Burial Before Harvest — John 12:12-26 (08.02.2026)

Okay, I'll go ahead and pray for us again. Father, just as these Greeks said,

to Philip, we wish to see Jesus.

That's why we're here. That's why we've gathered. That's what our hearts need,

whether we realize it or not.

We need to see Jesus. So would you show us your son today through your word?

I pray it in his name and Jesus' name, amen.

Well, we are coming to the climax of the Gospel of John.

We've been making our way through the Gospel of John to this point,

and I wanna zoom out just a minute and also help us to understand what we're

coming to in the whole of the story of scripture.

The Jews have been awaiting a Messiah King for thousands of years.

In Genesis chapter three, third chapter of the Bible, God promised that the

offspring of the woman would bruise the serpent's head.

The proto-evangelium, the first gospel pronouncement in scripture,

thousands of years before.

In Genesis 12, God promised Abram that through his offspring,

all the families of the earth would be blessed.

In Genesis 49, God promised a great future king from the tribe of Judah.

In 2 Samuel 7, God promised David

that one of his offspring would be established on the throne forever.

And then the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Micah and Zechariah

and Daniel spoke of this coming Messiah King who would reign forever.

One example relevant to our passage comes from the prophet Daniel.

Daniel 7, verses 13 and 14.

Daniel 7:13

And Daniel says that he sees one like a son of man, and he came to the ancient

of days, and he was presented before him, and to him was given

dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Here's this powerful, incredible messianic prophecy, this vision that is given to Daniel.

And because of it, the term or the title Son of Man became synonymous with this Messiah.

Daniel's vision is of the Messiah's coronation.

He sees the Son of Man presented before the ancient of days.

He's given an everlasting dominion and glory in a kingdom that cannot ever be destroyed.

It shines light on what Jesus is going to say in our passage in verse 23,

that the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified throughout John's gospel.

I mean, beginning in John chapter two with the first sign, the miracle of turning

water into wine in Cana, the wedding of.

We've been hearing that Jesus' hour had not yet come. Remember,

if you were with us, he says that to his mother.

His hour had not yet come. And we've heard that again, that his hour had not

come. His hour had not come. We've heard that come up many times in this gospel.

And now in verse 23, he says, the hour has come.

The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified. He's saying clearly,

I'm him. I'm the son of man in Daniel's vision. It's my time.

It's time for what Daniel saw, my coronation as king.

Throughout John's gospel, he's been proving to his readers that Jesus is Israel's Messiah.

And as he's done so, simultaneously, there's been this growing tension in the story.

Israel's religious leaders have increasingly wanted to silence him.

And after he raised Lazarus from the grave, they determined that it was time to put Jesus to death.

In chapter 11, the high priest, Caiaphas resolves that Jesus must die.

And ironically, Caiaphas unknowingly prophesies that Jesus will die not merely

for Israel, but quote, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

He has no idea just how true that was.

And then we get to chapter 12, and it begins to lay out for us how that's going to happen.

It begins with Mary anointing Jesus for burial.

And now we come to Palm Sunday as it's been termed.

The triumphal entry. Jesus enters into Jerusalem as Israel's king.

And Gentile Greeks come seeking him.

But Jesus knows where all of this is heading. His hour has come to be glorified,

but he knows that the way to his glorification is through death.

And in just a few short days from his triumphal entry, the same crowd who welcomed

Jesus as their deliverer and king will cry for his crucifixion as though he were a criminal.

When Jesus says, we're going to look at this in depth in a moment,

unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

He is speaking first and foremost of himself, of his death.

His death must occur in order for there to be a worldwide harvest of redeemed people.

That's the much fruit he's referring to. But he is also secondarily talking

about those who follow him, which is why He says what he says after that in verses 25 and 26.

He's revealing a kingdom principle that cannot be broken, that we must live out as well.

There are deaths that we must experience in order to experience a harvest on the other side of it.

We naturally pursue glory apart from sacrifice, resurrection life, apart from death.

But practically what this means, what we're gonna look at, what we're gonna

see today, What it means is that without self-denial, without surrender,

without costly obedience, there's no real life. There's no real fruitfulness.

Essentially, we frequently want the blessings of the kingdom without the cross.

I'll give you a real life example that I've been processing this week.

I've been an emotional mess. My oldest...

Is going to college. And we have five kids and the oldest two are boys.

And so Sam is, we're taking him Saturday. We're dropping him off in Athens.

And we're very close.

