John 12:12-50 - You’re Doing It Wrong
Main Idea: We exist to fully glorify Jesus, not ourselves.
Vs. 12-19 — Jesus enters Jerusalem 4 days before the Passover.
Vs. 20-36 — Jesus declares His purpose for coming to Jerusalem.
Vs. 37-41 — John explains why many still did not believe on Jesus.
Vs. 42-50 — Jesus gives His final public call in John to believe & obey.
• Paul David Tripp — “Sin makes us glory thieves. Rather than glorifying God by using the things He’s given us to love other people, we use people to get the glory we love. But the Redeemer has come so that glory thieves would joyfully live for the glory of Another.”
• Michael Svigel — “Whatever gimmicks you use to attract a crowd, you must increasingly out-do to keep them.”
• Tony Evans — “If a person persists in pursuing darkness, eventually God will confirm his desire. Be careful what you wish for.”
• Bruce Milne — “Those who expect the Lord to own their names on the judgment day, He expects to own His name now before a watching world.”
WE GLORIFY JESUS THROUGH PRAISE, NOT PRIDE
WE GLORIFY JESUS THROUGH SURRENDER, NOT SELFISHNESS
WE GLORIFY JESUS THROUGH OBEDIENCE, NOT JUST BELIEF
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)
We are in a series in John 11 through 13. We're walking all the way through John this year, but in particular, this portion that we're going through is John 11 through 13, in a series entitled A Rejected Savior.
And this is right at the end of Jesus' life, literally the weeks leading up to Jesus' death. So in John 11, we heard about the raising of Lazarus from the dead. That was about a week or two before Jesus' crucifixion.
And then in this... Forgive me. Did I say episode?
Okay. Here's the problem, guys. If you don't know, I have a Bible study podcast that I go through the books of scripture.
And so I record a lot of those. It's weekdays, so it's a lot of that. So occasionally, when I am preaching a sermon in my brain, I go, wait a second, did I say the right thing?
This is a sermon. There are actually people here, which I like a lot better, by the way. It's nice being able to see you and get to interact.
But occasionally, my brain, I go, okay, I really hope I said the right thing there. So we are in a sermon series, and our sermon today is happening the Sunday before Jesus dies.
So what we're looking at today happens five days prior to Jesus' death on the cross. If you knew you had five days to live, what would you do? Who would you be spending your time with?
Jesus knew. And we're going to hear it today, and then really over the next four months, we're going to be seeing, because now John like really, really zooms in on this last week, the passion week of Jesus to see what the Lord has.
So, the title of today's sermon is You're Doing It Wrong. Now, I know you guys are like, oh man, you know, I came to church for encouragement. The very first thing the pastor says is, you're doing it wrong.
I don't know how, in what ways you have failed in your life, in what ways you've done things wrong. I do things wrong all the time, and I fail constantly.
And one of those ways that is on the more humorous side that I failed, when I grew up, I did a lot of reading, but I didn't always know how words were pronounced.
So then I got into trouble sometimes when I tried to say a word that I had only ever read, but hadn't ever actually heard.
So what do you call the strainer in a kitchen that, you know, you're rinsing out lettuce or some other, you know, vegetable or thing. What do you call that? There's a word for that strainer.
Yeah, colander. But when I was probably an early teen, way too old to be pronouncing this wrong, I passed the colander to my mother, who then promptly educated me on the right way that you're supposed to pronounce the word.
One other thing, a couple of years ago, I think this would have been about three years ago now.
So when my wife and I were initially looking for the church, that God would have us to go to before I met y'all, so don't worry, this is like an X that I used to date. This isn't y'all.
We were in Colorado, and my family was still living there at the time. And there was a church down in Pueblo, Colorado, that we were interviewing at. And my dad was gracious enough to lend me the use of his jeep.
I forget if it was a Wrangler or something, while we were driving down there. And so my wife and I had started down the road, and you guys know me, I love music.
And so I was wanting to listen to some songs as we were driving down about an hour and a half down to Pueblo from Castle Rock. And so I pressed what on my vehicle is basically the up and down for the volume that was on the steering wheel.
Well, all of a sudden my dad's jeep started wigging out. And I tried using the gas pedal, and the engine was just like revving, nothing was happening. And I went, oh, no, like, I've literally had this for 15, 20 minutes.
My dad is going to kill me. So I called him up, and I told him what happened. And he went, oh, what on the steering wheel should be volume controls were gear shift paddles.
