I. The Most Famous Verse in the Bible 00:00
Lord, that we might walk forth from this church building, Lord, into our days, into our weeks, with the light of Christ that conquers the darkness; Lord, that we would be your people, spreading the kingdom. In Jesus’ name, amen.
So today we get to talk about the most famous verse in the Bible. I know this because God’s holy burger, In-N-Out, has printed this verse reference on the cups for their soda fountain. And that’s John 3:16. And so today we’re going to be diving into some of the context of that verse, because it’s weird. The context for John 3:16 is odd, and I like the odd things in the Bible, because they often show us something that, if you don’t consider it, you might miss. You might jump straight to John 3:16: you know, God loved the world, he sent his only begotten Son, what else do you need? Well, everything else written around it would have informed this verse, would have been the basis. So we’re going to take a step back, and we’re going to look at what led to this great proclamation of the gospel message.
And so we’re going to start back in Numbers. The people who put together our lectionary are geniuses, and when the Gospel references the Old Testament, they put that in the same service with that Gospel. And it’s like, “Whoa, the connections that are made.” I’m being a little facetious here, but I’m excited. I love the fact that our church reads Scripture more than any other church I’ve ever been to, because we read the Old Testament, the psalm, the New Testament, the Gospel every time. And sometimes you can be like, “Oh man, let’s just get to the worship.” Or maybe you’re thinking, like I’m sure you are, “Let’s just get to Jesse’s message.” These are the exciting points of church. But I want to remind you that the lifeblood of the church has always been two things: the word and the sacrament. And so when we come together and you listen to these words, or you say the words of the psalm, let them work on you. Pay attention. They are so good for life and for abundance.
II. Why Have You Brought Us Up Out of Egypt? 02:13
Okay, we’re going to talk about this story. As you remember, we did a series a while back in Exodus, and we didn’t get to do this story, because it actually isn’t in the book of Exodus, although it happened at the same time. And so I’m excited we get to jump back to Moses and those stubborn Israelites, and we’re going to get to talk about them in Numbers. We’ll start with verse 4 today, in Numbers 21, and it says:
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. 5 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.” Num 21.4–5
Interesting things are going on here. You can see the stubbornness, the intransigence, of those wicked sinners, those Israelites. And they sound a lot like us. God saves them in this amazing act, this wonderful scene. Keep those amazing images in your mind: God sending the plagues of Egypt, all of the miracles that he did for the Israelites. He saved them from the greatest global power known to man at the time, from slavery. They are now free, and their first thought is, “Are we there yet?” and “Why can’t we have better food?” In fact, they’re so bad that they didn’t just say, “Why can’t we have better food?” They said, “You’ve brought us here to die, because there’s no food and no water.” And then they have to admit, “Well, okay, we like the food and water that you gave us.” They can’t even lie. They’re so mad, but they’re wrong: “this worthless bread,” or “this worthless food.” Really fascinating.
And what’s going on here, too, is an exact inversion of what God often says when he introduces himself in his covenantal, regal majesty. He shows up to Israel, and what does he say? “I am the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” And they’re sitting there going, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Why can’t we be in slavery anymore?” It’s completely backwards. In fact, we often call God’s kingdom the upside-down kingdom, where it takes a lot of the things that you know in the world and turns them on their head. The first shall be last; the last shall be first. If you would lead, then serve. All of those concepts. I’m just going to say right now, the Israelites are the ones who sound upside down. They are completely missing the point. God is bringing them into the promised land, and they’re saying, “I’d rather be a slave in Egypt.” That’s really backwards.
III. The Only Path to the Promised Land 05:40
In fact, I think we often fall prey to this same thing. In the time, you start to forget what happened. Let’s imagine that you had been praying for weeks for God to deliver you from a horrible job, a horrible workspace, a horrible boss. You get laid off due to restructuring, and immediately you start saying, “God, I hate this. Can’t you just put me back with that horrible boss and that horrible job? Don’t leave me in the desert of unemployment.” And you get impatient. You say, “There’s no food. There’s no water. Where am I going to get my bread?” And God’s providing for you every step of the way, and he goes, “No, I’m taking you somewhere. Remember what I saved you from, and look forward to where I’m saving you for.”
Because what’s happening here is the Israelites are actually on the only path to the promised land, the only way to get there. There’s no end-around. The only way is to leave the house of slavery and to go through the desert. You can’t shortcut that process. But many of us find ourselves in those desert seasons, lamenting where we are and forgetting where God saved us from. We forget that God actually brought us there, and we’re asking God, “Save us from the desert.” And he goes, “Didn’t you see what I had to do to get you here?” He put you right where you are for a purpose.
Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t times where we take our hard left turns and get into some pretty bad water. We know the times where we’ve done things that have led to embarrassment, shame, destruction. We’ve done those things. So, it’s Lent: repent, be saved. But let’s not get mixed up. There’s God’s desert, where he will make you a people of the promised land, and then there’s that time that you did that thing the seventeenth time and you finally paid for it, like the cop found you speeding or something. I don’t want to attribute to God the consequences of your sin. But I also want to take a bigger look. God’s not surprised that you’re a wicked sinner. In fact, he has designed your life step by step to rescue you from your sin, to transform you into the people of God. And so look around. Look at the ways that you’re praying. Maybe ask God, “God, why am I here?” He will show you. He’s a good father. He’s not here to just beat you up. In fact, it says God disciplines those he loves (Heb 12.6). He might be bringing some correction. He might be turning you in a different direction.
IV. Fiery Serpents 07:54
Okay, let’s continue this story. So these stubborn Israelites, a lot like us, are complaining to God. They’re impatient. They don’t like the food God’s providing, which of course is the bread of heaven. So come on, they’ve got pretty high standards here. Let’s go to verse 6 here:
6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. Num 21.6
Now, you might read this verse and be like, “That sounds more like Zeus than it does Jesus,” like he’s smiting them because he’s angry at them. I read this verse a little differently. What happens when you set yourself up against the salvation of God? You invite the fiery serpents into your life. When you spend your time complaining about the things that God has done for you, the places he’s bringing you, you open the door for our very natural and very real fiery serpents to come in: the serpents of doubt, temptation, fear, those things that bite at you.
Think about this. We start to talk about God not holding up his end of the bargain. We start thinking that God owed us something, or, “Why isn’t God saving me from this?” He’s looking at it going, “You’re right on the path to the promised land.” We’re looking at it going, “God, why aren’t you providing for me?” But when you open that door, you start to complain. You start to let things deteriorate in your life. Maybe you stop doing your devotions every day. Maybe you skip that home group: “You know, I don’t really need that other thing in my week.” Or maybe you start hanging out with people who are also complaining about what God hasn’t done for them. You start to cultivate a spirit of offense against God. We all do it. The reason I know it is because I’ve done it. I’ve been there.
You start to withdraw from the community, the church. You start to excuse your sins, like, “Well, God didn’t do this, so I can do that.” Or you start to take your life into your own hands, and you start trying to fix it yourself. And then you start to question God’s goodness. And maybe even, I’m going to take it all the way, maybe you question the existence of God, because you’ve allowed that door, that complaint, that disbelief, into your heart. I’ve seen it again and again in these YouTube videos. They deconstructed, and it all follows this path. Something bad happened. They decided not to trust God. They withdrew from the community of the church. They didn’t know if God was good. Then they didn’t know if God existed. And then they have this great awakening that they’ve deconstructed: “I’m no longer a Christian, because I can’t live in a world where suffering exists and God also exists.” And they’ve convinced themselves of this grand narrative that started with an offense against God, because they thought God didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. And he said, “I’m leading you to the promised land.”
All of that to say, not that anybody in this room matches that exact picture, but just know what complaint and offense open the door to in your heart. It opens the door to fiery serpents that bite you, and you die. So guard your heart. In fact, look at your heart; we’ll get there. All of us disobey God because we think our way is better. Every one of us at some point believes we know more than God about how to live our life, or we convince ourselves it’s fine. But you know what? If you’re not obeying God, you’re obeying a different god. It’s not a choice between freedom and slavery to God. It’s actually a choice between freedom, obeying God, and slavery to sin.
What did the Israelites escape when they escaped Egypt? They escaped the god of sin, the god of slavery, the god of bondage. And so when you go into the desert, and you start to feel the lack, and you start to turn away from God, you start to enter back into slavery. Don’t pretend that you’re doing it your own way. I actually hate that song, that Frank Sinatra song, “I did it my way.” It’s this beautiful song. It sounds so great and grand. How empty is that? I want to do it his way. So guard your heart against complaint, against offense, or guess what? You’re opening the door to the fiery serpents.
Once again, it’s not like God is saying, “You evil people, I’m mad at you, and so I’m going to come up with a torturous way to hurt you.” It’s not that at all. God is allowing the consequences of their sin, because guess what happens in the very next verse:
7 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. Num 21.7
God allowed the fiery serpents so that they would realize their sin and come to him and ask for forgiveness and salvation. God is not vengeful. We’re getting to John 3:16, which proves that pretty spectacularly.
V. Look and Live 13:39
Now, let’s give them some credit. Oftentimes we start to experience the fiery serpents because we’ve turned away from God. We’ve started to have a bad attitude towards God. We started to complain. And then the fiery serpents come, the discipline of God. Who knows what it is in your life? Maybe the car breaks down. Who knows? And then you start thinking, “Oh man, now I have another reason to be offended with God.” And the very thing that he was trying to use to help you slow down and see his discipline, the very thing that was supposed to turn you back to God, the fiery serpent, so you’d look to him for your salvation, becomes another stumbling block on your path of complaint and offense.
