Worth the Cost
Notes
Transcript
ME
ME
I’m sure you have noticed it as much as me, but the prices of everything has gotten completely out of hand. There are some things that we don’t have a choice but to pay… For Instance groceries… video WM order from 2021 54 items 121 dollars…. reorder all…. 350 dollars… and when it comes to groceries most of us would say we don’t have a choice we have to have them.
Another thing we see the price going up on are used cars… I heard someone talking about Dave Ramsey the other dday and they were complaining becausee Dave said you could still find a good used car for under $5000 dollars, but no one can seem to figure out what it is he is talking about because it is gotten so out of hand.
Jenn took the kids to a free movie a week ago, the movie was free… the concessions not so much… and you get kids in a movie theatre they haven’t been in a few years and it is hard to take an experience away from them they haven’t had. Some of them ever…
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And if I am a betting man, I would bet there are some of you that are also feeling the cost of things in this world changing drastically. The question becomes is it worth it. That’s what we all have to decide. Is the price that we are being charged worth the cost. Can we afford it, SHOULD we try to afford it? And today we are looking at a story in the life of Jesus when he knew what was coming for him and knew exactly what it would cost him and he knew what was expected of him by the father, and could have done whatever he wanted, but he knew that he would have to go to the cross and it would cost him his entire life, and he decided it was a price he was still willing to pay
And here we find Jesus still speaking to the crowds, remember the hellenists are still there with them, and last week we saw Jesus telling them the time was now here… and Jesus knows… and here is kind of where we pick up that conversation
and in these first few verses we see the Agony of Jesus
EXPOSITION
EXPOSITION
John 12:27 (ESV)
27 “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.
And we see it here… he has just told them the time is now here, and its no surprise he would now say his soul is troubled… Its understandable… the end is coming he knows it… and when you are with people as they pass there are normally two different aspects you will see… there are people that are excited… they know that there soul is going to be at peace with Jesus so they don’t worry… or there are people that are concerned about what is next… they have no idea what to expect… Jesus knew what was coming… but it says he is troubled… and its not just a little bit worried…
The Greek word there for trouble is, “tarassō” which means extreme horror, fear, or revulsion.
And he is saying there is a deep fear and revulsion in his soul… not for where he is going to spend eternity, but because of the awfulness of the cross…
And if we are being observant what we can clearly see is this is very similar to Jesus words we will find in the Garden of Gethsemane before his death,
36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
And just imagine this, he knows the cup, the wrath of God is about to be poured out upon him as he hangs and dies on the cross… as he became sin, the Bible tells us, that knew no sin… and I can’t imagine knowing what that would feel like… he’s standing there knowing he is about to take on the sin of the world… and not just the present world… but of everyone who would ever call upon his name… and he knows what to expect… I doubt any of us could ever imagine the weight of that… I don’t even want to pretend to imagine that… just the shear thought of understanding what that would feel like scares me. and look back at verse 27 at what he says…
John 12:27 (ESV)
27 “… And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.
And here we find Jesus, and he is greatly troubled, and what we will see is this is a prayer aloud, and he is saying to them, yes, my soul is troubled, and what am I going to do, pray that you will take this away from me? Of course not, it is for this very reason that I have come to be here
And it is absolutely clear in this moment Jesus is feeling a ton of pain and dread of what is coming for him. And you and I have never felt the kind of pain that he is walking into… some of us have walked into some scary stuff…
Some of you remember the pain you felt as you were walking into the hospital as someone was sick and you’re heading to see them for what very well may be the very last time…
Some of you know the pain of having a discussion with a spouse and you know it may be the end of the situation….
Some of you teenagers may have had the moment when you messed up and you knew you had to go speak to your parents…
However, very few of us find ourselves in those moments doing what Jesus is doing here… going to God in prayer… we often start lining up all the possibilities of how we can get out of the situation we are in… well if I can do this… this and this… if this goes bad I think we will be okay…
For most of us, prayer is an afterthought we don’t really seek him in prayer…
As one poet said,
“I say my prayers before I go to sleep, Dear God!
say my grace before i start to eat, cause times is hard…”
And thats it… I wanted to write a book about the three fold disciplines… worship… prayer… fasting… and I remember praying about prayer… thats not prayer… thats begging…
But here in this moment we don’t see Jesus looking to himself or his own power…
And instead Jesus is seeking God… reaching out to him… and then instead of asking for God to save him, what he says he really wants is….
