A summary of the Lord’s ministry John 12: 44-50
Someone in a seminary class once asked the professor, “How many points should a message have?” And he wisely said, “At least one.” And I hope to fulfill the dreams of all my professors this morning because there’s nothing worse than a pointless message.
A couple of weeks ago I said that Jesus had just finished speaking to all the unsaved people in John chapter 12 and the final point of His message was in verses 35 and 36 where He said, “Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.” And here Jesus was letting these people know that the time had come for them to make a decision. And they had to decide, were they going to identify Him and be treated as He would be but in the end reap all the rewards that awaited the faithful or were they going to line up on the other side and be participants in the crucifixion.
And then last week we looked the prophecy from Isaiah and saw a couple of different theological viewpoints and these were the Calvinists and Armenian concepts and we saw that there are some believers who actually think that these Jews had no choice. Personally, I think that’s absurd because if they had no choice in whether or not they would sin then God would have to assume some of the blame for their actions. And we all know how absurd that is because they sinned and they knew they were sinning. What they didn’t know was the end result of their actions and I’m not talking about Jesus death but their own eternal punishment.
Now, when He was talking about this crowd Jesus used a unique phrase when He said, ‘He that walks in darkness doesn’t know where he’s going.’ It’s like He’s saying that these people are headed in the wrong direction and they don’t even know where they’re going. And we see that today because non-Christians talk about the afterlife like it’s going to be something that’s organized around their wants and desires.
I’ve heard unsaved people describing heaven like it’s going to be one big party they’re all looking forward to, where all their friends and family will be gathered together enjoying themselves for all of eternity. And there are others who have portrayed heaven like it’s going to be a big rock festival with all the great musicians of the ages jamming together. You know people like Mick Jagger, Jimmy Hendricks, Beethoven and all the rest. And there are others who see heaven as a field of flowers with classical music playing in the background and a few have even pictured heaven as a place of total immorality. And their heaven doesn’t have Jesus, angels, the holy city or anything else the Bible describes. You see, their concept of heaven is simply a reflection of their sinful desires.
And that’s why Jesus says, “He that walks in darkness doesn’t know where he’s going.” So, the question is, where is he going? Simply put, he’s going to hell. And Mark 9 describes hell as a place, “Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” And this is a picture of a stinking, smoldering garbage dump and then Luke 16 also tells us it’s a place of eternal suffering where we see the story of the rich man crying out for a drop of water to be placed on his tongue and then burdened for his family because they’re all headed for the same place.
And then we’re going to see Jesus spend the next four chapters with His disciples both teaching them and preparing them for what was about to happen and by this I mean His arrest, torture, crucifixion, death and resurrection as well as their subsequent ministries. And yet, here we find Jesus speaking one more time and we wonder, what’s going on? I thought He was finished with this crowd.
And to understand this passage you have to go right back to the purpose John has in writing. Remember, he’s writing this book somewhere around the close of the first century and most if not all of the other disciples are dead. And no doubt John has copies of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and he wants to share not only what they left out but he wants to do so in such a way that his message would be acceptable and understandable to both the Jews and gentiles alike.
And so we say Matthew was a Jew writing to the Jews, Mark was writing to the Romans, Luke wrote to all the gentiles in general and John was written to everyone. So, remember this book wasn’t written to a specific group and neither was it meant to give an entire account of Jesus life and ministry but John is using just eight different miracles and interspersing specific teachings and claims that Jesus made to show his audience that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.
As we look at this book overall we see Jesus being described in the very first verse of the first chapter as God. “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.” And then we see His miracles and none of them could be duplicated by someone performing a slip of the hand. I mean, when He turned the water into wine, He didn’t make a glass or a bottle. He made somewhere around 150-180 gallons. And when He fed the people on the hillside it says there was about five thousand men as well as women and children. Most commentators assume there would be somewhere around 20,000 people. I have no idea how much food that would be but it would have to be close to a tractor trailer load. And we can imagine Jesus taking a handful at a time and passing it to His disciples to hand out to the crowd. And then when He healed the man in chapter 5 it says that he had been crippled for thirty-eight years and yet he got up and walked away. And then we saw how Jesus walked on water, healed the blind and raised the dead just to mention a few more. And even when the Pharisees saw all these miracles they said, “What are we going to do? For this man is performing many signs.” And about His teaching the soldiers who were sent to arrest Him said, “No man has ever said the things that He said.” So, listen, Jesus proved who He was by what He did and by what He said.
