• John 12:27

John 12:27

Sermon preached on April 5, 2009 by Laurence W. Veinott. © Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Other sermons can be found at http://www.cantonnewlife.org/.

Quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (NIV). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.


A few years ago I had a very weird experience while driving. I was in my van and as I was going down the road I was suddenly startled when a mouse appeared right in front of me. By that I don't mean that he was on the road in front of me, he was right in front of me, so close I could reach my arm out and touch him, or so it seemed. My first reaction was to shudder because I thought that he might run up towards me and jump on me. I sort of prepared myself for it so that I wouldn't freak out when it happened—because I didn't want to hit another car or go off the road. You need to be in control when you're driving. It looked like he was on the dash and that he could just scamper over to me at any time. But then as he ran around a bit I quickly realized that he wasn't inside the car, but that he was on the other side of the windshield, running around where the windshield wipers are. It as actually through a little hole where the wipers attach where he came up. Once I realized that he wasn't on the dash in front of me I relaxed and more or less just enjoyed the experience, watching him and he went back and forth in front of me and then go back down the hole he had come out of.

What a weird experience. But knowing that he was on the other side of the windshield made all the difference. It made the whole thing a lot easier to deal with. I knew that he wouldn't be able to freak me out.

Knowing certain things can make some things easier to endure. You can relax and know it's going to be all right and that makes it easier.

We Christians sometimes make that mistake about Jesus' sufferings. We know that He was God and therefore we can minimize His sufferings, thinking that His divine nature gave great strength to His human nature so that His sufferings were not that bad for Him, that He easily endured them. When we think about our sins being imputed to Him, we can minimize the grief that it caused Him, thinking that since they really weren't His personal sins, so it was relatively easy for Him to take them to Himself.

We must resist thinking in such terms because it lessens our appreciation of our Savior. Not only that, but it minimizes and undervalues His great work on our behalf. Not only that, but it leads us to not appreciate His true and full humanity. So this morning I want to look at a text that will help us put these things in their proper perspective. In John 12:27-28 Jesus said,

"Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say?
'Father, save me from this hour'?
No, it was for this very reason
I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!"

The great truth we see here is that

Jesus experienced great pain as He contemplated His death.

Jesus said,

"Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say?"

This is similar to what Matthew told us about Jesus' words in the Garden of Gethsemane. He said, (Matthew 26:38)

"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."

We see something of this in Luke 12:50 as well. Jesus said to His disciples,

"But I have a baptism to undergo,
and how distressed I am until it is completed!"

The Greek word that John uses that is translated 'troubled' means to have inward turmoil, to be disturbed or unsettled, to be thrown into confusion. (BDAG) Literally John writes that Jesus said that His 'soul' was troubled. Putting both of these things together we can conclude that Jesus was undergoing intense inner anguish. He wasn't talking about physical pain, but rather the intense mental and psychological pressure of our sins being placed on His account and His suffering and dying for them. This is what was causing Him great inner turmoil.

This is clear from the context. In the verses before and after this Jesus had referred to His death. In verses 23 and 24 He had referred to His hour coming and how unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains a single seed, but if it dies it produces many seeds. In verses 31 and 32 He told how it was time for judgment and how the prince of this world will be driven out and how when He was lifted up He would draw all men to Himself.

So the first thing you Christians should understand from our text is that

it was because of His association with you that He was troubled.

What trouble His association with you brought Him. The cause of his great anguish was His association with you. The reason He was going to die because He was taking your sins upon Himself. He had no sin of His own. It was because of your sin that He was troubled. It was transferred to His account so He could suffer and die for it. As we read in 2 Corinthians 5:21,

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us,"

Or as Isaiah 53:4-6 says,

"Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

Louis Berkhof writes, (Systematic Theology, p. 337)

"In the last analysis all the sufferings of Christ resulted from the fact that He took the place of sinners vicariously."

"the cup which the Father gave him consisted substantially in the imputation to him of a criminal's guilt, and the assignment to him of a criminal's position and destiny."

"You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;"

Not only that, but He loved having the approval of the Father. In one sense He certainly had it here for the Father's voice boomed from heaven that He was going to glorify the Son. But in another sense, the laying of our sins on Him resulted in His being separated from His Father and experiencing His wrath. He knew that was coming and it pierced Him to the heart. You'll remember how He quoted from Psalm 22 while He was on the cross, (Matthew 27:46)

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Berkhof tells us that one of the causes of Christ's sufferings was,

"His perfect awareness and clear anticipation, from the very beginning of His life, of the extreme sufferings that would, as it were, overwhelm Him in the end. He knew exactly what was coming, and the outlook was far from cheerful."

"Think of Jesus coming into this terrible position towards the Judge of all—towards his Father and his God—towards him whose approbation and pleasure in him were the light and joy of his life unspeakable! Think of him consenting to have all the sins of myriads imputed to him by his Father: to underlie, that is, the imputation, in his Father's judgment, of every kind and degree and amount of moral evil—every species and circumstance and combination of vile iniquity!"

