Morning, brothers and sisters.
I would like to read a couple of verses from John Chapter 12.
Now there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the feast.
These therefore came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
—John 12:20-21
And then Verse 45:
And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me.
—John 12:45
Let us bow our heads for a moment.
Heavenly Father, we come to You with thanksgiving and praise because You have made a way for us to be in Your presence and to be in the purposes that You planned for man from the beginning. This is only possible because of what Your Son, the Lord Jesus, has done for us.
So we thank You, and we come to You this morning asking that, by Your Holy Spirit, You would help us to see Jesus and, in seeing Him, Lord, to walk in the light of what we see. We ask this in Christ’s name.
This morning, I would like to continue in John. As I have said before, I am not doing a verse-by-verse study, but considering some things that strike me from each chapter.
There are a lot of things in this chapter. We have the coming into Jerusalem on the donkey, after the raising of Lazarus, with a great crowd and throngs coming to see the Lord Jesus and even hailing Him as King.
This is the very end of His public ministry—the last thing He does in public. All the rest of the Gospel of John, except for the crucifixion, takes place in intimacy with His disciples. The trial was not public, although the crucifixion was. But here we see the last part of His public ministry.
You would think that everybody had seen enough and was ready to crown Him King. But the thing that struck me, and what I would like to speak about, is this little verse: “We wish to see Jesus.”
Here we have these Greeks. Most people say they were proselytes—Greeks who had converted to Judaism. They were second-class Jews, in a sense. They were only allowed to go so far into the temple and were held at arm’s length.
When they say, “We wish to see Jesus,” they do not mean that they merely want to look at Him and say, “Oh, yeah, there He is. I did not notice how long His beard was, but that is Him, all right.” That is not what they are talking about.
They want to see Him in the sense of speaking with Him. They want to gain something from Him through an interview or a conversation. We do not know why they wanted to see Him; there is all sorts of speculation. But what they wanted is not really that important, or else I think it would have been said. The whole matter is simply this request: “We wish to see Jesus.”
Why did they want to see Jesus? I think, in one way, they wanted a reference point for their faith.
When we think about what we are called to live by, we are called to live by faith. Romans tells us that, and Habakkuk tells us, “The just shall live by faith.” Faith needs a reference point.
You would think that all the works that had gone on before this time—all the healings, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the healing of the blind man, all these signs—would have been enough. There had also been all the teaching the Lord Jesus had given in the temple and in other places. Yet here we have these people saying, in effect, “We need a reference point for faith.”
Our faith does not rest in a teaching. It does not rest in experience, either. It rests in God Himself. Is that not what Peter says concerning the resurrection? We believe in the resurrection of the dead, and that puts our belief in God.
These Greeks needed a reference point for their faith. I think one reason they needed it was that they were proselytes. They could not claim, “The oracles of God have come to us.” They had been brought in, as it were, and they needed a point of reference for faith—not merely a law to live by, but a living reference for their faith.
So this is what we see: they come simply saying, “We want to see Jesus.”
I think it is really odd how Jesus responds to them. As a matter of fact, they do not really seem to come directly into His presence. From Verse 22 through at least Verse 36, it appears that they go to Philip, Philip goes to Andrew, and then Andrew and Philip go to Jesus. Where are these men?
I think they are within earshot, because Jesus speaks. They have said, “We want to see Jesus,” and what He says seems like a really strange, off-the-wall kind of response. But this is the key to everything in their seeing Jesus.
Remember, their desire is to see Jesus. So Jesus says, in effect, “You want to see Me? This is how you must see Me.”
In John 12:23-24, Jesus answers them:
The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone;
but if it dies, it produces much grain.
Then, in John 12:31-32:
Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.
This is how He answers these men who want to see Him. “Do you want to see Me? If you want to see Me, you must look in this way.”
Jesus gives this little parable: unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground. But He prefaces it by saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.”
As we come to the end of Jesus’ public ministry, we come to this phrase: “The hour has come.” If you are a student of the Gospel of John, you have seen the phrase, “His hour had not yet come,” from Chapter 2 onward. They could not take Him because His hour had not come. Mary wanted Him to do a miracle, but it was not His hour yet.
But now we find that His hour has come, and He says that the hour has come for Him to be glorified. We know that at this time He is right on the verge of being crucified. The question is, how can this be His glorification?
There is a little song we sang from Hebrews 2:9. I have always wondered at that verse:
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.
Why does it not then say something about the resurrection? We tend to wonder about that because we think of His cross as His humiliation—His humbling Himself to death on the cross. Yet here we see the Lord Himself looking at it differently: “Now is My hour; it is time for Me to be glorified.”