We can assume that this particular passage is part of a teaching session that Jesus had given earlier but John uses it here as a summary statement of everything He had to say to the unsaved. And so that’s why there is no record of time here and we really don’t know where it fits in to the overall story in chronological order; but as I said this particular portion was used by John to illustrate Jesus’ overall ministry and the fact that he uses this portion out of context doesn’t take anything away from what these verses have to say.
And so in this passage we find a summary statement of Jesus claims and they include not only who He is but also what He has to say about the judgment that’s coming to all who have been confronted with the gospel and have rejected Him. And the bottom line of all this is, that it’s in Jesus that we meet God and God meets us and if we don’t meet Him then we’re lost forever.
And so, in terms of an outline we have in verses 44 and 45 Jesus speaking of His relationship with His Father and He communicates the equality that exists between the members of the trinity. And then in verse 46 He speaks of Himself as the light of the world. And in verses 47-48 He warns about the danger of unbelief. And then finally He finishes in verses 49-50 with a command for all to believe.
This final paragraph sums up the main themes that Jesus wanted to communicate to the world. And throughout His ministry He has insisted and continues to insist that the initiative of His coming here has not been His own. He said He has accomplished the works that were appointed by His Father and then He delivered the teachings that were given to Him by His Father and by both the things He said and the things He did He revealed His Father.
I Jesus and His Father
And so we begin in verse 44 where Jesus is talking about His relationship to His Father where it says, “Jesus cried and said.” Where it says He cried, this wasn’t an expression of gushy emotionalism but this was a term that was often used to describe the ministry of a prophet. And what He does is raise His voice to signify that what He was saying was extremely important. It would be like what you or I would do if we saw a two year old reaching down to pick up a razor blade off the floor or saw a child reaching toward a fire. We wouldn’t bother casually introducing ourselves but we would probably yell a warning to get this child to stop what they were doing, and basically, that’s exactly what Jesus is doing. He’s trying to get their attention not only because they’re they doing something wrong but because they’re in grave danger and they don’t even know it.
And so, He begins by talking about Himself in relationship to His Father and He does this not only to give credibility to what He has to say but also to help them understand who He is in relationship to His Father. After all, his audience was Jewish and they only understood God in terms of one being.
So He says, “He that believes on Me, believes not on Me but on Him who sent Me.” And what He’s saying is that He had come down to earth to become and behave like a man but at the same time He was totally dependant on His Father in every situation so that the invisible God might be made manifest or visible through Him. And then He said that if they believed on Him it would be the same as believing on Him that sent Him. So, believing on Him is the same as believing on His Father because they are part of a trinity and you can’t have a relationship to one without having a relationship to the other. And the key to understanding how important it is to believe on Jesus is that He is the only way we can ever have a relationship with the Father and that was Jesus’ aim, it was to get all people everywhere to know the Father.
And so we as believers have prayed since the church began to the Father in Jesus name, because Jesus ultimate goal was to get us in a proper relationship with our Father and if we’re in a proper relationship with the Father then we‘re in a proper relationship with the rest of the trinity. And the fact is; if we don’t know Jesus then we really have no way of knowing God or anything about God. And that’s why Jesus tells us, He is the door because if we don’t go through Him then we don’t go.
And yet, we see people all over the world and in every kind of religious background telling us they’re serving God and they’re going to heaven. Listen, they might spend a lot of time serving mankind and put a lot of money and effort into it but Jesus says that the only way to get to God or have any kind of salvation is through Him. (Pause)
Let’s think about the trinity for a minute. The Bible says that Jesus is the only visible expression of God. As John 1:18 says, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” And this tells us that any physical expression of God in the Old Testament, like when He walked in the garden of Eden, met Moses on the mountain, led the people through the wilderness or was worshipped by Samson’s parents it had to be Jesus. After all, He was the only visible expression of God.
We also know that the Holy Spirit is invisible, so it stands to reason that Jesus is the only member of the Godhead that has ever been seen or that we possibly ever will ever see.
