Latest / The TakeAway / John 12:20-33 What Did Jesus Mean by ‘I Will Draw All People’?

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John 12:20-33 What Did Jesus Mean by ‘I Will Draw All People’? · The TakeAway

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Jesus said, When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: But what did he mean by all people?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Was Jesus saying that everyone would eventually be saved?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: That salvation was being offered equally to every person?
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Or was he describing something else entirely?
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: In John chapter 12, a group of Gentiles arise in Jerusalem with a simple request.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: They want to see Jesus.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Their arrival becomes the setting of one of Christ's most debated statements about salvation and reveals something deeply personal about how God draws people to this Son.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Join Pastor Harry as he unpacks John chapter 12, verses 20 to 33 and follows the text itself to answer the question: Does Jesus draw everyone to himself?
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Here's Pastor Harry Barns with today's message.
• 1:09
  Speaker: Hello and welcome again to the Takeaway.
• 1:11
  Speaker: I'm your host, Pastor Harry Behrens, and today we're going to be touching on a topic that is sensitive for some and unknown to others.
• 1:17
  Speaker: And it all revolves around one verse.
• 1:20
  Speaker: In John chapter 12, verse 32.
• 1:23
  Speaker: That verse is actually asking two questions at once.
• 1:26
  Speaker: And I want you to hold on to both of them as we walk through this episode.
• 1:30
  Speaker: One is a definition, and the other is a cost.
• 1:34
  Speaker: The definition question is the one that's been fought over for centuries.
• 1:39
  Speaker: But underneath it is a second question nobody names as often.
• 1:43
  Speaker: What it actually took for Jesus personally to be the one doing the drawing?
• 1:49
  Speaker: Now, those two questions have always been the same question, asked from two different directions.
• 1:54
  Speaker: And by the end of this episode, you're going to have an answer to both of them.
• 1:59
  Speaker: Now, the tension that we're looking at is around this question.
• 2:03
  Speaker: Did Jesus come to save all?
• 2:05
  Speaker: Did he come to save some?
• 2:07
  Speaker: Or did he simply open up the opportunity to all, making salvation our decision to receive the gift he made available to us?
• 2:17
  Speaker: Now, this is a topic that has been ongoing for centuries, and it comes with names like Calvinism, Arminianism, and Universalism.
• 2:25
  Speaker: And there are many who stand firm on each one of those theological positions.
• 2:30
  Speaker: Now, here's what I've noticed: a Calvinist coming to this verse with a mindset of predetermination will often read the words all people and define it as tribes, tongues, and nations.
• 2:42
  Speaker: God choosing out of the world, not the whole world itself.
• 2:46
  Speaker: And then we see that an Arminian will read the same verse and say, see, this makes it clear.
• 2:52
  Speaker: The choice has been made available to all, and it's up to the individual to receive it.
• 3:00
  Speaker: And then we have the universalist that will look at the same words and say, All just means all.
• 3:07
  Speaker: Everybody, without exception, gets saved.
• 3:11
  Speaker: We have three sincere positions, three different readings, and each one arrived there by bringing something to the text first and then coming back to define the words by that position.
• 3:23
  Speaker: Now, I'm not saying theological positions don't matter or that we shouldn't have one.
• 3:29
  Speaker: They do matter and they have a real role to play.
• 3:33
  Speaker: But that role comes after scripture has spoken, not before it.
• 3:38
  Speaker: Theological positions should be formed by the text, not laid over the text like a lens we look through before we ever even read it.
• 3:46
  Speaker: Now, when we take a position first and interpret scripture through that lens, we will always get something wrong somewhere because we've let the position define the words instead of letting the words define the position.
• 3:58
  Speaker: Now, whether you've heard those three names before or not, here's the deeper thing going on underneath all of it.
• 4:05
  Speaker: Every one of us brings something into this text.
• 4:09
  Speaker: And I don't just mean a theological system, I mean something much deeper.
