Listen to the unabridged sermon here: Held
This world often feels like it’s spinning out of control. You look at the news, you look around, and it just feels that way. There’s an old country song by Joe Diffie called “Third Rock from the Sun” that captures it — this sense that we live on a planet hurtling through space, and things are out of control. There’s another song, from Stephen Curtis Chapman, that answers it: God is still the King of the jungle. He’s the Lion of Judah who sits on His throne, and He is still in control.
There’s a theological word for this: providence. God holds all things together. This world doesn’t fall outside His sovereign goodness, no matter how it feels. And because of that, we can know with certainty that through Jesus’s sovereign grace, rooted in love, we need not fear.
Fear is the natural result of feeling out of control. When things begin to spiral, our instinct is to be afraid. But in the midst of that, we need to remember: God is holding all things together, and He is holding them together in sovereign grace rooted in love — a love that, if we trust it, drives out fear.
Entering the Book of Glory
This week we turn to John 10, 11, and 12, and with it we come to the end of Part 2 of our series in John — the end of what scholars call “the Book of Signs.” Next week we step into Part 3: the glory of the cross.
As John turns his attention toward passion week, there’s a question sitting in the background: will God hold all things together? Will Jesus go the way of every other failed would-be messiah, dying and staying dead — or will there be a different ending?
We know how the story ends. Easter is coming. The resurrection is coming. The disciples didn’t know that yet. As we move toward the Book of Glory, I want us to sit for a moment in their uncertainty — what’s going to happen? — while still walking in with the settled confidence that God holds all things together through sovereign grace rooted in love, a love that drives out fear.
Across these three chapters, we’ll see three ways that love does exactly that:
- Love gives us security in the face of the enemy (John 10)
- Love gives us hope in the face of death (John 11)
- Love gives us belonging in the face of loneliness (John 12)
Fear of an enemy. Fear of death. Fear of loneliness. At any point in history, we’re likely wrestling with at least one of these. Love drives them all out.
Love Gives Us Security in the Face of the Enemy (John 10)
John 10 is one of the “greatest hits” of the Gospel — the Good Shepherd discourse, complete with two more of Jesus’s “I am” statements.
“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep… I am the gate for the sheep… I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” (John 10:1–16, excerpted)
It’s tempting to hear this and think, “Ah yes, an agrarian illustration — Jesus is speaking the language of His day.” That’s partially true. Shepherds are still a fixture in Israel today; you’ll find them happy to pose for a photo for a few shekels. But that’s not primarily why Jesus reaches for this image here.
He’s connecting Himself to Ezekiel 34 — an extended passage of judgment against the leaders of Israel, where those leaders are explicitly called robbers and thieves, and where God promises a good shepherd who will come, gather the flock from every nation, and lead them into good pasture. It’s a messianic text.
This comes right on the heels of John 9, where the religious leaders threw the healed blind man out of the synagogue because he wouldn’t play by their rules. Jesus is telling them: you’re the robbers and thieves Ezekiel warned about.
That should make us uncomfortable, because when we read “robbers and thieves,” we tend to picture outsiders — non-religious people, maybe even persecutors of the church. But Jesus is pointing at the ultimate insiders. The elite. The ones who know the Scriptures, know the law, and have built an entire system for worshiping God rightly.
Here’s why they couldn’t hear Him: we always cast ourselves as the hero of the story. Ask anyone at any point in history whether they were the good guys, and they’ll tell you yes. The religious leaders weren’t watching for sheep — they were, per Ezekiel 34, growing fat and comfortable on the backs of the flock. They had set aside their calling and, in the process, manufactured fear and insecurity in the very people they were meant to shepherd.
That’s sobering for me as a pastor. The temptation to grow fat and lazy on the backs of the church is always there. And it should be sobering for anyone who’s spent a lifetime in church, fluent in all the right language and all the right moves — because it becomes very easy for insiders to become the enemy. To cut people off from grace. To cut people off from mercy.
When that happens, something breaks loose in us: an overwhelming insecurity. I’m not good enough. I can’t ever be good enough for Jesus’s love. But that’s a strange thing to say about grace, because by definition grace is something we receive precisely because we don’t deserve it. The moment grace becomes something to earn, it stops being grace.
First John puts it simply: perfect love casts out fear. When we’re walking in God’s love, fear goes away — it’s overruled, banished. But when we trade that for rules, rituals, and things to earn, we become the enemy, and insecurity creeps back in.
Love Gives Us Hope in the Face of Death (John 11)
If John 10 is a “banger,” John 11 might be an even bigger one — the raising of Lazarus.
Jesus gets word that His friend Lazarus is sick. And then:
“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” (John 11:5–6)
Stop right there. Don’t rush past that logic, because it doesn’t logic. If Lazarus is sick, and Jesus loves him, the natural response is: go now. Instead, John tells us Jesus stayed because He loved them. For Jesus, there was something bigger at stake — a fuller picture of glory He wanted them to see, so that they would know hope in the face of death.
