Gooding, David: The Christian’s Right Perspective

We have a number of scriptures to read to prepare us for our study, first of all from the Old Testament, and then presently from the New. From the Old Testament, we begin to read in the book of Genesis and chapter thirty seven. Genesis thirty seven. And we begin to read there in verse five. Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, hear this dream that I have dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright, and behold, your sheaves gathered round it and bowed down to my sheaf. His brother said to him, are you indeed to reign over us? So they hated him even more for his dream and for his words. Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me. But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, what is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you? And his brothers were jealous of him. But his father kept the saying in mind. And now on to the end of verse uh seventeen. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him. They said to one another, here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we shall say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams. And then two verses from chapter forty one of this book of Genesis, Forty one. And the verses, uh, fifty to fifty two. Genesis forty one fifty to fifty two. Before the year of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph. Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, bore them to him. Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. For, he said, God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house. The name of the second he called Ephraim. For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. So much for the moment from the Old Testament. Now let's turn to the New, and this is the Gospel by John. Gospel by John and chapter eleven. m Verse fifty four. John eleven fifty four. Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim. And there he stayed with his disciples. And finally, in chapter twelve, verse twenty three, And Jesus answered them, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Verily, verily, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, let him follow me. And where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor. 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 both glorified it, and I will glorify it again. God, give us fruitful understanding of his word. As our main topic of interest this evening, I wish to refer us to the word of our Lord Jesus that we have just read in John chapter twelve and verse twenty five. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. And since that is to be the main thrust of our study this evening, let's spend just a few moments making sure we understand its basic terms. There are in this verse two words for life. That is, there are in the Greek from which our English versions are made. The one is the Greek word psuche, and you can forget that forthwith. It means life in the sense of soul life. It's a word frequently used in the New Testament, and sometimes it's a job to know how to translate it in any particular context. Sometimes it will mean life. It is also the standard word for soul. And therefore, for our purposes tonight, let's translate it as soul life. Meaning, not just our life measured by so many years of breathing and digesting our food and so on, but life in its full sense, all that goes up to make human life. Our life, of course, and time is a part of our life, isn't it? And we observe that when we talk about our lives, we frequently talk about spending them. Because there's one thing you can't do with life, and that's put it in a box and put it in some safe container in the bank until the Lord comes from heaven and you say, half a minute, Lord, I've left my life in the bank, I've put my soul in the bank, and now let me go and collect it. You can't do that, can you? Not with life. Ordinary physical life has a time element to it, and we have to spend it. And every minute of every day of our life, we are spending our life. But then life is not just physical existence, is it? Our love is a part of our life, surely. Part of us, isn't it? Isn't your love part of you? You'll have well observed, of course, that that is true of your love as well. You have to spend it, don't you? You can't keep it in a box. And then, of course, there's our energy. And our talents and our hate, if you like. All things bound up with our life. And we observe, once more let it be said, that when it comes to our life in this sense, our soul life, as the Greek would have it, we have to spend it. The other word for life is translated from the Greek word zoe. Every schoolboy knows about that by, uh, the time he's left school, perhaps. Zoology is its, uh, English, uh, common translation, the study of zoe life. But in the Greek New Testament, it means more than animal life. It's the word that is consistently used in connection with eternal life, and eternal life is a spiritual life. So in this one verse, there are the two ideas of life. There's life in this world, our soul life that we constantly have to spend. And