Numbers 21:4-9March 11, 2018
John 3:4-17Pastor Lori Broschat
SAVED FROM DEATH
Billy Graham told a story of a friend who stood on a mountaintop in North Carolina, looking down on the road below. It was a winding road twisting along the side of the mountain, and there were many blind curves along its course. The man could see three cars on the road, all approaching a blind hairpin curve, two from one direction, one from the opposite direction. One of the two cars pulled out to pass the other, unaware that the third car was approaching just around the bend.
The man on the mountain could see what was going to happen. Due to the narrowness of the road, there was no room for any of the cars to escape. He cupped his hands and shouted a warning, but it was hopeless. They would never hear him. In seconds, there was a clash of grinding metal as the three cars met in the middle of the curve. It was a horrible, fatal crash.
That is the difference between God's perspective and ours. We are like drivers on a mountain road, approaching a blind curve. We know that God has warned us not to pass on the curve, not to take the curve too fast, not to drive recklessly. But we say, “God just wants to limit my freedom. He just wants to ruin my fun.” And we proceed to our doom.[1]
While we think we understand the whole process, we may have more to discover. From the beginning, God’s people were slow to understand and quick to disobey, even before they started wandering in the wilderness. Just think of the errors in judgment made by Abraham, Jacob, Moses and others. The truth is, God has always been on a rescue mission of some type or another. He called the Israelites a group of stiff-necked people repeatedly.
In the passage from Numbers, which is a book not often preached on, we have this unusual incident. In what seems like harsh behavior from God, we see not only how God disciplines but also how He forgives. Hundreds of years later God spoke through Isaiah, “I will not accuse them forever, nor will I always be angry, for then they would faint away because of me – the very people I created.”He doesn’t eternally accuse, but He does eternally love.
The way to receive His eternal relationship is simple, yet profound. In all of history no such offer has ever been made again, no matter what religion you can name. This is mainly since it can’t be duplicated. Only God could do what was needed to satisfy His own standard of obedience.
Jesus explained the event in Numbers to Nicodemus, a Jewish leader who had come to Him in the cover of darkness to seek answers. Darkness may represent sin or evil in the Bible, but in this case, it also stood for anonymity, protection from prying eyes, and perhaps a certain degree of misunderstanding. Their rather unusual conversation contains easily the most familiar verse from Scripture.
Familiar, yes, but easily understood? Well, more on that later. For now, we need to delve into that strange reference from Numbers where God punished the Israelites by sending poisonous snakes among them. Many of them died, which seems to us rather contrary to God’s way of doing things. God may have sent the curse, but He also provided the cure.
He told Moses to make a bronze serpent and mount it on a pole, hoisting it up for the people to see. Those who looked at the serpent would live. The same image of a snake entwined around a pole remains with us as a sign of healing, shown in medical organizations. That snake remained with the Israelites as a sacred object in the Tabernacle, until the people began worshiping it and it was destroyed.
There is no other reference in the New Testament to this bronze serpent or this incident. This was not just God having a bad day; this is significant to the crucifixion. Jesus told Nicodemus that the Son of Man must be lifted so that everyone who looks at Him can have eternal life. When we see Jesus hanging on the cross, we are looking at the result of evil in which we are all stuck. And we are seeing what God has done about it.[2]
Jesus came to bring us into right relationship with God, using the method of the time to illustrate His earnestness. The cross was a shameful, unthinkable way for anyone other than a criminal to die. John’s gospel shows us that God does not shy away from doing the improbable. There are themes present we should not miss because they are key to understanding God’s objectives.
Condemn and save, believe and not believe, stay in the darkness and come into the light, do evil and doing what is true. These opposites express the sharp distinction that is created when our dark cosmos is entered by the light of God. Like the people in the story in Numbers, we have already been bitten or are in imminent danger of being bitten. Death is inevitable. When the bronze serpent is brought into the world, we look and live, or we do not. As Jesus comes into the world, we trust that which bears God's gracious love, or we do not. We receive eternal life, or we continue to live apart from God, condemned.[3]
Max Lucado wrote: Nicodemus thought the person did the work; Jesus says God does the work. These two views encompass all views. All the world religions can be placed in one of two camps; legalism or grace. Spirituality, Jesus says, comes not from church attendance or good deeds or correct doctrine, but from heaven itself. Salvation is God’s business. Grace is his idea, his work, and his expense. He offers it to whom he desires, when he desires.
This is part of what we don’t understand about this passage. It’s not quite the happy little verse we’ve come to think it is. Of course, it is happy; we call it the good news, but we can’t consolidate the entire Bible into this one verse, nor can we eliminate all the rest of historical Scripture prior to this event because this is all we think we need to be Christians.
