Losing Your Life to Find It

Audio Transcript

Let me ask you please to take your Bibles and turn this morning to John chapter 12. John 12. We’ll be in verses 20 to 33 today.

Many years ago in churches all across this country there was a trend that took place that I sort of envy. I wish I had been a part of that time. I think some churches still do it. But there was a phrase that was either placed on a plaque or carved into wooden pulpits in churches all across the land, and it was placed in such a way where only the pastor could see it while he was standing behind the pulpit teaching.

Show that photo, if you would, of some of those old pulpits. The phrase was: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Those words come directly from the passage we’ll be in today, and they served as a constant reminder to pastors as they stood and opened the Word of God that the people sitting in front of them didn’t need to hear his personal opinions, they didn’t need to hear social commentary, they didn’t need to be entertained for 30 minutes and sent home. They need one thing—they need to see Jesus.

And that is our desire at LifePoint, and I pray that it always will be. As long as I’m here, I will do my best to make sure that that’s the case. When I’m gone, you take that spot and you make sure that that never changes here. As we sang this morning, as Jaron prayed, it’s Jesus, only Jesus.

Well, last week we saw Jesus entering the final week of His life. We saw Him riding into Jerusalem on that young donkey during Passover week, and He did this to fulfill Old Testament prophecy about the coming Messiah. He did it to publicly declare His identity as the Son of God and the promised Savior and King. And we saw that the crowds got excited for a moment, as crowds tend to do. They lined the streets, they laid their cloaks in the road before Him, they laid palm branches down.

All of this was symbolic of a king entering the city, and they even shouted “Hosanna” to the King, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” It was a fever pitch moment filled with excitement, and we hoped so much that that would carry forward, that it would end up being a beautiful day for Him, but it was anything but that. We saw last week as He rode up the back of the Mount of Olives and reached the crest and looked down on the city of Jerusalem. We’re told that He began to weep, He began to sob as He looked at the city, knowing that He had come to give His life for them and knowing that they would soon reject Him and nail Him to a cross, and they had missed their time of visitation. So that has just happened. Jesus has now entered the city of Jerusalem, and John tells us around the middle of chapter 12 that many people had come out that day to see Jesus because they had heard that He had raised Lazarus from the dead.

And the Pharisees were now in a full-on panic because they saw people, more and more people, turning to Him even though the entire nation as a whole would soon reject Him. The Pharisees are panicked now, and they said there in the middle of John 20, “Look, the whole world is going after Him.” And that was the moment they knew they have to put a stop to this man. What they didn’t know was that they themselves were ushering in the timeline of God.

So now Jesus has entered Jerusalem, and we pick up in John 12, verse 20.

“Now there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the feast. Then they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, saying, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.'” Or a more modern way to say that is, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” or “Sir, we want to see Jesus.” Verse 22, “Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn Andrew and Philip told Jesus.” As I mentioned last week, the city is packed at this point with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who’ve traveled in from all all over the known world to celebrate Passover week.

And there were also some Greeks who had come in for this festival. You might wonder why Greeks would be coming in to celebrate a Jewish ceremony, but obviously these are Greeks who had been converted to Judaism, who are now coming in to celebrate the Passover along with everyone else. And word about Jesus has obviously reached them too.

And so they went to Philip, and they asked if they could see Jesus. I find it interesting that we’re specifically told they went to Philip. I’m not sure that it matters in the grand scheme of things, or does it? It’s interesting because Philip is a Greek name. We’re told that, well, Philip was from Bethsaida, not Jerusalem, and so could it be that they went to Philip because he has a common Greek name, maybe they saw something familiar in him, maybe he was their easiest approach, going to these unknown disciples and, “Well, maybe we have something in common with Philip.” So they went to him and they asked, and I love how they worded this, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” We would see Jesus.

They weren’t content to hear about Him. They weren’t content to read about Him. They didn’t want to just hear a sermon about Him. They wanted to see Him face to face. And without overdoing this, I think it’s still relevant today, because that’s what everyone still needs. Everyone in the world, more than anything else, needs not just information about Jesus—they need an encounter with Jesus.