• 4:13
  Speaker: We bring our old nature.
• 4:16
  Speaker: Paul calls it the old man, the flesh still present, still resisting the spirit, even after we've been made new.
• 4:24
  Speaker: Now think about a baby being born.
• 4:26
  Speaker: That baby is fully alive, fully human the moment it's born, but it has no understanding yet of its own life or its own purpose.
• 4:35
  Speaker: It takes decades just to mature enough to function and become self-sufficient.
• 4:40
  Speaker: And it takes the rest of that person's life discovering what they were actually made for.
• 4:45
  Speaker: That's the natural man.
• 4:47
  Speaker: And spiritually, it's the same.
• 4:50
  Speaker: We are born again, born of the spirit, born from above, as we learned back in John chapter 3, fully alive the moment it happens.
• 4:58
  Speaker: But we spend the rest of our spiritual life maturing into an understanding of that new life.
• 5:03
  Speaker: And that's what theological positions offer.
• 5:06
  Speaker: They give a name to our understanding.
• 5:08
  Speaker: And that understanding can change over time, but it doesn't affect whether we're alive or not.
• 5:14
  Speaker: In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul told the Corinthians exactly this.
• 5:18
  Speaker: He said, I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.
• 5:25
  Speaker: And even now you are not ready.
• 5:28
  Speaker: Now he wasn't questioning whether they were truly born again.
• 5:31
  Speaker: He was naming their immaturity, their inability yet to take in the deeper things of the faith.
• 5:37
  Speaker: And we see the same thing elsewhere in scripture: this call to grow up, to mature in the new man, to stop feeding the old nature and start feeding the new one.
• 5:47
  Speaker: In John chapter 17, verse 17, Jesus prays for us and says, Sanctify them in the truth.
• 5:53
  Speaker: Your word is truth.
• 5:55
  Speaker: Now that's a process, not an instant.
• 5:58
  Speaker: We are being drawn toward the truth and we are being sanctified in it over time by the word of God itself.
• 6:05
  Speaker: Now I want to give you an example of that.
• 6:07
  Speaker: I want you to picture something with me.
• 6:09
  Speaker: Our lives are like a river that runs into the sea.
• 6:12
  Speaker: The fresh water and the salt water just go right into each other.
• 6:16
  Speaker: They don't separate cleanly and they mix.
• 6:19
  Speaker: And for a long stretch, the water is what we call brackish.
• 6:23
  Speaker: It's not fully one or the other.
• 6:25
  Speaker: That's what's happening in every one of us right now and for our entire lives.
• 6:29
  Speaker: Now we are being drawn toward the truth, but we are still carrying the contamination of our old nature, our sin, the world we've walked through.
• 6:38
  Speaker: And what happens is this we look at spiritual truth and we interpret it through a nature that hasn't fully caught up to that yet.
• 6:48
  Speaker: That's why this verse produces so much heat.
• 6:51
  Speaker: It's not just that Calvinists, Arminians, and Universalists disagree.
• 6:55
  Speaker: It's that all of us, every single listener right now is reading this verse from somewhere inside that brackish water with an old nature and a new nature at odds with one another.
• 7:08
  Speaker: Now, here's part of the problem with the world we live in.
• 7:13
  Speaker: We intellectualize everything, and that's exactly what trips us up here because salvation was never an intellectual thing to begin with.
• 7:22
  Speaker: You don't get saved because you understand or because you've reached some level of spiritual maturity.
• 7:27
  Speaker: It's the other way around.
• 7:29
  Speaker: We are saved, and then we come to understand that salvation over time.
• 7:35
  Speaker: In Philippians chapter 2, verse 12, Paul says it plainly.
• 7:38
  Speaker: He says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
• 7:43
  Speaker: What we see is that we are saved, and then we work out what that means, how to live inside of it, the same way a baby doesn't understand walking the day it's born, but it learns to crawl first and then to walk and then to run.