I’m pretty impressed with the Israelites. They’re complaining about God in the desert, the fiery serpents come, and instead of saying, “Oh man, they didn’t have fiery serpents in Egypt,” instead of that, they recognized, “Oh, this is our fault. We created this problem. We need God to save us.” And so they go to him and they ask for salvation, and Moses prays to the Lord:
8 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.” 9 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. Num 21.8–9
So the people come to Moses, and they say, “Hey, there’s a bunch of poisonous serpents. We’re dying out here. It’s painful. Save us.” And Moses goes, “I’ve got just the thing.” And he makes a bronze statue of a serpent, and he holds it up, and he says, “This will save you.” That’s crazy. That makes no sense. Any doctor who told you anything like this, you would think was a kook, a nut. And not only that, you’re in the middle of the desert, you just have bread and water, you have no medical attention beyond what this guy is offering. And yet that was God’s plan.
We are pretty sure we know how God is going to save us. We’re pretty sure when we start praying. We know: “If I need money, God’s going to give me money.” And then God gives you something completely different, and he goes, “Here you go.” And we complain yet again: “God, I wanted the money.” And he goes, “Well, trust me. Look at this bronze serpent and live.”
VI. The Psychological Significance 16:02
What is going on here? Well, I do think it has some significance, and so we’re going to look at a couple of layers of meaning here. We could do it a lot more academically, but this is easy. We’re going to look at the psychological, the spiritual, and the Christological significance of the bronze serpent. Now you’ve got some many-syllable words that you can share with your friends.
So first of all, the psychological significance. Here’s the concept: you have to look at your sin to be saved. Let me explain it a little bit more. If you have an unpaid parking ticket, and you don’t look at that parking ticket because you are so embarrassed and so ashamed, and you have no money, so you don’t want to pay the parking ticket, and you’re mad anyway because they should have marked the parking spot better, that parking ticket will kill you, or at least land you in jail, if you don’t look at it. All of this is about our attention. There’s nothing scarier than a snake that bites you in the dark, that you can’t see, something that can kill you with a single bite that you don’t notice.
And so part of the symbol of the bronze serpent is, during Lent every year, we tell you it’s time for some self-examination. Where are your serpents, the fiery serpents that are going to kill you? Pay attention. There’s actually nothing more valuable in this life right now than your attention. I mean that dollars and donuts. All the way across the board, advertising, the game that Silicon Valley is playing: their whole job is to get you to look at their stuff, and part of their job is to get you not to look at other stuff, to distract you from how much money you’re paying. How many subscription services can you possibly have? It’s like, “It’s just $8. Don’t even worry. Don’t look.” And then all of a sudden you have $600 of subscriptions every month, and they’re just killing you. It’s all a game of attention. When we’re talking about our sin, the problem with these fiery serpents is when you don’t look at them, when you don’t stop and slow down and pay attention to what’s going on in your life. That’s the psychological significance.
In fact, next week is Saint Patrick’s Day. I love Saint Patrick’s Day. Not for the booze, but the story of Saint Patrick is wonderful. What did he do? He came to Ireland, showed them Jesus, and got rid of all the snakes. That’s salvation. He came to Ireland, and he helped them see the goodness of their salvation in Christ, and all the snakes went away. He brought their attention to the right things. There’s a reason why Saint Patty’s Day happens in Lent every year, and it’s not just so you can have an extra feast day to skip out on your fast. Either way, if you look at the bronze serpent, the things that you’re scared to look at, you will find the things that you need to do.
In fact, there’s this great story in King Arthur, the Round Table, where they’re looking for the Holy Grail: the cup that Jesus used on the night that he was betrayed, when he held up the cup and he said, “This is my blood.” They’re looking for that cup, the Holy Grail, the thing of the greatest value. And what’s the story? It says each knight went into the part of the forest that seemed darkest to him. He looked in the dark place. Not because we’re worshiping the darkness. No, no, no. We’re bringing light to darkness. That’s what paying attention does. And not only that, but guess what? You have the Holy Spirit in you, the one that Jesus had, the one that raised him from the dead. So bring the Holy Spirit with you. Look at your sin. Ask for forgiveness. He’ll show you the way of salvation, and you’ll end up in the promised land. This is the psychological significance of the bronze serpent.
