Latest / The TakeAway / John 12:34–36 If God Chooses Us, Do We Still Need to Respond?

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John 12:34–36 If God Chooses Us, Do We Still Need to Respond? · The TakeAway

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: If God chooses those he will save, then why does he still command us to respond?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: For many Christians, that question sits at the center of the tension between God's sovereignty and human responsibility.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: If salvation is God's work from beginning to end, what place is left for our believing, responding, and choosing to follow Him?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: In John chapter 12, Jesus doesn't treat those truths as contradictions.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Standing before a crowd struggling to understand who he is, Jesus doesn't first resolve every question they have.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: He tells them to walk while they have the light and to believe in the light while it is still before them.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: In this message, Pastor Harry examines why God's sovereign choice never makes our response unnecessary, and why the command to believe carries an urgency we cannot afford to dismiss.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Pastor Harry Barns with today's message.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, welcome again to the takeaway.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barns.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And today I want to ask a question that revolves around everything we discussed over the last two episodes.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's this if God chooses us, then do we actually need to respond?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that question can pull us in a direction we have to be careful about because it's easy to hear God chooses and quietly conclude that the response doesn't carry any real weight.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: That if you're chosen, you'll get there eventually.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not, nothing you do changes it either way.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not how scripture actually describes it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: God doesn't just ordain who gets saved, he ordains the moment it happens.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Paul tells the Romans exactly this in chapter 10 when he says, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the hearing itself, the actual moment someone encounters the gospel, is the means that God appointed for his sovereign work to land.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a formality happening alongside of it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what that means for you listening right now.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: You don't get to reason your way to if I'm chosen, I'll get there eventually.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So today doesn't matter.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because nobody has access to that answer in advance.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Not you, not me, not anyone.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the writer of Hebrews in chapter 3, verse 7, puts it about as sharply as it could be said.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now that doesn't mean someday, not once the theology is fully sorted out, but today, waiting is not neutral.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's the very thing that verse is warning against.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's the tension sitting right underneath where we are picking up today in John chapter 12, verses 34 through 36, where we watch Jesus himself do something remarkable with this exact question.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't stop to explain the doctrine of God's drawing to the crowd in front of him before he commands them to respond.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: He simply tells them to walk while they have the light.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's how Jesus handles the tension between being chosen and being commanded, it's worth paying attention to what he's actually doing here.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, remember what we talked about at the start of our last episode, that every one of us brings something into the text before we've even opened it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Whether that's a theological position or just the old nature we are still carrying, reading scripture through our own understanding instead of letting it teach us.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, today we get to watch that exact thing happen in real time to a whole crowd of people standing right in front of Jesus.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's one last thing we need to remember before we move into today's teaching.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Our last episode revolved around verse 32, the promise that Jesus would draw all people to himself.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we spent the whole episode landing what that word all actually meant, that it was sufficient for every person, but effective only for the ones the Father actually gives.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: All peoples without distinction, Jew and Gentile alike, drawn out of the world one person at a time.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what that meant for you is that all people was never a crowd too large to see you standing in it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was always you standing at the door.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: The same God who moves the vastness of history is the same God establishing the steps of one individual life.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And now this week we get to watch whether a crowd can see itself that clearly, because what we are about to see is exactly how this crowd responds to what Jesus already said about all people.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, starting in verse 34, we read this.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: So the crowd answered him, We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Who is this Son of Man?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to be fair to this crowd, the same way we were fair to the Calvinists, the Arminian, the Universalists back in verse 32, because they are not making this up here.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: There really is a strand of scripture that promises an eternal throne of God's anointed king.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: In 2 Samuel chapter 7, God tells David through the prophet Nathan, Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Your throne shall be established forever.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then centuries later, in Daniel chapter 7, Daniel is given a vision of a kingdom that outlasts every empire in human history, one that is never handed over to anyone else and never comes to an end.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And this crowd knows that.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because here's what they're doing without realizing it.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: They've taken one true strand of scripture that says Christ remains forever, and they let it function as the final word where the verse corrects everything else.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: But the person standing right in front of them is the one who actually inspired and fulfills every one of those promises.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they're not letting him tell them how the pieces fit together.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, earlier in the gospel in chapter five, Jesus says, You search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it is they that bear witness about me.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what we see here is that this is the same failure, just a different crowd in a different chapter.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that tells us that you can hold the right text and still miss the right person if you let the text stand in for him instead of pointing you to him.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the crowd's confusion wasn't just one position, it was three separate questions stacked on top of each other.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: They asked, How someone who remains forever could die, why he specifically had to be lifted up, and who this son of man even was.