The Death that Bears Fruit | Sermon 10/08/2023

Apologia Utah

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John chapter 12.

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We're going to be in verses 20 through 26 today.

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The title of the sermon is the death that bears fruit.

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The death that bears fruit.

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So starting in verse 20 of the gospel, according to John chapter 12, hear now the words of God.

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Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast.

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These then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

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Philip came and told Andrew.

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Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus.

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And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

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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.

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He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.

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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.

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Thus ends the reading of God's magnificent and holy word.

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Let's pray as a church body.

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God, I pray that you would show us exactly what you want us to see in this today.

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God, I pray that you would not simply inform your people, but transform your people today by your word.

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God, these are heavy, heavy truths.

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These are heavy words of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I pray, Lord, that this wouldn't simply be something that just passes over us and we forget it the next day.

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Lord, but I pray that this would have an impact on me and on your people.

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Help us to see, Lord, these truths.

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God, help me to speak in a way that is helpful and clear, and let it always be true.

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I pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus.

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Amen.

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Well, when kings become coronated, they often receive delegations and visits from neighboring nations.

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These ambassadors from other nations come and pay homage and bring gifts to the king.

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If you remember, we actually talked about that last week, right, with the triumphal entry and what some of the coronations of kings have looked like throughout history.

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And after Solomon had become king, it says that the queen of Sheba brought camels, and these camels were loaded up with spices and tons of gold, and the Bible even records that there was precious gems, and they were presented before Solomon by the queen of Sheba.

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You might even recall in the gospel of Matthew or Luke, when Jesus was born, wise men who were Gentile kings, we call them the Magi sometimes, these men from the east came and they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

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This was a gift to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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And this is a typical practice when visiting a king.

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You don't come empty-handed, okay? And so, again, we saw last week Christ's triumphal entry, the coming of the king.

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The king entered into Jerusalem riding on a white stallion shining with the rays of heaven.

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No, he didn't.

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He came riding in lowly, gentle, riding on not even a large donkey or a mule or something a little larger.

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He came riding in on the colt, the foal of a donkey, a young donkey that could probably barely carry his weight.

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And the people, if you remember, they put palm branches down and they shouted, "'Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the king of Israel.'" They came to see Jesus.

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So, in our text today, we don't have wise men from the east, but Greek men from the west.

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Greek men from the west have come to see Jesus.

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Just after the Pharisees exaggeratingly proclaimed that the whole world's going after Jesus, oh, look, the whole world's going after Jesus.

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And they said that in a facetious and mocking sort of way, but indeed, immediately after the Pharisees proclaimed, look, the whole world's going after him, Greeks come down and go, we're here to see Jesus.

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It's amazing.

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So, look at verses 20 through 22.

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It says, "'Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast.

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These then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, "'Sir, we wish to see Jesus.'" Philip came and told Andrew.

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Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus." Now, some have said that these are simply Jews.

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These Greeks are just, they're Jews, they're from the dispersion back all the way hundreds of years ago from the Assyrian captivity when they were dispersed abroad.

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And these are Jews who are making pilgrimage to the feast, but they're Greek.

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But I would say the New Testament writers, to my knowledge, have never called what's called diaspora, which is the dispersed ones, the Jews who were dispersed throughout the known world at that time.

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The New Testament writers never called Jews who were of the dispersion Greeks.

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They've never been called Greeks, ever, not once.

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These are most definitely, in my opinion, Gentiles.

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These were not Jews.

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These were Gentiles.

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Now, if they're coming to the feast to worship, it does say they're coming to worship.

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That's in the text.

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I believe that they're doing it then either as God-fearers, which was a typical term in the book of Acts, God-fearers, who were Gentiles that either sort of in a syncretistic way mixed Judaism worship, the worship of the Lord, with their own worship of their false gods, or exclusively only the Lord.

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They are possibly what's called proselytes.

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You see, sometimes Pharisees or other Jews would go out to other nations, and they would make what's called proselytes.

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That's where the word proselytizing comes.

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That's evangelizing.

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It's making converts.

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And so these could be Gentile proselytes who have full-on converted from their pagan practices, and they're now in Judaism, but they're Gentiles.

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Okay? So with that said, there is no indication of why they've made this request to see Jesus, but these Greeks first approached Philip.

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Why Philip? Well, John gives us a little bit of a hint.

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I'm not sure.

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I'm going to have to read into it a bit.

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Philip and Andrew were both from the Galilee region.

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They're both from Bethsaida, which was, if you know, if you look at the map during that time, you know, so you have Jerusalem down here, you have Galilee up here, Nazareth, you have Bethsaida, and near there in the north would be many Greek-founded cities at that time.

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So Greeks had come down, they had made more cities, and just near Galilee and Bethsaida would be a town called the Decapolis.

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Decapolis.

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That was a Greek-founded city.

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So in fact, men like Andrew, men like Philip, even Jesus probably grew up speaking Greek.

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They lived in the north.

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They would have spoken Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew for special rituals, things like that.

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So the north side of Judah would have had way more interaction with those who are Greeks.

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So maybe, not only was it where they were closer to the Greeks, but maybe somehow they knew Philip in some capacity or had some sort of connection.

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Again, we don't fully know.

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But what we do know is they wanted to see Jesus.

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They told Philip, sir, we wish to see Jesus.

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And it's interesting, in my study at the beginning of this, I had to mention this.

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What a cool fact.

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I don't know how many churches you've grown up going to, but there's...this is what's called a pulpit.

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And I thank the mission for letting us use their building, and I'm sure they would agree with me.

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I know actually Pastor Rich Wood, one day he hopes for a real good big wooden pulpit.

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There's something special about a pulpit.

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And on the outside to you guys, you know, the churches I've been a part of, you see wonderful stained wood.

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It's beautiful.

