How Far Will God Go — Dennis Kinlaw

Jesus’ Glory Revealed Through the Cross

I'd like to talk to you tonight about an event that comes at the end of his ministry. It's in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of John. It is after the triumphal entry of Jesus on Palm Sunday, when you will remember the whole city turned out to see him, and the children led them in singing his praises, shouting Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.

They said, blessed is the King of Israel. You see, Israel had been looking for 1900 years for their King to come, David's greater son, and now the city cries out, this is he, here he is. You remember at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, they went to John and said, are you the Christ?

Now the city of Jerusalem is saying, you are he, and they lauded and praised him. Now in that crowd we are told there were some Gentiles, the text says Greeks, and they came and they found two of Jesus' disciples, and they said to them, Sir, they came to Philip, you will remember, and then Philip went and got Andrew, they said to Philip, Sir, we would like to see Jesus, and Philip finds his brother Andrew, and they go and they tell Jesus.

I think one of the most significant passages in all the New Testament is the passage that comes immediately there. Jesus is within now a few days of the crucifixion, and he knows that. The whole city has been lauding, praising him, and he says, now he's told that there are Gentiles in this Jewish city that want to see him.

I don't know, but I think what we're being told is that at that point, you get these who come who are a reminder of that bigger world for which Christ came. And so when Philip and Andrew come and say, Master, there are some Gentiles out here and they want to see you, Jesus immediately is reminded of the fact of John 3 .16, that when he came, he came not just for the believers, he came not just for the Jews, he came not just for those that knew God, he came not just for the righteous, he came not just for the good, he came for the whole world, and those Gentiles there, those Greeks represented that larger world, and he knew that the only way that that larger world could ever be saved was the way John 3 .16 said, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and what was the giving?

The giving was for the cross. He gave his only begotten Son, you will remember right before that, he said, as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, speaking of the crucifixion.

So Jesus knows the Gentiles are there, they represent the whole world, and he says, there's no way that world can be reached except by the way of the cross on Friday. Now notice how he says it, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

It's an interesting expression. If you had asked Nicodemus how the Son of Man or the Messiah would be glorified, he would have said, by putting him on a throne and putting a crown on his head and giving him a kingdom.

Jesus says, and a few days now from the cross, now is the time, the hour for the Son of Man to be glorified. How is he going to be glorified? He's going to be glorified by being crucified, by suffering, being crucified, dying, being buried, and then being resurrected.

Dying to Self and Bearing Fruit

Now you will notice what he says about that, verse 24, I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if that grain of wheat dies, it produces many seeds.

The man who loves his life and wants to protect his life and keep his life, secure his life, the man who thinks about himself, you will notice he says, the man who loves his life will lose the very life he's trying to save.

But the man who hates his life, that doesn't mean that we despise our life, it means that we are not bound to protect our lives. We are free to give our lives away. The man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Whoever serves me must follow me. You will remember that was the way Jesus got his disciples. He didn't say, go do what I tell you to do. He said, follow me. It's interesting, we never are first. You'll never get ahead of him.

He says, follow me. He goes first and says, you follow me. Now where was he going? He was headed for a cross. And he says, if any man will come after me, the one who serves me must follow me. And where I am, my servant also will be.

My father will honor the one who serves me. Now I'm glad for that next verse because it indicates that Jesus was as human as we are. He didn't enjoy the prospect of suffering. He didn't enjoy the prospect of shame and obloquy, rejection.

He didn't enjoy the prospect of physical death. He says, now my heart is troubled and what shall I say? Shall I say, Father, the one who said he loved the world so much that he was giving his only son, shall I say, Father, save me from this hour?

He says, no. It was for this very reason that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Now I suspect there is no profounder principle of Christian life asserted anywhere in scripture than in this passage where he speaks and says that a grain of wheat, unless it falls into the ground and dies, loses its identity, in a new creation it will die and will abide alone.

But if it loses its life, it then will gain it and will produce much fruit. Now I think he was getting at the thing that was the most difficult for the Jewish people of that day to grasp. And I'm convinced it's the most difficult thing for the Christian church today to grasp.

