tonight's text, John chapter 12, verses 20 through 26. We're going to focus especially tonight on 25 and 26, but let me read the whole thing. If you don't have a Bible, you can find it on the back of your order of worship as well. So I say, do you hear the word of God? Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip who was from Bethesda and Galilee and asked him, sir, we wish to see Jesus. Philip told Andrew and 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 to the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it. 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, they're my servant, they're my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. Let us pray.
Father, I pray now that as we consider your word that you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, I pray that you would wake us up where we sleep, give us ears to hear as we consider what it means to actually live out this thing called the gospel. I pray that you be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my understanding, in my mouth, in my speaking, in Christ's name, we pray these things, our men and our men. Well, this morning you got an example of what derives from my extensive research during the week when I told you about Wiley Coyote and the road runner. Then I didn't want to give you a read you a few things that I also gleaned this week that have to do with helping you, right? Because that's what I'm all about, making sure that you're healthy and safe. And so I downloaded, I don't know, I'm not going to read them all. I've got three pages of warning labels from products. What's your thing about it? On the sear's hairdryer, the warning says, do not use while sleeping. Bag of Fritos says, you could be a winner, no purchase necessary, details inside. Think about it. Packaging for the row went to iron, do not iron close on body. From the night hall, from night hall, sleep aid, warning may cause drowsiness. Okay. On all brands of Christmas lights, it says for indoor or outdoor use only. On a can of saints, buried peanuts, there's a warning that says contains nuts, shin pads for cyclists, say shin guards cannot protect any of the part of the body, they do not cover. Now, the sad thing about it, by the way, is all these were written probably in response to the fact some poor person did it, which makes this one particularly sick. In a microwave oven manual, it says, do not use for drying pets. Box of aspirin, do not take it for allergic to aspirin. A couple more good ones. On a bottle of baby lotion, it says, keep away from children. 500 piece jigsaw puzzle, some assembly required. Another sick one on a toilet cleaning brush, it says, do not use orally. And another one of my favorites on a blowtorch is the warning not to be used for drying hair. You read, you know, there are hundreds or maybe thousands of websites that, where you can look up crazy, but in fact, true product warnings, because people are so worried about, you know, some harm coming to them. And they sound crazy, right? I mean, we read them and you think, how did I ever survive? I remember taking trips as a kid and five kids and an old Buick, no seat belts, nothing, and somehow we made it to adulthood. And yet, those are crazy, but not in the context of the New Testament. What do I mean by that? Because we read those when we laugh and we say, okay, you know, okay, who would use one of them said, don't use the toaster in the water, right? Who needs to be told that? And yet, apparently some people do. And the reason I bring these up is because while they sound crazy, they're not, they don't come near the craziness of what Jesus says in this text, right? Imagine a warning label or advice, you know, you go to Jesus and say, advice to Jesus, man, I want to live a full life. I want things to be the best for me. And his advice is this, die. If you want to, you know, the product label would say, in order to have a great life, die. That's crazy. That's backwards. Is it not? And yet, that's the way of the gospel. That's what we're going to talk about tonight. I really am not going to, I don't have points for you. I'm going to just go through the last two verses. If you remember, the context of this was this morning's, what I talked about this morning with Jesus, Greeks seeking after Jesus, and finally, Jesus takes the Greeks coming to him as a sign, right? Philip goes and says some Greek speaking Gentiles are seeking you. And Jesus doesn't say, well, tell him to come on in. Let's talk. Instead, he says, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. That the Jewish leadership had rejected him. The Gentiles are seeking him for some reason. In Jesus mind, he took that as the sign now is the time for the Son of Man to be glorified. And what Jesus meant by that is death. What it means for the Son of Man to be glorified is to die. And I talked about that quite a bit this morning. How can death be glorious? Well, it has everything to do with Wily Coyote and his instant manhole. Remember the Pharisees kept trying to trip Jesus up with all of their schemes and all of their things, right? Remember Wily Coyote? You dropped the instant manhole in front of the road runner and supposedly just falls right through. And he never did. And they