John 12

John 12:13

How The Children Helped Jesus Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.—John 12:13 (AV).Imagine a lovely April morning on the slopes of Mount Olivet just outside the walls of Jerusalem. The slopes are covered with the tents of pilgrims who have come up to the Feast of the Passover. Suddenly someone looking up the hill towards the Bethany road cries, “Here He is!” and the whole hillside is immediately in a buzz of excitement.Yes! it is Jesus Christ. He is riding on a donkey and He has with Him quite a troop of followers. Those folks on the hillside are mostly from Galilee, where Jesus wrought so many of His miracles, and many of the children are Galilean boys and girls. Some of them had been at the wonderful picnic in the wilderness of Bethsaida when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.

It was from one of themselves that Jesus got the five loaves. And had not their fathers and mothers told them of the little girl who was raised from the dead?

Jesus was a special Friend of theirs. Soon the tents were stripped of their decorations. The boys and girls gathered branches from all the trees within reach.With their fathers and mothers they ran to meet Jesus, waving the branches all the way; then they turned and followed Him. Young and old were together in the crowd that surrounded the wonderful Teacher. Palm branches were spread upon the ground for Him to ride upon. It was like a royal procession.“Who is this?” asked the people of the city.

The procession caused quite a stir on the Streets. The pilgrims from the north were full of enthusiasm. “Bravos,” and “hurrahs,” rose from their lips, and sweet children’s voices blended in the “Hosannas.” To the city the whole thing meant nothing. “The Galilean peasant prophet, forsooth!” said they. “And He is going to the Temple.

What desecration!” But they could hear the shrill voices of the children joining in the hymn used at the Feast of Tabernacles. “Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.” The Temple masters were angry—they could not restrain themselves; but the boy and girls cared not. They had eyes only for their Friend. “Hearest thou what these say?” said the scribes and Pharisees impatiently. Jesus was calm. He loved to hear the children. “It is such praise that God loves best,” was His answer; and it meant a great deal.Perhaps some of you wish you had been in that procession. You wish you could have shouted, and sung, and flung your branches on the road to make a fair triumphal path for Jesus. Perhaps some of you think you would have preferred to scatter rose leaves in Jesus’ way.

You feel that only the best and the sweetest would be good enough for Him.Well, boys and girls, you can still cast your palm branches or rose leaves at Christ’s feet. You can still make beautiful His way.

We are sometimes apt to think of Christ as being far up in some vague region beyond the skies which we call Heaven. That is a great mistake. Christ is in Heaven, but Heaven is much nearer us than we imagine, and He is also on earth. He comes to us in every opportunity to help our fellow-men. And if we are doing anything to make their road in life easier or more beautiful we are casting our palm branches and our rose leaves in Christ’s path; we are making His way smoother, we are workers along with Him, making the world better and sweeter.Shall I tell you a story I read the other day? It is an old tale, and it comes to us all the way from Hungary.

There was once a good Queen of Hungary named Elizabeth. She was always thinking how she could help her subjects, and she was specially kind to those who were sick or in want.

She was so interested in them that she often carried them food with her own hands. Now her husband was not pleased about this. He thought that it was beneath a Queen’s dignity to do such humble service, and he forbade her to do it any more, saying that he would punish her if he found her doing it again.One winter morning when the King was out hunting Elizabeth heard of some people who were hungry and in great distress. She filled her basket with bread and slipped out of the palace gate. And at the gate whom did she run into but the King himself, who had unexpectedly returned from the chase? He saw the basket and sternly bade her show him what it contained.

Trembling, she removed the covering, and lo! the basket was filled with the most exquisite roses.That is a story with many meanings, but what I want you to remember about it is this. Our little bit of help to others may in our eyes be but a small crumb to offer to the great Master.

In His sight it is a fragrant rose of love.

John 12:21

Seeing Jesus Sir, we would see Jesus.—John 12:21.Have you ever stood in the streets of a great city and watched the crowds surging past? Have you ever wondered where these people came from, what their homes were like, what was the story of their lives, and what their future would be? For a moment they are beside you, you hear a scrap of their conversation, or they look with you into the same shop window, and then they vanish from your sight, and very likely you never meet them again.Now there are people in the Bible who are like our friends and relatives. We know quite a lot about them, we have a pretty long account of their life history. But there are others—and some of them are very interesting people—who are like the crowds in a big city. For one moment we get a glimpse of them, and then they pass out of our sight for ever.Among those people are the Greeks who came to the apostle Philip and asked him to introduce them to Jesus.

All that we know about them is told us in three verses; but they are very interesting verses, and they set us wondering about a lot of things which they do not tell us.And first we wonder, Who were these Greeks, and from where did they come?Some people think that they may have come from Bethsaida on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee, because they spoke to Philip who belonged to Bethsaida.There is one thing that we certainly know about them, and that is that they believed in the God of Israel. They had given up their heathen gods and adopted the God of Israel as their God.

How do we know this? Well, if you look at verse 20 you will find out. It tells us that these men had come up to worship at the Feast. The Feast mentioned is the great Feast of the Passover which the Jews kept once a year in memory of the time when the first-born of Egypt were slain and the destroying angel passed over the houses of the first-born of Israel. And if the Greeks had come up to worship at that Feast, then they must have believed in the God of Israel.Then another question we ask is, Why did these Greeks want to see Jesus?Well, a great many people wanted to see Jesus in those days. Some wished to see Him because they were sick, or had sick friends, and they wanted Jesus to heal them.