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But I can't get away with it here.

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In fact, I wish I could because now you see like half-drink water bottles, you know, books right here, stuff like that.

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If you look behind a lot of pulpits across America, you'll see like a little fan for the guys who get really hot like me really easily.

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You'll see a little heater for the other type of guys.

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You'll see papers and random Bibles and books and probably crumpled up water bottles.

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And I mean, the backs of pulpits are just...there's a reason why they're so guarded.

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But anyways, how is this relevant? What am I talking about? Well, it's interesting.

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One brother was saying he was preaching at a church, and he was invited to preach there.

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And when he came up to the pulpit, there was actually...there's often inscriptions in the front of a pulpit for the body to see.

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But this was an inscription in wood for only the preacher to see.

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And you know what it said? It was from this.

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It said, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

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And I was like, wow, that's really powerful that the preacher might come up and see inscribed right here, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

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May you see Jesus today.

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Not see it in a weird way, obviously, where the pastor is acting like that, but you would see him through the text.

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You would see the Lord Jesus.

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You would see Him and love Him.

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So anyways, what an amazing way to use this verse of these Greeks.

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But anyhow, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

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There's no reason stated as to why they wanted to see Him.

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Why did they want to see Jesus? It's possible that the Greeks have heard of some of the miracles that Jesus has performed.

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That's possibility.

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Or something to consider, we preached...we saw in John chapter 2, the first temple cleansing.

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And if you go back to that sermon from John 2, I talked about how the synoptic gospels, synoptic means seeing together, that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they're seen together.

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They're very similar.

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And those gospels record a second temple cleansing that happens late in Jesus's earthly ministry.

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Actually, it would be happening right after the triumphal entry.

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So my belief is that right now, Jesus has come into Jerusalem for the final time before His crucifixion.

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The triumphal entry has happened, and He's come already and done the second temple cleansing.

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He's come into the temple grounds, and He's seen all those things, and He overturned the money changers' tables, and He sent everyone out.

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And what's interesting is what Mark shares what He said.

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It's different from John 2.

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It's a second temple cleansing.

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Jesus cries out in Mark chapter 11, verse 17, "...My house, is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations?" And that's different.

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Greek God-fearers understood their inferiority to ethnic Jews.

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They knew it.

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They understood.

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There was what was called the dividing wall.

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Did you know that converts to Judaism who were Greek or Gentile, they couldn't go past a certain place? They couldn't see God.

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They couldn't come into the temple.

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They had an outer court.

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So those who were Gentiles but converted to Judaism understood they had some sort of inferiority to their Jewish spiritual brothers.

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But in Mark, in the second temple cleansing, Jesus demonstrates that all nations should be able to come to the mountain of God and worship.

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They should all.

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And so maybe they've heard this.

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Maybe they're in town.

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In fact, it says they're in town to worship at the feast.

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And maybe they were there or outside in that outer court.

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They heard what happened.

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Maybe they could even hear His booming voice.

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My house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations.

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And so they're seeking Jesus.

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How can He make that happen? How can we be a part of this? All nations.

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So Philip and Andrew come together, and they determine they should probably tell Jesus that these Greeks want to see Him.

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And let's see how Jesus responds.

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Go to verse 23.

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And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

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The Son of Man to be glorified.

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The hour is here.

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Now, this is interesting, okay? I want to address something here.

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I want to address why I believe Jesus sees His hour as now finally here at the inquiry of the Greeks.

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Why would Jesus at the inquiry of Greeks say, My hour is now here, right? How is that? How is them, these Greeks, seeking Jesus the catalyst for His coming hour being finally here? So let me address that.

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Remember God's original promise in Genesis 12, that when the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, He said He'd make him into a great nation.

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Abraham and his posterity would be blessed.

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And the Lord said, In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

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So not only those of physical Abrahamic lineage, but the families of the entire earth will be blessed, not curses, blessings.

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What kind of blessing? We'll get into that.

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God told Israel they'd have a special role in being His covenant people.

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In Isaiah chapter 42, verse 6, He says, I am the Lord.

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I have called you in righteousness.

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I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you.

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And look, He says, And I will appoint you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the nations.

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They were to be a light to the nations, that you could see the deeds of these covenant people of God, and other nations would go, What a God that they have.

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May we have a God like that, the one true God.

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They were to be such a light to the whole world, that the people would want to have what they have.

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But they failed.

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I think Isaiah is not simply talking about the people, but I think he's pointing to the very one of Israel who would come and be the light, the light, the light of the world, as we saw in John.

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That light that takes the nations, even Gentile nations, out of darkness.

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And John was hinting at this in our last section of the Triumphal Entry, because if you remember, Jesus fulfilled not only Psalm 118, but He fulfilled Zechariah 9 in the Triumphal Entry.

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And in the context of Zechariah 9, that prophecy on Jesus being the king riding on a colt of a donkey, was that God, if you remember, would take a believing remnant even out of Gentile nations.

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He talked about Egypt, and He talked about other nations, and He says, I'm going to make a remnant out of you, a believing remnant.

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He said, I'm going to make you like Judah.

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He said that to people who were God's covenant people.

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He said that to other nations.

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I'm going to make you like Judah.

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And so, the Pharisees then, as I said, in their hyperbolic and dramatic complaints of Jesus, they actually accurately spoke to the fact that the world is going after Jesus Christ.

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And this is the evidence right here.

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The Greeks have come to see Jesus.

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The world is going after Him.

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And so, that's the first part.

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In addition to this, and here's where you need to tune in, okay, the question is, once again, why is it that Jesus' hour has come at the inquiry of Greeks, okay? Here's where I think it's going.

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So, we have the background of the promise of Gentile nations coming to Christ, but here it is.

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In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus says all these different things that are going to happen with AD 70.

