John 12:23-28, If it die

Maybe we could look together in the gospel of John chapter 12, the gospel of John chapter 12. Verse 23, And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn or a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.

But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me, and where I am, there shall also my servant be.

If any man serve me, him will my father honor. Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour.

Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. Now, the verse that I'm thinking about here in this passage particularly is somewhere in the outline of the of the conference, but I'm imagining that we'll be struggling to cover in a meaningful way a lot of the references that there are, so I don't think it'll be a problem to use it tonight as well.

This is a very, very significant point in the Gospel of John. The Lord Jesus has raised a man out of death. People have witnessed it, and it is just shortly before the Passover, a very brief time, and it has triggered, you might say, shockwaves throughout the nation of Israel.

It has galvanized the people to recognize him as the Messiah, and it has also galvanized the leaders to try to stop him. And so it is bringing the the nation of Israel to a time of crisis, and just in the verses prior to this, it seems like everything is going his way. The crowds have heralded him as the Son of David.

They have called upon him to save now, to take his place, and so when he says, the hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified, it has to be appreciated in that context, that the moment has come, the time is here for glory, and yet the cross is ahead. There's a vast, vast, deep valley between this moment and the glory, the time of honor and glory and manifestation. It's one of the interesting things, and I'm sure you've thought about this as you go through the Gospel of John, there are times when being glorified seems to be in a context that doesn't make any sense because it's referring to the work of the cross and the outcome of it.

But just as does happen even in times of family crisis, of health, and I'm thinking just now of some of the families here experiencing what they're going through, it's hard to imagine that this is going to end in glory. It doesn't look like glory is just on the horizon, and yet it is. And so the very avenue by which it seems like everything is being lost and destroyed becomes the avenue by which glory ultimately is achieved.

And so as the Lord Jesus speaks this way, he then brings in this principle that we will be looking at somewhat, tomorrow at least, about the idea of a harvest, the idea of sowing and of harvest. Now, growing up on a farm, every spring we went out there and we just threw away all kinds of grain. You know, and yet we never thought that we were just throwing it away uselessly.

We were sowing it. It was a deliberate act of sowing it. And yet, I've wondered in more recent years, why have I been so slow, and why generally, as Christians, are we so slow to see the impact of this for our own lives? As the Lord Jesus spoke of it here, he says, unless a corn or a grain of wheat falls into the ground and die, it remains alone.

It does not reproduce itself. But if it die, then it brings forth much fruit. Now, we all want to be fruitful.

I'm sure there's not a Christian here who doesn't want to be fruitful as a Christian. And yet there's a cost, and that cost is ourselves. Now, I want to just say something that, I don't know, maybe it'll seem heretical to you, but we were meant for glory.

We were created to be glorious, to be beautiful. To have honor, to have dignity. But glory has become, you might say, a double-edged sword for us because of sin.

Glory is a very dangerous thing for us. And any of us who have had any experience of success in some form of our life, we discover that. Glory can be a dangerous thing.

It can destroy us. And so, as Christians, we need to balance our thinking about glory. Some people can never take a compliment.

Some people can never accept appreciation shown to them, and they try to deflect it all the time, or discount it. We have to learn to just say, thank you. Appreciate it.

Acknowledge that something good has been done. Something commendable. Something worthy of honor.

And that is deserving of honor and praise. But we also have to be willing to face the cost for glory. And that is that we have to die to ourselves.

Now, as it says here, if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. Now, that's easy to grasp in the natural realm. In agriculture.

But in our lives, and this is where I would just like to think of it in this way, what a pity we don't more consciously think that true success in life is simply sowing our lives into the lives of others. That's what makes good parents. That's what makes good Christians.

When we sow our lives into the lives of others. And in doing this, we are fulfilling these two things that are mentioned here. It says, he that loves his life shall lose it.

He that hates his life shall keep it. Now, when you just take that out of the context, you might say, well, we're kind of done for either way. If anything that you really enjoy, you have to give up.

If anything that's fun and makes you happy and so on, well, you have to say no to it and abandon it. And if you hate your life, well, you get to keep that forever. Well, who wants to keep something that you hate? No, that's not what he's really saying.

