Some marches change everything. It was March 29, AD 33. Jesus of Nazareth got on the back of a colt to ride into Jerusalem. We call it ‘The Triumphal Entry.’ It started the clock ticking on a week that has changed the world that we live in. Maybe in more ways than we recognize, that week changed everything! The reason you have Sundays off as part of your weekend? It’s because Jesus rose from the grave on a Sunday. It used to be that followers of Christ, until Christianity was the religion in the Roman empire, would go to church before work, early in the morning, before the sun came up, to worship, then go to work. Because Sunday was just like every other day in the week. THIS changed everything! We now have a weekend. It changed more than that. Over the next few messages, we’re going to wrestle with these four days, these 96 hours that changed the world. My hope is that over the next week, the Spirit of God invites you into this story to know it better, but maybe knowing IT better, we would be known. That we might not just regurgitate it and the facts of what happened. We’re going to wrestle with questions like: Why did Jesus die? Why did Jesus have to die? Who killed Jesus? Who did Jesus “pay off” for the debt of sin? What was that all about? Please come back. We’re going to wrestle with a new type of influence. . . .an influence of love. We’re going to talk about ‘he descended to the dead’ or ‘he descended to hell.’ What does that mean? On Easter morning, we’re going to celebrate the fact that what Jesus does on Easter morning changes definitively the world we live in. It’s a march that changes everything.
As I was preparing and reading through some of the gospel accounts, I was struck by if you take the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and you start to read them, you’ll notice something really interesting. This one week, this Holy Week as we call it, beginning with the Triumphal Entry and culminating with resurrection from the dead. . . . .if Jesus lived 33 years, which is roughly what most scholars would say he lived, this is 1/1716th of his life. Which, if you’re doing the math, is .06% of Jesus’s life. That’s a small percentage. But if you read through the gospels, you’ll start to recognize that they seem to put an awful lot of emphasis on this one week. It’s .06% of Jesus’s life, but it’s 33% of the gospels. From the time of the Triumphal Entry forward. I’m not even including times that Jesus definitively says, “I’m pointing my face towards Jerusalem,” or he starts to talk about the cross. I’m starting the timer when he walks into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey. Thirty-three percent of our gospel narrative is this one week. That’s amazing!
You might be asking the question: Why is it so important? Glad you asked that. Open your Bible with me to the gospel of John 12. Jesus is going to begin to tell us why this week is so important, why this week is going to change the world. We want to listen to the words of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus today, and sort of let these 96 hours just press in on us a little bit. John 12:27 then we’ll jump back to the beginning of this story to see it for its whole. Listen to why Jesus says it’s so important: Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? {Quick timeout. I love that the gospel writers are going to include for us these moments of Jesus’s humanity. He’s looking at what he’s walking into, and like you or I, he says I am troubled. His soul is in turmoil. He asks a rhetorical question then.} Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. The reason I’m clothed in humanity, the reason I’m walking the face of the earth, the reason the incarnation happened is for THIS MOMENT. Everything has been coming and leading up to this. . . .like little streams that eventually merge into a river. . . .Jesus goes this is what it’s all about. Jesus’s turn towards the cross turns the world upside down. Today we’re going to look at sixteen verses in the gospel of John where Jesus lays out, for us, sort of a methodology why we can say this with confidence. Why did these 96 hours, why did these four days, why did this week change it all? He goes, “Let me tell you.”
Let’s go back to verse 20, because that’s where this story begins. Jesus’s turn towards the cross, and his resurrection. . . .so we’re seeing that as an entire event, turns the world upside down. Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. {I think they chose Philip because he was also a Greek.} “Sir,” they said, “we would like to Jesus.” {Underline or star that in your Bible. It’s going to be important and we’ll come back to that in a few moments.} Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus. Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single see. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify you name!” Then a voice came from heaven, {Timeout! This only happens three times in the gospels, so it’s sort of important. Often, we just read right over things in the Bible without trying to put ourselves in the picture of people who are just standing there going, “What in the world is going on??”} “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine.”
What is going on? They begin by saying ‘We want to see Jesus,’ and Jesus says ‘Oh, you’ll see me alright.’ He goes into this almost riddle-laden teaching about his cross. But notice what he wants to address first. Verse 23 — The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Jesus says, “Here’s what you’re going to see. You’re going to see the Son of Man glorified. Father, glorify your name.” He says, “I have glorified it,” talking about his life, “and I will glorify it again.” Most people who study the Scriptures say that Jesus is unequivocally declaring that the cross is THE picture of God’s glory. Which is astounding!!