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He says, Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days, for there will be a great distress upon the land and wrath to the people.

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They will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all the nations.

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And here it is, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles.

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That happened.

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History records that.

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Josephus, the Jewish historian, records that Rome came and the emperor came and they destroyed the Jewish nation.

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But he says this, all this is going to happen until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

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The times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

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This is the trigger that's been pulled.

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Paul speaks to a very similar thing.

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He says, especially in Romans chapter 11 and Romans 9, he says the time of the Gentiles must be fulfilled.

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And so, what I'm trying to say is that Jesus has been healing.

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He's been teaching.

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He's been reaching the Jews, His people, His kin in His earthly ministry.

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But now, Greeks have come to see Him.

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That is to say, the time of the Gentiles has officially begun.

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The time of the Gentiles has officially begun.

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And the time of the Gentiles means what? A partial hardening of the hearts of those of Israel.

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A partial hardening of the hearts of those of Israel.

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And that hardening of those in Israel will result in a desire for murder.

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We're talking people who shouted, Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

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And then Jesus is standing before the people.

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And a lot of those people who were there when He came in and they put palm branches down, a hardening came over them.

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And all of a sudden you had the people going, crucify Him, crucify Him.

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So, this hardening occurs.

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And the time of the Gentiles begins.

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And only a remnant of Israel will recognize their Messiah.

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That's true.

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Paul records that.

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Paul says, if only I could give up my salvation, right? I'm paraphrasing.

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If only I could give up my salvation for the sake of my kin.

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That all these Jewish people have rejected their Messiah.

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I'm not trying to say that there hasn't been many.

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There were tons of Jews that turned to Christ in that first century.

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Tons.

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Tons.

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But not nearly the amount that you would hope for with the coming of their Messiah.

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Because as Paul said, a partial hardening has occurred.

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The time of the Gentiles has happened.

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And so this goes right in line with Jesus's statement.

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The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

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At the coming of the Greeks, seeking to meet Jesus, Jesus identifies this moment as His hour beginning.

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His Father is drawing Gentiles to Himself, preparing the hearts of Gentile men and women to receive the gospel of Christ.

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And it begins now.

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The acceptance of the Messiah by the Greeks is also, at the very same time, the rejection of the Messiah by the majority of Jews.

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So we've been seeing this whole time in John that Jesus's hour was something that was described in the future.

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It was in previous chapters.

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It was always a future event.

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This time, it's finally changed.

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John called Jesus's hour the time that He is glorified.

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He said that earlier.

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We saw that now.

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Jesus Himself calls His hour the time that He is glorified.

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What does He mean, the hour of His glorification? This is His crucifixion.

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This is His crucifixion.

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The hour has come.

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And honestly, that is very profound because this is one of the most horrific and tragic events that the world has ever seen, and yet the most glorious at the same time.

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It only makes sense in light of who Christ is.

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He came into Jerusalem, called a king, and His glorification will not be a golden crown, but it'll be a crown of thorns upon His head.

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It will not be jewelry on His hands, but it'll be holes through His hands.

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And it will not be a throne that He sits upon, but a cross on which He hangs.

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That's His glorification.

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His honor is exchanged with shame.

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His power is exchanged with weakness.

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His grandeur is exchanged with humility.

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This is His glorification.

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And He says the Son of Man instead of the Son of God.

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I think He uses Son of Man here instead of Son of God to kind of hint at the fact of His humanity and what He will go through, the suffering that He will face.

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The Son of Man title also reminds us of the one who comes up to the Ancient of Days in the book of Daniel chapter 7, who receives a kingdom, a dominion that is everlasting.

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And so the way to kingly glory is through crucifixion.

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And that makes sense.

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Remember in the temptation in Matthew chapter 4 when the devil tempts Jesus and he takes Him to the high place and he shows Him all the kingdoms of the world and he says, if you just bow down and worship me, I'll give you all this.

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And so there's been this temptation that Jesus has never taken, that He's never sinned upon, He's sinless.

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But there's been this carrot hanging out there of having all the nations right now, being a king right now.

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We even saw that when He fed the 5,000 in previous chapters where it says, and they tried to make Him a king and He hid Himself.

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He actually ran away so that they wouldn't make Him a king right then and there.

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And what happened in the triumphal entry? Our king.

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And what did they want? I told you this.

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They wanted a military, powerful king who will give them the renown of old, the Davidic reign that they had once before, that wealth and prosperity, being not under the occupation of foreign invaders.

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They wanted someone else and Satan himself offered it to Jesus.

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If you just bow down and worship me right now, I'll give you all this.

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And so that is a bootleg kingdoms.

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What does Jesus have to do then? He calls it His hour of glorification because the place where Satan and the world thought Christ was dead was actually the place where He rises and lives forevermore and becomes the king He always was.

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It's incredible.

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That's why it's glorification.

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Something much bigger is being indicated to you right here.

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The Lord then says in verse 24, He's going to make several comments explaining His opening statement about glorification.

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So He talked about His glorification.

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Now He's going to make three comments expanding more of what He's talking about with His glorification.

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It's the hour of glorification because when He goes to the cross and He dies and He goes into the ground, He comes back out living and His life will result in life for a multitude of people.

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It will bear fruit.

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Let's think about this parable in more detail.

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You see, a seed at the time that it is still in the fruit on a tree or on the stalk of a plant, when it's still connected, it's kind of alive.

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It's part of something that's living in that sense, a seed.

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But when the seed falls out of the fruit because the fruit dries up or the kernel of wheat falls off the wheat stalk, it becomes dead in a way.

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It becomes something that is inert, inactive.

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You see, I think we even have seed packets that we've been meaning to plant for several years.

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And seeds in a seed packet, what do they do? They do nothing.

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They're just there.

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They don't do anything.

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They look insignificant.