We're very close. Sam is my, just like all of my kids. He's my buddy.

He's my friend. And over this past week, the reality of that loss has been hitting

me harder. I'll picture our table and say I'm not there.

I go up to their room and I picture him not there.

This loss, sending out a child that you love into the world, it's a kind of death.

But without it, without experiencing that, that death, he cannot become the

man that God has created him to become without experiencing that death.

He can't begin his own family. He cannot step into the calling that God has on his life.

He can't bear the fruit in the world that God has for him to bear.

The life we've so enjoyed with him at home is like a grain of wheat.

That grain of wheat has to fall into the ground and die or it won't produce

fruit. So we have to surrender to God's plan.

That's just an example of what Jesus is talking about here.

Jesus reveals that the path to real and lasting joy is the cross and his followers,

are to embrace that same pattern because those who die to themselves for his

sake will find true life.

And so today we're going to be considering this. It's a difficult concept in scripture.

We don't like the thought of having to die to ourselves, but take heart.

We're also going to see that for each and every call to lay down your life,

there is a promise of unbelievable reward.

So that is a lengthy introduction to our passage, but I felt it helpful.

So let's look now at our first point, the king that we need.

As we look at Jesus coming into the city, we see.

The kind of king that he is. It's shocking and it's unexpected.

He isn't the king that people were asking for, but he is exactly the king that

we needed and far better.

So in verses 12 and 13, you see this crowd that has gathered and they hear that

Jesus is coming to Jerusalem. And so they line the streets and they're crying

out, Hosanna, which means save us now.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.

What are they doing? They are declaring that Jesus is this long-awaited Messiah

that Scripture has been prophesying about for thousands of years.

They're singing a psalm that was commonly sung at Jewish festivals.

In fact, it's the psalm that Jesus will sing in just a few short hours with

his disciples as he is marching his way to Gethsemane to be arrested.

They're singing Psalm 118. Hold your place here in John 12 and turn over to Psalm.

118, if you're able, and just take a look at it.

In Psalm 118, this song is celebrating a deliverer. We actually read a chunk

of this in our call to worship.

It's celebrating this deliverer that's coming through the gates,

the gate of the Lord that the righteous may enter through.

It celebrates this deliverer who is a cornerstone that the builders rejected. Verse 22.

And this deliverer is receiving blessing and honor as he passes through the gates of the city of God.

And here's the section of the psalm being sung by the crowd as Jesus enters

into Jerusalem, verses 25 through 27.

It says, save us, we pray, O Lord.

O Lord, we pray, give us success.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God.

He has made his light to shine upon us. bind the festal sacrifice with cords

up to the horns of the altar.

Astonishingly, the part of Psalm 118 that they're singing does not end with

the entry of the deliverer into the city of God.

It immediately envisions a sacrifice being bound with cords upon the altar.

Little did they know as they sung this song through the centuries that the cornerstone

that the builders rejected would be the sacrifice upon the altar.

I'll turn back over to John 12. So this is the scene.

The crowd welcomes Jesus into the city as their Messiah King.

Verses 17 and 18 explain why.

John 12, the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the

tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to bear witness.

The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign.

So here's what drew the crowds to Jesus. They saw the power he wielded.

He could call the dead to life. He could stand outside of a person's tomb and

call their name and they would come back to life and come walking out.

What can't that person do?

They saw his power and they saw the miracles. They'd heard about the miracles

that he had performed besides this one.

And they said, this is the king we need. We need a man with this kind of power. And they were right.

They were right. Jesus does have immeasurable power, the power that the king needs to have.

But we learn something else about the kind of king that Jesus is.

As we keep reading verses 14 and 15, Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it.

Just as it is written, fear not daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming

sitting on a donkey's colt.

How would you expect this mighty king that's been prophesied for thousands of

years to come into the city of God in his triumphal entry. How would you expect it?

Maybe the way that he's going to return. If you've read the book of Revelation

in Revelation 19, it tells us that when he comes back, he's going to be riding a war horse.

He's going to be wearing a robe dipped in blood.

He's going to have a sword. He's going to have eyes like fire.

That's what they expected. That's what we would have expected.

But that's not how he comes. Not this time.

He comes riding on a donkey's colt. Fear not, it says. You don't have to be afraid.

He's coming on a donkey's colt.

You don't have to be afraid because he isn't coming right now in judgment.

He isn't coming to bring judgment, which he will, but not now.

He comes in a different way, a very unexpected way.

