[Machine transcription]
Jesus says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man
be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.
Amen.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Amen.
Dear saints, Jesus is giving Nicodemus quite a lesson in the text, quite a sermon.
In fact, the more I look at the text, the more I’m convinced that John is just giving
us the highlights of long and extended sermons that Jesus would have had with Nicodemus this
night.
In one of these sermons, Jesus recalls the mind of Nicodemus and the mind of us, His
Christians to this event in the wilderness when the serpent was lifted up by Moses.
Now what was going on?
I’ll read you the text, but I want you to remember this comes to us from Numbers chapter
21.
Aaron had just died.
The people were traveling towards the promised land.
They had been in the wilderness for forty years.
The Lord was still feeding them every day with the bread from heaven, and they started
to complain.
pain, and the Lord sent to them serpents.”
The Lord says that if you don’t want the bread, here’s some meat, if you can catch it.
And the serpents were devouring the people, and a lot of them were dying, so they repent,
and then this odd thing happens.
Okay, here’s the text, Numbers chapter 21 verse 4, “‘From Mount Hor they set out by
the way to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom, and the people became impatient on
the way, and the people spoke against God and against Moses, why have you brought us
up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless bread.’
Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many
of the people of Israel died.
And the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned for we have spoken against the
Lord and against you, pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.
So Moses prayed for the people.
And the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is
bitten when he sees it shall live.
So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole, and if a serpent bit anyone, he
would look at the bronze serpent and live.”
Now, dear saints, I want you to just try to imagine the situation.
I mean, here are the people scattered in the wilderness being provided for by God, but
complaining against them, and it was â I mean, it wasn’t just a group of a small
little band, it was millions, you know, 1.2 million people spread out in this complex
and highly organized wandering society in the wilderness, and the serpents start to
creep in from the edges and they just start to eat the people, devour the people, bite
the people and kill the people and the people are able to discern, now this is saying something
for them, the people are able to discern that this punishment, these snakes are punishment
from God.
These snakes are God’s judgment, in fact they are able to discern that the snakes are God’s
judgment for their complaining against God and against Moses.
And so they go to Moses and they ask Moses to pray to God to send the serpents away.
But the Lord doesn’t answer his prayer.
The Lord doesn’t send the serpents away.
Instead, the Lord has Moses go into his tent and craft a bronze serpent.
Now can you imagine this?
sitting outside the tent of Moses.
Moses, we’re all being eaten by snakes out here.
You got a plan?
He says, yeah, yeah, don’t worry.
Tink, tink, tink, you hear him hammering away.
Tink, tink, tink, God told me what to do.
Well, tink, tink, tink, what is that, Moses?
I’ll show you in a little bit.
Well, don’t you want to tell us?
We’re all dying.
He says, okay.
God said that I’m supposed to make a bronze serpent.
We don’t need more serpents, we’ve got plenty out here.
No, no, God told me to make a bronze serpent and to lift it up on a stick, and if anybody
looks at it, then they won’t die.
People say, couldn’t you make an antidote?
Couldn’t you get some medicine?
Couldn’t you build a fence to keep the snakes out?
Couldn’t you send them away somehow?
This whole plot seems ridiculous, Moses.
Now I think I want to press that a little bit.
It seems ridiculous that to heal the bite of a serpent, the Lord would put a serpent
on a stick and have the people look at it to be healed.
They know that looking at serpents doesn’t heal anything, it just doesn’t make sense.
They’ve got a big problem here, they’ve got a snake problem and the Lord is going to fix
it with a bronze serpent on a pole.
Now that does sound crazy, but I want to suggest that there’s maybe one thing that would be
even crazier than that.
I just want you to imagine people outside the tent and Moses, this Moses has gone crazy,
his brother Aaron has died, he’s old, he’s like 119 years old, he doesn’t know what he’s
talking about, making a bronze serpent on, no way am I looking at that serpent.
And Moses comes out with the serpent and he lifts it up and he puts it before the people
and people start to look at it and they start to live.
Someone from the earlier service said that they take their babies and hold it up so that
they can see the serpent and now they’re healed from the snake bites.
The people say, no, forget it, I’m not going to look, I’m not going to look.
If the serpent sounds crazy, not looking at the serpent is even more crazy.
Now look, there’s a lot of things that are wrong in this world, there’s a lot of things
that are broken, there’s a lot of things that are disappointing, there’s a lot of things
that are scary.
We look around us and we see that the world is falling apart.
You watch the news and you listen to the radio and it’s everywhere.
I mean, there’s disease, there’s pestilence, there’s plague, there’s war, there’s violence,
there’s death, and it’s not even just outside of us.
If we look inside of us, we feel this fallenness of this creation.
Our own weakness, our own pride, our own despair, our own loneliness, our own self-loathing,
our own arrogance, whatever it is, you feel the sickness inside of us too.
And there are problems that we can’t see.
I think these are probably the worst.
I mean, the real problems of creation, of being in this fallen world, the wrath of God
over sin, the anger of God at our breaking of His commandments, there’s big problems.
We are like the people crying, you know, look, Moses, we need some help out here.
Look, if God could send us some help, if He could send these problems away, and we’re
always trying to sort this out, how God can be good and how life could be so bad.
In fact, I think I told you guys that I went to Concordia, Texas to do the chapel a couple
of weeks ago, and I passed out note cards to the kids, to the college kids there, and
I said, write some theology questions and I’ll try to answer them.
And I got 25 questions, I’ll bet you five of them were all on this theme, how can things
be so bad if God is good?
You say God is good, but the world is falling apart.
You say that God has a plan for everything, but my grandfather had a stroke and now he
can’t talk anymore.
How does this make sense?
So we come to the Lord and ask, what are you going to do about it?
And just like the Lord’s solution for the serpents in the wilderness, so we find the
Lord’s solution to all of our problems.
problems.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must
the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, Jesus says to you, here’s the solution.
Here’s how I’m going to solve the problem of evil.
Here is how I’m going to save the world.
I’m going to be lifted up on the cross, and I’m going to die, and all who look to me,
all who believe in me, will have eternal life.”
Now what do you think Nicodemus thought about that?
I mean, Nicodemus, if anybody knew how to enter into the kingdom of God, it was the
Pharisees, right?
They knew how, and their way made sense.
If God had a kingdom, the way to get into it was by being a good person, by keeping
the rules, by obeying the commandments.
Surely if anybody was in the kingdom of God already, or anybody about to be in the kingdom
of God, it was Nicodemus.
But Jesus comes along and says to him, you must be born again.
If you want to see the kingdom of God, you have to be born again.
If you want to enter in the kingdom of God, you have to be born by water and the Spirit.
But if you want to live and have eternal life, your only hope, Nicodemus, is not in yourself.
Your only hope is me, says Jesus.
Your only hope is my death, but looking to me, you will be saved.
Now if the whole plot with the bronze serpent in the wilderness seemed ridiculous, how much
much more does this seem ridiculous, that the way the Lord saves the world, the way
the Lord saves you, is by putting His Son on the cross to die?
Paul says it’s foolishness to the Greek, a stumbling block to the Jew, but to those
who believe this is the wisdom of God and the power of God, that the way the Lord solves
your problems, the way the Lord forgives your sins, and the way the Lord gives you life
is by being lifted up on the cross to die.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever
believes in Him will not perish, but will instead have eternal life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through Him.”
In order that you might be saved through Him.
So we gather around, not the bronze serpent lifted up on a stick, we gather around the
body and blood of Jesus, and trusting Him we live forever, amen.
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus
Christ our Lord, amen.
