John 12:27-28
All right, hear God’s word with
me, John chapter 12. Six days before the Passover,
Jesus therefore came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus
had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him
there. Martha served and Lazarus was
one of those who was reclining with him at table. Mary, therefore,
took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed
the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house
was filled with the fragrance of the perfume, but Judas Iscariot,
one of his disciples, He who was about to betray him said,
why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to
the poor? He said this, not because he
cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and having charge
of the money bag used to help himself to what was put into
it. Jesus said, leave her alone that
she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always
will have with you, but you do not always have me. When the
large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came
not only on account of him, but also to see Lazarus, whom he
had raised from the dead. So the chief priest made plans
to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him, many
of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. The next
day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that
Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm
trees and went out to meet him, crying out, Hosanna, blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the king of Israel. And Jesus found a young donkey
and sat on it just as it was written, fear not, daughter of
Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s coat. His
disciples did not understand these things at first, but when
Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things
had been written about him and had been done to him. The crowd
that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb
and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The
reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard
he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one
another, you see that you are gaining nothing, look, the world
has gone after him. 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 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 it dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much
fruit. 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. 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. 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 an angel, that it had thundered and others
said an angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered, this is the voice
that has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment
of this world. Now will the ruler of this world
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 the law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the son
of man must be lifted up? Who is the son of man? 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 of the light. When Jesus had said these things,
He departed and hid Himself from them. Though He had done so many
signs before them, they still did not believe in Him, so that
the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord,
who has believed what He heard from us? And to whom has the
arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore, they could not believe,
for again, Isaiah said, He has blinded their eyes. He has hardened
their heart. lest they see with their eyes
and understand with their heart and turn, I would heal them.
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of
him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in
him, but for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that
they would not be put out of the synagogue. For they love
the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes
from God. And Jesus cried out and said, whoever believes in
me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me. And whoever
sees me, sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as
light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not
judge him for I did not come to judge the world, but to save
the world. the one who rejects me and does
not receive my words as a judge. The word that I have spoken will
judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own
authority, but the father who sent me has himself given me
a commandment, what to say and what to speak. And I know that
his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say
as the father has told me. And may we regard his word as
such. Amen. Some of you have your calendars,
not your phone calendars, but your paper calendars, and you
have marked on them various events. Maybe it’s a vacation. Maybe
it’s a dental appointment. Maybe it’s the grandkids are
coming. Maybe it’s a birthday, an anniversary, it’s some sort
of celebration. But for others of you, it’s a
rather serious event. Maybe a surgery. Maybe an appointment
that brings great fear and dread upon you. And as you count down
towards that date, the reality begins to set in on you. I’m gonna be put to sleep. I’m
gonna be worked on. Will I wake up? Will this surgery
work? Will this medical procedure do
what it sets out to do? Will it heal me and help me?
And you begin to maybe want to crawl out of your skin. You want
to get out of this body that will undergo some heavy and hard
thing. And I want you to take that experience
that is in your mind that I’ve painted before you and think
on Jesus. On His calendar was the cross.
On His calendar from before the foundation of the world was the
work of redemption. And we know that Jesus in His
incarnation left the riches of glory. We know that He left the
comforts of heaven, the glories that surrounded Him, the beauty
and the perfection, and He entered into our humanity. We refer to this in our theology
as His humiliation. Jesus, the eternal Son of God,
became man by the power of the Holy Spirit through the womb
of the Virgin Mary. He was born of us. He was made
under the law. And in Jesus’ particular case,
he suffered many infirmities in this life that most humans
don’t encounter. He was poor. He was born in a
stable. He was despised. He was rejected. He was cast off from among his
own people. And then, of course, he was shamefully
mistreated. He was crucified and he was put
in the grave and he remained under the power of the grave
for that time. We refer to this as his humiliation. And of course,
each Sunday, next Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus. Death could not hold him. The
shame of this world could not get him down. But think of that. event on his calendar, the cross,
that date fixed in his mind, the day of Calvary, the day of
atonement, the day of the wrath of almighty God and what he must
have faced. Oh, if I could just get out of
my skin, get out of my body, get out of this divine appointment
that I must keep. We want to think on that for
a few moments today, is in chapter 12 of John, verse 27, and then
28, Jesus says this, now is my soul troubled. And what shall
I say? Father, save me from this hour,
but for this purpose, I have come for this hour. Father, glorify
your name, Jesus says. want us to think about the cross,
want us to think about the covenant that God had made within the
Trinity, the covenant of redemption. So the cross, the covenant of
redemption, but also the confirmation we see when God himself speaks
from heaven about his own son. First, let’s think about the
cross. Jesus says in this longer story,
which we’ve read, now is my soul troubled. He sees the fixed date
on the calendar. It’s six days before Passover. It’s a week or so before the
cross. And as that date is next page, next week, you can imagine
the weight of sin. the worry that he has because
the wrath of God will come upon him. He will die at Calvary on
the cross, the death of all deaths. And so he says, now is my soul
troubled. He’s shaken, he’s stirred, he
is spiritually horrified. And this is a growing weight
on him. You know, sometimes the worst
that happens to us, you know, we call it first world problems,
our cable goes out. We bounce a check. Or maybe some
of you young people have had to sit at the table for hours
until you ate your green beans. And the prospect of the taste
of those beans just, oh, it curled in you. These things do not compare.
