A Sermon by C H Spurgeon
John 12:28. Father, glorify Thy name.
In the first part of my discourse this morning I shall keep strictly to my text, as the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. I shall try to show what it teaches us about Him. These are His own words, and it would be robbery to borrow them until first we have seen what they meant as they fell from His lips. Their most golden meaning must be seen in the light of His sacred face. Then, in the second part of my sermon, I shall try to point out how believers may use this petition, and I pray that divine grace may be given us so that it may be engraved on our hearts and that each of us may be taught by the Holy Spirit daily to say for himself: “Father, glorify Thy name”.
I would suggest that these words should be to all the Lord’s people in this church their motto for another year and indeed their prayer throughout life. It will be as suitable for the beginner in grace as the ripe believer; it will be proper both at the wicket-gate of faith and at the gates of glory. Like a lovely rainbow let the prayer, “Father, glorify Thy name,” overarch the whole period of our life on earth. I cannot suggest a better petition for the present moment, nor indeed for any moment of our pilgrimage. Let us close the old year with it, and open the new in the same way.
As for the past, “Father, glorify Thy name”. In the present fulfil this desire unto Thy servants. And in the future do it yet more abundantly.
- Let us look at what the text teaches about the Lord Jesus Christ. It occurs in the following connection. He had wrought a notable miracle in raising Lazarus from the dead. The fame of the miracle had attracted many to hear Him; enthusiastic crowds had gathered, and He had become so extremely popular that the Pharisees said, “The world is gone after Him”. The people wished to make Him a king, and a great crowd met Him with branches of palm trees and cried, “Hosanna; blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord”. The Saviour passed in royal but humble pomp through the streets of Jerusalem, riding upon a colt, the foal of an ass.
This public appearance, the renown of the miracle, and the general talk of the people led to strangers hearing of Him and enquiring about Him; so certain intelligent Greeks asked to be introduced to Him. They “would see Jesus”, not of course merely see Him in the street, for they could do so if they pleased without applying to Philip; but they wished to have an interview with Him, and learn more about His teaching and His claims. I suppose the sight of these
1The first part of a sermon preached on 30 December 1877; taken, with editing, from The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol 24.
Greeks greatly gladdened the heart of the Saviour, for He delighted to see men coming to the light. He seemed to say within Himself, Behold the nations come to Me; the Gentiles arise and seek their Saviour. He saw in those Greeks the advance guard of the Gentile world. He looked upon the strangers with delight, regarding them as representative men, the first of myriads who should come flocking to Him, from the islands of the sea and the ends of the earth, to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
The Lord rejoiced in spirit; His heart was glad, and He began to address Himself to the people round about and to the Greeks who mingled with the throng. At that very moment, the thought flashed across the Saviour’s mind: But these nations who are to be born unto Me, and to be saved by Me, cannot be so born without birth pangs and unless I endure unspeakable suffering as their Redeemer. This fact came vividly before the Lord’s mind, and it rushed over His spirit like a raging torrent. He saw that He could not become the seed corn of a great harvest unless, first of all, He should fall into the ground and die. He was the one grain of wheat upon whom all depended, and He must lose comfort and life and be buried in the earth, or else He would abide alone and bring forth no fruit. He saw the vicarious suffering which lay in His way, and His soul was troubled.
Do not imagine that the Saviour dreaded death considered in itself. He was far superior in sacred courage and strength of mind to any of His servants, and yet many of them have welcomed death; and others, such as the martyrs, have endured it in its most terrible forms, without fear, even expressing a holy delight in glorifying the name of God by their mortal agony. The Lord was not less brave than they were in prospect of His departure. But never let it be forgotten that the death of Christ stands by itself alone. His death was the vindication of justice; it was the death of the sin-bearer. It was a sacrificial, substitutionary, expiatory death, and this is very different from the death of a pardoned and justified believer, who passes out of the world resting on the atonement and supported by a sense of having been reconciled to God by the great sacrifice.
