Jesus Predicts His Death
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2021 · 25 July 2021
We’re studying John’s biography of Jesus. We have come to the last week of His life in Jerusalem, in the temple surroundings headed for the cross on Friday. We have looked at the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. We saw how Jesus came in actually on Monday. Before He had supper with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, at the home of a leper He had cleansed by the name of Simon.
Then on Monday He left Bethany, and He headed toward the city of Jerusalem riding on the foal of a donkey. There was a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Jerusalem ready for the week events leading up to Passover. The year is A.D. 30. It is His final Passover. It is the time that God has designed for Jesus to die. He will be killed as the true Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.
On Friday, He will be crucified and die when all the other Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the temple. But He alone is the Passover Lamb that God has chosen. All of the lambs that had died since sacrificial institution way back in the days of Moses; all those sacrifices that have ever died through those years could not take away sin. They were only looking forward to the one true sacrifice.
Now, the Jews had been waiting for their Messiah for centuries. Their Messiah and hope grew in some ways every year. But they also grew more desperate every year. They had had a succession of conquerors. And they had been mistreated throughout their history because they were continually under the judgment of God for their unbelief and apostasy, which had gone on for generations.
They had grown to hate the people around them. They were prejudiced and they were racist. They disdained the nations around them. If they traveled out of Israel and came back, they shook the Gentile dust off their shoes so they wouldn’t bring Gentile dust into their country. They wouldn’t enter a Gentile home. You might think this preserved them, but actually it developed a wrong theology.
When God originally called Israel, He didn’t call Israel to be the end and the goal of His purposes of salvation, but to be the means. God had always determined that He would save people from every tongue, tribe and nation in the world. In fact, in Genesis 12, God established Abraham as the father of that nation; He said to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “In you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
Instead of doing that, they became more isolated, more prejudiced and narrower. And they turned to hate the very people they were to reach. You see this, for example, in the case of Jonah, the reluctant missionary, who when told to go to Nineveh and preach, ran the other way. This is a sort of symbolic reflection of how the nation Israel felt about Gentiles coming to know their God.
This narrow prejudice has become the national mindset. They had no interest in thinking about anyone else. They were God’s people, and the blessings stopped with them. So, when they were thinking about the arrival of their Messiah, He was distinctly their Messiah. They viewed Him as their king, their leader, their redeemer and their conqueror. And the other nations who had rejected God would be judged.
But Jesus has put the exclamation point on His three years of miracle power by raising Lazarus from the dead in a village two miles away from the temple in Jerusalem. Everybody knows about it. It is in a very public place. It’s His last great public miracle. Again, this is just the capstone on conversations that have been going on for three years about the amazing power of Jesus.
He has power over demons, power over death, power over disease, power over nature. So when He comes into the city of Jerusalem on this occasion with an unmistakable power display of giving life to a dead man. So He arrives to their, “Hosannas, hail the Son of David,” Messianic title. They are thrilled. But they missed the reason for their existence. God never chose them to be the end, only the means to the end.
Paul in Romans says they were given the promises. They were given the prophets. They were given the law, the Scripture. They were even given the Messiah, but all of that was not the end. There must be a repentance of the leaders of Israel if they are truly to receive the Messiah and the kingdom. Well, they would not give up their works righteousness religion. They would not turn from their apostasy.
By the time Jesus comes to the end of His ministry of three years to hundreds of thousands of people all over Galilee, there are 120 believers in Jerusalem and 500 in Galilee. Jesus had come to offer Himself. Yes, He did come to call the people who had been chosen to true obedience and to become that witness nation. But as we come to John 12, we see one final offer, and it’s a call for embracing Him as God’s Savior.
We all know how they responded to it. They rejected it. It looked like they wanted to accept Him in John 12 with all the, “Hosannas.” That’s recorded in the other three gospels as well. But the truth of the matter is seen by Friday, in John 19:14–15 they’re screaming, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” “We have no king but Caesar.” The fickle crowd turns to call for His death. This is God’s final offer to Israel.
The question now is who will be God’s new people and witness nation? Who will take the truth about God and now about Christ and the gospel to the world? Look at Paul in Acts 13:44-48, “The following week almost the entire city turned out to hear them preach the word of the Lord. 45 But when some of the Jews saw the crowds, they were jealous; so they slandered Paul and argued against whatever he said.”
“46 Then Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and declared, “It was necessary that we first preach the word of God to you Jews. But since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we will offer it to the Gentiles. 47 For the Lord gave us this command when he said, ‘I have made you a light to the Gentiles, to bring salvation to the farthest corners of the earth.”
“48 When the Gentiles heard this, they were very glad and thanked the Lord for his message; and all who were chosen for eternal life became believers.” The Jews wouldn’t believe. The Gentiles did. God’s witness people shifts from the nation Israel to non-Jews. This is a stark transformation. There still were Jewish believers in Christ. There were 3,000 on the Day of Pentecost, thousands more in Acts.
