John 12:20-26 (Called To Be Witnesses)

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you.

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Over the last several weeks what we've been talking about is the kingdom. John chapter 12 is the moment in the

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Gospel of John where it shifts away from the prophetic ministry of Jesus, where he's chasing people out of the temple with a bullwhip and where he's calling people to repent, where he's saying very prophetic things.

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And John chapter 12 is this transition where we see the king coming into his kingdom.

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We see the kingdom that's prophesied in the Old Testament through John 12. We see the king that's anointed by Mary in the beginning part of John chapter 12.

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And we see the king who rode into the city on a donkey in the very next passage.

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Last week we showed how his disciples did not understand any of this. They saw

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Jesus riding into the city and they thought, well, that's interesting. But they didn't get it.

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They didn't understand the totality of it. It says that it wasn't until after Jesus was glorified that they understood all of what this event actually entailed.

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It wasn't until then that they understood the prophecy of Zechariah and what Zechariah is saying, that this king will rule over all the nations.

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So when he rides into Jerusalem and after he was risen from the dead, that's when they understood. Oh, he's not just a

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Jewish king. He's not just our Savior. He's gonna be the Savior of the entire world.

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He's gonna have all the nations and we talked about that last week. Well today, we're gonna be looking into the next phase of this, the next development in this.

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One logical step next is, okay, Jesus is gonna have all the nations. He's gonna have all the world.

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He's gonna gain them all for himself so that eventually, just as Genesis 12 says, so that Zechariah says and Micah says and all of these passages we looked at last week, he's gonna have all the nations.

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How? Today that's what we're gonna look at is how is he going to accomplish this and what we're going to see today is that he's going to use you and I to be his witnesses.

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Today, we're gonna see two men in the Gospels, Philip and Andrew, who become witnesses for Christ and who serve as a model for you and I on how to be witnesses to Jesus in this generation and in the next generation and until the whole world is filled with believers and Jesus Christ returns to give his

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Father a completed kingdom. So that's what we're gonna be looking at today. If you will, fastest introduction probably you've ever heard from me.

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Today, let's look at John 12 verses 20 through 26 and then we'll pray and then we'll unpack these passages together.

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So turn with me to John 12. Now, there were some

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Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast. These then came to Philip who was from Bethsaida of Galilee and they began to ask him saying, sir, we wish to see

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Jesus and Philip came and told Andrew and then Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus and Jesus answered them saying, the hour has come for the

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Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone.

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But if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it.

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He who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me and where I am, there my servant will be also.

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If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. Let us pray. Lord, we see in this passage how you're going to own the nations, how you're going to fill the world with your glory as the water covers the sea, how you're going to bless every family on earth through Christ.

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Lord, we see that you have deliberately chosen what by the world's standards might be an inefficient plan using us and yet,

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Lord, for your great glory you have decided to use us in your purposes.

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You could have assembled for yourself a kingdom the moment you rose from the dead.

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You could have looked down the potential corridors of time and you could have seen everyone in this room and every

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Christian who will ever live and you could have assembled them out of dust because you did it in the garden where you made man out of the dust.

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You could have done that and yet, Lord, you chose to build your kingdom with all of the broken, with all of the redeemed sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

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You chose to restore us to our God -ordained purpose. In the garden we were told to be fruitful and multiply and Lord, you've restored us to that plan and you've restored us to that purpose.

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Lord, today help us as we consider creative, faithful,

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God -honoring ways that we can as your sons and daughters extend your kingdom in New England.

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Lord, help us today to think about these passages in practical ways. Lord, help us to think about how the wonderful missionary

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William Studd said that one life shall soon be passed.

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Only what is done for Christ will last. Lord, help that to be our anthem as we joyfully long to serve you in Christ's name.

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Amen. Jesus says in this passage that his hour has come. That is a fascinating thing that we should not skip over too quickly.

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What is Jesus's hour? That's not the hour of his wake up in the morning.

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That's not the hour that he gets his cup of coffee, if they had such a thing in first century times.

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His hour is the moment of his death. His hour is the moment of his greatest glory.

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His hour is the moment of his resurrection. His hour is when he will be lifted up onto a Roman cross, the pinnacle of shame in the ancient world, where only criminals and miscreants were ever crucified.

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And yet that is the moment of Jesus's hour. And that is the moment of his glory. That is the moment of his victory.

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That is the moment of his triumph. His hour is the very reason why he came.

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He came to die so that all of us might live.

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That is the hour that Jesus is talking about. And his hour, when it happens, is going to shake the foundation of the earth as they knew it.

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The whole Gospels that we've been in so far, John chapter 1 through John chapter 11, is technically the

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Old Testament. Because Jesus hasn't risen from the dead yet. You've got men and women who are living under the authority of the priest, under the temple system, under the sacrificial system.

