John 12 (Part 3) 27-43 • "I will draw all people to myself"

Here we are in John chapter 12, open your Bibles there. This is the third installment of our study here in John. I was going to finish the chapter, I promise, but I just can't because we'd be here too long. We're going to read from verses 27 through 43. All right, John 12:27-43. Follow along with me as I read, goes like this:

I'm going to have you stop there. Let's pray. Father, as we dig into Your Word this morning, we ask for Your Holy Spirit to speak to each and every heart as we unpack these verses and think about what they mean. And Lord, we're looking to You to feed us spiritually from Your Word today, that we might grow in grace and understanding and not just have more information, but that we would have more life, that we would take that life from this place and convey it to a lost and confused world that desperately needs a Savior. So, we ask You to be with us today and equip us all. We ask it in Jesus’ name, amen. Notice that John begins by quoting Jesus as saying, “Now is my soul troubled?” Jesus is looking toward the crucifixion. He knows that it's just days away. And I looked up that word troubled, “Now, is my soul troubled?”, and the word means “to stir up’ in a negative sense. This is the same Greek word that Jesus or is used of Jesus as He stood before the tomb of Lazarus. When it says He was deeply troubled as the people around Him were weeping because of the death of Lazarus, and I have to wonder if this is just God's response to death because, as we've said many times, death was never part of God's original creation and death is troubling, I don't know if you're aware of that. Death is troubling. It always has been, It always will be until death is finally eliminated. And I've shown you various passages before about God's promise to eliminate death one day. But I'll do it again because I think we can always stand some reminders. This is from Isaiah 25, up on the screen and it says,

Interesting, in that single passage, notice how many things or ways God describes death. Did you catch it? He, first of all, refers to it, metaphorically, as a covering and then a veil. And then He calls it “the reproach of all the people”. Now, this passage gives us a wonderful promise about the elimination of death, but we have to kind of ask ourselves, what does it take for death to be eliminated? I mean, is it just a quick wave of God's almighty hand saying, “All right, boom! (snaps fingers) That's it! No more death now! I'm going to wave My hand and death will be gone? Wouldn't that be wonderful? But actually, it's not nearly that easy. In fact, it's quite complex because, you see, it all comes down to the reason death got started in the first place. The way it got started was God's master creation, and that's you and me, those who are created in His very image brought sin into God's beautiful creation, and with sin came death.

And so, God can't merely wave it away with a wave of His hand. So, the answer to the question of, what does it take then to overturn and eliminate death? Is found in the statement that Jesus made in verse 27, where He said, ““And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me.” Is that what I should pray? Save Me from this hour?” He says, “For heaven's sake, this is the very purpose that I came. This is the reason that I came.” And so, that statement, reiterates what you and I know already but might forget from time to time, and that is that Jesus was born so that He might die, and specifically so that He might die for you and me, and that He might begin that process of overturning and eventually eliminating death. So, Jesus came to die. We remind ourselves of this often every time we do communion, we remind ourselves of this even at Christmas. We remind ourselves that without the cross, the manger really lacks value and understanding, it's just another birth. But because the cross exists, the manger has meaning. He was born for a specific purpose; that He might die on a cross and bear our sin. And some people have asked, “So why did Jesus have to come and die? I mean, couldn't He just come and teach us the right way and say, ‘Well, here's the way and God will forgive you if you repent.’? And…why the need for death? Why the need for all of the agony and all the suffering and all that? Why death? Why was Jesus' death necessary?” And it was answered by a very small, very short phrase that the Apostle Paul included in his letter to the Romans, up on the screen. It's very simple and you know it.

That's it, that's it right there. That's why Jesus had to come and die our death; because that's the wage, that's the penalty, that's the consequence of sin; it's death. And next Wednesday, Lord willing, as we get into Genesis chapter 2, we're going to read how God gave a warning to the first man and woman concerning the possibility of death. I'll put it up on the screen as a little bit of a preview for you.

I find that a very sobering warning because we all know that in the very next chapter, they did exactly what they weren't supposed to do, and death came as a result. And we all know that's what happened, the dying process began on that day. But we know that Jesus came to overturn that and eventually eliminate that dying process. Romans 5:12 up on the screen says,

And so, we know that death became a reality at that point. But listen, the consequences of the actions of Adam and Eve and their sinful actions in the garden go far beyond just inviting physical death. It's not just physical death. The Bible teaches us that through sin, our first parents actually inherited a sinful nature, a very nature of sin. Which has been passed along to every child born since that time, and it is resident in each one of us here today, myself included. We hate it, but it's here. It's a reality. But the sinful nature that we possess has effectively introduced a curse into mankind and it took over all of mankind and that curse literally cuts us off from God. We are literally born cut off from God. It's as crazy as that sounds. You and I were both born into this world, cut off from God. So, Jesus had to come to deal with that curse, He came to deal with it. It sounds easy, doesn't it? How did Jesus deal with our curse? Paul explains it in Galatians 3:13, up on the screen.

