heard of His teaching and miracles and wanted to see the One everybody was talking about. Our Lord met their request with a strange an swer. He began by saying, “ The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.” He was say ing, “ I am facing death and resurrection. This what I came for and if these Greeks do not see Me in that light, they do not see me at all.” There are many Greeks out to see Jesus today, but if they see only a teacher, an example, a martyr, they haven’t seen Him. Leave out the cross and the open grave and you miss the meaning of Jesus Christ. Historians who treat Him only as a re ligious leader, merely as the Founder of Christian ity, miss the point. The heart o f Christianity is His death and resurrection and Christianity grows as His followers share with Him dying to sin and rising to walk in newness of life. The grain of wheat must die to multiply. Otherwise it is only a grain of wheat. Plant one grain and you have a hundred. Plant a hundred and you have a thou sand. That is the secret of Christianity, from death unto life. After two thousand years, most church goers have about as much understanding of it as they have o f nuclear physics. So He said, “ The hour is come.” In other words, “ This is i t !” He had often spoken of His hour. He had said to His mother at Cana: “Mine hour is not yet come.” He had said to His brethren: “My time is not yet come.” When some tried to take Him, no man laid hands on Him because “His hour was not yet come.” Later we read, “When Jesus knew that His hour was come. . . .” Everything else was done in the light o f that hour. It was not just that He must die, for all men must die. This was the greatest hour in all history when God fought it out with the devil and settled the sin question forever. There have been crises in his tory, decisive battles, turning points in time, but they are as molehills beside mountains compared to this hour. Take this hour out of history and it makes no sense; it is only “ a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.” Our Lord said, “ Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?” There is no Gethsemane account in John but here He is facing the same issue. Some have asked why Jesus seems to cringe before Calvary while Socrates and many another faced death without qualms. But this was no ordinary death. This is the Son o f God taking upon Him self all the sins of all men from the beginning to the end of time. There never had been such a death before and there never would be such a death again. Jesus Christ being Who He is and sin being what it is, this death took all the evil that ever was or would be and nailed it to the cross. No wonder the Saviour said, “ Now is my soul trou bled” ! Then He prayed, “ Father, glorify Thy Name.”
When in our little lives our souls are troubled and we know not what to say, here is the prayer for us to pray. The supreme purpose o f our Lord’s life was to glorify God and it should be the supreme purpose in your life and mine. Dr. Torrey used to say, “ The supreme purpose of prayer is that God may be glorified in the answer.” But we had bet ter mean it when we pray, “ Father, glorify Thy Name” for sometimes God has strange ways of getting glory from our lives. Lazarus’ sickness was for the glory o f God and Jesus told Peter by what death he should glorify God. Whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, we should do all to the glory of God. When we pray for revival, we should remember the old song, “Hallelujah, Thine the glory, revive us again.” Sometimes we are strong on the “ Hallelujah” but weak on “ Thine the glory” ! In answer to our Lord’s prayer, there came a voice from heaven saying, “ I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” Three interpretations of this voice followed. Some said that it thundered. That is the secular, the natural explanation. Some said that an angel spoke. That is the spiritual ex planation. But our Lord gave the true interpreta tion: “ This voice came not because of me but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me.” Here is a three-fold explanation: the judgment of this world; the casting out o f Satan; the universal magnetism o f the crucified Christ. Jesus had already said: “ The hour is come.” Luke tells us that when He was arrested a little later, He said to His enemies: “ This is YOUR hour and the power of darkness.” It was HIS HOUR, the hour for which He had come to earth to die for the sins of the world. It was also THEIR HOUR when the opposition of Satan came to its climax. It was their big moment! Light met Dark ness, Heaven met Hell, Christ met Antichrist in a head-on collision. Our Lord knew that there was a dark, sinister world under the control of the devil and his demons. The priests and Pharisees and all who fought Him during His life were the human tools of this world of darkness. He was not merely accommodating Himself to the demonology of His time. Paul tells us that “we are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Phillips). This warfare reached its climax at Calvary and Jesus Christ won the victory when He came out of the grave. It was His hour and it was their hour, and the power of darkness:
“One death-grapple in the darkness ’Twixt old systems and the Word."
APRIL, 1969
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