[AI translation] It is perhaps unusual that on Palm Sunday I read not the usual Palm Sunday story from the Bible - not the part about the entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the temple - but a seemingly completely alien event that followed in the Gospel of John. But it is not! Because the scene that I have just read from the Gospel of John, which continues here, took place on the same day as the cleansing of the temple, so even this is one of the events of the Flower Sunday. Among the crowds who gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover were Greeks and Gentiles who were sympathetic to the Jewish worship of the one God, who, precisely because the city was full of people speaking the name of Jesus, and everywhere people were talking about Jesus, and discussing the events of the day with enemies and friends alike, began to search for Jesus themselves. Someone might direct the inquiring Greeks to one of the disciples, so they come to Philip and ask him, saying, "Sir, we want to see Jesus!"Of course, this request from the Greeks does not mean that they want to see Jesus from afar - for they may have already seen Him in the morning crowd - but, having heard so much about Him, they want to see Him now. In other words: they want to meet Him, to meet Him in person! Oh, what a joy it is when a soul has come this far! When it is no longer enough to have heard about Jesus, but now wants to see Him, wants to meet Him in person! I know souls who say: Leave me alone, man is always hearing Jesus this way, Jesus that way; here was a whole week, everyone was always talking about Jesus - hasn't it been enough, aren't you bored yet? And there are souls who, the more they hear about Jesus, the more their hearts are filled with the desire to "see" Him!
How do you feel about this question? Are you tired of hearing the name of Jesus here again? Well, that may be true, but don't you feel that it is not enough to know everything about Him, not enough to know His deeds and teachings, but because you already know Him by hearsay, you want to know Him personally? Is that so? So do we understand what this is all about? A good week ago, I was talking to a woman at a conference, she was in agony. It was because, despite having all the necessary knowledge of Christ, she did not have Christ, her Saviour. She could answer all the questions precisely and accurately, such as: why did Christ have to die on the cross? He knew, he said, that it was also for his sins. He knows that it is for Christ's death that there is forgiveness of sins, but He also knows that He has not yet been forgiven of His sins. He knows that he who believes in Christ has eternal life, but he also knows that he does not have eternal life. He recognizes that all that God has given in Christ is beautiful, true and good, but it is not his! It is a very miserable state of mind, because it is a feeling of a terrible inadequacy! When man feels that he can no longer bear this uncertainty, he needs certainty, he needs clarity! He now wants to see everything clearly and definitely! He now wants to be convinced of reality - he wants to see Jesus!
It may be a miserable state of mind, but it is even more miserable when one is satisfied with what he has heard, what he knows, what he knows about Jesus, and does not want to see Him! It does you no good to see Jesus through another man's eyes! The way others tell you, the way they describe you. No matter how brightly His beauty may be painted before you, it is not a vision that can bring assurance, that can bring blessing, that can bring His face to be engraved on your heart! You must see Him face to face for yourself! When the wandering people were beset with fiery serpents, and Moses, by the Lord's commandment, made a serpent of brass, and lifted it up on a pole in the midst of the camp, that all who looked upon it might escape the deadly bite of the serpent - then, too, each one had to look up to the serpent of brass himself. A mother could not look up for her child, nor a best friend for his friend. So it doesn't help you if your spouse or child is Christ's, you have to want to see Christ for yourself! I do not want to talk about Jesus in a nice way here, because too much nice talk tends to obscure the One I want to draw your attention to. I only want to pass on the Lord's warning: you must want to see the Lord, you must want to know Him personally, directly, because it will not help you if you only know Him from me or from anyone else, and not by personal encounter!
These Greeks came to a disciple of Jesus and asked him to introduce them to Jesus. A precious task for Jesus' disciples, to take someone's hand, lead them to the Lord and introduce them to Him. But no one should think that they need someone to introduce them to the Lord! No need for such a parade! Our Lord is no earthly greatness, that he should need the recommendation of others to come before him. The way is open to all directly! I read somewhere that a little child was dying and he said he was not afraid to die, he just wished his mother could go with him to present him to Jesus! Because you already know him, my mother," said the little girl, "and I have always been afraid of strangers!
But no one will find Jesus a stranger! He is no stranger to anyone who really wants to see Him, who really wants to know Him. He is always happy to reveal Himself to one who seeks Him. Believe me, He is not far from you either, you will find Him easily, you don't need anyone to introduce you to Him! Introduce yourself to Him and be alone with Him! You heard so much about Him last week. He has called you with so much love all week, you must have heard His message. Well, if you don't want to leave it at that again, if you want to meet Him, then kneel down at home, quietly, alone, before the invisible Christ and literally introduce yourself to Him! Tell him who you are! Tell all that is in you! All your secrets, all your ugliness, all your sins - expose yourself to Him!
