The Fourth Sunday In Lent

SERMON

INI

Text: John 3:14-21

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

In Christ Jesus who is the only begotten Son of God who has redeemed us and gives us life—dear fellow-redeemed:

It is arguably the most famous Bible passage of all. Even people who do not know the words recognize the reference if for no other reason than that it often appears at major sporting events. John 3:16 – the numbers and name of the book can be seen among the fans as the camera pans across the crowd. But how many of the people who see "John 3:16" really know what it says? Of those who know what it says, how many fully understand the meaning of those words and believe them?

Just as popular as John 3:16 is the image of the cross. What is it about the cross? We see crosses everywhere – crosses on the top of churches, crosses in jewelry, crosses in illustrations of books and other publications. Think about it, as a Christian author points out, the cross is a means of execution. Crucifixion is a horrible way to die. The cross was a cruel means of executing criminals in Jesus’ day. We don’t wear little models of an electric chair, or a hangman’s noose, or an injection needle around our necks and in jewelry. We don’t put those on top of a church. What makes the cross so unique? So important? So special?

John 3:16 and the cross are two ways in which we can summarize, in very simple form, God’s love for us sinners and all that He has done to redeem us. John 3:16 has been called "the Gospel in a nutshell." The whole essence of the Gospel is wrapped up in that single verse, and when we know what took place on the cross we see there the whole plan of God’s salvation.

This morning we consider Jesus’ words to Nicodemus and learn that He was LIFTED UP TO SAVE! In our text, Jesus says that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent even so the Son of Man must be lifted up” [v.14] With those words, Jesus draws a direct parallel between the Old Testament story of Moses raising up the brass serpent and Himself being raised up on the cross. So, as we consider "Lifted up to Save" it applies to the serpent and more fully to Jesus. As we compare the Old Testament account with Jesus’ own life and work and His words to Nicodemus we find that I. Rebellion against the truth prompts the need to be lifted up. There is II. Redemption out of undeserved love and III. Restoration through faith.

I.

The Children of Israel were on their final approach to the Promised Land. The asked the people of Edom for permission to pass through their land. This would make the journey much shorter. Passage through the land of Edom was denied, so Israel began its long way around Edom enroute to Canaan. This was more than the people thought they could bear. The people came out against Moses saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread?” (Numbers 21:5).

The people were very much rebelling against God and against His leader Moses. Ultimately, the people were rebelling against the truth and in the process were believing lies. Their first complaint was, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to die?" They knew so well—or should have known so well—that this was simply not the truth. If God had brought them to the wilderness to die, He could have accomplished His purpose long before this time—generations earlier! For God had miraculously brought the people out of Egypt. He demonstrated His power through the plagues, then at the Red Sea and again and again throughout the wilderness wanderings. Why would God go to such trouble if all He was going to do was kill His people in the wilderness? God provided for His people in their journeys, He forgave them and had patience with them even though time and again they grew angry at Him and rebelled against Him. Oh yes, if God had wanted to destroy His people, He would have had plenty of opportunity in the past and plenty of reason to do so! Does a God who graciously provides for His people during 40 years of wilderness wandering have a death wish for His people? Of course not! The people’s contention that God had brought them from Egypt to kill them in the wilderness couldn’t have been further from the truth, however, in the people’s rebellion that is one of the falsehoods they set forth. That is the rebellion against the truth.

There was more—another complaint. They said, “We have no food or water and our soul loathes this worthless bread.” True, they had no water, but they had food, just not the food they wanted. They had Manna to eat, but they called it worthless bread—another lie. When they first ran out of bread after leaving Egypt the people complained and God provided Manna. God had continued to provide for them daily ever since. In all the people’s wanderings and for all those years, their nutritional needs were supplied through the Manna and the meat that God provided through quail. If the bread were "worthless" it would not have sustained them. "Worthless bread" came every morning without fail except on the Sabbath but they were allowed to gather a double amount the day before the Sabbath. "Worthless bread" came without ceasing until Israel was settled in the Promised Land and had harvested the first crop. Then the Manna stopped, but only because it was no longer needed. "Worthless bread" was the same bread their ancestors had so rejoiced to see the first time God rained it down from heaven. Stating there was no food and calling Manna "worthless" were lies and a rebellion against the truth that God had and continued to graciously provide for their earthly needs. But rebelling against God and against His truth they said, "We loathe this worthless bread."

Our sins are really no different. Every sin is, ultimately, a rebellion against the truth. The rebellion against the truth is what causes the need for a Savior to be lifted up. Jesus told Nicodemus, “This is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” [vv.19-20]

The truth of God’s Word is the light. Those who practice darkness—those who sin—don’t want to be in the light because it just shines on their sin. If the truth of God’s Word is directed to our hearts and to our lives it condemns us. It shows us that we sin daily in thought, word, and deed. Our sinful flesh doesn’t want that. It wants to cower away from the light and stay in the darkness where it can rebel against the truth and not acknowledge our sin. That is our natural desire and that is what the unbelieving world continues to pursue.