I think what he's talking about is the fact that there is a universal principle that no life can be fruitful that is self-centered. No life is fruitful until the person loses an interest in gaining his own way and surrenders himself to something bigger and nobler than himself, to God.

It is in the losing of our lives that we really gain. And that's counter to everything within us, because we want to protect our interests. We want to take care of our concerns and our well-being and our security and our pleasures.

And Jesus says that's the way you lose your life. But if you'll turn it loose and give it up, then you will not only gain your own life, but you will find your own life extremely fruitful. Now here's the thing I want to get to.

Self-Sacrifice as the Way God Redeems

I think the thing that impresses me most now is that when Jesus was saying this, he was saying this is a universal law. And it's so universal that not even God is an exemption to it. Not even God can be fruitful without self-sacrifice.

You see, I always thought God could speak and do what he pleased. If he wanted to save the world, he could do it in a word. If he wanted to save the world, he certainly got enough power. I don't believe that anymore.

I don't believe power ever saves anybody, naked power. You see, not even God could save the world without giving himself, and that's what we believe happened in Christ. God was in Christ, reconciling the world.

Now if God can't be fruitful without sacrificing himself, how am I going to be fruitful if I hold on to my life and control it? Now when Jesus came, doing that, saying that, believing that, living by that, the church it blew their minds and said it can't be.

And so the interesting thing to me is that Israel rejected Christ for the very reasons that they ought to have accepted him. And I'm convinced that the world today rejects Christ for the very reasons that it ought to accept him.

And the Christian church fails to do what God wants it to do and what it's supposed to do, and its reasons are exactly the reasons why it ought to do what God wants it to do. Now let me illustrate. They had their ideas about what the Christ was going to be like.

The Unexpected Incarnation of the Messiah

When you think of, if he's the son of God, come, the one thing you think about when you think about God is sovereign power. If you think about God, the chances are that the kind of context in which you think about him, the typical person in the world is a throne, a crown, a scepter, a retinue of servants doing his will.

And how does he get his will done? Then he speaks, and somebody obeys, and it's accomplished. And then God came in Christ, and he came exactly the way they didn't expect him to come. The very incarnation.

You know, I have a lot of sympathy for that innkeeper. How was he to know that he was rejecting God? Who could have ever believed God would come in a little girl's body, peasant girl at that? You want something that'll blow your mind.

They said, when God comes, he'll come in power and glory, and he came the same way you and I come. They didn't know what to do with that. Now, you can go through the life of Jesus, and you will see that that's the way he came, and that's what shook people, because he didn't come the way they wanted him to, the way they expected him.

They saw his miracles. They said, looks like he's the one, but, and the but was always a bigger reason why they should have believed than the thing they were saying the but to. Let me give four examples out of the Gospel of John, and then show four counterparts to that in the book of Revelation, and they're fascinating to me.

The Rejectable God Who Knocks

Now there are four pictures of Christ coming, the way he came, and illustrate the fact that he came exactly the way the Jews said, God won't come, first. In the first chapter of John it says, very simple, I read it a long time without catching it.

I think it's verses 10 and 11. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. God came unto his own, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That Word came unto his own, and his own received him not.

Isn't it interesting, the first picture in the Gospel of John of God that you get is a God who can be rejected. The first picture you get of God is a God who is rejectable. Now I link with that the verse in the book of the Revelation, Revelation 3 .20.

You know the familiar one, behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me. Now that's a very tender passage.

Out of all the paintings of Christ that I've ever seen that have impressed me the most, the one that has impressed me the most is Holman Hunt's painting, The Light of the World. I think there are two copies of it in existence, one maybe at Oxford, the other is in St. Paul's in London.

I've been to London twice, and each time I've gone to St. Paul's to see Holman Hunt's The Light of the World. It's life-size, he has on royal robes, he's the king, he has on priestly robes as well, he is our high priest.

He has a crown on his head and there is an aura about it. He has a lantern in his hand that casts its light about his feet. He's standing at a doorway and there's no knob, no handle on the door. The greenery has grown up over the door so you know that door hasn't been opened in a long time, and he's standing knocking.