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We're living in the Old Testament. When Jesus says, my hour has come, he's talking about shifting the world out of the

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Old Testament, out of temples, priests, and feasts, to a new era of redemption in Christ.

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That is what his hour is talking about. Now, so far in the

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Gospels, we've heard his hour has not come. That's been the refrain that we've heard over and over and over again.

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If you remember, in John chapter 2, Mary comes to Jesus at this party, and she says,

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Jesus, we ran out of wine. And he says, woman, and that's very respectful in that day, he says, what does this have to do with me?

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My hour has not yet come. He says his hour has not yet come in John 2.

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John 4, when he's talking to the woman at the well, and she says, you know,

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I don't know when the Messiah is coming, but when he does, we're gonna worship. And he says, woman, again, respectful.

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I tell you the truth, that an hour will come when you will neither worship on this mountain or on that mountain, but you will worship in spirit and in truth.

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He's alluding to a future hour, which means his hour had not yet come. When he heals the sick man in John chapter 5, and the

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Pharisees are angry at him. Why did you heal this man? How unloving of you?

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Because he was doing it on the Sabbath. Jesus tells them that his hour had not yet come. When they try to seize him in John chapter 7,

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John tells us they could not do it because Jesus's hour had not yet come. When they wanted to seize him again in John chapter 8, when they wanted to pick up stones and kill him in John chapter 10, they could not do these things because John tells us his hour had not yet come.

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So now in John 12, when Jesus says my hour has come, something has changed in the gospel of John.

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We have moved out of ministry of Jesus, and now we've moved into the mission for which he came was to give his life as a ransom for many.

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We now, in John chapter 12, when Jesus says my hour has come, we are five days away from the crucifixion of Christ.

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Now we've got John 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and half of 18 to go before we get there, but we're five days from the crucifixion.

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John 1 through 11 is three and a half years. John 12, we have five days left. His hour has come.

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The passion narrative begins in John chapter 12, the final week of Jesus's life.

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Now, why did Jesus say that his hour had come here? Why? Is it because he's five days from the end and he knows it?

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Well, okay, yeah. But he says that his hour has come here, specifically here, because something happened that triggered

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Jesus to say that now my hour has come. And do you know what it is? In this passage, the

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Gentiles began coming to him. The Gentiles began coming to Jesus. It says that a group of Greeks came to Philip.

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Philip and Andrew brought them to Jesus and Jesus doesn't even acknowledge them and say, hello, how are you?

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What's your name? He says, now my hour has come, which keys us into the kind of kingdom that Jesus is going to build.

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He's not going to build a Jewish kingdom for Jewish people. He's going to build a worldwide kingdom full of Gentiles, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.

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And when the Gentiles start coming to Jesus, Jesus says, that is what I've been waiting for.

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That is going to initiate my hour, that the world is going to come to me like the

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Pharisees say in John chapter 12, verse 19. The world is going to come to Jesus. When Jesus sees that, he says, now the hour has come.

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Now it's time for me to prepare to die because the nations are going to come to me.

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That was the final prerequisite in Jesus's ministry. Now it says the

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Gentiles came to Christ. Let's talk about that. Verse 20. Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast.

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Very fascinating phrase here in verse 20. Very fascinating. The word for Greeks in this passage doesn't mean people from Sparta.

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It doesn't mean people from Troy, people from Athens or any other ancient

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Greek city. This means Gentiles. Greek at this time, especially what's called

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Kohenai Greek, was the universal trade language of the world. You may have as your primary language

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Hebrew or Aramaic. You may have as your primary language Latin if you're of Roman descent.

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You may have all kinds of different primary languages, but your secondary language at this time that you did business with, that you traded with, was

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Greek just like today. Where English is sort of the universal language that we do with business and with other things.

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So if you were to call someone Greek, especially if you were a Jew, you were not appealing to the fact that they were

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Greek. You were appealing to the fact that they were a Gentile. At this time, the world had been so thoroughly

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Hellenized, and when I mean that I mean it had been made to look like Greece, that the

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Jews used this term Greeks often as a derogatory statement. The Jews were purist at that time.

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They didn't want anyone to infect their culture, so they looked at the outside world with disdain and hatred.

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They would say, oh those are the Greeks. They had lots of phrases actually that they made up to look down their noses at other people at that time.

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The Jews at that time were fairly ethnocentric. At that time, the

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Hellenization of the world had happened to such a degree that there was actually a division among the

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Jewish people. There were groups of people called Hellenized Jews, which are people who lived in the Greek world, subpar to the

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Hebrew Jews who lived in Jerusalem. So that's sort of the dynamic that you have here, where you have people who are outside of Israel called the

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Greeks, and people who are inside called the Jews. Now why would the

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Greeks want to come and worship with the Jews when the Jews hated them? Why would they want to do that?

