SS04-01-07.

STUDY THEME: WHAT DOES JESUS DO FOR US?

“JESUS DIED FOR US.” JOHN 12:15-13:30’ 18:1-19:42.

JOHN 12: 12-15; 13: 21, 26-27; 19:16b-19, 33-37.

PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO JOHN 12.

On the Sunday before His crucifixion, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. A large crowd heard about it and came to greet Him with palm branches and shouts that acknowledged Jesus was the One who came in the name of the Lord and that He was the King of Israel, thus fulfilling the Scriptures.

During Jesus’ final meal with His disciples, He announced that one of them would betray Him. Then Jesus revealed to Judas that He knew Judas was the betrayer. After being condemned to death, Jesus was taken to the place of execution and crucified. In order to make sure that Jesus was dead, a soldier pierced His side with a spear. Blood and water flowed out. All of this fulfilled Scripture.

1. PLEASE READ JOHN 12: 12-15.

There are really two distinct incident recorded in these verses, either of which might serve as the theme for a complete lesson; but I want to try to combine the two incidents.

First we have the Lord riding into Jerusalem and hailed as the Son of David, and then we have the Greeks coming with their quest, “We would see Jesus.”

The next day refers to the day after the events of John 12: 1-8. The feast was the meal to honor Jesus and Lazarus, which was six days before Passover. The next day we have come to call “Palm Sunday.” This Sunday was five days before Jesus’ death and a week before His resurrection.

A large crowd had come to Jerusalem for the observance of the Passover. Many of these were Jews from many places. It is clear that those who sought to honor the Lord were Pilgrims, not residents of Jerusalem.

On this particular Passover more than usual came because they had heard of the way Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. The people that was with Him when He called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met Him, for they had heard that He had done this miracle.

The raising of Lazarus seemed to have a greater effect on the people than any of His other miracles. We need not wonder at that, for it certainly was His greatest physical miracle, as that of stilling the tempest was the greatest in connection with inanimate nature.

By calling forth that man from the grave, who had been four days dead, Jesus demonstrated Himself to be the Resurrection and the Life. The people who had never considered His claims before began to wonder if He were the promised Messiah, which was to come, when He rode into Jerusalem on this occasion.

But there were those who dissented and who eventually succeeded in alienating many of these people from Him. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, “Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold, the world is gone after Him.” And so Isaiah’s words, spoke seven hundred years before, as he contemplated the coming of the Messiah, were now being fulfilled: “Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?”

Those who should have believed, who should have been the first to receive Him, were actually the first to reject Him. In vs. 10-11 the Chief Priests decided to also kill Lazarus, because he was the reason many of the Jews were deserting them and believing in Jesus.

We pass on to the next incident. When the Pharisees were thus deliberately and willfully rejecting the claims of Christ, it must have been a great joy to His heart to meet this first token of interest of the Gentile world in Him and the message He came to bring. We read, in vs. 20, “And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast.”

These Gentiles had come up to the Jews’ feast, the Passover. They were perhaps proselytes. They may have recognized in Judaism a much purer, holier, and better religious system than that to which they had been accustomed among the pagan peoples of whom they formed apart.

They had come to worship, we are told, and when in Jerusalem they heard about Jesus.

Doubtless they had put many questions to those who had heard Him and they would be asking themselves, “Could He be the promised One?”

And so, learning that Jesus was already in the city, they sought out the company of the disciples. They came to Philip, who was of Bethsaida. Why Philip? Well, his very name would appeal to them. Philip was a Greek name, meaning “a lover of horses.” This Philip, they may have thought, would have some link of understanding with them.

They did not go to Peter, John, James, or to the other disciples. They went to Philip, who bore a Greek name, and they said, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

Philip must have felt, “Oh, the day of our Lord’s triumph must be near, the Gentiles are already coming, just as the O.T. said, to recognize His claims.”

Philip called Andrew, and Andrew and Philip together went to the Lord Jesus, and I fancy they were most eager as they said, “Master, will you come and meet some Gentiles who are here, who want to see and to know You, and who are interested in the message You give.”

I have no doubt Jesus revealed Himself to these Greeks, but we are not told that He did. We are told that He answered saying, “The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified.

He saw in their request an evidence of what will take place in the whole Gentile world in the years to follow.

Let me say again---as I have said many times before, and that at the risk of being misunderstood---no one was ever saved by following Jesus. It is after we are saved that we begin to follow Him.