He's not coming to set up his kingdom in an earthly way yet,

not in the way they expected. He's not coming to overthrow Rome and set Israel

free from its oppression. No, no, no, not yet.

Even though that's what they wanted. He comes to fulfill Zechariah 9,

9, which says this, rejoice greatly, which can also be translated fear not.

Oh, daughter of Zion, shout aloud, oh, daughter of Jerusalem,

behold, your king is coming to you.

Righteous and having salvation is he.

Humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Jesus comes in gentleness. He comes to his people,

in the only way that his people and any other human beings could have been a

part of the kingdom he was establishing. He comes in mercy.

Jesus in his triumphal entry is putting on display the words from Mark 10 when

he said, the kings of the earth, Lord over their people, domineering authority,

it shall not be so among you, not among my people.

If you will be great, be the slave of all.

The son of man came not to be served, but to serve.

Do you see, do you see the beauty of this Messiah?

It's incredible. You and I needed a king, powerful enough, to defeat death itself,

and humble enough to do it for us, in our place,

as one of us taking our guilt and the penalty for our sin.

We needed a capable king with power. We needed a lion.

And we needed a merciful king with steadfast love and gentleness. We needed a lamb.

And Jesus Christ is the only king who can simultaneously be both.

He may not have been the king that they were asking for, but he was the king we desperately needed.

So believer, are you caught in some enslaving sin?

Christ looks upon you with compassion. He is gentle enough to forgive you and

powerful enough to set you free?

Are you grieving some loss? Christ is gentle enough to weep with you,

but also powerful enough that he can bring life out of a grave.

Look at this king who is the mighty deliverer of Psalm 118 and also the humble savior of Zechariah 9.

If Jesus is really this king, and he is, then one question remains,

how does this kind of king establish his kingdom?

It brings to point number two, the death that brings life.

So he comes into the city and it tells us in verse 20 that among those who went

up to worship at the feast were some Greeks.

And these Greeks come to Philip and they say to him, sir, we wish to see Jesus. What a statement.

What a statement. This is what all of our hearts are longing for,

whether we realize it or not.

They're searching for Christ and they're Gentiles and it marks a watershed moment.

Commentator D.A. Carson says that the Greeks function as the first fruits of

the vast Gentile harvest.

This marks the beginning of the gospel going beyond Israel to the rest of the world.

This is why most of us in this room are believers.

The gospel went to the world, to the nations.

And that's why when they come to him, his response is what it is.

It's interesting, right? He doesn't say, no, they can't come to me.

He doesn't say, bring them to me. What does he say?

He says, the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.

He sees what's happening. He sees this as the watershed moment that it is.

And he says, there's something that must happen first before the nations can come to me.

The son of man had to be glorified before we could be saved.

What no one expected was the way that that glorifying, that glorification would

happen. Immediately after talking about being glorified, he's talking about dying.

Verse 24, truly, truly, 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.

Jesus's death is part of, it's the beginning of his glorification.

What the world saw as humiliation was actually glory on display.

As Christ was lifted up on the cross, the glory of his grace shone brighter

than at any other time. And so his crucifixion is actually the beginning of his coronation.

Though his death looked like defeat, it was victory. Look at the end of verse

23. He says, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

And so he is building his kingdom. He is establishing his kingdom,

but not the way they expected.

He is doing it, as I said, in the only way that we could be a part of it.

How does this king provide a way for guilty sinners to be a part of a holy kingdom?

First, we must be forgiven. We must be absolved of guilt. We must be cleansed.

And second, we must become different than we are.

We must become the kind of people that would even want to be a part of a holy

kingdom in the first place.

And Jesus's death produces both of those things for those who believe in him.

First, it produces justification. When we trust in him, we are absolved of guilt.

We are cleansed and forgiven.

We are no longer guilty.

And it produces union with him. When we trust in him, we are united to Christ.

His life is our life. It courses through our veins.

His spirit indwells us and we become infused with the life of Christ.

His life was the seed. We are the harvest.

Only if he dies can his life be reproduced in us, in countless people.

If he doesn't die, there can be no salvation for humanity. So Jesus is the seed,

planted for the harvest of a new humanity, a new world, a new life.

And so his kingdom comes through his death.

Here's the last part of this sermon that we have to consider.

If that's the case, if his kingdom comes through his death, what does that mean

for those of us who are his followers?

What does that mean for us? And that's what verses 25 and 26 are getting at.

Verse 25, whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this

world will keep it for eternal life.

