Jesus' Loud Cry

Lesson Transcript

Give you greetings in Jesus' name this morning. I'll get a little bit farther away so I can see you over here. Um, I really enjoyed the theme of your program this morning, um, particularly since it kind of ties in with what I want to share this morning. Let's turn our Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 12, um, for those of you who are not here every Sunday or, or frequently. I've been working through John's Gospels for the last couple of years, and this just happens to be where I am in the sequence.

I want to read verses, uh, 37 to 50 of John 12. "But although he had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in him. That the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke: Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts, and turn so that I should heal them. These things Isaiah said when he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, even among the rulers, many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue.

For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. Then Jesus cried out and said: He who believes in me and believes not in he, he who believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me, and he who sees me sees him who sent me. I've come as a light unto the world, but whosoever believeth in me should not, uh, in me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears my word and does not believe, I do not judge him, for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.

He who rejects me and dies and does not receive my words, but has that which judges him, the word that I have spoken will judge him to this last day. For I have not spoken on my own, uh, own, but the Father who went, g who sent me, uh, gave me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that his command is everlasting life.

Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told me, so I speak." The title for my message this morning is "Jesus's Loud Cry." Now, uh, as we have been going through the Gospel of John, uh, there are a number of signs. There's actually seven signs. We've already covered six of the signs. There are kind of seven signs, and there are kind of seven messages. And so we've looked at the signs and the messages that precede this. There's been six signs. You remember, he turned the water into wine.

Uh, he healed the nobleman's son. Uh, he healed, um, the, uh, he brought, he, uh, made bread in the desert. Uh, he helped the man who was, uh, born lame, um, born blind to come. And he finally, he raised Lazarus from the dead. And John tells us at the end of the Gospel that these things were done so that people might believe. They were validations. They were symbol. They were signs. They were waymarks on the way.

They were to help people understand that something very special has happened, and that in Jesus, something very special has, someone very special has come. And he comes, as it says in this, uh, passage, he says he doesn't come on his own, okay, but he comes as one who has been sent, as a Messiah. All right? And this passage here is Jesus's last words to the people.

In chapter 13, he and his disciples are going to the upper room, and the rest of what he has to say, uh, in this Gospel is, is a, in a sense, a private communication between him and his disciples, between him and his followers. Now, but now he's speaking his last words to the people. And the thing I found so interesting is that he cried out.

He cried out with a loud voice, uh, an emphatic voice to make sure that, that if you haven't got the point of everything that he's been saying up to this particular point, he's given you one last chance to hear. One last chance to hear. But the reality is most people, even though they may have heard with their ears, that hearing did not result in faith. It did not result in belief. It did not result, as one version, uh, translates a later verse, in keeping his commands.

Uh, the King James, the New King James, uh, translates it as believe, but another, another version's translated as keep his commands. And so the question is, why not? Why did they not believe? Why did they not believe? Well, uh, John, uh, quotes here two passages from the prophet Isaiah. And the one, he says, "Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" Now, that is the beginning verse of chapter, um, 53 of Isaiah.

And, you know, these folks, uh, these Jewish people were used to hearing the, uh, Old Testament read to them. Um, they, uh, they were used to hearing the word of God read regularly. Uh, and I don't doubt that when these words were spoken to them, "Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" It called up images and thoughts and so on about that passage in Isaiah 53. And it's a very familiar passage to us. And I want to read this.

Now, if you have your Bibles, uh, turn to Isaiah 53. Um, I am going to be reading a translation that's based on the Greek Septuagint. Um, and the reason I'm doing that is because most of the quotations, uh, in the New Testament are based on the Greek Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Masoretic text. And I want you just, I have a feeling that most of you have, uh, a translation that is based on the Hebrew, which is fine. I'm not, not saying there's a problem with that.

