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Welcome to Faith of our Fathers. Today we feature John Stott. He dedicated his life and earnings to seed and grow the ministry of Langham Partnership. Today John Stott presents a study on Easter according to the Apostle John from the Gospel of John, chapter 12, verse 21.
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As Richard has reminded us, we begin today this brief series Entitled John's Easter I.e. easter According to the Apostle John in the Gospel of John. And and I would be grateful if you would take your Bible and turn immediately to the Gospel of John, chapter 12. My text really may be said to come from verse 21. And that famous question which certain Greek speaking people ask Philip, you see it in verse 21. Sir, we would like to see Jesus. And ever since those Greeks articulated that desire millions and millions of other people have repeated is the cry for example, of an awakened sinner who has come through the conviction of the Holy Spirit to feel his or her sin and guilt before God and longs to see in Jesus the heaven sent Savior that he or she needs. It is also very often the cry of a young believer who has recently come to know Jesus Christ, but who longs to know him better. Sir, this young believer says, I want to see Jesus. It's also the cry of a long standing believer who may be approaching the end of life's journey and who remembers the promise that is repeated on several occasions in the New Testament that the day is coming when we will see him as he is. And our heart cries, oh, that we might see him, that that day may come to us soon. Then you know also it is the cry of the Christian congregation that is fed up with moralizing lectures from the pulpit and longs instead for a Christ centered message. And the congregation is saying to the preacher, sir, we want to see Jesus. And I'm sure you know there are many pulpits throughout the world that have let into them somewhere a little maybe brass plaque that is a mute invitation to the preacher. Sir, we want to see Jesus. Well, to this great cry from the human heart which I hope is echoed in many of us who have gathered for worship this morning, the four evangelists have responded. The whole purpose of the four Gospels is to present a portrait of Jesus so that people who read the Gospels may see him and seeing him may be drawn to him and may put their trust in him and may find new life in him. And so we're going to look at John's Easter. We're going to look at the Jesus crucified and risen whom John presents in his Gospel. And in the passage that has been Said for our consideration this morning, John brings together three episodes, three little scenarios. Within a week of the first Good Friday and Easter Day, there are in fact three crowd scenes. There are three different crowds or groups who come together. And John enables us to see Jesus through their eyes. So let me begin with scene one. Scene one is Jesus on the donkey. And I want to suggest to you it is a vision of weakness. Now, the incident of the donkey is extremely familiar and it bears all the signs of having been prearranged and even stage managed by Jesus. And although John in his Gospel omits some of the details that are included in the Synoptic Gospels, particularly the securing of the donkey and its foal by the statement of an agreed password, John leaves all that out. Nevertheless, you see in verse 14 where Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it as it is written, fear not, daughter of Zion, your King is coming. Sitting on the colt of a donkey. A quotation from Zechariah, chapter 9. So the triumphal entry into Jerusalem that we are particularly celebrating on Palm Sunday was a deliberate, self conscious fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah, chapter nine. We're told by John in verse 16 here that the disciples didn't understand this at the time. They didn't fully enter into what was happening. But Jesus understood he was doing it deliberately and the apostles came to understand it later. So what Jesus was doing was not only claiming to be the king and the Messiah foretold in Zechariah 9, but he was also plainly declaring what kind of a king or Messiah he had come to be. This the nature of his Messiahship. Jesus had been teaching the 12 privately, but now he dramatized it publicly. Jesus had not come as a Zealot. I imagine all of us know that the Zealots were a political or revolutionary political party founded in AD6 by somebody called Judas the Galilean, nothing to do with Judas Iscariot. And although that particular rebellion of AD6 had been brutally crushed by the Romans, Palestine had remained a hotbed of revolutionary expectation. And it was some 35 years after the incident that we're considering today in AD 66, that it was the Zealots who led the rebellion against Rome which led in AD 70 to the destruction of Jerusalem and in AD 74 to the termination of that terrible siege of Masada in which the Zealots were finally killed and some committed suicide and the Zealot movement came to an end. Now, I don't know if you know, but there are a number of Christian, or maybe without