The Consequential Cross | Tim Henderson

As Dave talked about last week, some Gentiles came and approached some of the disciples because they wanted to see Jesus. And Jesus responded to the request with this puzzling and seemingly unconnected monologue about a grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying before it could produce life. And of course, Jesus is that seed, and he was speaking of his own death. And the passage we're gonna look at this morning continues that same conversation that Jesus had in the aftermath of this request, this visit.

As he talks about things, he's maybe surprisingly transparent about how anxious he is. Jesus knows that in mere days, he will be tortured to death. And as he's working through that angst, his father speaks out loud. Jesus had just said, "my soul is troubled." And his father speaks promising to glorify his name through what is about to happen. Some people thought it was thunder, others thought it was an angel, but John recorded that it was the father speaking to his distressed son.

It's really to our advantage—it's a crazy moment. This is simultaneously a public event, but it's also incredibly intimate as the father speaks to his troubled son. The dialogue that comes after that gets recorded, and so we have a chance to know what was happening in that.

There's three things as we overhear this conversation that I wanna draw to your mind.

Number one, we're gonna hear about the consequences of the cross. I've told you guys this before, we've talked about it many times, but there was a lot going on on the cross. And if we carefully read what Jesus is saying here, we can get a pretty good list of what was happening in those most important hours in all of human history.

Second thing, we're gonna see both clarity and confusion. As the crowd is paying attention, they get a lot of stuff right, which is honestly surprising, because they're always getting it wrong. But they clue in to the significance of what Jesus is saying, and yet, they still had questions, they were still confused. You might as well. And so we're gonna try to sift out the clarity from the confusion.

And then number three, we get to hear Jesus give yet another call to commit. As he often does, he uses this moment to implore people to believe. I'll show you that at the end.

So the consequences of the cross, some clarity and some confusion, and then a call to commit. So let's expand on each one of those.

The Consequences of the Cross

Let me ask you this: what was it that Jesus accomplished on the cross?

In fact, let's do it like this. Take fifteen seconds, and just turn to somebody sitting next to you. When you think about what happened on the cross, what did Jesus accomplish? Okay, what was being done there on that particular day?

Probably what many of you heard was something along the lines of: he bore the wrath of God. That Jesus paid for our sin, that he atoned for us, right? And that is all true. In fact, that's central to what is true. But it's not all that he did.

I want you to hear Jesus's list of what he's about to do.

"Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name." And then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it and I will glorify it again." — John 12:27-28

Without question, in John's gospel, the hour, the long awaited hour, is the hour of his crucifixion. This is a theme that runs through the book. The hour is not yet here, the hour is not yet here, it's not yet time. Well, it's time, right? And as the hour is finally imminent, now that the cross is upon him, he says, glorify your name.

Now, glorify something is to illuminate it. It is to shine a spotlight on it, to say, behold, look at the excellency of this. And what Jesus is doing on the cross is he is glorifying, he is illuminating, he is displaying the excellency of his Father. He is showing the supremacy of his justice, and the supremacy of his mercy.

He is showing the absolute worthiness of the Father that he himself would stoop so low to give the Father what he wants. What the Father wanted was you, what he wanted was to extend mercy to you, to not hold you accountable for all of your wrong. But if he were to do that, he would be unjust. And to show the supreme worth of the Father, the Son takes upon himself our punishment so the Father could show mercy to you.

And by the way, the cross also shows the glory of the Son because the Father was willing to accept his single sacrifice as sufficient compensation for the sins of everyone who ever lived. The Father is speaking to the Son in his very death of his incomprehensible worth. It was all of us in exchange for him, and he was sufficient to do it.

The whole thing, you guys, is a dance of the Father and the Son, as each one points to the other, and adores the other, and treasures the other, and preferences the other. The cross is a demonstration of the glory of God.

Four Consequential Truths of the Cross

Number two is in verse 31. Jesus says, "now is the judgment of the world." You guys, on the cross, Jesus is demonstrating that the world stands condemned. He is demonstrating that God is serious about sin. He is demonstrating that the wages of sin is death. Jesus is simultaneously declaring the world to be guilty and stepping in our place to absorb that guilt into himself, into his very body. It is not just the glorification of God, it is the condemnation of the world.