"there is a vexing fallacy to be guarded against. We are ready to suppose that however hard and terrible to bear must have been the wrath and death which were the wages of the sins for which he suffered, yet the imputation of these sins to him could have, in itself, cost him little anxiety, or cause him little sorrow, in the consciousness that he was not personally guilty of them—the consciousness of his own unsullied holiness."

"God the Father made His innocent Son the object of His wrath and judgment, for our sakes, with the result that in Christ on the cross the sin of the world is judged and taken away."

"Whom having not seen, ye love;
in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing,
ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:"

We can have joy unspeakable because of Christ's righteousness being given to us. So you can imagine the anguish unspeakable that came upon Christ when our sins were imputed to Him. We can only poorly conceive how difficult it must have been for Jesus to take our sins. It filled Him with great pain. John Calvin writes,

"it was necessary for our salvation, that the Son of God should have experience of such feelings, In his death we ought chiefly to consider his atonement, by which he appeased the wrath and curse of God, which he could not have done, without taking upon himself our guilt. The death which he underwent must therefore have been full of horror, because he could not render satisfaction for us, without feeling, in his own experience, the dreadful judgment of God;”

"Behind death, he saw him who has the power of death, and that sin which constitutes the sting of death. His whole being revolted from that final and deepest humiliation, in which the powers of evil were to inflict upon him the precise penalty of human sin. To bow his head beneath this stroke was the last indignity, the hardest act of that obedience which it was his to render in his servant-form, and which we are told with significant emphasis, extended 'up to death' (Phil. ii.8)."

"Since the children have flesh and blood,
he too shared in their humanity
so that by his death he might destroy him
who holds the power of death—that is, the devilÖ"

Of course Satan does not hold the ultimate power of death. His control over death is secondary. As Philip E. Hughes writes, (p. 112)

"Death is not a sphere that has broken loose from God's command. On the contrary, Scripture, as Aquinas observes, clearly teaches that death, like all else is under God's control (cf. Gen. 2:17; Dt. 32:39; 1 Ki. 2:6; Mt. 10:28; Lk. 12:5; 1 Corinthians. 15:25f; Rev 1:18);"

"I lay down my life—only to take it up again.
No one takes it from me,
but I lay it down of my own accord.
I have authority to lay it down
and authority to take it up again.
This command I received from my Father."

But having said all that, we must realize that

death is a great evil and that for the time being it is, to a large extent, the realm of the evil one. It was that realm that Jesus entered.

Philip E. Hughes writes, (p. 111)

"At the cross, the decisive encounter between God and Satan occurred."

"He said that though he had seen many deaths, he had never seen any really peaceful. In all there had been much struggle. So much so that 'I myself have conceived what I will not call a terror of death, but a repugnance from the idea of death. It is the rendering asunder of body and soul, the tearing apart of the two elements of our nature…'"

"Now my heart is troubledÖ"

Now this has great implications for us.

First, Christians, how much Jesus loves you!

What He went through for you! What anguish of soul He suffered for you. The only way for you to be saved was for Him to go through the suffering that your sin required. What amazing love.

If you ever find yourself going through hard and difficult times and a doubt about God's love for you comes to your mind—dismiss it! How can you doubt when you know what anguish Jesus willingly suffered for you? In His work of saving you He underwent the most horrific sufferings. It was for you—because He loved you. He has proven His love—with such proof that that fact of it is unassailable.

Christians, be assured of Christ's love for you. Be convinced that when you suffer, He knows what you go through and He is sympathetic. He knows what a troubled heart is like. James Montgomery Boice writes, (Foundations of the Christian Faith, p. 285)

"Jesus, by means of the Incarnation, came to know all the vicissitudes of life: trials, joys, sufferings, losses, gains, temptations, griefs. He entered into them, understood them,"

"For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way,
just as we are—yet was without sin.
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence,
so that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help us in our time of need."

Secondly, for those of you who are not Christians, what you should understand from our passage is that unless you go to Jesus,

you're going to suffer great anguish.

The horror of the consequences of sin. The horror of sin. Why did Christ suffer? He suffered and died because it was the only way for sinners to be saved. In Galatians 2:21 the apostle Paul wrote,

"if righteousness could be gained
through the law, Christ died for nothing!"

But righteousness can't be gained through the law. Christ's suffering was necessary. Romans 8:32 speaks of God not sparing His own Son, but delivering Him up for us all. Do you think that God would have spared His Son if He could have? Absolutely.

But there was no other way for sinners to be saved. You need Jesus. Without Him you're going to be lost. Without Him you'll one day know what a truly troubled heart is—and there'll be no relief, no escape, no hope—it'll be too late. Don't let that happen to you.

The third thing we should see from our text is that

Jesus was truly human.

Warfield, (The Person and Work of Christ, p. 93)

"It belongs to the truth of our Lord's humanity, that he was subject to all sinless human emotions."

Yes, He is true God. But He was (and is) also true man. His troubled heart proves that He was fully human.

The fourth thing we should learn from our text is that

you should hate sin.

John Calvin,

"hence we come to know more fully the enormity of sin, for which the Heavenly Father exacted so dreadful a punishment from his only-begotten Son. Let us therefore know, that death was not a sport and amusement to Christ, but that he endured the severest torments on our account."