I wonder why these Greeks wanted to see Jesus. Did they have troubled hearts? Were they just curious? Were they searching for the truth? Well, we’re not told what drew them, but whatever it was, it was the most important request they could ever have made. Can I just tell you, no one has truly lived until they have seen Jesus through the eyes of faith. Have you seen Him through the eyes of faith? Or is He just some historical figure to you among Napoleon and Churchill and all the others?

Now here’s what we must not miss. They’re brought to Jesus. “We’ve been dying to see You. We’re finally here.” When these people said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” Jesus responds by talking about His death.

It took me a long time to kind of come to terms with this. Why did Jesus respond how we’re gonna see in just a moment? People come to Him, they’re excited to meet Him, they want some maybe wisdom from Him, and He immediately points them to His death. Because I think the truest way to see Jesus and to understand what His entire life and His entire mission was all about is to see Him on the cross.

Look how Jesus responds, verse 23. “Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.'” Now I’ve mentioned to you before, throughout His ministry, Jesus had opportunities to take advantage of a situation to make Himself more famous, to be made king even, and throughout His ministry He repeatedly said, “My hour has not yet come.” So when this opportunity came in His ministry, He would say, “My hour has not yet come.” John 2, John 7, John 8, and so on.

But here, for the first time, for the first time, Jesus now says, “The hour has come.” The hour for what? Well, look at verse 23 again, except let’s look at the last part. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” And we think, “Oh boy, how is He going to show His glory? This is going to be amazing. Is it going to be through a blinding light? Is it going to be through a dazzling miracle?” None of that. I want you to see something that’s quite shocking to our reasoning.

When Jesus says, when He says the Son of Man, He’s referring to Himself, by the way, when He says, “I’m going to be glorified,” He’s saying, “I’m going to be crucified.” In His mind those two words are synonymous. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” That sounds so wonderful, except what He means is, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be crucified.” He’s teaching us that true glory looks like sacrifice, not strength, not triumph, like the world defines it.

You know, glory is not a word we use often. I doubt anybody has used it in casual conversation this week. When we think of glory, we think of fame, popularity, we might picture a throne or a crown. Jesus says His glory is a cross. How can this be?

That should stop us in our tracks really because it’s the opposite of everything the world tells us. These people came wanting to see Jesus, and in essence He tells them, “If you really want to see Me in all My glory, wait until Friday.”

And He explains why His death will bring glory. Verse 24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain or a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” This is a simple illustration but a masterful illustration that Jesus gives us here.

A grain of wheat held safely in your hand will never become more than that. Just a single seed. It’s only when that seed is released and buried, when it is surrendered to the soil, and it appears that you’ve wasted it, you’ve lost it, it’s gone, it’s buried, that’s when it finally becomes what it was meant to be. Something extraordinary happens underground, invisible to the human eye, but out of that death comes life. Out of that death comes a harvest.

Seeds never multiply in the farmer’s hand. They only multiply in the field. If a farmer holds on to a hundred grains of wheat and refuses to let them go, he’ll always have exactly a hundred grains of wheat. But if he releases them and plants them into the soil, he’ll eventually have enough to feed his family, maybe his neighbors, and extra seeds to plant for the future. Because he understands the law of the harvest, that he’s willing to go hungry today so that others can be fed for years to come. He knows there’s life in that hidden seed.

There’s a remarkable story you can go and research further if you’re interested, but in 1963 archaeologists were digging in Israel near Masada, near King Herod’s palace, and they found a clay jar containing preserved date palm seeds, and they estimated them to be around 2,000 years old simply by the other artifacts that they found in that same area. They kept them sealed off in a jar until 2005 when some scientists decided to plant one. They planted one of these seeds, and it grew into a tree that they named Methuselah. There’s a picture of it right there.

It’s still thriving today, and it’s still producing seeds of its own. That’s the lesson Jesus is teaching here. A life held back and protected and kept safe produces nothing, but a life released and surrendered produces a harvest that outlasts generations. Jesus says, “I’m about to be killed and buried, and out of My death millions of souls from every nation and every generation are going to spring to life.”

