have been honoring me in practicing these things, but also people who don't actually know me very well. So let's go on. We see Jesus now. He's gonna teach. He's gonna walk through. What does it look like to glorify God? Because this is an invitation not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles. So let's kind of get into the Bulk of what we're gonna talk about here. Jesus teaches us how to glorify God. Look, verse 23 with me in your Bibles, Jesus for three and a half years or so has said there will be an hour coming. There will be an hour coming. The time is not here. The time is not here. And yet now we see in verse 23 he says this, the hour has what come. Can we say come together? Come. The hour is now here. So it's been long time of the disciples saying, he keeps saying the hour's not yet here, it's not yet here, but now. He says now the time has come. The time has come for what? For the Son of Man. That's Jesus reference to himself. It's a reference also to Daniel speaking about the Messiah coming to be glorified. The time has come for this, for Jesus to journey to the cross, to be lifted up and to be seen by many as obedient to prophecy and also to the Father. So this theme, you see the word glorified, I just left there. This theme is really what we're going to lean into this morning.
[00:13:17] How do we glorify God? What does that look like? Jesus does that. Well he does that perfectly because he's God. He recognizes this. I want to show you how to do this. I want to show you how to glorify God. Not just in the concept or the idea that that looks like that might be something that God would like, but let me put real skin on what it looks like to glorify God because he is worthy of being magnified, of being seen for who he truly is. The first thing that Jesus says, verse 24 and 25, you could write this in is dying to self. We see this all over scripture but particularly here. Jesus unpacks this for us in a unique analogy. Truly, truly. In other words, pay attention. This is important not just for the Jews, but who else is there watching? Who's listening? The Jews and the, and the Gentiles and the Greeks. Right, Jews and Gentiles and Greeks, those are kind of interchangeable. We can use the word Greeks here, people who are non Jews. He says this is something that you should pay attention to. And he doesn't reference back to Old Testament stuff. So if he's just interacting with the Jews it would make sense for him to say look back in the Old Testament with me. But here he's interacting with some Gentiles and so he's not even going to reference particularly the Old Testament. Here he's just going to say let's use an analogy you all know. And what is he talking about here? A little tiny seed, a piece of grain, a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies. It remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
[00:14:49] What is he talking about?
[00:14:51] Something singular. In order for something productive to come from it, for it to multiply and find purpose, here's what has to happen. It must die. Jesus gives this example of everyday life, and that's this analogy that we see here. A seed which is singular. How many of you have planted a seed before?
[00:15:09] Okay, you take a little seed, you put it in the ground.
[00:15:13] What do you do after you put it in the ground? You probably water it. And then you wait a little while. And you wait a little while and you hope that the seed doesn't just stay there and nothing happens. If it did, you're probably going to find another seed and put another seed in the ground. But hopefully after a while, what's going to happen to that seed? It's going to sprout. It's going to come out of the ground. It's going to begin to grow and grow and mature and mature. And after a period of time, you're going to see fruit come from whatever plant that that was. Now, that fruit also is going to have more seeds than what the first, that one seed that you put in the ground. So here's what Jesus is saying, a clear analogy for all of us to see. Here's the principle. Multiplication can only take place if you are willing to die. That picture of being buried. Jesus says, something better is going to come, but first I have to die. We know that to be true, right? In order for something better to come, for the name of Jesus, for the Gospel to be spread throughout the world, even for there to be good news, Jesus has to die.
[00:16:16] He makes this connection, speaking to those who would follow him. He says, you want to experience eternal life. Which they thought, if we follow the law, we will experience eternal life. But Jesus says, no, you have to be willing to die to yourself, to your own desires, in order for you to experience what God truly wants. For you to lean into this a little bit more. Matthew chapter 16 speaks about this, doesn't it? Listen to what it says. Matthew 16:24. Maybe write this in somewhere. Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself. Take up his. You know this passage, his cross, and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Now, what does this mean? Does this mean that we are supposed to hate the life that God gave us? No, it does mean though this we are to consider the passions that we have that aren't in line with God and say, I'm going to let those die and I'm going to ask God to help those things die in my life. Galatians 5 says this, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh along with his passions and desires. It's what do I want that isn't in line with what God wants? How many of you know the difference between what you want and what God wants? You're able to discern those things. Hopefully all of us here are able to do that. And when we're unsure, we're able to open his Word and say, does my life match what I see here? Or we're able to spend time in prayer and say, God is the things that I'm doing or the desires that I have, are they in line with what you want? Now here's what Jesus is saying. When we are willing to die to ourself, something better comes from it. Just like when we take a little seed that's this big and you put it in the ground, or that picture of death, you say, let it die. Something better is going to come from it. That's the picture that Jesus is teaching us here. Dying to self in scripture is never portrayed as something that is optional for the Christian. It's not. Follow Jesus, and if you would like to die to yourself, you could do that.
