I’m told these were actual answers that children gave in Sunday School: “Noah’s wife was called Joan of Ark.” “The epistles were the wives of the apostles.” “Moses got the 10 Commandments at Mt. Cyanide.” “King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 porcupines.” “The men who followed the Lord were called the 12 decibels.”
And then there's my personal favorite: “Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire by night.”
You’d expect kids to mangle Bible stories once in a while, and it’s kinda funny when they do it. But when adults mangle the Bible… that’s usually not so funny. When adults distort Scripture its often because they don’t agree with what they’re reading.
Someone once said: “People don’t reject the Bible because it contradicts itself. They reject the Bible because it contradicts them.” Folks like that might KNOW the Bible, but they just don’t agree with it. And so they can end up NOT having their theological ducks in a row.
And that’s what’s happening in our story today. Jesus told the crowds that “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32) And the people understood Jesus to be saying He’s not going to be with them long. He’s going to be “lifted up from the earth” In fact, Jesus confirmed that by saying “The light is among you for a little while longer....” John 12:35
Now the crowds heard this and they knew just enough Scripture to say “Hey, wait a minute! That doesn’t sound right! We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?" John 12:34
Well, were they right? Was the Christ supposed to REMAIN forever? (PAUSE) Well … yeah. The Old Testament spoke of the Messiah this way: “… I have sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. HIS SEED SHALL ENDURE FOREVER, and his throne as the sun before me. Psalm 89:35-36
Isaiah 9:7 (speaking of the Messiah) “Of the increase of his government and peace THERE SHALL BE NO END, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even FOREVER…”
Ezekiel 37:25 And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant … for ever: and my servant David (codeword for the Messiah) shall be THEIR PRINCE FOREVER.”
FOREVER!!!! The Messiah would endure forever. He would be a prince forever, His kingdom would last … forever. And that’s exactly what Jesus had come to do. He and His kingdom WERE going to last forever… just not quite the way the Jews had planned.
They were looking for a King who would throw off the bonds of Rome and lead them to be a powerful nation that rivaled the days of Solomon. But in order to do that - Jesus had to stick around. But that wasn’t the plan. The Messiah that God sent wasn’t the Messiah that they wanted. Jesus didn’t fit into the box they’d built for Him. And that’s a problem for a lot of people. The Jesus folks get isn’t always the Jesus they want.
And a lot of times it has to do with this statement by Jesus: “’when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.” John 12:32-33
The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ … really upsets a lot of people. It doesn’t fit into their thinking. For the Jews (for example) the idea that the Messiah would die was unthinkable. And that was true not only back in the days of Jesus. It’s still true (because the Jews still don’t think Messiah has come). But that had been God’s plan from the beginning.
ILLUS: For example, one of the most powerful prophecies about Jesus is in Isaiah 53. “Surely he (the Messiah) has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5). Even the Jews recognize this prophecy had all the marks of being about the Messiah. But it troubles them that it says He would have to suffer and die for our sins.
ILLUS: Man named Marc Axelrod told of picking up a Jewish Study Bible at a bookstore. It was probably the 1st time he’d ever seen a Jewish Study Bible. The 1st thing that went through his mind was “I wonder what they have to say about Isaiah 53.” So he thumbed through the pages, and he found the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. And the notes at the bottom said, “This is a very difficult passage.” To this day, the Jews struggle with the idea that Isaiah 53 describes the Messiah who would suffer and die for our sins.
ILLUS: But its NOT JUST the JEWS that struggle with this. It’s become popular in some “religious” circles to accuse God of being a cosmic abuser. A “progressive Christian” writer named Steve Chalke (in his book “The Lost Message of Jesus”) is appalled that we would teach that God sent His son to die on the cross. He accused God of “cosmic child abuse” in the crucifixion being “…a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.”
ILLUS: Now, you’d expect atheists (who don’t know any better) to attack the Bible with this kind of thinking, but this guy’s supposedly a “Christian.” And he’s not the only one. Some time back there was a popular book entitled “The Shack.” Lots of believers were praising it as a new way to look at God (I was skeptical). The author was a man named William P. Young… and he wrote: “Who originated the cross? If God did, then we worship a cosmic abuser, who in divine wisdom created a means to torture human beings in the most painful and abhorrent manner… how would we religious people interpret this sacrifice? We would declare that it was God who killed Jesus, slaughtering him as a necessary appeasement to his bloodthirsty need for justice.” (from his book “Lies We Believe About God.”)
His point? He accepts the crucifixion (it’s kind of part of the deal) but he seems to want to keep God out of it. How dare we believe that God had somehow planned it this way!!! And yet, that whole attitude DENIES the truth of Acts 2:23 which tells us “… Jesus (was) delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God…” Or, as Galatians 3:13 tells us: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."
