Latest / The TakeAway / John 12:12-19 Why Can't I See What God Is Doing?

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John 12:12-19 Why Can't I See What God Is Doing? · The TakeAway

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever looked at what God is doing in your life and wondered, why can't I see how any of this fits together?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we assume that if we had enough faith, enough wisdom, or simply paid closer attention, we would understand.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: The scripture shows us something very different.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: In John chapter 12, the disciples are standing in the middle of one of the most carefully orchestrated moments in all of history.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Prophecy is being fulfilled before their eyes.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: The crowds are gathering, and Jesus is moving deliberately toward the cross.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yet they do not understand what God is doing until they look back later.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Join Pastor Harry as he unpacks verses 12 through 19 of John chapter 12 and shows us why not seeing what God is doing doesn't mean he isn't working.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Here's Pastor Harry Barns with today's message.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome again to the takeaway.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barns, and today we're going to be looking at an assumption that most of us carry without ever even realizing it.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: We assume that clarity is available to anyone paying close enough attention, and that when people miss what God is doing, it's usually a failure of attention, faith, or intelligence somewhere on their part.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: We sit down, open our Bibles, listen to a message, and somewhere underneath it all, we assume that understanding is simply a matter of trying hard enough.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're going to see today, as we look at John chapter 12, verses 12 through 19, is that this isn't true for the crowd standing in front of Jesus that day or for us.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: What we're about to see is one of the clearest examples in all of Scripture of God setting a stage so intricately, so far in advance, that the people standing right in the middle of it, watching it happen with their own eyes, could not understand it until it was already finished.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's simply how the stage was built to work.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And once we see that on a scale this vast, it starts to change how we look at the stage still being set right now in our own lives for his glory and for our satisfaction in him.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we get going with these verses, I want to look at where we were in our last episode as we sat with four different postures in that dinner at Bethany.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: We saw Mary, Judas, the crowd, and Lazarus all answering the same question.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And today, that same crowd that was right there, the one drawn to Bethany because of Lazarus, becomes the crowd that ushers Jesus into Jerusalem.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, let's read the scriptures, verses 12 through 19 of John chapter 12, and walk through this together.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It says, The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it was written, Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him, and had been done to him.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the Pharisees said to one another, You see that you are gaining nothing.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Look, the world has gone after him.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's look at what's happening here.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The crowd hears Jesus is coming and they go out to meet him with palm branches, shouting, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the king of Israel.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we go any further, I want to make sure we actually understand that word Hosanna, because most of us have sung it or heard it without ever really knowing what it means.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Hosanna isn't a word of celebration on its own.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's transliterated from a Hebrew phrase, which means, save now, we beg you.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It comes directly from Psalm 118, verse 25, one of the psalms sung at the Feast of Tabernacles, the very psalm the palm branches themselves were already associated with.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this crowd right here isn't inventing a spontaneous chant.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're crying out an ancient, urgent plea for rescue.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And in the very next breath, they quote the very next verse of that same psalm.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: They say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what we see is that the crowd understood something true in this very moment.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: They were crying out for salvation and they were declaring Jesus to be the one Psalm 118 calls blessed.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: What they hadn't yet understood was what kind of saving he actually came to do.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then we see Jesus getting a donkey and coming, sitting on the donkey.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to look at how Jesus gets that donkey in the first place, because the other gospels fill in a detail John doesn't include here.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus sends two of his disciples ahead and tells them exactly what they'll find a cult, tied, one that has never been written.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he tells them exactly what to say if anyone questions them.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: He says, the Lord has need of it.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And Mark and Luke both tell us it happened precisely the way Jesus said it would.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then the owner released the cult without a fight on nothing more than those words.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: What that means is that Jesus, the one through whom everything was made, didn't need to take anything by force, not even the animal he would ride to his own coronation.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And those disciples that he sent out, he sent out on nothing but his word, trusting an owner they had never met to release what belonged to him.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that owner did exactly that.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So what we see is that Jesus doesn't walk into this moment unprepared.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And John tells us plainly why.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now we actually see in Luke's account of this same day the Pharisees standing right there in the crowd, telling Jesus to rebuke his disciples for shouting this messianic praise over him.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: They knew exactly what was being claimed and they understood the prophecy behind it.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's look again at the word this crowd actually chose to shout, the word Hosanna, save us, we beg you.