Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2338
“Now is the judgment of this world: nowshall theprince of this world be cast out. And I, if Iam lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. This He said, signifying what death He should die.” John 12:31-33.
OUR Lord passed through His passion in a kind of rehearsal before it came. He saw those Greeks who came to Philip and whom Andrew and Philip brought to Him, and His heart was flushed with joy. This was to be the result of His death, that the Gentiles would be gathered to Him! That thought reminded Him of His approaching decease. It was very near— only a few days would elapse and then He would die upon the Cross. In anticipation of Calvary, His soul was full of trouble—not that He feared death, but His death was to be a very peculiar one. He was to die the Just for the unjust. He was to bear our sins in His own body on the tree and His pure and holy soul shrank from contact with sin! To stand in the sinner’s place—to bear His Father’s wrath—this bewildered Him. He was very faint of heart and He cried, “What shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Without any wicked weakness, He proved how truly human He was—without any sinful repining at His Father’s will, He saw how terrible that will was and He shuddered at what it included. This was a kind of rehearsal for Gethsemane. It was a sipping of that cup of which He was to drink until His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground, while His whole soul poured out the agonized petition, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless not as I will, but as You will.”
When our Lord Jesus was in this great distress of mind, in anticipation of the terrible sufferings He was about to endure, His Father spoke to Him. And when you are in your direst distress, God will speak to you. If you are His child, when the weakness of your flesh seems ready to prevail over your spirit, you, too, shall have a reassuring voice out of the excellent Glory even as your Master had. He seemed to recover Himself at once and, bracing Himself up, He indulged His heart again with a vision of the glorious result of His death. Then He uttered the happy words on which we are to meditate, tonight, in which He summed up the consequences of His death in these three points—“Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.”
Let us, first, tonight, consider the threefold result of Christ’s death. And when we have done that, let us think about Christ’s death as it is described in our text.
I. First, let US CONSIDER THE THREEFOLD RESULT OF CHRIST’S DEATH.
There is, first, the judgment of the world— “Now is the judgment of this world.” If you like, you may read it, “crisis,” for that is the Greek word used here—“Now is the crisis of this world.” The world is sick. It grows worse and the physician says that its malady has come to a climax—it is a case of kill or cure. There was a crisis in the world’s disease and that crisis was when Christ died! His death was the turning point, the hinge of the world’s history. There have been many hinges in history—every nation has a hinge in its history—the Cross of Christ was the hinge of the world’s history—it had reached the turning point. I thank God that the death of Christ was the future death of sin. When He died, the archenemy received his death stroke. That death was the bruising of Christ’s heel, but in that death He bruised the old serpent’s head.
Now there is hope for the world—its crisis is passed! Now will the gods of the heathen fall! Now will the dark ignorance of men yield to the Light of the world! After this crisis there shall come a new Heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness, for Christ’s first coming is a pledge of His second coming wherein He will exterminate sin and make
the wilderness and the solitary places to blossom as the rose. Thus we may render our Savior’s words, “Now is the crisis of this world,” the turning point, the hinge, on which all its history hangs. Still, I greatly prefer to keep to our old version, which is a translation whereas mine is only a borrowing of the original word “crisis.”
“Now is the judgment of this world.” This means that when Christ died, the world that lies in the Wicked One, the ungodly world, was judged in this sense—first, it was convicted of being guiltiest of the guilty. I daresay you have heard people rise pretty phrases about the dignity of human nature and so on. They are lying phrases, for human nature is as bad as it can be. If you want the proof of that assertion, behold how God, Himself, came here among men, Incarnate Virtue robed in love! Did men love Him? Did they fall down before Him and do Him homage? The homage of the world was, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” The world hates virtue—it cannot bear perfection—it might endure benevolence, but absolute purity and righteousness it cannot! Its native instincts are wrong. It is not towards the Light of God that men are going—their backs are to the sun—they are journeying into the thick darkness.