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what's interesting about each one of those is that they're the same perspectives we still bring to scripture today.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Take the first one, for example, if he remains forever.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the natural question underneath that, the one that we would ask, is why didn't he remain forever?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, watch what the crowd actually assumed.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: They heard remains forever, and they heard never dies, as if those were the same promise.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not what the text they're quoting actually says.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Isaiah's servant song in chapter 53, verse 10, describes a suffering, dying figure in the greatest detail anywhere in the Old Testament, and it doesn't stop at the grave.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was the will of the Lord to crush him, Isaiah says.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is exactly what Jesus himself later explains to two men on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, when they still hadn't put the pieces together.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: He said to them, Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's the very same road into the promise of forever that the crowd standing in front of Jesus right now still needs to walk because they're asking the same question.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Those two men on the road to Emmaus were still asking after the resurrection had already happened.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're thinking about him remaining forever was never wrong.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: They just hadn't yet seen that forever comes out the other side of the grave.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that same crowd isn't only wrestling with whether he would die.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're wrestling with why he had to die the specific way he did.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: If he remains forever and dying was somehow part of that, why did it have to be a cross?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Why lifted up of all things?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, remember, this isn't the first time this gospel has used this phrase.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Back in chapter three, and one of the very first things Jesus ever says about his own death, he tells Nicodemus, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we learn that anyone bitten in the wilderness who looked at the bronze serpent, lifted up on a pole, they lived.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: The image was never subtle, and Jesus has been telling us what kind of death this would be since chapter three.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: But here's what's easy for us to miss.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Isaiah had already fused lifted up and exalted into a single idea.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Centuries before John ever wrote a word, in Isaiah chapter 52, verse 13, he says, My servant shall act wisely, he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, lifted up isn't only the shape of a cross.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: In Isaiah's own words, it's the same phrase used for exaltation.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So when Jesus says the Son of Man must be lifted up, he's stepping into language Isaiah already used to describe both the suffering and the glory as a single motion.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Down and up at once on the very same beam.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's still one more piece of their question we haven't touched yet, the title itself.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: If he remains forever, and if being lifted up was always part of the plan, who exactly is this son of man they keep asking about?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what the crowd doesn't realize about their own question.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where it all comes together.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: The title, son of man, isn't a vague phrase Jesus made up about himself.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a title, and it comes from the same book that likely gave the crowd their whole objection to begin with.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: In Daniel chapter 7, in a night vision, Daniel describes exactly this.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: With the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, when we see dominion, glory, a kingdom that will never be destroyed, it is very likely the same promise this crowd has already quoted, word for word.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that the crowd is holding the answer to their own third question inside their answer to the first one, without ever realizing the two questions were always about the same person.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: They know a son of man who reigns forever.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: They just haven't yet let that same son of man be the one Isaiah describes as crushed and pierced and lifted up to die.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now that settles what the crowd actually asked.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a question sitting underneath all three of theirs that they never got to voice.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's probably one you're already asking, even if you haven't put words to it just yet.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not only why did this have to happen?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's why did it have to happen this way?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Why not some painless transaction, some quiet arrangement settled behind the scenes instead of a public execution soaked in shame and blood?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, let me ask you a question.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: We have to ask ourselves before we go any further.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Which way would you have preferred it?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want you answering that in a general sense.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to name it.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to name an actual alternative because it's easy to look at the cross and call it a tragedy.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: What's much harder is actually naming a better way for God to have done what he needed to do.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that every alternative anyone actually offers eventually collapses into the same place with no tragedy at all, no cross, no cost, nothing hard to look at.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: But then we have to ask the next question.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: If that's how we would have done it, if there had been no wrath poured out anywhere and no mercy required to cover it, how would we have ever known him?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't just mean known about him.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the way Isaiah already told us that it was the will of the Lord to crush him on purpose and for a purpose.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Paul asks almost this exact same question in Romans chapter 9 to people telling God he should have done things differently.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: He says, You will say to me then, why does he still find fault?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: For who can resist his will?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul doesn't soften the answer.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: He says, But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then he says, What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I want you to notice that last phrase, in order to make known.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's the purpose behind everything Paul just said, and it's easy to read right past it.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: God endured the vessels of wrath with much patience for a reason, so that the riches of his glory could be made known to the vessels of mercy, the ones he prepared beforehand for glory.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's you and I.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you are a believer listening to this, the chosen, the ones who received mercy instead of what was deserved.