Then suddenly Jesus turns this around, and He points this truth directly at all those who say they want to follow Him. Verses 25 and 26. Here’s where it gets personal for us. Jesus said, “He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me, and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, My Father will honor him.”

First of all, Jesus isn’t telling us to hate life. He’s the giver of life and life itself, and we should value the gift of life. He’s using this expression to point to a deeper truth. He’s saying, “If you live for yourself in this world, you’re showing, you’re giving evidence that you’re not following Me, and you’re not on the path to eternal life.”

What does this mean, losing your life? This is nothing mysterious, it’s nothing mystical, it’s not talking about dying physically. I’ve told you before, we seem to be quick to say things like, “Oh sure, I would die for Christ if I had to,” knowing there’s a 99.9% chance here in Greenville we would never have to back that up. So it’s an easy claim to make. That’s not what He’s talking about here at all.

This is much harder than dying. If you want to know the truth, what does He mean? Laying down your life, losing your life. It simply comes down to a matter of daily priority. To love my own life in this world means living a self-focused life, means prioritizing myself above Him and above all others. Followers of Christ don’t live like that. But it also doesn’t come automatically because we’re still stuck in this flesh that fights us every minute of every day. As followers of Christ, listen, we have to wake up every morning and possibly do this several times during the day, and we have to intentionally die to ourselves again.

This is not an automatic process. It’s not a once and done. It’s saying, “Lord, I’m putting Your will, Your honor, Your desires ahead of my own.” You know how hard that is in real life? You know how easy that is for me to stand up here and say, “Okay, all y’all now, you need to live in such a way where His honor and His desires and His will come before your own.” I’m like, “Okay!” And then we get out there and it’s a whole different story, because that flesh is brutal.

It’s a constant process. This is why the Apostle Paul said, “I die daily.” If you’re not doing that, you’re losing half the battle. Wake up in the morning, before you grab your phone, those cursed phones, take a moment and remind yourself of the battle that is ahead. Recommit yourself to living for Him above all else and say, “Lord, I can’t do this on my own because I love me, and I want to put me first, so Lord, put me to death again right now, and I’m asking You to come and live through me today.” It’s an ongoing process. Jesus said if you don’t do that, you’ll lose real life.

You’ll miss it completely. If you live for yourself, if you live for this world, you’ll die and you’ll have nothing to show for it. But if you live for Him, you’ll enjoy the benefits that He promised right here in this passage. Not just eternal life, but the joy of His presence right here and now. He said, “Where I am, there My servant will be also.” And at the end of it all, did you notice He said, “You’ll be honored by My Father”? What a thing. What a thing. Imagine that, God honoring you for laying down your life and for putting Him first. That’s what losing your life for Christ is all about.

C.S. Lewis put it this way. He said, “Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim and earth and you get neither.” I wish just once that guy would come up with a great quote. Such a slacker.

I’ve seen this play out, the person gripping tightly, you know, white-knuckling his own life, the person holding on tightly to their own comfort and reputation and agenda, they’re gonna lose it all when they die. All of it. Gone. A wealthy CEO died, and two employees were at the funeral, and this guy was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. One guy during the funeral leaned over to the other one, and he said, “Do you have any idea how much he left?” And the guy said, “He left all of it.”

But the person who surrenders his life, the person who follows Jesus where He leads, even into suffering, even into sacrifice, the one who lives for eternal things is building a life on that which will last forever. That’s why throughout Scripture it says, “Set your eyes and your mind and your thoughts and your heart on things above, not on things on the earth.” Nothing wrong with having things here, but what are we living for?

And then we’re given one of the most extraordinary glimpses into the heart and thoughts of our Savior. I want you to see this. Verses 27 and 28. This is Jesus speaking. “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour,’ but for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.”

This is incredible to me. Jesus, the sinless Son of God, admits out loud in front of a crowd, “My soul is troubled.” The shadow of the cross is looming large over Him now. It’s just a few days away, and it’s bringing with it all of its unimaginable horrors. Jesus knows the physical agony He’ll soon face, but I think that’s only a fraction of it. He knows spiritually what awaits—that the sins of the whole world will soon be placed upon Him, and that He will endure the judgment and the wrath of God for those sins as though He had committed them. And He knows that He will be separated from His Father for the first time ever.