That scripture continues to blow me away. I'll be honest with you, I don't even know what it fully means, and I've been studying the Bible for a long time, and I…there's so much we don't know. I mean, just exactly how our Savior became a curse for us? How He became a curse and then bore that curse and was punished under that curse? But the reason I've shared all this with you here this morning is I wanted you to have a little more background to understand the gravity of Jesus's statement when He said, “Now is my soul troubled.” Now we know a little bit about why He said, “Now is my soul troubled” because He knew that, in just a few days, He would bear our curse by becoming our curse on the cross. And I'm so glad that He didn't shrink from that prospect. What did He say? I mean, here He is saying, “My soul is troubled.” And yet He goes on to say, “So, what do I say? Do I say, ‘Lord, save me from this hour?’ No, I'm not going to say that. It's for this very hour that I came.” So, what does He say? “Lord, glorify your name.” Wow. You know why that blows me away? Because when I'm uncomfortable, when my heart and soul is troubled, I got to tell you right now, in all honesty, my first desire is usually not to glorify God. My first desire is to get out of whatever trouble I'm in so that I won't feel troubled anymore. That's usually my first goal. But aren't we glad that when Jesus knew and understood and was troubled with the understanding of all that He would suffer on the cross, His heart, His aim, His goal was, “Lord, glorify your name, glorify your name.” And in the middle of verse 28 we have the Father speaking, it says, “...a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’” Isn't that something? Jesus makes glorifying God the primary focus of His life? And God says, “Oh, I will. I'll honor that, I'll honor that prayer.” You know the voice came from heaven, but not everybody understood it. We're told in verse 29 that the crowd that stood there and heard it, some of them they said, “Well, that was thunder. Did you hear that? That was thunder. Wow. That was incredible.” And then, it goes on to say that others said, “No, that was an angel, because I know what angels sound like. That was an angel, I hear angels all the time.” And what you've got going on here are two people, or two people groups, I should say, which I still see today. You've got the naturalist, who comes up with a natural explanation for everything. They would see a miracle from God, and they would define it in natural terms, I mean, if somebody got healed right in front of them, they'd say, “Wow, that is an incredible way the body can just heal itself just like that (snaps fingers). I mean, have you ever met somebody that was like that? I remember giving my testimony one time about how God had saved Sue and I from a wrecked marriage and then healed and restored our marriage. And I had a person say to me, “Oh, Paul, you just grew up.” What am I dealing with? I'm dealing with the naturalist, who has a natural explanation for everything. And those people are still around today. I remember reading a commentary one time by a liberal bible commentator and he was going through one of the Gospels and he was talking about a miracle. In fact, it was the miracle where Jesus cast all those demons out of the man, the man of the tombs. And you remember the demons asked permission to be cast into the herd of pigs? Do you remember that? And the pigs, of course, freaked out and they ran down a hill and ran into the water and all drowned. Well, here's this liberal bible commentator explaining this, he says, “Well, the man who was being ministered to by Jesus obviously was under great emotional duress and he began to scream, thus frightening the herd of pigs that caused them to run down the hill and drown themselves in the lake.” And I remember it was a long time ago when I read that, I wrote in the side of the thing, I said, “Are you kidding me?” It was just like, how do you come up with this stuff? Well, there's a lot of people that do that. “It thundered, that was thunder. It was just thunder.” So, that's the naturalist. Well, then you have the other person that says, “Oh no, it was an angel.” So, this is the person I called the super-spiritualist. They get all excited about all kinds of spiritual explanations and they like to guess. And that's what these people were doing, they guessed. And now, they were a little closer than the naturalist, but they're still wrong. In fact, both of these people have something in common; they're wrong! And these people still exist today, and they haven't gotten any better. They still just either try to explain everything naturally, or they have this super spiritual mindset that tries to come up with an explanation and they're wrong, and…there you go. So, what does that tell you, when there's going to be people that are going to have all kinds of opinions in life? It's one of the reasons when people write to me or ask me, they'll say, “Pastor Paul, what's your opinion on such and such?” And I'll say, “Oh, you don't want my opinion.” The last thing you should ever ask somebody when it comes to truth statements is, “What is your opinion?” Who gives a rip what somebody's opinion is? When you're asking about truth, ask them “What's the truth?” And for that, you got to go to the Bible. We don't care about opinions because there's all kinds of people who are more than willing to give you their opinion. That's not what you're looking for. It goes on in verse 30 and says, “Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not mine.’ (And then Jesus went on saying,) 31Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. 32And 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.” There's three things I want to bring out from these three verses, and if you're taking notes or if it's helpful, I'll put them up on the screen for you so that you can see them. The three things we're going to look at are the statements that Jesus made. Three Points to Consider… 1. Judgment of this world 2. The “ruler of this world” will be cast out 3. “...when I am lifted up…will draw all people to myself…”

