Now My Soul Is Troubled

[0:00] he will be glorified. This hour has now come, says Jesus. It's here. It's right around the corner. And it's here in John 12, verse 27, that Jesus tells us plainly what's going on in the depths of his heart and what kinds of thoughts are in his mind.

[0:24] John 12, verse 27, Jesus says, now my soul is troubled. And what shall I say?

[0:36] Father, save me from this hour. Jesus is not often troubled by things.

[0:47] Have you noticed this? He's the one with wisdom for every situation, with the answers for every question. He's the one who is fearless.

[1:00] The one who's completely unbothered by the storm on the sea and even sleeping while his disciples were panicked and afraid for their lives. He seems to have no fear of the religious leaders.

[1:14] even while his disciples were dreading coming back to Jerusalem, thinking it might end badly for them, Jesus seemed fearless and unflinching, going right up into Bethany and now marching right into the city of Jerusalem.

[1:31] Have you noticed this? So now we can't help but take notice when Jesus says here that he is troubled. The last time in John's gospel that we saw Jesus troubled was back in chapter 11 when Jesus met with Mary after the death of her brother, Lazarus.

[1:53] He saw Mary weeping and Mary's friends weeping with her about Lazarus' death and John told us there that Jesus himself was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.

[2:09] Same word. So troubled, in fact, that Jesus himself burst into tears and wept with her, with them. But now here again, Jesus makes it visible on the outside what's really going on for him on the inside.

[2:28] Now my soul is troubled. Not just a little troubled, but deeply troubled. My soul, the inmost part of me, the core.

[2:46] How come? What's bothering you so much, Jesus? Well, we don't have to wonder. Jesus tells us what he's thinking about.

[3:00] He says, Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say? Father, save me from this hour? Even if we and the disciples have already moved on in our minds, are thinking about something else.

[3:18] Jesus has not. He is still thinking about this hour that has now come for him. About what this hour holds.

[3:30] And it unsettles Jesus in his heart of hearts. It causes him to tremble in his soul. And thoughts arise in his own mind of how he might be saved from this hour.

[3:49] Think about this for a moment. Jesus feels in his heart. Jesus feels in his heart the desire for escape. We've all felt something similar in the troubles we go through, haven't we?

[4:06] At one time or another. Who of us has not felt that things are just so hard, so heavy, so dark, so unbearable that we simply must escape.

[4:20] I can't do this anymore. I can't go through this anymore. For us, this is often a key factor in substance abuse and addiction.

[4:31] The desire to escape. The desire to get out from under that crushing weight of our emotions. Amazingly, Jesus, the God-man, has felt in his soul the desire to escape, to get out from under the crushing weight of what's about to come in this hour, to be saved from this hour.

[4:58] And yet, even as Jesus gives us these words to know what he has been thinking, he also says it in such a way that it's clear.

[5:09] He intends to go through with this hour. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No.

[5:21] It was for this very reason I came to this hour. There's a statement here. It's as though Jesus is saying, should I pray and ask God to spare me from what's about to happen in this hour, what I'm about to go through?

[5:37] No. I want to, and yet, no, I will not. Because for this hour and what it holds, it's the very reason I came.

[5:56] What's about to happen to Jesus is at the very core of why he has come down from heaven to earth. earth. It's at the very center of why the word who was with God and was God became flesh and came to live among us.

[6:14] all of Jesus' story and life is important. His birth, his baptism, his obedience to the Father, his teaching, his miracles, his calling of the disciples, all of it is important.

[6:35] But this hour and what's about to happen to Jesus here stands above all the rest of it. The chief purpose, not the only purpose, the chief purpose in coming was not to teach us how to live.

[6:52] It was not to do great miracles and to heal people. These are all things he's been doing up until now. His chief purpose in his coming is what will happen in this hour.

[7:04] He came to die. As we heard last Sunday what he said in verse 24 right before this, very truly I tell you unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains a single seed.

[7:24] But if it dies it produces many seeds. Jesus came to make this great exchange. one for many.

[7:36] His life for ours. There are two things here for us. First, do you see how truly like us Jesus is?

[7:50] How human. He wrestles in his heart and mind with his emotions and thoughts just like we do.

[8:01] there's an emotional struggle here in Jesus a deep one and even though Jesus prevails that is to say he makes the right choice in this moment isn't it a comfort to know that Jesus knows what it's like to have the deepest of struggles and conflicts in his own heart.

[8:22] second, do you see the depth of Jesus' love for you here?

[8:36] First, notice when this plan of love began. Notice when Jesus had a reason to die for us. it was not after he came down and saw us face to face that he suddenly realized, oh man, I must do something for these poor people to save them.

[8:57] No, it was before he came into the world. In fact, it was the reason he came into the world to save us which means that Jesus loved you long before you even knew it.

[9:16] He saw your need for his death even before you were born. He loved you when to you he was a stranger, someone you'd never even heard of.

[9:30] He loved you then enough to come down, to get to this hour, to die for you. Next, notice the depth of his love for you here in this moment.

[9:46] We might at first think, look, Jesus seems to be having second thoughts about going through with this in order to save me.

