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,