did that to Jesus over and over again. And he never fell for it. And yet at the cross, they thought we finally got him. And yet when he went through the Pharisees' manhole, they didn't realize it was a portal to glory. It was a portal to his resurrection and his exaltation and his sitting at the right hand of the father. But also, there's a sense in which we see glory when we see glory actually given up. You don't know how much glory there is there until you see it actually given away. And at the cross of Jesus, what you see is he manifests glory by actually giving up his glory. He manifests life by giving up his life. And then he immediately goes into basically what amounts to application. He transitions by talking about the grain of wheat, right? He says unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it does, it bears much fruit. And that's sort of a transition because then now the last two verses of this text he's talking about us, those who would follow him. Listen to what he says. Here's what it means to live as a Christian from Jesus. He says whoever loves his life loses it, whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. What does he mean by that? Whoever loves his life will lose it, whoever hates his life will keep it for eternal life. Well, part of it is understanding the words life there are actually two different words that are being used. One is the word when he says whoever hates his life, that is a word in Greek that is a suke from which we get the word psycho psychology, that kind of thing or ego. And the word at the end where he says whoever hates his life will keep it for eternal life. That's the word Zoe. And it's joined up with this word eternal or the age to come really. So that's helpful to know. So whoever loses his life keeps it, whoever loves his life loses it. What does he mean by that? What he means, just what he's saying, do you want to have the best out of life lose it? Give it up. And what's he talking about? Basically, he's talking about our own rights, our own desires, our own things that we want. I was thinking about to say the root because if you're in church for very long, you start to almost get this vibe that what it means to be a Christian is to be obedient. And the application, what's the application of every Bible verse and children's Sunday school oftentimes? Not here, but oftentimes. If you ask a little Johnny when he gets home, little Johnny, what would you learn in Sunday school today? Be good. The application, if you're a parent, I can tell you in our house, what's the application of every Bible verse? Be good. Right. Or be quiet. Either way. But what's the root of almost all disobedience? The root of almost all disobedience is what? It's selfishness. You want something as opposed to what is being proposed. You think that doing things your way, doing things the way that you have planned out is somehow better than what God has given. And Jesus says, do you want to be an obedient person? You've got to die. And you have to die to yourself. I mean, if you think about a Christianity, it's mind-boggling, unless God does open your eyes to it because on one hand you're told you need to be born again. You need to be born again. And then as soon as you're born again, your eyes are open, you say, okay, Jesus, what now? And He says, die. Which is it? What's both? But what we die to is our self. And not until you begin to die to yourself, do you really understand the cross? But not unless you understand the cross, can you die to yourself? You see, because it's one thing for me to stand up here and tell you, you know, what it means to be a Christian is to just need to quit being so selfish. You need to quit grasping onto your right. You need to die to yourself. Part of it is because I'd be a hypocrite, right? Because personally speaking, it's hard for me. I don't even like to bear inconvenience. Let alone bear suffering. I don't even like to be bothered. Let alone lose my life for the sake of someone else or something else. So what is it that would enable me to even consider that? The only thing that can enable you can consider that is what we just talked about in the prior verses, the fact that Jesus Himself did it. To the extent you looked to Jesus and say, Jesus gave up everything. He gave up his rights. He gave up his life. He lost his life. He gave it in order to gain my life. And by losing his life, he gained his life, but he also gained my life in the process. And to the extent I understand that Jesus has done already what he is asking me to do is the extent to which I will be able to do it. He never asks you to do anything that he hasn't done himself. And he says, whoever loses his life for my sake will gain it. And whoever hates his life will keep it for eternal life. Does he mean that you should hate yourself or hate your life? Absolutely not. That's a semitic way of sort of juxtaposing two things. Love and hate. What it really means is love less. Whoever loves his life less for my sake will keep it for eternal life. An eternal life is not just, he's not just talking about some sort of pie in the sky. Some sort of, you know, I'm going to gut it out here. And then someday I will go and be with Jesus for eternity. The language there in