Now, you know, I looked at that thing and enjoyed the beauty of it, it's very impressive for decades, and the irony of that thing never came home to me until the last three or four years. Do you know the one thing a king never does?

The one thing a king never does is knock at anybody's door. Kings have whole retinues of people that go before them to open all the doors. You watch Ronald Reagan come into a press conference or watch him come into anything else, I'll never forget about 1938 seeing, I'm the old man in the crowd, seeing Franklin D. Roosevelt.

You know, he couldn't walk. I was sitting there in an arena where I could see him as the car pulled up outside with the Secret Service men swarming all around. And they lifted him out of the car, newspapers never showed you that.

They carried him on a seat to the doorway, and as he came into the doorway he had a big hat that he lifted and waved at the thousands of people there, and the place erupted in applause. And he paused and they stood him on his feet and hooked the braces so he could stand.

Nobody in the crowd knew that, but I was sitting on the side where I could see. And as he stood there, he waved, the place went wild, he walked to the platform with two men on each side assisting him, and the way was open perfectly for him.

Kings don't knock. I would bet you, if I were a betting man, that Ronald Reagan hasn't knocked on anybody's door in four years. And if he has, you know whose it was? It was Nancy's. There isn't anybody else in the world that can say no to him.

And if there is anybody that would say no, his men find out ahead of time so that he doesn't get to that door. You're not going to find a president rejected. You see, power and position and pomp, they don't expose themselves to rejection.

You know why? We don't like to be rejected. Can you tell me anything more painful than being rejected? I don't know about you, I'd rather suffer physical pain than have the people I care about reject me.

And I expect you're the same way. I'll never forget the first time I was ever in one of these door-to-door evangelistic campaigns, and they taught us and trained us and hyped us up to where we were keyed up to go.

And I stood in front of that first doorway and got ready to punch the doorbell and uttered that last, final, desperate prayer, Lord, please don't let them be hung. Now why? People on the other side of that door were people just like you and me.

But you know what my mortal fear was? Rejection. Nobody wants to be rejected. Do you know how well-trained we are, how we train ourselves in games to play to keep from being rejected? You make that tentative overture to that other person to see how he's going to respond, and if the door cracks a little bit, you make a little more of an overture, and if it starts to shut you back up a little bit, we do it all the time.

Rejection is painful. Here is the eternal God who puts himself in a rejectable, vulnerable position. You know, there is an interesting story of a king that was rejected. One of the emperors in the Middle Ages took on the pope, and the pope in turn took on the emperor to decide who was top dog.

And so the emperor ruled that in civil matters he was supreme. And so the pope ruled that in all matters he was supreme, and to prove it, he excommunicated the emperor, and the battle was on. The end of it was that the emperor crossed the Alps walking, stood in the snow barefooted outside the papal residence asking for admission.

You see, when you knock, it's a symbol that you don't have the power. I looked at that painting of Jesus in St. Paul's. First time I saw it was in 1955. Second time I saw it was 19 years later in 1974.

You know what interested me the most the second time? He was still knocking. He'd been there 19 years, knocking. How far will God go to reach you and me? See, they said, that's not the way he's going to come.

He's going to come in power and great glory. You remember what the devil said to Jesus? Took him up on top of the temple and said, just jump down. The angels will carry you down, and everybody will know you're the Christ because of that demonstration.

He said, yes, but that's not the kind of Christ I am. See, there's not another God anywhere in the world. You see, other gods have people beat their pathway to get to them. This is the God that comes to get us.

And when he comes, he gives us the privilege of shutting him out. That's what you call vulnerability, isn't it? Exposure, self-exposure. Now, the second one took place just the day before, or maybe even the day of this story about the Greeks.

The Servant King Who Rides a Donkey

It was Palm Sunday. Jesus had begun his ministry three and a half years before, miracle ministry, great teaching. The wisest of men that had ever come, the wisest teacher Israel had ever produced. And the people had seen the lepers he'd cleansed.

They'd seen the blind men to whom he had given sight. They'd seen the lame people who walked now easily because he had restored them. You will remember, just a few days before this final trip and before this scene with the Greeks, just two miles outside of the city of Jerusalem at Bethany, he had raised a man from the dead who'd been dead four days.