The Lord Jesus was called to bear the enormous load of man’s transgressions; the dark shadow of human guilt must pass over His holy soul and the iniquity of sinners must be made to meet on His sensitive spirit. His saints’ deaths are blessed in the sight of the Lord, but He must be made a curse for them that they might be blessed in Him. As the mind of Christ clearly perceived that this lay in the way of that triumph among the Gentiles which gave Him joy, there was a struggle in His soul, and before the assembled people that struggle was manifested. The Greeks desired to see Jesus, and they did see something very remarkable in Him, so that they must have been astounded.
If they expected to see a king, they did indeed behold a royal soul, but they saw Him in grief above the lot of common men. If they wished to see somewhat of His greatness of spirit and power of mind, they did see it, yet it was a power which did not transfigure His face with glory, but filled it with an agony marring all its beauty.
I shall not be too bold if I say that Gethsemane was rehearsed in public on this occasion. Our Lord’s soul, He says, was troubled. He felt a sort of foreshadowing of that midnight among the olives in which His soul was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”. It was out of that conflict that our text came: in fact, our text is to His suffering in the midst of the crowd what “nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt” was to the agony of Gethsemane, or what “It is finished” was to the passion on Calvary. It was the climax, the conquest, of a great mental battle. And when He had thus spoken He seemed to shake Himself clear of the agony and to emerge from it with the memorials of it still upon Him, but with His face set like a flint to go forward to the bitter and glorious end, this being now His watchword, “Father, glorify Thy name”.
I want to call your attention briefly, first, to the trouble of the Redeemer’s soul. I always tremble within myself when I try to speak of the inner conflicts of the blessed Lord, for it is so easy to make a mistake and darken counsel by words without knowledge. His person is complex and therefore we are readily confused, yet He Himself is but one, and it is equally dangerous to make over-nice distinctions. Loving jealousy of His honour makes us feel that we scarcely know how to speak of Him. I remember an earnest admirer of art who, in pointing with his walking-stick to the beauties of a famous picture, pushed his cane through the canvas and ruined it; and it is possible that, in our enthusiasm to point out the beauties and points of interest in Christ’s life and death, we may spoil it all. I fear lest in my ignorance I should make sorrow for myself by dishonouring Him for whose honour I would gladly lie down and die. Help me, O divine Spirit.
This much is clear: our Saviour’s heart was full of trouble. He who could still the sea and make the storms retreat was tempest-tossed in His own soul and cast about Him for anchorage. He who could drive away the fever, or send a legion of demons into the deep, was nevertheless troubled in spirit and cried, “What shall I say?” Master of all worlds, supreme among the angels, and adored at His Father’s right hand, yet He confesses, “Now is My soul troubled”. Lord of all, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered. How near akin it makes Him to us! How much compassed with infirmity! You worship Him, and rightly so, but still He is a man and a mourner. You call Him Master and Lord, and you do well, yet He not only washed His disciples’ feet, but His own feet trembled in the rough places of the way.
He felt those same commotions of spirit which make our hearts sad within us and cause us to pour out our souls within us.
Do not think of the Lord Jesus otherwise than as a brother born for adversity or a faithful husband sharing our lot, being bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Did you cry out in anguish, “Now is my soul troubled”? Then remember that He has used the same words. Are you half distracted? Are you tossed to and fro in your thoughts? Do you ever ask, What shall I say? Jesus also understands by sympathy what it is you mean. Do you look around you and feel that you do not know what to do and does your trembling heart suggest that you should pray, Father, save me from this hour? In all this you may see the Well-beloved’s footprints; you are not on a new and strange track. He leads you through no darker rooms than He went through before. He has been afflicted with the like afflictions; there is nothing in them that is novel or surprising to His sympathetic heart.
Let me invite you to consider that, not only did Christ thus suffer, but it is joyful to reflect that He suffered all this without sin. Hence it follows that mental conflict is not in itself sinful; even the shrinking back of the flesh from suffering is not necessarily evil; and the question, “What shall I say?” and the apparent distraction of spirit for the moment as to what shall be its course are not in themselves criminal. There could be no sin in the Lord Jesus, and consequently there is not of necessity sin in our inward struggles, though I am very far from venturing to hope that in any one of them we are quite clear of fault. Christ’s nature was so pure that, however much it was stirred, it remained clear; but in our case, though the stirring is not sinful, it sets in motion the sin which dwells in us, and we are defiled.
