I Will Draw All People to Myself
John 12:20-36
[Imperatives in this sermon:
1. The world’s deepest need is to see Jesus.
2. We must die to self if the world is to see Jesus through us. .
3. The most frightening words in the world, when it comes to our eternal destiny, are, “Have it your way.”]
We Wish to See Jesus
Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 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.
Some Greeks were attending Passover. The term Greeks does not mean that they were from Greece, but that they were of the Greek language and culture that dominated the Mediterranean. From the context, we may conclude that they were Gentiles who nonetheless worshiped the God of the Jewish scriptures. They came to Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples, a Galilean Jew with a Greek name, and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
A 19th century congregation decided to help keep its preacher grounded. They placed a note inside his pulpit where he could not miss it, quoting the Greeks, in the King James Version, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” They wanted him never to forget that his highest priority was helping them see their living Savior and Lord.
It is a request that needs to be in front of every one of us whenever we are serving Christ’s mission in any respect. Whether we are preaching a sermon or hearing it, making a joyful noise on a praise team or as part of a congregation, participating in a youth meeting or sponsoring it, serving a meal or eating it, visiting a nursing home or receiving homebound communion from an elder, teaching a Sunday school class or attending it, we need to be reminded that the deepest need of those around us is to see Jesus. May people see Jesus through all of us!
The world’s deepest need is to see Jesus. My deepest need, your deepest need, and our neighbor’s deepest need is to see Jesus.
How Jesus Was Glorified
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.
Jesus was glorified or lifted up in two ways, (1) through his self-giving love on the cross, and (2) through his resurrection, ascension, and exaltation. As he says that the hour has come for him to be glorified, he is referring to the set of events, from crucifixion to exaltation. Jesus knows that, through these events, his ministry focus will be expanded beyond Judaism to form a mission of salvation by grace through faith for the entire world. The Greeks who want to see him will really see him because of what he is about to undergo. His ministry is about to take giant leap ahead in fruitfulness. He explains that, as a grain of wheat can be fruitful only when it has been buried, so he must pass through death to open up the next level of his fruitful mission.
How Disciples Become Fruitful
Jesus continues, 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.”
Jesus addresses his disciples. If they wish to be fruitful as his disciple-missionaries, then they must follow Jesus and die to self. We have to die to self in order to be free from worldly pressures. Only then will people actually see Jesus through us.
The Agony of Surrendering Self
Jesus then says, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
For Jesus, as well as for us, there is an agony to surrendering self. Jesus is candidly, honestly vulnerable. He is troubled about what is going to unfold. He is unsure about how he should pray. But no sooner does he contemplate turning back from the cross than he knows that it cannot be. He lives for the purpose of glorifying his heavenly Father, and every act he takes, whatever the cost, must be the one that most glorifies his heavenly Father. So his prayer must be, “Father, glorify your name.”
It is important that we see this struggle so that we can know that Jesus faced every kind of temptation that we face, and that he made choices to obey that were hard and painful for him. He can be our Savior because he has entered into our circumstances. He knows where we live. He does not ask anything of us that he has not already done.
Divine Affirmation
Jesus had prayed, “Father glorify your name”: Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine.
When Jesus prays, “Father glorify your name,” the Father thunders his answer from heaven that he had already been glorifying his name in Jesus’ ministry. From Jesus’ baptism, through his first public miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, through many subsequent miracles of healing, deliverance, providence, and protection, the Father has been making known the presence of his reigning love in his Son Jesus. Now a new stage is coming, glorifying his name through Jesus’ self-giving love on the cross and then through his resurrection, ascension, and exaltation.
The Judgment of the World
Jesus goes on to list two consequences of his being lifted up, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.
Jesus says repeatedly in John’s Gospel that he did not come to judge the world, but he also knows his coming will produce judgment. Jesus came to carry out his Father’s commandment to offer eternal life, but those who reject the offer have no further plea. They are judged by their own rejection of their only hope.
The New Testament contains countless references to an eternal punishment that awaits persistent sinners. For just one example, most of Revelation 21 is about the wonders of the perfect new heaven and new earth, but consider verse 8 which offers the needed contrast: “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death
The new heaven and new earth certainly will contain people who have done every sin on the previous list. Nobody has ever committed any sin that by itself condemns them. What finally condemns us is refusing the medicine for our sin-disease, rejecting the redemptive work of God in Christ Jesus, blaspheming the liberating power of the Holy Spirit, declining to repent, refraining from dying to self, not letting Jesus heal us. There is room in Jesus’ arms for black sheep who are ready for his healing touch and guidance.
The Most Frightening Words in the World
C. S. Lewis, in his marvelous little book The Great Divorce, puts it this way: “There are two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ Those who are in hell choose it.”
The most frightening words in the world, when it comes to our eternal destiny, are “Have it your way.” As the judgment takes place, the prime mover behind such self-assertion, the ruler of this world, Satan, will be cast out. Translation: Satan is toast.
Jesus Will Draw All Kinds of People
Then Jesus says, 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.
People of all backgrounds will be drawn to Jesus. Almost all the commentaries say that, when Jesus promises to draw all to him, he does not mean all individuals. This would contradict what he has said about judgment. Rather, we are to read this as part of his reply to the Greeks who wish to see him. His death will open the way for all kinds of people, Greeks included. In Revelation 5:9 and 7:9 we are told that Jesus by his blood ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and that a great multitude of them praise the Father and the Son with the words, “Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb!”