VII. The Spiritual Significance 20:50
Let’s talk about the spiritual significance. The great problem in the world is this. God made a beautiful world. He put Adam and Eve in his image, in his likeness, with his breath in them. And they said, “We’d rather do it our way,” and they rejected him. And by their rejection, and by all of our rejection of God, the world has broken and invited the fiery serpents in. In fact, the serpent was involved in that story, if you remember. And ever since, every human has rejected God and embraced sin and death. So in the bronze serpent, God offers up a symbol of their death and sin crucified. He says, “This is what I do with your death and sin. I symbolize it, crucify it, and save you from it. Pay attention. Look to it.”
The Israelites repent. They look to the image of their sin being held up and conquered by the power of God. Not a single Israelite healed their own wounds. Not a single Israelite came up with a special antidote. In fact, there’s a medical symbol that has to do with two serpents twining around, and some of it has to do with, “Oh yeah, you know, if you take the venom of a serpent, you can sometimes make the antidote.” That’s all fine and well and good. That’s not this story. This story is: God healed them. That’s the story of the world. We rejected him. We embraced sin and death. God crucified sin and death, that we might have life, and life abundantly.
VIII. The Christological Significance 22:07
And so let’s jump right into the Christological significance, in our Gospel, John 3:14. So we’re getting to 3:16; we’re getting there, I promise. John 3:14, it says:
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. John 3.14–15
So Jesus is calling himself a snake. What is going on here? Another crazy story. How did they connect these two stories? What makes this work? Well, of course, you’re really intelligent, so you already know where we’re going with this. Jesus became the picture of our death and our sin and hung himself on a cross, that we might not have to sin and die. He crucified all of the fallen nature, all of our rejection. Every sin that you have committed, every sin that you will commit, is on the cross, already paid for, bought at the price of his blood, so that every one of you today can walk out of this building, and guess what? You don’t have to sin. You don’t have to die. You don’t have to let the fiery serpent eat you. It’s dead.
In fact, even Paul talks about it. He’s like, “Why are you trying to submit yourself back into bondage that you’ve been freed from?” (Gal 5.1) He’s looking at the church, and they’re just like us, and so they’re arguing and fighting, and they’re doubting, and they’re trying to one-up one another. And he’s like, “Why? Why? We have been set free.” There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus (Rom 8.1). The message of Lent is: look at the serpent. It has no power over you. Christ has set you free from it. Let’s live. But the message of Lent is also that in order to live, we have to join him on the cross. We have to take that sin, that death that we cling to so tightly, and we have to let it go, open our arms, and join Jesus on the cross, as the sin and death is crucified in us and we are made a resurrected people. That’s the story of the bronze serpent. That’s the story of Jesus. And how do you do it? Well, guess what? You look to the cross. The same way the Israelites who were bitten had to look at the bronze serpent, we have to look to the cross. Our sin and our salvation are both there.
IX. For God So Loved the World 24:30
And we get to that great high point in Scripture, John 3:16:
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3.16
Once and for all, we can banish the image we have of God as the judgmental father. We sometimes separate God and Jesus, and we make God out to be this angry God who is trying to punish us, and Jesus, like an action-hero guy, jumped in the middle and said, “No, I’ll save them.” That’s not God. God loved the world. Not the saved world: the evil, condemned, dead-in-your-trespasses world. That’s what our New Testament was about: “while you were dead in your trespasses.” Think about the worst thing you have ever done. God knew that, and then sent his Son to die for you. That’s pretty amazing. That’s the love that we have to sing about every Sunday, to remind ourselves how good it is, because it just doesn’t compute. In fact, the only way for you to understand God’s love is to become the love of God, to become like him, to be transformed. That’s the journey we’re all on. As we look at the cross, everything that’s in us that is not love is burned away, and we, on this journey in this world, become more and more like the one who would send his only Son to save a wicked and rebellious humanity.
Let me just say this: he also wanted to spend eternity with you guys, which means he loves you more than I do. I don’t think I could spend a week with any of you. No, I’m just kidding. But think about the implication. He wants to be with you. This is the Christian story, and this is why this verse is so powerful, and why it’s been memed about the world, and people love to throw John 3:16 on everything: because it’s the center. God loved the world and sent his Son, that we might live with him eternally.
If you’re feeling bummed about something today, remember the good news, the joy of our salvation: that God loved you enough to rescue you from the bondage, the house of slavery. He’s probably taking you through a desert. It seems like almost the entire book is about how he takes us through deserts. There are moments where we get to experience hints of the kingdom of God in the afterlife, but there’s a lot of desert in the Bible. And if you’re feeling like you’re in the desert, remember: that’s the path to the promised land. This morning I’m just thinking about how great it is to be here with you, worshiping the God who loves us. It’s all about where you put your attention. So as we get towards the end of this Lent, let’s look to the cross. Let’s look to Jesus, our example, the author, perfecter, finisher of our faith (Heb 12.2). And the good work that he’s begun in you, he will bring to completion (Phil 1.6). Amen.