60. Joy and Sadness in Jesus' Final Days: John 12a

G'day, Dave.

Here.

Welcome to Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

Have you ever been around a bunch of grown ups who are talking and suddenly they all start laughing and you're like, what are they doing?

I've got no idea what they're doing.

What's the big deal?

I don't get it.

Or maybe it's gone the other way.

You're around a bunch of grown ups and suddenly they all get really quiet or sad and you have no idea why and you're like, what's going on here?

These grown ups, they're so hard to understand.

Sometimes things can happen that make other people really happy or really sad and you have no idea why.

It's a bit of a mystery.

I wonder if you've ever felt like that about Jesus dying on a cross.

If you go to church or your parents talk to you about Jesus, you've probably heard about it, you know, around a thousand times.

And you know it's important.

Jesus died on the cross to take away our sin.

But also, what's the big deal?

Even as a grown up and someone who teaches people about Jesus a lot, sometimes even I can feel like that I find it hard to remember why it's so important.

In this episode, we're starting to look at the second half of John's gospel.

And something's about to happen.

Something really, really big.

So big John's gonna spend half of his entire book talking about it.

Of course, it's Jesus going to the cross, dying, being buried, and being raised back to life.

It's really easy to say those words and not think much about them.

In today's story, though, John's going to help us see why what's about to happen is both the worst thing in the universe and the best thing in all the universe.

Get ready for our next episode of Stories of a Faithful God for kids.

Something's just happened.

Something amazing, something wonderful.

Jesus has just raised Lazarus back to life.

That doesn't normally happen.

It's usually impossible to raise someone back to life.

But Jesus has power over life and death.

And he called Lazarus out of death into life.

Can you imagine how happy that must have made Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha?

Instead of having a funeral, they can have a party.

Instead of burying Lazarus, they can give him a big hug.

Since Jesus did that, though, he's been in hiding.

The leaders want to kill him, which seems completely nuts.

How can you kill a guy who has power over life and death?

In Jerusalem, the Passover celebration is about to happen.

Hundreds of thousands of people are travelling to Jerusalem to celebrate.

And they're all asking the same question, Is Jesus going to come?

The leaders have given orders that if anyone sees Jesus, they need to tell on him straight away.

So will he turn up?

Suddenly, Jesus comes out of hiding and arrives at the village of Bethany.

That's only a short walk from Jerusalem.

Also, it's where Lazarus lives with Mary and Martha.

You remember Lazarus, right?

The one Jesus raised from the dead.

Imagine how excited this family is that Jesus has arrived.

There's no one as great as him.

There's no one they love more than him.

And there's no one who's ever given them as much as he has.

And so they hold a special dinner in honour of Jesus.

At the dinner, Martha's running around serving the food.

Lazarus is at the table with Jesus.

You remember Lazarus, right?

He's the one who Jesus raised from the dead.

So where's Mary?

Well, Mary's just appeared carrying a jar of very expensive perfume.

A lot of very expensive perfume.

A pint or half a litre of very expensive perfume.

She does something with that very expensive perfume that no one expects.

In fact, no one would have even dreamed of it.

She pours all that really expensive perfume on Jesus feet.

What on earth is she doing?

In those days, if you invited an important guest to your house, you might get a servant or slave to wash their feet.

People only wore sandals in those days and they walked on dirt roads, so feet got pretty dirty.

But Mary knows that Jesus is the most important person in the world.

He's the most wonderful person in all the world.

He raised Lazarus from the dead.

Mary thinks Jesus is so important, she doesn't want to have a servant do this job.

She does it herself.

And she doesn't just want to use water.

She uses all this really expensive perfume to show how valuable Jesus is.

He's worth it.

And she doesn't want to use any old towel to wipe his feet.

She uses the most precious thing she can think of, her hair.

Because Jesus is worth it.

He's the most precious, powerful, wonderful person in all the world.

John, who's there, tells us in verse three of chapter 12 that the sweet smell from the perfume filled the whole house.

What a beautiful moment for the most wonderful person in all the world.

Suddenly, though, a grumpy voice speaks up.

It's the voice of one of Jesus disciples, Judas Iscariot.

John tells us in verse four, he was the one who would later turn against Jesus.

Turn against Jesus?

Why on earth would anyone turn against Jesus?

The man who can Literally raise you from the dead.

That'd be nuts.

Well, Judas is all grumpy because he thinks that Mary's wasted the perfume.

He says this perfume was worth an entire year's wages.

It should have been sold.

And the money given to the poor.

Oh, isn't that nice?

He just wants to care for poor people.

John tells us something different though.

He says in verse 6, but Judas did not really care about the poor.

He said this because he was a thief.

He was the one who kept the money box and he often stole money from it.

Well, Jesus answers Judas by saying, mary hasn't wasted the perfume at all.

She's done exactly the right thing.

Because something's about to happen, something huge, something massive.

In verse seven he says, let her alone.

It was right for her to save this perfume for today, the day for me to be prepared for burial.

The poor will always be with you, but you will not always have me.

Now you can imagine people thinking, umm, burial?