• 7:58
  Speaker: Just as we see everything in nature testifies to this very same pattern, this slow unfolding.
• 8:05
  Speaker: And then we get to the spiritual life.
• 8:07
  Speaker: And somehow we treat it as though it should work differently.
• 8:11
  Speaker: As though the moment we receive something, we've received it in its fullness, fully mature, with nothing left to learn.
• 8:20
  Speaker: But growth is exactly how both reality and scripture actually work.
• 8:25
  Speaker: There will always be more to know.
• 8:28
  Speaker: And staying willing, staying open matters more than staying so firm in our own position that we end up interpreting scripture from a flawed place.
• 8:37
  Speaker: The perfect word of God interprets our imperfect position.
• 8:43
  Speaker: We are formed by it, and we do not form it to us.
• 8:47
  Speaker: So that is the posture we need to have today as we begin looking at these verses.
• 8:54
  Speaker: So with that, we're going to begin by looking at verse 32, and it says this I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
• 9:05
  Speaker: Now, here's what we're going to be doing today.
• 9:09
  Speaker: Instead of working forward through these verses the way we normally do, we're actually going to work backwards, starting right here at verse 32 and systematically stepping back one verse at a time, letting each one unpack itself.
• 9:22
  Speaker: Now, I'm not going to answer what the word all means just yet.
• 9:26
  Speaker: And I want to tell you why.
• 9:28
  Speaker: If I give you the answer up front, everything we're about to walk through would just be evidence gathered to support a conclusion you already had.
• 9:36
  Speaker: And that's exactly the trap we just discussed.
• 9:39
  Speaker: It's what those three theological positions do when they come to this verse with an answer already decided.
• 9:45
  Speaker: So instead of coming with an answer, we're going to let John's own gospel, everything he's already written up to this very point, build the answer for us, verse by verse, backward, until we land right back here at verse 32 with an answer that isn't asserted, but it's earned.
• 10:03
  Speaker: Now, by the time we get back to this verse at the very end of the episode, you're going to have everything you need to know exactly what the word all means straight from the text itself.
• 10:14
  Speaker: So when we see that Jesus says, I will draw all people to myself, let's just hold on to that for right now.
• 10:19
  Speaker: We're going to come back to that once we walk through everything that leads up to it.
• 10:24
  Speaker: But for now, we're going to step back one verse to verse 31 where it says, Now is the judgment of this world.
• 10:30
  Speaker: Now will the ruler of this world be cast out.
• 10:33
  Speaker: Now that presents the next question we need to ask.
• 10:36
  Speaker: If Satan was cast out right here, why does Paul still call him the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians chapter 2?
• 10:44
  Speaker: Writing to people who were already believers?
• 10:47
  Speaker: Why does Peter still warn us in his first letter that our adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour?
• 10:55
  Speaker: Now, Paul and Peter are both writing to people already living on the other side of the cross.
• 11:00
  Speaker: And they're both still describing a real active adversary, which tells us that cast out here doesn't mean his presence was erased from the world.
• 11:11
  Speaker: It means his dominion was broken.
• 11:14
  Speaker: His legal claim, his rightful rule over the one the Father draws ended at the cross.
• 11:20
  Speaker: And that transfer is settled and cannot be undone.
• 11:22
  Speaker: The way the current in the river is permanently set toward the sea.
• 11:26
  Speaker: But the atmosphere a believer still lives in right now, the world they still walk through every single day, hasn't been fully purged yet.
• 11:35
  Speaker: So we still feel the residue of that.
• 11:37
  Speaker: We still feel him prowling at the edges, even though he no longer owns us.
• 11:43
  Speaker: Now, there's something else here that most readers miss.
• 11:47
  Speaker: In the Jewish world of Jesus' day, the ruler of the world was common shorthand for Satan's dominion, specifically over the Gentile nations, not over Israel, who had the law, the covenant, and the temple standing between them and the rule.