Number three, still in verse 31, Jesus says, "now will the ruler of this world be cast out." This is one that we've talked about before, but I feel like every time it comes up, it's a little bit surprising. On the cross, Jesus is defeating Satan.

You might remember in Luke four, Jesus goes into the wilderness, and the devil meets him there, and he's tempting him. Among the things that the devil says to him in that temptation is this:

The devil led Jesus up on a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. — Luke 4:5

Now, Satan is lying, of course, because he's a liar, and this is what he does. Global authority was not given to him. He stole it, he took it, and Jesus has come to take it back.

We talked about this just a couple of weeks ago when we were looking at Passover and Christus Victor. Remember that the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, is about paying for sin, it is the wrath of God, it is a propitiating moment. Passover was not. Passover was about freedom for captives. It is about defeating an enemy. And what Jesus is saying right here is that he has come to defeat that enemy. When he goes to the cross, he will be casting out the ruler of the world. For he has come to destroy the works of the devil.

Hebrews two talks about this. It says:

Since the children have flesh and blood, Jesus too shared in their humanity, so that by his death, he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. — Hebrews 2

So far, he's glorifying the Father, he's judging the world, he's defeating Satan, and number four is in verse 32. Take a look at this. He says:

And I, when I'm lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. — John 12:32

I want to unpack this one. We're going to spend a little more time here. Because on the cross, Jesus is drawing us to his irresistible beauty. He is wooing us and he is winning us by displaying the enormous chasm that exists between our pettiness and his selflessness, between our supreme prioritization of our own comfort and his unimaginable acceptance of terrible suffering, between our insistence on privilege and his surrender to lowliness and torture and death.

I want you to think about this, this fourth one, in light of the second one, in light of what he says in verse 31. "Now is the judgment of this world." You guys, the cross does not merely show us who Jesus is, it exposes the world for what it is, and it brings into light these two radically different ways of living.

The instinct of the human heart is to say, my life belongs to me, my body belongs to me, my highest obligation is to preserve my freedom, my comfort, my autonomy, my ability to determine the course of my own life. But Jesus Christ steps into this world and he says something altogether different. He says:

This is my body broken for you.

Friends, I want to ask you to lean in for just a moment for tender conversation and I want to ask you to consciously lower your defenses. This is going to be tender but I just beg you to hear me. Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between these two visions more painfully visible in our culture right now than in the issue of abortion. An issue that Virginians will soon have the opportunity to cast a vote.

And I wonder if it's ever occurred to you that the oft repeated refrain of the abortion movement is a complete reversal of what Jesus says on the eve of his crucifixion. "This is my body, my choice." Friends, that is a horrible parody and inversion of Jesus' own words. "This is my body broken for you." Jesus said, I will die so that you can live. Whereas an abortion advocate's demand: someone else must die so that I can live the way I choose.

And the sad reality is that far too often on issues big and small, we all embrace the latter vision. We all love ourselves supremely and we see our own needs as preeminent. This is my body. This is my money. This is my time. This is my preferred form of pleasure. This is my subjective view of reality. This is mine.

But Jesus comes into this world, the world which incidentally is literally his, every molecule of it, and he gives everything away including his very life and he says, "This is my body broken for you."

Friends, the cross calls Christians to emulate Jesus in a way that will necessarily make us live radically different than the spirit of the age. We are to value not only God himself, but all those who bear his image including the tiny little images. For a person's a person no matter how small. And yes, that was Horton, here's a who.

Strangely, shockingly, confoundingly, the womb has become the most dangerous place in the world. I'm not being hyperbolic here. This is literally and actually objectively true. You can fact check me on this.