What Jesus is saying in this verse is that he calls every single one of his

disciples who follow him.

To follow him in the kind of life he lived, to follow him through death into

life, through death to self into life and joy and kingdom fruit.

Throughout church history, this has been called the cruciform life or the cross-shaped life.

If we die with him, and when I talk about that, I mean, yes.

It is a completed fact. We have died with him.

And it is an ongoing reality every single time we deny self.

We lay down preferences. We put others before ourselves. We follow him in costly obedience.

If we die with him, then his life can be manifested through ours and we will bear much fruit.

He says, if anyone serves me, he must follow me where I am, there they will

be. He's saying, you're going to live the same kind of life.

He's saying, it's going to be

a life that resembles mine, a life of many little deaths, death to self.

This is the cross-shaped life.

It's the cross-shaped life. So what keeps us going?

What motivates us on this? How is this not just bad news? It's because,

as I said in the beginning, there is a promise of reward on the other side of every death.

It's the hope. It's the hope in the dying.

It's the hope that on the other side of death is resurrection life. Think of the farmer.

We're talking about a grain of wheat falling into the ground.

We're talking about farming. Think of the farmer.

He knows that if he wants to reap a harvest, he must first start by burying thousands of seeds.

He takes these valuable seeds and he puts them into the ground so that they

can die. He buries them in hope.

Every harvest begins with burial. Say I'm going to college, it feels like death in some ways, right?

I know it's a wonderful thing, but to me right now, it feels like death in some ways.

But it's necessary for the reward of the harvest that it will produce.

Anytime you confess sin to another believer, you sit across from another believer

and you look them in the eye and you say, this is what I've done. It's a kind of death.

You're doing that in hope, right?

You know that that's going to make you feel pretty rotten in the moment,

but you're doing it in a hope that on the other side of that,

coming into the light, there's resurrection life.

There's healing that can happen because you're living in the light.

We bury our pride into the dirt in hope We bury the image we want others to

have of us Into the dirt in hope,

Every single time we love another person The way that scripture calls us to

love people Sacrificially, it's the same thing,

Loving others means dying to your own desires And preferences and putting the

needs of others above your own You're burying your preferences You're burying your desires.

You're burying your needs, whatever it is, in the dirt, in hope that on the

other side, there's life, there's reward, there's harvest.

What motivated Jesus as he did it? What motivated him as he marched willingly

toward his own death, as he knew that suffering was coming? What motivated him?

Because the same thing can sustain us. It can motivate us. It can carry us as

God calls us to sacrificial love and costly obedience.

Each and every call to lay down your life has the promise of reward.

Verse 24, if the grain of wheat dies, it bears much fruit.

Verse 25, if you don't love your life, you can keep it for eternal life.

Verse 26, if we follow Christ on this path of self-sacrificing love,

the Father will honor us.

So what about Jesus? What about him? What motivated him? Was it the same thing? Yes.

Yes. Hebrews 12.2 says, look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,

who for the joy, for the joy that was set before him on the other side of the

cross, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

How did he walk to his death? It was the focus on the reward.

It was the focus on the harvest to come. Unless a grain of wheat falls into

the ground and dies, it bears a loan. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Let's look to Jesus, our lion and our lamb, our death-defeating,

sin-conquering, humble,

gentle, merciful king who died that we might live.

And then let's follow him in the same pattern of life. What's on the other side

of following Jesus into death? everlasting joy.

Believer, you can trust him. So

bury those seeds in hope, knowing that the harvest is coming. Let's pray.

Father in heaven, you know that we are but dust.

You know how weak we are, Father. You know how hard it is for us to die these deaths.

And so sustain us, Lord. Sustain us with the hope of the gospel.

Sustain us with the hope that on the other side of death is resurrection, life.

Sustain us with the hope that on the other side of burying these seeds there is a harvest to come.

Sustain us Lord as we look to the author and perfecter of our faith,

who suffered looking to the reward looking to the joy that was before him,

Lord Jesus thank you for dying for us thank you for dying for us so that we

might live and thank you for being the kind of savior that we so desperately needed,

powerful enough to defeat death powerful enough to defeat sin gentle enough

humble enough compassionate enough,

that you would win us and call us to yourself and take our sin and take our

punishment to reconcile us to God.

Lord Jesus, we look forward to you coming back.

We look forward to seeing the clouds part and our king riding on a white war horse.

But until then, Lord, sustain us, sustain us, keep us, in Jesus' name, amen.