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a painful thought to sit with, because it means we don't just receive mercy.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: We come to understand it, to understand the depth of God's glory, only because wrath was shown somewhere real, not held back or hidden from view.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, before we go any further, I want to guard against a wrong turn here because it's an easy one to take.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Paul doesn't let vessels of wrath become some other category of people off somewhere else, separate from us.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: In Ephesians chapter 2, writing to believers about believers, he says, We all once lived in the passions of our flesh and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's all of us.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Every believer hearing these words was by nature exactly where those vessels of wrath in Romans chapter 9 are described as being.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So don't hear vessels of mercy and assume you started out somewhere better.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Wrath poured out in full on the Son, mercy poured out in full on everyone the Son was drawing.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: A people who deserved wrath and received mercy instead.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: This was the very means by which God made himself more fully known than any other way ever could have.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, none of that was available to the crowd standing in front of Jesus that day.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't have Romans chapter 9 or 2,000 years of the church wrestling this out behind them.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: All they had was Jesus himself standing right there with their three questions still hanging in the air, unanswered.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now watch how Jesus actually answers them.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because on the surface, he doesn't answer them at all.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: In verse 35 and 36, he said to them, The light is among you for a little while longer.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now notice what's missing.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't explain how the Christ remains forever and lifted up together, or defined son of man for them.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Every question they asked, he leaves standing exactly where it was, unresolved.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not the first time in this gospel Jesus has done this.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Back in chapter three, Nicodemus asks, How a grown man could be born again?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus points him to the wind and the spirit.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: The woman at the well asks, which mountain is the right one to worship on?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus points her past the mountain entirely when he says, Worship in spirit and truth.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Every time someone in this gospel brings Jesus a question, they expect him to settle with information, he answers with an invitation instead.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's exactly what happens right here.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going because it isn't a general warning about the dangers of darkness so much as a description of the crowd standing right in front of him.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know where they're going.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's precisely what all three of their unanswered questions just proved.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus' response is to tell them the confusion itself is the darkness, and the way out was never going to be a better explanation.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's a decision.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And remember what we said at the start of our last episode.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: You don't get saved because you understand.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: You understand because you've already been saved.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is the same principle playing out in real time in front of a crowd that wanted the order reversed.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: The way Jesus lays this out, belief comes first, and becoming follows.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: The same way John already told us in chapter 1, verse 12 and 13, at the very start of this gospel, he said, To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sons of light is what belief produces before the theology is ever fully sorted out.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Then, without waiting to see whether they take him up on it, when Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now that withdrawal is the answer because the light doesn't argue indefinitely, it shines for a little while, and then a moment comes when it withdraws.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what a person does in that little while is the question this whole passage has actually been asking.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, everything Jesus just said assumes something important.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Walk while you have the light and believe in the light are addressed to people who can actually do something with them.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Their real commands spoken to real people standing right in front of him with the light shining on them at that very moment.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, the very next verses in this chapter tell us that most of them didn't respond at all.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: In verse 37, John will go on to say, though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's a real light, a real command, and a real invitation, and still no response from most of the very people standing closest to it.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's a real tension.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to leave it there for today because the text itself doesn't resolve it until the verses right after this one.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when we get there, it's going to cost us something to look at it honestly.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I want you carrying that question with you this week, the same way this crowd carried theirs.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because whatever the answer turns out to be, it isn't going to let any of us off easy.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Not the crowd standing at the temple that day, and not us listening 2,000 years later.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Father, we don't want to look away from what we've just seen, even the parts we can't fully explain yet.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your patience with us, the same patience you showed that crowd, still speaking, still offering light, even to people who didn't yet understand.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Forgive us for the times we wanted every question answered before we give you our trust.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Give us grace to walk while we have the light, to believe before we fully understand, and to trust that understanding will follow the belief you are asking of us.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Make us sons of light by the same mercy that has always done the making.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name, amen.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to thank you again for joining us today, and I hope today's message has really helped you take a step closer knowing just how much God loves you and wants you to know Him.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if anything today resonated with you, if you have any questions or comments, please visit us on our website at thetaway.faith, where you can send us an email, or you can click on the text us link in today's episode description and send us a text as we would truly love to hear from you.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in our next episode, we sit with the hardest question this chapter raises why a crowd who saw so many signs still couldn't believe, and what that tells us about grace itself.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.