Sermon Transcript
July 26, 2026
Please stand with me as we read John 12:44–50. I’m reading from the Christian Standard Bible this morning. We have ESVs in the pews if you don’t have a Bible, but you can follow along.
Jesus cried out, “The one who believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me. And the one who sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me would not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and doesn’t keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and doesn’t receive my sayings has this as his judge: The word I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a command to say everything I have said. I know that his command is eternal life. So the things that I speak, I speak just as the Father has told me.” (CSB)
You may be seated. This is the word of the Lord.
Heavenly Father, I come to You now. I ask that You would please be with us and help us today as we seek to learn more about You and more from your word. Holy Spirit, come and flood our people. Rain down on our children. Rain down on those who are hearing. I pray that You would send the Holy Spirit to rain down on those who are watching from home.
Today is the day that You have made, Lord, and I ask that You would do a supernatural work in us. Help us to recognize that the world that we live in is evil, but there is a hope that is carrying us out of this darkness. I pray that everyone here would walk out these doors and know the truth that Jesus is the life, that Jesus is the way—the way back to the Father.
Lord, I need your help because I’m tired. Our people are tired, and many people are carrying burdens that we don’t know about today. I pray that You would help them to put those burdens on the back seat, and for the next hour for them to just completely forget all of their sorrow and pain so that they can see You sitting on your throne, blasting, radiating, glorious light on all of humanity that just radiates your love towards us. Be with us today, Lord, and help us. In Jesus’ name, amen. Spirit, speak through me.
Introduction: John’s Gospel Is Designed to Warn the Unbeliever and Encourage the Believer Already in the Fight
I don’t know if you guys remember, but back in 2008 when Liam Neeson dropped his movie Taken, it was all a buzz. I bought that movie so fast back when you could buy movies on DVD, and I watched that movie over and over and over again for a few reasons. That movie really sparked my interest because it takes place in Europe. I had just come home from Europe, living in the south of France, and now this movie is taking place in France, and I’m so excited. I shared this movie a lot because it really spoke to the heart.
Now, if you don’t know, Liam Neeson made this movie in 2008, and it’s all about a retired CIA operative who’s now trying to live in Los Angeles, but his daughter wants to take a trip to Paris. Reluctantly, the main character, the CIA operative Bryan, gives her permission to go to Paris. But while she’s in Paris, she gets kidnapped. She gets kidnapped by a ring of Albanian human traffickers. She is somehow able to get a hold of her dad, Bryan, calling him right before they take her.
Bryan gets on the phone with one of the traffickers, and he tells them, “I’m coming for you.” Because nothing is going to stand between him and his child. He would not let an entire network of criminals, traffickers, guns—you name it—stop him from rescuing his daughter from the arms of the enemy.
I’m going to tell you today, the reason why we love that story so much is because it resonates with the Father who has sent His Rescuer down from heaven to save us from the dark world that traffics us in rebellion against God. You see, since the Garden of Eden, we have lived in a world where Satan has had supernatural control over the human mind. Children are born in rebellion against God. You don’t believe me? That’s because you don’t have children. All you need to do is tell your kid, “Do not do that.” They’ll look at you, put their hand back, stretch it out, and do exactly what you told them not to do. That is because we are born into the world where Satan has affected our DNA.
Adam and Eve were in the garden, and God told them, “Everything is yours. I love you. You’re here to dwell with Me for all eternity, and it’s great. Just don’t touch that tree because then you will know things that you shouldn’t” (Gen 2:16–17). They had the opportunity to be satisfied dwelling in God’s presence, eating everything that He ever wanted them to have. But that human trafficker, Satan, steps onto the picture, and he tells them, “God doesn’t have your best interests in mind. He just knows that you’ll be like Him. He doesn’t want you to be God” (Gen 3:4–5). So Eve looks at the fruit, and it looks good to her eyes (Gen 3:6). In that moment, she was renouncing her loving Father as her King, as her Hero, as her Leader. Ever since then, she and all of her descendants and her husband have been enslaved to Satan himself.
Jesus sees that, and He sees the world that we have created. The world we have created has brought death, disease, destruction, addiction, drugs, adultery, corruption, and pain. My brother Bart is in the hospital this morning with his mother because of what our ancestors did in the garden (Gen 3). Disease, death, and sickness would not be on this planet if we were satisfied by nature with God being our loving Father.