[00:18:26] But rather it's one that he calls us to. As we just saw, if you want to follow me, you will die to yourself. So what does this mean? Where we once pursued selfish desires or pleasures, now we pursue with equal or greater passion what God desires for us. Whoever loves his life loses it. In other words, whoever wants to hold on to everything that I have, it can be burned up in an instant.
[00:18:56] You know this as. Even as you watch the news and what's happening in the south, southern part of our state, right? You look at the news and the fires that are just ripping through land, you can see how quickly possessions can be burned up and gone, can't it?
[00:19:10] So, so quickly we can hold onto the things that make us feel big or make us feel. Feel wealthy or make us feel like we have significance in this world. It's the love of this life. And he says, you can hold onto that, but it can be gone in an instant. But whoever is willing to let go of those things and hold on to what matters, that is who's going to experience eternal life. He goes on. Point two, you could write this in not just does one need to die to self to glorify God as followers of me, but also one needs to follow the ways of Jesus. One needs to follow the ways of Jesus.
[00:19:52] Before we go on with this, I just want to clarify something I said I wanted to put skin on some of these things. I think one way that you might be able to put skin on that idea before of dying to self is this. How do you know if you and I are dying to self and living in the spirit? I think that's a helpful question for us to think about. Maybe just on point one. How do you know if I am dying to self and living in the spirit? Here's how you can check.
[00:20:14] Does my life display the fruit of the Spirit?
[00:20:20] And if it's not, then I'm living in the flesh, at least in that point in time in my life. So am I displaying love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control. Because where I'm not, I am not dying to self, but rather living in the flesh. So that connects very quickly and easily. Would point to following the ways of Jesus. Point to following the ways of Jesus. If anyone serves or ministers, desires to walk alongside me, he must follow or accompany me. And where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor or prize is the word. There are fixed value to him. So Jesus goes on and imagine, remember there was just hundreds of thousands of people. Jesus just entered into Jerusalem. This, the Passover feast is going on. This is the week of Passover. There's people all over the place. So imagine here Jesus is talking. The Greeks come up, they say, we wanna see Jesus. And Jesus then calls out and he says, if anyone. There's thousands of people listening here. If anyone wants to follow me, These people have just followed him into Jerusalem, didn't they? So now you have this picture. They're like, we wanna follow you.
[00:21:32] Where I am there will be my servants also. They're like, yeah, we'll serve you. But they're also thinking, wait a minute. He also just said we have to hate our life.
[00:21:42] So now maybe I'm a little bit more skeptical about following this person named Jesus because it sounds really good. I want to follow him. And he says, if I follow him, my father will honor him as well. We have the tendency to say, yes, Jesus, I'll follow you. And you're parading into the city when it Sounds really good, but when things get hard, I might want to step back. There's a book that talks about the difference between being a fan of Jesus and a follower of Jesus. It's called Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman. And he walks. He's a pastor. He walks through the difference between someone who is a fan of Jesus and someone who is a follower of Jesus. And how many of you watch sports? How many of you are sports fans? Right? You have a team that you're like, I am a fan. Now, how many of you follow that team? You're like, there is a particular team that I am following. You know there's a difference between those two, right? Some people are like, yeah, I like the. Throw out a team. I don't know. I don't watch sports. The Seahawks. This is going to get dicey here real quick.
[00:22:45] There are some people who are fans of, for example, let's say the Seahawks. There you go. And so we watch it. They're playing. That's great. Yay. Cool. They're winning. But as soon as things start going downhill. Does that happen with the Seahawks?