then there's a question of eternal life. And presently we shall have to think about the connection between the two of them. Then we must take seriously our Lord's word when he said that whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it unto eternal life. But now the question arises, what do you mean by hating your life in this world? Here we've got to be very careful. It does not mean, let me underline that not, that we have to despise our life in this world. It doesn't mean that we have to dislike our life in this world. For ponder a minute and think, it's God who gives us our life, and every hour of every day we ought to be grateful to God for the gift of life. We must avoid all misrepresentations of Christianity that have taught people that the thing to do is to go and shut yourself away in some secluded monastery or other and be hard on your body and despise life in all its fullness. That is not Christian doctrine. God gives us all things richly to enjoy. He is the author and preserver of our daily life, and has so made us with divine cunning that within our bodies he has put mechanisms that if we injure ourselves or temporarily become ill, the body has means of helping our own body to recover. We are not to hate our life, then, in the modern sense of the word hate. This is the biblical use of the word. It's based in its Old Testament Hebrew. Let me quote you an example of the use of the word in the Old Testament. Jacob, you may remember, had two wives and two, whatever else you call them, handmaids of his first two wives, you see, so he had four in all, do you see? And the first one he married was called Leah, but he didn't really want her. He preferred the second one, and she was called Rachel, uh, do you see? Ah, but the Bible tells us in the book of Genesis, chapter twenty nine and verse thirty one that when the Lord saw that Leah was hated. What does that mean? That Jacob couldn't stand the sight of the dear woman and hated the woman every time he looked at her? Of course not. She was the mother of quite a number of his children. Hate in this kind of context means that she took second place to the favorite wife, which was Rachel. To hate is to give second place to something, in that Hebrew idiom. So that what our Lord is saying here, i- in this verse, he's saying, whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world, that is, whoever gives his life in this world second place, behind some other big priority. Whoever hates his life in this world, gives it second place, will keep it unto life eternal. So much then for our, uh, um, study of the basic words of our text. And now we come to another matter. We're going to ask about the context in which our Lord spoke these exceedingly important words. He spoke them after he had raised Lazarus from the dead, so we are told in chapter eleven. But when he raised Lazarus from the dead, instead of the authorities being delighted and awestruck at such a wonder that Jesus Christ could raise a dead body from the grave and give it new life. You'd have thought that anybody with a haypeth of sense in his mind would have welcomed it and said, oh, marvelous, and let's hope he does it again a thousand more times. But no. When he did it, the authorities gathered together in council and determined to destroy him. They said, if you let, they said to themselves, if we let this man go, then the Romans will come and do away with our place, that is the temple, and our nation. And the high priest said, you don't know nothing at all. You must be more skilled in politics. It's expedient that this one man die and the whole nation perish not. This, the Bible says, he spoke not just for himself, because by himself he meant one thing. He meant that Jesus politically had to die so that the nation could be saved. But God was behind it all, and there was another reason why Jesus had to die, that he might, uh, die for his people and for the children of God spread throughout the world. Anyway, he had raised Lazarus from the dead, and now the Jewish authorities had taken their final decision. They were going to bring him to his death. And when they decided that, our Lord withdrew. And John, with his flair for referring to the Old Testament, tells us he came and departed into an obscure place called Ephraim. And why does John tell- bother to tell us the name of this obscure town? Ephraim. And what does Ephraim mean anyway? It means fruitful. Because as we have read from the Old Testament, when Joseph was in Egypt and had come to power, and Pharaoh had given him the keys to every granary in Egypt and made him minister for agricultural and fisheries in Egypt and was about to solve their economic problems. He married an Egyptian girl, the wife of Potiphar the high priest, and she eventually gave him two sons. The first one he called Manasseh, that's a Hebrew word meaning forgetful, saying, God has made me forget my father's house because of all the glory of my present. And the second son he called Ephraim. That means fruitful. For he said, God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. And our Lord came and dwelt in