2. PEASE READ JOHN 13:21, 26-27.

Now having spoken of the work of the cross, it would seem as though the soul of Jesus already began to enter into the dark shadow that was involved in His being made sin, for He said, “Now is My soul troubled.” What troubled Him? The fact that there on the cross He was to endure the pent-up wrath of God, that He was to be dealt with in judgment in order that we might be dealt with in grace. And all that disturbed His soul.

He could not have been man in perfection and holiness if He did not shrink from being made sin for us. “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I into the world.”

“I came into the world to die, to give Myself a ransom for all.” And so instead of asking to be saved from that hour He prays that the Father’s Name might be glorified. Then, we are told, there came a voice from heaven, and this is the third time in the experience of our Lord Jesus that there came such a voice from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

When Jesus passed through the cross God glorified His Name by raising Him from the dead. He has glorified His Name by setting His own Son at His right hand in highest heaven. He will yet glorify His Name when He sends Jesus back into this scene to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Throughout John’s Gospel Jesus spoke of His hour. In earlier passages Jesus said His hour had not come, but beginning in Ch. 12 vs. 23 He said that His hour had come. This theme continues in John 13: 1. Jesus and the disciples were together for what Jesus knew was His last supper with them on earth.

He washed the disciples feet, thus setting an example for them of true humility. Then Jesus made the shocking announcement. “One of you shall betray Me.” One of you who has been so close to Me, who has shared so many thing with Me, one of you who has failed to believe Me and trust Me---one of you shall betray me.”

As Jesus said this, He was troubled in spirit. Though John pictures Jesus as in control of the situation he does not want us to think of Him as unmoved by the events through which He is passing.

Though He was God, our Lord was a true Man. He was not only God, but God manifested in flesh. In becoming man He took a human spirit, a human soul and a human body. Here we read, “He was troubled in spirit.” As He looked forward to what was ahead, He groaned in anguish as He thought of the judgment that the treachery of Judas was to bring down upon that guilty man.

The disciples started looking at one another---uncertain which one He was speaking about. John was next to Jesus, and Peter asked John to ask Jesus who the betrayer was. John asked, and Jesus answered in vs. 26.

As part of the meal there was a bowl of gravy or sauce into which each dipped a piece of bread or a sop. Jesus said “the betrayer was the one I give the piece of bread after I have dipped it.”

Jesus dipped the bread and gave it to Judas Iscariot. In this way Jesus let Judas know that He was aware that Judas was the betrayer. But this action was done in such a way that the others failed to realize Judas was the one.

Since Judas was the treasurer, they assumed that Jesus sent him to buy provisions. Thus Jesus clearly communicated to Judas His knowledge of the plot. That must have been something of a look that Jesus gave to Judas! It probably included grief and compassion. Jesus told Judas to do quickly what he planned to do.

We read, “after the sop Satan entered into Judas”---in a new way now. Judas, by this further act, had put himself absolutely under the domination of the devil. There is now no more possibility of repentance.

The betrayal raises many questions. “Why did the enemies of Jesus need a traitor?” They were afraid to arrest Him in public because of His popularity with the people. Thus they needed someone who knew where Jesus was and would lead His enemies to Him. Only an insider could have such knowledge. Enemies can do you great harm, but only a “friend” can betray you.

The most difficult question to answer is why Judas betrayed Jesus. One view is that Satan made him do it. Vs. 27 says that after Judas received the bread, Satan entered into him. John 13:2 says that the Devil had put the idea into Judas’s heart, so vs.27 does not mean that the Devil overwhelmed Judas when he entered him. Judas couldn’t excuse him self by saying that the Devil made him betray Jesus. Satan tempted Judas, but Satan can enter us only when we open our lives to his evil presence.

Another explanation says that God made Judas do it. This gets into the deep subject of the relationship between God’s sovereignty and the human freedom of choice. The Bible teaches both and they often stand in a tension beyond human understanding.

True, God knew who would betray Jesus, but that doesn’t mean that Judas was merely playing a part and reading a script. In dramas as in life, there are villains, but Judas was more than a helpless tool in God’s drama of redemption. Otherwise we would applaud the excellent way the villain played his part. But the Bible condemns Judas for a decision he had made.