[00:22:59] Yeah. Then the fan might kind of jump ship a little bit and say, well, I'm not going to maybe wear the jersey, wear the hat, wear the shirt, whatever that might be. I'm not going to magnify my team because it's not doing super well. But the follower says, no matter what's going on, I'm sticking with it. And not just that, I'm going to study, I'm going to lean in, I'm going to know the players as well as I possibly can. Jesus says, if you want to be someone who follows me, you can't just be a fan of me, but you must quite literally be a follower of me. Stick with me wherever I go, no matter the cost. Matthew 10 says this. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. Very similar to this verse here. Here's the point. The one who wants to glorify God is the one who looks closely at their own life and uses the word of God as their guide and then says, what's going on in here? What's the teachings that are happening here? No matter how hard it may seem, that doesn't match with my life. And I'm willing to study this not because it's the quote unquote, the. The duty, if you will, of the good Christian person, but rather because I want to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus. I want to follow him so closely. And I know that when my life doesn't look like Him, I'm at a greater distance. So in order for me to be close, I have to know Him. I have to step into those relationships. And oftentimes doing that with somebody else can be really very helpful. So someone who wants to glorify God, they die to self, say, my desires are secondary to Jesus. Secondly, we see that they follow the ways of Jesus. How did Jesus do life? That's how I want to do life. I'm going to sit with the Father, I'm going to let him change me. I'm going to submit to his desires over mine. Point three on your outline, you can write this in. They also Jesus then transitions here, not just talking about himself, but staying faithful to God. He remains obedient in the face of trouble. Verse 27. You can look in your Bibles there. I said this earlier when we were reading, right, didn't I? Now my soul is. What's the word?
[00:25:26] Can we say that together? Troubled. My soul is troubled.
[00:25:33] And when I read this, even particularly this last week, I just stopped there for a minute.
[00:25:41] Do you see the significance of that? When it says, there is my soul, my inward parts, my mind is troubled, is restless, is agitated, is stirred up, is distressed. Who's speaking here?
[00:25:57] Jesus, the Prince of Peace is restless.
[00:26:03] Do you see that? The author of all that is good is feeling distressed. The Sovereign God is agitated.
[00:26:14] We can't miss this here. We have to stop and say, wait a minute, how can this be? The one who's in control of all things. And he says, my soul is. What's the word? Trouble is stirred up. There's a level of angst going on in my heart right now. And as I look at this, and hopefully as you do as well, you have to ask the question, why?
[00:26:39] And what could cause, bring about this kind of agitation, this kind of feeling of restlessness or being stirred up in the Prince of Peace?
[00:26:49] What does he say?
[00:26:51] Because the hour has come.
[00:26:55] The hour that I have been talking about for years is now here. It's always been in the distance, but not any longer. And Jesus says, the hour has come. If anyone there and wherever they were at this time hears the hour has come, they might think, does he mean he's gonna be a king now? But he starts off saying, my soul is troubled.
[00:27:17] If you're gonna be crowning yourself as king, taking over the Romans, you wouldn't have a troubled soul. You'd be excited. I would assume so. Here. Everybody's eyes and ears must have just been gripped fixed on him. What are you talking about? Jesus. We're gonna see in a second that they realize he's not talking about crowning himself as king, but rather he's going to be obedient to the call of God upon his life to go to the cross.
[00:27:46] The last week of Jesus life is now here. Now, why does this trouble him? Because very soon Jesus will be drinking the cup of wrath of God for all mankind.
[00:27:58] Jesus was not afraid or too weak to handle the cross. We often say that Jesus had trepidation or trouble about going to the cross because it would be very painful. Yes, that is true. It was to be very painful. But if that were the only reason he would experience this kind of angst trouble. Think about the garden of Gethsemane, which we haven't got to yet. But think about the garden, the level of pressure he felt there. If it was only because he knew the pain of the cross was coming. We might even consider Jesus to be weak because many of his followers went to the cross with courage. And many followers after him were burned at the stake, singing. But Jesus, he wasn't strong enough to do that.
[00:28:39] Jesus experienced something at the cross that was much more than physical pain.
[00:28:45] So much more he knew he would be experiencing the full wrath of God upon mankind for their sins. He would be taking on his perfect self, the punishment of God for sins he did not commit, but rather all of humanity had done. Because of this, God could not stay in union with him. So not only would he be carrying the sins of mankind, but he would also be, for the first time ever, in a broken relationship with the Father. And thus he says as he hung on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
[00:29:28] This caused his soul to be in great trouble.
[00:29:33] And yet he leaned in, he stepped forward and said, I am willing to go to the cross. It's hard to stay faithful when other people aren't faithful. If we think about our own life, it's hard to stick with something when your body wants something else. It's hard to step up when you want to step away. It's hard to lean in when you want to lean away. But here's what we see from Jesus. The one who seeks glorifying God with their life, the one who desires God to be magnified in their life, not themselves, is the one who checks with God before moving and says, what do you want me to do? I realize it might be Unpleasant, but I'm willing to do it anyway. It doesn't mean that we ignore our feelings, but it means this, that our feelings don't decide if we're going to obey or disobey God. It simply means we're going to submit to Him. We're going to remain obedient even in the face of a troubled or hard situation. Point four on your outline. We'll keep going.