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Why would they want to go to their crummy old Passover festival when they weren't welcome anyway? That's a question we need to answer.

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In the Old Testament, the Jews were supposed to welcome the nations in. It says that they were to be a light to the

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Gentiles. It says that that their temple would radiate the glory of God to the nations. You remember in the time of Solomon, where the whole world was hearing about this beautiful era of of God's power and glory, and the queen of Sheba came to see it, and people from the nations came to see it.

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The Jews were always supposed to be a people who welcomed the nations. You think about in Egypt when they're in slavery.

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It says that when they left Egypt, it doesn't say that a group of ethnically pure Jews left

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Egypt. It said that a mixed multitude left Egypt, which means that there were both

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Jews and Egyptians who decided to leave. There were Egyptians in the book of Exodus who saw the power of God, who saw

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God do these amazing plagues. There were probably Egyptians who painted blood over their doorposts, just like the

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Jews. And when they saw that God protected their firstborn son, they said, we're going with them.

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Because we know their God is real. Our gods are not. The man

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Caleb, not a Jew. The woman Rahab, not a Jew. All throughout the Old Testament, we see

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Ruth even. We see time and time again that it's not about ethnic

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Jewishness. It's about spiritual Jewishness that matters to God.

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Israel got their name because they wrestled with God. Israel got their name from Jacob, who said,

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I'm not going to let go of you until I get a blessing. Israel was always about a spiritual relationship with God, not a national ethnic relationship.

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But by the time of the New Testament, the Jews had become so focused on their ethnic identity that they hated everyone else.

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That they hated. That's not a stretch to say. There was rare Gentiles that we know from the scriptures who put up with that, who came to Jerusalem anyway.

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We think about the Ethiopian eunuch, who would have been looked down upon by the

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Jews, but he came and he worshipped anyway. We think about Cornelius the centurion in Acts chapter 10.

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These people who were Gentiles, who were fascinated with Yahweh, who wanted to know.

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But we can't even imagine. We can't even imagine what it must have been like for them to walk into Jerusalem and to have everyone look at you and say, you're not welcome.

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You're not one of us. Here, here's this little area of the temple that we've devoted to you, but we filled it so full of animals and manure that you have nowhere to pray, but that that's for you.

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We can't even imagine what it must have felt like for them to come and worship this God. And yet we have these examples.

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There were some who actually tried to become Jewish people. Now, this was not supposed to be a very complicated issue.

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When we see Ruth coming into the nation of Israel, she became true Israel because of her marriage to Boaz.

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We see people in the Old Testament, there's rules and there's laws on how they could become Israelites.

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Well, at the time of Jesus, that was a very difficult process. You had to deal with a lot of racism from the

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Jews. You had to deal with a lot of hatred. You had to grind it out and bear with it.

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And if you became a Jew, let's say you were Roman, you wanted to become a Jew. And if you finally did, you would at best be a second class citizen.

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You would never be fully in. This is exemplified even in the way that the temple itself was constructed.

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At this time, the temple was one building and there was three layers. There was the inner layer, the

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Holy and then the Holy of Holies. Outside of that, there were courtyards. The first courtyard was called the

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Courtyard of the Priest. That's where only the priest could go in and worship and serve and offer sacrifices on behalf of Israel.

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Outside of that, there's now another courtyard. It's called the Courtyard of the Men. And at that time, heads of households would bring their animals into the

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Courtyard of the Men. They would leave their wives and their children in the Court of the Women. They would come and they would bring their animals to the priest and they would offer those sacrifices on behalf of their family.

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Then they would leave the Court of the Men and they would, after they fellowship with some other brothers or whatever, they would leave the Court of the

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Men and they would go back and join their families in the Court of the Women. So that's the second courtyard. The third is the Court of the Women.

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That's where women and children were allowed to go. That's where the offering buckets were, where you could put your tithes and offerings.

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That's where fellowship and life happened. That's where people danced and rejoiced to the Lord. But outside of that, there was a fourth courtyard, and that was called the

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Courtyard of the Gentiles, or the Court of the Nations. This was supposed to be a place where the nations could come and worship

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God. This was supposed to be a place where they could come and pray. This was supposed to be a place where they could come and say, let's imagine that they're from Ethiopia.

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They come and they say, dear God, make it so that we can become like Israel, that we can know you.

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Make it so that we can know you in spirit and in truth. They were coming there to pray. Jesus, even when he cast out these money changers and stuff, he says, my house is supposed to be a house of prayer.

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The nations were supposed to come and be welcomed. You're supposed to lay out the red carpet for them and say, come and pray.

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We're all supposed to be looking forward to this moment where all the nations of the world become true Israel. And they did not welcome them.

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They did not lay out the red carpet. In fact, there's examples of this in the Bible.