So I'd gone into like, you know, first or second gear on the highway when I was trying to go 80 miles an hour or 70, whatever was appropriate and legal to do. And so I had pressed the wrong thing at the wrong time. I was doing it wrong.
I was not using it for the way it was intended to work. And for you and I today, we have been given a wonderful gift, much more wonderful than my dad's jeep at the time. We have been given the gift of life, of existence itself.
But today, I want us to recognize that we have been doing it wrong. We have been utilizing the gift that has been given to us in the wrong way because we exist to fully glorify Jesus, not ourselves. We exist to fully glorify Jesus, not ourselves.
Paul David Tripp, where some of us are doing a monthly book study. So I hope if you're doing that book by Paul David Tripp, Do You Believe?
I hope that you're reading so that that way in a couple of Saturdays, we've got some good things to talk about together. But that author says this, Sin makes us glory thieves.
At the bottom of a broken marriage, a shattered family, or a forsaken friendship, you will always find stolen glory. We crave glory that doesn't belong to us, and we step on one another to get it.
Rather than glorifying God by using the things he has given us to love other people, we use people to get the glory that we love. Sin causes us to steal the story and rewrite it with ourselves as the lead and with our lives at center stage.
But the story of scripture is the story of the Lord's glory. It calls me to an agenda that is bigger than myself. It offers me something that is truly worth living for.
The redeemer has come so that glory thieves would joyfully live for the glory of another. There is no deeper personal joy and satisfaction than to live committed to his glory. It is what we truly need.
So this is the kind of mindset that we have as we come to this passage, Palm Sunday, in John 12.
Jesus, fresh from raising Lazarus from the dead and fresh from receiving a death sentence by the Sanhedrin, the ruling court of his day, he comes to Jerusalem five days before his death.
His last public sermon recorded in John's Gospel tells us how Jesus lived for the Father's glory and how we are called to live for the glory of God as well.
And we're also going to see a little bit of what it looked like for people then and now to instead glorify ourselves instead of him. Let's pray and then we'll dive into the passage and then there'll be just three short statements at the end.
Dear Jesus, we are so thankful for your goodness to us. Thank you for the fact that you have given us your word. Lord, thank you for making us cognizant of the fact that we are supposed to live for your glory.
That's the way you've made us to operate. But Lord, we have lived for ourselves instead. God, forgive us.
And Lord, even as we hear today from your word, Lord, may our hearts be shaped to obey and to follow you and to seek your glory even as you did. We love you and we pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
If you have your Bibles, follow along and buckle in. We're going to go kind of fast through the scripture portion. So stay with me.
Verse number 12, the next day, this is the day after Jesus is anointed with oil by Mary, the sister of Lazarus. We talked about that last week.
So the very next day, when the large crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took palm branches and went out to meet him.
They kept shouting, Hoseanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel. Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, Do not be afraid, daughter Zion.
Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt. His disciples did not understand these things at first.
However, when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.
Meanwhile, the crowd, which had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to testify. This is also why the crowd met him, because they had heard that he had done this sign.
Then the Pharisees said to one another, You see, you've accomplished nothing. Look, the world has gone after him. Here, from these initial verses, here's what happens.
Jesus is going to come into Jerusalem for basically the last time that we have recorded in John's gospel.
We know from the other gospels, there's a few more ins and outs, but John isn't covering every action, but he does want to cover the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.
So here, as the people that they were there at the raising of Lazarus, which if you saw someone get raised from the dead, are you going to be kind of excited when the Resurrector is coming to your city?
If the Resurrector is coming, then anything is possible. When even death isn't a period, but it's just a comma, you might get a little excited. And so that's what these people are doing.
And so they begin to shout in the words of scripture, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The Lord is the King of Israel. Here they quote from Psalm 118, from a different portion, a different verse than DC read today.
But they were proclaiming this Psalm, that Jesus was the King of Israel. Jesus was the cornerstone, rejected by the religious rulers of the day, rejected by the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. But Jesus was the point of it all.
And John also tells us there in verse 15, that Jesus fulfilled Zechariah 9. That scripture is all about Jesus. That when Zechariah is saying, don't be afraid, daughter Zion.
Zion is another word for Jerusalem, by the way. It says, don't be afraid, daughter Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt.
Sidebar, how many of you guys in here, like you ride horses or you ride donkeys, any riders in here? Okay, just like one or two of you. Okay, a couple of you.