GOD HAD THIS PLANNED FOR CENTURIES!
Now, granted, the cross was a terrible way to die, and yet that was exactly what God had planned from the very beginning of the world. The Jesus folks get isn’t always the Jesus they want. And so there are people who mangle the Bible to get what they want!
But it gets worse: The idea that Jesus came to die for our sins really upsets folks.
ILLUS: Billy Joel (for example) “I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I used to go to mass with my friends, and I viewed the whole business as a lot of very enthralling hocus pocus. There’s a guy... nailed to a cross and dripping blood, and everyone’s blaming themselves for that man’s torment, but I said to myself, ‘Forget it. I had no hand in that evil. I have no original sin. There’s no blood of any sacred martyr on my hands. I pass on all of this.’”
Inherent in Joel’s comment is this idea: “I don’t need God’s help to pay for my sins! I’m not a bad person! Sure I’ve done bad stuff in my life but I’ve done a lot of good too!!!” But Joel’s problem was… he was looking at Christ’s sacrifice backwards. He said “everyone’s blaming themselves for that man’s torment.”
Now, there were a couple problems with this view Billy Joel had about the Cross. First – he saw Jesus as a mere man. But that’s not true… Jesus was not a mere man. He was also fully God. In fact, John (who wrote this Gospel) makes a reference to Jesus’ Godhood, when he records that Jesus quotes a passage out of Isaiah 6. John said this: “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.” John 12:41
You mean Isaiah SAW Jesus’ glory back then? Oh yeah! “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple… And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Isaiah 6:1 & 5
Did you notice that word LORD (as in LORD of hosts)? There’s something distinctive about that word “LORD”. Do you know what is distinctive? (It’s in all CAPS). Any time you see the word “LORD” or “GOD” in all capital letters, that’s the translators’ way to telling you that this was God’s personal name - Jehovah or Yahweh. So what Isaiah was saying was this – “I SAW GOD!”
And what the Apostle John is telling us here in John 12 is - when Isaiah saw God high and lifted up in the temple… that was Jesus. Jesus WAS GOD!!! On the cross, Jesus was not a mere man. He wasn’t some kind of helpless victim. Jesus was the mighty King, the LORD of hosts, the One who VOLUNTARILY stepped down out of heaven to pay the price for our sins. So that was the first misunderstanding Billy Joel had about the death of Jesus.
2nd misunderstanding was that he saw Jesus on the cross as a guilt trip for Christians. “Everyone is BLAMING themselves for that man’s torment.” In other words: Jesus was tormented on the cross, and it’s supposedly all my fault! And that IS true… after a fashion. I mean – our sins were the reason Jesus went to the cross. But the cross was not about GUILT (not about blaming ourselves for His death). The cross was about the LOVE of God that removed our guilt.
THE GUILT WAS ALREADY THERE. WE WERE GUILTY!!!! We deserved punishment for our sins!!!
As Ephesians 2:3-5 “(we) were by nature children of wrath (we deserved to go to hell), like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved”
You see, Billy Joel’s view of Christian guilt is that it never quite goes away. The guilt’s ALWAYS there! And there are churches who teach that kind of foolishness: They teach Christians to believe they’re worthless. They teach them to believe that they’ll never get past sins they've done. They teach that believers will never be completely forgiven by God.
BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE! Jesus died for us because the guilt of our sins deprived us of God’s peace. But the Cross was more about God’s love than it was about our guilt. Romans 5:8 says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
ILLUS: This is best illustrated by the story of the boy who had a new slingshot. He’d shoot at all kind of targets, could never hit anything. But one day, in his Grandma’s backyard he saw her pet duck. On impulse he took aim and let fly. The stone hit… and the duck died. “The boy panicked and hid the bird in the woodpile… and then he looked up and saw his sister.
After lunch that day, Grandma told Sally to help with the dishes. Sally responded, “Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen today. Didn’t you Johnny?” And she whispered to him, “Remember the duck!” So, Johnny did the dishes. What choice did he have? And for the next several weeks he did a lot of dishes. Whenever he objected Sally would whisper. “Remember the duck.”
After a while he couldn’t handle it anymore. He went to his grandmother and confessed. His grandmother smiled and hugged him and said “I know, Johnny, I was standing at the window and saw the whole thing. Because I love you, I forgave you. But I wondered how long you’d let Sally make a slave out of you.”
CLOSE: Jesus died to free you from the slavery of guilt. He died to remove your shame and fear of punishment. And He died because He loved you. Don’t mangle the Scriptures. Realize how much God loves you, and respond to His free offer of forgiveness.