Still another view sees Judas as a sincere but misguided disciple. According to this theory, Judas was committed to seeing Jesus set up an earthly kingdom. He had become convinced that Jesus meant what He said about being rejected and put to death. As John told the story, two people took Jesus seriously. One was Mary of Bethany, who anointed Jesus’ body in anticipation of His death. The other was Judas, who betrayed Jesus. According to this view, Judas expected Jesus to be forced to reveal His power if He was arrested and threatened with death.

This view, however, fails to match the Bible’s way of describing Judas. Jesus in John 6: 70-71 called him “a devil.” When Judas criticized Mary for anointing Jesus with expensive spices, he said the ointment should have been sold and the money should have been given to the poor. John 12: 6 says that Judas said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. What then was his motivation for the betrayal?

He went to the chief priests, who were looking for an insider to help them seize Jesus. Judas went to Jesus’ enemies and in Matt. 26: 15 asked, “What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you?”

Judas saw that Jesus was determined to go to the cross, and he asked himself, “What can I get out of this?” In fact, when we examine those who were involved in crucifying Jesus, many of them acted out of self-interest.

Judas had left the little company in the upper room. Moved by the worst of motives, controlled by covetousness, he had gone out to meet the chief priests and to receive the money they had promised him in view of a little later betraying the Lord Jesus into their hands.

And now as the Savior was left alone with the eleven whose hearts were strangely troubled because of certain things He had already told them, He spoke with a new joy and said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.”

It did not look as though God was about to be glorified, and during the next three days they must have had plenty of doubts indeed as to God being glorified in the events that took place.

The Lord had said that He was going out to die, that He was to be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Could that glorify God?

He had said that He was to be buried and then raised again, and it was in this, His death and His resurrection, that God was to be glorified. For in His sacrificial death upon the cross, He was to settle the sin question in a way that would meet every claim of the holiness of God’s nature and the righteousness of His throne. And we may say that in that death of His upon the tree, God has received more glory than He ever lost by Adam’s sin and by all the guilt and enmity and iniquity that came into the world since.

As proof that He has been glorified, God raised His Son from the dead, glorifying Jesus, the One who had accomplished the work. “If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him.”

The thought of the Father’s glory was very much in the heart of Jesus at this time. In fact---it may seem strange to some of us to say it---but our Lord apparently was far more concerned about glorifying God than He was about saving sinners. How we like to think the opposite! We like to think our salvation was the important thing: that the great thing Jesus came to do was to save our souls. And He did come for that. “The Son of Man came,” He said, “not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.” “Christ also loved the

Church and gave Himself for it.”

But there was something greater than the salvation of sinners that occupied His heart, and that was glorifying the Father. So in the seventeenth chapter when we see Him before God as our High Priest, anticipating the work of the cross, we hear Him saying, “I have glorified Thee upon the earth, I have finished the work that Thou gavest Me to do.” God’s glory is first, and then that finished, the work of the cross by which our souls are saved..

In John 13: 34 Jesus gave us a new commandment, sometimes called the eleventh commandment. He said, “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another.

3. PLEASE READ JOHN 19: 16b-19.

After being condemned to death they took Jesus, and led Him away. The word they refers to the soldiers in charge of the crucifixion. Jesus was bearing his cross. This probably refers to the cross-bar since the entire cross would have been too heavy.

Crucifixion was the most extreme method of execution used in the time of Jesus. Only the worst criminals, slaves, and seditionists were crucified. It was designated not only to execute a person but, to torture and humiliate the wrongdoer.

The prisoner was beaten, forced to carry the cross-bar to the place of execution, stripped of his clothes, and nailed or tied to the cross-bar.

The upright part of the cross was fixed in the ground, and the cross-bar attached to it. There was a sort of seat so that the nails holding the victim would not rip through his flesh. Some crosses had a foot-rest from which the prisoner could push upward and avoid being unable to breathe. In other cases the feet were nail for the same purpose. Most of the time it was a slow, torturous death. But death could be hastened by breaking the victim’s legs.

They led Jesus to Golgotha, the Hebrew word for the place of a skull. It was a place of public executions located at that time outside the gates of Jerusalem. When they arrived, they crucified Him. Jesus cross was between two other crosses on which two convicted criminals were put to death. Isaiah 53 says, “He was numbered with the transgressors.”

This was a brutal reminder that Jesus died for sinners. He died with sinners, at the hands of sinners, and for sinners.