“Now My soul is troubled.” A few days from this moment in the Garden of Gethsemane—we’ll be there in a few weeks—He’ll say, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” This is Jesus. The thoughts of the cross pressing in on Him, He asks the question, “What shall I say?” It’s a question. “What shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? Is that what I should pray?” Well, of course that’s not what He’s going to pray.

He immediately responds, “No, it was for this purpose I came to this hour.” And then He sums up His greatest desire, “Father, glorify Your name.” That was His goal in life and in death, that His Father would be glorified. Not long from this moment, after the meal in the upper room, we’ll also be there soon, Jesus will say in John 17, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son. Why? That Your Son may glorify You.” Jesus is overwhelmed, He’s troubled by the thought of the cross, and yet despite the terror that He is facing, He says, “The only thing I want out of this is for My Father to be glorified through it all,” and we are called to follow His pattern.

What an incredible example He set for us here. What a great reminder it is for us that when we’re facing burdens, when we’re facing fears, we don’t have to pretend we’re never bothered by them, we’re never troubled by them. The Christian life is not faking your way through and pasting a smile on when your heart is breaking. It’s okay to say to people around you, “My soul is troubled. I’m overwhelmed right now. That’s okay.” Jesus felt that.

But what we must do is refuse to let those things have the last word. Jesus said, “My soul is troubled. I could pray to get out of this, but that’s not what I want. That’s not why I’m here. What I want is, ‘Father, glorify Your name through this.'” And when we’re in those moments of hardship and suffering, fear, may we learn to pray, “Father, glorify Your name through this, whatever that means.”

Verse 28. “Then a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it had thundered. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to Him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has not come for My sake, but for yours.'” This is only the third time in all of the recorded Gospels that the Father speaks audibly from heaven. We’ve seen two of them so far, once at His baptism, once at His Transfiguration, and again now just days before the cross.

Notice the two halves of what the Father says. He says, “I have glorified it.” God has already been glorified by His Son’s life and ministry up to this point, and He said, “I will glorify it again.” Let me tell you, on Friday on the cross He will glorify His name like never before when His Son would willingly lay down His life to bring salvation to all who believe.

Verse 31, Jesus still speaking, “Now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler or the prince of this world will be cast out.” The ruler of this world or the prince of this world were Jewish titles for Satan. And so when He said this they knew exactly what He was talking about. And I love this because right there, days before the cross, Jesus announces victory before the battle on the cross had even begun.

At the cross, Satan’s grip over the bodies and the souls of men through sin would be defeated and stripped away. I don’t know any place in the Bible that sums this up more beautifully than Colossians chapter 2, verses 13 to 15. Look at this with me. “When you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross, and having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

And here’s the good news for all of you who are in Christ. The victory that Jesus won over Satan is your victory too. Why do we rarely live like that’s true? We have the authority, we have the right, we have the ability every moment of every day to appropriate that victory. By faith, by obedience, by self-discipline, not to keep you saved, but because you are saved.

Warren Weirsbe in his book “The Strategy of Satan” said this, “Remember, you’re not fighting for victory, you’re fighting from victory, for Jesus Christ has already defeated Satan. The prince of this world has already been cast out.” And then Jesus says this back in John 12, verse 32, one of the most beloved things He ever said: “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men, or all people, to Myself.” “Lifted up” was a phrase in that day that meant death by crucifixion. Jesus goes on to clarify that in the next verse. He said this to show the kind of death He was going to die.

Jesus has used this expression before. Just a few years earlier when He was speaking with Nicodemus, I don’t know if you remember, but He compared—Jesus compared Himself to the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up on a pole in the wilderness so that anyone dying from a snake bite could look up at that pole and live. It’s back in Numbers chapter 21. And now, it’s the same principle, it’s the same offer. Look at the lifted up Savior and live. That’s salvation.

