The Truth about Sacrifice
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John 12:20-26
We are continuing on our eight week journey through the Gospel of John, looking at the Verily, Verily statements of Jesus.
As we look at the theme of The Truth will make you free throughout this year, I thought it fitting to start with this series.
The word translated Verily, again, is the word Amen…or truth.
So what was Jesus emphasizing by saying Verily, Verily or Truth, Truth?
We saw in the first week how he emphasized the Truth of Who He was.
The Second week we saw the Truth about the Son of God.
The Third Week, last week we saw the Truth about priorities.
This week Jesus is emphasizing the Truth about Sacrifice.
God calls us to a life of sacrifice.
The truth of this is that it is a life of not thinking about yourself.
That is the key to sacrifice.
Your focus is not on your pain, your loss, your life, your agenda, your plans.
The focus of sacrifice is Christ, and the Kingdom of God.
24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
Deny himself…take up his cross and follow me.
The idea of taking up our cross is often lost on us today, we see crosses all over the place, our homes, our necks, even bumper stickers.
To us it is a symbol of victory, and rightfully so.
But when Jesus spoke these words, and to whom He spoke them to, it meant something completely different.
The cross was a torture tool to punish criminals.
And this is how Christ calls us to identify with Him.
The cost of discipleship is much larger than any of us can imagine.
Jesus understood, even before the cross, what sacrifice He would have to make.
As we come into the passage today, we are just coming out of the Triumphal Entry.
The people lined the street shouting, “Hosanna, Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
Now in verse 20 we are told that a group of Greeks that had come to the Passover feast, obviously believers, came seeking to see Jesus.
Curious about this man who had been lauded as King of Israel.
They came to Philip, who we learned about in our first sermon, but Philip didn’t know what to do with these Greeks, so he came to Andrew to find out what to do.
Apparently Andrew didn’t know what to do with the Greeks either, so they came and told Jesus that there were Gentiles wanting to talk to Him.
As we have seen in these Verily, Verily statements Jesus doesn’t address their question…He just begins to teach them some truth.
The call to be a disciple of Christ is a call to sacrifice.
We see in this passage before us Three Lessons that can be learned about Sacrifice.
I. Sacrifice Comes through Humility
I. Sacrifice Comes through Humility
We see this truth in the events that occur in this chapter.
Jesus comes into Jerusalem riding on a donkey.
The people laud Him as their King.
They cried out Hosanna!
Jesus could have received their praise, received their calls to make Him king, and there would have been nothing wrong with it if He did.
He is King!
He could have conquered the rulers, and taken Israel, even the whole world as His domain.
In fact, one day He will!
But we see in this passage in the midst of these many in Jerusalem calling for Him to be their king, he responds with God’s Will for His life.
“The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.”
Speaking of His death.
Even the Gentiles are coming to see Him.
He could, right now, have the following of both Jews and Gentiles…but He humbled Himself, and thought of the plan…God’s plan.
If we are ever going to be a true disciple of Christ, we are going to have to humble ourselves to God’s Will.
The world rushes on around us, we get busy with our plans, our schedule, our goals and we focus so much on the things of this world we often forget that we are called to humble ourselves... sacrifice ourselves.
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
The call to be a disciple of Christ is the call to sacrifice, and the first step of sacrifice is humility.
Humility, remember, is not thinking badly of yourself, but not thinking of yourself at all.
We often will be given praise and honors.
And there is nothing wrong with that!
It does help encourage us to keep going and know our work isn’t in vain.
But we must never let it go to our heads!
We have many people in this church who do an incredible job in serving the Lord in this church, and I dare not begin naming names because I am sure I would forget someone and cause an offense.
But each and everyone from the teachers who teach, to the greeters at the door who offer a warm hand and a welcome heart each of you do an wonderful job for the Lord.
From time to time someone will encourage me by telling me I did a great job on a sermon, or something…I usually and purposefully try to respond with, “Praise the Lord.”
Because I truly know that no good can come from my own efforts, but if anything was a blessing it was only because I yielded to God in humility.
I heard a story of Samuel Morse who invented the telegraph. Someone asked him if he ever encountered situations where he didn't know what to do. Morse responded, "More than once, and whenever I could not see my way clearly, I knelt down and prayed to God for light and understanding."
Morse received many honors from his invention of the telegraph but felt undeserving: "I have made a valuable application of electricity not because I was superior to other men but solely because God, who meant it for mankind, must reveal it to someone and He was pleased to reveal it to me."
May we have a similar humble spirit about us when we are praised or thanked for anything that we do.
So Sacrifice comes through Humility
II. Sacrifice Comes through Dying
II. Sacrifice Comes through Dying
That’s a big jump, isn’t it?
But Jesus shows his disciples a very important principle here.
24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
The call that we have been given, the call to be a disciple of Christ, can only happen if we humble ourselves to the point that we die.
Just as the kernel of wheat must be placed in the ground and dies in order for a wheat to grow.
So we must sacrifice through dying.
That is quite an ask!
But the life of the disciple is marked with some characteristics that are not appealing.
First of all, the life of the disciple is an
A. Open-handed Life
A. Open-handed Life
The call to being a disciple of Christ is a call to dying to self.