We by nature and in our sinfulness don’t want anything to do with the truth and we will come up with elaborate schemes to get around the truth. So in our day we find rebellion against God’s truth all over—God didn’t really mean THAT when He said, "Do not commit adultery. He didn’t mean THAT when He said be content with what you have." Whenever God’s will and His law is reshaped to coddle our flesh and make our hearts content in their sins, that is rebellion against the truth. When we know in our conscience something is a sin but we push it behind us trying to quiet our conscience (a very dangerous thing to do indeed!) that is rebelling against the truth. When the world at large disputes the fact that God created the heavens and the earth and instead comes up with an elaborate way in which it just by happenstance occurred; or when people take the events and successes of their lives and give all honor and glory to themselves for what THEY have accomplished, all of this is rebelling against the truth. Those who rebel against the truth, hate the truth. This is condemnation when sinners hide from the truth and continue in darkness, preferring to think themselves greater than God and their word better than God’s. This leads to judgment for sin brings judgment from an angry and just God.

II.

To the people of Moses’ day who rebelled against the truth, God sent the judgment of poisonous snakes. The snakes bit the people and many people died. This was a just punishment for their rebellion, but when they began to die, the people cried out for mercy and help from the Lord. Purely, out of undeserved love, God did show mercy. There was no reason apart from His love for God to spare the people, but out of love He told Moses to erect the bronze snake. Moses was also to convey to the people that if they looked to the snake, God would heal them and the would not lose their lives.

The people of Israel were saved that day purely out of God’s love…and so are we. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” [vv.14-17]

God SO loved the world. The world is filled with sinners who rebel against the truth and contradict everything God says and does, yet God loved them SO MUCH that He sent His Son to be their Savior. God’s love for us sinners is SO DEEP that He has no greater desire than that we be rescued and redeemed from the death we deserve. His love is SO DEEP that He desires ALL people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (cf. 1 Timothy 2:4). The love of God is SO DEEP that “the Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). The love of God is SO DEEP and His promise of salvation SO SURE that very early in His ministry when talking to Nicodemus, Jesus said, "the Son of Man MUST be lifted up" – the deep love of God required it. It was necessary for the Son to be lifted up and to die, just as Moses raised up the snake, so that God’s people might be saved from death.

The bronze serpent was a strange figure to turn to for help. It was a model of the very snakes that were killing them! The people were looking to an image that signified death in order to be spared from death. Likewise, when the Son of Man is lifted up to save, we see Him DYING for OUR SINS. When we see His body dropping in pain and agony, blood-covered with thorn encircled head and hear Him cry out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46), we see the death that is killing us! There we see the spiritual death in which we are born which will send us to eternal damnation unless we are saved. But THERE IS the salvation. It was necessary that the Son of Man be lifted up to die the death that we deserve so that we could be saved forever.

The love of God is SO DEEP, SO SURE that He loved the world and provided salvation. The "world" can sometimes seem rather abstract and faceless. Who are the people that God so loved whom He calls the "world?" It is YOU. You can put your name in place of "world." “God so loved______________ that He gave His only begotten Son that through faith I have eternal life and shall not perish.” God so loved YOU that He has given YOU redemption and the forgiveness of sins through undeserved love.

III.

The snake was lifted up and God gave His promise that if the people looked to the snake they would not die. That snake spared a single life. The power was in God’s Word and in His promise. The people were spared when they believed what God said. There were probably those who doubted and wondered, "Why would I want to look at a silly snake?" They didn’t look, they didn’t believe, they were lost. But those who heard the promise of God, "Look to the snake and be healed!" and turned to it in faith were saved through that faith.

Unlike the snake, Jesus being lifted up DOES accomplish our salvation. But that salvation also comes to us through faith. For all those who maybe know John 3:16 and maybe wear a cross on a necklace, but don’t believe in Him as their Savior, there is no faith and salvation does not come to them. Through faith we are restored. “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” [v.18] “By grace you are saved THROUGH FAITH” (Ephesians 2:8). Jesus accomplished salvation for the whole world. That salvation comes to us individually as we put our faith in Him, as the Holy Spirit works that faith in our hearts so that we trust in Him as the only one who can rescue us from our sins. If someone rejects what Jesus has done, if someone turns away in disbelief and says, "I don’t care!" They are condemned already. The only sin that condemns is unbelief for unbelief cuts the soul off from the salvation that God has so richly provided.

Jesus was lifted up as our Savior to accomplish this salvation and then to be the object of our faith. We put our complete trust in that Son of God who became man so that He could be lifted up to die the death we deserve and restore us as children of God.

The Son of Man MUST be lifted up. God SO LOVED the world that Jesus was lifted up on the cross. Now as we see crosses or wear them, we can also remember John 3:16. There, on the cross, we see our Savior lifted up to restore us even though we rebel. There we see our deep need meet God’s great love in the blood of our Savior. That is the love of God for YOU. Amen.

—Pastor Wayne C. Eichstadt