Ephraim. We're about to read, and we must come back to it in a moment, what he said subsequently of himself. Except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and die, it abides alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. So let's think first of all about, uh, Joseph. Genesis tells us that there's a young lad. His father gave him a coat of many colors, and his brothers didn't like him for that. But more, Joseph had dreams. He dreamed one night, so he told his brothers, he dreamed that they were in the harvest field, and Joseph's sheaf of corn stood upright, and the other eleven sheaves, uh, all bowed down before his sheaf. And the brothers weren't slow on seeing what that meant. Are you telling us, they said, you little teenage squirt of a chap, are you telling us that you're going to rule over us? Oh, what pompous cheat, they thought. Typical teenage. You'll see that never happens. Hmm. And then he had another dream, and he told that to his brothers. He said, you know, the sun, the moon, and the stars, 11 of them, all fell down and worshipped, uh, my star. Well, it didn't upset merely his brothers, it's upset said his father. His father said, young man, get in your place too. What fancies have you got in your head? Shall I and your mother and your eleven brothers bow down and worship you? And his brothers hated him for it. Though his father, on second thoughts, stored it up in his memory. You see, the question was, did those dreams, what was their cause? You know, the Bible is very realistic when it comes to dreams. It says in one place, dreams can come because you've had too much supper, of course, you can't digest it. It's one reason. And other dreams come because you've had such a busy day that when you go to sleep, the mind still keeps working, and you're chi- churning over the details of the day and trying to make plans for the future, and it comes out very bizarre in the dreams. Well, never mind that. But some dreams, says the Old Testament, in those days came from God. And suppose God was behind the dreams. His father kept the matter in his mind to wait and see. And presently, while his brothers are away with the flocks in a different part, Father Jacob sent Joseph to see how they were getting on. And when eventually he, he found the way to them, and they saw him coming in the distance, the eleven brothers said to themselves, ha, look who comes there, if it isn't this dreamer. Well, we know what we're going to do with him. They decided they would slit his throat and c- cast him into one of the pits, and they added, and then we shall see what becomes of his dreams. The story goes on to tell in its beautifully vivid way what became of his dreams. He eventually became Pharaoh's grand vizier, given the keys of all the granaries in Egypt. The man who was given to interpret Pharaoh's dreams, being advised by God about the famine that was to come. And counseled Pharaoh as to what to do to meet this impending famine. And thus saved Egypt economically. Saved its citizens from starvation. And not only saved Egypt, but saved a lot of the little countries around, and saved even his father and brothers in Canaan from death by starvation. No wonder when his second child was born, he called it Ephraim. God has made me fruitful, he said, in the land of my affliction. And then we ask an important question. How did he get from his initial dreams to their fulfillment in Egypt? Well, you'll know the story. I need not dilate upon it. First of all, his brothers hated him. They decided to kill him. He was thrown down the pit. And then, at Judah's suggestion, they decided not to kill him. They could make money out of him. So they sold him to some Gentile merchantmen passing by. So he was sold by his brothers to the Gentiles, but in Egypt he prospered in the house of one of the leading politicians of the day and was faithful until he was falsely accused by the Egyptian's wife and put in prison. And there he languished. And I suspect many a night before he went to bed, he wondered and wondered, what about my dreams? Will they ever come true? It so happened after some years that two of the fellow prisoners, they had dreams as well. One was the chief, uh, steward, and the other was the, uh, baker. And Joseph interpreted their dreams to the effect that by Pharaoh would release both of them from prison. One he would restore to his office, to his former glory, the other would be executed. And as he said goodbye, uh, to the one who was going to be promoted back to his office originally, he said, you will remember me, won't you, when it goes well with you? But the good man being restored to his office completely forgot Joseph for the time being, and the prison door shut on him again. And there he languished. How many times, I ask, did he wonder? What about those dreams? Will they ever come true? Yes, indeed, they came true. But from the story we notice. The what he had to go through... before they came true. It was by the way of suffering, down into the pit, down into the dungeon, and long years of suffering before he became fruitful, he called his son, as I have