G. Campbell Morgan looks at this and says, concerning the phrase, “crowned with glory and honour, that He by the grace of God might taste death for every man,” that it was only Christ—only this Man, Jesus, this God-Man Jesus—who could take the honour of dying for mankind.
It puts it on a whole other level, does it not? When you ask, “Who can take the honour of saving My people?” only One could take that honour. In the saving of people, there is honour; there is glory, even though it comes through humility.
So He says, “Do you want to see Me? Well, if you want to see Me, then you have to see Me in this way.” He gives them this parable: unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone.
What is He talking about? Well, we know because we are Christians. He is saying, “If you really want to see Me, first you must see Me as the Lamb of God. You must see Me as the One who goes down into the earth and dies.”
It was not merely that He came into the earth at His birth, leaving Heaven and coming down to live a life holy before God and holy before man.
Because He lived that kind of life, when He was transfigured on the Mount of Transfiguration, He could have walked right into Heaven at that moment and said, “This is what God wants, and I will be what God wants forever.” But He did not.
God did not want merely one Man in the heavenlies. He wanted many sons brought to glory. So Jesus left that Mount of Transfiguration, that mount we would call the mount of His glory. We would think, “Boy, that is glory, if anything.” But He came down.
He came down to fall into the earth and die. So we see Jesus as the Lamb of God.
He would not merely live to save them. That is what they were looking for: a living saviour, someone who would live and lead them into freedom. That is what the nations wanted, and really that is what we want. We want someone to lead us into freedom. Give us a leader.
We are amazing people; many of us are followers. We look for someone to lead us: “Just lead us into salvation.” But Jesus does not merely live to save them. He will die to save them.
Not many people will do that. We might say, “I will live to save you. I will be that hero.” We love that kind of role—the hero whom everybody looks up to, who leads people here and there. But here is One who says that you die to save.
I enjoy reading romantic novels here and there—romantic in the proper sense, not Fabio-covered romances, but the Romantic era. Think of A Tale of Two Cities, where a man falls in love with a woman who does not love him, but he saves the life of her lover by taking his place to die for him. That is the hero.
That is how Jesus saves. He will not merely live to save us; He will die to save us, to bring people back to God and to God’s original purpose.
Now, you cannot stop with the grain. This is where many of us, as Christians, stop. We stop with the Lord dying for us. Most of Christianity does that: we look only at the Lord dying for us.
But remember what it says: if the grain of wheat falls and dies, what happens? It becomes something other than merely the grain.
When you plant something—when I was a little kid, I used to plant popcorn seeds to see whether they would grow. Why are you laughing? They grow.
That little seed becomes something other than that little seed. It becomes a stalk, a root system, and then it bears fruit. It is an amazing thing: you bury it, and it becomes something totally different.
In the same way, we see Christ. We stop at the seed, but Christ is more than the seed. We want a whole Christ, not merely the Christ who died, because God has meant for us to have a whole Christ.
What is this whole Christ? In John 12:31-32, we read:
Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.
There is a different rendering of Verse 32. Morgan said that it translates, “If I be lifted up out of the earth.”
Both Morgan and Edersheim said that, when He is talking about being lifted up out of the earth, He is not speaking merely of the cross. The cross is included, but the work of the cross is bigger than just the death of Christ.
The work of the cross also includes His resurrection, His ascension, and His exaltation. If it does not, then that cross cannot save us. You have to understand that. Without the rest of these things, there is no salvation for us—other than perhaps having our sins washed away. But salvation is much bigger than that.
His resurrection, His ascension into Heaven, and His exaltation are all connected. They are all connected to the cross, and they are all connected, in a sense, to Verse 31: “Now the ruler of this world will be cast out.”
I want to look at these three things quickly, and then make some application.
The resurrection is included in the cross. Acts is all about the resurrected Christ. Without the resurrection, you do not have the Book of Acts.
If you notice the Book of Acts and all its sermons, they refer to the resurrection of Christ. Take Peter’s first sermon in Acts Chapter 2, and then look at the rest of the sermons: they all refer to the resurrection of Christ.
Even when they are trying to choose a new apostle, he must be a witness to the resurrection—not merely a witness of the death, but a witness to the resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is such an important matter for us as Christians.
Paul, writing his last letter to Timothy, says in 2 Timothy 2:8:
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.
It does not say, “Remember Him crucified.” It says, “Remember Him risen.” It implies the crucifixion, but it does not stop with the crucifixion. The cross, viewed simply as a historical event, was not the end or the totality of the crucifixion. The resurrection is included in it.