We all need to be rescued because we’re all being trafficked. I want to tell you today, there is hope for you. There is hope for this world. It’s not in whatever leader you want to elect in DC. It’s not in whatever TikTok channel or YouTube Short you want to watch. It’s not in your buddies drinking beer and shooting the stuff trying to think of how you’re going to fix the world. None of that is going to fix this. There is only one thing that will fix the pain, the plight, the disease, the addiction, and death. In short, what will fix darkness is the light that Jesus is when He entered this world, and He is here to pull us out of slavery.
So today’s main point—hear me well, Church: We must believe that God the Father has sent Jesus, His Son, as our only way out of the darkness of death and into the light of life. Again, we must firmly believe that Jesus was sent by God the Father to rescue us from the place of darkness, which is death, into the light of life.
I don’t know about you, but I hate death. I don’t know about you, but I hate cancer. I hate to see all the prayer requests that we have on our bulletin—95% of these are all sickness. The list grows and comes and goes, and it’s because it’s a reminder that the world is broken.
So John sees the pain, the darkness, and the death that’s in the world, and he says, “I’m going to give them some inspiration, and I’m going to remind them of the hope that they truly have.” So he writes this Gospel. In wartime, we send literature into war zones for a few reasons. There are two types of literature we send in war zones. The first one might be a pamphlet to warn people, “The bombing is coming.” It’s a warning: “Get ready. Evacuate.” The other type of literature that we send are letters to our warriors who are overseas, and we’re trying to encourage them to stay the course, to not stop fighting.
Well, good news for us: John writes a Gospel that encompasses both types of literature for the war we’re in. John’s Gospel, the Gospel of John, is both to warn you that there is judgment coming, so you better evacuate, and he is trying to encourage those who are already in the fight.
What kind of fight was the original audience in? Well, this Gospel was written just after the temple was destroyed in Jerusalem. If you’re not Jewish, you may not understand why that’s so pivotal, but all of Jewish life centered around this Jerusalem temple. It was where every Jew, every year, would travel to celebrate Passover. All the festivals, all the feasts for nearly a thousand years, centered around Jerusalem and the sacrifices that they made in the temple, and now it’s gone.
What are they to do? Well, John has the lovely opportunity to tell the people, “I have something better than the temple that is here, and His name is Jesus.” You no longer need to make the sacrifices. You no longer need to show up and fulfill all the law here in Jerusalem because Jesus has fulfilled all the law’s requirements for you. So this letter is a letter of hope for the Jewish Christians.
But also, this letter is hope for the non-Jews who are Christians because we now have a new Roman emperor on the scene. His name is Domitian, and he expects people to call him Lord and God. This is a phrase that Christians reserve for only one party, and now Christians are being killed because they refuse to call the Roman Emperor “Lord and God.”
So this letter, the Gospel of John, is both a warning to those who are still addicted to darkness, but it is also an encouraging piece of literature for those who are already in the fight. Just like the first-century Christians, we live in a day and an age where you will be threatened in many ways unless you bow the knee to some false god. In America, if you do not drink the LGBTQ agenda, you might lose your job. If you do not promote abortion, you might be kicked out of the workforce. You might be blacklisted. You might be shadowbanned on the internet. If you do not indoctrinate your children in the way the world tells you to, then you will be isolated, ostracized, and exiled from family dinners. Forget about Thanksgiving being comfortable. Forget about Christmas. Or even when you do Christmas, maybe you’re the family that says, “We only believe that these gifts come from one person.” And now you’re the weird guy at the family party.
The world is still telling you, “Christian, do not call him Lord and God. Call this Lord and God.” [Pastor points up.] So we must cling to the Gospel of John because it reminds us that we are still in a dark place, but there is a light pulling us out.
The Father Has Sent the Son to Bring Us Out of the Darkness of Death to the Light of Life (vv. 44–47)
Our passage today at the end of chapter 12 is the summary of the first 12 chapters of the Gospel. So the passage, as our brother Bob had read this morning, is letting you know that the darkness is trying to take over the light. The light entered the world. You see, Jesus created everything. Nothing that was created on earth was not created unless it was created through the Son (John 1:3). He has always existed. Jesus was not created; He was begotten (John 1:14). Jesus is the Creator, and He is the light because the light is associated in the Gospel of John with life, and we must understand that true life means that you are in the presence of God.