At the very least we also need John 3:17, “For God sent His Son into the world, not to pass sentence on it, but that the world through Him might be saved.”This is a remarkable statement! What good would eternal life be if we were to be condemned first? One author said, “Think away this verse. It does not exist. God never spoke it. Once that is done, I can understand why many Christian people are filled with apathy and indifference to the world around them.”[4]
Thankfully, this verse does exist. God did say it and it stands recorded in Scripture endlessly. Jesus felt it was necessary to follow up His statement about God’s love for the world causing Him to send His Son into the world to die a criminal’s death to save us from death forever. He felt it was necessary to add that little detail that it was never God’s intent to condemn people, but to save them.
If God does not condemn us, what does that do to our sense of calling sin a sin? There was a time when pastors would stand at the pulpit and point fingers and shout for people to repent. There’s an unfortunate remnant of our sinfulness that allows us to look at the lives and behaviors and choices of others and verbally, nonverbally, or even demonstratively judge them. Do we accept John 3:16 as our own but dismiss John 3:17 as God speaking to someone else?
When King David confessed his guilt and remorse to God in Psalm 51, he stated, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” I have a pastor friend who used to hold his belly when he said, “My sin is ever before me!” What David meant was that it was on his mind all the time. He could feel the weight of it on his conscience. The only person you can judge or condemn for sin is yourself.
We need to know that, but we also need to know the correct understanding of the word “so” in John 3:16. Pretty easy, right? Maybe not. We might have always taken it to mean God loved the world SO much, the way we love the people in our lives, as a matter of quantity, a lot, in a big way.
However, in this case the word translates to “in this way” or “like this.” That’s the way it is expressed in each of the thirteen times it is found in the gospel of John. It’s not how much God loved the world, but how that love looked.
Mercy is what we need first from God, when what we really deserve is punishment. Instead, we are forgiven. Mercy is not the opposite of justice, because a pardon is the ultimate act of justice. We are fortunate that God is rich in mercy, for without mercy there would be no hope of grace.
Love is what comes between mercy and grace; it is what tempers God’s decision to deal with us tenderly. So great is God’s love that He loved us even when we were still guilty, even when we were still lost in sin. Truthfully, it was our lost state that prompted His great act of love, because His love has two elements; desire and delight. He desires that all remain with Him, that all be saved, and He delights in the act of the sinner saying yes to repentance, to salvation and to life.
One author wrote, “Completely misguided is the thought that a tender and loving Jesus intervened in the nick of time to save humankind from a stern and blustery God bent on destruction.” The glory that awaits us will show the world that God has triumphed over the powers of evil, not by wrath, but by kindness.
Still think you know all there is to know about this familiar verse? Is memorization enough, learning it by rote when we were kids and then referring to it now and then over the years, happy that we have this truth to fall back on? I rather doubt God expected us to stop at this knowledge. There is so much more to learn.
For years whenever a sporting event is televised someone in the crowd has held up a sign reading “John 3:16” in bold letters. Not bad as evangelistic strategies go, but it has probably lost its effectiveness over the decades. For the skeptic it might look like a desperate attempt to point people to the Bible. More likely to those who aren’t interested in religion enough to be skeptical it may look like secret code, or like someone is trying to tell a guy named John to meet him after the game.
Without a context this reference on posterboard does no good for those we are trying to reach. John who? What happens at 3:16? This is the best statement in the history of humankind, so we can’t waste it. Maybe our witness could become more specific than that one. Would we not speak a word of grace to a broken world if we were to quote John 3:17? Would it help people to know that God desires to save the world and not condemn it? Would people gain a better sense of God’s deep love?
Let’s tell the story of how one man’s death made life eternal possible for an entire world of people. Let’s teach them the reverse logic of how God turned death into life, and let’s make sure they know what God went through to do it, and that He did it all for them.
One of my favorite Charles Wesley hymns is “And Can It Be, That I Should Gain?” which unfortunately we rarely sing because it’s a vocal workout to the unfamiliar. As an explanation of salvation, its theology is unsurpassable. This is verse three: He left His Father’s throne above, so free, so infinite His grace; emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race; ‘tis mercy all, immense and free; for, O my God, it found out me.
Lord God, who gave us Jesus to rescue us from all that poisons human lives and destroys human relationships, as we look to Him, lifted and suffering on the cross, may we find in him our health and our salvation, for his name’s sake. Amen.
[1]Stedman, Ray, C., God’s Loving Word, Exploring the Gospel of John, pg. 95-96
[2]Wright, N.T., John for Everyone, Part One, pg. 33
[3]
[4]Tozer, A.W., And He Dwelt Among Us, Teachings from the Gospel of John, pg. 124