• 12:01
  Speaker: So when John writes, Now is the judgment of this world, now will the ruler of this world be cast out.
• 12:08
  Speaker: The word world is already doing more work than it looks like on the surface.
• 12:13
  Speaker: It's already reaching past Israel to include the very people this whole tension has been building toward before verse 32 ever says, all people out loud.
• 12:22
  Speaker: Now, what we see is that this is the same brackish tension playing out on a cosmic scale.
• 12:28
  Speaker: The direction of water is fixed the moment someone is drawn to Christ.
• 12:32
  Speaker: But the concentration of salt still remaining in that water takes time to change.
• 12:37
  Speaker: And that change has a name.
• 12:39
  Speaker: It's called the sanctification process.
• 12:41
  Speaker: And it's for a purpose God Himself has willed, not something left to accident or chance.
• 12:48
  Speaker: And that purpose is exactly what Jesus names before this, and the verse right ahead of it, when the Father speaks and answers the very thing Jesus just prayed.
• 12:58
  Speaker: So let's step back one more verse to verse 30.
• 13:01
  Speaker: It says, Jesus answered, This voice has come for your sake, not mine.
• 13:07
  Speaker: Now, what voice is he talking about?
• 13:10
  Speaker: Well, right before that, back in verse 28, Jesus prays, Father, glorify your name, and a voice from heaven answers, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.
• 13:19
  Speaker: Now, the question we have to ask here is, isn't God already glorious?
• 13:24
  Speaker: Did something actually have to happen for glory to happen?
• 13:27
  Speaker: Or was this always true of him?
• 13:30
  Speaker: Well, we have to look to scripture again, as that already answers it for us.
• 13:34
  Speaker: God says to the prophet Isaiah in chapter 42, verse 8, I am the Lord, that is my name, my glory I give to no other.
• 13:43
  Speaker: So what we see is that his glory is his own.
• 13:47
  Speaker: It isn't something conferred on him from outside, and it isn't something he can lose or hand away.
• 13:53
  Speaker: So the first thing we need to understand is that God's glory at the level of who he is never increases and never decreases.
• 14:00
  Speaker: We see that it can't be added to because it doesn't depend on anything outside of him.
• 14:04
  Speaker: But scripture also talks about that same unchanging glory being displayed, being made visible in history at specific moments.
• 14:13
  Speaker: That's what this voice is describing.
• 14:15
  Speaker: Glorified already across everything Jesus has done up to this point, and glorified again, meaning this isn't a single isolated event, it's a pattern.
• 14:26
  Speaker: Then Jesus tells us exactly where that pattern goes next.
• 14:30
  Speaker: Later in John chapter 17, praying for his disciples, he says, I am glorified in them.
• 14:36
  Speaker: And then a few verses later, the glory that you have given me, I have given to them.
• 14:41
  Speaker: What that means is that the glorifying doesn't stop at the cross, it continues into the disciples themselves.
• 14:48
  Speaker: And by that same pattern, it continues into every believer, the spirit indwells after them, including you right now, listening to this episode.
• 14:58
  Speaker: And for that to be possible, Jesus had to do something, which brings us to the verse right before this one, where his soul is troubled because of the weight of what that cost was going to be to him, so that we could be redeemed for the very purpose we were created for in the first place.
• 15:15
  Speaker: Now, Isaiah says it plainly in chapter 43, verse 7.
• 15:19
  Speaker: He says, Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made, that's why he came.
• 15:28
  Speaker: That's what the trouble in his soul was actually about.
• 15:32
  Speaker: Now we're going to hold that and we're going to step back one more verse to verses 27 through 29, where it says, Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?
• 15:41
  Speaker: Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I have come to this hour.
• 15:47
  Speaker: Father, glorify your name.
• 15:49
  Speaker: Now Jesus is naming a real temptation here and then refusing it.