I want you to consider a question. How many people have died in all of the wars throughout human history? Stack them up, thousands of years. Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Revolutionary Wars, Civil Wars, swords and sledgehammers, arrows and axes, bullets and bayonets. Picture the bloody fields that have covered the earth for fifty centuries. Do you know how many dead people have died globally in all the wars of all of human history? If you research it, what you'll find is that the outer limit is one billion people slain. Do you know how many people have died globally in abortions in the last fifty years? Two billion. Look it up.

There is a choice. Option one: you must die so that I may live. Option two: I must die so that you can live.

You guys, Jesus draws us to himself by his obvious beauty, his lowliness, his self-sacrificial death by radically and consistently considering the needs of others as more important than his own. And there is no one like him and yet he invites us to become like himself. That we would turn away from our orbit around ourselves and begin to see the needs of others as more important than our own.

What Jesus Accomplishes on the Cross

So that's his list. What is he doing on the cross? He is glorifying the Father. He is judging the world. He is defeating Satan and he is drawing people to himself through radical self-sacrifice, which is not a bad day's work.

And remarkably, astonishingly, the crowd understands this. They figure out that all of this is gonna come because he dies. Now, we know that Jesus is talking about his death because John says so. John literally says, "He said this to show about what kind of death he was going to die." But his crowd, they didn't get to hear the narration. They just lived through it. And they realized, wait a minute. Are you saying you're gonna die? How in the world is that gonna work out?

They understood when Jesus said, "When I am lifted up, I'll draw all men to myself," that he was alluding to his death. And it is surprising, honestly, that they figured it out because in John's gospel, everybody's an idiot, right? Have you noticed this? Constantly, everybody's confused.

He tells Nicodemus, you need to be born again. He's like, yeah, I don't think that's gonna work, right? He says, we're gonna destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, and they're like, I don't see that happening, right? He goes to the woman at the well and he says, I will offer you living water. She's like, living water? Where's the well? Show me the well. He tells everybody, my flesh is real food. And they're like, I have no idea what you could possibly mean by that, right? Constantly, everybody's baffled.

But here they're like, you're telling us you're about to die. They figure out what he is saying. Not only that, but they figured out that he is the Messiah, right? They're piecing these things together and now they got a puzzle piece that just doesn't fit.

When I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. — John 12:32

He said this to show about what kind of death he was going to die. So the crowd answered him, time out.

We've heard from the law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? — John 12:34

See, they're finally getting it. They're finally understanding. He is the Christ. This is the Messiah. This is the one. And then the Christ says, and I'm about to be killed. And they're like, what? How? How could that possibly be?

Because what they know about the Messiah, one of the things they know about the Messiah is that he's gonna reign forever, he's gonna rule forever, he's gonna live forever. And so they're like, I don't understand. God bless them. This has been a difficult journey. Jesus is hard to keep up with. And they are finally getting it. They're finally pulling it all together, and then he just baffles them all over again.

Now, their underlying belief is correct. The Messiah is going to live forever. His reign will last forever. They've read about it. They're not imagining that. In fact, we looked at Psalm 118 a couple weeks ago. It's a messianic Psalm. Well, most of the Psalms are messianic. Let me point you to Psalm 72. He's just everywhere. The whole book is about him.

In Psalm 72, just briefly, it says:

Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son. — Psalm 72:1

Here's a quick pro tip: when the Old Testament starts talking about the royal son, it's talking about the Messiah. And in the same stanza, it describes what he's gonna do:

May he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice. Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people and the hills in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people. Give deliverance to the children of the needy and crush the oppressor. — Psalm 72:2-4

That's all good work that the Messiah is gonna do. Our question though is, for how long will he do it? Look at verse five:

May they fear you while the sun endures, and as long as the moon throughout all generations. May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth. And in his days, may the righteous flourish and peace abound till the moon be no more. — Psalm 72:5-7

Those are all poetic ways to say what he makes explicit in verse 17:

May his name endure forever and his fame continue as long as the sun. May people be blessed in him and all nations call him blessed. — Psalm 72:17

So they're right. He will have an enduring messiahship. They're not wrong. They finally have clarity. But they're confused again because they don't know how that could possibly be true if he's about to get killed.