What are you talking about, burial?

You can't die.

You can raise people from the dead.

You're the most wonderful and powerful and precious person in all the world.

It's impossible for you to die.

But Jesus knows that the most horrible thing in all the world is about to happen.

The one who can save people from death, who can give people life forever, is about to die.

When news spreads that Jesus is staying down the road in Bethany, heaps of people jump up to go and see him.

They don't just want to see him, though.

They want.

They also want to see Lazarus.

You remember Lazarus, right?

The one Jesus raised from the dead.

They've heard the story about what happened and they want to see it for themselves.

John tells us in verse 11 that because of Lazarus, many Jews were leaving the leaders, the Jewish leaders, and believing in Jesus.

Up until now, the Jewish leaders have wanted to kill Jesus.

You'd think though, that Jesus raising someone from the dead would make the leaders go, hey, this is amazing.

We shouldn't be trying to kill Jesus.

He owns the power of life and death.

We should believe in him as well.

But no, instead they just say, oh man, now we have to kill Lazarus as well to get rid of the evidence.

How crazy is that?

It's like if you're drowning and a lifesaver comes to save you and you kill them and keep on drowning.

And the leaders don't just want to kill Jesus who's come to save who owns the power of life and death.

They also want to kill the guy who's already died, but come back to Life.

Well, the next day, the huge crowd in Jerusalem hears that Jesus is coming.

They're so excited, they grab palm branches to wave around and they spread out along the road to cheer on Jesus.

They shout praises to God for sending the king, the king he'd promised to send long, long ago.

Can you imagine thousands and thousands of people all yelling out these words from verse 13?

Praise God.

Praise the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

God bless the king of Israel.

They're right.

Jesus is the king, the greatest king in all the universe.

The king God promised to send.

But he's probably not the sort of king they expect.

They're expecting a king who'll come to make war on the Romans.

Jesus, though, hasn't come to make war.

If he had, he, he'd ride into Jerusalem on a big war horse.

Instead, he rides in on a donkey, a young male donkey called a colt, which is exactly what God said would happen when the king comes.

Not to make war, but to make peace.

To end all fighting.

Not just fighting between countries in big wars, but fighting in countries, fighting in schools, fighting in families.

Do you ever have fights in your family?

Are they nice things?

Do you like them?

No.

The good news is, though, Jesus came to make peace.

And because he's the king of everything, he's come to make peace everywhere.

Peace between people and peace with God.

John points us to what God said about when Jesus would come back in the Old Testament.

In the book of Zechariah 9:9, it says, Rejoice, people of Jerusalem.

Shout for joy.

People of Jerusalem, the king is coming to you.

He does what is right and he saves.

He is gentle and riding on a donkey.

He's on the colt of a donkey.

I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the horses from Jerusalem.

The bows used in war will be broken.

The king will talk to the nations about peace.

His kingdom will go from sea to sea and from the Euphrates river to the ends of the earth.

As the disciples watched Jesus riding this donkey with thousands of people cheering and waving, they don't get it.

They don't understand what Jesus is doing.

They don't understand what God's doing.

John tells us they didn't really understand until much later in verse 16.

He says the followers of Jesus did not understand this at first, but after Jesus was raised to glory, they remembered that this had been written about him, and they remembered that they had done these things to him.

It's not that the disciples don't know anything.

They do know that Jesus is the king.

They know he's the one who can give eternal life.

They know that Jesus coming is the best news in the entire world.

But they don't think he's going to give people life by actually dying in their place.

They don't understand that to rescue people out of the grave, he's going to have to die and be buried in a grave.

They don't think that this king, who looks so powerful and so mighty and great, who's the best king in all the world, whose arrival is the happiest moment in all the world, would have to be killed in the saddest moment in all the world.

Like I said right back at the start, we can get kind of used to hearing about Jesus dying on the cross.

We know it happened, and it's easy to not think much about what a big deal it is.

If we'd been standing at Lazarus grave, though, watching him being razed back to life, it would have been hard to think how someone with so much power over life could possibly die.

If we'd been standing on the way into Jerusalem, it would have been hard to understand why these same crowds who are cheering for Jesus as king would be calling for him to be killed.

In just a few days, when we fully understand the good news that Jesus came to bring peace in every corner of the world, peace with God and peace with each other, we'll know how sad it is that our lifesaver is killed.

In fact, it's the saddest moment in all the universe.

But it's also the happiest moment because through his death, that is how he's going to bring peace.

That's how he's going to give eternal life.

And we're going to explore that as.

As we look at the second half of John's gospel over the next few episodes.

Back in Jerusalem, people can't stop talking about how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

And the Pharisees, the people who want to kill Jesus, they're so frustrated and angry, they can't believe what a bad job they're doing at getting rid of him.

In verse 19, they say to each other, you can see that nothing is going right for us.

Look, the whole world is following him.

And actually what they're saying is more true than they can imagine.

People from far away in the world are about to come and try and meet Jesus.

And that is the beginning of the end.

But that's a story for next time.

Hi again, guys.

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