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: What that means is that whether or not they had worked out any of the theology we're about to get into, the very cry coming out of their own mouths was already a confession.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: What we see is that people don't beg to be saved if they believe they are secure already.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whether or not they knew it or not, the crowd was admitting in that single word exactly what repentance requires us to admit that we cannot save ourselves and we need someone else to do it for us.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really the whole point of salvation here.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: If Jesus had ridden in on the clouds in obvious glory, most of that crowd would have assumed themselves worthy simply by being there to see it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: But he came the other way.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in crying out for saving, they told the truth about themselves without meaning to.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the tragedy underneath all that.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Most of that same crowd never followed through on what their cry admitted.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted the saving, but they didn't yet want the savior badly enough to follow him all the way to what saving them would actually cost him.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: What they hadn't reconciled was the other half of it.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: That the same prophecy in Zechariah goes on to describe a king who cuts off the chariot and the battle bow, whose dominion reaches from sea to sea.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Its language, most of Israel, including its religious leadership, read as a conquering deliverer who would finally throw off Roman rule.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But what they got was a king riding in lowly, unarmed, undefended, on his way to being crucified within the week.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: That king didn't fit the king they were expecting, even though it was the very same prophecy.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter later tells us that even the prophets themselves, the men who wrote those words, searched carefully, trying to understand what person or time their own prophecies were pointing to.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: What we see is that the two-sided shape of this, a first coming in humility and a promised second coming in glory, wasn't something anyone could fully resolve until the other side of the resurrection made sense of it.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly the pattern we're about to see play out again, but this time with the disciples themselves.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's look at verses 17 and 18 again.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb continued to bear witness.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason the crowd went out to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So what we see is that this isn't an incidental sequencing.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Go back with me to what happened right after Lazarus was raised.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: We saw that the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Caiaphas prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and from that day on they made plans to put him to death.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: That was what we saw in chapter 11.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here in chapter 12, that very same crowd, drawn by the very same miracle, is the crowd ushering Jesus into Jerusalem with palm branches, and the Pharisees, watching it happen, say to one another, You see that you are gaining nothing.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Look, the world has gone after him.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't believe that timing was incidental.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I believe the Father's timing in allowing Lazarus to die and in having Jesus raise him at the exact moment that he did was the appointed catalyst for everything that follows.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: It drew the crowd, it pushed the religious leaders past the point of debate and into a plan for murder.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It set off the exact chain of events that leads within days to the cross.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want you to remember something we established back in our study of John chapter 10, where Jesus said, No one takes my life from me.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I lay it down of my own accord.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: What that means is that Jesus wasn't swept up by events other people set in motion.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: He set them in motion himself.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: He chose the timing of Lazarus' death.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: He chose the moment to raise him.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: He walked toward Jerusalem, knowing exactly what that miracle would trigger, because he was the one triggering it.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now here's the verse I think is the theological center of this entire scene.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 16, we see that it says his disciples did not understand these things at first.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So what that means is that the men closest to Jesus, walking beside him, watching all of this happen, couldn't yet understand what was happening, even though they had all the information available to them.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't understand the donkey, the palm branches, or what Lazarus had to do with any of this.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: But it was only later, after the resurrection, after Jesus was glorified, that they looked back and finally saw it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the next verse, what we're going to see here is that up until this point in John's gospel, Jesus keeps saying the same thing.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: He always kept saying, My hour has not yet come.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: He says it in chapter 2, chapter 7, and chapter 8.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: But right after this verse in verse 23, everything shifts.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: He says, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: What that means is that Jesus isn't talking about something future anymore.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about something happening right now in the present tense.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe what we're watching as we get closer and closer to the cross is the one place in all of history where every attribute of God is put on display at the exact same time.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Paul tells us in Romans that God put Christ forward to show his righteousness so that he might be both just and the one who justifies everyone who has faith in him.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's his justice and his mercy meeting in the same place without contradiction.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Paul calls Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, and all of it reaches back to a promise made all the way back in the garden in Genesis chapter three, that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, everything before this moment was pointing toward this moment.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And on the road to Lemaeus, Jesus himself tells two of his disciples that beginning with Moses and all the prophets, everything in scripture was concerning him.