First of all, that judgment was now going to come upon the world. Secondly, He made the statement that the ruler of this world is going to be cast out. And I'll just tell you right now, He's talking about the devil. And then, thirdly, He made the statement that when He's lifted up, He will draw people to Himself. And we want to investigate each of those statements because each of them in their own way is a very important statement. The first of which is now is the judgment of this world. And that's sort of an interesting statement in light of the fact that we know that Jesus went to the cross to bear our judgment. And yet, He defined it as the judgment of this world because, you see, there's more than just the sin of man, there's the sin of the kingdom of man. The kingdom of man was being judged on the cross because the kingdom of man is that which is opposed to the rule of God. And Jesus came to judge that kingdom as well as the individual sins of the subjects of that kingdom, and we're glad that He did. But He didn't just come to judge the kingdom of man, He came to judge the ruler of the kingdom of man. That's the second thing that you see on the list there. And the ruler, of course, as I said, is Satan. And here's what Jesus says, He says, “the ruler of this world will be cast out.” I really wish that I was able to explain to you fully what He means by that, but I can't because I don't. We know so little of the spiritual realm. So, what exactly did it mean? What exactly does it mean? Well, I've already admitted you I don't know. Well, what do we know? Well, here's a couple of Scriptures to help. First from Hebrews chapter 2, verse 14:

So, we know what we know, and it's very little what we know, but what we know is Jesus destroyed him, the devil, who has the power of death. And then, we also know what it says in Colossians 2:15, also up on the screen, it says,

So, we've got two different interesting passages Right there. We have Hebrews that tells us that Jesus destroyed the one who has the power of death, that is the devil. And we're also told, that He disarmed the authorities, the rulers and authorities, and that's spiritual rulers and authorities, and He triumphed over them by the cross. What's challenging about reading those two passages is they sound very final, don't they? And when you read those, it says He destroyed him who has the power of death. But then, we look around and we go, “Yeah, well then what's death still doing here? Because last time I looked, it's still kind of on the rampage. I mean, it's still happening.” And we're told here that He disarmed the rulers and authorities, those spiritual rulers and authorities, to disarm means to literally remove their armament, right? But then, we keep reading the Bible and we run into passages like this, in 1 Peter chapter 5, that says,

Well, how in the world can he devour me if he's been disarmed? And why am I still experiencing death when death has been destroyed? Well, the fact of the matter is, these are the many issues that the Bible challenges us to lay hold of and to hold intention. And the challenge is to understand and keep in tension this idea of the now and the not yet. Now, Satan has been defeated but not yet has he been eliminated. Now, death has lost its power, but not yet has it been eliminated. And we have to be very careful to hold those ideas in tension because, if we start focusing on the not yet as if it is now, we're going to become a triumphalist and we're going to lose our grasp on reality, right? But if we focus on the now and we don't even consider the not yet, we're going to become discouraged and lose our hope, and we're going to stop remembering that this is happening, Jesus began this process whereby death and the devil will be completely one day eliminated. And He began that process on the cross. So, until that time, until the not yet shows up, we have to stay alert. We have to be careful, we have to be sober-minded because we have an enemy and he wants to take you out. But the fact of the matter is, God has given you everything you need to battle the enemy; He's given you the full armor of God and He's given you the power in His name, and He says to you and me, “Use those things.” Stop laying down and playing dead whenever the enemy rolls into your life and start resisting him because the Bible gives a wonderful promise; it says, “...resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7) God has given you the power to resist the evil one, and that is the power that is ours until such time as those things are eliminated completely. But the final statement that we want to look at on those three things that came out of those verses is that final statement when Jesus says, “...when I am lifted up…I will draw all people to myself…” And this is sort of an interesting statement. First of all, the verb “lifted” in that verse has a dual meaning; it means to “lift from lower to higher”, like I'm lifting something off the floor, but it also means to lift in the sense of exalt. You said, “Well, which one did Jesus mean?” I think He meant both. I think He talked about being lifted up on the cross, but then also exalted by the Father. And do you know that's exactly what the Bible says? Paul wrote about it in Philippians chapter 2. Check this out on the screen.

