Look and Live

Sermon Lent 4

“Look and Live”

John 3:14-21

This morning’s gospel text is from Jesus night time encounter with the Pharisee Nicodemus.  Jesus at this point will give to Nicodemus the summary of the Father’s will for the Son. John 3:16 is probably still the best known verses among Christians. It is still seen occasionally written on signs at televised football games. It is one of the first bible verses that I can remember memorizing encouraged by my Aunt. It is the gospel in a nutshell. “For God do loved the World that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish but receive eternal life.”

What a comforting message. It is a message that creates faith in the heart of the believer. But what is the context of this message? Why did God have to send His only begotten Son? And once he was sent why did his own nation reject him? Without answering these questions the Gospel message is meaningless.

Jesus begins by taking us and Nicodemus back to the time of Moses. Back to the Exodus from Egypt back to one of the most significant deliverance events in the history of the people of Israel. God had brought them out of slavery and was now leading them to land He had promised to them, a land flowing with milk and honey.  The problem was that they needed to go through the wilderness to get there.  And there is very little food and drink in the wilderness. The people needed to depend on God.

God is faithful and so he did provide for their needs. He provided them a rock in which water flowed and he fed them with manna and birds from heaven. However the people became dissatisfied with God’s gifts. They became ungrateful. It is written, 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 food.”

The peoples lack of faith, there denial of God’s gifts, was met with swift justice. The people received what they deserved. God sent fiery serpents, fiery meaning that their venomous bites were painful.  Many Israelites suffered painful deaths. 

The result of this justice, this catastrophe is that the people began to repent. They cried out to Moses and to God. They confessed, “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.”

Moses did pray for the people, he brought their confession to the Lord. They had sinned against God and the one whom God had sent and now they turned to God and the one he sent to grant them salvation.  So the Lord did relent and justice was turned into mercy.

The Lord told Moses to fashion a bronze poll and on the top of the pole fashion a bronze serpent. Moses was then to take the bronze pole with the serpent, lifting it up, he was to take it out upon the suffering people so that they could look upon it.  “Look and live!” was the cry.  The very thing, the serpent, that was the instrument of God’s justice was now the instrument of God’s mercy. 

So now Jesus says in our gospel text to Nicodemus, “And 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.”

This may be a bit uncomfortable for us to consider but Jesus, the Son of God, lifted up on the cross is both the instrument of God’s justice and the source of mercy.  We confess that in the future Jesus will come again to judge both the living and the dead. It is Jesus who will send Satan and His followers to eternal death in the Lake of Fire.

Who are the followers of Satan? Those who have been conceived in sin, which includes us all prior to faith. Paul gives to us a further description writing, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Notice how passion and desire from the scriptural point of view are descriptions of the fallen nature. I know that passion and desire in the culture is lauded.  It’s lauded even in the church.  I have seen advertisements for Passionate worship.  The rampant consumerism that seeks self-gratification, carrying out the desires of the body and mind, has also become a dominate driver in church practice and worship. But this sort of thinking denies that we are snake bitten. We are fooled into thinking that our desires are God’s desires even in our individualized worship of God. This sort of thinking will lead us back to becoming children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

We are all snake bitten with the venom of sin.  God’s law shines the light, makes this fact known to us. We deserve God’s justice for failing to appreciate the gifts sent to us. From the cross Jesus was judged for all your sin. He also judged those who were unbelieving and this he does still today from the altar.  

But it is also from this place that mercy flows.  The Father says, “Look to my Son lifted high on the cross. Look and live for He is the curse and he is your salvation.” Both our sin, the cause of Jesus being judged, and of the Father’s mercy is before us. Just as the people we reminded by the snake of their sin so the cross also reminds us of our sin and that Christ crucified is justice served and mercy given. Distributed from cross to this altar, the sacrificial lamb is now consumed for the forgiveness of sins.

Just as God’s justice is for all so now is his mercy. The only begotten Son dies for the whole world for you and I and all people. 

We wish to retreat into the darkness. The light being shown on our sin makes us uncomfortable. We don’t want to see it and we don’t want others to see our wicked works. However, those works which God has prepared for us before hand these works are done in the light because they are true and being carried out in God as Jesus promises.

Jesus raises you from the deadly snake bite of sin, Look and live at the only begotten Son of God lifted High on the cross for your salvation.