INTRODUCTION:
When we are facing a difficult and dangerous assignment, what alternatives do we have? One alternative would be to avoid it, refusing to go through it or running away from it. The prophet Jonah comes to my mind. When God told him to go to Nineveh, Jonah ran in the opposite direction. Another alternative would be to do the parts of the assignment which were less threatening and disregard the rest. A third alternative would be to do it, regardless of the danger or cost to ourselves.
The Lord Jesus Christ was faced with a dangerous situation. He knew that very soon He would be arrested and crucified. John 12:27-36 describes Jesus’ response and His motivation in the face of suffering and death.
I, JESUS PRAYER CONCERNING HIS COMING CRUCIFIXION (verses 27-28)
Jesus didn’t wait until the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before His death, to begin to pray about it. In verse 27, He expressed His inner feelings to the Father when He said, “My soul is troubled.” There was a conflict of emotions. Jesus asked Himself the question, “What shall I say?” [“What shall I pray?”]. Two alternatives came to His mind and He expressed the first one: “Shall I say . . . Father, save Me from this hour?” We see the reaction of Jesus’ human will to the possibility of death. It was an instinctive reaction to danger, a reaction that we all have as human beings. Jesus was no actor playing a role. He was a real person possessing real emotions. And this hour that He was facing would involve the desertion of His disciples, being bound and led away, being struck on the face, scourged with a whip, crowned with thorns and mocked, followed by crucifixion and death. Try to imagine facing that situation yourself, knowing what was about to happen to you.
In verse 27, Jesus immediately realized that He could not pray this prayer, “Father, save Me from this hour” because His whole purpose for coming to this earth was to go to the cross. Jesus was born so that He might die for our sins. Without Christ’s death, His life would be fruitless. It would accomplish nothing of eternal value. So Jesus immediately dismissed that thought and expressed His real desire when He prayed the words: “Father, glorify Thy name.” Jesus knew what was in store for Him: the physical pain, the emotional strain and shame, and the spiritual agony as He would become the object of the Father’s wrath for sin. Yet His prayer was not for Himself but for the Father’s name to be glorified and His will accomplished. Jesus was saying, “complete your perfect plan of salvation through Me, even at the cost of My own suffering and death.” We will see this same attitude again in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). Then he immediately added, “yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”.
The Bible doesn’t tell us when God the Father revealed to Jesus that He was going to die for the sins of the world. We do find, in Luke 2:41-52, that at the age of 12, Jesus was found in the temple listening to the elders and asking them questions. His response to Mary and Joseph was, “Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” It’s clear from that passage of Scripture that Jesus already had some understanding of His mission. We find that, early in His public ministry, Jesus talked about His death.
William Hunt painted a famous picture entitled The Shadow of Death. The artist portrayed Jesus as a young man in Joseph’s carpenter shop. It was in the late afternoon and the sun’s rays were coming through the open door. Jesus had gotten up from His work and was stretching His aching arms. As he did so, the setting sun casts a shadow on the wall behind Him, creating the appearance of a man on a cross. That picture dramatizes the truth that Jesus lived with the consciousness that Calvary was God’s will for His life.
In verse 28, Jesus’ prayer was a demonstration of His perfect obedience to the will of the Father. He also fulfilled, by His example, the prayer He taught His disciples in Matthew 6:9, where He said, “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ “ Exalting the name of the Father and doing the Father’s will were the chief concerns of His life.
II. THE FATHER’S RESPONSE (verse 28)
After Jesus prayed those words, “Father, glorify Thy name”, verse 28 tells us there was a voice from heaven saying, “I have both glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” When did the Father glorify Himself through His Son? We find the Father’s voice echoing from heaven at Jesus’ baptism. In Matthew 3:17, God spoke from heaven saying, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” The Father was testifying to His Son’s sinlessness and perfect obedience to Him during the silent years before Jesus began His public ministry.
Later the Father’s voice was heard again at the transfiguration of Jesus as Peter, James, and John watched and listened, and as Moses and Elijah appeared and talked with Jesus. God the Father spoke these words from heaven: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him!” (Matthew 17:5). The Father was expressing His delight in the Son’s ministry – a ministry that was superior to all the prophets and leaders who came before Him. When God the Father said, “I will glorify it again”, He was also saying that still greater glory was yet to be brought to Him through the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.