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But if the seed dies and the grain head of wheat in Jesus' example dies and it goes into the earth, then something's going to happen.

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And it's truly amazing.

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God takes what was dead and makes it a living thing.

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It seems almost unnatural, but a seed will produce life.

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It'll produce fruit.

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But to do that, it must die.

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It must die first.

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And when you think about it, when God filled the earth with trees, it says He filled the earth with abundance of trees and plants that bore fruit for eating.

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People say, what came first, the seed or the tree? I think it's obvious that the tree came first and there was fruit on them.

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And then the cycle of seeds falling and reproduction and replication took place.

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But this has been the case from the very beginning.

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If you keep a seed as is, if you just take a little small seed, it remains alone.

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It does nothing.

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If you just have a seed and it's dry and it's just sitting on your counter, it'll do nothing.

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It'll remain alone.

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But if it dies and goes into the earth, it'll rise and become a living plant.

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And that plant will bear fruit.

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And when it bears fruit, it's no longer alone.

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It's no longer by itself.

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Much more comes as a result of that.

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Okay? Now, right now it's apple season in northern Utah.

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In fact, if you go to these free pages or KSL, a lot of people are like, especially the elderly, say, oh my goodness, I've got three mature apple trees and I've got too many apples.

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And they offer some of that for free.

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In fact, my wife drags me to these places all the time.

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And no, I benefit highly from that.

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But anyways, there's these apples everywhere right now.

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And when you think about it, one apple, a single apple on average has about five to upwards of eight seeds inside of that apple, five to eight seeds in that one piece of fruit.

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And when you think about a mature apple tree, it can produce in its prime 700 to 800 apples.

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That's a lot of apples.

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Some even report more.

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So we're talking about a possibility of 6,400 seeds in just one year's crop on one single tree.

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And there's thousands of trees in northern Utah of just apples alone, 6,400 seeds.

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And so when you think about that, when you think about one crop of one apple tree and the seeds that it will produce, if they go into the ground and die and rise again and produce fruit, we're talking the image of endless replication, reproduction, exponential growth.

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You do that a little bit, if everyone took every single seed from every apple tree in northern Utah and we all planted it and we all grew apples, there would be apples everywhere.

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It would be unreal.

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We'd be probably full of rats, I think, or something like that.

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Right? They'd be rotting on the ground.

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We'd have to ship them off.

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But that's the idea.

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If He dies, if Jesus dies and goes into the earth and rises, He will undoubtedly, unstoppably produce fruit.

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That's what it is.

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Hallelujah.

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He will replicate the life that He possesses.

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He will give life to others in an exponential way.

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He will not remain alone.

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He will not remain the only living one because Christ is living, right? He's God.

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But it says that we're deadener, trespassers, and sins.

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But if He dies, if the living one dies and goes into the ground, He will rise again and He will produce fruit.

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He will produce fruit.

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Things will become living.

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And so the children of God are the fruit.

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You and I, Christians, are the fruit.

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That the seed has gone into the ground, rose and produced fruit.

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That's Christ producing us.

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We are the fruit.

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And so the children of God come into existence when the unique Son of God dies.

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That's the reality.

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One commentator says of this, while death is normally unnatural, that's true.

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From the beginning, it was not so.

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There wasn't supposed to be death.

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He says, while death is normally unnatural and death is normally entirely unproductive, this death of the seed or the Son is quite the opposite in that it becomes the means by which natural things are produced and in great quantity.

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In a strange sense, reflecting on the illustration, the death of the seed, though still death, becomes known more for its life-producing results than for its death.

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You see, Christ is, of course, known for His death.

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But what He ought to be known for most, what should overshadow that crucifixion most, is the fact that He's alive.

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And He's alive today.

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And He's alive forevermore.

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Life overshadowing death with Christ.

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And this is the main aspect to why the dying and rising is His glorification.

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Every single person who spiritually and physically resurrects will glorify and worship and praise the first one from the dead, Jesus Christ the righteous.

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That's true.

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That's true.

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Now, Paul speaks to the mystery of this final resurrection of us all on the last day in 1 Corinthians 15 in a similar way that I think Jesus speaks about it here.

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And so Paul talks about the fact that a seed is kind of an ugly thing, a bit.

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A seed is just something that's small, insignificant.

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You know, there's some weird-looking seeds out there in the world if you have a green thumb, right? And so a seed goes into the earth and it comes out and it looks so different.

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Some of the most beautiful flowers were the ugliest seeds.

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That could probably be a saying for, like, some sort of child coming into adulthood.

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Sorry, I'm just kidding.

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I'm just playing.

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I've got to wake you guys up.

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So he talks about how it's sown this one way and it comes out another way.

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I even think about it like this.

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A seed is so small.

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A seed could be thrown into water and it'll go downstream and you'll never see it again.

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That's true.

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You'll never see it again.

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You could throw a seed into the air and the wind takes it and you'll never find it again.

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But if you take a seed from a redwood and you plant it in the ground in Northern California, then come back in a hundred years and you have a huge sequoia tree.

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The kind of trees that some of them are hollowed out and SUVs have driven through them.

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I've seen that myself.

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These huge sequoia redwoods.

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But back when it was a seed, it was nothing.

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It was insignificant.

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And so Paul talks about when these seeds, us, when we go into the ground, we come out differently.

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Let me read it to you.

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Think about this as I read this in 1 Corinthians 15.

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It's also in your handout.

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He says, But someone will say, How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come? You fool, that which you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

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Jesus said that.

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And that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be.

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So when you and I die and we go into the ground, we're not going to rise with the same body.

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That's what he says here.

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But a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or something else, but God gives it a body just as he wished.

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And to each of the seeds a body of its own.

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All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of man and another flesh of beasts and another flesh of birds and another fish.

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There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one and the glory of the earthly is another.

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There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars.