And many others came to see Him out of curiosity, because they had heard of His miracles. But I don’t think the Greeks came for either of those reasons.

They were not ill, so they had not come for healing; and if they had wanted merely to behold this Man of whom every one was talking, they could have done so by waiting by the roadside where He was to pass, or by climbing a tree like Zacchaeus. But they acted differently. They came to one of the disciples and asked him to let them see Jesus. They wanted to speak with Him. I wonder why?I think it was because they were not quite satisfied. They had learned to know and worship the true God, but they felt there was something more to know about Him.

There was still a great hunger in their hearts. They had heard of the great things Jesus had said and done, and they came to Him hoping He would be able to teach them and give them rest for their souls.And then another question we ask is, How did Jesus receive these men?

What did He say to them?Well, we are not told. All the Bible says is that Philip went and told Andrew about their request, and that then the two disciples came and told Jesus. But of one thing we may be sure—sooner or later these Greeks found Jesus, for nobody ever sought Him earnestly in vain. Perhaps it was not until after He had ascended that they found Him, perhaps they were among the early converts of Peter or Paul; but we may be quite sure of one thing—they found Him in the end of the day.Now I wonder if you have ever felt that you would like to see Jesus. If it were announced that Jesus was coming to this town you would put off any engagement to go and see Him, would you not? Perhaps you have felt that if you could hear His voice and look up into His kind face it would be easier to be good.But we can still see Jesus—every one of us—if we will.

If He had stayed on earth only a few people could have seen Him. Many could not have travelled so far, most people could not have afforded do so.

But now that He has ascended into Heaven we can all see Him—if we will.How can we see Him?We can see Him in the Bible. Someone has said Shat God has given us five portraits of Jesus in the Bible—one in each of the Gospels and another in the Epistles. But it is not only in the Gospels and the Epistles that we find Him; for long before He came prophets and psalmists spoke of Him, and if you search carefully you will find a very great deal about Him in the Old Testament.Then we can see Him in the lives of those who are following Him most closely and loving Him best. You have all met men and women whose lives were so beautiful and unselfish and true that they reflected some of the beauty and the love of the King of Love Himself.Once a lady who worked in the slums of one of our great cities was walking along a street when she met a little ragged boy who smiled up in her face. “Do you know me?” she asked. “Yes,” said the boy.“Then who am I?” Very softly and reverently he whispered, “You are Jesus.”But best of all, we can see Jesus in the visions of Himself which He gives to all who love Him and try to serve Him.Will you ask God to give you His Holy Spirit so that your hearts may be filled with love to Jesus, and your eyes may be opened to see Him?

John 12:32

Magnets And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.—John 12:32.Most of you have seen a magnet. I remember that when I was at school, a good many of the boys had small steel magnets with which they went about picking up screws, metal, and a great many things. I envied most of all a fruebd who had what I thought was a wonderful box. It contained toy ducks and a little fishing-rod. At the end of the fishing-rod was a tiny magnet. The ducks are put into a tub of water, you hang the fishing-line near them, and they follow in whatever direction you care to lead them.The story of how a magnet is made is very interesting.

At one time it was just ordinary steel; but one day a coil of wire was twisted round it, an electric current was passed through the coil, the steel then became a magnet, and even when the current was stopped remained a magnet. The steel magnet can pass on its magnetism to other pieces of steel.

If you stroke a needle with a steel magnet, the needle also becomes a magnet.Magnetism is not something that we add to the steel. If that is so, why is every little piece of steel not a magnet? One writer has said that the simplest way to think of the subject is to picture every particle of which the steel is made as itself a tiny magnet. In a piece of ordinary steel there are millions of these tiny magnets, but they are all lying higgledy-piggledy, some pulling one way, and some another. They are, in fact, all at sixes and sevens, and the result is that they do no good. Ordinary steel attracts nothing.

But if an electric current is sent through a coil of wire placed round the steel, all these little magnets within the steel are pulled into line with one another, and their combined efforts produce quite a strong attraction for any other piece of steel or iron.Magnetism is a wonder, but a greater mystery is how one person attracts another.Are there not certain of your companions who attract you in a very special manner, and you cannot tell how it is? You cannot keep away from them.

You cannot explain it to yourself, but there it is. Something in them corresponds to something in you; they are magnets. It is very strange and wonderful.Here is another strange thing. We want to be good; we see the beauty of the character of a companion who is always downright and kind at heart, and who never suggests bad thoughts to those about him. But evil also has its attractions. If the good pulls us in one direction, evil is never far off.It is in the playground, at home, and in our own hearts. The conflict between good and evil is life’s most tremendous problem. It is a case of the good drawing us from above and the evil holding us down.

When boys and girls come thoroughly under the spell of good companions or friends they are kept from evil; but friends pass away, and with them passes away the magnetism that was about their living presence.There is One, however, who lived nearly 2000 years ago. When He was on earth, He attracted just a few working men about Him. But as time went on His influence, instead of diminishing, increased. The story of how during these long years men and women, and boys and girls, have been drawn to Jesus Christ is one which has no parallel in history. You cannot find another story like it.Boys and girls, we have all some good in us— something that wants God. But we have evil in us too; and you know how we need to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The only thing that can help us is coming into contact with Him who can draw all men unto Him.

All sorts of interests attract us: some are good, some evil. When Jesus Christ touches us, our longings and desires will be pulled into line with one another.

We in turn shall become magnets—magnets for good.