You would know, you don't want to ride the youngest, you know, donkeys or horses. Those are going to be the ones that have the most energy. You guys have seen my children.
You know that my children have more energy than me, and it works just the same way with horses and donkeys.
But here, Jesus' rule and his peace and his reign extends even to where he's able to ride things that you'd normally not go, hey, what does a king ride into the city? You wouldn't say the most obnoxious donkeys.
I'm glad that Jesus tames some of the most obnoxious donkeys. Amen. Amen.
And I noticed as well in verse number 17, where it says that the crowd who had seen Jesus raise Lazarus, they continued to testify. And the crowd, the larger crowd, met him because they had heard from the crowd that was testifying.
A consistently confessing or testifying people of God will lead people to God. Let me say that again. A consistently confessing and testifying people of God will lead people to God.
Food, clothing, holidays, or even a great public speaker will not ultimately make a church biblically grow. As a pastor from the previous century, AW. Tozer said, What you win them with is what you win them to.
Or as Dr. Michael Svigel from Dallas Theological Seminary put it yesterday, whatever gimmicks you use to attract a crowd, you must increasingly outdo to keep them.
You win them with Jesus, you win them with the gospel, then they stay for Jesus or they stay for the gospel. This is something John has highlighted over and over again.
And here as Jesus, as he raised people from the dead, as he has proclaimed his greatness and his glory and has shown his authority over even death itself, that got people's attention.
And unfortunately, even as we read the Pharisees' words, not everyone was convinced, but those that would be convinced by who Jesus truly was, the Lord, the King of Israel, they were all in for that.
We're going to continue reading now in verse number 20. Now, some Greeks were among those who went up to worship at the festival. Okay, what ethnicity, what nation was Jesus a part of?
Yeah, he was Jewish, the land of Israel. So this is already kind of cool. Here, there are some Greek proselytes that are there.
Greeks are among those who went up to worship at the festival. So they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and requested of him, Sir, we want to see Jesus.
I have pastor friends I know of that even like on their pulpits, or maybe on something that only they can see every time they get up to the pulpit, that they see engraved, Sir, we want to see Jesus. That ought to be the goal of our lives.
There's a lot of good things in this world. There's a lot of worthy things that we can encourage people about. But the most important thing that anyone can know, that anyone can hear about, is Jesus.
May we make him the forefront. So then Philip went and told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus replied to them, The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.
I won't stop there quite yet. Just keep that in mind. That phrase, you're going to need that.
Truly I tell you, this is Jesus speaking, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. The one who loves his life will lose it.
And the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me. Where I am, there my servant also will be.
If anyone serves me, the father will honor him. Now my soul is troubled. What should I say?
Father, save me from this hour. But that is why I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.
Then a voice came from heaven. I have glorified it and will glorify it again. The crowd standing there heard it and said it was thunder.
Others said an angel has spoken to him. Jesus responded, this voice came not for me, but for you. Now the judgment, now is the judgment of this world.
Now the ruler of this world will be cast out. As for me, if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. He said this to indicate what kind of death he was about to die.
Then the crowd replied to him, we've heard from the law that the Messiah will remain forever. So how can you say the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?
Jesus answered, the light will be with you only a little longer. Walk while you have the light so that darkness doesn't overtake you. The one who walks in darkness doesn't know where he is going.
While you have the light, believe in the light that you may become children of light. Jesus said this and went away and hid from them. Here in this next portion, you have Jesus who is lauded as the King of Israel.
He proclaims what he has come for. Jesus didn't enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to be crowned the King of Kings by the nation of Israel at that time.
What he proclaims even as the Gentiles who are there and they recognize who Jesus is and they want to see Jesus and talk to him, Jesus proclaims to them and to the crowd what he was there for. He didn't come to glorify himself.
He didn't come to get earthly accolades and praises and positions. He came to die. Think of what he says there.
He says, a grain of wheat, unless it goes into the ground and dies, it's all by itself. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. I loved this quote by 18th century pastor Matthew Henry.
He said, Christ might have possessed his heavenly glory alone without becoming man. Or after he had taken man's nature, he might have entered heaven alone by his own perfect righteousness without suffering or death.
But then no sinner of the human race could be saved. He says, the salvation of souls hitherto and henceforward to the end of time is owing to the dying of this corn of wheat.