Our troubles, is as awful as they may be in this world. And
yes, we experienced some heavy things, maybe physically, relationally,
professionally, emotionally, we experienced some heavy things,
but dear brothers and sisters, nothing will ever come upon us
than the agony of the cross. the weight of sin, the wrath
of almighty God, this death of all deaths. We think of Jesus
passion. We think of it in our terms,
which are usually physical death. We don’t like to fall off our
bicycle and hit our knees. We don’t like to bonk our head,
getting a pair of shoes out of the bottom of the closet. We,
we, um, We want to avoid pain and hardship, and we definitely
want to avoid physical death. That’s why as you ride along
church street, they can fix your broken bones. They can whiten
your yellowing teeth. They can fix your sagging skin
and whatever else, because we don’t want to die. And on the
way to death, we don’t want to look bad. And so we live in a
world that fixes and tucks and cuts and whatever else it does
because we want to prolong life and we want life to the fullest.
And if possible, we do not want death. In fact, when we think
of death, we speak of it very euphemistically. And it’s a wonder
that the church has lost the gospel because we forget to say
the wages of sin is death. And so we live in this world
where we worry more about our bodies than we do our souls.
And I wanna point out to you that Jesus was facing, yes, a
physical death. And I know some of you this week
will probably religiously watch Mel Gibson, you know, the, whatever
the Jesus movie is. And you’ll, you’ll see the nails
and the scourges and you’ll see the spitting and the scoffing
and you’ll see all of those things. Friends, that is, that is a cakewalk. when you compare to the wrath
of Almighty God for your sin, for the sins of His children
being poured out on that man on the cross. It’s why in our
theology, when we think of Jesus two natures, He’s God and He’s
man, and we think in His humanity, He bore the sins of His children
on the cross, but it took His deity to bear up that weight. because his humanity would have
been crushed and obliterated, but it took the God man. Now
the God side did not die. The God side never sinned and
did not become sin. And we can get into heresies
very quickly, but the weight of the cross, the weight of the
wrath, the weight of the sin of almighty God led Jesus to
say, now is my soul troubled. And it was not over green beans.
or a dental appointment or a phone call from the IRS or whatever
it may be that gives you chills. I don’t want to downplay our
human struggles, but it was not the human troubles that Jesus
faced that scared him. It was, it was his father. It was his wrath and his curse
and his displeasure. And Jesus knew I must go to Jerusalem
He’s at the green mile, we call it. You know, the walk from the
cell to the electric chair, to the lethal injection chamber,
to the hangman’s noose, to the firing range. We sing of this
sometimes when we sing about dark Gethsemane. This is a week or so before Gethsemane
where Jesus will be sweating droplets of blood. His body so
traumatized by the the spiritual and physical anguish that will
come upon him in the next few hours of his life, that he sweats,
not perspiration, but blood, because he realizes the weight. But we think of the joyful words
of the scripture, Jesus, for the joy set before him endured
the cross. For the joy set before him endured
the grief and the shame and the separation from his father and
the wrath and curse. He endured it for you. And we
often miss this, but need to think of it this way. Every Sunday,
when God blesses you through the preacher, the Lord bless
you. The Lord keep you. The Lord cause his face to shine
upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance
upon you and give you peace. You think of just the opposite.
That’s what Jesus was troubled over. He did not hear on the
cross, the Lord bless you. He heard the words, the Lord
curse you. He did not hear the words, the
Lord bless you and keep you, but the Lord put you away. away from the fatherly presence
and pleasures of being a child of God, the eternal son, the
Lord turned his face away from you. The Lord pour out his complete
and unmitigated wrath upon you and send you to hell and to the
grave and to darkness and punishment. So indeed, Jesus said, now is
my soul troubled. But then he goes on to speak
of the covenant. And what shall I say? Verse 27 continues. Father, save me from this hour. Doesn’t this echo the words in
Gethsemane? Father, if there’s another way, spare me. Spare me the cross. Spare me
the agony. Spare me the shame. Spare me the hardship. Lord,
if there’s a different way to save a people. But he knew of
the covenant. He knew of the covenant of redemption
where God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit in eternity
past ordained that Jesus would be the lamb slain before the
foundation of the world. They ordained the whole sacrificial
system of the old covenant to point to the need of a substitute
for sin. And Jesus on the day of atonement
would be the lamb where all the sins of the people would be placed
on him. He would be the scapegoat. He
would be the atoning sacrifice. Jesus knew of Isaiah 53 and its
prophecy that the suffering servant would be pierced and crushed
and put to grief, would be buried in a grave and poured out as
a guilt offering. Jesus knew as the scriptures
needed to be fulfilled, that the coven of redemption was before
him. He could not shrink back from it. He could not really
expect the father to save him from this hour, but to push him
through it. For we know that Christ dies
for the sins of his people once and for all. The just for the
unjust, so that he might bring to God Those of us who have put
to death our sins in the flesh and been made alive by the spirit
of the living God. Is this not a picture of self-denial? Not just that he left the riches
of heaven, but that he endured the shame. Your guilt became
his burden. He suffered and he endured the
cross in order to bring many sons to glory. Self-denial is
not on our to-do list, is it? We like our creature comforts.