There wasn't anybody in Jerusalem who hadn't met, hadn't either been there and seen Lazarus after he was raised or talked with somebody who'd been there to see Lazarus. It was the final demonstration of his power.

And the whole city knew about it. The temple knew about it. They said the whole world's going after him now. What can we do? Now, they had seen his power. And so they said, the Sabbath now is over. Will he come into the city today?

This is Passover week. And so they came out to the edge of the city to see him when he came. And when he came, they saw him and they began to strip the branches from the palms. They began to take their clothes off their backs to lay them in the roadway in front of him.

And he saw that crowd chanting, Hosanna to the Son of David, Hosanna to the King of Israel. And as he saw it, he looked around for an appropriate way to enter the city. And he turned and got a donkey and its foal.

And they laid their cloaks over the animals and he rode into the city. Now, I read that passage for years. But about three years ago, I saw something I'd never seen before. You see that the event is the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy in Zechariah.

Zechariah 9 .9. Behold, your king comes to you lowly, meekly, riding upon a donkey and upon its foal. So he did exactly what the prophet said he'd do. He came into the city riding on a donkey and in doing that he said, yes, I am the Messiah.

He fulfilled the role of the Messiah. But you know what I never noticed until about three years ago? I never noticed verse 10 in Zechariah 9. Verse 9 in Zechariah 9 says, Behold, your king comes to you meekly, lowly, riding upon a donkey and its foal.

Verse 10 says, He will put away the horse and the chariot from his city. Could it be that he chose a donkey in deliberate contrast to a horse? When a Roman general rode through the city of Jerusalem, you know what kind of animal he rode?

He rode a prancing horse. When an emperor from Babylon came through, you know what he rode? He rode a horse. When a pharaoh came, he came in a chariot pulled by a team of prancing horses, decked out carefully, magnificently arrayed.

Did you ever see a man ride a donkey? How many of you ever saw anybody ride a mule in the roast bowl parade? Next parade to have in Lexington, it'd be interesting to know how many people ride mules in them.

Did you ever see a man ride a donkey? It's ridiculous. His feet flop like this as a little donkey. It's sort of beneath a man's dignity to ride a donkey. You know, the thing that illustrates it for me is that last summer they sold here in Lexington a yearling that had never run a step in a race for $8 .2 million.

And the summer before, they sold one, a year old, four-legged animal for $10 .4 million. Be interesting what the going rate on donkeys is, wouldn't it? Now, you see, the horse is a symbol of pomp and ceremony.

Queen Elizabeth's carriage is not pulled by donkeys. The horse is a symbol of pomp and ceremony, but the horse is also a symbol of power. If we had time, we could go into that. Did you know that David didn't have any horses?

There are commentaries that'll tell you there was a royal donkey and that Jesus rode a royal donkey into the city. As far as I'm concerned, that's poppycock. You will remember that Absalom, his son, was riding a mule when he died.

And do you know what Solomon was known for? His horse stables. David hobbled the horses that his armies captured because he didn't have anybody who could handle horses. He didn't have any men to handle cavalry or chariotry, so he hobbled them.

What was a horse? The horse was the equivalent of the first-line military tank or the first-line military airplane. The horse was a military instrument. Don't trust in horses and chariots means do not trust in natural, physical, military power.

Don't trust in the flesh. The horse was the symbol of that. Now, what's the donkey? The donkey is not the symbol of power or of pomp. He is a symbol of service, isn't he? And of humility. And Jesus said, I'll tell you what my kingdom's like.

It's much more like the donkey than it is the horse. I came not to be served, but I came to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. The Jews said, that's not the kind of Messiah we're looking for.

The Lord Who Washes His Disciples’ Feet

Now, the third picture is later this week on Thursday night. Jesus got his 12 disciples together and said, Israel missed it. Jerusalem doesn't understand me. I want to find out if you do. And he took a basin of water and a towel and he got down and started washing one of his feet.