That because Jesus was the seed that died, he rose again and he is the firstfruits of all who will believe in him for eternal life.
Unfortunately, the crowd, as Jesus proclaims this, and he talks about the fact that you need to hate your own life as opposed to hating the life of God or the glory of God.
He says, if you love your life and you will not surrender it to God, you will end up losing your life at the end of everything. He says, but the one that goes, my life, my earthly existence in the here and now is not of ultimate importance.
God and his will are of ultimate importance. The person who does that, acting like they hate their life, is going to experience eternal life. Let me give a little bit of an illustration.
There would be people that seeing, you know, my job as a pastor, they would go, you are wasting your time. You could make a whole lot more money selling used cars.
You, you know, would be able to have so much more fun if you weren't bound by the rigidity of your, you know, Christian morality or following a 2000 year old book. You could have more fun. You could have more money.
You'd have more time on your hands. Imagine what you could do if you didn't have to preach a sermon every Sunday, and you could just go out, you know, on any trips you wanted and have all the fun you wanted.
They would say, why do you hate having fun? Why do you hate your life? And the truth is, I don't really hate my life.
I hate what I would turn my life into, and I love what God has turned my life into.
And my prayer and my hope and my firm belief is that as I have handed the reins of my life over to God, and as I know many of you have, in all sorts of different occupations, you don't have to be a pastor to turn your life over to Jesus.
I have seen over and over again people that their life involved addiction, their life involved greed, their life involved cruelty to others. But as Jesus took over, and they hated their life, and they took on Jesus' life, man, they found it.
And they found eternal life that is found in Christ alone. What a joy. The crowd doesn't believe him, and they have, they quote from one of the Psalms that talks about the Messiah, the descendant of David, that lives forever on the throne.
And so they say, we've heard this about the Messiah. So how can you say that the Son of Man needs to be lifted up? Now, when we talk about this and we think, oh, we're going to uplift someone.
Like, if I uplift Laurie, most of you would not go, Brian's trying to kill Laurie. But here, these people recognize exactly the turn of phrase that Jesus is using.
Even as we read in the verse that it says, Jesus said this signifying what type of death he would die. And so they say, how can you say that the Son of Man is going to be lifted up, is going to be killed when the Messiah lasts forever?
Well, you guys tell me, did the Messiah die? Yeah. Does the Messiah live forever?
Amen. Now, they didn't understand that, but that is what Jesus was proclaiming to them. And unfortunately, this crowd, they deny his Messiahship, ignoring his claim to be the slain yet conquering Son of Man from Daniel 7.
So this past July, when we went through Daniel 7 through 12, the very first message that we looked at in Daniel 7, we saw that as the kingdoms of this world, they live and they're in control and they're doing evil.
And Daniel talked about the Son of Man that came.
And though he's on the land where everything's getting crushed and destroyed, and even God's people and the Son of Man as one of God's people is crushed, yet the Son of Man is lifted up and he reigns over the entire world on the throne of David
beside the Ancient of Days, God the Father. And so Jesus here is giving the exact blueprint for what would happen, but they don't understand.
Now, sometimes in our life, there's things that we won't understand until after it happens, and then God gives us some insight afterwards to go, yeah, you didn't like that part of the story, but you needed that part of the story in order for the
happy ending. You needed to go through the troubled time so that you knew that you needed me. And so, here, Jesus proclaims, yes, I am here, I truly am the king of Israel, but I am not here to establish my reign.
I'm here to die, that as I am lifted up on the cross, then everyone else gets eternal life, everyone that chooses to reject their way of living and accepts the Lord's way of living.
Even here, as Jesus, he does not insist on his own right to existence itself, but he goes, I am willing to die. So that God's work can be accomplished, so that people can experience salvation.
Then in verse number 37, even though he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him. Here John is giving like a, hey, author's note in here, I want to tell you guys what was taking place.
He says, they didn't believe this was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet, who said, Lord, who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
This is why they were unable to believe, because Isaiah also said, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts so that they would not see with their eyes or understand with their hearts in turn, and I would heal them.
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke about him. Here, what a sadness that those created in the image of God, those that were God's people, those that were given the word of God, chose to not believe and follow the Lord.
And I want to challenge you guys today with this. There's a quote from Tony Evans, a pastor in Texas. I believe most of you have it on your handout.
Well, if it's on the handout, all of you have it. He says, if a person persists in pursuing darkness, eventually God will confirm his desire. Be careful what you wish for.