[00:30:33] Listen for God's word. God's words. Listen for God's words.
[00:30:39] Father, he says, now, glorify your name. Glorify your name. He realizes, like, I am not going to ask you to have me step away. I am not going to ask you to save me from this hour, because this is why I'm here. I am here to glorify you. And also he says, father, glorify your name. It's a statement. Then a voice came from where?
[00:31:05] From heaven. I have glorified it and I will glorify it again. Three times voices come from heaven when Jesus is talking. Can you list them off? How many of you remember? Let's see, what's the first time the voice comes from heaven? The baptism. Second time a voice comes from heaven.
[00:31:21] Transfiguration. And the third time?
[00:31:25] Right here.
[00:31:26] Right here. Jesus prayer here is not for courage, but good job with that test, by the way.
[00:31:33] It's not for comfort. It's not for God to change the plans. Rather, it's for God to be glorified. That's his aim. God, I want my Father in heaven. I want people who see you as small or in the distance. I want distance. I want them to see you as big. I want them to see you for who you truly are, as a God who is loving and kind, a God who is merciful and gracious, a God who is abounding in. In patience, even towards those who are his enemies.
[00:32:03] God, in a loud and thunderous voice it seems, but yet wasn't seemingly understood by the people, responds to Jesus and he says, this voice didn't come for my sake, but for yours. It seems that they didn't understand what was said. We don't get much detail about that other than I think it was thunder or I think it was. What was their other excuse? A reason. An angel. It might have been an angel that spoke. And it seems that Jesus says these things, perhaps looking up and then there's this thundering sound. And maybe Jesus was the only one who understood. We don't see that, but we do see is they don't say, oh, I heard that voice. And this is what it said. They thought it was thunder. They thought it was some reply from the heavens. And here's why that's significant, is they're realizing this. Jesus gets a response out of God.
[00:32:53] They have been striving year after year, sacrifice after sacrifice, duty after duty, ritual after ritual, to be right with God. And Jesus steps on the scene, he looks up to the heavens and says, father, glorify your name. And immediately there's a response. What do they realize? We should pay attention to this guy.
[00:33:12] He has a connection with God in a way that we do not have. Now to the point here that we see in point 4 is thinking about voices, listening particularly for God's voice. There are a lot of voices around us, aren't there? A lot of voices. And yes, both audible voices are things that we read on screens and on social media, on TVs and your Internet, on the Internet, on news platforms and your emails. There's so many voices out there, let alone friends and neighbors and family members. The amount of voices and the high volume of voices doesn't mean that they are right. Just because you read Something online somewhere 10 times doesn't mean that information is right. Some of you know this to be true from experience.
[00:34:01] If that were the case, the quantity of voice meant the accuracy of the voice, then Jesus should have taken over the Romans and become the King of Jerusalem right then and there. Because weren't there thousands of people saying, we're ready for you to be the king? But Jesus didn't listen to the voice of the people or to the volume of the crowd. He did what he was called to do. He went back, he checked in with God, with the voice of God for validation and verification.
[00:34:30] And this is where we are also to get our validation and verification, our identity, if you will. What does God say about me? What does God say that I should do, no matter how loud the voices are out there about who I am?
[00:34:49] What does he say? And if we truly will magnify or glorify God, if we want to do that, then we will live in the identity that he has placed upon us, not other people. Because as soon as. Get this, friends, as soon as we say I believe more about myself because of what other people have told me than about what God has said. Here's what we're doing is I'm glorifying people, not God. I'm magnifying the voice of people and saying that is true about me, rather than magnifying the voice of God about me and saying that is true. About me? Are you with me there? What does he say about me? Not what does everybody else say about me. It's a dangerous, dangerous road to go down. And we all do this to some extent or another to say, I care about what people say before. I care about what God says about me. And we live in this tension even as Christians today, saying, I care about what others think, but I know that I should care about what God thinks. But I hear their voice audibly, and I don't always hear God's voice audibly. But we can go back and read God's word audibly, and then you can hear it audibly.
[00:35:55] Ask yourself this question as you think through this identity for yourself.