And Peter looked at him and said, God have mercy on you, Master. You will never wash my feet. And you know, I have some sympathy for Peter. God wash my feet. Me wash his, maybe. I belong at his feet, but God doesn't belong at my feet.

And Peter said, get up from there, Lord. And Jesus looked at him and said, if I can't wash your feet, you don't have any part in that. You know why he did that in the upper room? Because the city that couldn't understand him when he came on a donkey, what would they do with him when he got on his knees to people like you and me?

Not another religion in the world like it. How far will God go to reach you and me? In that upper room, you begin to see how far God will go. It's interesting. He does downright ungodly things to get to the likes of you and me.

The Crucified Messiah and the Gospel of Self-Giving

Now, the fourth picture comes on Friday. You remember, it's outside of the city on the hill. They nailed him on a cross. Anybody knew that when God came, he should come on the throne with a crown, with his retinue and with his scepter.

He had a crown, but you remember it was thorns. He had a purple cloak, but it was dirty, filthy, put on him in derision. He had a scepter, but it was a broken reed. And he had a throne, but it wasn't a throne, it was a cross.

And they nailed him there. And the Jewish leadership looked and said, there's the proof. That's conclusive evidence that he can't be God. That's the final proof that he's not the Messiah. You know, I never come to this, but I think of what Dorothy Sayers said.

You know, she said, it's interesting what news is. If a dog bites a man, that's not news. So if a man bites a dog, that may merit a couple of inches in the paper. For a man to die for his God, that's not news.

Human history is full of that. What about those hijackers? You know why they're exposing their lives? That's for Allah. Those fellows who drove those trucks loaded with explosives into the American Marine bastion, they died for Allah.

Human history is loaded with stories of men, women dying for their God. Dorothy Sayers, when did anybody ever hear of a God dying for his creatures? She said, if there were a God like that, that would be news.

She said, there was, and it's the news, the news of all news. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. Paul said, I delivered unto you the gospel which was given unto me, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures.

Now, you know, I'm glad that in addition to the priests, the disciples didn't know what to do with it. You know, they just simply fled. I said, we don't understand this. Doesn't fit anything that we anticipated.

They knew how God was supposed to come, and Jesus didn't fit the role. They loved him, believed in him, so they just faded into the woodwork and disappeared. The priest stood down below and said, there's the proof.

He's not the Messiah. He dies like any other man, like any other criminal. In fact, he dies before the other two. You know, I'm glad there was a Roman centurion there, a hardened soldier, leader of an execution squad.

He was the executioner there. He had led, I suppose, many an execution squad. He'd watched men die. He was the instrument of their death. And while they're standing below saying he can't be the Christ, you see, that Roman centurion looked up and saw his lips move and strained to hear those words as Jesus looked down through fevered eyes and said, forgive them, Father.

They don't know what they do. And that old executioner looked up and said, surely this is the Son of God. It's interesting, he was a Roman Gentile soldier. See, that's the kind of person God was reaching for.

Revelation’s Four Pictures of Christ’s Return

He's reaching for all. Now, there are those four figures. Now, the fascinating thing to me is that in the book of Revelation, you get those figures reversed. We're told about when he will come again. Do you know when he comes the second time, he won't come knocking?

Revelation 1, I think it's verse 6 and 7 tell us he'll come like the lightning flashing from the east to the west simultaneously every way. Every eye will see him and there won't be a door that can shut him out.

There won't be a prison door. There won't be a metal door. There won't be a wooden door. There won't be a fleshly door of a heart that can shut him out. He will breach them all. When he comes the second time, he won't come knocking.

When he comes the second time, he won't come on a donkey. You look at the 19th chapter of the book of Revelation, and you'll find that he comes on a great white horse with a host behind him with a two-edged sword coming out of his mouth.

It is like a flame of fire and written across his thigh are the titles King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and he comes in power and in glory. When he comes the next time, he won't come on a donkey. He'll come with pomp and power and glory.

When he comes the next time, he won't come washing people's feet. You read the 6th chapter of the book of Revelation, and you'll find that the chief men of the earth, the mighty men of the earth, the kings, the emperors, the captains, the nobles, they will all be on their faces at his feet, pleading for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them and hide them from the face of him that sits upon the throne and from the Lamb.