Yet I do not believe that God sets down as sin all depression of spirit that is the result of sickness, all wandering of mind in the heat of fever, all shrinking from pain in His children, though sin is doubtless linked with them. If they are sinful in themselves, yet surely the sin is blotted out as soon as written down, for, “like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him”. He pities rather than censures or condemns. You do not judge your children hardly for what they say when they are racked with pain or prostrated by weakness; you bear with their little peevishnesses and the like, and you never taunt them with their follies afterwards.
Neither can I think that God would have His children doubt their interest in Christ because in their semi-delirium they could not realise His love, nor would He have them question the grace which is in them because their feverish thoughts were near akin to despair. When the true heart struggles to love and trust and obey, but the poor brain is tortured with dark thoughts, the conflict is not all sinful, nor is any of it necessarily so. There may be an awful
struggle in the soul and yet the Father may be glorified; the sin lies not in the conflict but in the defeat, if defeat there be; the guilt is not in the shrinking from pain but in permitting that natural feeling to hinder us from duty or to lead us to rebel against chastisement. “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me,” is not a sinful utterance if it is followed by: “nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt”.
I feel so glad to think Christ spoke out His feelings when He was passing through this inward conflict. It is instructive, for with His strength of mind He was quite capable of keeping His agony to Himself. Yet you notice that He did not attempt to conceal His emotion from others – neither here, when others heard Him, nor at Gethsemane, when He took three of His disciples with Him and went to them again and again for sympathy; nor even on the cross, when He cried aloud: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
It may be that He thus intended to teach us wisdom; He would show us by His own example that it is well for us not to be too much shut up within ourselves. Do not smother your sorrow; tell it out, or it may gather ungovernable heat. It is the worst grief which cannot weep or moan. Give a vent to pent-up feeling; even if it is just a child who hears your tale it will relieve your mind to tell it. Anything is better than concentrating all the heat within the soul. Do not act the stoic’s part; do not be ashamed to let it be known that you are a human being, who can grieve and be troubled even as others. In Himself speaking out, Christ gives us full permission to speak too. We might have said, I will not tell what is going on within, lest my weakness should seem to dishonour God. Now we know that Christ did not dishonour the Father by saying, “Now is My soul troubled”, and revealing the inward conflict of His soul; neither will it necessarily dishonour God if we speak out our grief. Jesus wept, and we may do the same.
In thus speaking, Christ affords us the best of help, for His fellow-feeling is a grand support. Did He say, “Now is My soul troubled”? And did He at last still triumph and resign Himself into the Father’s hands? Then, girt about by the selfsame power, we may also encounter the same sorrow after our measure, and endure until we triumph as He did. Even though in the triumph there should be clear evidence of our personal weakness, yet we will not regret it, since by that means our God shall be the more surely glorified by the more distinct revelation of His power.
I will say no more about the trouble of our Redeemer, because I would now ask you to fix your thoughts for a minute on the firm resolve which the text sets forth. There is a battle, but from the very first moment to the last there was really no question in the Saviour’s mind about what He meant to do; His purpose was settled beyond disturbance. The surface of His mind
was ruffled, but deep down in His heart the current of the Redeemer’s soul flowed on irresistibly in the ordained channel. He was straitened till He had been baptized with the appointed baptism.
Observe the question raised, and see how really it was answered in His heart before He asked it. “Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour.” Must men be unsaved and Jesus be delivered from the lowering storm? If so, yonder Greeks need not ask to see Him, for there will be no life in a look at Him. The disciples round about need not cling to Him as their helper, for there is no help in Him unless He dies to redeem the sons of men. Shall men then be unredeemed? Shall the blood of atonement be unspilt and no man be ransomed from going down to the pit? Shall He remain alone, the grain of wheat unsown? If He does, He will be happy enough and glorious enough, for heaven is all His own. Does He need men to make Him blessed? Does He require worms of the dust to make Him glorious?
