Word of Salvation – Vol. 46 No.11 – March 2001

 

Judgment and Salvation on the Cross

 

A LENT Sermon by Rev R Meischke

on John 12:31-33

Scripture Readings: Revelation 12; John 12:20-33

Suggested Singing: BoW: 177; 332; 334; 188; 528

 

Beloved in the Lord,

I.  Introduction – There Really is Hope

How often have you heard the question: if God is such a loving God, how come He doesn’t do something about all the wrong in this world?  How come God lets such evil and starvation and greed and disaster keep happening in this world?  Why doesn’t He just stop the wars and the earthquakes and the slaughter of innocent people?

One of the main reasons why people refuse to even consider trusting God is that they think He is powerless because evil is still around.  They think God can’t be worth much if bad things still happen.  A standard comment is that if God really was that good and that loving and that powerful, then He would do something about what’s wrong in this world.

And, as Christians, we often get caught on that, not really knowing how to answer it.  Because we too will look around us at the broken lives of others, even at our own broken lives, and wonder where God is.  Doubt is a lot more common than we like to admit.  If that wasn’t true, then questions like, “Where was your God in the holocaust or in the death of my child?” wouldn’t still rattle us.

Now, the main reason why we have God’s Word is because doubt is a reality for us.  We do struggle with what looks like injustice or unfairness.  We do shake our fists at God and say, “why?”  We might not like to admit that, but if you’ve ever been upset about your situation, you know it’s true.

Well, the point of this passage is that we might understand that God has done something about what’s wrong with this world.  God has dealt with the evil.  We might not get the perfect world until Jesus comes back, but we can look at passages like this and be reminded that God really is God and that evil never gets away with it.  And we also learn that there really is hope for this world, rather than empty despair.

II.  Judgment on the World Through the Cross

You’ll notice from the bit we read before these verses that Jesus is very quick to say that the hour has come.  The time had arrived for Him to die.  All of history is focussed on that moment where Jesus goes to His death.  The cross is where everything comes together.  All the promises of the whole Bible focus on this moment.  The death of Jesus is the satisfaction of God’s justice.

I’ve heard many arguments in favour of a lot of the cultural icons that have developed around Easter.  You know, things like the eggs and the rabbits and the whole process of Lent.  The eggs and the rabbits are defended, even among Christian circles, as appropriate at Easter time because they represent new life.  The egg represents the start of a new life and rabbits are well known for producing lots of it on a regular basis.  These are known as ‘fertility symbols.’  They are very common in a lot of religions around the world, and they are often used in the hope of getting good crops or plenty of children or any sort of prosperity.

In fact, they’re much the same as a lot of the gods that were around in Bible times.  People who didn’t believe in God still had to acknowledge that life came from somewhere, so they had a lot of different symbols of life, much like eggs and rabbits.  The whole idea of Lent revolves around imitating what Jesus gave up by giving up things ourselves, as well as period of repentance that usually involves fasting.

The problem with Lent is that it has easily become a process where people try to impress each other or God because of what they have given up.  What we remember at Easter time is much bigger than a simple new life message that people use bunnies and eggs for.  It’s also much bigger than just being challenged to give something up during Lent.  The death and the resurrection of Jesus is judgment.  It is God’s judgment on evil.  Because Jesus died and rose again, the power of sin in this world has been destroyed.  It’s a simple fact.  Jesus said, “Now is the time for judgment on this world.”

We very easily get scared of evil, don’t we?  We worry about getting hurt, or robbed, or ridiculed by evil people.  We worry about the damage that evil can do in our personal lives and in the life of the Church.  But, the thing about evil that worries people the most is the fear of its influence in our lives.  We live in fear that we will become evil if we let it near us.

Now, this doesn’t mean that we should embrace evil, but Jesus is saying here that it is shot.  Because Jesus died on the cross, we know that the evil of this world is dead.  It is powerless.  It cannot win.  Jesus even says that the prince of this world will be driven out, which is a direct pointer to Genesis 3:15, where God promised that the seed of the woman would crush the head of Satan.  In His death and resurrection, Jesus made it very clear indeed that Satan simply has no authority in a world where Jesus reigns.

Now, we can accept this on a theoretical level.  We’ve learned it again and again for centuries.  But the question remains, do we live as though evil has already been punished and defeated, or do we still see it as a threat?  How much fear do we really have?  Fear of things collapsing; fear of things not going right; fear of being dragged down by a bad influence; fear of the thin edge of the wedge; fear of losing control; fear of death?

If we really are convinced that God has dealt with our evil, then we can live without fear.  Then not only does that give us a sense of peace and confidence that allows us to move forward together in the grace of God, it also gives us an answer to those who think God has let us down.  God hasn’t let us down.  The controlling evil of this world has been driven out.  When we stand in the grace of God, there’s nothing left to fear.

III.  Jesus’ Glory Through the Cross

And this is where the cross of Christ comes in.  Jesus says, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself.”  Even though we have a world that is more used to following evil than anything else.  Even though most of our society has fallen into the devil’s trap of pleasing themselves and living for their own profit, Jesus still says that His own death is the only hope that this whole world can have.

And, you’ll notice that John makes a point of noting what Jesus was talking about.  In verse 33, he says that Jesus was talking about the kind of death He was going to die.  To be honest, I think that’s more for our sake than for their sake.  John simply acknowledges the crowd’s interpretation.  This sort of language told them straight away that He was going to be crucified.  That’s what being lifted up meant to them.

