Let’s pray. O Father, we trust that these words we have just sung are not just words, but reflect and express the attitude of our hearts, so we pray again that you would prepare our hearts, O God, help us to receive. We do have hard and stony ground in our hearts. We are easily distracted; even now we’re thinking of what’s to come, what’s for dinner, what’s ahead this week. We, we are prone to wander. Lord, we feel it, and so these next moments together are apt to be a waste of time if You don’t come and break up the stony ground in our hearts and give us the grace to receive, to learn, from Your Word. And so we ask that by Your Holy Spirit your people here might hear a better sermon than the one that I’m going to preach, and that You would speak to us and give us just what we need to hear. We pray in Your name. Amen.

Famous last words. Some of them are quite noble. George Washington said, “It is well, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go.” Some are poetic. Emily Dickinson. It is said her last words were “the fog is rising.” Perhaps like her poems. Interesting, not quite sure what it means. Some are historically fascinating. Louis XIV, “Why are you weeping? Did you imagine I was immortal?” Thomas Jefferson, “Is it the fourth?” And it was, as you know, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Some are sad. Pablo Picasso’s last words, “Drink to me.” Some are tragic/comic. John Sedgwick at the Battle of Wilderness, when he was told not to show himself over the wall. “Nonsense,” his last words, “they couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” It turns out they could. [laughter] Dylan Thomas, last wounds, “I have just had 18 whiskeys in a row, I do believe that is a record.” Or John Rogers, a criminal when asked at his execution for any last words or final request, he said, “Why, yes, I’d like a bullet-proof vest.” And then there is, as you may have heard, Oscar Wilde, who said, “Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.”

Famous last words. Some are inspirational, some are tragic, some are comical. They can tell us a lot about the person, especially if they are premeditated words. I imagine Oscar Wilde thought of that said something of his irreverent attitude toward life.

We have, in this text, in Acts chapter 1, two famous last words, in a way. We have the famous last words from Jesus before He ascended into heaven, but we also have the last words from His disciples. Now, not the last we hear from His disciples, but the last question from the disciples for the risen Lord Jesus.

Follow along as we begin this study in Acts. Not looking at every section, but various high points throughout the book, beginning this morning in Acts chapter 1, this famous section, version 6 through 11.

“So when they had come together, they asked Him,” so here are the disciples’ famous last words, their last words for Jesus, “‘Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’ And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as He went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven.'”

What would you say if you had one last question to ask the Lord Jesus before He ascended...

Let’s pray as we come to God’s Word. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous, altogether more to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant is warned, in keeping them there is great reward. And so we ask, Lord, that the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts, would be acceptable in Your sight, and our ears would be open before You, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to John chapter 12, John 12, beginning at verse 44 through the end of the chapter, and then Lord willing next week we’ll begin a semester long series with various sections in the book of Acts and hope to pick up in the New Year with John 13, and the last week in Jesus’ life in the upper room, His arrest, betrayal, death, and resurrection. This morning we come to John chapter 12, beginning at verse 44.

“And Jesus cried out and said, ‘Whoever believes in me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. And whoever sees Me sees Him who sent Me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in Me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears My words and does not keep them, I do not judge Him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects Me and does not receive My words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on My own authority, but the Father who sent Me has himself given Me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told Me.'”

One of the challenges in preaching through John’s Gospel is that you end up encountering many of the same themes over and over. You hear some of the same words; light, darkness, Father, Son, Spirit, birth, death, sent, faith, unbelief, glory, one, Christ, love, sheep, shepherd, words, the Word, grace, truth. We are constantly encountering those words and those big themes. Hardly a sermon goes by where we aren’t seeing some of them.

The challenge then, is that we not tune out and think “haven’t we heard this sermon before?” Well, yes, you’ve heard verses like this before, but there’s a reason that the Spirit inspired the book in the way the He did, and so we need to hear these things again and again. So rather than seeing it as a challenge, perhaps you see it as an opportunity to learn again and again the most important lessons from John’s Gospel.

You think of that line from Paul in Philippians: “It is no trouble for us to tell you the same things again.”

We must always as Christians be those “same things again” sort of people, because we need to be reminded the Gospel that we receive also leaks.

And so we find here, in these closing paragraph to chapter 12, many of these same themes, and that’s quite intentional. I believe it’s deliberately placed here by John, who was of course inspired by the Holy Spirit, because this paragraph is meant to act as a kind of summary paragraph for Jesus’ public ministry. Now notice, look in your Bibles, notice very carefully the setting for this paragraph. You looking at it? Do you see the setting? Well, if you see it, you can tell me afterward, because I don’t know what the setting is. [laughter] There is no deliberate setting to this paragraph.