By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. Martha meets Him on the road:
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died… I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” (John 11:21–22)
Jesus tells her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha, ever the theologian, replies with correct doctrine: “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” And Jesus answers with something far more personal than doctrine:
“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” (John 11:25)
That’s the whole thing right there. Jesus doesn’t point Martha to a future idea or a distant hope. He points to Himself. He is the resurrection. He carries it in His own body. This is why Paul can later say, in 1 Corinthians 15, that if Christ has not been raised, our faith is worthless and we’re the most pitiable people alive. The resurrection isn’t a concept — it’s an embodied reality in the person of Christ.
Both Mary and Martha meet Jesus with the same accusation: if you had been here, my brother would not have died. They weren’t angry because they didn’t believe — they were angry because they did. They knew He could have healed him. That tells you something about faith: it often argues with God not out of doubt, but out of trust.
I want you to notice one more thing. Jesus weeps. He already knows what’s about to happen. He said as much earlier — this sickness isn’t going to end in death; it’s for God’s glory. And yet, standing at the tomb, He weeps anyway.
There are two different words for weeping in this passage. The word used for Mary and the mourners describes the loud, public wailing you still see in funeral processions in Israel today — an outward expression of grief, a way of showing the world that this person was loved. But the word used for Jesus is different. It’s the kind of weeping that comes from deep in your gut — the kind where you’re crying so hard you can barely make a sound. Jesus is a man well acquainted with grief, and because of that, He can meet us in ours.
And in that meeting, He offers hope. Lazarus was raised, but Lazarus died again — he isn’t walking around today. What happened to him was not the final word on death. Christ’s own resurrection was the final word: death does not win. Because He was raised, we have real hope in the face of death, and Christ’s sovereign grace, rooted in love, drives out that fear too.
Love Gives Us Belonging in the Face of Loneliness (John 12)
From there, John moves into chapter 12 — Jesus is anointed at Bethany, then hailed as the coming king on what we now call Palm Sunday. We’re entering the final week of Jesus’s earthly life (we’ve still got about nine more sermons to go before we get there in real time, but here in the text, the countdown has begun).
Some Greeks — Gentile worshipers — approach Philip with a simple request: “We would like to see Jesus.” Philip tells Andrew; Andrew and Philip tell Jesus. And Jesus’s response is striking:
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:23–24)
If a seed simply falls on the ground, it stays a seed. But if it’s planted — if it dies — it produces a harvest. That multiplication points to the way love gives us belonging in the face of loneliness.
So much of life feels like walking alone. Even Jesus, a few verses later, admits, “Now my soul is troubled.” He wrestles with the weight of what’s coming. And through His death, He multiplies — not saving isolated individuals, but building for Himself a body, a people. Revelation captures the promise: “I will be your God, and you will be my people, and I will wipe away every tear.”
What’s remarkable is the timing. Up to this point in John, Jesus’s ministry has centered on His own people, the Jews, even as He keeps hinting at something wider — “I have other sheep that are not of this pen” (John 10:16). It’s the moment the Greeks come seeking Him that Jesus finally says, “My hour has come.” Every time before this, His answer had been, “My hour has not yet come.” Now it has — because the sheep from the other pen are starting to gather.
We live in a world that names loneliness as an epidemic. Entire government agencies now exist to address it. We are more digitally connected than any generation in history and more isolated than we’ve ever been. And isolation breeds fear.
The single kernel didn’t just fall to the ground — it died, was planted, and was multiplied through each of us. Jesus called to Himself a body, a people, and we are invited into it.
I hear people say, more and more, “You don’t need to go to church to be saved — so why go?” Part of that is absolutely true: our salvation was never dependent on church attendance. (See point one — if we make attendance a scorecard, we’ve built an enemy and manufactured fear.) But when we gather as God’s people, we’re reminded that we’re not alone. We’re part of a people who weep with us when we weep and rejoice with us when we rejoice — part of something bigger than ourselves.
Life, and life to the full, can only be experienced together. That kind of belonging can’t be contained in an hour and fifteen minutes on Sunday morning. It has to spill into Monday through Saturday. It’s an invitation to do life together, because we are not alone.
Where Do You Need to Be Held?
Love gives us security in the face of the enemy. Love gives us hope in the face of death. Love gives us belonging in the face of loneliness.
So here’s the question for you this week: where do you need Christ’s love to give you security instead of dread? Hope instead of despair? Belonging instead of loneliness?
His sovereign grace isn’t just strong enough to remove your fear — it’s rich enough to give you something better in its place. Will you trust Him to receive it?
Heavenly Father, we thank You that You drive out fear — the fear of the enemy, the fear of death, the fear of loneliness. Lord, make us a people who can receive it. In Jesus’s name, amen.