• 15:53
  Speaker: He doesn't hide that the request would be reasonable to make.
• 15:57
  Speaker: Now that word hour has been sitting underneath this entire gospel just waiting.
• 16:39
  Speaker: Now go back with me to John chapter 2 at a wedding in Cana, when Jesus' own mother comes to him about the wine running out.
• 16:46
  Speaker: He tells her, Woman, what does this have to do with me?
• 16:49
  Speaker: My hour has not yet come.
• 16:52
  Speaker: That's the first time he says it.
• 16:54
  Speaker: Then in chapter seven, when the religious leaders want to seize him, John tells us plainly, no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come.
• 17:04
  Speaker: And then in chapter eight, teaching openly in the temple, right in front of the men who wanted him dead, no one arrested him because his hour had not yet come.
• 17:15
  Speaker: So what we see is that three times across three chapters, the door stays shut.
• 17:20
  Speaker: He wasn't hiding and the moment didn't catch him off guard.
• 17:24
  Speaker: He was moving on a schedule the father set, not a schedule his enemies or even his own mother could push forward early.
• 17:31
  Speaker: What we see is that when he finally says the hour has come, that it isn't a phrase arriving out of nowhere.
• 17:39
  Speaker: It's a door that has been closed three times and now it's finally opening at the exact moment the father determined, and not one moment before.
• 17:49
  Speaker: Now notice something else here.
• 17:51
  Speaker: This is the first time in this entire gospel that the hour is triggered specifically by Gentiles seeking him.
• 17:59
  Speaker: That timing is not incidental.
• 18:02
  Speaker: But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
• 18:13
  Speaker: What that means is that Jesus is explaining in advance what being glorified is actually going to look like.
• 18:21
  Speaker: Now, this same word shows up in one of the hardest sayings Jesus makes in all the gospels.
• 18:44
  Speaker: In Luke chapter 14, it says, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
• 18:58
  Speaker: Now I want to make sure we're careful here, because that word hate makes people flinch, and it should if we take it in the wrong way.
• 19:06
  Speaker: Jesus isn't describing actual hatred toward the people we love.
• 19:10
  Speaker: As we can see as we look at Matthew's writings, where he records the same teaching in a plainer way.
• 19:16
  Speaker: He says, Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
• 19:22
  Speaker: So what we see is that this is a comparative language, not literal hostility.
• 19:27
  Speaker: It's describing where our supreme devotion is placed, not the elimination of natural affection.
• 19:33
  Speaker: Now, here's what matters most about what we're reading here.
• 19:38
  Speaker: When Jesus has our supreme devotion, love for our family, friends, and neighbors doesn't disappear.
• 19:44
  Speaker: It flows out of that devotion.
• 19:46
  Speaker: But when we try to love our family or serve Jesus as a work, as something we perform to earn his favor or prove our devotion, we've already missed the mark.
• 19:56
  Speaker: We only love because he first loved us.
• 20:00
  Speaker: Love flows down through us.
• 20:02
  Speaker: It was never meant to be something we climb up toward him with.
• 20:06
  Speaker: Our natural sinful love is distorted, self-protective, conditional.
• 20:11
  Speaker: And as we come to know Jesus more fully, his own love begins to be manifest in us, reordering even the way we love the people closest to us.
• 20:21
  Speaker: Now, what that means is that whoever treats this present life and every relationship inside of it as the ultimate good, we are going to lose what actually matters.
• 20:32
  Speaker: Then whoever holds this life loosely, with Christ supreme over all of it, keeps what lasts and loves everyone else in it more truly because of where that devotion is placed.
• 20:47
  Speaker: And then he says, If anyone serves me, he must follow me.
• 20:52
  Speaker: And where I am, there will my servant be also.
• 20:56
  Speaker: If anyone serves me, the father will honor him.
• 21:01
  Speaker: Now I want to be careful here also, because on the surface that can sound like a transaction.