We like our worldly pleasures. We think we’re gonna live forever
and we should do it comfortably. But what of that date on your
calendar that you dread so much or the hardships you’ve already
endured? Can you not see that your suffering Savior has been
there before you? He’s got the been there, done
that T-shirt. And the book of Hebrews says, we have a high
priest who can sympathize with us. He’s been infirmed in every
way. And so as we endure hardships
in this life, both physically, but also spiritually as Christians
receiving the sufferings of Jesus, we can say to ourselves, we’re
in good company. This, our Savior, has been there
before us. And yes, we may say, now my heart
is troubled. My soul is troubled. Lord, I
don’t wanna go through this. I don’t think I can make it through
this pain, this hardship, this relationship, this surgery, this
whatever the difficulty is. You put it in the blank for your
life. But we have a Savior who knows.
We have a Savior who’s endured. And we have a Savior who is cheering
us on. But one of the great blessings
we also find in this passage, as we look at the cross, as we
see Jesus’ fidelity to the covenant of redemption, is we have the
confirmation of God Almighty. Jesus says, after he asked the
question, Father, save me for this hour. He says, no, for this
purpose, I’ve come. I have come for this hour. I’m going to the cross to keep
the covenant and I’m gonna glorify the father’s name. Father, he
says, glorify, not my name, your name. And what does the father
say? He says out loud so that all
can hear, I have already glorified it and I will be glorified. He’s saying your life, Jesus
son, your ministry has already glorified my name and after the
cross, I will be glorified again. Now God rarely speaks audibly
in the scriptures. He’s done so at Jesus’ baptism.
This is my son with whom I’m well pleased. He did so at the
Mount of Transfiguration when Peter and John and Moses and
Elijah were there. This is the third occasion in
the New Testament where God speaks audibly from heaven. Now there
were those who could not hear. They thought they heard a thunderclap.
They thought they heard angels speaking, but there were those
who could hear with thunder clarity that God himself spoke. And that
he spoke of his son and his confirming that his work would glorify him. It strengthened these disciples’
faith. It was a witness that God was
at work in and through his dear son. And it helped those disciples
know for sure that what Jesus had said of himself was exactly
true. And you notice only the disciples
really hear. And down the line in this passage,
the Bible says, this confirms what God said to Isaiah, you’ll
preach, but nobody will listen. You’ll preach, but people will
have hard hearts and not come to faith in Jesus. You’ll preach
and it will come from heaven with thunder clarity and people
will reject it. And so that leads me to ask this
question. What is God’s word to you? When
it is read, when it is sung, when it is explained, when it
is prayed, when it is preached, is it a gobbledygook? Is it something
to endure until we can get on to lunch? Or does it bring to
you the life-saving, life-changing, promise-making, promise-keeping
blessings of Almighty God? Does it bring comfort to your
spirit, even when you have something on your calendar that you dread
most? You know, the worst that can
happen to you is you die. And I hear people say, it’s not
dying or death I’m afraid of, it’s the dying part. Well, Jesus
has been through it. And if you are in Christ Jesus,
he is with you through thick and through thin. But I pray
that you’ll hear his voice and then you recognize all that he
endured, all the trouble of his soul for your sake, that you
might hear the words of God say, my child, you are forgiven. You are my beloved and I will
never leave you or forsake you. Pray with me. Lord, open wide our hearts that
the King of glory might enter and that he might rule and reign
and that he might comfort and that he might assure us that
we are his child, his children, to the praise of the everlasting
Father who is glorified in the obedience of Jesus, the death
of Jesus, the ongoing work of Jesus, and most especially will
he be glorified at the last day when God’s love, God’s justice,
God’s wrath, his grace, his wisdom and mercy are on full display,
when the righteous will be brought into glory through Jesus and
the rest will go to everlasting punishment for having hard hearts
and stopped ears. Lord, let us hear this hour and
be comforted in these truths we pray in Jesus name, amen.