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then what we see is that everything after this moment looks back at it as a fixed center.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't just one miracle among many or one sign pointing to the next.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the single point in human history where the full glory of God, his justice, his mercy, his wisdom, his power, his faithfulness, all of it is on display all at once.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it is happening right now in these very chapters as we get closer to the cross.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: But right now, let's go back to the question we opened with Why can't I see what God is doing right now in my life?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: What we see today is that the absence of clarity in our lives is not evidence that God isn't setting a stage, it's evidence that we are not yet standing in the vantage point from which that stage becomes visible.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: The disciples walked right through this moment we read about today, and they didn't understand a bit of it.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't until they looked back after Jesus was glorified that they finally saw what had been true the whole time.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want us to tie this back to a series I recently did when we asked why a loving God allows suffering in this world.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we're seeing today is the same architecture at work, just from a different angle.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: God's own son walked toward the ultimate suffering for our salvation and for his own glory.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that same intricacy is present in every hard thing that we have walked through.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not saying that to reopen everything we already covered in that last series.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying it because when we finally get the vantage point we didn't have before, even when we look back the way the disciples eventually did, we still struggle to fully comprehend it because it's too vast.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's too intricate.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: It reaches back further and stretches forward further than we could ever hold in our own minds all at once.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I heard someone say recently that there's a real difference between explaining how something works and helping someone actually understand it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can explain a mechanism to a person without ever giving them understanding.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's exactly where we sit with the ways of God.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: We can trace his hand, we can see the stage he set, we can even watch it fulfilled in hindsight and still not fully understand it the way you understand something you've actually lived and felt.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: That gap is not a failure on your part, it's simply the difference between a finite mind and an infinite one.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are listening today and you're struggling to understand and see how God is working in your life, here's what faith actually asks of you.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Faith doesn't require us to know how God is working.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Faith says we know that God is working.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Paul tells us in Romans chapter 8, hope that is seen is not hope.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: For who hopes for what he has already seen?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: If we could see it, understand it, it would not require faith at all.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: It would just be sight.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: So my encouragement to you as we look into these verses is this we know that God is who he is, because the evidence is there all through history looking back, and that same evidence lets us look forward toward what we cannot yet understand, and it allows us to trust him there also.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we may not be able to comprehend in our finite minds how an all-knowing, all-powerful, righteous, just God is doing everything that he's doing all at once in our lives and in the whole of all of history.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, our position isn't to comprehend it, our position is to have faith, and that's exactly what scripture gives us by the power of the Holy Spirit opening our eyes to the truth of his word, the same way he opened the eyes of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And just like those disciples, they didn't recognize him at first, but scripture opened to them turned into recognition.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when we can trust in the one scripture reveals, not because we understand how he does what he does, but because we know the one who does it, our lives have more meaning and purpose than we could ever comprehend.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what I do know when we look to God and his word to get the life that we want, we will always struggle.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: But when we come to know him and the life that he created for us, we will find the joy that he promised.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because the life that we were created for is and always will be for his glory.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you that you are always setting a stage we cannot yet see.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you that Jesus walked toward the cross by his own choice, timing every step of your glory, even when the people closest to him couldn't understand what was happening.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Give us the patience to trust your timing in our own lives, even now, before we reach the vantage point where it will finally all make sense.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to thank you again for joining us today, and I hope today's message has helped you take a step closer to knowing just how much God loves you and wants you to know him.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if anything today resonated with you, or if you have any questions or comments, please visit us at thetaway.faith.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: There you can send us an email, or you can click on the text us link in the episode description, as we would truly love to hear from you.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in our next episode, we're going to come back to this same moment in Jerusalem, but we're going to look at it from a different angle.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Today we saw the divine scale of what God was doing.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Himself initiating the moment toward the cross, timing the raising of Lazarus with precision for his own glory.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: But next time we're going to bring that all the way down to the human level because on that very same Passover, there were Gentiles present in Jerusalem, seeking Jesus, asking to see him.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're going to discover is that God was working just as intricately on the individual level as he was on the national and cosmic level, all at the exact same time.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every single person present that week, the Pharisees, Gentiles, Jews, the disciples, all of them were purposed to be there to witness what they witnessed.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.