This word ‘glory’ has a lot of history to it. If you were to be a good Jewish person, your immediate thought would be going to the book of Exodus 33, where Moses, arguably one of the best leaders the nation of Israel had ever seen, asked to see God’s glory. God, let me see your glory. God says I’d love to show you my glory, but it would kill you! We’ve got a little problem here. So how about you just look at my backside after I pass by. Or your mind, as a good Jewish person, would be drawn to Psalm 19:1 — The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. This word ‘glory’ could literally be translated ‘weightiness.’ If you took a pebble and threw it into a lake, you’d get to see its glory by how much water it displaced. If you took a boulder and threw it into a lake, you’d get to see its glory by how much water it displaced. It’s a way of talking about majesty. It’s a way of talking about beauty. So Psalm 19 says if you go out in the evening and look up in the sky and try to count the stars, it’s a little bit like taking in God’s majesty, his glory, his beauty.
But when Jesus says that the Son of Man will be glorified, talking about the cross, it changes everything. It changes the entire view of what we think of when we think about God, but also about what we think about when we think about glory. What Jesus is saying, what the Triune God is saying, if you want to see what I’m like, in all of my glory, in all of my weightiness, in all of my splendor, and in all of my beauty, then you cannot look passed Golgotha. You cannot look passed Calvary. That’s where you see, ultimately and definitively, what I’m like. Every other picture of God’s glory is subsidiary to the cross. We go that doesn’t make any sense, that God would show his beauty, his majesty, his power through the cross?!? Yeah, I know. Richard Dawkins, a prominent atheist, echoes our lament and questions about that: “I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on a cross as worthy of grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible.” To Richard Dawkins, I’d say, “What’s more incomprehensible than the cross?” I think he nailed it, unknowingly to him. This is the upside down world that Jesus invites us into. Friends, Jesus is the exact radiance of the glory of God (Hebrews 1:3). The glory of God is best displayed, according to the gospel of John, on the cross. That’s where you see him most fully. If you read through the New Testament, it’s going to be really clear that the cross is the wisdom, and the power, and the glory of God.
So why does this week change the world? It exposes the reality that God’s glory is sacrificial love. So glory’s this word about weightiness, but the word ‘glorify’ is a little bit different. It’s the request. When Jesus says glorify your name, he’s saying put your glory on display. Let everyone see it. Literally in the Greek, it means ‘to recognize the real substance of something.’ Where you go, oh, so that’s what that’s like. That’s what that tastes like. That’s what that means.
Anybody else like the show “Fixer Upper” on HGTV? Chip and Joanna Gaines go into these houses that look like yours and mine, and then they turn them into houses that don’t look like yours and mine. They do all sorts of remodeling and make it awesome. There’s this moment at the end of the show where they have this big banner in front of the house, and there’s a picture on the banner of what the house used to look like. They have a big reveal. {Are you ready to see your fixer-upper?!} They pull back the curtain and the couple gets to see their new house. You know what they’re doing? They’re glorifying it. They’re displaying it. They’re letting all of its beauty shine forth.
What if the trinitarian God is looking at the cross going that’s it! That’s what we are like. He’s echoing what early church creed would have said, and Paul records it for us in Philippians 2:6-7. Here’s the way this creed read: (Jesus Christ) Who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; {Paul is saying that the way that Jesus characterizes God, displays God, glorifies God, is not by coming and powerfully suppressing those under him. He could have done that but he didn’t He actually showed us what God is like by emptying himself.} rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. He doesn’t empty himself of God, he empties himself of grasping and displays what God is like. That’s good. {You can write this down.} The cross is not something God does, the cross reveals who God is. The cross reveals what God is ultimately like. The cross is showing us forgiveness extended to all. Love for enemies put on display. Hope for the hurting held out. Relationship with God ultimately and finally restored. This is what your God is like.