said, Ephraim. God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. And with it, we come to our Lord. Remember where we left him? He was in a little town called Ephraim. And since he is the author of scripture, and why it was that Joseph gave his second son that name. He was in Ephraim because having raised Lazarus from the dead, he discovered that the Jewish authorities were now, uh, determined to kill him. What should he do? What should his tactics be? I hesitate to use the word. I must put it in inverted commas, but you'll know what I mean if I say to you, do you suppose that our Lord at this time had any God-given dream of the future? Any God-given objective? You say, of course he had. Yes, indeed he had. Let us notice for the moment some of the things that he did just at this stage in his history. Chapter eleven tells us how that a friend of his by the name of Lazarus took ill. The man's sister sent a note to the Lord Jesus that he whom thou lovest is ill. They thought our Lord would come at once and heal the man, but he didn't. He stayed in the same place where he was, and his friend Lazarus died. And to the disciples' astonishment, our Lord said to them, I'm glad I wasn't there. That must have been difficult for them to understand. Lord, why didn't you heal him? You could have healed him at a distance. Even now you could raise him from the dead at a distance. But no, said Christ. Christ, let the man die and then made it very clear what his program was. He came to Bethany and raised the dead Lazarus from his grave. Oh, it was a sign, a marvelous miracle, but it was a... For one day the Lord shall come. The Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. And then, when he comes, the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall be changed and caught up with the resurrected believers to meet the Lord in the air. That shall be the great reality of which the raising of Lazarus was but a sign. When Lazarus ra- was risen from the dead, you know, they had to take the grave clothes off him. And eventually he went back to death. It was only a sign. When the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, they didn't have to take the grave clothes off him, came right through them and left the grave clothes behind in the sepulcher. And oh, when he comes again, what a wonderful thing it shall be. The great reality of which Resur- uh, Lazarus's resurrection was but a sign. When the Lord comes, said our Lord to Martha, he that believes on me, even though he die. You say, what do you mean, even though he die? Doesn't everybody die? Well, not everybody will die, no. For some believers will still be alive when the Lord comes, will they not? But even if believers have died, yet shall they live. Live in resurrection life, of course. At the first resurrection. And he that bel- lives, and we're talking about believers, says Christ, he that lives and believes on me shall never die. No, indeed not. And if you should be alive when the Lord Jesus comes and you are a believer, you'll never die physically, you'll be caught up together with the resurrected saints to meet the Lord in the air. Wonderful, isn't it? May I ask you a question? When our Lord raised Lazarus from the tomb, was he aware of that great event that shall be when the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout to call his people home? You say, of course he was aware of it. Ah, good. Do you know, after his re- after he came back to the city, he went to Nazareth, I to to to Beth- uh, Bethany, and there Martha and Mary and Lazarus made him a supper. What a lovely occasion that was, wasn't it? There was the living sisters, Martha and Mary. There was Lazarus, their brother, raised from the dead, and they sat at this supper in the presence of the Lord Jesus. Lovely, wasn't it? Can you think of anything like it in the future? Who say, well, of course, my good sir, when the Lord comes, there shall take place the marriage supper of the Lamb. Oh, joy and delight to be at last at home with the Lord. The dear ones that have died in faith of Christ raised again, and we the living, if we're alive until that event caught up, to be forever with the Lord. We shall feast with him in the very paradise of God. And then from Bethany, so we're told, our Lord went forth, and he ordered his apostles to provide him with a donkey, and he sat upon the donkey and rode into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey. What for? To fulfill, deliberately to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah chapter nine and verse nine. O Jerusalem, thy king cometh unto thee, meek and lowly, riding upon an ass and on the foal of an ass. Deliberately fulfilling it. I ask you again, when our Lord took that donkey and rode into Jerusalem, was he not aware of what one day he shall do? When for the second time he comes to Jerusalem and God returns to Jerusalem. He shall come that time not riding on the back of a donkey. He shall come on the very clouds of heaven. Oh, the wonder of it. And we shall see him. Oh, I shall see him descending the sky when he comes again to Jerusalem. It caused such a stir in the