The Rest of the Story
So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?”
The crowd wants an explanation of how the Messiah/Son of Man can at once remain eternally and be lifted up in death. Jesus knows that, for all his attempts to answer this question for his disciples, they will not get it until they see it. How much less the uncommitted crowd! He points them to a more profitable consideration. What are they doing with their opportunity to be enlightened by his presence?
So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons (children like Jesus) of light.”
Jesus is the light of the world. When we see Jesus, we see who our Creator is, who we were created to be, and who we may yet by God’s grace become.
First, when we see Jesus, his light reveals and judges our sin, everything that misses the mark, everything that falls short of the glory for which God created us.
Second, when we see Jesus, if we are ready to repent and die to self, then his light heals us of what drives us to sin.
A Personal Story
I know from personal experience that this is true. Some of you have heard this story, but, if I am only going to tell true stories, there will be some repetition. This is a condensed version of the story. It is an example of how the exalted Jesus shows himself to us by aid of the Holy Spirit.
Just over twenty years ago, within a two week period, two people who were nearly strangers to me, certainly strangers to each other, a former Missionary Baptist minister and a woman married to a former priest and a fairly new Roman Catholic herself, spoke the same words to me: “There is an inhibition in your ministry that the Lord wants to heal.” The man prayed for me. The woman gave me a set of instructions for seeking the healing.
As instructed, I began by asking Jesus to reveal to me the hurt that he wanted to heal.
My mind’s eye was taken back to a time when I was four years old on the family farm in Kansas. The winter had been cold and long. The coyotes had been ravenous. When the lambs were born, we brought them in from the pasture and bottle fed them, first in a corner of the basement and then in a small, unused chicken house. One cold morning, my father came from the chicken house carrying a lamb that looked nearly dead. It was barely breathing. He put it in a box behind the kitchen wood stove and looked up what to do for a lamb overexposed to cold. He reported that the book called for glucose. While he was trying to figure what he would need in order to give the lamb an i.v., I asked, “What’s glucose?” My father replied absently, “Sugar water.”
I stuck my finger under the faucet, into the sugar bowl, and then into the lamb’s mouth. The lamb got up and began moving around the kitchen. I was impressed.
My father felt it necessary to explain, “Son, there was not enough sugar on your finger, and it did not have time to get into the blood stream where it could have an effect. The fire was warming the lamb, and the sugar gave it an interest in life.”
I had never seen this as a wounding memory, nor in my early adulthood when the memory came, was I a person inclined toward tears, but, as the scene unfolded before my mind’s eyes, tears flowed down my cheeks.
I obeyed instructions and accepted forgiveness for being carried away with myself, forgave my father for being insensitive, and then asked Jesus to reveal his healing of this memory. When the answer came, it came as a vision of Jesus standing in that kitchen of my childhood, with his blood-wet finger going down into the sugar bowl and being held out to me. Again tears flowed, but I understood neither the pain nor the healing.
I went to see the woman who had given me the instructions, but ended up talking with her husband, the ex-priest, now counselor. “The key,” he said, “is the vow you made when your father explained things to you.” “Vow?” I asked. “Yes, you made a vow.” “Oh, you’re right. I did. I thought, ‘Daddy is very reasonable. I have been unreasonable. I will never be unreasonable again.’” The counselor concluded, “Jesus is healing you of your overexposure to the coldness of reason. God gave you a good mind and wants you to use it. But he does not want you to use it to explain away God. Let God be God, and healing will follow.”
This moment was at once a stern judgment of my sin and a wonderful healing of the inhibition of my ministry. My self-concept was built on reason. I could not yield it to God’s control without dying to self. But I could not be raised to newness of life until I thus died.
I felt out of control. A week later I had a dream. It was at night. I was in Little Rock, on I-630, driving west at Interstate speed. In those days, the western end of I-630 was simply a barricade. Suddenly all lights--street lights, building lights, car lights--went out. I tried to slow down with my brakes. They went to the floor board. I tried to steer to where I imagined the slower right lane would be. The steering wheel spun in my hands. I had no control. I would crash into the barricade. I struggled to pull myself out of the dream. As I did, I heard a voice: “No, I am the light of the world.” Jesus was asking me to trust him to be in control. I really could yield my dominant sin to him. When I stopped trying to control things with my reason, when I died to self, he would take over.
An Undefined Time Limit
The light that is available to us in any given moment is a precious commodity. There is an undefined time limit to our opportunity to respond to the light. We do not know how long we will live, how long our minds will remain sharp, how long spiritual resources will remain available to us, how long before sin will have such a hold on our hearts that we will be unable to yield to the reign of God over our lives, how long before God says, “Okay, have it your way.”
The light feels like it will kill us, but it is the light of love, of redemption, of healing. When we are ready to die to self, the light will lead us to new life.
Our deepest need is to see Jesus lifted up, lifted up as our crucified Savior who gave everything for our salvation, lifted up as our risen and exalted Lord who alone can bring us to a perfect destiny. Choose to see him now. Enter his light while you may. Receive what he has to offer, which is nothing less than everything.
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