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The star differ from star in glory.

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So also, here it is, so also is the resurrection of the dead.

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It is sown in a perishable body, a body that can die.

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It is raised an imperishable body, one that can't die.

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It is sown in dishonor.

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It is raised in glory.

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It is sown in weakness.

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It is raised in power.

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It is sown a natural body, but it is raised a spiritual body.

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If there is a natural body, there's also a spiritual body, he says.

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You see, Pastor Wade, why are we speaking about the resurrection right now? It's because it's directly tied to the death and resurrection of Christ.

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If he didn't die and go into the earth and rise again and bear much fruit, then we would all die and stay in the ground.

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We would all die and stay in the ground.

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We would be sown in a perishable body, and we wouldn't rise in an imperishable body.

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We would stay a dead seed.

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But because of Christ, the holy seed, because he died and rose again and bore much fruit, we too are raised in the likeness of the one who went before us.

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Paul says that because Christ is the first fruits from the dead.

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He's the first one to rise, and he's risen with this imperishable body.

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You too will rise one day in a body that never decays, never gets old, never gets those aches or those gray hairs, or I even wish I just had gray hairs, right? So that's huge, you guys.

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So therefore, the emphasis is not on the life we have now in this world, but on the life to come.

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That's what Jesus is pointing us to, and he states that in the next verse.

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Go to verse 25 in our text.

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Jesus says, he who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.

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He's pointing us to something beyond this life.

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A seed that figuratively loves its own life would fail to produce fruit, and likewise, a fruit that doesn't recognize it owes all credit for its own existence to the seed means it doesn't know its purpose.

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As the Scripture says, we were bought with a price, okay? We were bought with a price.

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Because a seed that wants to remain a seed will never die and go into the ground and rise again.

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If Jesus loved his life more than he loved yours, he would have never gone to the cross.

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He would have taken the offer that Satan gave him, and he would have saved his own life.

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But he doesn't love his own life more than he loves yours.

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That's what's crazy, is the Son of God loved your life more than he loved his life, and he died for you when he could have taken the easy way out.

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He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it.

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He showed us that example.

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He showed us that.

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You see, the value that we have now in our Christian lives is not innate, which means it's not inside of us.

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Our value doesn't come from in us, outward.

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It comes from the seed who is Jesus Christ.

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It comes from outside of us.

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Now, you may have noticed in this verse, we have opposing words here.

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Loving life, losing life, hating life, keeping life.

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As I said before, these are some very heavy words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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It seems to me He's trying to get us to understand something very, very crucial here, and I'll seek to explain it, and I pray that the Lord impresses this upon us, okay? He who loves his life here, and I'm going to add the qualifier that I think Jesus adds, which is meant for both the loving and the hating.

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He adds this phrase, in the world, in this world.

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So I'm going to add that to the rest of the phrase, because in the Greek, it belongs to all of it.

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He who loves his life here in this world, or of this world, will lose it.

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The word lose is a polio me.

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It's actually the word for perish or destruction.

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Jesus used this exact word in John chapter 10, when he said that the good shepherd holds his sheep, excuse me, and he will let none of them perish.

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Same word.

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If one loves their life in this world, it will perish.

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If you love your life in this world over Jesus, over the life to come, you will go to destruction.

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That's what it says.

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And church, honestly, I think so very often we love our lives too much.

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I think to myself, if at the thought of dying tomorrow as an individual in Christ and going to be with him, can I say, like Paul the apostle to the Philippians, that I would, quote, think it far better? Could you actually say that to someone with honesty? Oh man, if I went to be with Christ next week and he took me home, that would be, quote, far better, as he says.

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You know, I know as dutiful Christians, what we might say when prompted with that question, but what does our heart really say when we're asked something like that, okay? Is going to be with Jesus better than the life in this world? The answer ought to be yes.

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And it can be yes while at the same time understanding that living on is service to Christ and others, which is not bad.

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That's good.

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It is good for you to keep living, right? I can say both.

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It is good for you as a Christian to keep living.

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And I can also say at the very same time, if you're a Christian, it's good for you to go to be with Jesus.

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It is both.

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It's not neither or.

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It's both.

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I know how our families might feel if that were to happen.

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I'm not talking about that.

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I understand there's a lot of pain and hurt in that if some of us were taken already or taken next week.

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I'm trying to get you to think past that.

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I'm thinking in the form of ultimates right now.

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Is it ultimately better to be with Jesus? And it is yes.

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The answer is yes.

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But again, I want to add that qualifier.

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I'm talking about the life that this world offers.

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You hear that? I'm talking about the life that this world offers is not as good as being with Jesus.

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That is, when they use this term, the world, often in the New Testament, kosmos, it means the evil of this world, the evil system, the evil of this world.

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The kind of life that is being offered to us is antithetical to the one that Jesus gives us.

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And so if you struggle with this, if you struggle with this idea, maybe number one, you don't realize what awaits you.

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Okay? And that, though this may sound a bit morbid, we can have a healthy and happy expectation to die and go into the earth because we will be with Christ and He will make us rise again.

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I think the Scripture shows we can have a healthy expectation and hope of that.

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Maybe you think you'll be alone.

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Maybe you think when you die you'll be alone, but that's not true.

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He says, because of dying and going into the earth, you won't be alone.

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That's what He says.

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A seed that doesn't die remains alone, but a seed that does die will bear much fruit.

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You won't be alone.

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You will join all the others who have gone before you and are with Him right now.

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We as Christians, apart from anyone else, can shout, oh death, where is your victory? Oh grave, where is your sting? We can shout that because we have the confidence to back it up.

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In Philippians chapter 3, verses 20 through 21, get this, Paul says, for our citizenship is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait.

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We eagerly wait for this.

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And for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into the conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of the power that He has, even to subject all things to Himself.