But as I read this, I want you to kind of pay attention to what, uh, maybe some other things that are brought out. "Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a child, like a root in a thirsty land. He had no form of glory or glory, and we saw him, and he had no form or beauty. But his form was without honor, failing beyond all men, a man being in calamity and knowing how to bear sickness, because his face is turned away.

He was dishonored and not esteemed. This one bears our sins and suffers pain for us, and we account him to be in trouble and calamity and ill treatment. But he was wounded because of our acts of lawlessness and has been weakened because of our sins. Upon him was the discipline of our peace. By his bruise, we were healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. A man has strayed in his own way, and the Lord gave him over to our sins. And he, because he had been ill-treated, does not open his mouth.

Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before the one shearing it, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who will describe his generation? Because his life is being taken from the earth, he was led to death on the account of the acts of lawlessness of my people. And I will give the wicked for his burial and the rich for his death, because he committed no lawlessness, nor was deceit found in his mouth.

And the Lord desired to cleanse him from his blow. If you give an offering for sin, your soul shall see a long-lived offspring. And the Lord wishes to take away from the pain of his soul to show him light and fill him with understanding, to justify a righteous one who is well subject to many. And he himself shall bear their sins. Therefore, he shall inherit many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was given over to death.

And he was reckoned among the lawless, and he bore the sins of many. Because of their sins, he was given over." Okay, in this passage in Isaiah, we have this prediction. We have this description of who Jesus is, what he was like, and what he was going to do, and why he did it. And he did what he did, dying on the cross, suffering on that cross, bearing the shame and reproach of the cross. He did that. Why? As it says here in Isaiah 53, because of our lawlessness, because of our disobedience. Okay?

He was our substitute. Okay? He paid a price that he did not owe, and we owed a price that we could not pay. As the little children's song says, we needed someone to take our sins away. And that's what Jesus is doing here. Okay? That's what he's doing. He is, he is doing what is necessary to deal with the power of sin, to break its stronghold, and do everything that, um, God has sent him into this world, that his Father has sent him into his world.

And so I think that when Jesus quoted these beginning words of Isaiah 53, this passage probably, or at least the memory of this passage, some of the points in it probably went through people's head. Is he talking, is he talking about the, the Messianic King, the one who's going to come and is going to release us from everything that controls us and holds onto us and keeps us away from God? And of course, Isaiah, like many of the prophets, are speaking a word to a disobedient, unfaithful people.

And that's the purpose of the prophets. Uh, they don't speak just when things are going wonderfully. One of the things I have noticed as a historian is that, um, whenever things are not going well or whenever there is conflict, it produces more paper. It produces more, uh, uh, people write things down and they say things and they communicate things, particularly when things are contested. And here we have unfaithful Israel, and God is communicating to unfaithful Israel what his will is.

And it's always a calm, uh, it's always a message of repentance and return to him. Put away your lawlessness. But we know, as I said before, that we do not have within us the thing that is necessary for us to repent. We need help. And that help comes through what Jesus did on the cross. Then, uh, again, there's another reference to Isaiah. He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts, and turned so that I should heal them.

And again, um, if you look at the Septuagint, it says, "For this people's hearts have grown fat." That's the idea of hardening, of, you know, it's, uh, oftentimes that word is used. And with their ears, they have heard, heard heaven heavily so that they might not, I'm sorry, my handwriting's here, um, they may not, um, with their eyes and understanding with their hearts, turn to the Lord, and I would heal them. Now, that's, of course, from Isaiah chapter six. Sorry about that. My glasses, I need to get new glasses.

Um, or, or maybe the print needs to get larger. All right. Um, this, this passage from Isaiah chapter six, okay, at the beginning of that chapter, you remember that Isaiah saw the Lord in the temple. He saw the train of, of the Lord in the temple, and he cried out. He said, "I saw the Lord." Now, the, um, the Aramaic Targum, which is a, an Arab, is a translation of the Old Testament into Aramaic, which was the language that most Jews were speaking at this particular point in Palestine.

