First Baptist Church, Cornelia, Georgia
4th Sunday of Lent
Numbers 21:4-98
John 3:14-21
Darkness.
Nicodemus comes to speak to Jesus in the darkness of the night as chapter 3 of John begins.
Darkness hides Nicodemus. Darkness keeps him from being seen by the other religious authorities talking to Jesus. Nicodemus was one of them, a respected religious authority – trained, educated and raised in Jewish theology, practice and piety. He served on the highest Jewish Political and Religious council in all of Roman occupied Judea. Everyone assumed he had had life and faith figured out. He needed darkness to hide his talk with Jesus – a religious instigator.
Darkness also clouds Nicodemus’ life. While he has been raised and trained and studied the Jewish law – there is still emptiness – darkness – questions about God and life and FAITH. Something is missing.
In the first half of chapter 3, we see the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. To discover the faith he desires – Jesus invites Nicodemus to be born again – which can also be translated – born from above. The darkness, though, keeps Nicodemus from understanding. His religious life is grounded in following laws and the consequences of failing. Jesus attempts to raise his eyes beyond the law to the spirit at work in the law. The Holy Spirit is at work in our lives like the wind that blows through the trees – you know it is there by impact on things around you. There’s a mysterious element to the experience of faith and Jesus invites Nicodemus to receive it.
In the second half of Nicodemus’ meeting with Jesus, the conversation moves from dialogue to teaching. In our New Testament reading today – v. 14-21 – Jesus continues the conversation with Nicodemus by teaching him – and us – one overarching lesson about faith.
Lesson: An invitation to faith, grounded in love, requires a decision.
Invitation to Faith
In v.14-15, Jesus uses an ancient, and strange, Old Testament story, to give an invitation to Nicodemus to a lasting and powerful faith. Listen again to the verses from the Message:
In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life. John 3:14-15 (MSG)
Jesus is referring to our Old Testament passage that Laura Grace read for us today from Numbers 21. In this story, the people of Israel are miserable in the wilderness. Being miserable makes them impatient and cranky. The daily manna they receive for bread and the weekly arrival of birds that provide meat have gotten old and tasteless and monotonous. They complain there is no food … and the food is detestable all in the same breathe.
Then, to make things even worse – snakes show up in camp. Not just harmless, annoying snakes – but poisonous vipers whose painful bites kill. The snakes get the people’s attention. They confess their impatience to the Lord and the Lord hears.
To save the Israelites from the poisonous snakes, the Lord commands Moses to craft an image of a snake out of bronze and raise up the bronze snake on a pole in the middle of the camp. The bronze snake would be their salvation, their healing. If a person was bitten by a snake, he or she could look upon the raised up snake and be healed. The snakes and the bad food were not gone – but salvation was provided.
A couple of weeks ago, I preached on Abraham’s faith – how God formed this faith in Abraham over the 25 years he waited with the Promise and hope of a son to begin a great nation. In the wilderness between Egypt and Palestine, the Lord is doing the same thing inside the People of Israel –building their faith. During their hundreds of years in slavery in Egypt, the faith of Abraham had been lost. Then, with Moses, God gave them a promise – a land flowing with milk and honey and no slavery.
But they had to wait – 40 years – before their children would be able to see it.
In this story about the bronze snake, the Lord reveals that he is the source of their promise. The Lord is their salvation. As the snake is lifted up, the people find salvation and healing and their faith is formed.
In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus uses this illustration, to invite Nicodemus to a new kind of faith. Rather than a snake lifted up in the desert for salvation, the Son of Man will be lifted up so that people who live in the darkness will discover the light of eternal life. Being Lifted up as two meanings here – first Jesus, gives us the first glimpse of the cross in John. Jesus being lifted up on the cross will provide salvation to all like the snake in the desert. But there’s another meaning too – Jesus will be lifted up in glory. We are invited to look upon his glory – so that we too may discover faith that leads to eternal life. Jesus invites you and me to have faith in him.
Grounded in Love
Jesus’ invitation to faith is grounded in God’s Love.
The heart of the Gospel is found in these words from John 3:16-17. Listen beyond your familiar understanding of these verse to the meanings of the Greek words with the Amplified Bible.
“For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge and condemn the world [that is, to initiate the final judgment of the world], but that the world might be saved through Him. John 3:16-17 (Amplified Bible)
Faith begins in God’s heart: His love. This love – this AGAPE – is why Jesus comes to earth. This love is why Jesus is lifted up on the cross. This love is why Jesus is exalted and glorified. This love is why you and I are invited into relationship with God in the first place.