Greek is the life of the age to come. In other words, when Jesus talks about eternal life, he's not talking about the future only. He's talking about right now. Do you want to have his life right now? You can have it. But the only way you can have his life right now is to love your own life less. And the only way you love your own life less is to look at the cross and see that he loved your life more than he loved his own life and gave it. And it's at the point when you begin to truly be able to give up things and give up your own rights and really get the gospel is when you truly become free. Don't you hate people? He hates a strong word. But you look at people and you see someone that just doesn't care about anything or someone who, you know, maybe they spend their life, you know, maybe doing adventures or, you know, rock climbing, they do all the things they want. And they just don't care what anyone thinks. Don't you, you can't stand those kind of people. Why? Because they're free and you're not. Well, what makes them free? Some people just personality. But once you understand that Jesus has given you everything in himself, only then can you be truly free. I read a quote by George Mueller this week. If you're not familiar with George Mueller, he'd lived in the 19th century and he ran several orphanages. And then what differentiated Mueller from everyone else that I've ever heard of or known is George Mueller never raised any money for the orphanages. And he never asked anybody for money. He determined that he would run these orphanages and they never had a problem completely and solely by prayer. He would do nothing but pray for the needs of his orphans and trust God would provide and God always provided. And someone at some point asked him, George, how do how do you get away with that? How can you just say I don't care what people think I don't care I'm just going to pray about all these things and trust God. And here was his response. He says, there was a day when I died. I died to George Mueller. His opinions, preferences, tastes, and will died to the world. It's approval or center. I died to the approval or blame with my brethren and friends. And since then I've studied only to show myself approved by God. The thing that freed up Mueller was death in his own words. I died to myself. I died to the opinions of others. I died to what anyone else cared about me and studied to show myself only to be approved by my Lord. And you can only do that if you realize that you have the approval of your Lord. Do you realize that? Your Christian here, if you've trusted Jesus, what that means is that God has not only forgiven your sins but he's given you all the righteousness of Jesus and with that 100% of his approval. God is completely and utterly pleased with you. You believe that because if you really believe that, that God is completely and utterly pleased with you, then why do you care what anyone thinks about you? Why do you spend so much time worrying if you know that you have the approval of God? And you see, if you know you have God's approval and you know you have all of Jesus' righteousness, only then can you move on to what he says next. Because what does Jesus say next? He says, 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. So what does it mean to serve Jesus? It means to follow him and yet it means to follow him. He says, wherever wherever I am there, my servant will be also. Where is Jesus always?
If this kind of thing I do to my kids, is he with the hottie and the proud? Is he with the best and the brightest? Jesus always seeks the worst of sinners. Jesus always seeks to show mercy in grace. Remember the end of Matthew's gospel toward the end. In Matthew 25, when Jesus talks about what it'll be like on the very last day, the separation of the sheep and the goats and he says, I'll take the sheep and he says, and as much as you've done it to the least of my brother, you've done it unto me, I was imprisoning you, visited me, I was poor and you gave me food, all of these things, that service. And if you want to serve Jesus, really what it means is serving the least of his brothers. And frankly, for a church that is predominantly Anglo, middle class, on one hand, we do an unbelievable job. Honestly, I say all the time how proud I am of our deacons. And yet most of the people we serve like that are sort of generally speaking squirrel the way we're known and can see them. What happens when we begin serving and inviting the least of them? Whether they're a different race or not, but people who are different than us, what does it mean to serve Jesus? It means to seek and pursue the least and the lowest and the outcast, not the proud and the haughty, but those who are humble. That's where Jesus always is. I've told you the story before I remember when we were in Capitol Hill. It's one of those moments where you think, oh, I think my kids, kids were fighting in line to get on a slide and Flannery looked up at me, my middle daughter at one time and she said, you know, Dad, I bet Jesus would be at the end of the line. He would have gone straight to the end, wouldn't he? That's right. If you're looking for Jesus, he's always at the end of the line. And you know what, you can only go to the