But what he is saying is you have to love something else more. Or to be more precise, someone else more. And so he immediately puts it in the context in the next verse, if any man serve me.

That's what it really involves. And so my heart, your heart must be drawn out of ourselves and the gravity of our own self-occupation and self-absorption and self-glorification and everything else drawn by love towards someone else that we choose to serve. Now, this is what makes life work.

This is what makes a marriage work, is when each partner is drawn out of their own self-focusedness towards the other. And you serve each other. That makes a marriage flourish.

That's what makes a family flourish. That's what makes an assembly flourish. When you stop looking for attention and give attention.

You stop looking for praise, wanting to be first and give precedence to another. And so this principle is at the very heart of what the gospel is and what the life of Christ is. If anyone serve me, let him follow me.

He's already given us the example of that life that is precious and what God wants to see reproduced in the world. If any man serve me, let him follow me. And where I am, there shall also my servant be.

Now, if we just spent enough time thinking about this, we would be willing to go through almost anything. Just to think that the outcome of being a servant to the Lord Jesus is that we get to be with him forever. We get to share with him everything that he has and everything he's doing and to be with him forever and ever.

And that's exactly what he has planned for us. And then he says, if any man serve me, him will my father honor. You know, it's one of the things that every child longs for is to have the approval of mom and dad.

And in fact, I remember reading many years ago and some of the help given for parenting and so on is that this is one of the most critical things for parents to work on. It's more important than stopping everything that you see wrong is try to find something that they're doing good and show approval for it because that will make them thrive and that will motivate them to want to please you more and more and more. And one of the saddest things that I see and hear every once in a while is a Christian my age who's basically floundering in life because they have never been able to feel that they're approved by someone, that's important to them.

And they're still fighting for that. And unfortunately, usually end up destroying relationships around them while they're demanding to be accepted and approved. And yet we were made for these qualities.

And so we have to realize that this is where he wants to bring us. He wants to bring us to glory. He wants to bring us to honor.

He wants to be able to confer honor upon our lives. But there's a cost. And that cost is we have to submerge our self-interest and self-focus and leave that aside and love him and serve him.

And then he uses himself as an example. He's right at this point. The world is clamoring, you might say.

The world is ready to crown him. But he looks the other way. And he says, now is my soul troubled.

What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. Now some translations will suggest, and this may be just more, not so much a translation as an interpretive issue in this verse. The question mark could go at the end of save me from this hour.

And I would just, I'll just put it that way. Now is my soul troubled and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. That's a possible way that this can be read.

And I don't think it matters either way. We can make good sense out of it. But for this cause came I unto this hour.

And so we have this in himself fulfilling exactly what he's telling us, how we need to live our lives. Very, very naturally, very reasonably. It's natural in every human being to cling to life and to run from anything that threatens it.

And he's at that moment. When everything is going to be threatened. And so what's his prayer? What's his request? Well, I know what my request is.

Father, save me from this hour. That's our first instinctive desire. Get me out of here.

Help me, rescue me. But he says, Father, glorify thy name. And I remember a dear aunt of mine who at her stage of life, her husband was a very wonderful man and everybody loved him.

But unfortunately, just in his mid-60s, he got Alzheimer's and basically ended his life in a very, very sad, sad condition. She had gone through about 10 years of that. And now her health was gone.

She was in the hospital. I almost said in prison. In the hospital.

And I came to visit her. And she said, don't pray that I'll get better. Pray that the Lord will give me grace to glorify him.

And I was very much impressed. And so that's where spiritual life is tested supremely. What is your bottom line? What does matter supremely to you? Father, glorify your name.

That's expressing that I love you more than I love myself. And I'm willing to be at the cost of my life to bring glory and honor to your name. And so, Father, glorify thy name.

And then came there a voice from heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. One of the things that thrills me is to know that the glory of God is bound up in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus is the one who brings God out into full glory.

Manifestation, revelation for the ages to come. And one of the things that thrills me more and more the more I think about it is that God has given to his son as the supreme gift of his love to his son, he's given the church to Christ. And so we're right in there in this embrace of eternity.

Eternal love and eternal glory to be with Christ in that fulfillment of the glory of God. So may God encourage us in his work.