So if you have a Bible, we're in John chapter 12, and I want to give to you a message that I'm calling it had to be done.

It had to be done, right? Like you set chips and salsa down in front of me, they're getting eaten. Someone say it had to be done, right?

The need for milk after you have the chocolate chip cookies, it has to be done. Like that's another way of saying there's no other way.

There's no other way, and that is literally the story of Good Friday.

We find in John 12, starting in verse 20, and just to set it up for you, it is chronology, in the chronology of the Passion Week, it's Palm Sunday.

And Jesus is moving towards this really is a point where he really moves towards the cross. It's in his vision, it's like the thing now.

He's just fulfilled prophecy by writing on a donkey. He's cleansed the temple of the money changers who are ripping people off with exchange rates and manipulating the religious system to serve their purposes instead of what God wanted,

which is for people to come to know him and have that experience and for that experience to go global and to touch every nation on earth for his house to be a house of prayer for all nations.

We care very much for those who are hurting and suffering our brothers and sisters around the world in other countries.

We care for the gospel to flourish and go out into the whole world. It's always for the global mentality that our local gatherings should take place.

And so that was on Jesus's heart as he did everything that he did from this point forward, culminating in his hanging on the cross.

But one interesting detail that perhaps gets overlooked in the many dramatic elements that took place as Jesus moved to Calvary was a conversation that he had with some people who were searching spiritually, who were seeking spiritually,

and they had come specifically to Jerusalem to try and encounter God because wherever they lived in the world, we know they were Greek.

And so where they came from as they sought God, whatever it was that they had been told about how to have peace, it didn't do it for them.

And so they sought out something different. And let me just say that we should celebrate that.

If there's within any of you here today, the reason that you're here is that I don't know exactly, I wouldn't identify myself as a Christian.

I wouldn't say I'm a Jesus person, but I know I'm seeking, I know I'm searching.

Well, let me just first of all say we are so glad that you are here. We are glad that you would come. This is not a club for the initiated.

This is not a place where you have to believe in order to belong. We welcome you warmly.

And this is a safe place for you to try and discover with us who Jesus is, what the Bible has to say about who he is.

And that's exactly what happened in this conversation that sheds much insight for us all about the purpose of the cross it had to be done is what we will discover.

Starting in verse 20, and if you don't have a Bible, we're going to put the verses on the screen for you.

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