Why is this so important? Paul also writes in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know the power of His resurrection.” This is part of the salvation that we have.
You want to see Jesus, and you want to see Him in His resurrection. In His cross we see His humility, but in His resurrection we see His power.
This is not power in the sense that He is a He-Man or something like that. It goes back to Verse 31: “Now is the ruler of this world cast out.” The power of the resurrection is the power to cast off the authority of the one who had power over us.
The forgiveness of sins is not enough. We must have power over the one who once had power over us. In rising from the dead, Jesus wrested this power from the ruler whom we know to be Satan.
It is almost like The Lord of the Rings. Most people have read it or seen it. If you have not, I am sorry—you need to read the trilogy, which is about this big, or you can watch nine hours of film. I do not know which is easier. I think it is easier to read, because you get kind of sore sitting through nine hours of a movie.
There is a scene with a man named Théoden. He was under the power of a man named Wormtongue—great name, is it not? He was clouded over: “Oh, I cannot move. I cannot do anything.” He was held captive under that man’s spell.
Then Gandalf came in and threw Wormtongue out. All of a sudden, the spell was broken. The power that this one had over Théoden was broken.
In the same way, when Christ rose from the dead, the power of the one who ruled over us because of sin was cast out.
Or we can say it this way: it says, “will be cast out.” In other words, it is a process. As we begin to recognize that we are no longer under his power, and as we begin to see that Christ has freed us and to walk in the power of the new life Christ has granted us through His death and resurrection, we find ourselves becoming more and more free from the power of the one who rules over the world.
It says that the whole world lies in the power of the wicked one—that is 1 John 5:19, I think. But we are out of that power. That is what the resurrection means. When Paul says, “I want to know the power of His resurrection,” that is what he is talking about: “I want to know my freedom from the power of darkness.”
I want to know it more and more. That is what we have in the resurrection of Christ.
We are now able to fight the good fight. It used to be that we could try, and we would be defeated all the time. But now we can fight the good fight of faith and be victorious because He is victorious.
Not only that, we have now come under the authority of Another. This One under whose authority we now are leads us into life and away from darkness. This is the word of our testimony made real.
The word of our testimony, in a sense, is Jesus Christ risen from the dead. That is what they witnessed to in Acts. But the reality is that, as we place ourselves under the authority of this risen Lord, we find this truth worked out in our very lives.
It is not merely good Bible teaching. It is true.
Secondly, there is the ascension. Christ has a heavenly ministry. It is a priestly ministry, and this is discussed a great deal in the letter to the Hebrews.
I want to mention three things about this priestly ministry.
One part of this ministry is that He applies the blood to our conscience.
It is not merely a matter of the doorposts and lintel, where God sees the blood and passes over in judgment. He applies it to the conscience. Why is that so important? Because that is what really frees us from the guilt and shame of sin.
This does not free us from the penalty; that has already been dealt with. But as we fail here, it frees us from the guilt and shame of that sin so that we can walk and come boldly into His presence. We can draw near to Him because He saved us so that we could draw near to Him.
How can we draw near to Him when our conscience is defiled? We learned at this conference that “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” The blood is applied to our conscience—not merely to our sins or the penalty of our sins, but to our conscience—making us free from guilt and shame.
Jerry, the other day, when we were talking about the blood, said that many of us sin and then go into a funk. It is not because we have not confessed our sin. We know that if we confess our sins, He is righteous and just to forgive us.
It is not because we are unforgiven. It is because we feel that we must do something to make up for it. We have an old conscience.
The whole matter of the blood being applied to us is about faith—faith in what the blood of Christ has done for us. It cleanses our conscience. The risen, ascended Lord applies that blood to our conscience when we come and confess to Him. He makes us free.
Is it not wonderful when you get into the presence of the Lord and feel that there is nothing between you? Do not tell me you have not had those moments. When you get there and there is nothing between you, that is Heaven.
At those times, it is almost as though you say, “Oh, I wish I did not have to go to work today”—not because you are lazy, but because you are enjoying this so much. You talk about a book you cannot put down; this is a presence you do not want to get away from. That is for us. That is part of His ascension.
Also, He makes intercession for us. Hebrews 7:25 says that He ever lives to make intercession as a priest.
His intercession is not merely, “Oh, bless him. Bless him and bless him.” The Lord Jesus is not in Heaven simply saying, “Oh, bless you. Oh, just bless him.”
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, one of the first things He said was, “Thy will be done.” That is part of His intercession for us: “Lord, let Your will be done. Let Your will be done in My people’s lives.”