When he comes the second time, he won't come on a donkey, and he won't come at our feet. The first time we disposed of him, the second time he will be the disposer of all things. Second time he comes, he won't come on a cross.

You read the 19th and 20th chapters of the book of Revelation, you'll find that he comes on a great white throne, and he comes to judge the nations of the earth, all men. We disposed of him the first time, the second time he will dispose of us.

The Finality of Judgment and the Necessity of Atonement

Isn't that interesting, the contrast between those two? But now hold on. You know what has begun to come home to me with great drama, dramatic effect? Do you know that when he comes the second time in power and glory, there will be nothing saving in that coming?

Do you know there won't be a sinner who will have a single sin forgiven when he appears the second time? There won't be a single broken relationship that will be restored when he comes the second time.

There won't be a single person slave to sin that will be released from sin by that demonstration of his power and his glory, his dominion and his authority and his kingdom. You look at verse 11 of chapter 22 of the book of Revelation.

It says, He that is unjust, let him be unjust still. He that is filthy, let him be filthy still. He that is righteous, let him be righteous still. And he that is holy, let him be holy still. When he comes in power and glory, it will be to fix everything the way it is.

It's only when self-sacrifice occurs that anything is ever redemptive. Not even God is exempt from that. If God wants to redeem, the only way he can redeem is by the sacrifice of himself. That's the reason the doctrine of the Trinity is absolutely essential to the Christian faith.

That's the reason there is no atonement in Judaism, because there is no triune Godhead in which sin can be atoned for by self-sacrifice. That's the reason that in Islam there is no atonement, it's salvation by works.

There is no other person in the Trinity who can take into himself our sin with its consequences and its death. It's only in the God of Scripture, the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that that atonement can take place.

And only where there is the sacrifice of oneself is there anything redemptive. Now you know that's true if you'll stop to think. If you're a Christian here tonight, the thing that moved you the most deeply was not his power and not his glory.

It wasn't his crown and his glory that got the hymn writer. It was the sacrifice of himself in Calvary. That's the thing that's moved you most profoundly. But now the thing that interests me, and this is what I want to get to tonight in closing, Jesus didn't say that's the only way the world can be saved by me sacrificing myself.

Following Christ in Self-Sacrificial Mission

He said the only way the world's ever going to be saved is on the principle of self-sacrifice. And he says, where I am, there should my servant be also. And where I go, he should go. And he says to you and me, follow me.

Why does he say follow me? Where does he want us to go? He wants us to go the way of self-sacrifice too. Because you see, if it hadn't been for God's sacrifice of himself, he would have lived in eternity without your fellowship.

And if it isn't for the sacrifice of yourself and mine, we'll live eternally without the fellowship of people that are supposed to be one too. And so God says, I want you, if you're a believer, to go the way my son went.

You remember what Jesus said, as the Father sent me, now I am sending you. It's a universal principle. Now you know how we want to save the world? We want to save the world by having them come knock at our door.

He said, go ye into all the world. That's what he did. Do you know none of us will ever go as far as he went? None of us will ever go as far as he went to reach us, to reach the world. We want to save the world riding on horses, not on donkeys.

You know, we like the pomp and the glory, not the lowliness and the self-sacrifice. We like the position. It's the forfeiture of those things that's going to be redemptive. We'd like to have the world come to wash our feet.

Now I'm willing to wash yours because you're my brother. But what about the person I think is below me? Harry Denman was head of the Board of Evangelism of the Methodist Church for many years. He was a layman.

He could skin preachers better than any man I ever heard alive. When he got through with a bunch of preachers, they'd been taken to the cleaners better than by anybody else I ever heard. Preachers would cringe when they knew he was going to preach.

And he was always done in love and gracious. But he was in a conference. He grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. He's been dead now for a number of years, so you know this was back in the pre-civil rights days.

He found himself in a conference with some blacks. I remember he grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. And he had an apartment in the conference he was in. He had one room here and the other room for another speaker was over here and they shared a common bathroom.