city that the Pharisees talked one with another, and they said, gentlemen, you're getting absolutely nowhere. The world has gone after him. And they determined the more to destroy him. The world gone after him. Ah, yes, so it shall be one day. When he comes again, the whole world shall bow their knee, willingly or enforced, to the Savior. So that these events at that moment, they were not only historical events, they cast their shadow before them of the greater events to be. Joseph had his dreams, didn't he? God-given dreams of what the future should hold. But Joseph had to face the fact that to be fruitful and to be supreme, he must go through the experience of suffering. All these wonderful signs of what yet shall be, the resurrection of Lazarus, the feast with the Lord, the supper with the Lord, the coming of the king, the world gone after him. But how could it be? Our Lord stayed in Ephraim until the time was come, then went to Jerusalem and gathered his apostles around them and uttered to them the verse that is the point of our study. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die. It abides alone. But if it die, it bring the forth much fruit. It is a law of nature, isn't it? The kernel of wheat left on the shelf remains a kernel of wheat. There's no fruit. If ever it is to being fall fruit, it must fall into the ground and metaphorically die. Yes. So our Lord was now facing the reality. John records the words that then came from his mouth. Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. We must not underrate the reality of what our Lord said. His soul was troubled. Must it be that he fall into the ground and die? Was there no other way? He saw the cost of it. Now is my soul troubled. Tell me, this great work of redemption, if it was going to cost our Lord so much, was it really worth it? Hmm. Mm. It was, for instance, he raised Lazarus from the dead. He had the power to do it by his summons and command. But that was just a physical revivification, and Lazarus went back to death. If there were to come a real resurrection, and Lazarus be raised from the dead, and we be changed and caught up to heaven, if that kind of resurrection was ever to to take place, then it meant our Lord must fall into the ground and die. Was it worth it? They made him a supper in Martha's house. Lovely the fellowship was. But if ever these were to be brought to the marriage supper of the Lamb, it would mean our Lord's suffering and death. Was it worth it? Why, even in Martha's house, when they feasted together, one of his disciples gave out his opinion that spending the ointment that Mary spent on the Lord was a waste of money, he said. He's not worth all that much. And many of the other disciples were taken in by it and joined with Judas in his complaint at this waste of money on Jesus. Hmm. What about us? If you had been standing by the Lord Jesus when he uttered those words, now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Would you have tried to comfort him and say, but Lord, it would really be worth your while saving me, would you? What was a whole world of people to him? Who created the heavens and the galaxies and all beside. Who could create another human race if he so pleased. Shall we turn around and tell him, oh Lord, but it was worth your suffering. Go ahead, would you? The crowds were about to welcome him as he came into Jerusalem. He knew enough to know that a few days later they would crucify him. Worth it? Now is my soul troubled, he says, to translate those signs, those historical happenings into the glorious future. There was no other way than that he must fall into the ground and die. Now is my soul troubled, says he, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. And then he added, but for this very cause I came to this hour, and if I don't go through with it, the whole reason why I was born into this world falls to the ground. And quickly he added, what shall I say? Father, says he, glorify thy name. And there came a voice from heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. And we have sang, sung his praise tonight because of his great decision. But in our closing moments, we must listen now, must we not, to the principle applied to us. Shall we listen? Would we be fruitful for God? Whosoever loves his soul life shall lose it. Whosoever puts his soul life in this world second rate, as a second thing, not the primary thing, shall keep that life unto eternal life, shall turn the temporary soul life into something eternal. But if I'm going to be asked to count my physical life, with all that it involves, my soul life, my loves, my ambitions, my time, my talents, my money, and whatever else. If I'm asked to guide g- grade that as the second objective, not the primary objective, that will pose me another question. I put it to you. You got any dreams? Hmm. Young folks, I'm told, have dreams. What are your dreams for life? And for the future? Got any dreams, or do you just go muddling along. Ah, you say, yes, I have dreams. I, I, I, I know what I want to be. I'm going to work hard at school and get my, uh, GCE things and please