Remember when Peter said to Jesus, “I will follow You anywhere. I will even die with You”? Jesus said, “Peter, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you.”
He did not say, “I have prayed that the Lord would not let him do it.” That is not what He says, is it? He says, “I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not. And when you have recovered…”
Have you ever thought about that phrase, “when you have recovered”? His intercession does not save us from hard circumstances, or even from the consequences of our sin. I am not speaking of the penalty or judgment of sin, but of its consequences.
His intercession says, “Father, do not let his faith be taken away. Get him through this with his faith intact.”
“And when you have recovered”—in other words, when you have gone through that whole ordeal. We can only imagine what Peter went through after denying the Lord and then seeing Him crucified. He went out and wept bitterly. What did he do in those two days, waiting to see whether the Lord would rise on the third day? He was probably beating himself up terribly.
But the Lord said, “When you have recovered.” In other words, “I am praying that you make it through with your faith intact. And when that happens, strengthen the others with like faith.”
Finally, He is the Mediator of a new covenant. That is in Hebrews Chapter 8. He takes the law of God and writes it into our hearts. That is part of His priestly ministry.
For us, this is the life of Christ in us. As He writes it, His life moves us this way and that way so that what we are actually doing is the will of God. We bow to that writing of the law in our hearts.
He mediates it. He takes it from God Himself. It is not something coming from the outside and saying, “Here is the list. Go and do.” Rather, He takes it from God, comes in, brings it into our temple, and writes it in our hearts so that it is worked out through us.
That is mediating the new covenant. It is not merely saying, “Hey, here is a new list.” It is Christ coming into us, writing that out, and moving us so that we obey, so that we bow the knee to His authority in our lives.
Then there is His exaltation. Matthew 28:18 says:
All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.
The Book of Acts is all about this. You see the authority of Christ in Heaven and on earth. You see demons cast out, men walking, and people being saved because of the authority of Christ. He has been exalted; He is in that place of authority.
This is an authority under which we come. Can you imagine having that authority when you pray? There are times when we sense that authority when we pray.
But His exaltation also makes Him King. When the Lord made David king, He said, “I want you as a king so that you can shepherd My people.”
As Christ is exalted, He becomes our Shepherd. As Shepherd, He cares for the sheep. Everything the sheep need, He provides, because He is the Shepherd and the King. He provides for those under His authority.
Everything needed is provided. He binds up the wounds. He sets the legs that are bent and makes them right. He recovers those who stray. He is the King, and in that way He works out our salvation.
He leads us as a Shepherd into the purpose of God.
How does this apply to us? I am not going to say that you all need to see these things. How can we see unless God shows us? It is not a matter of trying. Telling a blind man, “You need to try harder to see. Look harder. Stare better,” does not work.
I am not here to whip you and say that you have to understand these things. That is not the point.
In John 12:36, Jesus says:
While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light.
This is what I want to say by way of application: the Lord has given each one of us, if we are Christians, some light. Some of us see more, and some of us see less. That is not the focus—not whether we see more or less. The point is that we have been given some light.
We are to walk in the good of that light. We are to live in that light. We are to act upon that light.
The light He gives us is not merely intellectual light. It is not merely theological light that makes us say, “Okay, now I can teach this,” or, “Now that I know this, I want to know some other things.”
The light He gives us about Himself leads us into practical faith. I want to make that really clear: the light He gives us about Himself is meant to lead us into practical faith—not merely to lead us into faith, but to lead us into faith that is lived.
It is not merely that I believe. It is that, because I believe, I am moved to action. Or to dis-action—no, not dis-action—to action.
He proves Himself to us as faithful and true. He proves Himself by testing that faith. When He shows us something about Himself, He says, “Okay, here it is. Now let us go to the laboratory. Let us see whether it works.”
The Lord is never out to give us something ethereal, something vapour-like, something merely mental. Everything He shows us about Himself is to be tried.
It is not that we are trying God. But He will bring us into circumstances and say, “Remember what I showed you about Me? This is where it applies. Will you believe Me? Will you trust Me here?”
This is where we come to the matter of denying ourselves. “Oh Lord, it just does not feel right.” Well, you have to deny the feeling. You have to trust Him. It is practical.
Acting out of faith pleases God. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God. When He gives us light and we act upon that light, that pleases God because we are saying, “I believe You. I will take that step.”
But at the same time, when we act in faith, that saves us. It is living faith that saves us—not merely living faith, but faith in a living God that saves us.
So we are to walk in that light. As I said, it is not a question of how much light you have. It is a question of the light that you do have: what do you do with it?