• 21:07
  Speaker: Like honor is a wage you earn for enough service.
• 21:11
  Speaker: But look at the order.
• 21:12
  Speaker: Serving follows following.
• 21:15
  Speaker: And following is the fruit of being drawn, which is exactly what we're about to land on.
• 21:23
  Speaker: The Father isn't paying wages for effort, he's honoring what he himself produced in the person he drew.
• 21:31
  Speaker: Now, back up with me one more time to something we touched on earlier when the voice from heaven answered Jesus and said, I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.
• 21:40
  Speaker: Jesus had just prayed, Father, glorify your name.
• 21:44
  Speaker: And I want to make sure we don't move past that word name too quickly.
• 21:49
  Speaker: In Scripture, a name was never just a label, it was the person, their character, their reputation, the whole weight of who they were.
• 21:58
  Speaker: That's why God changed.
• 21:59
  Speaker: Changes Abram's name to Abraham and Jacob's name to Israel.
• 22:04
  Speaker: They weren't nickname swaps, but they were a new identity spoken into being.
• 22:10
  Speaker: So when Jesus prays, Father, glorify your name, he isn't asking God to be complimented.
• 22:16
  Speaker: He's asking the Father to put his own character, his own reputation, his very identity on full display through what's about to happen.
• 22:26
  Speaker: What that is, is every attribute of who God is, his justice, mercy, wisdom, power on display all at once through the hour Jesus is about to walk into.
• 22:39
  Speaker: And that's what makes this last step back so important.
• 22:42
  Speaker: Because everything we've just walked through, the grain that has to die to bear fruit, the life laid down instead of clung to, the name that the Father is putting on display wasn't something Jesus decided on his own to set in motion.
• 22:57
  Speaker: It was triggered by something that happened first, something outside of him.
• 23:02
  Speaker: So let's step back one final time, all the way past everything we've just covered, to the moment this entire hour actually began.
• 23:11
  Speaker: Verse 20 through 22.
• 23:13
  Speaker: It says, Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks.
• 23:19
  Speaker: So these came to Philip, who was from Besseda in Galilee, and asked him, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.
• 23:28
  Speaker: Philip went and told Andrew.
• 23:30
  Speaker: Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
• 23:33
  Speaker: Now what we need to do first here is remember everything we covered in our last episode, that the law itself, given all the way back in Deuteronomy, required every Jewish man to be in Jerusalem for this feast, guaranteeing this exact gathering centuries in advance.
• 23:50
  Speaker: Now remember the precise timing of Lazarus' death and his raising and how that single miracle drew this crowd, pushed the religious leaders past debate and into a plan for murder.
• 24:03
  Speaker: And then that set off the entire chain leading to this very week.
• 24:07
  Speaker: Now, all of that vast national cosmic machinery working for years, for centuries, all of it was already in motion.
• 24:15
  Speaker: Now, let's hold that next to everything else we just walked through to get here.
• 24:20
  Speaker: The ruler of this world had his dominion broken at the cross, and the voice from heaven glorified a name that keeps being glorified in everyone, the spirit indwells after the cross, including every listener hearing this right now.
• 24:35
  Speaker: Jesus' troubled soul named the temptation to escape and resolved to walk through it anyway.
• 24:42
  Speaker: And a grain of wheat refused to stay one seed.
• 24:45
  Speaker: An hour that closed three times finally opened once, opened by the very people this whole tension keeps circling back to Gentiles at the gate.
• 24:55
  Speaker: Now, what we see is that every one of those movements was already answering the question we're asking right now, before we even asked it.
• 25:04
  Speaker: What we see is two individuals, outsiders to the covenant nation, relayed through two ordinary disciples with Greek names of their own, asking one simple thing.
• 25:15
  Speaker: This is what all people in verse 32 was always talking about.
• 25:23
  Speaker: All peoples without distinction, Jew and Gentile alike, exactly as Jesus already said back in John chapter 10, when he says, I have other sheep that are not of this fold.