Offense, I could say semi Christian scholars who have tried to demonstrate that Jesus was a zealot, that he was a kind of Che Guevara, a kind of urban gorilla, you know, in fact, there's a famous book by Dr. Brandon of Manchester University called Jesus and the Zealots, who makes out that Jesus was a zealot. And there is another book called the Jesus scroll, written by an Australian called Donovan Joyce, in which he speculates that about the age of 80, Jesus himself fought and died at Masada. Well, of course, there is no evidence of those speculations. It is an impossible reconstruction. And I need to remind you that before the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus in the wilderness of Judea, Jesus deliberately renounced the option of force, the zealot option. He would not conquer the world by force. He was going to conquer the world through the cross and not by might and power. Besides, John records in chapter 6, verse 15, that after the feeding of the five thousand, when the crowd came and tried to take him by force and make him a king after their own image and a kind of zealot king who would drive the legions of Rome into the Mediterranean, Jesus gave them the slip. He wouldn't allow them to make him a king. He hadn't come to be that kind of king at all. So what kind of a king had he come to be? Well, his answer, as he dramatized it on Palm Sunday, was the kind of king who had been foretold in Zechariah, chapter nine. Who'd ride into Jerusalem triumphant, indeed, and victorious, but not in swashbuckling bravado on a prancing war charger, but meek and lowly, riding of all creatures upon a donkey, the foal of a donkey, in other words. He would come into the capital city weaponless except for love, proclaiming peace to the nations and claiming a universal dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. What an extraordinary anomaly that is. It is quite true that in ancient Palestine, sometimes people like princes or judges would ride on donkeys. But a donkey was not, emphatically not the usual mount for a king. Witness Solomon's horses. Solomon, I think, wouldn't have been seen dead on the back of the donkey. But he might on the back of a horse. He had plenty of them anyway. But whoever heard of a king claiming a worldwide empire and issuing his claim from the back of a donkey for us in the west, ever since AA Milne created Esau Eeyore. Excuse me, I can't undo that slip of the tongue. Ever since he created EOR as one of the friends of Winnie the Pooh, we have regarded donkey as being faintly ridiculous. Could God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth? Could God ride on a donkey? It's the first vision that John gives us of Jesus. And I want to say to you friends, that metaphorically speaking, he still rides on the back of a donkey when he rides into human hearts. Jesus will never use a battering ram to break down our resistance. He will never come to us on a prancing war charger and and intimidate us into acceptance of him. On the contrary, he comes not galloping to his throne over the dead bodies of his enemies, but humble in amazing weakness on the back of a donkey. Mind you don't misunderstand this. One day Jesus is going to dismount from his donkey and he is going to mount the white horse on which we see him in the book of Revelation, going forth, conquering and to conquer. One day he is going to take his power and reign. One day he is going to rule the nations with a rod of iron. But not yet still today, before the day of judgment comes, he is God on a donkey, God on a cross who refuses to trample upon our resistance, who respects the integrity even of those who reject him. It is a fantastic vision of deliberate divine weakness. So that's scene one, Jesus and the donkey, a vision of weakness. Now secondly, scene two, Jesus and Lazarus, a vision of power. Now, the raising of Lazarus from the dead was of immense importance in the Gospel of John has diverted the whole of the previous chapter, chapter 11 in our gospel, to recounting the story of Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and particularly the raising of Lazarus from the dead. And now he reaches what in our bibles in chapter 12, John will not allow us to forget. Lazarus. If you glance back at verse one of chapter 12, you'll see that he tells us that six days before the Passover, Jesus, Jesus came to Bethany and to the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. Mary then anointed Jesus. And if you look on to verse 9 John 12:9, a great crowd heard that Jesus was there. And they came together. John says, not on account of Jesus only, but also to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. And that brings us to our text and in particular to verses 17 and 18, where we're told that there was another crowd, this time a more specific crowd consisting of those who'd been with Jesus when he called Lazarus from the dead, called him out of the tomb and raised him from the dead. And. And it consisted of those who had heard the testimony of those who had seen Lazarus being raised, and those who had seen and those who had heard the testimony of those who had seen were together. And