Hebrew had almost become kind of a learned language or a religious language that was read in the synagogue. And people, the, the Pharisees and the scholars and the scribes, they understood Hebrew. And some of the people understood some Hebrew. But to make sure that people got the sense of it when the passage was read from the Old Testament, one of the scribes would, on the spot, translate it into Aramaic.

And in the Aramaic Targum, it says that, um, "I saw the glory of the Lord." And what Jesus is saying here, I think, reflects that thing because it says, he says, "These things Isaiah said when he saw his glory and spoke of him." Right? And of course, it was a very glorious thing he saw. He was frightened about it. He realized he was a person of unclean lips that God was sending to these unclean people. All right? Now, I say, oh, Jesus is saying here, they don't believe because Isaiah said this. Okay?

Isaiah predicted that they would not believe. And, you know, we can puzzle about that and say, well, you know, this, did God say they're not going to believe, or did he purpose that they weren't going to believe, did he, did he in a sense predestine that they were not going to believe? Is that what's going on here? Well, it's a Hebrew literary device, particularly in prophecy, to identify the result of a prediction with its purpose, as though it's a purpose, as though it's predetermined.

But Isaiah is simply describing the result of unbelief. All right? He's simply describing it. And if a person, if they do not believe, okay, God cannot heal them. Faith in God is what is necessary to be healed of our sin, of our estrangement, of our walking away from God. All right? Now, one of the things that's really interesting here is these two verses which talk about the fact that even among some of the rulers, there were people who believed. Okay? They believed.

What that means is that they believed that what Jesus was saying is true. They believed it was true, that it was coming from God. Right? They didn't try to explain it away like some of the Pharisees did or some of the other people did. They didn't try to do that. They didn't scoff at it. They knew somewhere in the innermost of their beings, yes, this is right. This is true. But they were scared. They were frightened.

They realized that if they openly came out and they made common cause with Jesus and with his disciples, there would be a cost that would have to be paid. And that cost is that they would have to be put out of the synagogue. They would, if they were a ruler, they would lose their position and their authority and their power. They would have to surrender all that. And they weren't quite willing to do that.

Do you remember Nicodemus is one of these rulers in the early part of John's Gospel who comes to Jesus at nighttime, okay, in secret because of his fellow rulers. He's worried about what they might think about him coming and seeing Jesus. Later on, it talks about Joseph of Arimathea, who was a "secret disciple" of Jesus. Uh-huh. But he, again, a ruler. Okay.

But unwilling to really come forth and let his, let his allegiance, let his, his certainty about who Jesus is really play itself out, really be expressed to the people around him. I remember a story, I think it might be apocryphal, about this young man who went up north to a, to a lumber camp back in the days when that's what they used to do. And he was, and his family were Christians, and he was a Christian, and, uh, he, they were worried about him. He went up and so on.

And they, uh, after he was there, um, for a while and so on, came back home. He said, "Well, how did it go?" I mean, and so on. He said, "Well, fine." He said, "Well, what about, you know, you, you being a Christian?" He said, "Well, they didn't know I was a Christian." Because he kept it secret. Now, that story may be apocryphal to, you know, one of those, uh, things that, um, that, uh, you buy these books with, uh, sermon illustrations, which I've never done, are used, but I've heard that one before.

But I want to share with you a story that is true about a person who, um, encountered a similar kind of, of, um, test. And this is Meno Simons. And I'm going to, I'm going to read you exactly what Meno said about his experience. Meno was a young man. He decided to enter the priesthood. He was serving along with two other priests in a, in a, uh, village in the Netherlands.

And he says, "During the first year of his ministry, there are his, his pastorate there, the thought occurred to me as often as I officiated at the Mass that the bread and the wine were not the flesh and blood of the Lord. I thought the devil suggested this to me so that he might undermine my faith.