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There's a man named Lucius Vitellius. Lucius Vitellius is a

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Syrian governor of Rome. So he's top level Roman. He's not the emperor, but he's a

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Roman governor of a Roman province. He has all kinds of power and authority. And he records for us that he came to the to see what the

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Passover was all about. What an opportunity for Israel to welcome him in and say, this is who

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God is. And imagine the governor of Syria goes away from there, overjoyed at who

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God is, changed for the rest of his life. He rules differently. He leads differently. What an opportunity that they totally squandered.

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His recording to us is that it was that he could not enter past the gate of the

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Gentiles, and he dared not do it because it would set off a war between the people. He walked away saying, even though I'm a governor,

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I'm damaged goods. God doesn't want me. God doesn't care. His people hate me. We see this in the

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New Testament, where Paul is accused of this very thing in Acts chapter 21, 27 through 29.

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The Jews lied about Paul in order to get the crowd turned against him so they would arrest him and kill him.

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Now watch what their accusation was. When the seven days were almost over, the Jews from Asia, upon seeing him in the temple, began to stir up the crowd and they lay hands on him, crying out, men of Israel, come to our aid.

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This is the man who preaches to all men everywhere against our people and the law and this place.

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And besides, he's even brought Greeks into the temple. Can you believe it? And he has defiled the holy place for they have previously seen

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Trophimus, the Ephesian, in the city with him. And they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.

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This is the backdrop for John chapter 12, where the Greeks are coming to Christ. This is the animosity that the

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Jews had towards them. And they were coming anyway. They were coming anyway. Because when

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God begins that good work in you, he will draw you even if you're persecuted, even if you're hated, even if you are judged, even if you are looked down upon.

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These are the Greeks that we see in John chapter 12. And something caused them to seek

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Jesus. They came to seek Judaism. They came to seek Yahweh. But something changed where they now left the temple and they start looking for Jesus.

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Why did that happen? Verse 21 says, the Gentiles, these, then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying,

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Sir, we wish to see Jesus. What happened that made them want to seek

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Christ? Now, first of all, we need to understand what a contrast this is, of course.

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The Pharisees are wanting Jesus dead. They're the Jews. They want the God who made them to die.

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They had the Old Testament. They had the prophets. They had everything. And yet they were so blind. Look at these

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Greeks. They have nothing to go on other than the fact that they're interested and intrigued in Jesus.

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And they say, we want to see this man. What a contrast between the Jewish leadership and the aristocracy who should have bowed the knee and worshiped

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Jesus. Now, why are they coming to Jesus? Well, the first reason, maybe, is they heard about Lazarus.

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They heard about this man who was raised from the dead. You can't keep quiet, even in an era without the internet, you can't keep quiet when a dead man, four days dead, raises back to life.

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At this point, Jesus entered into the national conversation. At that time, you could say that that event went viral.

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What in the world? We'll have to remove this part of the sermon.

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Oh, my goodness. Maybe this will be my cross to bear.

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I get stung while I preach the gospel. Maybe we should just...

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He was a football player, not a baseball player. I told you all we need to pray that the

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Lord would protect us from the enemy. All right.

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Why were the Greeks coming? Well, perhaps they heard about Lazarus. Again, it's hard to keep news of a dead man being risen quiet.

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This would have been the talk over all the town. This would have been something that, you know, we say today went viral. This would have been something that everyone would have been talking about.

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Everyone would have heard about. Jesus entered into the national conversation of the life of Israel by this miracle.

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Everyone understood it. Even if you remember the two men walking on the road to Emmaus after Jesus' crucifixion, and Jesus shows up, and they don't even recognize

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Jesus. And they go walking with him. And Jesus is asking, what are you guys talking about? Tell me what you've been conversating about.

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And they say, are you the only person who hasn't heard these things? From Lazarus being raised from the dead to Jesus entering the city on a donkey to Jesus cleansing the temple, this city was abuzz with what

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Jesus was doing. And they were wondering what these things meant.

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So the Greeks would have heard about this, even though they just probably arrived in the city. They would have heard that these things were happening.

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So maybe that's part of it. I don't think that's primary why they came, but I think that may be part of it. The second reason why they may have came was because the temple had just been cleansed.

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Now, we have to do some work here because the gospels don't make this easy for us.

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For instance, John tells us that the temple cleansing happened in John 2 at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry.

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The synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke say that the temple cleansing happened right after he rode into the city.

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Matthew 21 says that he rode into the city, everyone was cheering, then he went immediately to the temple and he cleansed it, and now everybody's angry.

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So when did it happen? Did it happen at the beginning or did it happen at the end? I believe that it happened at the end, and I believe that it happened at the beginning.

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And now that we're all thoroughly confused, let me unpack what I mean. There's several different theories on when this happened.