• 25:37
  Speaker: I must bring them also.
• 25:39
  Speaker: And that word draw is the same word Jesus already used back in John chapter 6, when he said, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent him draws him.
• 25:49
  Speaker: What that means is that the drawing was always personal.
• 25:55
  Speaker: The father's own initiative, reaching someone real, not a category floating somewhere out in the world.
• 26:02
  Speaker: Two Greeks standing at a door is what all people actually look like up close.
• 26:08
  Speaker: Now, remember the three positions we named at the beginning: the Calvinists reading all people as tribes, tongues, and nations, the Arminian reading it as choice made available to everyone, and the universalist reading it as every person without exception.
• 26:23
  Speaker: Here's where the text itself settles it.
• 26:27
  Speaker: In 1 John chapter 2, verse 2, John writes, He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
• 26:39
  Speaker: Here's where I need you to pay close attention.
• 26:41
  Speaker: The finished work of the cross is sufficient for every single human being who has ever lived.
• 26:50
  Speaker: That part is not in dispute.
• 26:53
  Speaker: And the very words we just quoted from John chapter 6 already answered the second one for us.
• 27:07
  Speaker: It said, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me withdraws him.
• 27:14
  Speaker: So again, what we see is this every person carries the same old nature we talked about in the opening, and that old nature has no capacity, zero capacity to want what it's being offered.
• 27:30
  Speaker: So if the drawing were left up to us, nobody would come.
• 27:35
  Speaker: The sufficiency of the cross would just sit there, offered to the whole world, and received by no one.
• 27:44
  Speaker: That's why the very next verse in the same chapter says, All that the Father gives me will come to me.
• 27:53
  Speaker: The Father gives, the Son receives, and the ones given, they respond.
• 28:00
  Speaker: And they respond because the Father had already been at work, giving life to people who had no capacity to give it to themselves.
• 28:08
  Speaker: Now, before you say that that isn't fair, we already dealt with that question back in episode 53.
• 28:14
  Speaker: What would actually be fair is God condemning every single one of us, since none of us were owed anything to begin with.
• 28:22
  Speaker: What we are looking at instead is God being just and merciful to save whom he will save for the praise of his own glory.
• 28:32
  Speaker: So here's what all people has meant this entire time.
• 28:36
  Speaker: It is sufficient for all, not one person excluded from what the cross accomplished, and it is effective for those the Father gives, because no one comes any other way.
• 28:49
  Speaker: All peoples without distinction, Jew and Gentile alike, drawn out of the whole world, one person at a time.
• 28:59
  Speaker: Now let's go back one final time to where we started in verse 32, where it said, I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
• 29:10
  Speaker: All people.
• 29:11
  Speaker: What that means is as wide as the world whose ruler was broken, and as real as two men with Greek names standing at a door.
• 29:19
  Speaker: That's the size and the shape of it.
• 29:22
  Speaker: Now, we built this whole episode backward, one closed door at a time, until we landed here at the very first door that opened.
• 29:30
  Speaker: And then from here, we're going to walk forward because everything we just pulled apart has to be carried by somebody.
• 29:36
  Speaker: And that somebody is you listening to this right now.
• 29:40
  Speaker: So what we see is two men standing at a door asking to see Jesus.
• 29:46
  Speaker: That's where everything we've built across this entire episode finally comes down to rest.
• 29:51
  Speaker: A person asking to see the sun is what all of it was pointing toward the whole time.
• 29:56
  Speaker: And it would be easy after walking through a dominion broken over the whole world, a glory glorified across the whole span of redemptive history, and an hour set on a schedule only the Father determined to hear all of that and think it has nothing to do with you personally, that you're just one more name folded into something too vast to notice you.
• 30:17
  Speaker: But Solomon already answered before John ever picked up his pen.