I confessed my doubt, sighed, and prayed, but still persisted." Of course, according to Roman Catholic teaching, they believe that when the priest said, "This is my body, this is my blood," that the bread and the wine turned, physically turned into the body and blood of Christ, and one ate it, and thus one was spiritually nurtured by the simple eating of it. Okay? Meno is a priest.

He's celebrating the Mass, and he, as he lifts it up, and he says, "Hoc et corpus," he says, "Is this really the body of Christ?" He begins to wonder about that. He initially thinks, "Oh, this is coming straight from the devil." And then he goes on and says, "In our daily life," he and his other two companions, "My, two companions and I with others spent our time in card playing, drinking, and other diversions, as alas is the way and nature of such idle persons.

Then when we talked a bit about Scripture, I could not say a word without being ridiculed, for I did not know at all what I was aiming at, so concealed was God's word from me." Now, here he is a priest. He's responsible for pastoring a parish of Roman, Roman Catholic parish, and he hadn't read the Scriptures. Okay? He hadn't read the Scriptures. Okay? Can you imagine what a blind leader of the blind that is? "Finally, I thought I would diligently examine the New Testament.

Before I read very far, I saw at once that we were deceived. My troubled conscience about the bread was immediately relieved, even without anyone instructing me. Through the illumination and grace of the Lord, I made daily progress in knowledge of the Scripture, and before long I was known by some, though wrongly, as an evangelical preacher. Everyone looked for and wanted me, for the world loved me, and I the world. At the same time, it was said that I preached God's word and was a good fellow.

I loved the world, and the world loved me." You know, there is a preaching of "a gospel" that is very, very attractive to the world. And the world will celebrate, will give praise to, and so on. But it is often a "gospel" that avoids the cross. And that's what Meno was doing here now at this particular point. He was avoiding the cross. All right? People thought he was a swell person.

"After this had happened, before I'd ever heard of any brethren, a devout hero of the faith, Sicky Snyder by name, was beheaded at Lutwarden because he had been rebaptized. It sounded very strange to me to hear about a second baptism. I investigated carefully what the Scriptures had to say and thought seriously about them, but could find no account of infant baptism. Then I saw clearly that we were deceived in regard to infant baptism.

A short time afterwards, I was chosen at another village called Whitmarson, where I was born. I went there out of desire for gain and a craving for a greater name. There I spoke much about the word of the Lord without the spirit and love, as all hypocrites do. In this way, I gave birth to disciples of my own kind, idle boasters, frivolous talkers who, like myself, alas, had little care for the matters mentioned above. Although I knew much from the Scriptures, I wasted that knowledge in youthful lust.

In an impure and carnal life, I sought only profit, ease, human favor, glory, a name which honor, as in general all do, who live a high life. So, dear readers, I received the knowledge about baptism and the Lord's Supper through the illumination of the Holy Spirit and with much reading and meditation on Scripture by God's gracious favor and gift. Following this, the Münster Sect appeared and received many devout persons. The Münsterites were anabaptists who had decided that it would be okay to take up the sword.

They took over the city of Münster and sent out a message to all the people in the, uh, all, uh, to people in the Netherlands. Come there. Thousands came, and so on. And Meno is this Roman Catholic priest in Whitmarson preaching what he called, uh, evangelical doctrine, and so on, studying the Scriptures, having come convinced that, yes, infant baptism is wrong, the Mass is wrong, but he's still baptizing babies, and he's still celebrating the Mass, even though he knows it wrong. And this thing rises up.

This movement rises up. "I was much distressed in spirit, for I observed that though they were zealous, they erred in doctrine. I saw zeal, but not knowledge. With my limited talent, I opposed them as much as I could with preaching and admonishing. Twice I drew up with one of their leaders, once privately and once in public. However, my admonitions had little effect, for I myself did that which I, I knew was not right. The report spread widely that I could skillfully silence them.

The people appealed to me regardless of who they were, and I saw clearly that I was becoming a defender and a surety for the unrepentant. The fact that all learned leaned on me gave me no small shock. I sighed and prayed, "Lord, help me that I do not become chargeable for the sins of others." I was troubled in spirit and thought about the outcome. What if I won the whole world and also lived a thousand years, and then finally had to submit to God's punishment and wrath? What would I have gained?