Pilate wrote the superscription that was on the cross. It was customary to write the name of the crime for which a person was crucified. Pilate wrote: JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. It was written in Hebrew (Aramaic), Greek, and Latin. This made it readable to people of all languages.

The chief priests objected and asked Pilate to begin the sign with the word “he said, I am king of the Jews.” Pilate stubbornly replied, “What I have written I have written.” This response reflected the bitter disagreement about Jesus between the religious leaders and Pilate. Pilate had persistently denied that Jesus was guilty, but the Jewish leaders had used political pressure to force him to order the death of Jesus. So Pilate used the sign as one act of defiance to his political foes.

Actually, the title ironically testified to Jesus’ being King. He was the King who ruled from the cross. The O.T. had two focal points. One was the promise of a King to reign over an everlasting kingdom. The other was the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, who suffered and died for the sins of others. On the cross Jesus fulfilled both aspects of this hope.

As you trace the footsteps of the blessed Lord through this scene, as pictured for us by the four different writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you see in Jesus absolute perfection.

He was the only man who ever trod this earth who never had one word to take back, never had one sin to confess. His was a life in which there was nothing to be repented of---the Man Christ Jesus, God’s perfect, spotless son, of whom He could say, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I have found all My delight.”

John 19: 23-32 tells of Jesus time on the cross. Soldiers gambled for His seamless robe, fulfilling Scripture in John 19: 23-24. Jesus committed the care of His mother to John in John 19: 25-27. Toward the end, Jesus said in vs. 28, “I thirst.” Then in vs. 30 He shouted, “it is finished.” This was a victory cry.

The Romans usually left bodies on their crosses long after death, but the Jewish Sabbath began at dark. To honor the Jewish custom of not leaving bodies hanging on their crosses overnight, Pilate sent soldiers to hasten the death of those being crucified. The soldiers hurried the victims’ deaths by breaking their legs. Breaking their legs hastened their deaths by removing the prisoners’ ability to support their weight by pushing upward. As a result their bodies sagged so badly that they were unable to breathe. The soldiers came and broke the legs of the two criminals, thus hastening their death.

4. PLEASE READ JOHN 19: 33-37.

After breaking the legs of the two criminals the soldiers came to Jesus and found that He was already dead: therefore, they did not need to break His legs. Probably to ensure that Jesus was truly dead, one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side and blood and water came out of the wound.

What is the significance of the blood and water? At least three factors may have been involved. The most obvious meaning was the assurance that Jesus was truly dead. He was not just unconscious. Some skeptics tried to explain away the resurrection as a resuscitation, but it was not. Everyone at the time knew Jesus was dead.

A second factor may have been that the two substances represent a broken heart. Some physicians have suggested such. If so, Jesus’ heart was ruptured by bearing the sins of the world. But we should not interpret this to mean that Jesus died grieving. His words “it is finished” were a cry of victory. A third factor may have been that the blood and water were signs or symbols. Blood may represent His shed blood for sinners. Water may signify the cleansing power of His sacrificial death for us.

Someone---probably John---saw this happen, and he testified to its truth. His purpose in recounting this was that we might believe. These events fulfilled Scripture. No one verse uses precisely the words “a bone of him shall not be broken,” but possibilities about what John was referring to include Exodus 12: 46; Numbers 9: 12: and Psalm 34-20.

The quotation about “looking on Him they pierced” comes from Zechariah 12:10, which begins a passage in Zechariah 10: 14 about mourning and repentance, and is immediately followed by Zechariah 13:1 which is an announcement of the opening of a fountain to wash away sin and impurity.

Surely John intended his quotations to recollect the prophecies and to connect them to the flow of blood and water in vs. 34.

We often sing: “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.”

For man—oh, miracle of grace: For man the Savior died.

Today, some people are not willing merely to personally reject Jesus and His claim of kingship over their lives. They would do anything to do away with Him once and for all. But being confronted with the death of Jesus on the cross for our sins leads people to believe in Him as Savior. Such experience with Jesus should be part of every believer’s testimony.

THE EASTER SUNDAY LESSON FROM JOHN 20:1-18 IS THAT BECAUSE JESUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD, HIS FOLLOWERS ARE TO TELL OTHERS JESUS LIVES FOR THEM AND THAT HE ASCENDED TO GOD THE FATHER FOR THEM. A.V. DAUGHERTY