[00:36:01] Starting today, maybe spending a week doing this, of exploring your identity, we do this. Take out a piece of paper and write down I am. And then put a blank there.
[00:36:13] Be honest about it. It doesn't mean other people have to look at it and see what comes up on your paper. See what you start filling in that blank with. I am tired.
[00:36:27] I feel worthless. I feel sad. I feel unworthy. I feel what.
[00:36:36] And then spend time doing that. And then sit back and ask yourself, where did those identity statements come from? Where did they originate? And check them, check them against the word of God. I feel loved. Does that match with what God's word says, or does it not? This is going to be so powerful to be willing to say to God. I'm going to check to make sure the things that I believe about myself are because of what you've said about me, not what other people have said about me, not the volume of people around me. We see this, Jesus doing this here. And by doing this, by listening for God's words over people's words, we see that he glorifies God. Let's do point five and six here as we kind of come to a conclusion. Realize the power of the cross. Jesus knows the power of the cross. And we look at two, three, these three verses here that might maybe on the surface look somewhat confusing. So just explain them here. Verse 31, Jesus says, Now is the judgment. And actually that word, judgment, original language is where we get the word crisis. It's the idea of separating something or selecting something. Now is the judgment of the world. Now will the ruler of the world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from. Lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to show what kind of death he was going to die. So at the cross, a separation occurs. That's that word, that separating or Selecting occurs, occurs the leader of the world.
[00:38:10] Who's the God of this world?
[00:38:12] The Devil. Like, well, isn't God in charge? Isn't he the one? Yes, he's the God of the universe. He's in control of all things. And yet God has given him an amount of power, if you will, in this world to rule over portions of and parts of this world. Yes, God still has complete dominion. But you and I look around, you can see the devil is having his way in a lot of places, isn't he?
[00:38:38] But at the cross there was a great defeat for the first time. Now the devil says, I'm not going to have the souls of all mankind because of Jesus, death and resurrection. There is a defeat that Jesus brought about at the cross. And the devil now is restricted. Jesus is the king and is sovereign. He is stronger than any other leader. Satan knew this, but he still had been granted great power over the world and the lives of humans. Now at the cross, friends, get this. The enemy no longer has the power that he used to have, particularly over Christians.
[00:39:20] Colossians chapter 2 says this. Having wiped out, stripped away the handwriting of the requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, He, Jesus has taken it away. Having nailed it to the cross, having stripped down or disarmed the principalities and powers he made a public skeptical of them, triumphing over them. Here's what Jesus is saying very plainly. The devil's not in charge anymore. You can have victory because of what Jesus did. You no longer need to be enemies of God running from him. Now you can hold on and say, I, I can lean into the power of the cross. And because of that, I am a child of the King. I am a child of the King. And the ruler of the world to some degree was cast out then and one day will be completely cast out. Amen. No more control will the devil have any longer. And then the second part of this verse 32 and when I am lifted up, and it's almost a play on words because it's similar to the word glorified, to lift something up, I will draw all people to myself. Here's what he's saying very clearly, people of all nations will be drawn to the change that happened at the cross. It doesn't mean if you're Jew or gentile, slave or free, we can all be one through Jesus Christ. Jesus. And the preaching of the cross is as one pastor said, is the magnet for Christianity. It's a polarizing event that people will either reject or they will accept the work and the mission of Jesus comes down to what happened at the cross. We know this, we see that we put crosses kind of all over the place, don't we? We know the cross is significant and Jesus believed that. So as followers of Jesus, before we look at point six, as followers of Jesus, we who want to glorify God, we must realize that not only the world calendar hinges on Jesus death, but our whole life must hinge on him as well.
[00:41:26] Which way am I going to go? What am I going to believe about myself? Will I surrender or will I not? We come back to the cross and say, I need to realize the power there. When the cross of Jesus is preached clearly, it's both offensive and it's lovely. When Jesus sacrifice is clearly understood, both the heart is gripped with guilt and there is freedom that is found as well. Jesus then concludes with those listening and he says this, there's not much time. I'm not going to be here forever. Believe while you can. Let's look at the conclusion of this passage here together.
[00:42:01] So the crowd, remember, here's Jesus. He's talking to a group of people. We don't know how many people are out there. He's chatting, whatever's going on. Two disciples bring some Greeks to them. What are the two disciples names?