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The first theory is that John's chronology is out of order. This is what scholars say.

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They say that John is not interested in chronology, he's interested in theology, and John is putting something that happened at the end of Jesus' life, he's taking it and then placing it at the beginning of Jesus' life for a theological reason.

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And the theological reason, they say, is because Jesus in Jerusalem and the gospel of John are at odds with one another.

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They're constantly, there's this bubbling hatred that the Jews have towards Jesus that began early on in Jesus' ministry.

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So they'll argue that they took the temple -cleansing moment as an example to show that this is how these things began, and they got worse in John 5,

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John 7, John 10, and they move it to the front and they say that this is John just telling an accurate story but an inaccurate chronology.

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I don't find that satisfying at all. And the reason I don't find that satisfying is because John is the most chronological of all the gospels.

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The very reason that we say that Jesus had a three and a half year ministry is because of John. The reason we know that he went to Jerusalem four times for four different Passovers is because of John.

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Why would the guy who wrote the most chronological gospel take one of the most important events and move it so far out of its current chronological order to just prove a point?

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That's the first thing. The second thing is the temple -cleansing at the end of Jesus' life caused the

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Jews to hate him so furiously that they murdered him. So if John's trying to tell the story of mild annoyance to deep frustration to murderous hatred, you would think that he would take a very minor event and put it in the beginning instead of a major event and then downplay it.

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That doesn't make any sense. The third is if John were trying to do that, he could have used other stories to do that.

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There's plenty of things that John could have mentioned to demonstrate that theme of hatred with Jerusalem or Jerusalem hating

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Jesus, but he didn't do it that way. So I don't find that theory satisfying at all.

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Second theory, John was right. The temple -cleansing happened in the beginning of Jesus' ministry and the other three gospels messed up the chronology.

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I also don't find that satisfying because three gospel writers, you're saying, cared more about their theological point than accuracy, so they took it out of the beginning and added it to the end.

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I just don't think that that makes any sense. So then we're left with the third, and I believe this is what is right.

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There were two temple -cleansings. There was one at the beginning of Jesus' ministry and there was one at the end.

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The early temple -cleansing is the one that John tells us about where Jesus goes into the temple and he cleanses it.

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Why? Because they filled the court of the Gentiles, that place where the Greeks were supposed to come and worship.

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They filled it with animals, with money changers, with industry, with business. They filled it so full that the

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Gentiles could not even come in and worship. And Jesus comes and he says, this is wildly inappropriate.

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He chases them out. He cleanses the temple and he purifies it. He says, my house will be called a house of prayer.

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That happened early in Jesus' ministry. At the end of Jesus' ministry, he comes back on his final week and guess what he sees?

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The animals are back. The tables are back. The industry is back.

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These Jews who were supposed to love the nations so hated them that they failed to uphold

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Jesus' purifying of the temple and they reverted back into their

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Gentile hating ways and Jesus infuriated, cleansed the temple again.

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Now, if that's the case, why didn't John mention it? Why didn't John mention the second temple cleansing? That's a question we need to wrestle with.

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This is where I would say that there is theological reasons for it. John mentions the temple cleansing because that's a prophetic act.

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That's something a prophet would do. And he mentions it in chapters one through eleven because that's John's telling of Jesus, the true and greater prophet.

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In John 12, John's theme has been kingship. He's the king who's been anointed.

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He's the king who's rode into the city. He's the king who the nations are coming to. In that theme,

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John, who was the latest gospel to write his book, said, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have already covered this part sufficiently and I'm going to continue to talk about Jesus as king.

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We know that John said in chapter 20 that if he wrote every single thing that Jesus did, there would not be enough room on earth to contain the books.

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So we've already learned from John that he's taking certain events, he's choosing certain things, and he's lining them up for a purpose, which is what?

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John 20, 33. I hope we have memorized it by this point. These things have been written so that you will believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the son of God. By believing in him, you will have life in his name. John's telling us that I didn't tell you everything.

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Imagine what heaven will be like when you walk up to John and you say, all right, brother, where's that library with all those books that you could have told us about?

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Tell me more. I want to know more. We've got all eternity. Just keep talking. Won't that be amazing?

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But for now, he didn't give us everything. I think that's an adequate reason for us to believe that there's two temple cleansings and John didn't feel the need to tell us about the second one because Matthew, Mark, and Luke already did.

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But he tells us about the first one and he tells us why it happened. Now, we have to bet our bottom dollar that the

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Greeks heard about this. Think about it. The temple is the area where they want to worship God and they've not been welcomed.

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And now you've got this Jewish man who comes in and he cleanses it and he chases out the

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Jews that were looking down their nose at the Greeks. And he chases out the ones who were crowding that area so that they would have nowhere to pray.