Did you know that there’s no indication that the Father or the Holy Spirit will ever take on any kind of visible body in heaven. Colossians 1:15 says of Jesus that, “He is the image of the invisible God.” And then in Hebrews 1:3 it also says of Him, “Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person.” And remember when Jesus said to Philip, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.” So, if anyone put their faith in Jesus then they believed on the Father as well because Jesus was the personal manifestation of the Father.
The phrase, “he that believeth on Me” appears four times in the New Testament. We find it in John 6:35, John 7:38, John 11:25 and John 12:44 and believing here simply means commitment and it wasn’t a commitment that was based on His miracles but it was based on His person. Jesus did the miracles to demonstrate who He was but He didn’t want the people to come to Him just for what they could see or get out of the miracles but He wanted them to understand that He was the light of the world.
And there are two things we know about light from our experience and one is, that it exposes things and the second is; it attracts bugs. And I believe that Jesus’ ministry did both because He was constantly exposing the sinfulness of those who came to Him and this resulted in either their conversion or in their getting really angry at Him.
Light does attract things though. I heard a story about a man who walked into a dentist’s office and sat down. “Doc” he says, “I’ve got a problem, you see I think I am a moth.” And the dentist said, “I think you have another problem, you’re in the wrong office, the psychiatrist is down the hall. What on earth are you doing in here?” And the man said, “The light was on.” You see, he really did think he was a moth.
And although the New Testament doesn’t say so, I think Jesus must have attracted some pretty strange people as well as everyone else who were attracted to Him. And when you think about it, not too many of these demon possessed people, lepers or any other kind of sick people would have been confused with the rich young ruler.
So, He said He was the light of the world and this is the fourth time He made that statement in this book. We see it first in John 1:8 and 9 where John says, “He (meaning himself) was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” And then in John 8:12 he writes, “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” And in chapter 9:5 Jesus said, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” And then we have it here.
So, several times, not only in this book but also in the other gospels Jesus refers to Himself as the light of the world and what we have here is the contrast between light and darkness. And at the end of our life we either go out to a light that’s brighter than the sun or go out into the horrors of darkness, the blackness of eternal doom. And throughout the scripture and even in secular writings there is the idea that darkness portrays all the unseen evil of the universe. It’s not so much of what you see that bothers you but what you can’t see.
When Sally and I were getting married one of the important things we had to do was to look for a place to live and like most young couples we looked everywhere and at everything and we finally found what we considered to be the ideal apartment. It was at the corner of Don Mills and Eglington and Sally worked about two blocks north of where the apartment was and I was in sales at the time and the entrance for the Don Valley Parkway was only about two blocks west in the other direction. So, for both of us it was an ideal location.
Since were both working we could only go looking at places in the evenings and when we found this place we thought it looked really nice. The lady who was subletting it had cozy furniture, a few pictures on the walls and soft lighting. The price seemed reasonable and it was available when we wanted it so we took it.
A few weeks later she moved out and we went back to see what we needed in terms of paint and paper and I’ve got to say that it was a disaster. The problem was, we looked at it in the evening in soft lighting and we went back and saw it in the daytime. All the furniture and pictures were gone and it was very bright in there from the sunlight. And then we could see not only how dirty it was but we could even see where the pictures had been because there were squares of white marking the spots on the walls.
Since our wedding was coming up in two weeks, we got some help from Sally’s family and we cleaned, painted and papered and then we bought enough new furniture to fill the place. And then we got married and went away on our honeymoon.
While we were gone one of my friends and his wife thought they’d play a little trick on us and we had given them a key so they could take some wedding presents over for us. So they went into the apartment, took out all the light bulbs and spilled two large boxes of Rice Crispys all over everything. Of course they were counting on us coming home at night and then we’d think we were invaded by bugs. But we fooled them on both counts; because we came home early in the daytime and saw everything in the light and later we found out the entire building was invaded by bugs. You see, all their trick needed but lacked was the absence of light.
I read a book one time about industrial security and in this book the author said that light was the greatest deterrent to crime. You see, people who do wrong don’t want anybody to see what they’re doing.