That is how you will see Him! That's how I met Him 18 years ago, on my knees, when I dared to introduce myself honestly to Him for the first time in my life! So go boldly, no one else can do it for you! When Jesus learns from His disciples that Greeks want to see Him, He says things that seem to be irrelevant: 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of corn fall into the ground die, it abideth only in itself; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." (Jn 12:23-24) Jesus says this so that the Greeks who want to see Him will not have the wrong idea about the Messiah. Especially after seeing the royal procession on Palm Sunday, it was easy for them to get the wrong idea that Jesus was some kind of warrior-like hero. 'Make no mistake,' says Jesus. Those who want to see Him will see Him truly when they see Him as a grain of grain fallen into the ground. What does this image of a grain of grain falling into the ground mean? Imagine a grain of wheat! There is life in that grain of wheat! It has a wonderful, rich life squeezed into it, stored away in tiny, tiny places. But in order for that life to unfold in all its richness and splendour, that grain of wheat has to be absorbed into the earth, there it rots, it 'dies', and from that 'death' of the grain of wheat comes the harvest. If it does not die, it remains alone - if it dies, it multiplies. It triumphs by the very fact that it is willing to die! All this is only an image, but it expresses a truth that cannot be expressed otherwise. It is clear that Christ is the grain of wheat, the seed of eternal life, whom God has sown in the earth. He first cast Him, a part of His divine life, down from heaven to earth, and then sowed that seed here on earth, right into the earth, into the grave. There it lay in the ground, in the grave, like a grain of wheat in the furrow, under the clods. And if from the death of the grain of wheat new life springs up, how much richer, fuller, more glorious life springs up from the death of the seed of eternal life? Just as the life of a grain of wheat can be multiplied by its death in 30, 60, or 100 grains of wheat, so the life of the one Jesus Christ can be multiplied by the very death of the death on the cross in the lives of millions and millions of people. Thus God has transplanted eternal life to the earth in Christ, through Christ.
Do you know when you really see Christ? When the fruits of that Good Friday sowing begin to ripen and grow in you! The very first fruit of that holy sowing is the forgiveness of sins. When a person presents himself on his knees to the Lord, it is in the liberating power of forgiveness of sins that the living Jesus Christ first becomes a reality for him! It is here that the personal encounter with Jesus begins, when he says to the person kneeling before him, "Your sins are forgiven you!"
The fruit of the Good Friday sowing is the fruit of all Christian life. "He that serveth me, let him follow me", says Jesus. (verse 26a) He died on the cross so that through the forgiveness of sins you might be freed to serve Him now by following Him. To be a Christian is to follow Jesus and serve Him! Sounds very general? Well, let me put it in other words. The Greeks, the Gentiles, the outsiders, asked Philip, "We want to see Jesus!" To the Gentiles, to the outsiders, to the world, this admitted or unacknowledged demand of Christ's disciples, "We want to see Jesus!" A believing woman asked me the other day: what advice do I have for her unbelieving husband to give her a Bible, because she wants him to have the treasures of Scripture! I said to her: don't give it to him at all, but give him the Bible. Don't read the Bible for the time being, but let your husband see from your wife's life what Christ's love, forgiveness, patience and gentleness are. That way she will understand better than reading it.
Believer, always feel this demand of the world upon you, "We want to see Jesus!" So: not to hear - but to see! As it is revealed in you! All those around you who are not yet walking in faith want to "see Jesus" in you, in your actions. In your behaviour. Do you already know what it means to follow Jesus and serve Him? This: to respond with all your efforts to the need that the world wants to see Jesus!
But this is also the result of the sowing of the seeds of Calvary. That Christ should be revealed in me is not the result of my efforts, but is the fruit of Christ's death and resurrection from the beginning. It is in contemplating the crucified and risen Christ that the Christian life is produced in me! It is not that I make up my mind and summon up all my strength - just as one does not get a tan by taking a vow to do so, but by exposing his face to the sun, by being bathed in its rays. As Paul wrote: "But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Cor 3:18)
How right these Greeks were when they came to Philip saying that they wanted to see Jesus! How good for us that we can see the Lord! We can still look up to Him! He is here with us now. Let us stand before Him in spirit and tell Him in the words of our beautiful song:
In you my faith now looks, my Saviour, my God,
On Calvary:
Hear my prayer, and take away my sin;
From now on, let me be yours alone.
Canto 466, verse 1
Amen
Date: 18 March 1951.
Lesson
Jn 12,20-26