Now, I think this little scene right here might give us hope because it's possible for you to rightly understand what the Lord is doing, to understand what he's done, to know that he is Messiah, to know that he is great, and still be confused. Sometimes terribly confused about the details. Not just the little details, but sometimes the big details. Has anybody in this room ever been confused about what God is doing in your life? What in the world is going on? Sometimes you're just like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought you said this, that has to mean this, and yet, here we are. That's exactly where these guys are. It's finally coming together, it's finally clicking, they're getting it, and then we're thrust right back into the confusion.

Sometimes maybe you have begun to think that you've got Jesus figured out. You can fit him in your pocket and then he baffles you and bewilders you again. He is not a tame lion, that is for sure.

The Call to Believe

And so this Messiah, who has come to glorify the Father, to judge the world, to defeat Satan, and draw people to himself, says to these people who are finally getting it—they're sort of getting it, they're getting it but they're still confused—He gives to them a call. And I think that's really interesting because what he doesn't give them is an explanation. He could have said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right about that, but here's how it's going to work. First, I'm gonna die. Then, I'm gonna be raised from the dead, and then I will reign forever, and everything you expect is gonna be true. But just wait for it. I got a couple things to do first. He doesn't say any of that. Instead, it's so interesting, he skips all of it and he simply says, hey, hey, hey, you just need to trust me. That is his answer.

So Jesus said to them, the light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he's going. But while you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light. — John 12:35-36

He's basically saying, listen, I know you're confused. I know that you can't make it all out, but there's one thing that you have to do. It is the most urgent thing that you could possibly do. What you simply must do is believe in me. This is the answer.

You guys, I've been walking with Jesus for about thirty-five years and I can tell you, he cannot be ultimately comprehended from the outside. He shows us enough to embolden us to come to him. He reveals enough so that we might come trembling and with hope and surrender to him. He draws us to himself so that we can and will come to him. But you guys, I'm telling you, there are just things that you cannot understand from the outside. It only comes together, it only clicks after we yield and believe in him. Jesus is the light of the world but he's a strange light.

He glows with enough brightness to draw our eye, to expose to us how much we need him but the light that he brings can only be comprehended by those that have surrendered to him. And then if we're being honest, even then he remains baffling. His ways are not our ways. Sometimes he simply hides. He hides so that we will seek him. I would be shocked if there are very many people in this room that think they've got Jesus all figured out. That you get them all simple, you can predict his next move, right? That everything he does is perfectly ascertainable. But if you have, if that's you, just wait because surprises are around the corner. He is a wild man. He is inscrutable, but he is also trustworthy.

And however much has already come together, however much you're piecing it together, starting to make sense, you're getting the shape of it, however much of that has come, what he invites you to do with the rest is to trust him. He will be bewildering. But I suspect he has already shown you enough and he is asking you to believe. And the rest will become clear in due time.

You guys, he comes to us with a model of life that is so backward. The world demands, this is mine. Jesus acknowledges, this is mine and I'm giving it up for you. And if you are somewhere on this journey where you're trying to figure out who is he, my invitation to you echoes his own. Trust him, believe him, come.

Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, whatever regrets you may have, it would not be possible to describe how tender he is to you in your failings and shortcomings. How eager he is to love you, to shower you with mercy, to rebuild your life and to make you what he always meant for you to be. He has surrendered everything for you. Will you today, now, surrender to him?

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, who is like you? Who is like you? Who would take his very self and offer it to others to be made sport of, to be mocked, to be tortured and killed? But we are so quick to prize and treasure ourselves. Would you help us see that what you did on the cross, you did for us. That when you are considering other people's needs as more important than your own, you are specifically considering me. We don't wanna simply be inspired by your example, but we wanna be changed by the experience of knowing that you love us and that you gave yourself for us.

Our Lord, as a praise that penetrates our lives, we would give our lives to you and we would spend our lives in service of others, that they too could know the sweetness of mercy for undeserving sinners and that you might make us be in some degree over time a little bit more like you until you're done and we are actually genuinely like you.

We love you. Amen.