I know a lot of people who want to “live for the glory of God.” That’s so up-in-the-air that we have no idea what that means. Can we just agree with that? I’m a fan of the Westminster Confession that says the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. To that I say praise the Lord, but let’s define glorify. And let’s define it like the Scriptures do. What if we looked at it as the chief end of man is to selflessly love which allows us to enjoy a God who is love. What if we actually defined what we’re talking about and sunk our feet into the ground that we actually walk on and say well, this is what it actually looked like for Jesus and this is what it looks like for us. So he’s transforming the world. This is what glory looks like, this is what God looks like. Self-giving, sacrificial love for those who are distant and obstinate towards him. That’s who God is. That’s what God is like. {You can say Amen if you’d like to.}
Listen to John 12:23-26 — Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. {I can imagine Jesus being a great rabbi—being witty, being funny, using props and all the things around him—picking up a stalk of wheat and putting it in between his hands, rubbing it, and it falling to the ground. He’s making this point: The rhythms of grace are sown into the soil of creation. Every time you see a seed go into the ground and come out with more life than it went into, you’re seeing something that God has wired into his world. That’s awesome.} Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
What’s Jesus saying? Should we read this literally? Literally, Jesus says that we should hate our lives. Well, he also teaches that the Golden Rule is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you hate your life, literally, and want to harm your own life and your own self, then that command doesn’t make a lot of sense. Can we agree on that? Jesus is using hyperbole; he’s going to the nth degree to make a point. He’s saying you’ve got to surrender your own life, and in doing so, find what it means to actually, truly, genuinely live. That’s his point. He’s not calling you to be a sadomasochist. He’s actually inviting you to be a hedonist. He’s going this is what real life looks like.
January 7, 2007, The New York Times Magazine ran an article about a study they had done. They were trying to figure out what makes people happy. They called this article “Happiness 101.” They found that the people who were trying to just live for pleasure, to live for the next high, to live for the next newest thing, were actually some of the most unhappy people they studied. You know why that makes sense? We’ve all seen it. Here’s what they decided. . . .if that type of please is our ultimate goal, it keeps distancing itself from becoming a reality. You get something and it satisfies temporarily, but then you need just a little bit more in order to make yourself happy the next time. You need a little bit newer car, you need a little bit nicer, a little bit brighter, a little bit shinier, a little bit bigger… All of that and we’re on this treadmill that keeps getting pushed up, up, up, more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger, brighter, brighter, brighter, and soon we’re running so fast that we can’t even keep up. The study found that we become addicted to our own pleasures and the need for it keeps growing until it outgrows our capacity to feed it. You have to do more and more to be satisfied, they said. According to this study, the best way to increase happiness is to do acts of selfless kindness, to pour yourself out to those who are in need. Research shows that an unselfish life of service gives a sense of meaning, of being useful and valuable, and of having significance.
Jesus is like hey, look up at me! That took you 2000 years? I was telling you that!!! Come on! That’s exactly what he’s inviting us to. . . .the life where we lay down ours and find what it means to really, truly live. He says it like this in Mark 8:34-35 — Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. {In the same way that Jesus uses an illustration about a stalk of wheat and seed that goes into the ground, he’s using a saying from the day. ‘To take up your cross and follow’ was to say I’m going to place myself under the authority of the Roman empire. I’m going to surrender to them. I’m going to submit to them. What they ask of me, I will do. So, when people talked about carrying their cross—which they did back in Jesus’s day—they were talking about a surrender to the empire. When Jesus says take up your cross and follow me, he’s inviting them to surrender, not to an empire, but to a kingdom. Live in my way.} For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. Taking up your cross is essentially saying back to God, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
When Jesus turns toward Jerusalem, he turns the world upside down, because he reveals that death is actually the path to life. You have to hear me on this, Jesus is not calling us to look at the cross and admire the cross. He’s asking us to look at the cross and emulate it, to live in the same way. It’s not hey, Jesus, that was great. He’s like wonderful, will you do the same? You follow me in this. Look at how he does this. In John 12:21, there’s these Greeks that come to Jesus and they say we want to see you. He’s like, great, you’re going to see me lifted up in all of my glory, but my goal is not just that you SEE me. That’s important, but it doesn’t end there. My goal is that you FOLLOW me. That’s my goal.