I want to give one example to prove that it is not a matter of how much light you have, but what you do with the light you have.
I have talked about this before, but if you do not have it, you need to get the little book Mimosa. It is by Amy Carmichael, and I think it is four dollars.
Mimosa was a little Indian girl who grew up in Hindu India. She went with her father to drop her sister off at Dohnavur, where Amy Carmichael’s mission work was. She only had a few hours at Dohnavur while her father arranged for her other daughter to stay there.
Mimosa was playing, and I am sure she had some little lessons. Out of that, she saw something of the Lord.
Then she went back to her town: no Christians, no churches, no Bible radio. But she had seen something of the Lord.
What she saw about Him was this—and I can say this because all through the book she speaks to God as Father. That is all she saw about Him: Father.
Because she saw Him as Father, the rest of her life she said, “Well, if You are my Father, then You will care for me.”
I cannot tell you the whole book; you will have to read it. It is a good read. It is only about a hundred pages, and if you read it devotionally, taking a little chapter at a time, you can finish it in a month or so. The chapters are only two or three pages—perhaps three to five pages.
But you see how that little light conquered her whole situation. No, the whole town was not converted, and people were not converted because of her ministry. She did not have a ministry except to her children and to the Lord Himself.
But because of that little light, she was preserved. She was saved, and she was brought into something bigger than herself. She was surrounded by darkness, but because she had a little glimpse of her Father, she was able not merely to endure, but to grow in her understanding of her Father.
She took every little part of what she understood. She said, “Well, if You are my Father, You have to be good. If You are my Father, then You would provide.” She had no Bible and nothing like that. All she had was a little touch she received at Dohnavur.
Then the Lord would bring someone in who knew the Lord—perhaps someone a little crazy—but she would receive a few words from the Scriptures and latch on to them. Now she had more light.
This is the thing for us: once we receive light and begin to act upon it, grasping it and walking in that light, we find that more light will be given.
It is like “daily light for the daily path.” Remember that devotional? It is daily. It is for us. Little Mimosa.
Finally, we will end with this. Verse 45 says:
He who sees Me sees Him who sent Me.
Up to this point in the Gospel of John, we have seen all sorts of miracles and lots of teachings. If you go through all the Gospels up to this point in Jesus’ life, that is what you see.
But He says, “He who sees Me sees the Father.” What are you seeing in Jesus when you read the Gospels? You may say, “I see compassion.” But what you are really seeing is God saving man.
That is the bottom line. You are seeing God saving man for Himself.
You can go so far as to say that He is saving them from their own false ideas about who He is. In Matthew, He says, “Go and learn what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” What are they finding out? They are thinking that God is something that He is not. He says, “Wait, wait, wait. Go and find out what this means. I want to save you from that. I want you to know who I really am.”
He is saving them from self-consciousness into God-consciousness. Remember the man in John Chapter 5 who was by the pool? He was paralysed, and the Lord asked, “Do you want to be healed?” The man said, “Can You not see there is no one around me?” He was so conscious of his condition and surroundings, and the Lord said, “Get up and walk.”
Self-consciousness is our worst enemy. We are so conscious of ourselves that we think the world revolves around us and that God’s salvation revolves around us. We need to be free from ourselves.
Is that not what Paul said? “Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” We are so conscious of it. Yet the Lord says, “No, no, no. Come out of that. Come and see Me.”
“You who are burdened and heavy laden, come to Me. I will give you rest.”
He takes us from darkness to light. That is what you see in people being healed, in the blind receiving sight, in lepers being cleansed, in sinners being made clean, and in the dead being brought to life. In all these things, we see God saving man for His own purposes.
He is not merely collecting trophies. He is redeeming man back to Himself so that man can be restored to the purpose of God.
Even in Mimosa, we see Him taking a person from idols to see the living God—the one true and living God. Is that not what it says in 1 Thessalonians? News had gone out that they had turned from idols to serve the living God.
If we see Jesus, we see the Father. We see Jesus saving men for God. That is what we see.
May we see Jesus. May we see Jesus not as a theological thing, not as something that makes us say, “Okay, that is a good teaching,” but may we see Him in a way that makes us believe Him.
He gives us faith, and then we walk in the light of that faith.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You that the last real message You gave to men publicly was about You saying, “I want you to see Me. I am more than what you even think I am.”
Even if we cannot see You in the extent of all Your greatness, You want to give us light that will get us started. Lord, we ask for that light. We ask for the light that will save our souls, bring us to You, and restore us into Your purpose.
Lord, we commit ourselves to You for this light, and we ask for the raising up in us of faith that saves our souls. In Christ’s name we pray.