Now, yes, it comes after what we just read in chapter 12 and comes before chapter 13. We all can see that,

Let’s pray. O Lord, we have just sung these powerful words that You will hold us fast, and so we say once again we believe, help our unbelief. We know You well, and yet some of us very poignantly this morning feel as if we are falling, or those we know are wandering away, and we wonder how we will endure for another week, and so we pray that You would hold us fast. We thank You, Lord, for your promises, all of which are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. We praise You for creating the heavens and the earth by Your Word, for speaking new life by Your Word, and we pray now that into the heart of every longtime Christian here and into the heart of every new believer and into the heart of everyone far from You, whether they know it or not, into the heart of the stubbornly disbelieving, You would speak, and we might see the glory of Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.

We come this morning in John’s Gospel to chapter 12, verse 37. Actually you see the break there, the section break, the second half of verse 36 through verse 43. The plan is to do this week and then one more week in John, finishing up John 12, which will be a good stopping point, and then to spend the morning for the fall with studies in the books of Acts, which will be, I think, illustrative and instructive for us as we seek to understand the Lord’s mission and vision for us here at Christ Covenant.

But this morning, John chapter 12.

“When Jesus had said these things, He departed and hid Himself from them. Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.’ Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke of Him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in Him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”

John’s Gospel can be divided into two halves. You have sometimes called a Book of Signs, in chapters 1 through 12, and then in chapters 13 through 21, the Book of Glory. The Book of Signs where Jesus does these enumerated signs, miracles, and then the Book of Glory which focuses mainly on His passion week. Sometimes the book is divided into His public ministry, prologue, chapter 1, public ministry 2 through 12, and then turning in 13 and following His private ministry, taken up with the upper room discourse and the high priestly prayer. However you divide the two halves, Book of Signs, Book of Glory, public ministry, private ministry, in either case, chapter 12 is a turning point. The signs are done, the ministry is turning now privately to the disciples. We have entered into the last week of Jesus’ life, and He will turn His attention to final instructions for His followers and then ultimately setting His face like a flint to Jerusalem and to the cross.

This last section of chapter 12 deals with the question that has popped up throughout Jesus’ public ministry, namely why such unbelief. You can see it in verse 37: “Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him.”

Remember, John’s Gospel was written for either those seeking Christianity or perhaps very new Christians or an apologetic for Christianity, and they would have been familiar with many, many, many who had rejected Christ and the church was just very small, struggling to hang on in those first centuries, and first decades in particular.

Let’s come before the Lord in prayer once more. Shine Thou, upon us, Lord, true light of men today, and through the written word Thy very self display, that so from hearts which burn with gazing on Thy face, Thy little ones may learn the wonders of Thy grace. We’ve just sung these words, and we trust, O Lord, that they have been our prayer, so we ask again, open our ears. We are hard of hearing and we want to hear your voice. Open our eyes. We do not see well, and we want to behold wonderful things from your law. Give us good hearts for they are often hard, and we want to receive whatever you have to speak to us this morning. We pray in Jesus. Amen.

We come back this morning and we’ll be here for the next two weeks, Lord willing, to the Gospel according to John. We have been on and off a bit of late, but in John’s Gospel for, well, the better part of two years now, and if you are new to Christ Covenant, you can expect that what we normally do on Sunday morning and Sunday evening is to move through a book of the Bible, usually verse by verse, section by section. I find that to be the best way for God to speak to us, and for God to set the agenda, what we need to hear.

And so as we pick up with where we left off at the beginning of the summer, we come this morning to John chapter 12, page 899 in the pew Bibles, verses 27 through 36.

“Now,” Jesus says, “now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to Him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to show by what kind of death He was going to die. So the crowd answered Him, ‘We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.'”

I probably don’t have to remind you that the start of the school year is upon us. Maybe this week, if you’re at Covenant Day School, or other schools in the area, I think it’s the following week for the public schools. Perhaps you’ve sent kids off to college already. And on the one hand as we come to the beginning of another year of school, parents can say it’s a good thing, children may need some structure. Parents may need some relief. The brains may be receding into an iPad induced mush. Or maybe you’re just tired of driving them from all the birthday parties, pool parties, camps, practices, and they need to go to bed before you.

On the other hand, I think I can safely speak for many of the parents when I say that at least in the DeYoung household the start of school is, it’s a little bit like that scene in Helm’s Deep, you know, where all of the, the Uruk-hai or there outside of the fortress and all of the, the elves and the men, they look out and the king says “so it begins.” It’s a little bit like that. [laughter]

That the lunches are starting, all of the games, the practice, the band, the sports, everything is coming on in a rush, getting everyone out of bed in the morning, including the parents and then getting them clothes on, I guess that’s not optional,