Unfortunately, because we live in a world that’s twisted and permeated with sin, we’ve seen this idea of laying down your cross and dying to yourself abused, and taken advantage of. Where people in position of power try to manipulate other people and say well, you’ve got to die to yourself, which actually really means to live to my desires, not yours. But when Jesus invites us and calls us to die ourself, he’s calling us to die TO ourselves, not to a death OF ourselves. {Lean in for a moment.} In order to die to ourselves, we’ve got to first KNOW ourselves. Otherwise, we will just die to ourselves and live to what everybody else wants us to do! I love the way John Calvin puts it in the beginning of Institutes of Christian Religion: “Nearly all the wisdom which we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” If we don’t know ourselves, we will die to ourselves and live to whatever anybody else wants us to do. Let me ask a question: Is that what we see Jesus doing? NO! Absolutely not! Nobody wanted Jesus to do the things that he did. It’s the reason he was crucified. He gave them what they needed, he didn’t give them what they wanted. He lived to the Father’s will, not to their will.
Death to self looks like something different to every person in this room. For the people pleaser, death to self looks like becoming a truth-teller in some instances. For the fearful, death to self means embracing a life of faith and maybe a little bit of risk. To the stingy, death to self means becoming generous. To those who’ve been sitting on the sidelines, death to self means jumping in and taking that risk, going a little bit extroverted when your natural tendency is introverted. . . .or the opposite, right? To those who’ve been working their fingers to the bone and feeling like their soul is shriveling, can I just tell you, that’s not what God wants for you. That is not death to self, that’s not knowing self and living to whatever anybody wants you to do. Death to self might mean saying “NO!” Or, to some, death to self might be saying, “I don’t know.” A surrender of pride. A surrender of ‘I’ve gotta have my own way.’ To the adventurous, death to self might mean planting yourself firmly in the soil of community and staying, and being known, and going against some of the natural desires and the natural tendencies. Death to self is laying aside everything else and saying, God, what do you want from me? Not my will, but yours be done. Jesus says something really beautiful happens when we do that. . . .it actually allows us to really, truly, fully live. Which is what he’s after. . . . .you want to hold onto your life, you want to control everything? It’s going to kill you! But if you’ll let me, you’ll find out what it means to really, truly live.
It’s something hard to diagnose in ourselves. Have I died to myself? Let me ask you a few diagnostic questions that could help. How often do you get offended? We live in an easily offended culture and world, don’t we? We get offended at everything! It’s like a sport sometimes! I would submit that maybe you’re not dead in the way that Jesus invites you to be, if you’re often offended, because I think that’s pride showing. How often do you find yourself defending yourself? How often do you feel sorry for yourself and wallow in self-pity? I’m right, how dare they! I deserve fill-in-the-blank. How do you respond when you don’t get your way? How often do you say “I’m sorry,” and not I’m sorry you’re a moron and didn’t understand what I was really trying to say, which is sometimes how we do it, right? Did you say sorry? Yeah, technically, I did!
What do we do with this? Here’s the truth of the matter: you cannot die to self by trying harder. You can’t! You can die to yourself by training better. So, if you were to train, what does this look like to release a little piece of ourself? The Christian community, for centuries, has said a good practice of learning how to do this is fasting. We don’t do that often in our culture, but it’s a great way to learn how to just. . . .in a little bit, one day, or one meal, die to self. You go, if I did that I’d be really hungry. Well, that’s part of the point! We can take that hunger and put it back to a God who says I’ll satisfy you and we can release some of our desires and take on his. Or maybe, you embrace what the early fathers would call a posture of simplicity or frugality. Maybe this week you don’t go out to dinner at all. Or maybe this week, you decide to not go to the store and just live off of what you have in your house. {Look up at me.} Most of us have enough, in our house, to live off of until Jesus comes back! You go, well, I wouldn’t get to eat anything that I want to eat! That’s the point! So we’re training ourselves to die to some of our desires and to step into the way of Jesus, where he says death to some of our desires and our pride and us, is actually where life is found. That teaching changes the world. Here’s a quote by Jan Johnson, who wrote An Invitation to a Jesus Life: “Does ‘death to self’ sound too hard? It’s easier than living for self.”
