4 Lent Year B 3/10/2024
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
The conversation that is recorded in our Gospel reading today is part of a secret meeting late at night between Jesus and one of the pharisees… His name was Nicodemus.
The conversation went on into the night.
And we pick it up in the middle of the chapter…
Near the end of the conversation.
Our reading begins with these words of our Lord:
Just 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.
There is a bit in these verses I want to look at today.
When Jesus talks about Moses he is referring to what was our Old Testament reading today…
From the book of Numbers.
In that reading, we hear about the Israelites in the wilderness…
They became impatient and spoke against God and against his prophet Moses.
They complained saying:
Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
There is no bread! There is no water!
And we detest this miserable food.
The result of their sin was a plague of venomous snakes.
In horrible fashion, they were bitten and with fiery poison they suffered…
Because of their misery they repented…
Saying:
We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you;
pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.
And with God’s instructions, Moses made a serpent and placed it on a bronze pole.
Whenever someone was suffering, they could gaze up at this image and be healed…
They received life!
In this story we can get a feel for the weight of sin, the justice of God, the mercy of God, and His glorious provision of healing and salvation.
This was the account which Jesus chose to describe his mission and purpose.
He was pointing out his own messianic prophecy…
To Nicodemus.
The pharisee, who met with him in secret…
The pharisee, who was the teacher of the people…
The ones who went around instructing others in Torah…
In the law…
Here Jesus told the story from the Torah and points it back to himself.
And what an analogy this is!
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up…
In a sinful and dying world, the atoning cross must be lifted up.
Must be lifted up…
A double meaning of Christ’s crucifixion and his exaltation.
It is used three other times in our Gospel of John (8.28; 12.32, 34).
The crucifixion must happen…
It is the keystone of God’s plan of salvation.
And our Lord chose this story in the Book of Numbers to point Nicodemus to his mission.
He chose the symbol of a snake to represent sin…
Of course, we know it was a serpent that tempted Adam and Eve in the garden… in the Genesis account.
So it was the serpent that inflicted pain once again in the wilderness upon the Israelites.
Just as the people were inflicted by the poison of the serpent…
So are all people inflicted with the problem of sin…
As it is written,
There is no one righteous, not even one… (Romans 3.10)
All of us have this problem of sin…
We can’t fix it on our own…
There is not a self-remedy…
And so, Jesus took on sin… became the curse… so that we might have the forgiveness of sin.
As it is written,
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us… (Galatians 3.13)
God chose the perfect symbol – a snake…
Pastor R. Kent Hughes writes:
Our Lord on the cross took the sins of the world upon himself as symbolized by the writhing serpent. [1]
It is only the cross of Jesus Christ that redeems the sins of the world.
There is no other cure for our sins…
It is the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth on the cross that makes way for the salvation of the world.
Our sacraments point toward this very truth.
This is the meaning of our baptism…
Where we find union with Christ in his death and resurrection…
(BCP, 858)
In the Eucharist…
Where the sacrifice of Christ is made present within us…
In the Eucharist he unites us to his one offering of himself…
Which is the cross.
(BCP, 859)
The cross of Jesus Christ…
It is our hope…
It is our cure…
It is where we find mercy and grace…
Just as the Israelites were suffering from the serpents…
They had to gaze up at the serpent pole to be saved…
To be given life.
No matter how bad they had been bitten…
No matter the number of times…
No matter how sick…
Life was found as they looked up and believed…
So, we must gaze up at the cross for our salvation.
No matter the depth of our sin…
No matter how many times we have failed…
No matter the degradation of our ways…
No matter how confused we are…
No matter how strange we feel…
Life is found as we look up at the cross.
Jesus takes our infected natures upon himself, bears the venom, and imparts a new nature to us. [2]
As it is written,
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
(2 Corinthians 5.17)
We are to look to Christ Jesus…
Our gaze must be fixed on him…
When we look to Jesus…
His cross and the resurrection…
When we believe in his work…
Not our own…
We will be saved from the penalty of our sins…
From the power of our sins…
And in the life to come from the very presence of sin.
It is here in this conversation with Nicodemus that we find Jesus pointing toward the cross…
His future sacrificial death on the cross.
Jesus said, “Just 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.
And then he says the most famous of scripture verses:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
He goes on…
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him…
Today, there are a lot of people and things that want our gaze…
That want us to look to them for salvation.
But the only real salvation…
The only real remedy…
The only real joy and hope…
Is found in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. (Acts 16.31)
May we with our sins, with our struggles, with our difficulties…
Gaze at the cross of Jesus Christ and believe…
Because it’s only at the foot of the cross where healing begins!
Amen.
[1] R. Kent Hughes, John, Preaching the Word (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1999), 83.
[2] Ibid., 83.