We see God’s motivation for sending Jesus in v.17. Jesus does not come to the world to condemn or judge the world filled with darkness. Instead, God’s love sends Jesus into the world so that you and I can be saved, rescued from the darkness. God wants you and me to be saved in the same way that he saved the Israelites stuck in the middle of the wilderness with snakes slithering through their tents and camps.
How we do we experience and find this salvation? The Israelites had to look up upon the very thing that had caused them so much pain. They had to look upon another snake on a pole in the middle of their camp. For us – we too must believe v. 16 says and look upon Jesus lifted upon the cross. We must stare deep into our biggest fear – death – so that we can believe God’s Good News of eternal life.
What does it mean to “believe” this Good News that in Jesus “lifted up” God seeks the world’s salvation, and not condemnation (John 3:17)? Too often, we say that it only requires us to offer our intellectual affirmation of this fact. To “believe that” Jesus died and was raised to save us is easy to understand in the sense that it requires almost nothing of us. It’s head knowledge.
But such simplicity does not honor the larger story John is telling – his invitation to faith. This is a story about an encounter with Jesus that left Nicodemus, an intelligent and accomplished man, scratching his head in bewilderment as he went back out into the darkness. This is a story about how any one of us might reject the light offered to us because of the way it exposes what is dark in us (John 3:19–20). To “believe” this Good News in a way that brings salvation requires more than “believing that;” it requires “trusting in; hold onto” This is faith. To “trust in” Jesus is not simply to believe something about what happened long ago, but also to let our own lives be transformed by the Jesus we encounter in this story:
1) Placing our trust in this Jesus means withholding our ultimate loyalty and trust from other things that ask us to pledge our allegiance.
2) Placing our trust in this Jesus means noticing that the new life Jesus offers is especially difficult for the religiously accomplished. We must repent of the ways our self-satisfied lives becomes a barrier to understanding the new things Jesus offers and asks of us.
3) Placing our trust in this Jesus means confronting the inconvenient truth that God’s purposes for those whom God loves are not the same as our own common-sense values of happiness, health, and safety. The “lifting up” of Jesus reminds us that the true life God has promised us is not a life that we can secure for ourselves.
This invitation to faith, grounded in love, requires a decision from us.
Requires a Decision
Jesus describes the decision that confronts everyone who ever lived in v.18-21.
18 “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. 19 And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. 20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. 21 But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.” John 3:18-21 (MEV)
To believe IN Jesus requires a decision on our part. And the decision we make will determine whether we are welcome or are repelled by God’s light that shines in the world.
There’s a beautiful and terrible story at the end of CS Lewis’ Last Narnia book called The Last Battle. It’s a difficult book to read because the world of Narnia is dying and knowing who to trust within that world gets harder and harder.
In the end Aslan, the Great Lion – Lewis’s God figure – returns and provides a door from the dying Narnia world to a new world – Aslan’s world. Everyone is invited through the door – but as they come towards Aslan – what they trust in their heart about him – becomes exactly how they see him. If they hold the love and faith of Aslan in their hearts as Peter and most of the children do – if there is light – they see Aslan as a kind and welcoming lion and enter the door. However, if there is darkness in their hearts and they have failed to trust in Aslan – then they see a ferocious lion and run in fear away from the door. The judgement is not Aslan’s – this judgement comes from within them.
This is what Jesus is saying here. The light of God entered the world through Jesus. If we receive the light – there is not judgement. However, if we refuse the light – if we allow the darkness to overcome the light – then the darkness judges us.
As. V. 17 says – God did not send Jesus to the world to condemn or judge us – God sent Jesu to the world because God loves us and wants to save us. This Good News requires you and me to respond to the invitation to faith by Jesus who is lifted up. We must decide – we will allow the light to enter our hearts? Will we trust in; have faith in, believe in Jesus Christ who was lifted up on the cross so that our lives will be changed? Have you? Will you?
Or will we allow an indecision – which is a decision – to stay in the darkness condemn us?
Nicodemus eventually came out of the darkness of that night time conversation into the light of faith. We don’t have any other conversations between Nicodemus and Jesus, but we do see him one more time in scripture.
In John 19 – on the Friday afternoon just after Jesus dies on the cross – we see this scene.
“Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night.
Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.”
Nicodemus came out of the darkness and so can you.
Jesus invites you to a life of a faith, grounded in God’s Love. This invitation requires a decision.
Will you stop being religious and trust in Jesus? Will you stop holding onto your own life and let the
light of Jesus in? Will you listen for the whisper of Jesus in the cool of the night as he invites to you come. Believe in him. Begin living his eternal life today.
What will you decide today?
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