John 12:28 (ESV)
28 Father, glorify your name…”
And what an amazing prayer. Father what I really want from you is not for you to take it away… but what I really want is for you to be glorified… and it goes so well with what we heard in chapter 11, Did I not tell you if you believed in me you would see God glorified… and really not only was it part of that in the life of Lazarus but he was looking forward to it here as well… if you believe in him… not only would you see God glorified in that.. but you are really about to see Him glorified…
And look at how God responds to this
John 12:28 (ESV)
28 …Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
And only three times in the Bible do we see the Father speaking to Jesus audibly… when John the Baptist was baptized, the transfiguration, and here.And he is telling him It has already been glorified in all the tings you do as you do things to please me and it will be glorified again on the cross. And what we see time and again as we walk through the Gospels is that Jesus obedience to the father is what brings the father glory… don’t see it?
Teenager… never follows the rules… stays out all night…vs the one that comes home when things get bad or even early.
29 The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”
And it’s amazing, the crowd hears the voice from heaven and they immediately think its an angel… my guess is they can’t fathom it would be the voice of God because there are some that have such a high view of God they won’t see him talking to man… and others who think Jesus is not a good man but a demon so they can’t really believe it was anything else.
30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine.
I love this… Jesus is really wanting them to know that he is already speaking with God, he and the father are so close the voice didn’t come for his sake, but for the sake of the people who are standing around and watching what is happening. And the thing we can see from this is the people don’t understand what has just happened to them. They don’t realize they have heard the voice of the Father speaking to Jesus. And it amazes me. I wonder if there are times in our life where we have this exact same problem… we hear the voice of God but because of something in our lives we cannot recognize it for who it is.
Some of us will have a real hard time thinking about hearing God audible just in this same sense, but even then we all know God speaks to us in one way or the other, and maybe you think he speaks to you through your thoughts not where others can hear, or maybe you think he speaks to you through his word as you read and meditate on it, the point remains the same, how many of us cannot in the moments God is using whatever method we have subscribed to believing trying to speak to us, we cannot hear it because of what we have already decided in our mind about Jesus and who he is and what he wants for us.
31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.
Could you believe there is some contention about this verse, there are some alternative views as to how the different theologians feel we should understand.
Those of the more reformed tradition tend to believe Jesus is speaking of himself here, as the ruler of the world he is about to be cast out in his death, but the other view the view I much believe is happening here is Jesus is referring to the enemy of our souls the devil because as 1 John 5:19 says
19 We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
Since the begging of time we have been under his rule, and what Jesus did as he went to his cross is he put to death the power the devil has from being able to accuse us in front of our maker… I think of him standing before God in relation to Job… explain… and that is what he had intended to do with us, but as Jesus goes to the cross and dies he takes away the ability for the enemy to use our sin against us as long as we take Jesus salvation upon our lives…and he goes on…
32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Here he is saying, when I am raised on the cross, my work there will do more for this world than you could ever imagine… my work will draw everyone to me… and this is a message to everyone standing there that is similar to what he has already been saying… he is there to save not just the people of Israel but when he does this work it will be done for everyone… Remember the Greeks are standing there with the Jews listening and they are representative of the rest of the world… and John gives us a note from the narrator next…
33 He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.
And he wanted people to see it was by the cross that all of this was going to happen, it was the death on this hideous torturous equipment to many… thats why Paul said in 1 Cor 1:23
23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
John here is already knowing how hard this is going to be to believe to everyone reading his letter and he wants them to understand the way he was drawing everyone to himself was through the work of the cross… do you believe that this morning…
And it is amazing because maybe for the first time in all of scripture the crowd is tracking with him, they get him and understand what he is saying about himself and who he is… but they are confused…
34 So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?”
So, they are saying look the Pentateuch tells us the Messiah will live forever… how is it then you are telling us the son of man must be lifted up… they are saying to them it sounds like there is a contradiction in what they see and know and what he is saying here… and what they are not realizing is that he will show them both things will be true… he must be lifted up to die and he will also remain forever… it is something their mind could not even wrap around in that moment, it was so out of the box
and as I read this sometimes i think this is our problem… we tend to think Jesus can only do things in a certain way and his answer is so out of the box that we cannot even wrap our mind around what he is going or trying to do…
35 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 is going.
36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.
And this is such appropriate language for a group of people who are are walking and coming into Jerusalem and are traveling for the passover… and Jesus is trying to give them something he can relate to and he wants them to realize he isn;t going to be there forever.. and he is offering himself up to be able to give them the help they may need while he is still around,,, he is saying come to me while you still can… and I think he says the same thing to us…
YOU
YOU
THe question is, we see Jesus knew the cost he was going to have to pay for the life he was called to live… my question for you this morning is have you counted the cost of following Jesus…
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Can you imagine if everyday we examined our cost of following Jesus the difference we could make...
