The Cutting Floor // John 12:36-43

Welcome to the Cutting Floor, a weekly podcast of West Canon Baptist Church.

I am Emily and with me is Pastor Zach. This week your sermon covered John 12 verses 36 through 43.

Why does the end of verse 36 mention that Jesus hid himself from the people?

So if we think back to the Sunday previous when Pastor Paul van Englundhofen spoke for us and gave a sermon on that section there in verses 35 through 36.

A, when I say 36, I mean the first part of what we have in our Bible is verse 36. Jesus there is giving this kind of impassioned plea to the people of Jerusalem that the light is in the world and that while the light is in the world,

you're able to walk without stumbling about in the darkness but they need to walk in the light less the darkness overtake them and then Jesus ends that section by saying the light is going to be leaving.

So while you have the light with you come to the light so that you can become sons of the light and of course as you know throughout the gospel of John, Jesus himself is the light who is coming to the world.

And the condemnation on the world will be that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. So while the people of darkness love the darkness, Jesus is calling out come to the light so that you may become sons of the light.

But ultimately what we're about to see in verses 37 through 43 is that the people rather than come to the light, they persist in their unbelief, they've seen the signs, they've seen the miracles, they've heard the teaching of Jesus, their hearts are hard, they don't come to the light.

And the physical kind of enactment of what Jesus has just worn them of that the light is about to depart, Jesus physically pictures that by as soon as he said come to the light before the light's gone unless the darkness overtakes you, he sort of gives a preview or foreshadowing of what that's going to be like by then immediately hiding himself from the people.

So what's about to come in the fact that he's about to be brutally assaulted, crucified, dead buried and then resurrected and then ascended and the lights can go out of the world, he gives almost a preview of that by declaring the lights about to leave and then hiding himself so that the people cannot find them.

It's a it's a for warning to them you are there's a day coming when you will seek me and you will not be able to find me so come to the light now what is still available to you so that the remark that John gives us that Jesus hit himself from them really ties these elements together that the light is about to to leave the world.

The men are therefore called to come out of the darkness to the light and it's a matter of urgency because pretty soon Christ will be hidden in a place where they will not be able to find him.

Now it's Christ volitionally hiding himself from them soon it will be that Christ has ascended into heaven where they cannot immediately follow him.

In this passage John quotes from two verses in Isaiah in verse 40 he quotes Isaiah 610 but why does he seem to misquote the verse?

Yes so it's interesting if you go back and you look at Isaiah chapter 6 what we find is that Isaiah is being commissioned by God to proclaim this message that is going to result in the hardening of people's hearts and there in Isaiah 6 the the message that Isaiah is given God tells him harden these people's hearts so that they do not hear and they do not turn and so it's as though God is telling Isaiah to do the hardening by giving this message.

But then we come to our text in John chapter 12 and in verse 40 John renders that quotation from Isaiah 6 by saying he that is God has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts less they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.

Now there he does a couple of things there number one he adds the pronoun he at the beginning of this quotation and the tenses are changed from blind harden in other words go do these things is what this is the commission that Isaiah receives to now a past or perfected something that's already happened happen to a past tense or perfect tense he has blinded their eyes he has harden their heart is that this is something that's already happened in the past so he he's quoting Isaiah 6.

But he's changing slightly the wording of Isaiah 6 in order to indicate to us as the readers that he is providing a level of theological interpretation of that quotation from Isaiah 6.

Now of course John can do this because he's writing under the inspiration and direction of the Holy Spirit so it's not as though he is doing something wrong when he's quoting Isaiah in this way rather he's demonstrating how that prophecy that Isaiah was given is actually fulfilled.

That what was true for Isaiah and Isaiah 6 that his message was going to harden the hearts of Israel is fulfilled in the fact that it was actually God himself who was hardening Israel's heart because we put those ideas together how was it that Isaiah was commissioned to harden the people's hearts and that as John looks back and says no he that is God harden their hearts so how do those two things go together.

Well it was the very message that God gave Isaiah to preach by which God himself was hardening the heart of his people it was the proclamation of God's message that was hardening to people's heart.