But God is identifying a new people that are non-Jewish. Jews are included in the church because, “In Christ,” Galatians 3:28, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile.” But it’s no longer one nation but all nations. Romans 15:8-9, “Christ came as a servant to the Jews to show that God is true to the promises He made to their ancestors. 9 He also came so that the Gentiles might give glory to God for his mercies to them.”
Then Paul quotes Deuteronomy 32, which is the law, Isaiah 11, the prophets, and Psalm 18 and 117, which are the other writings, all the three sections of the Old Testament. He quotes all about saving Gentiles. “I will praise you among the Gentiles. Rejoice with His people, you Gentiles. Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles. They will place their hope on Him.” That’s in the law, the prophets and the writings.
John 12:17-26, “Many in the crowd had seen Jesus call Lazarus from the tomb, raising him from the dead, and they were telling others about it. 18 That was the reason so many went out to meet Him—because they had heard about this miraculous sign. 19 Then the Pharisees said to each other, “There’s nothing we can do. Look, everyone has gone after him! 20 Some Greeks who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration.”
“21 paid a visit to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee. They said, “Sir, we want to meet Jesus.” 22 Philip told Andrew about it, and they went together to ask Jesus. 23 Jesus replied, “Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. 24 I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels, a plentiful harvest of new lives.”
“25 Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. 26 Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me.” It’s a transition. It’s a preview of the shift from Israel to the world, from Israel to the Gentiles, the witnessing people of God in the world.
So the big transition is the transition from Israel to the Gentiles. We are part of that. We are the people of God who are the witness people in the world and we are made up of all nations, Jew and Gentile, without partiality. Verse 17 tells us the people were talking about the resurrection of Lazarus. The people who had been with Him when He called Lazarus out of the tomb, spread the word.
This had a tremendous effect, verse 18, “That was the reason so many went out to meet him—because they had heard about this miraculous sign.” There are hundreds of thousands of people in the city who have heard the word about this. The two crowds come together, and that’s the triumphal entry event. But these are all shallow actions, superficial, transitory and going absolutely nowhere.
Verse 19, “Then the Pharisees said to each other, “There’s nothing we can do. Look, everyone has gone after Him!” The process of them coming at Him during that week, asking question after question trying to trap Him, trying to catch Him, trying to embarrass Him and trying to indict Him. All week long, whatever they tried to do failed. These are the Pharisees who have just given the official national rejection.
But they couldn’t stop the plan of God. No matter what strategy, no matter what questions, no matter what confrontations, no matter what they did. Now it is His time, and now God will move through their rejection to take the gospel to the world and to bring the world to Christ. God didn’t reach the world through the Jews obedience. God reached the world through the Jews disobedience, and He is in charge.
To seal that transition, notice what happens immediately in verse 20-22, “Some Greeks who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration 21 paid a visit to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee. They said, “Sir, we want to meet Jesus.” 22 Philip told Andrew about it, and they went together to ask Jesus.” There were some non-Jews among those who were going up to worship at the feast, proselytes.
What we want to see here is the universal provision. These Gentiles become a kind of first fruits of the global harvest to come. They are the world going after Him, but I want you to see what our Lord says in verse 23, “Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory.” Stop there. That should have ignited a firestorm, because “Son of Man” is a Messianic term found in Daniel 7.
But Jesus then gives them an analogy in verse 24, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.” There can’t be any conquering kingdom unless I die. The divine timetable has come, but He will be glorified not in a worldly triumphant conquering, but in substitutionary death.
Jesus explains it such a graphic way. As long as a seed remains in the granary, it is preserved by its outside shell. Only when the seed is put in the soil does it begin to decompose and rot away, and when the shell decomposes and rots away, the life inside begins to flourish. It gives life to a huge plant, which produces more seeds and more seeds and on and on it goes.
If Jesus didn’t die, heaven would be empty of human beings. There would be none there. Apart from His death, there is no spiritual harvest. That’s why in Luke 24:25-27, He told those disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Messiah must suffer and die. His life-giving power is made possible only through His death. He can only put sin away by the sacrifice of Himself.
The history of Christianity is the history of one long, miraculous harvest that has all been produced out of one seed dying at Calvary’s cross. Verse 25-26, “Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. 26 Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me.”
We’re no longer talking to Israel. This is a general invitation. If you hate the life in this world, full of its sin and godlessness and you want to abandon that, you will receive eternal life. It is how you look at yourself that makes the difference, and this is why there were so many false converts. This particular principle is all through the gospels. If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me.
Salvation comes not only to people who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but people who turn from their sin, repent of all that they have done. What is the benefit of this? End of verse 25, life in all its fullness eternally forever. Where? Verse 26, “Where I am, there My servant will be.” Where is He? He ascended into heaven at the right hand of the Father in the eternal glories that God has prepared. Let us pray.