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You can imagine maybe the Greeks were standing there watching Jesus do this and they're like, I have got to meet this guy.

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I'm going to go pray first because I haven't been able to do this my entire life. But after that,

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I'm going to go find this guy and I'm going to talk to him. You have to imagine something like that happened. This would have been front page news on Jerusalem Post of that morning and it's likely that they would have been there to see it because they came to worship.

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That's the only reason a Gentile would go to Jerusalem is that they had some fantasy that the

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Jews would let them worship there and Jesus fulfilled their wildest dreams. So they want to come meet him.

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They want to come talk to him. So I think that's part of it. The first part, the second part,

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I think the two things that we've mentioned so far that he cleansed the temple and that they heard about the death and resurrection of Lazarus, those things are true.

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But ultimately, I think that the reason why they came to Jesus more than anything else is that they were drawn by God.

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We've learned in the Gospel of John so far that no one comes to Jesus unless the Father who sent him draws them to him.

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So maybe they saw Jesus cleanse the temple. Maybe they saw Lazarus walking around alive and he's like,

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I'm not dead anymore. I'm not dead yet. Maybe they saw those things.

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But ultimately, underneath all of it, God had been drawing them. God had been moving them.

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We don't think that the chronology of Jesus's life was up for grabs, do we? We don't think that Jesus was like, that his ministry could have been 10 years long.

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We think it was exactly as long as it was supposed to be. We think the Gentiles came to Jesus exactly when they were supposed to come.

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Jesus determined that he was going to die at Passover. Is it really that hard to believe that God purposely and sovereignly drew those

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Greeks to him on that day, on that week, right before his death?

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I don't think so. So here we have three reasons why these

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Gentiles were coming to Jesus, and it all sets off a new era of redemption where the world, the

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Gentiles, you and I, are now a part of that legacy. Those Greeks that sought

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Jesus were the first in line of 2 ,000 years of Gentiles seeking after him, of which we are now beneficiaries.

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And just as a side point, Paul talks about how magnificent and transforming the life of Christ actually is when he says in Ephesians 4, chapter 13 through 15,

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Shannon read it earlier, I want to read it again, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace, who made both groups,

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Jew and Gentile, into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.

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What do you think Paul's talking about? He's talking about the wall of the court of the

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Gentiles, that dividing wall of hostility, where if you were a Gentile and you walked in and you looked up and it says, if you're a

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Gentile, don't enter or we'll kill you. There was a sign that literally said that. Jesus, by his death, burial, and resurrection, broke down the wall of division, broke down the barrier, broke down all of these things that kept us away, so that now that we in Christ can come by abolishing in his flesh the enmity, which is in the law of the commandments, contained in the ordinances, so that in himself he might make the two,

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Jew and Gentile, into one man establishing peace. The dividing wall of hostility has been broken for you and I because of Christ Jesus.

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There's no more death threats. There's no more enmity. There's no more alienation. There's no more second -class citizenship.

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There's no more going to a city where someone's going to look down their nose at you and say, you're really not welcome, but we'll let you in anyway.

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There's none of that. We are now bemothered in Christ. Citizens, children, sons and daughters.

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His hour had come and his hour unleashed the greatest era of redemption in world history.

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Now, it's funny to me that they began looking for Jesus and they didn't go to Jesus directly.

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They went to Philip. Why did they go to Philip? Well, we have to ask that question. Look at verse 21.

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These, the Gentiles, then came to Philip who was from Bethsaida of Galilee. John doesn't waste words, so that's important.

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And they began asking him, saying, Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Why did the

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Gentiles go to Philip? They were looking for Jesus and they found Philip. Why? Well, maybe one reason is that Philip and Andrew were the only two disciples of Jesus who had

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Greek names. Every other disciple had Jewish names. Now, Peter had

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Peter, which is Petros, but his name was Simon. Andrew and Philip did not have

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Aramaic names. They did not have Hebrew names. They were the only ones who had

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Greek names and they were popular Greek names. Philip and Andrew. Maybe the second reason is that they had a

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Greek upbringing. Did you know that Philip and Andrew did not grow up in the land of Judah and they did not grow up in the boundary of Galilee?

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The town of Bethsaida is a town in Galilee that's outside the border.

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So that means Herod had no jurisdiction in Bethsaida. Philip the

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Tetrarch was the king over that region. This town was outside of Galilee so that even faithful Jews would have considered them

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Hellenistic Jews. They would have considered them outsiders because you weren't born into the real land that we live in.

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Now, the Jews themselves did not, or the common people at that time considered Bethsaida a part of it, but the religious elite did not.

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They said Bethsaida is outsiders. That's a Greek city, not a Jewish city. So when the

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Greeks come to talk to Philip, they're talking to someone who gets it. You grew up outside.