Subsequently, the poor strained sheep wandering about without true shepherds and many cruel edict stranglings and executions came together close to where I lived at a place called Odecloister. There, they, alas, through the ungodly doctrine of Münster, resisted with the sword, the action being against the Spirit, and the example of Christ. He commanded Peter to thrust the sword into its sheath.

And this was a very personal thing for Meno because he had a brother, Peter, who was one of these people at the Odecloister who was captured and killed, who had been involved in the insurrection. When this happened in this way, the blood of these people, although misled, felt so hot on my heart that I could not bear it. Neither could I find rest in my spirit. I thought about my impure and carnal life and about my hypocritical doctrine and idolatry, this ideally practiced without any joy in my soul.

I saw with my own eyes that these zealous children voluntarily gave their lives and goods, although not for a right doctrine, for their faith, and I was one of those who had exposed for some of them the popish abominations. In spite of this, I remained in my life of ease and known odious habits just because I wanted to enjoy physical comfort and avoid the cross of the Lord. As I turned this over in my mind, my heart troubled me so that I couldn't endure it no longer.

I thought to myself, "Miserable man that I am, and what am I doing if I remain in this situation and do not hold to the word of my Lord with the knowledge I have received? If I do not reprove the hypocrisy of the educated and their unrepentant carnal life and their perverse baptism, Lord's Supper, and their false religion with the word of the Lord in spite of my limited gift.

If I do not lay bare the right foundation of truth because of the fear of the flesh, if I do not, with all that is in my power, point the innocent strained sheep who would gladly do what is right, if only they knew how, to the true pastures of Christ. Oh, how their blood, although spilled amiss, will rise up against me at the judgment of the Almighty and Great God who will pronounce the true sentence on my poor, miserable soul." My heart trembled within me.

I prayed to God with signs and tears that he would give to me, a sorrowing sinner, the gift of his grace, create a pure heart in me, and mercifully forgive my impure way and idle life out of ease through the merit of the red blood of Christ, that he would grant to me a courageous heart with wisdom, spirit, confidence, and so that I might truly preach his most adorable name and holy word. And finally, in January 1536, Meno Simon left. With Smartson, he left the Catholic priesthood.

He found a few souls who were trying to live a holy life, who had turned to, who had not joined in with the Münsterites and so on. And he made his common cause with that people. And then, of course, he became a leader among them. You know, you can know the truth. And this is like a nine-year journey for Meno. It was with some of the time he started to doubt the Mass until he finally left the Roman Catholic priesthood, studying, reading the Scriptures, coming to an understanding of the truth.

But it's not until he made that decisive decision to turn away from the world and everything it had offered him and take up his cross and follow Jesus. And that's what Jesus is saying in this passage today that we're looking at here. Okay? He's not just asking us. There are some of these, these, these people who, yes, they believe what Jesus says is true, but they're not willing to step out and be counted as a follower of Jesus. They're not willing to do that.

Or they may, as Meno did, I mean, if Meno would have just kind of waited it out a little bit longer. Okay? And as the area around him would have turned Protestant, he could have found himself in a situation where he could have been a pastor, he would have received a salary, and he would have been a person who was acclaimed and celebrated. If he had done that, he could have done that. And there were persons who did that. Okay? There were persons who did that. And there are people who do that today. All right?

They want to find an easier way. And it's a way that appeals attractive and good and enjoyable and comfortable. But it's not the cross. It's not faith in what Jesus had to say. And Jesus cries out loud. And he says, "He who believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me." Jesus repeatedly throughout the Gospel of John, at numerous, he says at numerous points, "I and my Father are one.