they formed this crowd who came to Jesus on account of Lazarus. They believed in Jesus. They believed in because of the testimony of those who'd seen Lazarus raised from the dead. Even though verse 19, the Pharisees were skeptical and bewildered and said in despair, while the whole world has gone after him. So the raising of Lazarus from the dead, one of three people Jesus raised from the dead, was a sign. John calls it a sign in verse 18. It's a sign of the resurrection power of Jesus. It is a sign that even death was subject to his authority. It is a sign of the truth of Jesus. Claim I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. That his death will become a trivial episode for him if he lives and believes in me. Now, that's the essence of John, chapter 11, where that great claim of Jesus is illustrated in his raising Lazarus from the dead. Now, Jesus raising of Lazarus is probably a more eloquent sign of his power than all the other many miracles that he did. All the miracles of Jesus were signs of power. Among other things, there were signs of his power over disease and over demons. Some were signs of his power over nature, like the turning of water into wine and the multiplying of loaves and fishes and the walking on the water. Power over nature, the natural order, the material universe. But greater than these expressions of power was his power over death. Death is humankind's last great enemy. Technological achievement is constantly extending our control of nature. But we are impotent in the face of death. We can postpone death, medical skill can postpone death, but it will never succeed in conquering death. Its steadily relentless approach is one that none of us can avoid. Death is the most democratic institution in the world. It claims everybody in the end. And only Jesus has power over death. He rose from death himself. And his resurrection is set before us in the New Testament as the supreme and preeminent expression of God's power. Power over death. Well, so far we've looked at two scenarios which are complementary to one another. The first is Jesus and the donkey, a vision of weakness. And the second is Jesus and Lazarus, a vision of power. And are we to leave them there in their watertight compartments, keeping Good Friday and Easter Day separate from one another? No. John gives us a third Vision, a third scenario, it's Jesus and the seed, the grain of wheat of which he speaks in verse 24, which is a vision of power through weakness or of life through death. We are told now we know the story very well of this third group wasn't exactly a crowd, but it was a group of Greeks. Almost certainly they will have been God fearers on the fringe of the Jewish synagogue. They were attracted by Judaism, but they were still Greek in their culture and they had not become Jews. And this little party, who were evidently intrigued and fascinated by Jesus, came to Philip, maybe because he had a Greek name, and said, sir, we want to see Jesus. And Philip went to Andrew and told Andrew, and Philip and Andrew together went to Jesus and said, there is this little group who want to see you, get to know you. Now, Jesus, answer to their question was not at all as cryptic as at first sight it may sound. He said to them, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. The hour has come is of course a reference to his death, the hour for which he had come into the world, concerning which he had said on several occasions previously, the hour is not yet come. It's not yet come. And now he says, the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified, glorified on the cross, revealed in the fullness of his glory on the cross, followed by the resurrection. And then he says, verse 24. Unless, truly, truly I say to you, unless a seed, a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it multiplies. Through death there is life, fruit is born, and above all there is this multiplication of the seed. It's only through the death of the husk that the wheat bears fruit. It's only through the death of the cross that Jesus will draw all people unto himself. It's only because of the cross that the way has been opened for anybody to believe. And all the nations of the world have come through their representatives to the cross. Well, let me draw this to a conclusion. What we've tried to see is these three scenarios which one after another, John paints for us. Jesus and the donkey, the vision of weakness, Jesus and Lazarus, the vision of power. Jesus maybe even picking up and holding a seed in his hand, the vision of life through death and power through weakness. I would like to share with you, as I conclude that during recent years I myself have come to see more clearly than before, that this paradox lies at the very heart of the gospel, that if you wanted really a brief summary or encapsulation of the Gospel. You could hardly do better than say, it is power through weakness, it is glory through suffering, it is life through death. Let me give you quickly one or two examples. This is true of salvation. We all know that life is offered to us through the death of Jesus. But it is not only through his