Every human being on every continent in every generation carries the same snake bite called sin. And the cross is the only thing powerful enough to heal us, to save us from the curse and the poison of sin. Jesus laid down His life like that grain of wheat falling into the ground, and His death has brought about a great harvest. I love… I don’t know if y’all know, I’m not a farmer. I wasn’t sure if you were aware, but just in studying some of these things, it’s so fascinating the multiplication that takes place just from a handful of seeds. That one seed can bring about dozens or even hundreds of other seeds, and the process just goes on and on.

And this picture of Jesus falling to the ground, as it were, like a seed dying and coming to life, bringing forth a harvest. The book of Revelation shows us what this harvest will look like one day in heaven. Revelation 5:9 says this, “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for You were slain and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.'” That seed was willing to die, and you and I are here today in this room because we are part of that harvest.

Jesus could have chosen to avoid the cross. He could have lived out the rest of His life, another 20, 30, 40 more years healing the sick, teaching the crowds, doing so much good, but the story would have ended there. He would have been just another teacher. Thankfully, He did go to the cross because the cross was why He came. It was one of those divine appointments, and He would not miss that appointment.

I mentioned to you how Jesus said, when He and His disciples were traveling north and the disciples were getting ready to go around Samaria, which Jews did not walk through, Jesus went straight into Samaria. His disciples are wondering what’s going on. Jesus said, “I must go through Samaria.” Why? Because He had a divine appointment with a lost woman at the well, and He brought her salvation. We saw two weeks ago how Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “I must come to your house.” Why? Because it was another appointment to bring a man salvation. But there’s another “must” that I’ve saved until now.

Matthew 16:21. Jesus said this. “From that time, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day.” He had an appointment with the cross, and rather than ducking it, rather than avoiding it and shying away, delaying it, He said, “I must go to Jerusalem.” The cross is why He came. He said, “I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give My life as a ransom for many.” The cross is central to everything. And it may surprise you to do a study of how the cross is pointed to throughout the whole Bible.

Way back to Genesis, when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac and he had him on the altar, but at the last minute a ram showed up caught in a bush, and the ram was sacrificed instead of Isaac. That was a foreshadowing of the cross, how Jesus would provide Himself in our place. In Exodus, the Passover and the blood on the doorpost, there was a picture of the blood that Jesus would shed on the cross. In Leviticus, all the sacrifices that had to be brought for sin, they were all pointing to that one final sacrifice Jesus would make on the cross. The psalmist points to the cross. The Old Testament prophets point to the cross. And then you get to the New Testament and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Have you ever caught how much time they devote to the cross?

I struggled with how to convey this in a way that you could see it. I started making this chart, and it was just packed with information, and I kept deleting and deleting and deleting until I got down to this right here. Show that chart. I want you to see this, if you can see that.

There are a total of 89 chapters in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Only four of those chapters cover Jesus’ life from His birth to age 30. The remaining 85 chapters deal with the last three and a half years of His life. Now that’s absurd. No one writes a biography like that. It’s another one of those silent marks of inspiration for me.

So 89 chapters in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, only four cover the first 30 years of His life. The remaining 85 cover the last three and a half years of His life and ministry. Of those 85 chapters, 29 of them cover the final week of His life, and of those 29 chapters, 13 of them cover the last 24 hours of His life. That’s insane!

The amount of time that the Gospel writers focus on this event we’re looking at right now, this final week and the final hours of His life, is astounding. Why all this attention to the cross? Because it’s there that Jesus would be most glorified. Because He’s obeying His Father’s will and laying down His life for the sins of the world.

That’s why, folks, if you’ve never seen Jesus on the cross, then you’ve never seen Him. He is not just a good man. He’s not just a brilliant teacher. He’s not some historical figure. He is the Son of God and the Savior of the world who died to set you free. “Sir, we would see Jesus.” And Jesus replied, “In essence, if you really want to see Me, look at Me on the cross. That’s where you’ll see My glory.” Have you ever seen Him there?

The cross was His proof of how much He loves us, and He calls us to love Him and love others the same way. I close with this one verse. Everybody knows John 3:16. You ever looked at 1st John 3:16? Here’s what it says: “This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”

May we see His glory at the cross, and may we follow His example by laying down our lives in love.

Thank You, Lord, for the cross!