"And being found in human form (Paul writes,) [Jesus] humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (That's where He was lifted up on the cross.) Therefore God has highly (lifted him up) exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name." So, you see, in that single passage in Philippians, we see the two liftings: lifting up physically and lifting up in exaltation. And the result, Jesus said, “...I will draw all people to myself.” Now, that may sound like a very simple statement, “...I will draw all people to myself”, but it has a sticky little member in that sentence. And you know what the word is? All. And people have debated this for years. Jesus said, “...I will draw all people to myself.” And some people stop and they go, “Yeah, but does all mean all? And is that all means?” We have this incredible way of dancing on the head of a pin when it comes to trying to kind of understand these things. Well, first of all, Jesus said, I will draw all man or all people to myself. Well, first of all, we know that's an important thing. We know that it's so important it's necessary for salvation. If you don't get drawn then there would be something terribly wrong. Jesus said it earlier in chapter 6. Let me show you on the screen.

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Now, I know Jesus is crediting the drawing here to the Father, that's not a big deal. The Father and the Son work in tandem. The fact is the word “draw” in this verse in John chapter 12 is the same “draw” that you're seeing on the screen from John chapter 6; and unless someone is drawn, they can't be saved, they can't come. So, here we come back to that question when Jesus says, “when I am lifted up… I will draw all people to myself.” Did He mean all people? Well, you may disagree with me and you have the right to do that, but I have come to believe that all means all. In other words, I believe that every single person gets drawn to the Lord. Now, I don't believe, obviously, that every person embraces that drawing. In other words, there's that responsibility that's still upon us to respond to the drawing of the Lord and to put our faith in Jesus and the finished work that He accomplished for us on the cross. That's my responsibility through faith, it's not a work, it is an act of faith, believing. But I don't think there's going to be anybody who is going to stand before the throne of God's judgment and say, “Well, You didn't give me a chance.” I don't think there's going to be one person who will say, “Well, I would've come if You just would've drawn me.” And I think everybody gets drawn. I think that's exactly what Jesus said, “...,when I am lifted up…will draw all people to myself.” Here's the question, are all people going to come to Him ultimately? No, that's the sad reality. Many are called, but few respond. So, I don't care what your Calvinist friend tells you, I believe we're all drawn. I believe we're all drawn. The question is, do we respond to that drawing? Verse 34, “So the crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the Law that the (Messiah) remains forever.’” The word “Christ” is, of course, what's in your Bible there because this is written in Greek and that's the Greek form of “the anointed One, the Messiah”. So, they're saying, “So, we don't understand.” “How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is the Son of Man?” Somebody asked me recently, “Why did Jesus call Himself the Son of Man?” Well, He did it for several different reasons, not the least of which is that God became a man in the person of Jesus, but He also did it to identify with a prophecy that Daniel made where He saw Messiah and referred to Him as the Son of Man. ---

And so, Jesus came, and He used that title so that the Jews would make the connection. And He was basically saying to the Jews, “I am the one that Daniel foresaw. I am the Son of Man.” But you see, they're now confused by His statement that He's going to be “lifted up” because their idea of the Messiah is all based on His victories. The Jews fixated on the victories of Messiah, His overcoming the enemies of God, and they ignored the Old Testament prophetic passages that spoke of the suffering of Messiah. And so, you see, they were completely unprepared for Jesus making statements about Himself suffering, and they're like, “Okay, we don't get this. Messiah is supposed to be a conquering hero, and you're telling us something different now. We were ready to believe in You as the Messiah, and now you're tweaking our brain. You're saying things that don't make any sense. So, we totally don't understand what you're talking about.” But again, the reason they don't understand is because they hadn't really opened themselves up to the full revelation of what God had told them through the prophets about the coming of Messiah. Messiah would come and suffer, but they missed that part. So, Jesus goes on in verse 35, He says to them,

Notice the threefold exhortation there; walk in the light, believe in the light, and then, what happens? You become sons of light. And this is kind of like a final appeal to the Jews that Jesus is making because they've essentially rejected Him. But He's yet continuing to make these appeals, “Believe in the light, become sons of the light.” But John explains to us that it really largely did not happen. Verse 37 says that even though “he had done all these signs before (among) them, they still didn't believe in him, 38so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:” And then, John goes on to quote a couple of passages from Isaiah. First of all,