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Are you eager for this? He says, we eagerly wait for this change.

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We eagerly wait to go to be with Jesus.

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Are you eager for this? And so maybe you just haven't familiarized yourself with this.

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You know, I think for so long we've taken cemeteries out of our view in this world.

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They're not connected to churches anymore.

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We don't go to grave sites anymore.

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We hide death from our view.

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We want to live forever.

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But they didn't have this issue even a couple hundred years ago.

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Everyone knew death was all around them, and it was coming, and there was an expectation of joy for those in Christ.

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But now we hide it.

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We get rid of it.

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We take it out of our sight, right? And so I understand there's even weird theologies out there that make it sound so scary.

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There are weird doctrines out there that men have purported and made that make you feel afraid of what's to come.

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Can I encourage you to read something? It's actually very easy.

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It's a very easy read.

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I don't agree with all of it, but it's almost one of the best books on heaven.

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It's called, what do you know, it's called Heaven by Randy Alcorn.

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Heaven by Randy Alcorn.

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It is really one of the best books to read on heaven.

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If you're at all afraid of what's to come, I encourage you to read that book.

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It's very exciting what's to come.

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We don't need to be afraid.

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So check that book out.

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So number one was maybe you struggle with this idea because you're ignorant of what to expect, and you just need to be informed as a Christian.

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Number two, maybe someone struggles with this idea because they possess a love of this world.

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That's the other reality.

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And so this sort of person loves their life in this world.

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John exhorts us, and I mean that in the wrong way.

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I mean that in the evil way, right? There's a way to take this and distort it, but we have to look at the text here.

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John exhorts us in his first letter, do not love the world nor the things in the world.

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If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

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James, the brother of our Lord, agrees with John here.

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He says, pure and undefiled religion is one who keeps himself unstained by the world.

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That's James 1.27.

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And to bring it back to Jesus and the seeds, he says in the parable of the sower in Matthew 13.22, and the one on whom the seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and get this, the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

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There's no fruit.

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No fruit.

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The worry of the world, the deceitfulness of wealth, the cares of the world choke the word, choke the believer, and they become unfruitful.

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You see, loving your life in this world is not worth it.

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We ought to love Christ more.

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We ought to love where Christ is more than we love where we're at.

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We ought to love the life we will have in eternity more than the life that we have here and now.

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Loving our lives in this world too much keeps one from being faithful to Christ, because if you think about it, if you love your life of this world too much, then there's going to be times where you're called to faithfulness, and because you love this world and this life more than the life to come, you will capitulate and do things in accordance with the world when you know you shouldn't, right? When the boss says to do this, when the family does that, when the friends have this expectation on you to do it the way the world does, and because of the love of this life in this world, we go, okay, I better do what they do instead of what Jesus told me to do.

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That's easy to do.

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It's easier to do than we think.

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This is difficult, but we ought to love Christ more.

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Love of one's life in this world breeds anxiety and fear, because this life must be so guarded and protected because it's the only one you got.

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You know, I see that all the time, mostly outside of the church.

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Anxiety, fear, because you have to protect the only one that you have.

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But we have this life, which is like this, we have all eternity, which is like that.

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It is not even comparable with what Christ will give us.

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It's not even comparable.

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It's not even worthy to be compared to the glories that are there with what we see in this life.

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It's so vastly different.

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And so, if you're a believer, loving eternal life over this life is loving the one who gave it and the one who dwells in eternity.

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If we love this life, the life of this world, who do we love? We love ourselves.

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We love ourselves.

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Do we love God? You know, I don't even know how long it was.

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Maybe it was a couple weeks ago.

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I think I gave an illustration from Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, and I'm going to do that again.

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I don't know why this movie's on my mind.

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It's so bizarre.

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It's a good movie.

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I would watch it as a family, whatever.

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So, I talked about them finding the Holy Grail, right? The cup of Christ, and it gives everlasting life, and Indiana Jones finds it, and he takes the water, and he makes his father, Sean Connery, you know, live.

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The bullet wounds are gone or whatever.

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Well, all of a sudden, when the Holy Grail go past some certain, like, sacred threshold, all of a sudden, the temple or holy grounds they're in start shaking, if you remember in the movie.

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Everything starts crumbling, and actually, the stone floor in front of them is falling down, and everything's going to chaos, and they've got to run out of that temple.

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They've got to get out of there.

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And so, if you remember that blonde German lady, she was bad at the beginning, and then I think she kind of becomes good in some sense, or at least she doesn't want to kill Indiana Jones.

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And she slips, if you remember, right? And she's hanging on a stone, and he, and Indiana Jones has her hand, and he's holding her up, and he's trying to pull her up, but he can't pull her up.

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Why can't he pull her up? Because this woman sees on a ledge just next to her the Holy Grail, and so she sees the Holy Grail, and she's holding on, and she's trying to reach for it, and he's saying, don't, don't.

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It's not worth it.

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Let me pull you up.

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And she doesn't listen to him, and she's reaching, and she's reaching to the point where he can't, with that angle, he, Indiana Jones can't hold her up anymore, and that woman falls to her death.

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And then it shakes a little bit more, and Indiana Jones then slips over that kind of cliff, right? And his father comes up, and his father has Indiana Jones by the hand, and he sees the Holy Grail as well, and this is a man who's chased relics and treasures all his life, and he looks at it, and he, he also falls under that sort of spell that the Holy Grail has, and he's like, I can get it, I can get it, and he's reaching, and Sean Connery goes, Indiana, right? Indiana, leave it, or something like that, right? And, and, and he snaps out of it, and he pulls him up, and the Holy Grail falls into the earth, right? This, this cup that was going to give immortality.

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Now, why do I say that story? I say that because I think in this way, the Holy Grail, this cup of Christ, represents the life that this world has to offer.