You see, in the garden when the enemy tried to traffic Adam and Eve and he tempted them to sin, God had warned them, “If you eat of this tree, if you eat of the fruit of this tree, what will happen to you, Church?” What does He say on that day? “You shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). Now, if we’re going off of the medical committee, they’re going to tell you they didn’t die because they were still breathing. But Church, what was the actual event of death? Being kicked out of God’s presence (Gen 3:23–24). So when it says that the life which was the light was entering the world, you must understand that the world we live in is dark and it is dead because it is absent of God the Father.
So when the light enters the world and they call the light life, He is trying to resuscitate your relationship with God the Father. So that’s how this section begins.
Chapters 1 through 12, for my advanced Bible readers, is what scholars call the Book of Signs. In the first 12 chapters of the Gospel of John, John is laying out seven signs that prove that Jesus is the Messiah. In the Book of Signs, we see in chapter 3, He starts having a conversation with Nicodemus. Maybe some of you can relate to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was the Pharisee who recognized there’s something special about this guy. He’s got his toe in the water, checking the temperature of the pool. He really wants to go swimming, but he’s so scared of what his friends might think. So, the only time he goes to meet with Jesus is under the banner of night (John 3:2). When his friends aren’t looking, now he’s really searching. He starts to ask Jesus, “How can we be saved?” And Jesus tells him, “Only if you’re born again of the Spirit of God can you be saved” (John 3:3–5). Nicodemus is still thinking with that medical book, and he’s like, “But how can a man be born again? It doesn’t make sense” (John 3:4). Jesus says that you have to be born of the Spirit (John 3:5–6).
You see, when the light enters the world, the light is coming to give us life. And it says in John 1:12, for all who receive the light, He gives them the right to become what, Church? Children of God. We become children of God because of the power of the Holy Spirit that is working in partnership with the Son who was sent by the Father. Our salvation experience includes every member of the Trinity.
So let Me read John 3:19–21 for you. We all know John 3:16:
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. (CSB)
Way to go. Now I’m going to teach you some more verses very close after that. He says:
This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.” (John 3:19–21, CSB)
If you find no interest in Jesus, there is only one reason. It’s not because you don’t believe that He didn’t really exist. That’s malarkey. If you do not want Jesus, it is pure and simple: You are doing something secretly in your life, and you do not want to let go of it because the second you look at the light, you see that it is exposing all of your dirty laundry. Well, the good news is He’s willing to clean your laundry, too. So, if you’re willing to be exposed, the light will be of benefit to you. But the judgment is that the people prefer the darkness.
So then it proceeds. We see that John the Baptist reiterates this reality in John 3:36:
The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who rejects the Son will not see life; instead, the wrath of God remains on him. (CSB)
And Church, remember: What is life? It’s being in the presence of God the Father. The wrath of God remains on the one who rejects Jesus.
Jesus reveals that He and the Father are working together. This is a key point in John’s Gospel. He wants you to know that there is nothing that Jesus said or did on earth that the Father did not instruct Him to do or say. Jesus does the work of the Father in chapter 5. We see that the Son only does what the Father tells Him to do (John 5:19). And Jesus says in John 5:23:
Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. (CSB)
I don’t care what Oprah told you, they do not all lead to the same God. You cannot, according to the Gospel of John, have God without having the Son. And the Son is the only light to take you back to life, which is presence with the Father. And yes, that’s in the words in red. For those of you who only like to be “red-letter Christians,” Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14:6).
It also says in the first 12 chapters of John, in chapter 6, we see that the bread of life is Jesus (John 6:35). This is for the Jewish people who are reading that just lost their temple. You see, they would have the bread of presence that would always be in God’s presence in the temple. So when Jesus says that He is the bread from heaven, this is a big deal. Paul later picks up this point, and he says that when they were eating manna in the desert, they were partaking of Christ in advance (1 Cor 10:3–4).
John progresses His Gospel, and He says that if you eat the bread of life, you will have eternal life. So look at John 6:57–58:
“Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the manna your ancestors ate—and they died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.” (CSB)
You partake of Jesus, you will never die. You will live on into eternity. And Church, what is true life? It’s being in God’s presence.
And then we get to the beautiful passage that I would love our children to recite. Children, what does John 8:12 say? Can you remember? Junia, your hand went up first. Go ahead, girl. But make sure everybody hears you.
Junia: “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
Praise the Lord. Amen. So Jesus spoke to them again:
Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.” (CSB)
In John 8:19, He goes on to say that if you know Jesus, you know the Father. Jesus is the light that guides you back to the Father. And the darkness is death because it separates you from the Father. The Father has sent the Son to bring us out of the darkness of death to the light of life. That’s in our passage. So go back to our passage in John 12.
