This is the second week of our sermon series, “God So Loved
the World”. We’re looking at the most popular bible verse, at least as
determined by biblegateway.com, John Three Sixteen. “For God so loved the
world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life.” But what we’re doing is looking at the
context of that verse and trying to put it into more perspective.
We talked
last week about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about what it means to be
born again. This week, we look at what comes right after that.
Nicodemus asks Jesus to explain a little farther, and Jesus says,
basically, look, I’ve been telling you about earthly things, things that you
can see and hear and touch for yourself, and you won’t even believe me when I
tell you about that. If you won’t believe me when I tell you about those
things, how are you ever going to believe me when I tell you about heavenly
things? Those are things that I’ve seen, because I came from heaven, but
you haven’t seen them. And then he says this: “Just as Moses lifted
up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone
who believes may have eternal life in him.”
And again,
as I keep saying, this is why context is so important. Because if we
don’t understand the context of Jesus’ statement, it’s pretty confusing.
Nicodemus, and the other people around him, would’ve known what Jesus was
talking about when he talked about Moses lifting up the snake. But most
people reading that today go, “What? What’s that about? What’s this
about Moses lifting up a snake? And what’s it got to do with Jesus?
Why is Jesus comparing himself with a snake?”
Well, what Jesus was talking about is what
happened in the story from the book of Numbers that we read. This story
takes place after Moses had saved the people of Israel from slavery under the
Pharaoh of Egypt. Now, the people are wandering in the wilderness, which
they would do for forty years before God allowed them to go to the Promised
Land.
We gloss over that sometimes, but think about
it. Forty years in the wilderness. Think about how long forty years
really is. I was still in high school forty years ago. Some of us
were not even born forty years ago. Forty years, in terms of a human
life, is a long time. And that’s how long the people of Israel wandered
in the wilderness.
I think I’d probably be in kind of a bad mood
if I had been wandering in the wilderness that many years. And the people
of Israel were in a bad mood. They started complaining to Moses.
But while they were complaining to Moses, they were really complaining
about God. After all, none of this was Moses’ fault. It was God who
had decided they should wander in the wilderness for forty years. And the
reason God decided that is because the people of Israel had not trusted him and
had refused to go into the land God had promised them.
Remember, that was God’s original plan.
Moses would lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and Moses would lead
them to a fertile, prosperous land. But when they got to that land, there
were people already living there. That scared the people of Israel, and
they did not trust God enough to believe that God would take care of them if
they went to the land God had promised to give them. So, God said that if
they did not trust God enough to go where God had told them to go and to do
what God had told them to do, they would not get another chance to go there for
forty years.
So now, they’re somewhere in the middle of that
forty year period. And they’re not happy. And they still don’t
trust God enough to believe that God’s going to take care of them. And
they sin. They speak out against God. And so, because of their sin,
venomous snakes come and start killing them.
That got the attention of the people of Israel.
They realize that what’s happening to them is nothing more than what they
deserve for their sin. And so, they confess their sin and turn back to
God.
And what does God do? God gives them a
way out. God tells Moses to make this bronze snake and put it on a pole.
If someone gets bitten by a snake, all they need to do is look at that
snake on the pole, and they’ll live.
And at this point, some of you are probably
thinking, “So what? What’s this got to do with John Three, Sixteen?
What’s it got to do with God loving the world and giving us eternal life?
Well, here’s the thing. All of us, every
person alive on this earth, is a sinner. That’s what the Apostle Paul
said in his letter to the Romans, “For all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God.” And God does not look at us the way we look at ourselves
and others. God does not weigh sins on a scale and say, well, this
person’s sins are worse than that person’s sins but not as bad as this other person’s
sins. God looks at each one of us and sees the same thing--a sinner.
That’s as true of us today as it was of the people of Israel thousands of
years ago. We are all sinners. And, just like with the people of
Israel thousands of years ago, we’ve all had times when we have not trusted God
as much as we should.
This is why the idea that we need to be good
enough to get to heaven does not work. None of us could ever be good
enough to get to heaven. Being good enough to get to heaven would mean
we’d have to be perfect, because heaven is where God is and God is perfect.
And none of us can do that. We can try, and we should try. We
should try to be as near to perfection as we can get. But we’re never
going to get there.
We cannot get to heaven by being good enough.
What we deserve from God is punishment for our sins, just as the people
of Israel deserved punishment for their sins.
But God gives us a way out. Just like God
did for the people of Israel, God gives us a way out. For us, that way
out is not a snake on a pole. For us, the way out is Jesus on a cross.
The people of Israel could look to a bronze snake
on a pole and be healed physically. You and I can look to Jesus on the
cross and be healed spiritually. Just as the people of Israel did not
have to suffer the consequences of their sins, you and I don’t have to suffer
the consequences of our sins. All we need to do is look to Jesus.
All we need to do is believe in Jesus as our Savior. And we will be
saved.
That’s how much God loves the world.
Because God did not have to do that. God could have required us to
suffer the consequences of our sins. If God had done that, there would
have been no reasonable argument that it was unjust or unfair. We’d have
been getting what we deserve, just as the people of Israel would’ve been
getting what they deserved.
But God loves the world--God loves us--God
loves you and God loves me--so much that God does not give us what we deserve.
Instead, Jesus took what we deserve. By dying on the cross, Jesus
suffered the consequences of our sins so that we don’t have to.
God loves the world so much that God does not
give us what we deserve. Instead, God gives us much better than we
deserve. God gives us the chance for salvation and eternal life. He
did that through the life and death of Jesus Christ. All we have to do is
look to Jesus. All we need to do is believe that Jesus Christ is our
Savior. And we will be saved. No matter what we’ve done. No
matter who we’ve been. No matter how bad humans may consider our sins to
be. All we need to do is look to Jesus and accept him as our Savior.
When we do that, the consequences of our sin are gone. And we
receive eternal life.
“God so loved the world that he gave his one
and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal
life.” God sent Jesus into the world to take the consequences that
should’ve gone to us. We are still sinners, but we are healed. And
we don’t have to look at a snake. All we need to do is look to Jesus.
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