end of the line if you're willing to die. If you're willing to give up your rights, you're willing to give up your desire to constantly be up front. The desire to constantly be not just the center of attention, but I mean the one who always gets what he or she wants or needs. And when you are able to do that, then you're starting to get it. But you can only do that to the extent you understand that that's what Jesus did for you. The reason Jesus says whoever serves me will go where I am is because Jesus has served you. And in fact, it says in the last day, and Luke, I think it's chapter 7 or 7 or 12, in the last day it says that Jesus will come and he will gird himself and he will serve you. So again, Jesus isn't asking us to do anything that he hasn't done. And what's the last promise here? He says whoever serves me, the Father will honor him. What's he mean by that? What does it mean to be honored by the Father? You know, Spurgeon told the story about a prince. And a prince and a servant who went to a far away country in battle and the prince was wounded and the servant stuck with him in prison and took care of him. And when they came home, when they finally made it home, the king said, who is the one they care for my son? It's lowly servant. That is the one I will honor. And the king brings him in and he basically gives him part of the kingdom. The Father will honor him. But the Father's honor is not, it's not exactly cause and effect because it's not just if you serve Jesus, the Father will honor you. You've got to say why am I serving Jesus? What is my, what is motivated me to serve Jesus? Do I understand the gospel? And to the extent I understand it, the extent I'm going to serve and the extent to which God will honor me. Remind me, I came across a story this week. I'll close with this. What does it mean? What does all this mean? How do you encapsulate all this? If you remember the story, millions of cats by a woman name, I said teachers or all the teachers are in their head. Millions of cats, great stories by a one-de-gag, I believe, 1928. It's the oldest children's book in print in America since 1928. And basically it's about this old couple who want a cat and the husband goes out and wants to get a cat for his wife. And so as he's out gathering, getting a cat for his wife, he thinks they're all pretty and so he can't decide which one and so he brings them all home. Right, talk about a nightmare, but it's bigger than that, right? The nightmare to bring one sort of, but he brings home not just one cat or ten cats. If you've read the book, he brings hundreds of cats and thousands of cats and millions and billions and trillions of cats. That's how many cats he brings home. And so they get home and hear outside of their house now, millions and billions and trillions of cats. And his wife said, which one should we pick? And he says, well, honey, you just have to pick the one that's prettiest. And as soon as he said that, the cats heard it and they began to just kill each other. I mean, they got in this huge, obviously the world's biggest cat fight. And it was so bad, the husband and wife go and they close themselves inside and the cats are just, they destroy each other and they literally devour each other. And when they open the door after the whole battle is over, there's one little skinny ugly cat left. Why? Because the little skinny ugly cat didn't think she was pretty. And so she just stood by in the grass while all the pretty cats killed each other, trying to gain approval. And the farmer's wife took the the cat in. And by when they took her in, they fed her and they bathed her and she became a sleek and beautiful cat. She became the prettiest cat, but she became the prettiest cat not by fighting to be the prettiest. She became the prettiest by realizing that she was not. She became, she became, she gained the honor, if you will, the husband and wife not by grappling for it. She gained the honor of the husband and wife by saying, I don't deserve it. You want to be honored by God? This is another backwards principle here. You want to be honored by God? Go to him and tell him how much you really understand you don't deserve it. You want to be received by God? Go to him and tell him how little you understand you deserve it. And the extent to which you understand you don't deserve it is the extent to which he bestows it on you. Remember the apostle Paul, as he went through his life, he started his ministry and he said, I'm the least of the apostles, right? There's 12, I'm maybe 13 or 12, who knows where I fit in, but out of all the apostles, I'm the least. And in the middle of his life, he called himself the least of the saints. And at the end of his life, he called himself the chief of sinners. So the extent to which you understand your need is actually the extent to which you'll receive that from God. So let's pray. Father, I pray that you would just help us to understand what it means to serve you, not on the basis of guilt or not on the basis of anything else, but being what we are, being like you, because we see what Jesus has done for us, that he has served us, that he's given up all his rights and to that extent we can do it the same. We pray this in Christ's name, Amen, and Amen.