• 30:24
  Speaker: He said, The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
• 30:29
  Speaker: The same sovereign hand that moved centuries of history to bring two ordinary men to a door is the same hand establishing the steps of the one walking through it.
• 30:40
  Speaker: The size of God's purpose was never the opposite of his attention to you.
• 30:46
  Speaker: It's the proof of it.
• 30:48
  Speaker: So, with that, let me ask you the question this whole episode has been pointing toward.
• 30:53
  Speaker: If the Lord who held an hour closed for three chapters on a schedule no one could rush is establishing your steps right now, where do you think he's leading them?
• 31:05
  Speaker: Now imagine being one of those Greeks, meeting Jesus, maybe for the very first time, and hearing him say what we just walked through when he says, a grain of wheat must die to bear fruit.
• 31:18
  Speaker: Whoever loves his life loses it.
• 31:21
  Speaker: My soul is troubled, but for this purpose I have come.
• 31:24
  Speaker: Now that's a lot to take in on a first encounter.
• 31:28
  Speaker: And if you've ever opened up your Bible as a new believer and felt like it was written in a language you didn't fully speak yet, that's not a sign something is wrong with you.
• 31:36
  Speaker: That's exactly where those Greeks were standing.
• 31:39
  Speaker: That's brackish water, old categories still present, trying to make sense of a new reality they've only just begun to meet.
• 31:48
  Speaker: Now, over time, as we come to actually know our Lord for who he actually says he is, our minds begin to be renewed.
• 31:57
  Speaker: Paul calls it exactly that in Romans chapter 12, where he says, transformed by the renewal of the mind, and slowly the salt water dilutes into fresh.
• 32:08
  Speaker: But here's the danger.
• 32:10
  Speaker: Thinking we've arrived at fully fresh water in this life, Jesus told Peter something important about this the night he washed his disciples' feet.
• 32:19
  Speaker: He said, The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean.
• 32:29
  Speaker: What that means is that the standing is settled.
• 32:33
  Speaker: You are already clean, but your feet still pick up dirt from the ground you're still walking on every single day in a world that hasn't yet been fully purged.
• 32:43
  Speaker: That's the Christian life.
• 32:45
  Speaker: Already drawn by name, still walking out the steps he's establishing.
• 32:51
  Speaker: It was always you.
• 32:53
  Speaker: It will always be you standing at the door.
• 32:57
  Speaker: Let's pray.
• 32:59
  Speaker: Father, thank you that the drawing you spoke of was never an abstraction, but always a person, always a name, always someone standing at a door asking to see your son.
• 33:09
  Speaker: Thank you that the same hand that held history to a schedule only you could set is the same hand establishing our steps today.
• 33:18
  Speaker: Thank you that our standing before you is already settled.
• 33:21
  Speaker: Even while our feet still gather dust from this world, please, Father, renew our minds, wash our feet again today, and guide the steps you've already claimed as your own.
• 33:32
  Speaker: Meet us at the door, Father, the way you met those two men, and be as patient and as near to us as your mercy has always been.
• 33:42
  Speaker: In Jesus' name.
• 33:43
  Speaker: Amen.
• 33:44
  Speaker: Now I want to thank you again as always for joining us today.
• 33:48
  Speaker: And I hope today's message has really helped you take a step closer in knowing just how much God loves you and wants you to know him.
• 33:54
  Speaker: Now, if anything today resonated with you, or if you have any questions or comments, please visit us at thetaway.faith where you can send us an email, or you can click on the text us link in the episode description where you can send us a message.
• 34:06
  Speaker: We would truly love to hear from you as there are many people around the world and around this country that are listening to this podcast, and we would love to hear how these messages are impacting you personally.
• 34:17
  Speaker: Now, in our next episode, we are going to keep moving through John chapter 12 as Jesus speaks publicly for the very last time in this gospel before turning to prepare his disciples for what's coming next.
• 34:28
  Speaker: God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.