So, as far as those people were concerned, this was stating the obvious.  But, for us, this little note is very necessary.  If verse 33 wasn’t there, we would automatically think of his ascension into heaven, wouldn’t we?  Jesus is talking about being glorified, which is affirmed in a voice from heaven.  And then he talks about being lifted up and becoming the focus of attention.  The picture that comes to mind with that is of Jesus ascending into heaven and ruling at the right hand of God.  That’s actually a very important thing to know, but it’s not what this text is talking about.

Jesus is saying that the focus of His glory is His death on the cross.  Here is the Son of Almighty God, direct descendant of David and heir to the throne; here is the promised Messiah, the Saviour that the whole Old Testament promised about.  And in the next verse, we see that the people are very clearly expecting Him to stay alive and rule.  But His glory would come when He died.  The act of salvation.  The bleeding sacrifice, which is God’s judgment on the sin of the world.  The cruel death that we deserve was His glory.  Why?  Because His death is our life.  His death is our salvation.  His death seals our forgiveness and gives us perfection before God.  The glory of Jesus, the height, the climax of His existence, is the salvation of you and me.

This means that the greatest honour you can give to Jesus, the finest praise and worship you could ever bring to Him, is always and only your personal faith in Him for the forgiveness of your sins.  If you want to live a life that is pleasing to God, if we want to be a Church that genuinely gives glory to Him, it happens when you look to the cross in faith.

Our concept of glory is easily distorted by what the world regards as glorious.  According to the world, things that are glorious are things that are perfect and spectacular, things that make us go, ‘wow’, or things that are done to absolute perfection.  That’s why we end up in arguments over worship, thinking that it has to be done one way or another way in order to be glorifying to God.  That’s why spectacular things and fancy buildings and stained glass windows and robes and choirs and great music are so popular.  That’s why having dress codes and behaviour rules and really specific liturgy is so common in Churches.  People think that the things we do are what give glory to God.

Jesus has made the point that His glory is only to be found in what He has done.  So the only way that we can give Him glory is by turning to the cross in humble and repentant faith.  The same faith that gives us our eternal hope is what glorifies our Lord.  That’s why Paul was so determined to preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified.  Every time we take our eyes away from the cross, we not only let go of our hope, but we stop giving glory to God.

IV.  Salvation to the World Through the Cross

Now the other reason why this is so important to remember is so that our witness to the neighbourhood and to our friends will actually be effective and long-lasting.  Jesus said that He would draw all people to Himself through the cross.  He said, “When I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.”  We hear lots of people in church circles who baulk at the idea of doing evangelism, don’t we?  It’s not uncommon for people to think that we are making too big a deal of all of this outreach and evangelism stuff.  We have our own problems to worry about.  Our own young people are often reluctant to get involved in church life.  We still have people across our churches who are leaving.

We sometimes have problems with harmony and unity.  We sometimes even have budget problems.  We can’t always agree on how we should worship.  We can’t even agree on furniture in our buildings.  In fact, it is so easy to find things that need fixing in our own midst, that we will sometimes say that we shouldn’t bother with evangelism until we get a bit of that mess sorted out.  We never actually say that we don’t want to do evangelism, but we do manage to come up with a lot of really good reasons why it should wait or get a low priority.

Of course, sometimes our reluctance to get involved in evangelism is not so much from a desire to fix our own backyard first, but simply because we like things the way they are and we prefer to keep them that way.  Sometimes it’s really easy to see the work of evangelism, the mission to bring more people to Christ, as a threat to what we currently enjoy.

This is especially so if we think that the way we do our church stuff is what gives the glory to God.  The thing we need to understand is that what gives Jesus the glory is people believing in Him.  That’s it!!  If we have a mission to glorify God and serve in His kingdom, then all we will care about is more people believing in Jesus.

And if that’s what we care about, then spreading the news through evangelism is simply our opportunity to pursue the glory of Jesus in a real and genuine way.

Now, when it comes to our evangelism, there are only two things to remember.

First, we must stick to the gospel of Christ crucified.  It’s true that there are a lot of things that we regard as valuable and important, but when people observe us and listen to us, they must only see Jesus.  Our purpose is not to sell the Church.  Our purpose is not to get people to like us and then become like us.  We are not inviting them to join our culture club, we are inviting them to join Jesus.  You see, of all the things we can tell people and discuss with them, the only thing that will bring them closer to God is the death of Jesus.  If they don’t hear that, we work in vain.

Second, Jesus Himself is the one who converts them.  We don’t need fancy, persuasive techniques.  We don’t need Bible bashing.  We just need to tell people about Jesus and let Him worry about the results.  In fact, when we boil it all down, we really do have the perfect answer for those people who think God should do something about all the evil and suffering in the world.  We don’t need to get flustered or doubtful when people throw that sort of accusation at us.  And we certainly don’t need to join them in doubting whether God is doing anything serious about what’s wrong with this place.  God has done something.  And what He did is the perfect answer to every complaint, because it means that justice prevails and that evil never gets away with it.

God sent His own Son to the cross so that His justice through judgment would be complete and so that people throughout the whole world might have real hope for salvation.  The cross of Christ is all we need.

Amen.