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Because what, what was it going to do? It was going to let people, as long as you kept drinking from it, it was going to let you to keep living in this world forever.

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You could leave, you could live in this world forever by keep drinking from that cup.

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Not to go to be in the world that, that is to come with Christ, it's to stay in this world, and honestly, so that Holy Grail that they were reaching out for is that life of this world that Jesus says, lose it, let it go, it's not worth it.

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If you go after that, you'll perish, and that's what happened in the movie.

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The woman perished, seeking after the life of this world, okay? So, in a great contrast, Jesus says, he who hates his life, he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.

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The word keep here means, instead of losing their life or, or perishing, it can also mean keep as in like a guarding.

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You guard your life from destruction into life eternal.

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It can mean to observe your life arriving to the, to the fruit of endlessness.

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You keep it.

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This one must love Christ and love that eternal life, but also hate their life in this world.

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The word hate here is intentional.

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Jesus means to give a grave distinction between love and hate, lose and keep.

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There is no different way that this word hate is used in the New Testament.

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He wants the full weight of this word hate to strike us, and it's an important tool, a tool of speech here, because love and hate contrasts were often used in Jewish idioms to describe ultimate preference.

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What do I mean by that? What do I mean, what I mean by that is you're not supposed to have some sort of sick self-hatred, okay, some sort of sick self-abasement.

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You're evil, you're evil.

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I hate my life here.

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I hate my life.

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You know, something strange or bizarre like that.

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That way I love Jesus because I hate myself so much.

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That's not what he's talking about, okay.

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It's, it's that you, your love for Christ, it's a backboard.

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You know, hate is a backboard here.

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Love is the ball going in, the keeping your life.

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It hits the backboard of hate, and you see it for what it is.

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Your love for Christ and the world to come ought to be so strong it almost appears as if you hate the life of this world.

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Does that make sense? It's like a backboard.

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You are to love Christ and the life to come more than you love the life of this world.

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In that way, it looks like hate.

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It's completely opposite.

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So hold on with me a little bit.

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We're almost going to be wrapping up soon.

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There is a scene in Matthew in which Jesus says something very similar to what he said here about losing your life and keeping it.

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In Matthew 16, Jesus and the apostles are at Caesarea Philippi, and if you know anything about Caesarea Philippi, this place was historically marked with intense false god worship.

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Here at Caesarea Philippi, historically, there's been the worship of Baal.

01:00:00

There's been Beelzebub worship, satanic worship took place, especially during the reign of the northern kings.

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Later, under the Greeks, it became the key place of worship to the fertility god Pan.

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Pan was this half-human, half-goat-looking thing.

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Actually, that's been throughout all history.

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There's been a lot of goat or cow slash half-human things for over thousands of years.

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So it's interesting why Satan likes that so much.

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Goats are actually really foolish creatures when you see them.

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But nevertheless, during the time of Christ, actually during the time that Jesus is alive there at Caesarea Philippi, there are five main areas to worship false gods.

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Right there at Caesarea Philippi, Herod the Great built a temple at the mouth of this huge spring, and he made it to worship Caesar Augustus.

01:01:00

False god worship.

01:01:02

Then there is a courtyard area that was made to worship the false god Pan.

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A temple was then dedicated to the false god Zeus, where you would worship him.

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An upper tomb in the temple had a room of the dancing goats, and you would worship them there.

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Then there was a lower chamber of the other dancing goats, and you would worship them there.

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So at Jesus's time, in a Jewish city that Greeks had come in, a place where there was false Baal worship that northern Israelite kings had partaken in earlier centuries before, just this place of full-on false worship at Caesarea Philippi, there is often the place that they considered what was called the gates of Hades.

01:01:55

They would call that place the gates of Hades.

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In fact, in Matthew 16, the gates turns to his apostles, and he says, the gates of hell will not prevail against me, the gospel, and my church.

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That's where he says it in the face of all this false worship.

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He says, this sort of false worship is never going to prevail over what I'm doing.

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That's true.

01:02:28

And so at this exact moment, when he says that, and they're in front of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus then says this.

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They're looking upon a city full of demonic activity.

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Jesus then finishes with this.

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He says, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

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Here it is, just like John, for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

01:03:02

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, the life of this world? What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul, or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Very similar things being said here in John 12.

01:03:21

You save your life in this world, you lose it.

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You lose your life in this world, or you hate it.

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You will find life then.

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You will find life eternal.

01:03:30

You'll save it.

01:03:32

The fallen soul wants the whole world, but he must give up his own soul for the sake of that world.

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Does that make sense? He must give up his own soul for the world, and so you are not to do it.

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It's hard.

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No one said it was easy, church, but despite all this, we are to take heart.

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We are to be encouraged because Christ has overcome that evil world.

01:03:58

He's looked upon Caesarea Philippi.

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He's looked upon the most evil recesses of this world, evil places of this world.

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He says, I've overcome this all, and through Christ we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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You're part of that.

01:04:12

That's an extension to you.

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You're a conqueror as well through Christ, and so we are not to fear these things.

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We are able by the Spirit of God to hate the life of this world and love the life to come.

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That's something that he gives us.

01:04:31

As Pastor Jeff has said in his Matthew series, which we were in for many years, he says take the death march when he points to this verse that I just read in Matthew 16.

01:04:44

Take the death march because everyone in the marketplaces and in the city, they would see men picking up their crosses and they would drag these crosses.

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These criminals would drag their crosses through the marketplace and city, and they would drag these crosses out beyond the city limits onto the hill of Golgotha, and there these criminals would be crucified and died.

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So Jesus said this before he went to the cross.

01:05:13

Jesus said this before the apostles even knew what he meant.

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Dying on a cross? And so they got the image in their mind every day men were picking up crosses, taking the death march, and dying on a cross for their crimes, but here Jesus reverses it.