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You grew up as an outsider like us. You, Philip, probably have had the Jews look at you the same way the

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Jews looked at us. You get it. You understand it. No wonder why they went to them because as people, don't we tend to go to people who think like us and look like us and people that we feel comfortable with?

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They would have felt immediately comfortable with Philip and Andrew because they weren't insiders, they were outsiders.

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They would have grown up in a Greek thinking city, a Greek educated city, a Greek speaking city, and the

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Greeks would have picked up on it. Now, there's an example of this that I have from seminary.

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Our seminary that I went to at the time was a fairly faithful seminary. I no longer believe that it is, just as a side note.

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But there was all kinds of people who were there. There was people from America.

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There were people from Nigeria. There were people from Somalia. There were people from all over the place. Now, it is very easy, very easy to tell the difference between an

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American born, multiple generations born black man and a

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Nigerian. They walk differently. They talk differently. They carry themselves differently.

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Some of my best friends at seminary were Nigerian, but you could tell that they were from Nigeria. I can't even,

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I can't do their accent. They make really, really good food, by the way. But it's easy to tell the difference.

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It's easy for you. You're like, he wasn't born here. And you know,

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I don't really have to talk a lot for you to get that. I can tell you all day long that I was born in Rivia, and you don't believe me.

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I carry myself differently. I have funny habits that you don't have. I look at a car on center blocks and I'm like, huh, that's normal.

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It's just, we see that there's differences. Now, what's the reason that I'm bringing all of this up? Because these

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Greeks could relate to Philip and Andrew. They were like, these are my people.

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Now, how does that apply to us? Because Jesus is going to bring so many different kinds of people into his kingdom that there's not one person in the kingdom that can relate to all of them.

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There's people who Jesus wants to draw to his kingdom today that I can't reach.

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There's people that only you can reach. There's people who you look like, think like.

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Maybe you're an introvert and shy and they're like, man, I want to talk to that person because they get me.

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Maybe you're loud, bombastic and full of fire like my family. And you would scare away every single quiet, shy introvert on earth.

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And that's okay because there's loud, bombastic people who we can reach. All of us have been made by the hand of a loving

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God who knit us together in our mother's wombs. He gave us skill sets.

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He gave us personality traits. He gave us passions. He gave us physical features that are not wrong that he will use to reach the nations.

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There are things about you that he's going to use when you have a conversation with someone who doesn't know

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Christ and he's going to use those things for his glory to bring that person into the kingdom. The question is, are you willing to be used by Christ?

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When we talk about Jesus being king over all the nations and him wanting to do that through us,

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Ephesians chapter four and five doesn't say that it's through the pastors and through the missionaries and through the worship leaders and through the

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Bible translators that the kingdom will be one. It's through us. It says that the church is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, not for the ministry to happen by the church.

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The ministry is that you and I've been called to reach the nations. There's people in this room.

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For instance, Matt, I'm going to pick on you for a second. Matt is an excellent rapper and some of us are like,

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I don't even know what that means. Is he good at Christmas presents? But Matt can reach people

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I can't. You can reach people that I can't. Maybe some of you are in the financial world. You can reach people that I can't. My mind doesn't work that way.

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There's people here who the Lord will use at your job. There's people here who the

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Lord will use in your family. Your family is not my family. The Lord maybe put you and your family for a purpose. You remember the book of Esther where she says, or where Mordecai says, perhaps the

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Lord raised you up for a time such as this. Perhaps, perhaps the Lord put you exactly where you're at with the exact friends that you have, with the exact family that you have, or the exact job that you have, with the exact house location that you have to reach the nations.

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Will you do it? A couple of things I would say is pray about it.

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Don't run out of here today and start yelling at people, although that would get people's attention.

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Pray. You know, some of the most interesting prayers that God has ever answered for me is when

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I've said, Lord, I want a disciple. I want to be a disciple maker. I want to help someone else grow in their faith.

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But Lord, I don't know who you would even possibly have for me to do that with. And it's kind of awkward to go up to somebody and say, hey, can

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I disciple you? Maybe you have that relationship. And I said, Lord, just help me. I'm weak.

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I don't have infinite knowledge like you. Will you help me? Will you help? And then that very week, someone would come up to me and say, man,

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I just really want to learn how to have a relationship with God. I want to learn how to study my Bible. I want to learn this. I want to learn that.

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And I would in that moment say, God just answered my prayer. And I'd say, you know, I just prayed about this.

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Why don't we meet once a week and talk about it? Do you have a desire?

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Do you have a heart to want to do these things? And if you do pray about it, I'm not even telling you to go to go make a conversation with anybody yet.

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I'm saying pray for an opportunity. Pray that the Lord would use you in his kingdom. Pray that the Lord would raise you up in such a way that you can tell someone else about Jesus and help them understand who he is.