I don't say anything that the Father hasn't told me to say." If you see, later on, he says to Philip, "If you see me, you have seen the Father." There's this constant identification that Jesus makes with his Father, with his heavenly Father. Okay? Hebrews tells us that he is the expressed image of God. Okay? When we see Jesus, we see God. That's why it's not only that it was important for him to come to this earth, to die on the cross, to pay the price of our sins. That is certainly of inestimable value.

But he also came to this earth to show us what the Father's will was and to show us how to live the Father's will. He was that great example. All right? And he shows us the way. All right? And then in verse 46, and this ties in so beautifully with the message that you all sang today.

In fact, I think one of the verses, one of the lines in this one song you sang, "Light," quotes this, "And I have come as a light into the world that whoever believes in me should not abide in darkness." Again, we can hear echoes here of the beginning of John's Gospel when it says, "The light cameth into the world, that light which lightens every man." And it says that people don't like that light because their deeds are evil. All right? The light exposes who we are.

It brings, it's like a searchlight that looks into our soul, and it shows us first ourselves and shows the folks around us. And we are there, we are there basically exposed. And that is not a comfortable feeling at all. But it is actually the thing that each one of us have to experience before we can surrender to God. We have to accept the fact that Jesus is the light that is going to look into our innermost being and expose the sin and the corruption there. But he doesn't do it just to expose us.

That's not the purpose. It's not just to make us feel undone. It should make us feel undone. It should make us feel inadequate. It should make us realize that we do not have what it takes to take care of this problem that we have with sin. He shows us the, he has that light. It shows us the way. Each one of us needs to accept that searchlight into our souls that exposes who we are and where we're to go and how we're supposed to respond.

And if we don't, if we don't, that means we love darkness more than we love light. And darkness is, maybe for a time being, feels comfortable because it hides things that we don't want to have exposed. But darkness, in the end, is something that will result in death and destruction and chaos and everything undone. All right? You know, I think sometimes people have this idea that if they surrender to Jesus, they're going to lose something.

That if they give up to what Jesus asked of them, somehow or another, they're going to be the loser. There's something they don't, they feel, if I, if I give this up, where am I going to be? The reality is, if you give it up, you will be in a good place. You will be exactly where you need to be because Jesus doesn't come to take away any good thing away from you. He comes to give you life and that life abundantly. As it says at the end of this passage, he comes to give us everlasting life.

And that's not just talking about longevity. That's talking about the quality. And that's also talking about something that begins right now when we say our first yes to Jesus. And then in verse 47, Jesus tells us that if anyone hears my word and does not believe, I don't judge him. Remember when he had that conversation with Nicodemus, he said, "I do not come into the world to condemn the world." Okay? He came into the world to save the world.

But our actions, our lack of faith, our lack of trust, Jesus doesn't need to condemn us. We are already in a condemned state. We are already in a desperate state. What we need is rescuing. What we need is help. What we need is salvation. And so Jesus doesn't have to condemn us because we're condemned already. He came into the world to save us. He came into the world to rescue us.

And whoever believes in him, as John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life." That's what Jesus came to do. All right? But he said, "The words that I speak, they will judge you." The truth will judge us. And we will be judged by the truth. But the amazing thing is, the truth will also set us free. That's the beauty of it.

And again, Jesus emphasizes the fact, "I have not spoken on my own own, but the Father who sent me, he has given me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told me, so I speak." There's a hymn that we sing that says, we'll think about this in the Gospel later on, Jesus is standing in Pilate's hall, friendless, forsaken, betrayed by all.

And the thing goes on to say, "What will you do with Jesus?" Someday your heart will be asking, "What will he do with me?" If you have not made that initial yes to Jesus, if you haven't yet said, "I believe, and I'm not only believing that it's true, but I'm going to walk out and I'm going to act on that belief, and I'm going to be, I'm going to publicly proclaim my trust and faith in Jesus without fear of men, without fear of the people around me, without any reservation." You will hear those words, "Well done,

thou good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of the Lord prepared for you." Same response to the message.