The arm in the Bible means strength, okay? So, when it talks about the arm of the Lord, it's always talking about the strength of the Lord. The question is, who has the strength of the Lord been revealed to? The Jews. They saw the strength of the Lord manifested many times in their history and certainly through the earthly ministry of Jesus. They saw the strength of the Lord over and over again as people were healed, raised from the dead, demons cast out and so forth. To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? To the Jews. And so, did they believe as a result? No. In fact, he goes on in verse 39 to say, “Therefore, they could not believe.”

Now, this is an important statement that we understand. He says, “For again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.’” Now, the reason that John is giving us these verses is he's trying to explain something to you and me. He's trying to explain the fact that the unbelief that Jesus is confronting here among the people is not something new, it's not something they just came up with. It's something that's been going on for hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years, and because these people have been rejecting the Word of God for years, and years, and years, God has now given over many of them to the hardness of their heart. And that is a terrible thing to happen; when people reject God over, and over, and over again and they keep saying “No” to God. Paul talks about this, we won't take time to read it or look at it, but if you want to, just read the first chapter of Romans. Paul talks about how the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against people who have determined in their heart to live a particular lifestyle even though they know it's wrong. And they simply say, “I'm going to live this way and I don't care what God says.” And Paul says, “Eventually God gives them over to the depravity of their lives, of their heart.” He literally gives them over, and that's a terrible statement that talks about someone just being given over irrevocably to their choices. In other words, they chose, they said, “God, I don't want you. I want what I want. And I want you to bug off.” Well, you can only say that for so long before God says, “Fine, I'll give you what you want.” And that's why John says there in verse 39, “Therefore they could not believe.” Because they got to this point where the hardness of heart and the deafness of their spiritual ears had become such that they were given over irrevocably to that hardness and deafness. Oh, that gives you the chills. Now, here's what people like to ask me, “So, Pastor Paul, when does that happen in a person's life when they're just given over?” “I have no idea. And God's not telling because that's not the point. The point isn't so that you and I would know just how far we can go before we drop off the edge. That's not what He cares about.” The word is given as a warning to those who have resisted the Holy Spirit, even though they've heard the Gospel over, and over, and over again. They've come to church, but they've sat there with their hands folded and maybe even a Bible on their lap, I don't know, and just ignored and rejected the invitation to receive forgiveness through Jesus Christ. And that's a serious matter because some people will say, “Well, I'll come to the Lord later in life.” You don't know if there's going to be a later in life. Like the

--- song from the second chapter of Acts, “You don't even know which way the wind blows”. So, how can you know tomorrow? So, this verse is all about the serial unbelief of the Jews that brought them to a place of an irrevocable giving over by the Lord to the hardness and the stubbornness of their hearts. Oh, God, save people from such a destiny. But it makes us aware that it's possible for someone to reject God so often, so many times, that they literally no longer then possess the ability to respond. When does that happen? I don't know. That's not the point. Just don't let it happen. If you're here today and you know that you know that you've been resisting the Gospel, and I would say to you, do not resist anymore. Here's what I would say to you, it's a message from 2 Corinthians chapter 6, the latter part of verse 2, and it simply says,

Don't put it off. Today's the day, get it taken care of, get right with God and stop resisting. That is so important, Amen? Let's stand together. We're going to have some people up here to pray for you if you have any prayer needs, and if you recognize that you've been one of those people resisting the Holy Spirit and you know you're okay with church once in a while and you're okay even people talking about God, but you know that you haven't bowed the knee yet and made Jesus Lord of your life, you haven't accepted fully what He did on the cross, then I want to encourage you to come up. We'd love to pray with you. In fact, let's pray right now. Father God, we just confess our sin to You. We confess that we have offended a holy God and we ask You to forgive us. And, Lord, right now, we accept what Jesus did on the cross on our behalf when He became a curse and bore our curse on the cross and paid my penalty, the consequences of my sin. I accept what He did for me. I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the world, and I accept and receive His forgiveness, and I ask for Your Holy Spirit, Lord, to come and live in my heart and change me from the inside. I thank you, Father God, for the power of Your Word to transform our lives. We pray that it would continue to do that very thing from this day forward, and we ask it in the name of Jesus Christ and all God's people said together, amen. God bless you. Have a good rest of your Sunday. ---