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Help them read the Bible. Help them pray. Help them walk with Jesus. Just pray about it. Second thing you can do after you pray is prepare.

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We got to read our Bibles like we are reading them for the nations. Oftentimes we read the

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Bible because we want what's in there for us for the day. And that's not a bad thing. We want to read the

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Bible so that we can be inspired, so that we can walk with the Lord, so that we can have courage, so that we can go to work. But you don't read the

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Bible just for yourself. You read it for the nations. Think about it like this. It would be morally wrong for a parent to feed themselves and not feed their children, right?

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Would it be morally wrong for the parents to sit around eating steak and not give their children any food at all?

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Yes, it would. As Christians, we've got to come to a place where we're no longer baby Christians, who are only focused on ourselves.

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And we grow up into maturity. What does it mean when you grow up into maturity? You're not thinking about yourself anymore.

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You're thinking about your children. There's lots of spiritual children in this congregation and in the world that need someone who's mature to come alongside of them and say, let me help you.

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How do you become mature? You put away childish things. You begin acting like an adult. You begin reading your

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Bible like you want to grow up in Christ. You begin reading your Bible saying this, Lord, I'm going to read your word today and I'm going to read it so intently and so passionately and I'm going to memorize this verse.

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And you know what, Lord, if you let me talk to someone about this, I'm going to tell them. And then you wait and you watch for an opportunity.

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And if the Lord brings it up, they say, what were you reading today? Let me tell you, I was just reading the book of John.

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The nations are coming to Christ. Let me tell you about that. We don't have to be ashamed of Jesus. Read the

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Bible. We pray as if he is going to bring people in our life that we can share and we watch and we wait for opportunities.

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The Bible doesn't say that every single person in this room is supposed to stand on a street corner and yell at people. Now that's not,

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I'm not saying that there's not a ministry for someone sharing the word of God in a prophetic way like Jonah with Nineveh, but we are to pray.

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Peter says, always be ready and willing to give an answer for the hope that you have. Be ready and willing when they come to you and they ask you for the hope that you have, be ready to share it.

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Read the Bible like that, pray like that, and point them to Christ.

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Those are the things that I would say is pray, prepare and point people to Jesus. And you and I will get to see the nations expand through Christ.

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Now, Jesus says, we're going to, we're going to land the plane here pretty soon. Jesus answered them saying, the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.

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Then he says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies and it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

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He who, he who loses his life, loses it.

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And he who hates his life in this world will keep it unto eternal life. He says in verse 26, if anyone serves me, he must follow me and where I am there, my servant will be also.

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If anyone serves me, the father will honor him. What we see happening here is that the Greeks are coming to Jesus.

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They come to Philip because he's comfortable to them and Philip takes them and he points them to Jesus.

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And the very first thing Jesus says to them is the gospel. Jesus says that just like a grain of seed that falls to the earth and dies, then it will bear much fruit.

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You know what Jesus is talking about? He's talking about himself. He's that seed who's going to die and enter into the earth.

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And because he dies and enters into the earth, he's going to rise and he's going to have much fruit. Jesus is saying that I am going to, in a couple of days, face the scandal of the cross.

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And I am going to be murdered on behalf of my people. But because I die and because I rise,

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I'm going to bring life to my people and I'm going to bring fruit to my people. And I am the reason why they are going to exist.

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So now how do we share like Philip? We don't share the latest fad in Christian news or in Christian book reading.

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We share the gospel. We pray that God would give us an opportunity. We prepare by reading the

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Bible as if we're going to share it that day. We point people to Jesus by pushing them towards the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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The gospel is that we were dead in our sin and that only in Christ can we be raised and that only in Christ can we bear fruit.

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And only in Christ can we do what Christ has done and lay down our life and die so that we might live.

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I believe God wants to use each and every single person in this room to expand his kingdom. The question is, will you pray and will you be willing?

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Let's pray. Lord, we see in this passage that you use the most unlikely disciple out of a lot, a man named

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Philip. A man who grew up his entire life feeling like he was an outsider, but a man that you chose nonetheless.

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Lord, maybe there were moments in his life where he thought you chose him out of pity. Maybe there were moments in his life where he thought he was the least among the disciples.

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And yet, Lord, you're the one, he's the one that you used. Lord, every single person in this room can be used by you.

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The greatest lie of Satan is that that we can't be used. We're too broken, we're too weak, we're too this, we're too that.

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Lord, would you break that lie and would you cause us to have confidence?

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Would you cause us to pray with expectation? Would you cause us to read our Bible hoping that we get to share what we just learned in it?

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Would you cause us to point people to Jesus and, Lord, I pray that revival would break out in New England because of a church, a single church even, that captured a vision for what it meant to expand

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Jesus's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, let your kingdom expand for your glory and,