III. THE CROWD’S REACTION (verse 29)
From the crowd’s reaction, we learn that there were basically two groups of people in that crowd. The first group said, “It thundered”. This group of people didn’t believe in anything miraculous. They were saying, “There is no such thing as a miracle, so there must be a natural explanation for this. Hmmm . . . It must have been thunder. That’s the only sensible answer.”
The second group knew it wasn’t thunder. They admitted that words were spoken, but they couldn’t be the words of God; so their conclusion was: “An angel has spoken to Him.” But how could an angel say those words? The Scriptures tell us that angels don’t marry or have children (Mark 12:25).
I just read a true illustration about a person whose response to his own personal experience is the opposite of these two groups of people. Near the end of World War 2, members of the allied forces were often found searching farms and houses for snipers. At one abandoned house, which had been reduced to rubble, searchers found their way into the basement. There, on a crumbling wall, a victim of the Holocaust had scratched a Star of David. Beneath it was written the words, “I believe in the sun, even when it does not shine. I believe in love even when it is not shown. I believe in God even when He does not speak.”
There was a time when the Jews believed that God spoke audibly to men. He spoke to Abraham, Samuel, Elijah, and several others. But during the silent years – the 400 or so years between the Old Testament and the New Testament, when God did not speak audibly or through the prophets, many of the Jews were drawn away from that sense of God’s presence and His closeness to them. Now, when God does speak aloud to them, they act as if they are hard of hearing. Would you agree that pride can sometimes cause us to be “selective listeners”? As the saying goes, “In one ear and out the other.” That seems to be the case in this situation, doesn’t it?
IV. JESUS RESPONDS TO THE CROWD (verses 30-33)
In His response to the crowd, Jesus begins by saying, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine.” Let’s not misunderstand the meaning of His words. Jesus was not saying that those words from heaven had everything to do with them and nothing to do with Him. The Father said those words aloud in reply to Jesus and I’m sure they were an encouragement to Him. What Jesus meant was: “That voice came more for your sake than for Mine.”
Then Jesus made a startling statement when He said, “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world shall be cast out.” He’s beginning to describe to them how the Father is going to glorify Himself again through His Son. Some may have been thinking, “What right does He have to make such a prophetic statement? Who is this ‘ruler of this world’?” Actually, many of the Jews of Jesus’ day may have had that understanding of Satan. The apostle Paul was a Jew and he referred to Satan as “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4), and “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). There were also many demon-possessed people in Palestine during the lifetime of Christ, and the Jews had opportunities to observe the power and control that demons could wield in a person’s life.
When Jesus referred to Satan as “the ruler of this world”, He was asserting that Satan was powerful and that he exerted a lot of influence over the people of this world. But even though Satan’s desire is to control this world, there is One who is more powerful than himself.
During the French Revolution in the early 1800s, Napoleon Bonaparte, with his staff officers around him, once spread a large map of the world on a table before him, put his finger on a kingdom colored red, and said to them, “Messieurs, if it were not for that red spot I could conquer the world.” That red spot was the British Isles. In like manner, Satan might place a huge map of the universe before his cohorts, put his finger on a place red with the blood of the Savior, and say to them, “If it were not for that red spot, I could conquer the universe.” That red spot is the Cross on Golgotha’s Hill where the Lord Jesus died to save sinners from Satan’s power.
Not only would He defeat Satan by His own death on the cross, but Jesus adds in verse 32, “I will draw all men to Myself.” When Jesus said the words “all men”, He did not mean every individual without exception, but all kinds of people without exclusion. Jews and Gentiles, regardless of age, gender, color, nationality, or social status would be drawn to Christ and find deliverance from sin and peace with God through the “magnet” of the cross of Christ. Earlier in His ministry, Jesus said, in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” When you are drawn, you come.
The apostle John wants his readers to understand the reason why Jesus said the words, “When I am lifted up.” It was to indicate the kind of death He was to die. In contrast to Satan [“the ruler of this world”] who is going to be “cast out”, Jesus is going to be “lifted up”.