There is no room for selfishness in the work of the Lord.
My wants will only distract me from what God wants.
We have to be willing to die to self - with open hands.
We need to be willing to give up our plans - with open hands.
But Jesus said, “if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
Yes, the call to discipleship is a call to dying to self, but it is also a call to being fruitful.
There is no fruit bearing without sacrifice.
So we must offer ourselves with open hands to God.
This is exactly the kind of lives that were lived by men like Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint and Roger Youderian.
These five missionaries found a tribe of Auca Indians while flying Nate Saint’s plane over their territory.
They began by dropping gifts from the plane onto the shore near the village, and they were received with smiles and laughter.
Once they felt it would be safe they decided to land their plane and make contact with the tribe.
At some point in the contact things turned bad, and all five missionaries were speared to death.
They each had guns on them, but they had agreed to not shoot the tribe members, but shoot in the air to scare them off if needed.
They decided this because the natives are not ready for heaven, but they knew they were.
Seven years prior to this, Jim Elliot wrote in his journal, “He is no fool who gives away what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”
To be a disciple of Christ is to live an open-handed life of sacrifice.
But there is something else this verse tells us, it is a ...
B. Lonely Life
B. Lonely Life
Serving the Lord is a lonely life.
We are not going to be in the majority, ever.
Jesus said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.”
As we are planted where God places us, surrounded by the soil of this life, it feels dark and lonely…but unless we die to ourselves, we will not bear the fruit that God wants for us to bear.
When I was 28 or 29 years old, I looked around me and all of my friends had married, I was still single. I was working with my dad in his church and Christian School in Vallejo, CA.
There was no one my age anywhere around. No hope of prospects for marriage. It was lonely, but I knew I was exactly where God wanted me to be at that point.
Finally, with a broken heart, I knelt beside my bed and told God, “OK. If your plan is for me to be single for the rest of my life, I will do it.” I died to marriage that day.
A few months later I met Michelle…at first I didn’t pay attention to my feelings for her because I was dead. I died to marriage…I’m supposed to be single!
But it wasn’t long before I realized that God didn’t want me to die to marriage, he wanted me to die to my will.
Once I died to my will, God brought His will to my life. and we brought forth much fruit…four wonderful children, and an exciting ministry together.
The life of the disciple must be an open-handed life, and certainly at times will be a lonely life.
So lesson one about Sacrifice is that it comes through humility.
Lesson two, is that Sacrifice comes through Dying.
Lesson three, to be a disciple we must understand that
III. Sacrifice Comes through Following
III. Sacrifice Comes through Following
26 If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.
It is a sacrifice to follow!
I’ve heard said that everything rises and falls on leadership.
But the truth is the leader cannot lead without someone to follow.
I have been an assistant pastor in two different churches and I have found that it’s not always easy to follow.
When you follow, you have to give up what you want for what your leader wants.
There were times that I didn’t want to do something the way my pastor wanted it done, but the follower must sacrifice.
You see the truth is the follower must...
A. Go Where the Leader Wants
A. Go Where the Leader Wants
26 “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be:”
If we are going to be a disciple of Christ, we must be willing to go where ever Christ wants us to go!
I have heard people say, “I’ll never go to the city”…or “I could never live out in the middle of no where.”
We must be careful to not only be open handed, but open minded as well.
Don’t ever hold anything back from the Lord!
Don’t ever let there be any place you would not go for God!
He wants all of you, and when you hold something back, that is like putting a big neon flashing sign pointing to what you are holding back.
God will sometimes test us to see if we are really his disciples.
He says, “I think I want that thing that your holding back. Are you willing to give it to me?”
I’ve heard more than once a missionary come through and give testimony how that they told God “I’ll go anywhere you want me to go,except...”
Every time their except, was exactly where they were headed.
Don’t hold anything back from God…be willing to Go where your leader wants you to go.
The good news is…Jesus doesn’t send you…He goes and invites you to follow Him!
“where I am, there shall also my servant be.”
But the Sacrifice through following not only includes where we go…but also we need to be willing to ...
B. Do What the Leader Wants
B. Do What the Leader Wants
The verse continues,
“if any man serve me...”
This statement implies the doing what the leader wants.
I remember when I was in elementary school in our Christian school, I saw that the high school had an auction where they auctioned off the high school jocks to be a servant for the day.
If you won the auction you could tell the basketball player to do whatever you wanted (within legal limits) and they had to do it. Somethings were pretty mild, they carried the persons books or back pack, they brought them lunch,etc. I remember a few being pretty outlandish, like one poor soul had to wear a diaper on the outside of his clothes and carry a baby bottle and wear a baby bonnet all day. I’m grateful that I never got auctioned off! It took a lot of humility to do what they were asked to do, all for a good fundraising cause, of course.
As the servants of Christ, he does not seek to humiliate us, but he does ask us to serve Him.
But there is a much greater prize than a basketball uniform in the end!
“If any man serve me, him will my Father honour.”
The God of all the ages calls you to follow His Son, Jesus.
He calls us to be His disciples.
But it means sacrifice!
The sacrifice of humility.
The sacrifice of dying to self.
and the sacrifice of following Him.
What about you?
Are you His disciple?