And so now as we roll this forward to the mystery of Jesus John is bringing that forward and saying just as God hardened the people in Isaiah's time by the message that Isaiah was preaching of the coming suffering servant of the Lord that would bring salvation harden the heart of Israel so that they would not see.

So also now the signs, the miracles, the teachings, the words of Jesus have hardened the heart of the Israelites once again so that they will not see and that they will not turn because God has not chosen these who are hardening their hearts to give to the sun for eternal life.

So there's a reason why John is and we might say updating or slightly nuancing this quotation it's not a word for word quotation he's giving us the quotation but adding a layer of theological interpretation so the message that Isaiah was given it was actually God who was behind it and hardening Isaiah a hardening the heart of the people through the message of Isaiah even now as God continues to harden the heart of people through the message of Isaiah and through the message of Christ.

What does it mean in verse 41 that Isaiah saw the glory of Christ and spoke of him and how could that be given that Isaiah didn't know Jesus.

You'll we see throughout the New Testament these illusions back to Old Testament men that are spoken of as though they saw Christ in a way that we struggled to understand given that these men were living or writing hundreds thousands of years, hundreds or thousands of years before Christ.

So we could think of earlier in this gospel where in John chapter 8 Jesus told the religious leaders hey you call yourselves children of Abraham Abraham saw my day and rejoiced and was glad and we're left as readers going away how could Abraham see the day of Jesus in fact it's the very response that the religious leaders have they say you're not even 50 years old and yet you're saying that you saw Abraham so how did that work or we could go to Hebrews chapter 11.

We're in a great hall of faith text the author of Hebrews says that taking Moses for example that Moses chose to under ill treatment with the people of God rather to rather than enjoying the passing pleasures of sin.

And then here's the reason that the author of Hebrews gave gives because he Moses considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt for he was looking forward to the reward.

Well as readers we should look at that and go wait hang on a minute how does that work how does how did Moses consider enduring ill treatment with God's people and suffering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt how did Moses have any sense of who Christ was.

In the answer is that the Old Testament saints well they don't have all the information regarding the identity of the Christ that we have on this side of an empty tomb and of the life of Christ and of the completion of the canon of the New Testament scriptures.

They were however holding to the promises of God that had been given all the way back in Genesis 315 the promise that a seed was going to come from the line of the woman who was going to crush the head of the serpent.

They were looking for the one who is going to be the fulfillment of that promise. Abraham is promised in Genesis 12 and then again Genesis 12, Genesis 15 and then Genesis 17 that he's going to have a seed who's going to bless the whole name all the nations of the earth and that there are going to be kings that are going to come from Abraham and ultimately them through David the realization of it's not just going to be kings but it's going to be a king in particular not just to see it isn't many but a seed as in one there's going to be a coming seed of the woman.

A seed of Abraham who's going to crush the head of the serpent the patriarchs are trusting in those promises the prophets the kings of Israel the faithful kings at least are trusting in the outworking of those promises so that the New Testament authors or Jesus himself can say that those patriarchs like Abraham like Moses the prophets like Isaiah that they were looking ahead with the eyes of faith and while they couldn't see all of the particularities about who Jesus was.

That through the eyes of faith trusting the promises they were envisioning the coming day of that seed of the woman who was the Christ or who would be the Christ and they were trusting in those promises and so even his Isaiah is speaking in a way that is fulfilling the truth of his day that he's speaking to people who are hard-hearted in his own generation by God's grace and prophetic insight that he gave to Isaiah and the work of the spirit within Isaiah Isaiah also somehow understood that he was speaking beyond his own day to a

greater fulfillment that would be realized in the time of the Christ that there was going to come a day that even as he Isaiah was being rejected that he was pointing toward a greater servant of the Lord who would be despised and rejected by man a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and so the lonely ministry of Isaiah really foreshadowed the lonely ministry of the coming suffering servant of the Lord who be far greater than Isaiah but who Isaiah was looking toward as the not only the outcome of the prophecies that he'd been given but ultimately the outcome of that great promise

in Genesis 315 that a seed of the woman was going to come to deliver the people of God.

If you have any questions from the sermon or the sermon passage that you would like to have answered on the podcast, please email them by 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning to questions at westcannon.org.

We'll see you next week!