There is confusion in the minds of the multitude. They heard Jesus call Himself “the Son of Man” in verse 23 and now He is talking about His death. That didn’t fit their understanding of the Scriptures so they demand an explanation. In verse 34, someone in the crowd must have spoken on behalf of the others saying, “We have heard out of the Law that the Christ is to remain forever, and how can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ ” Can you feel the tension? Just a couple of days earlier, they were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Now they are questioning whether the Son of Man and the Messiah are the same person.
V. WALK IN THE LIGHT (verses 35-36)
Jesus doesn’t answer their excuse and their question directly. Instead, He gives them a warning, a choice, and a promise. Farmers have a saying that goes like this: “Make hay while the sun shines.” It’s an encouragement to make the most of the opportunity. The weather won’t be favorable for planting or harvesting for much longer.
As Jesus speaks to the multitude, He once again uses the theme of light and darkness. In verse 35 He says, “For a little while longer the light is among you.” Jesus” is referring to Himself. You may have heard the saying, “Opportunity seldom knocks twice.” In their case, “opportunity” has been knocking for three years and very few have opened the door. It is now Passover week, and Jesus’ crucifixion and death are just a few days away.
When Jesus said, “The light is among you”, He was bringing to their minds the words of the prophet Isaiah who said, in Isaiah 9:2, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine upon them.” Jesus is, once again, proclaiming Himself to be the Messiah they are longing for. He is also giving them a final warning and two final exhortations: “Walk while you have the light, that darkness may not overtake you . . . believe in the light in order that you may become sons of light.” Can you sense the urgency in His plea to the multitude? This is His last call to them. God’s patience with them has reached its limit. To “walk in the light” and to “believe in the light” are two ways to say the same thing. Both refer to a commitment to follow Him, the “light of the world” (John 8:12).
They have the privilege of having the light of the world [Jesus Christ] in their presence, and along with that privilege comes an obligation to believe in that light with the result that they will become children of the light. The warning is that He won’t be around much longer, and they will be stumbling in the darkness. This was the end of Jesus’ public ministry in John’s Gospel. Verse 36 tells us that after He said these things to them, Jesus “departed and hid Himself from them.”
CONCLUSION:
Several principles can be drawn from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ in this passage of Scripture. First, God’s glory, not our own comfort and safety, should be the basis for all our decision-making. After Jesus told the multitude about His coming death, He said, “Father, glorify Thy name.” Secondly, God is glorified when we are obedient to His Word and are doing His will. And thirdly: Now is the time to glorify God in our lives. Is this a time of decision for you? The Light of the Lord Jesus Christ is not only to be seen and admired but also to be followed and displayed. He wants His light to shine in and through your life. Don’t put off believing in Him and living for Him. Before the people of Israel crossed the Jordan River to enter the land of Canaan, Joshua said, “Chose for yourselves today whom you will serve.” He was also quick to add his own personal application saying, “but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15)
When the French painter, Auguste Renoir was confined to his home during the last decade of his life, Henri Matisse was nearly 28 years younger than him. The two great artists were dear friends and frequent companions. Matisse visited him daily. Renoir, almost paralyzed by arthritis, continued to paint in spite of his infirmities. He had to hold his brush between his thumb and index finger. As he painted, students often heard him crying out in pain. One day, as Matisse watched the elder painter work in his studio, fighting tortuous pain with each brush stroke, he blurted out, “Auguste, why do you continue to paint when you are in such agony?” Renoir said, “The pain passes but the beauty remains.
The pain of Jesus Christ on the cross has passed but the beauty remains. It’s the beauty of the resurrected Christ. It’s the beauty of being a new creature in Christ because He suffered and died for us. It’s the beauty of a new kingdom that has been established in the hearts and lives of His followers. It’s the beauty of knowing Him and living for Him who died for us. It’s the beauty of heaven. Out of our pain and sorrow in this life will come a beauty that will last forever.
CONSTRUCTION SITE: COMPLETED
Welcome to this construction project: John 12:27-36. I hope you will enter into the emotions of Jesus and learn from His response, His Father’s response to Him, and the responses of those who were there, watching, listening, and coming to their own conclusions.