death that life comes to us. It is that we have to share in his death. That is why it is possible for the believer to say those extraordinary words in Galatians 2:20. I have been crucified with Christ. True, there is only one cross, but there are two crucifixions. He was crucified on it, and so have we been. We become identified with Jesus in his death, so that all the benefits for which he died have become ours, because we have died in him and with him. You cannot think about salvation without thinking about life through death. Then secondly, it is true of holiness. We don't hear much nowadays in the Christian church of that word mortification. Mortification was a very common word for those who wrote about holiness of life among Christian people in olden days. Mortification is putting to death the deeds of the body, to quote Paul. Or it's putting to death the desires of our fallen human nature. Here is the crucifixion, taken as a dramatic and vivid parable of this total radical repudiation of everything that we know to be wrong. The verse that helps me most, I often say it to myself, especially at the beginning of each day, is Romans 8:13. Listen to it carefully. If you, through the Spirit, that is, by the power of the indwelling Spirit, if you, through the Spirit, put to death, mortify the deeds of the body, you will live. Do you notice? It's life through death. The promise is you will live. How often I pray that I may inherit that promise more fully. That the Christian life may be life, that is life, indeed life with a capital L, you will live. But if that is the promise, what is the condition you have to die? If you, through the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body, then you shall live. But it's only life through death in holiness, as in salvation. And thirdly, it's true in mission. Jesus said it of himself. He said, it's only when the grain of seed dies that it multiplies, and the multiplication is people coming into the kingdom. And then he applied it to his disciples. He said, what is true of me is true of you also. The apostle Paul knew this. The apostle Paul was suffering for the Gospel. And the Gospel came to the gentiles because he was willing to suffer. Their glory was due to his sufferings and their life to his willingness even to die for them. Well, you may say, but has Paul lost his head? How can he claim that? You can say that of Jesus, but you can't say that life came to people through Paul's death. You can, of course, it wasn't an atoning death. But think of this verse in 2nd Corinthians 4. He says, so life is at work in you, but death is at work in us. It was through his willingness to die for the Gospel that the Gospel brought life to the Gentiles. And I myself believe it is true of missionaries today. Authentic missionaries, authentic cross cultural messengers of the Gospel, will always bear witness to the fact that glory is through suffering, power is through weakness, and life is through death. And it's only the seed that dies that multiplies. I think of one of our own missionaries who herself died a couple of years ago, Marjorie Press, for whom I've always had a great admiration. She was 25 years a missionary in Ethiopia and in Djibouti. She identified with nomadic Danakil tribes women. She lived with them. She was willing to accept tremendous simplicity, poverty and deprivation in order to live with these women, in order to bring them the good news of Jesus Christ. It was a kind of life through death again in mission. Well, we began with the Greek's request, sir, we want to see Jesus. And John has shown us Jesus, the one in whom the gospel paradox has come to its most perfect expression of power through weakness, glory through suffering, life through death. I hope that theme may stay with us during Holy Week as we move day by day towards Good Friday and Easter Day, and we'll see the paradox exemplified with the eyes of our imagination. Let us pray. We've heard wonderful promises, like the promise, you shall live. But we have also heard sobering conditions that death is the gateway to life and weakness is the condition of experiencing power. My power is made perfect in your weakness, said Jesus. And the real question is whether we're willing to suffer and to be weak and even to die in order to enter into these great promises. Let's reflect on this for a moment in silence. We desire to thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for the greatness of this paradox that has been brought before us in your word. We thank you that it has been true in your own life that you were willing to die and then rise again to bring us life. We pray that in different contexts and different ways we may experience it ourselves, that we may be willing for the cost of discipleship. We ask that during this very week, many of us may enter into fullness of life through a willingness to die to our own self sufficient centeredness and sin. We ask it for the glory of your great name. Amen.
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You've been listening to John Stott. Listen to Faith of Our Fathers each Saturday and Sunday to hear more great 20th century preachers.