Coming full circle, I want you to remember: The first 12 chapters of John is called the Book of Signs. It is proving Jesus is the Messiah and how He is the fulfillment of all the expectations of Moses. He is better than the temple. He is the light come into the world to bring us back to life, which is defined as being in God the Father’s presence. Our verses today are summarizing everything we just went through. So in v 44, the point is that the Father has sent the Son to bring us out of the darkness of death and into the light of life.
The Father Will Punish Those Who Reject Jesus and His Teaching (vv. 48–50)
I want you to know, Church—and unbelievers, skeptics, seekers—that Jesus’s mission is to save us from the coming judgment. Part of the reason why we nuked Japan in World War II was because they recognized that the people of Japan were so sold out on the mission of Imperial Japan that no one would surrender. So, unfortunately, since no one wanted salvation, they just had to unleash judgment on the nation. It is the same way with humanity. The time to raise your white flag is now. The Lord is offering you salvation, and He will take you out of the world before He judges it. When He judges the world, it will only be left with the people who refuse to enter the salvation He is offering. It will be beyond the worst nuclear warfare you can imagine, and it will last for all eternity.
And we get so hung up on: How can God judge humanity? The real question is: How can humanity pass up the opportunity to be saved from it? This isn’t on God. This is on us.
And that’s what the last few passages in verses 48–50 focus on. When you are rejecting Jesus, you are actually rejecting the Father because He says, “The words that I have spoken to you, these are the words that are going to judge you.” So what words did He speak? He says in v 49, “These words are not My own. They are from the Father.” This is the Father who watched Adam and Eve walk away from Him. The Father has watched His children be trafficked for millennia by this slave driver called Lucifer. And He is here to rescue you from that.
The words that the Father gives in v 50 are eternal life. Everything Jesus has spoken, they are your lifeline now. But if you ignore them, Jesus says He doesn’t have to judge you because the words that He spoke will just be cited. In that day, it will be cited to you: “I gave you the opportunity. What have you done with it?”
But here’s what I also want you to understand. In v 46, He says, “The one who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.” But what does He mean by believe? Is this the simple walking down the aisle at a Billy Graham crusade? Is this just a VBS confession? Are you in the good simply by saying, “Yeah, I believe”? The truth is that’s not how the Bible defines belief.
Jesus says in v 47, “If you hear My words and don’t keep them, that’s unbelief.” Therefore, belief is: You hear the words of Jesus, and you keep them. “Keep it” means to obey. Jesus’s teaching becomes your compass. And there are plenty of people who will tell you, “Yeah, I follow the teachings of Jesus. I just don’t follow religion.” Well, what about Jesus’s teaching that says, “If you want to be My follower, you must die to yourself and love Me more than your own life” (Matt 16:24–25, Luke 14:26)? What about the teaching of Jesus that says, “Sell all your possessions and give to the poor” (Matt 19:21)? What about the teaching of Jesus that says, “Love the Lord your God above everything” (Matt 22:37)? These are the people who truly believe in Jesus because the teaching of Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except by Me” (John 14:6). This is also the teaching of Jesus. These are the people who have entered life, and this is what we’re all called.
Jesus is standing before you today. So if you are tired of living in the world of death, disease, decay, sorrow, adultery, addiction to dark things on the internet, drugs—I don’t care how small you might think the thing that is beating you down is—there is freedom in the Light of Life. And the opportunity is today. Will you turn to Christ and let Him pull you out of this miry bog? Because He holds the lantern in His hands, and He stands ready to carry you back to the Father to have true life. The question is: Will you follow Him?
Let’s go to Him now.
Lord, I thank You so much for being our light in the world. I thank You that the Church has stood fast. Though there have been many mistakes, You have equipped the Church to be the light of the world (Matt 5:14). And so we stand on that hill, not hidden. I pray that You would help those who see that light today to hear your voice. That they would not harden their hearts, but that they would come to You in this moment. That they would renounce the evil and the rebellion that their slave master has encouraged them to do, and that they would grab a hold of their Rescuer, walking out of darkness and into the true light, the life that is being offered to all men—a return to fellowship with the Father.
Even still today, there are some that will refuse. And I want Satan to know that though you might hold the grasp on many in this world, you are defeated because our Savior is coming back to finish what He started, and you will rise for all eternity, and we will dwell again with our Father on earth in glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.