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He talks about his glorification.

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He says, I want you to take up your cross, deny yourself, and go and follow after me.

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Hate the life of this world and love the life to come, and love me more than you love this world.

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That's the call.

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That's the call.

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Pick up your cross.

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If you lose your life here, you'll gain an infinitely better one, and so then Jesus then defines what it means to hate one's life in the world, in this world.

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He takes things from their illustrations, and he makes it personal.

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Our last verse, verse 26.

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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.

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If one is a fruit, it comes from the seed.

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It follows after the seed, and therefore Christ desires for his disciples to follow him.

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In other words, if anyone is to serve Christ, he must go after Christ.

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You cannot serve him if you're going the other way.

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You cannot serve him if you're going after another master.

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If you're going to serve Christ, you're going to follow after him.

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That's what he says.

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Christ doesn't simply want part of us.

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He wants all of us.

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We aren't to love the life we have in this world, and then hate it a little bit.

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I really love it a little bit, the life this world offers, and I hate it some.

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He demonstrates there's no middle ground.

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It's one or the other, and we must be where he is, and where he is is where you and I will be.

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Christ in us, and us in Christ.

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Christ is our identity.

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The fruit, if you think about it, is to be in the likeness of the seed.

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They are interconnected.

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If you're saved by Christ, you will serve and follow him.

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That's just the reality.

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You will.

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These things will be the characteristics of a Christian.

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Serve and follow Christ.

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And so between this and hating your life, the new life of a disciple of Christ is one that chooses obeying Jesus' desires over our own desires.

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It's one that focuses on him over ourselves.

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It's living for him instead of living for ourselves.

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Self is displaced by the one who saved us.

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And this new life is one that the Father honors, he says here.

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He honors this life.

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If anyone serves Christ, the Father will honor or value or highly prize, the Greek would say, that sort of person.

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And we already know that it's not the honor from the Father that a true disciple seeks.

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It's not the honor that we're after, but somehow it says here the Father will honor that person.

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And anyone who is honored by the Father will likely, from my understanding, I think, give it back to God.

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The honor you get from the Father, there's just a sense of, I didn't do anything to receive this.

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It was such a gift that you then, you're just a mirror.

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You reflect it back to God.

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God, take your honor back.

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That's probably why the scripture says they cast their crowns before him.

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It's like you'll receive this heavenly crown and it's like you cast it before Jesus going, you're the only one who's worthy to wear a crown here.

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You're the only one who should wear a crown here.

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Cast their crowns before him.

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And this honor that the Father gives, you see, it should go back to the blessed seed.

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Because you're just a fruit.

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You just came from that seed.

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You came from Christ.

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We're here because of him.

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And this is all a fulfillment of Psalm 91.

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I had Eric read it today in Psalm 91.

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The last two verses says, he will call upon me.

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This is God speaking in Psalm 91.

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He will call upon me and I will answer him.

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I will be with him in trouble.

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I will rescue him and honor him.

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And then he says in Psalm 91 how he honors him.

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And it says, with a long life I will satisfy him and let him see my salvation.

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That's the honor.

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I believe that the long life that is promised to be given to this sort of person who cries out to God in Psalm 91 is not the now life of this world but it is the one to come.

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Why? Because he coordinates it with salvation.

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He says, I will give you long life and you will see my salvation.

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That doesn't sound simply like the life of this world.

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That sounds like the life to come and the salvation that he gives.

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And that's your honor.

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That's your honor.

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Your honor is in the gift that God gives you.

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Well, let's wrap this one up.

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I'm going to give you a story you know very well.

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And I think it's just important for you to remember this story.

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There was once the king's son, and the king's son was going to be crowned.

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He was going to be crowned king.

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And he left his kingdom and the glory in which he dwelled.

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And this king, the son became like the common folk of that land.

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And men and women started to follow this son.

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They traveled all over the country with him.

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They went on missions at his request.

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They slept not in lavish dwellings or had many possessions.

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They were often chased out of the areas that they were at.

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And the guards were often sent after the king's son.

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They rode in a small boat, not in a big ship.

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And they were in the middle of the sea for him while a storm was raging.

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They did all these things for him.

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And even though his followers didn't always understand, they believed him.

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Now at the beginning, the story shows that some of the men thought when the son goes back to his kingdom that they could sit at his right and at his left in his kingdom.

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They wanted power and status.

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Later on, they would see the folly in that request.

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The king's son didn't want to be used for the status that he had.

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He wanted faithfulness.

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He wanted loyalty.

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He wanted integrity.

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And I wish I could tell you that through every circumstance that they were there for the king's son.

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Despite being with him for several years through all the trials and missions, when the son needed his followers the most, they fled.

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Every single one of them left him.

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Now you may think, how will men and women like this ever gain the honor of the king for what they've done when they deserted his son in the hour they needed him the most? And that's the thing.

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That's the incredible thing, is it was determined that the honor the kingly father gives must be on the basis of his son's actions, not on the actions of his failed followers.

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The one who betrayed the son never returned to him.

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That one ended up killing himself.

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But the others and more came back to the son.

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And it was the forgiveness of the son, the pardon that he gave out of the love of his heart for these people that allowed them to come into his kingdom, to serve him, to follow him, to love him, and to live there in that kingdom forever.

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And the father indeed honored them.

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He did it because of his son.

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He didn't do it because of them or their deeds.

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And so church, I'm calling us all to hate our lives in this world in respect to our love for the king and the life he gives us because of the story I just told.

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I'm calling us to eagerly anticipate our arrival to his presence and kingdom.

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I'm calling us to serve him with everything in us because he first served us with everything in him.

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So whether you're a follower of the king's son, the king, today or not, here, present, or watching later, the call is to come to Christ.

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That's the call of the gospel.