Mr. Blair, and then I'm going to get a career, do you see? And I, I, I, I, I, I am going to get the most beautiful, uh, wife that ever was and get a decent home, you say, of course, a car and other such things, and I'm going to do well. Uh, yes, why shouldn't you? But is that your total dream? The old Greeks, you know, used to ask a question, and it meant distinguishing between an end, something that is an end in itself, and something that is merely a means to an end. And you say, what's the difference between that, an end in itself, and a means to an end? Well, sometimes you could ask the parents, now, your, your, your Thomas now, what, what is your, uh, uh, aim for him? Well, I'm going to get him through to college or university or something. Whatever for? Well, so he can get a good job. I see. And earn a lot of money? Yes, why not? What for? What do you want the money for? I said, don't be silly. He's got to live, hasn't he? And he wants to get a house and he wants to get a wife and and children. Do you see? That's what he needs the money for. Oh, I see, yes. And then anyway, if you have children today, they're very expensive, of course, and you want to get them into university, and that's going to cost you a lot of money now. Ooh. Oh yes, I can see that. So that's what he's he's he's come to the university so he can get a good degree, so they can get a good job and a good amount of money, so that he can marry a good wife, a bit of a wife, and get a nice house and get his children well educated so that they can go to university. What do they want to go to university for? Well, you say, don't be silly, old chap. They want to go to university so they can get a good job and, and uh, earn a lot of money and, and get a house and a wife and then, then have children. Oh, I see. Uh, uh, and what's that for? Well, so they can go to university and get a good job. Of course, what are you talking about? Isn't that all that's in life? Well, it is for some people. But what they're in danger of doing is taking the means of life as though it were the goal of life. That's a desperate mistake, that is, isn't it? We are to live to the full. Oh, but let me ask you, what's the purpose of living? Is it just to have a good career, a wife and children, and a nice house and enjoy yourself? You've got bigger dreams than that, haven't you? Got any really big dreams? You say, what are the big dreams? Ah, the dreams that the Lord is coming, and they're more than dreams, they're God-given certainties. Visions of what the future shall be when the Lord comes, and we are raised to be with him. And if scripture can be believed, and it is most certainly to be believed, we shall reign with him. That's the big goal. Excuse the term. That's the big dream. And because it's God's vision and God's future, the reason why the whole universe was made and we within it, to go after the lesser things and make them our big dreams and neglect the big things. That is to reap eternal disappointment. He who loves his life and lives, in other words, just for this world, shall lose it. The old hymn has it right, only one life will very soon be past. Only what's done for Jesus Christ will last. He that is prepared to give these things, beautiful and good as they are, but to treat them as merely means to an end, the secondary lower objectives, and turn the whole life of over into making Christ and his glorious future the main objective in life. Those who do that shall find that even their deeds here on earth, done for Christ, whatever they be, raising a family, being an engineer, being somewhere else in some profession or humble work, but done for Christ and done for his coming kingdom's sake, shall find that even the temporary activities of life take on an eternal value. And so we come to the end of our study with the words of our Lord ringing in our ears. If any man serve me, let him follow me. Follow him where? As he spoke, he was on his way to Jerusalem to give his life a ransom for many. Let him follow me. Not that we have to atone for sins, of course not. But he calls us to follow him. Deliberately, training ourselves in his values and being prepared for what sacrifice and suffering and costs it involves, so that by his grace we may bring forth fruit for God, not only here in time, but in God's great eternity too. Shall we pray? Blessed Lord Jesus, we have stood with thee, as here on earth thou didst face the great issue before thee. The purpose of thy coming, to fall into the ground and die, that there may c- might come an uncountable harvest for the glory of God and the salvation of men. We thank thee for thy sense of eternal values, and that the saving of us was part of thy purpose. Help us therefore now, Lord, to follow thee. Give us good, clear, and right perspectives on life, and good vision of the future we do beseech thee, so that the eternal glories gleaming afar may nerve our weak endeavor. We go about life here, thankful for it and all thy benefits, but looking beyond it to thy great eternity. So help us, we pray, and make our study fruitful in our lives to thy glory, for Jesus Christ, thy Son's sake. Amen.