These verses tell us that not only is Jesus the only true source of light that’s available to mankind but apart from Him everyone in the world is in darkness. As believers we may encounter darkness in this world, we may even feel as though the darkness is attacking us but we aren’t in darkness. And the Bible tells us that when Jesus came into this world as light He exposed darkness in the sense that man didn’t know how dark the world was before He came.
And so it’s by either welcoming or avoiding Jesus as the light that men show the quality of their life and works. In I John 1:5 it says that God is the light and that those who are His children will walk in the light as He is in the light and that’s the same as saying that God is the fountain of all holiness and righteousness, goodness and truth, and because of what He is, His children’s lives will be marked by these qualities as well. So, Jesus didn’t just come to bring us the light but He is the light of the world.
It’s interesting to look in Matthew 5 where Jesus tells us that we are to be the light of the world. In other words, after He went back to heaven He gave us the responsibility of exposing people to the word of God both by living it and then by sharing it. That tells us that it’s useless if we live the word but don’t share it and it’s even worse if we share it but don’t live it. We have to do both.
III Jesus warns about the danger of unbelief
In verse 47 He says, “And If any man hear My words, and believeth not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth Me, and recieveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”
Jesus said He didn’t come to judge anyone or another way of saying this is that He didn’t come for the specific intent to judge but when He returns He will come in judgment and I believe that a lot of His judgment will be based on the fact that men rejected both Him and His word that were revealed the first time He was here.
I believe the fact that men reject the word of God today actually lays a foundation for the work of the devil. I mean, without God’s word in their lives people are open to anything. We often give Satan credit for a lot of things that men do but the fact is that men don’t need any encouragement to turn away from the word of God. Every sinful heart avoids the word like the plague. If they hear you quote the scripture they’ll say, “Don’t tell me what’s in the Bible I know what the Bible says.” But the average person is lucky if they can quote John 3:16 and even if they do, they probably don’t even know what it means.
At the same time, we can certainly see why Satan is busy. He’s trying to get the Christians to ignore the word and to do as little as possible to get the gospel out and that way they’ll miss out on all the rewards of God. And then he tries to get the unsaved to wallow in as much sin as they can, so they’ll have to endure all the horrors of hell that he is facing. In other words he’s trying to make everybody’s life as miserable as he can, both for time and eternity.
And yet here in verse 47 when Jesus speaks of the word that people will be judged by, He’s referring to the words He taught as well as the Old Testament scriptures. And the more we study the scriptures the more we see that Christians will face the judgment seat of Christ which means our works will either be rewarded or simply burned away but the unbeliever will face the judgment where every thought, word and deed will be evaluated and accounted for, which means they’ll be punished accordingly.
Over in John 5:45-47 when Jesus spoke of judgment and He said, “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” And what He’s saying is that these people were treating Moses like he was their hero and Jesus was saying that He had the same message that Moses gave and that’s why He could say, “If you believed Moses you would have believed Me because he wrote of Me.”
And the very fact that Jesus gave His word to the unsaved is evidence that His purpose in doing so was to save them and not to judge them. And so He says to the unbeliever that he will have to face the very words that He said and they heard but ignored and these words will be their judge in the last day.
So, the message that declares life to the believer is the same one that declares judgment to the unbelieving and disobedient. Jesus came to give life to all but only those who receive it, will it be of any benefit.
The word for judge is used four different times in the closing words of this message. Jesus said twice in chapters 3:18 and 8:15 that He didn’t come to judge but to save. But if the sinner wouldn’t trust the savior then the savior would become his judge. And in fact, the sinner is actually passing judgment on himself. So, the bottom line here is that they can accept Him who is the light of the world or they can continue in darkness and end in eternal darkness.
The word ‘reject’ literally means ‘to count as nothing.’ It’s like when someone says, “Read the Bible? It’s not worth my time.” And what they’re doing is treating the eternal word of God as though it was worthless. But Jesus says that they will be held accountable in the last day for what they have done with His word.
It’s a sad thing to say but I remember growing up in a home where we always had three or four either New Testaments or Bibles on a little end table by the front door. And I think everybody in Cape Breton did. You see, it was a cultural thing. We dusted them, put obituaries in their pages and felt as though we weren’t pagans because we owned these Bibles. They were kind of like good luck charms. The only thing we never did, was read them.
