Preparing For Easter: They Came To See Jesus

(Full disclosure: Sermon Central already has a message of mine based on this text called “Seven Sundays to Easter: ‘Sir, We Would See Jesus’”. This is a different message, based on a sermon preached at First Baptist Church of Chamois, MO on March 19. 2023. This message is not an exact transcription.)

Introduction: Today is March 19, and, can you believe it, Easter is only three Sundays away! I hope it’s a great day for all of us. This morning we’ll take a look at a passage I’ve used before and it speaks to this season. The text comes from John 12, verses 20-26:

Text: John 12:20-26, NASV: 20 Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast; 21 these people then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and were making a request of him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip* came and *told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip* came and *told Jesus. 23 But Jesus* answered them by saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 The one who loves his life loses it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life. 26 If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him”.

<Opening prayer>

1 The Greeks come and meet Philp

Before I go much further, I’d like to share this with you. When I was a teen, about 14 or so, we moved to a different state and of course attended one of the local churches. Our youth group would sometimes meet in the sanctuary and try—emphasize, “try”—to sing one of more selections chosen by our youth group leader. After that, we’d go to our classroom for Bible study. Now, when we finished up practicing the music, I’d look at the pulpit. This is something I’ve always enjoyed doing but never to be anything but respectful. After all, one of God’s preachers was bringing God’s messages to us and to me this was holy ground, even as a teen.

It was on one of those Wednesday evenings that I saw something that’s stayed with me for many years now. The pastor had taken one of the self-stick (“Dymo”-labels, remember those?) labels with the words of verse 21, “Sir we would see Jesus” and the verse. If I could meet this pastor again, I’d like to tell him that something on his pulpit has been an encouragement to me.

But now let’s look at the text. The first thing to notice in the text is “the feast”. This was the Passover, and this was one of the three feasts that every male Jew was required by the Law to take part in. On each of these three feasts—Passover, around the first of April in our calendar; then Pentecost or First-fruits, six weeks later; and Tabernacles, or “Booths”, later in the year—every Jewish male was required to show up in Jerusalem. By the way, “booths” meant just that: every Jewish family was supposed to literally cut down tree branches, make a shelter or “booth” out of these, and live in them for seven days! I’m sure glad I didn’t live back then, as I might have had an “axe”-ident (accident, get it? Hmmph.)!

All right. Now, it’s Passover, and every male Jew was required to come to Jerusalem to observe this feast. But it wasn’t only natives of Israel who were coming: a number of Greeks had come to Jerusalem to worship God at the feast of Passover as well. We don’t know anything about them, such as how many, or where they were living, or even if they were Greek-speaking Jews or actual Gentile converts to the Jewish faith.

We do know about this one thing they did. They met Philip and made a request: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip found Andrew and the two of them went to see Jesus.

Now, one of the problems, challenges, whatever you want to call it is how to translate the original language of the New Testament (Greek) into understandable English! Some, and I do hope they were joking about it, suggested everybody learn Greek and there wouldn’t be a problem. Yeah, I don’t think so either. Part of this is because one Greek work may have any number of English translations and one English word might have several different Greek words.

That’s the case with the word “see” in verse 21. There are several words, maybe half a dozen, in Greek translated “see”. One has the idea of “oh, there’s something to look at” and that’s about it. Kind of the same idea of “I see something over there” and the one seeing may or may not know exactly what it is. There’s another that has the idea of analyzing something—we get the word “theory” from it. Mark used this word when Mary Magdalene “saw” the tomb where Jesus was buried. It’s as if she wanted to make a mental note of exactly where it was.