[9:57] Maybe he doesn't love me as much as I thought he did. We might think about it like a person who's made their vows and promises on their wedding day, but then all of a sudden is having doubts or second thoughts, getting cold feet about this marriage.

[10:12] Is that what's happening here with Jesus? No, I don't think so. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite. Jesus' inner struggle shows us how truly difficult it is to meet the requirements of our salvation.

[10:32] We're catching a glimpse here of just how costly it is for him to save us. he's feeling the weight of it in his own heart and that Jesus says, no, I will go through with this hour.

[10:53] I will not ask my father to save me from it. It's the proof that his love for us really is greater than we can ever imagine. This is the hour of testing.

[11:05] this is the hour in which we will see whether Jesus loves Peter, James, John, Mary, Martha, you, and me that much.

[11:21] Enough to die for us. Enough to receive the punishment of our sins on himself as though he had done those things.

[11:35] That he's troubled in his soul. It's not a sign of cold feet or second thoughts. It's the measure of just how deep his love is for you and for me.

[11:49] Because even though he feels that weight, that cost, he doesn't turn back here. That's the kind of love that we long for, isn't it?

[12:02] We're not looking just for the kind of love that people give to us when it's easy and it feels good to love us. We're looking for that greater and deeper love, aren't we?

[12:13] The kind that loves us even when it's really hard to love us. And that's what we see in Jesus here. He says, no. I will not pray that.

[12:25] I will not ask that. this is why I came for this hour. And then he seals this with a prayer to his father.

[12:37] He calls out loud in the hearing of all, father, glorify your name. Why does Jesus say that? Father, glorify your name.

[12:51] just a couple verses earlier, we heard that the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.

[13:02] That's Jesus. So why does Jesus not pray, father, glorify my name. Father, vindicate me.

[13:13] Father, lift me up and exalt me in the sight of my enemies. these are very deep waters. And I want to tread carefully here. This hour is the hour in which Jesus will be glorified and exalted and lifted up, but not by seeking after that for himself.

[13:36] As we heard earlier in John's gospel, it is God, the father, who will glorify his son in this hour. And for Jesus to go through with this hour and be glorified, he must do the very opposite of seeking his own glory, his own vindication.

[13:56] He must choose instead to surrender himself to the hatred of his enemies, to surrender himself to humiliation. He must give himself over to the shameful trials and the mocking.

[14:11] He must allow them to strip off his clothes and execute him as though he were a criminal. As a man to atone for men, Jesus must seek not to glorify and exalt himself in this hour, but rather to glorify and exalt his father, to be obedient, and to give the ultimate sacrifice of worship, his own life.

[14:42] God is a mysterious thing. Jesus raises high the name of his father, of God, by allowing his own name to be trampled in the mud.

[14:56] And it is mysterious. At the very same time, God the father is about to raise high the name of his son for doing the most beautiful and glorious act of love this universe has ever known or ever will know.

[15:14] It's especially for this hour in particular that we will be praising the Lord Jesus for all eternity, saying, worthy is the lamb.

[15:26] Why? Because he was slain. Worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.

[15:41] It's for this hour that Jesus, the God man, is worthy to take the scroll and open the seals and usher in the final program for our world.

[15:54] Why? Because you were slain and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.

[16:08] Revelation 5 verse 9. It's mysterious. It's wonderful. It's kind of upside down to how things go in our world and that's how it often is with God and his dealings with us.

[16:24] Over and over throughout the Bible we're told that God humbles the proud and at the same time that he exalts the humble. It ends up going the same with Jesus.

[16:39] His being glorified comes about by his humbling himself before the Father. And so that's why Jesus prays Father glorify your name because in these moments this hour ahead he's about to give it all up.

[17:00] Humble himself to the utmost to the scorn the shame the ridicule the pain of death on a cross.

[17:14] So we're here at the Lord's table again this Sunday and there's a reason that we do this every month. It's not an interruption in the schedule.

[17:26] It's not something that we do just to check off the box of religious duty as a church. It's because what we mark here is the very heart and soul of our Christianity.

[17:40] It's the very center of everything and we never want to lose sight of that or leave that behind. It's the very reason I came this hour.

[17:53] There are no greater and better things to move on to in the Christian faith. there is only for us to go deeper and deeper and deeper into our appreciation of the love that we have found here at the table and at the cross.

[18:10] And so if you've repented of your sins and put your trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior as the one who died for you for your forgiveness I want to invite you to join and eat and drink with us from this table as we pass out the elements in a moment.

[18:27] The bread represents the body of our Lord Jesus which was broken for us when he died on the cross. The cup represents his blood which was poured out for us for forgiveness and to secure a new covenant a new arrangement with God between us and him.

[18:45] And us taking and eating it as we're about to do in these next moments represents that we are those who believe from the heart that Jesus did this for us and that we needed it.

[19:01] If you don't believe that I ask that you abstain from partaking of the bread and the cup when it comes around but if you do please eat and drink with us.

[19:15] We'll pass it out and after we've had a few minutes of quiet prayer and reflection just ask that you hang on to both the bread and the cup until everybody's been served and then we'll eat and drink all together in unison.

[19:32] So let's do that now. Let's go to the Lord in quiet prayer.NY Thank you.

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