Here’s how Jesus continues (John 12:31) — Now is the time for judgment on this world… We have this visceral response to this word ‘judgment,’ because we probably picture somebody with a sign on a street corner…. We picture something like fire. . . . .I don’t know what’s in your mind, but we typically have a step-back response. What I’d like to present to you today is the way that Jesus talks about judgment we should all go “YES!” Finally! Because listen to what he says. . . .judgment has two parts to it. The first part (he’s talking about judgment): Now the prince of this world will be driven out. That’s great news. He’s talking about the Satan, he’s talking about sin, he’s talking about death, he’s talking about evil. He’s presenting sin, death, and evil, personified in the Satan, with an eviction notice ‘You’re done!’ That’s great news. Paul will recount that in Colossians 2:13-15. I’d encourage you to read the whole section, but he finishes in verse 15 by saying that by the cross he’s forgiven us, he’s taken our debt, he’s cancelled it out, and he’s disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. What’s his judgment? His judgment is this is not the good world that I created, and I’m turning it back to that world. I’m kicking the Satan, the Evil One, the one who’s behind systems of oppression, and racism, and manipulation, and keeping the low on the bottom and propping the higher up higher and higher. . . . .he’s like, I’m kicking the Evil One out! Literally, in the Greek, it’s exorcizing him. He’s throwing him out for being over us. We haven’t lived with him over us, so I don’t think we get the full weight of all that that means. Suffice to say, it’s doesn’t mean the devil’s defeat doesn’t always mean the devil’s absence. So we have this tension of what’s going on and we’ll talk about it more in a few weeks.
The second thing Jesus says is just as fascinating. . . .all in the context of judgment: And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. This is judgment. This is awesome! The cross is driving out evil and drawing in people. It’s driving out evil and it’s drawing in people. How many people? Jesus says all of them. 1 John 2:2 says that he’s atoned for the sins of the world, especially for those who believe. The sins of the world! In 2 Corinthians 5:19, it says that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. He’s drawing all people to him. Does it mean that every path leads to Jesus? No, but it does mean that people on every path are led to Jesus. His blood, and his death, and his life, and his resurrection is sufficient for every single person. We have this picture of judgment that’s presented as restoration. The word ‘judge’ literally means ‘to separate.’ It’s God looking at the world that he created, the world that he loves, and it’s him saying these things are right, these things are wrong.
People that live in a culture that’s been suppressed far more than ours has, long for the day of judgment. The day of judgment is like going into your chiropractor, and saying you have a kink in your neck. He looks at it and says that you do, that you’re all out of whack. He tells you to relax your head for a moment. How many of you find it really hard to relax your head in that moment because you know he’s about to break you? Judgment feels like he’s going to break us sometimes. Judgment is God looking at humanity, taking our head and saying relax, this might hurt a little bit, but you’re out of joint, you’re out of place, you’re not walking in the way I created you to walk. So. . . . .CRACK! That’s better. That’s judgment. If we don’t want to be bent, it feels like a fire. If we’re willing to surrender, it feels like refinement. But either way, it’s love. It’s love through and through, it just depends on whether you want to swim up that stream or get in line with it, but either way it’s love. Driving out evil—-if we aren’t ready to let go of our evil, we will be driven out with it—-and drawing in people. So, now when people ask you if you believe that God is a God of judgment, you can say, “ABSOLUTELY! Isn’t that great news?” Then you can explain: According to the gospel of John, Jesus is really clear. Judgment is driving out evil and drawing in people.
Here’s how Jesus closes: The crowd spoke up, “We have heard from the Law that the Messiah will remain forever, so how can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this ‘Son of Man’?” {They’re just quoting back the Scriptures that say The government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. (Isaiah 9:6-7) NO. END. They’re going, gods don’t die, they reign. You’ve got this wrong Jesus. Here’s what Jesus says.} Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.
He’s going listen, you have this opportunity in front of you. You’ve got this picture of what God is like: sacrificial love, it is his glory. You’ve got this picture of the path that he’s called you to walk: death as a way of abundant life. And you have this picture of God: restoring his good creation, driving out evil, drawing in people. He says, believe it. Believe it! Believe that light. Walk in that light, and in so doing become children of that light. I pray that we would. It’s just one day in the midst of many. But it’s one day that began a domino effect that changed the world.
So for 2000 years, followers of Jesus have been gathering around a table to remind themselves that the sacrificial love of God is his glory on display. To remind themselves of the path that they’re also invited to walk, of death to self and finding what it means to really, truly live. They talked about a cross that bids us come and die and find that I might truly live. As we come to the table this morning, would you remember his cross, not just to admire it, but as you come would you come with the anticipation of God, how do you want me to live this? Would you come and taste his sacrificial glory? And would you come saying, oh yeah, that illumination, that light is an invitation that I respond to today. If you’re not a follower of Jesus, I invite you to believe and step into the light, and come to this table.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march ended with the right to vote. But Jesus’s march into Jerusalem ends with eternal life. Let’s come and let’s celebrate that light and that life together. {Ryan gives specific communion instructions.}
