Read John 12:32-38

Please note here :-

1. It is in the Bible that the Lord Jesus is set forth.
It is God’s picture gallery where He hangs portraits of Christ.

• The message of God is here called a report. It is a report of God’s wondrous plan of mercy to redeem sinners by the sacrifice of His Son in their room and stead.
• It is a report which centres upon Christ. He is called here ‘The arm of the Lord’. The Gospel of Christ is “the power of God unto salvation,” Romans 1:16.
  As our arm accomplishes our will so the ‘arm of God’ accomplishes His will amongst men. “Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God,” Hebrews 10:9.
• It was a report that was not believed. “But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: that the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” John 12:37-38.

2. What a contrast there is between God’s view of His Son and sinful man’s view.

• God saw Him. “For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground,” verse 2. Tender – a small offshoot. God’s eye was tenderly upon Him but men observed nothing of His coming. “And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph’s son?” Luke 4:22. He was no one special to them.
• What man saw he despised. “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” No form, no comeliness, no beauty. Just nothing about Christ appeals to men. No name is more despised in the world than that of Jesus. Allah is honoured as is Buddha, the pope. But not the name of JESUS!
• How different man’s view of Christ is from that of God’s! “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not,” Verse 3.   This is man’s universal, age-old view of Christ.