[00:42:15] Andrew and Philip, who was the only guy with a Greek name, brings these, we don't know how many Gentiles to Jesus. And they say, jesus, these guys, they want to see you, or these people, they want to see you. And it's like Jesus shifts his attention from whatever he was talking about to them. And he doesn't say, hey, let's talk about what you want to talk about. He says, this is important. You can be a part of this message because this is the last time Jesus is going to have a public message in the Book of John, a public message to people. After this occasion, there's no more public ministry of Jesus. Everything moves into a private ministry. And it's important because we see the last public time he's talking to people. It doesn't just include the Jews, but also the Gentiles. And here we see, just as John 3:16 does, it tells us that all can believe. So the crowd says, we've heard from the law that the Christ remains forever. Like we've read from the Old Testament, this is the Jews speaking that the Messiah is supposed to have a kingdom that does not end.
[00:43:20] And Jesus, instead of answering them and going back to the Old Testament, he shifts his attention to a different metaphor. And he speaks about light, the Light is among you for a little longer. Who's he talking about? Who's the light? Jesus. I'm only going to be here for a little while longer. Walk, he says, or progress, or live while you have the light. Why? Because the darkness is coming.
[00:43:43] The darkness is coming so the darkness does not overtake you. Live. Trust in me. Because if you don't, I will be gone one day and. And so will you. You will breathe your last breath and that will be the end.
[00:43:58] The one who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. That is, the one who walks without Christ is living an aimless life. But verse 36, while you have the light, what's the word on the screen? While you have the light. The last phrase there. Believe. Can we say believe? Believe. Believe. That is the key phrase, the key word in the entire Gospel of John. He wants people to believe in Jesus. He comes back to it over and over and over again, says, will you please believe because he's worthy of your attention. He's worthy of your worship. Here's another way of saying it. How many of you. I have my phone here with me. Thinking about this point, imagine somebody calls me. Don't call me. Imagine somebody calls me and I see it and I really want to talk to them. And so I put my phone down and don't do anything with it.
[00:44:53] And then I wait till the ringing is done and then I pick up my phone and say, hello.
[00:44:59] Am I going to talk to the person? It's too late, right? Here's another way of saying pretty much what Jesus is saying. Answer the phone while it's ringing.
[00:45:09] Here's the time. There will be a time that the phone stops ringing. There will be a time where it's too late. There will be a time where your opportunity to trust in Jesus is gone. Jesus, don't wait for that. Don't wait for that. Everybody has the opportunity to trust in Jesus. I have done the work. All you need to do when I'm calling is answer the phone and I'll take care of the rest. He says, answer the phone. Answer the call of God. As we think about looking back at your outline, the various things that we are called to do, to glorify, to honor God. Even though point six is point six is the last point, it truly is the first thing that needs to happen in order to glorify God is believing in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. And after that, it's doing what he says. I'm going to die to self. I realize I have a Problem with this addiction, I'm going to lay it down before him. I realize I have this desire to listen to the voice of people instead of the voice of God. I wanna glorify God. I'm gonna check in with him first. I realize I have a tendency to trust in my own preferences and my own pleasure as my direction in life. Rather than saying, I'm gonna be obedient in the face of trouble, wherever you are, I encourage you, maybe just circle one of those points on your outline that you wanna work on most that week. Let me write some action steps that you can do. I'm going to do this so that I can grow in this area of glorifying God. Let's pray together.
[00:46:41] Dear Jesus, we are a people who come before you this morning. And my prayer first is for those here today who may not know you and have a relationship with you, Lord, I pray that your spirit is quite literally wringing their hearts, is calling upon them and today would be the day. They answer.
[00:47:01] They say, yes, I'm ready to listen.
[00:47:04] I've heard a lot about this God. I've read a lot of things. But I'm ready to answer the call and realize that that's the best thing for my life right now, is to be in complete submission to you. For those here today that have we have trusted in you, we have said, yes, Lord, I believe you. I want to walk in the light. Lord, help us to see the places in our life that don't reflect you, that don't magnify your name.
[00:47:32] Show us those places and help us to lay them before you, to surrender them before you as people who desire to have the same heart that Jesus did in this passage. Our one purpose, our one mission, our one pursuit is magnify to make grand, to edify your name. So that when people see us, they see your power, they see your love, they see your forgiveness, they see your mercy. When they see us, they don't see us in the flesh doing our own thing, but they see the mission of God, the purpose of God changing us.
[00:48:11] And you, Lord, are what's glorified because of that, because of our obedience. In Jesus name, amen.
