The Hour Is Come
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
We read in our opening verses that the Greeks who had come up to the feast desired to see Jesus. They told Philip, Philip told Andrew, and then Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus.
We wonder what prompted the Greeks? Was it that they had seen an evident growing rejection of Christ by the Jewish leaders, and therefore certain of the Greeks wanted to proffer to the Lord their hospitality and homage? It would seem that such was the case by the reply of the Lord to the Greeks. Let us study the response of the Master.
I. CHRIST SAID, "THE HOUR IS COME."
What was the hour to which He referred? It was that hour toward which all prophecy of Old Testament writings looked; it was that hour for the which He had been born; it was that hour that marked His atoning Calvary work.
It was of the same hour that Christ spoke in His upper room prayer, just before He went out to Gethsemane, when He said "Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son." It was the hour of which Christ spoke to Judas, "This is your hour, and the power of darkness."
It was the hour of which we read, "When Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end."
Christ could not turn to the Greeks because His hour had come, the hour that He, by the way of the Cross, should be glorified and go to the Father.
II. CHRIST SAID, THE SON OF MAN SHOULD BE GLORIFIED
What a blessed way to look at His sufferings. He saw in Calvary all of the agonies which were so soon to be laid upon Him, but He saw more than the agonies. He looked through the sighs and the sorrows to the joy and the glory. Christ placed a value on His Calvary anguish that He summed up in one word, "Glorified."
What is the song that the angelic hosts and all of the redeemed will sing in Heaven? It is this, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive * * glory."
Christ humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross, that He might be exceedingly exalted and be given a name that is above every name that, at the Name Jesus, every knee should bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus is Christ to the glory of the Father.
III. CHRIST PLAINLY MARKED THE PATHWAY TO GLORY
The Lord Jesus said, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." The small grain of wheat might demur and cry out against being placed in its cold, damp grave. But there is only one way for a grain of wheat to become fruitful, and that is the way of death. Christ was not ignorant of the bitterness of the "cup" which He was about to drink; He was not unaware of the weight of woe that He was about to bear; He was not blind to the sacrificial death that He must suffer, but Christ looked beyond all of this to the "fruit" that His death would bring to fruition.
IV. CHRIST MARKED OUT THE PATHWAY OF OBEDIENCE TO HIS FOLLOWERS
Christ plainly stated that he who would save his life, would lose it. When a child of God refuses to take up his cross to follow Christ in the Via Dolorosa, he thinks that he is saving his life. Not so. The grain of wheat finds its life in its losing; and loses its life, in its saving. If any man would serve the Lord, he must follow Him. We may not bear the cross and die a vicarious death, a propitiatory death as He died; yet we may go with Him outside the camp, and bear His reproach. We may take upon us His shame and spittings We may be hated as He was hated, and be isolated as He was isolated.
V. CHRIST MADE A PLEA TO HIS FATHER
It is marvelous to us how Christ stood just at the verge of His dying and weighed well the words He would pray to the Father, before He made His plea. He said, "And what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour?" He immediately answered His own query with a negation. I cannot pray thus, because "for this hour, came I into the world."
Setting aside as impossible the plea to be spared from the Cross, and to slip away with the Greeks, as utterly impossible, Christ did say "Father, glorify Thy Name." Immediately from out the blue came the voice of the Father, saying, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again,"
What is this! The Father glorified in the Cross of the Son? Even so. He had been glorified already in the life of the Son, He would now be glorified in His death. Matchless truth, worthy of prolonged meditation!
VI. CHRIST MARKED OUT HOW THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD WAS TO BE CAST OUT
The Cross stands before us as a place of victory and not of defeat. Satan, perhaps, thought as Christ hung on the Cross that he was a victor over the Son of God. He brought against Him every power of earth and hell that he could master, and to the eyes who watched Christ die, it seemed as though the Almighty Son was forsaken of God and defeated. Far from it. His death was the flinging back of the door of life. He died and in His dying, as He hung alone, surrounded by the enemy and shrouded by a darkness that fell like a pall upon Him, He met Satan and vanquished him. He made a display of Satan's powers as they clustered about His dying form. Principalities and powers satanic were hovering round, as He gave His victorious cry, "It is finished." Openly He threw them back, openly He cast them out. Satan had bruised His heel, but He had bruised Satan's head.