You can see this even in the life of Pharaoh, that over and over and over again, God gave the option to Pharaoh, let my people go, and Pharaoh resisted again and again and again. And eventually God hardened Pharaoh's heart.
He cemented that decision that Pharaoh had made. Can I challenge you guys today? Simply seeing miracles or hearing Jesus' words are not sufficient for your salvation.
These people saw the miracles Jesus did, and they heard the living Word of God speak, but it did not result in their salvation. We must surrender our lives to Jesus.
Accepting his teaching and becoming his disciples, that our belief isn't simply a mental assent. It is actually adopting Jesus' different way of living.
Then lastly today in verse number 42, Nevertheless, many did believe in him even among the rulers. But because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him, so that they would not be banned from the synagogue.
For they loved human praise more than praise from God. The word here for praise, it's the Greek word doxa, it's the word glory. They loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.
So then here, Jesus' final cry out in John's Gospel, his last public cry out. The one who believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me. This is saying he's not believing in me as opposed to God.
I in the Father are one, as we learned in chapter 10. So he says, you are, yes, believing in me, but you're also believing the word of God. He says, and the one who sees me, sees him who sent me.
I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me would not remain in darkness.
Now, just quick reminder, whenever you're reading any of John's works, here, Jesus is the light of the world, and he's come so that we would not remain in darkness.
Is Jesus, has Jesus come so that we would not be afraid of the dark, or that there would be a lot of photons wherever Jesus' followers are? Is that what he's saying? No.
This darkness is moral darkness, moral evil. Jesus has come to save us so that we would be made new. We would walk in his way, not in our old way of sin.
If anyone hears my words and doesn't keep them, I do not judge him, for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and doesn't receive my sayings has this as his judge.
So Jesus says, I'm not just sitting in judgment on you. I actually came to save the world, not to judge or destroy it at this time. He says, the word I have spoken will judge him on the last day.
The word of God is the judge for whether or not we experience eternal life with God in heaven, or whether we are forever separated from him in the place that scripture calls hell. The answer is the word of God.
And what have you done, if you will, with the living word of God, with Jesus himself? He says, for I've not spoken on my own, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a command to say everything I have said.
Jesus says, I'm not making any of this up. I am telling you exactly what God wants you to hear. It's not that God gave one set of instructions and Jesus went, oh, that was okay.
I'm going to give you a better set. He says, no, this is what the Father has told me to tell you.
Can I tell you, I know I'm the pastor here, but this goes for if you have like podcasts that you listen to that are scriptural, if you're listening to sermons or different things, go after people that have this mindset that the Father has told me to
say everything that I have said, that they want to be in the Word and that the Word determines what they say and how they say it. If you are listening to preaching and it doesn't have much of the Bible and it just has a lot of, well, here's 39 ways
that you can be a better aunt this week, or here's, you know, 40 steps to being the best employee, you know, you might be able to derive those things from scripture, but go after scriptural truth because this is the living Word of God. Verse 50, he
says, I know that his command is eternal life. So the things that I speak, I speak just as the Father has told me. Here we can see that belief in Jesus is not simply verbal or mental assent in his existence.
It is following his words and his way of life. We saw that back in verse number 42, that many, even from the rulers, believed in him, but they did not confess him. That they genuinely thought, this guy is the Messiah, he is the Lord.
But I'm more scared of the Pharisees and their praise, their glory, than I am of whether or not God is glorified, of whether Jesus receives the glory from me.
Belief in God is not simply verbal ascent in his existence, it is following his words and his way of life.
There's a quote from, it's a Bible commentary, the Bible Speaks Today by Bruce Milne, and he said, Those who expect the lords to own their names on the judgment day, he expects to own his name now before a watching world.
Three sentences, and we're done. Okay, there's three larger sentences, and then there's three minor sentences underneath. I want to make sure I don't lie to you guys on Sunday.
Any day, really, but especially Sunday. We glorify Jesus through praise, not pride. We want to be like the people that are shouting, Hosanna, welcome the king of Israel.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We want to praise, not be those in pride like the Pharisees who complained and said, I can't believe that we've only succeeded in making the whole world go after him.
Glorifying Jesus comes through praise, not pride. Obsessing about your accomplishments, your desires and frustrations, your plans or your possessions is not an act of glorifying God, but of seeking your own glory, worship, and adoration.