And I wonder how many so-called Christian homes might act the same way. We could own every version of the Bible and take great pride in the fact that we attend a church that upholds the word of God but if we don’t spend time reading the Bible then it’s hard to believe we actually believe it.
I remember years ago hearing a preacher say, “What if when one of the moon landings returned and one of those who walked on the face of the moon had found a book. And he brought that book back and NASA had it printed and available for anyone to read. How many of you would want to actually own and read a copy of the book that could hold the secrets of the universe?” Them he went on to point out that each of us has access to a book that came not from the moon but from the very presence of God Himself and this book was actually dictated by Him. Listen, God wrote a book. Have you read it yet?
IV And then Jesus commands everyone to believe
And we see His last point in verses 49 and 50 is a commandment to believe and I believe that His goal was for everyone to have eternal life. He says, “For I have not spoken of Myself; but the Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak.”
Jesus says I have not spoken of Myself. In other words this is a message that He was given by His Father so this isn’t something He heard from some distinguished rabbi or even made up Himself but this is a message from the Father and that makes it important.
I believe that the very words Jesus spoke and were recorded were words that were agreed on by the Godhead in eternity past. I mean, Jesus wasn’t just making things up as He went along but He tells us that this is the very word of God.
We also see that Jesus emphasizes His subordination or subjection to the Father’s authority and He says that His message is based on the Father’s commandment. Now, what commandment is He referring to? It could be the Old Testament that holds the New Testament and it also could be the message of the New Testament that tells us to, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” But overall, the commandment was the message of salvation.
We often refer to the offer of salvation as an invitation and it is but it’s also a command. In Acts 17:30 Paul said to the people of Athens that God had overlooked your times of ignorance, “But now commanded all men everywhere to repent.” Peter had the same approach when he preached on the day of Pentecost and said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.” This was a command. He wasn’t saying, you’ve got a choice because the fact is, the only choice any of us have is either heaven or hell and anyone in their right mind wouldn’t consider that a choice at all.
There is a three point message in this passage that calls each and every one of us to the place of commitment. Jesus tells us in verse 48 that there is a day of reckoning and that means that all unbelieving men and women will be judged at the last day. Elsewhere He tells us that even the thoughts and intents of our hearts will be the basis of our punishment. We can get so concerned about the things that other people know about us but the Bible says that God even weighs the things that only He is aware of and these are the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.
And then second, He says that the day of damnation of sinners is genuine and that men and woman everywhere have someone that will judge them. This tells us there is no escape from God’s all-seeing eye either now or in eternity. I’m always a bewildered when non-Christians die and leave directions insisting that they be cremated. Personally, I don’t think they’re concerned with the envoirment but I think that somehow they hope that the fires of earth will somehow help them to escape the fires of hell. And then third, it says that all men everywhere will be judged on the basis of the word of God. And people say, “Oh, you Christians say or your church says.” But listen, the Bible says; our lives will be evaluated by what we’ve done and what’s written here.
And that was the last word that Jesus had for those who were outside of the faith. And not only did they reject Jesus but they rejected the very message of salvation the Father gave through Him because in Jesus and His words were eternal life and apart from them there is nothing for anybody anywhere. And from this point until His death on the cross Jesus takes His message to his disciples and we’ll see Him spending the next four chapters in the upper room preparing them for what’s to come and their responsibilities to follow.
Imagine if you had two cats at your house and one day something weird happened and somehow you were allowed to understand what they were saying to each other. At first you might be fascinated that they can communicate with each other but what if as you were listening to what they were saying and you heard them mocking the way you did things. And let’s face it, cats are like that.
And they laughed at the fact that you put things in a refrigerator, that you cooked your food, that you wore clothes and even that you wasted your time cleaning the house. And the reason they would laugh is because their cats and the things we do wouldn’t make sense to them not only because they’re cats but also because they’re rude.
It could be that God’s ways are so far above us that we have the common sense of cats when it comes to understanding the things of God. But at the same time He condescended and came here not only to communicate with us but He became one of us and dealt with our sin. And someday He’s coming back and He’s going to take us all home where we can enjoy ourselves in His presence and take pleasure in the glories of heaven for all of eternity. And I guess the big question is, are you ready to go?