Should He remain alone, He will still be God and Lord. But shall the death penalty be left for men to bear – guilty men, who deserve to bear it? Shall there be no cross, no Calvary, no open tomb, no resurrection, no gates of heaven set wide open for coming souls? There is the question, and you see in the text how resolutely Jesus had settled it. He says in effect: Father, glorify Thy name by My death; for this purpose have I come to this hour, that by My agony and bloody sweat, by My cross and passion, I may redeem the sons of men. Redeemed they shall be, cost Me what it may. I have resolved to bear the penalty and magnify Thy law, and I will perform it, though hell itself be let loose against Me and all its waves of fire dash over Me. I will endure the cross and despise the shame to honour Thee, My Father.
Observe right well that the text indicates the deep intention which steadied Christ’s resolve. Why is He resolved to die? Is it to save men? Yes, but not as the chief reason. His first prayer is not, Father, save My people, but, “Father, glorify Thy name”. The glory of God was the chief end of the Saviour’s life and death. Jesus would have souls redeemed, that the Father’s name might be illustrious. His passion had for its main intent the exhibition of the attributes of God. And how completely He has glorified Jehovah’s name! On the cross we see divine justice in the streaming wounds of the great Substitute, for the Son of God must die when sin is laid upon Him.
There also you behold infinite wisdom, for nothing else could have devised the way whereby God might be just and yet the justifier of him who believes. There too is love – rich, free, boundless love, never so conspicuous as in the death of man’s Redeemer. But in the atonement, the divine attributes are all so perfectly glorified that none of them crowds out the others; each one has
its full display without in the least degree diminishing the glory of any other. That the Father might be glorified, the blessed Saviour pressed on to the end which was set before Him. Whatever conflict there might be within His spirit, His heart was fixed on bearing to the death the load of His people’s sin, on suffering their penalty to the end.
Now I will detain you here with but one other thought: the grand result which came of it was that God was in very deed greatly glorified, and to this fact special testimony was given. A voice was heard out of heaven saying, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again”. That voice speaks of the past: Christ’s incarnation had glorified the name of God. I am unable to describe to you how much lustre the love of God receives from the Word being made flesh and dwelling among us. It is the marvel of all marvels that the Creator should take the nature of His creature, and that He should be found in fashion as a man. O Bethlehem, thou hast exceedingly magnified God’s condescension. Angels might well sing, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill towards men”.
Not only Bethlehem, but Nazareth and the whole 30 years which Christ spent on earth, illustrate the condescension, the pity and the longsuffering of God. Did He dwell among us for 30 years? Did He abide in humility in the carpenter’s shop for the best part of that time, and did He afterwards come forth to be a poor man, a teacher of peasants, a friend of sinners, a man of sorrows, despised and rejected of men? Could the holy and the just, the infinite and the glorious One thus, as it were, compress infinity into so small a space, and marry deity to such poverty and shame? It was so. Then tune your harps anew, O seraphs, to tell the amazing love and condescension of Immanuel, “God with us”. Well spoke that voice: “I have glorified it”.
But listen yet again, for it adds, “and will glorify it again”. To my mind that word again sounds like certain voices I have heard in the Alps. The horn is sounded and then follows an echo: twice, thrice and perhaps 50 times the music is distinctly repeated. The metaphor is not complete, for in this case the echoes increase in volume instead of diminishing.
Lo, Jesus hangs upon the cross and dies, and God is glorified, for justice has its due. He lies in the grave till the third morning, but He bursts the bonds of death. Lo, God’s great name is glorified again, since the divine power, truth and faithfulness are all seen in the resurrection of Christ. Yet a few more days and the God-Man ascends into heaven, and a cloud hides Him from our sight; He has glorified the Father’s name again by leading captivity captive. Then comes Pentecost and the preaching of the gospel among the heathen, when God’s name is glorified by the outpouring of the Spirit. Whenever a sinner is converted, or a believer is in any degree sanctified, there is
a fresh glorifying of the name of the Father. And whenever a perfected one is received into heaven – and surely they are entering heaven every day, troops of them climbing the celestial hills, drawn upward by almighty love – Jehovah’s name is glorified again.
And when the end comes, and He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, and God shall be all in all, then shall the eternal echoes roll along of the glories of the great Father God. The glorious name of the one Jehovah shall through all space and all eternity be magnified, and the prayer of the once-suffering but now-exalted Saviour shall be fully answered: “Father, glorify Thy name”.