Instead, glorify Jesus through praising him in song, in prayer, in testimony, in teaching, in your social media, in your conversation. And if you want to know, okay, which one am I doing?
Am I doing praising Jesus and am I glorifying him or am I pride-filled? Well, what's coming out of your mouth? What do you spend time talking about?
At lunch today, you'll get a pretty good idea about what's going on inside of you. Am I praising Jesus or am I filled with pride? And am I seeking to glorify and lift up Jesus or lift up myself?
A person that is seeking to praise Jesus might say things like, I read this in the Word this week, or I was listening to this sermon, and or they might say, I was encouraged by so and so doing this or that, or seeing how they're living for the Lord.
Someone that's filled with pride might say, can you believe that they did this, or that they didn't do what I wanted? Let us be those that constantly lift up Jesus and are not focused on our own pride.
Second, we glorify Jesus through surrender, not through selfishness. Even as Jesus says, he's nervous coming up to the cross and his crucifixion and his beating and his trial and all the sins of the world being laid on him.
And even as we read, he said, what am I supposed to say? Father, save me from this hour. But it was for this reason that I came to this hour.
And so he prays, God, glorify your name. Insistence on everything that we deserve or everything that we want is a sure sign that we are walking in selfishness, living for our own glory instead of God's.
If your church, your marriage, your job, your friend group perfectly cater to your every desire, you are the one that is being glorified in that place.
We glorify Jesus as we surrender, as we do not have all of our desires met, but we seek to meet every desire of God.
God is glorified when you don't get everything that you want, and when you still choose to be kind, to not complain, and to lay down your life in service of others.
Are you willing to die to your own ambition and preferences so that God can be glorified through you?
Jesus was betrayed, abandoned, abused, tried in a kangaroo court, spat on, and crucified so that you and I could experience everlasting life and a relationship with God.
When you suffer at the hands of other people, your response will either bring glory to God, or you can try and point the glory to yourself. Surrender would say something like, well, it's not the way I would do it, but I choose to.
Selfishness would say, well, if you don't, then I'm gonna, or it's my this or that. Jesus modeled for us a surrendered life, one that said, not what I will, but what you will. And lastly, today, we glorify Jesus through obedience, not just belief.
As we read there, many of the rulers believed, but did not confess Jesus.
Many of us claim to believe in a God that we daily ignore, accept at mealtime prayers, that we never talk about unless we're using his name as a curse or a filler word, and a God that we obey his commands whenever they align with our wants.
Jesus did not tell us, go into all the world and have people pray the sinner's prayer. I'm thankful for the sinner's prayer. I prayed the sinner's prayer.
But what Jesus said was, go into all the world and make disciples.
The proof of saving faith is not a specific date and time where you bowed at an altar, but the proof of saving faith is the Holy Spirit of God producing His fruit of righteousness in and through you.
That's what Peter tells us in 2 Peter 1, that as the work of the Spirit is in us and abounds, it makes it so that we will not be unfruitful or useless, and we remember that we have been purged from our old sins.
1 John 3 in verses 7 through 10 say, Little children, let no one deceive you. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
The one who commits sin, that is a habitual committing of sin, a unrepentance, I'm going to keep on doing this because I desire to do it. The one who commits sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning.
The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the devil's works. Everyone who has been born of God does not sin because his seed remains in him. He's not able to sin because he has been born of God.
This is how God's children and the devil's children become obvious. Whoever does not do what is right is not of God, especially the one who does not love his brother or sister.
And I encourage you, if you are a Christian today, born again, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, washed in water, act like it this week. Choose to live your life in obedience to God's word following his commands.
So we exist to fully glorify Jesus, not ourselves. And we glorify him through praise, not through our own pride. We glorify him through, and I forgot what my second one was.
We glorify him through surrender, not through selfishness. And we glorify him through obedience, not just belief. Today, will you choose to glorify Jesus in your life this week?
And perhaps there's someone here today that, like the Pharisees or like some of the rulers, you have a mental ascent to believe in Jesus. You believe he really did live and die and rise again, but you've never turned your life over to him.
You have never accepted Jesus as your Savior. Can I encourage you? You can get that settled today.
Don't put it off. It might be that as these in John 12, there will come a day where God says, fine, your will be done, you refuse.
And so now he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts so that they would not see with their eyes or understand with their hearts in turn, and I would heal them.
Choose today as God calls to you for salvation that you would listen to and obey him. Your life was made for him.
