Look to Jesus..and Live
John 3:14-21
13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but[b] have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
Earlier in John chapter three Jesus has confronted Nicodemus by telling him..that even he must be born again.
Jesus is here talking to Nicodemus, responding to the question Nicodemus posed in verse nine, “How can this be?”
What Nicodemus really wants to know is, this new birth you talk about...how in the world can you be born again?
And so Jesus answers with an illustration he will always remember
Jesus ends his conversation with Nicodemus by telling him about salvation.
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder-ness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (15) that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Jesus reminds Nicodemus of Jewish history..He reminds him of a historical passage that he already knows about..but just needed to be reminded of
We find it in the book of Numbers 21:4-9 NKJ
4 Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged 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 our soul loathes this worthless bread.”
6 So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.
7 Therefore 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.
8 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.”
9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
Now what we find here..is the people of Israel are on their journey to the promised land
There are no amenities..no star bucks..no drivethru's..
just some of the roughest terrain on the earth.
TBS that because of the difficulty of the journey the people became discouraged and began to complain against God and His servant Moses
And because of their grumbling and complaining..
God in response sends poisonous snakes into their midst and many of the people are bitten and die from the snake bites
There's only one thing to get your attention When you're in a situation...
And that's a bigger situation that suddenly happens with worst consequences..
then the one you're going through and complaining about in the first place
We as adults and parents… Sometimes tell our kids the same thing.
If you want something to complain or cry about..
I'll give you something to complain or cry about..
has anyone ever heard those words before?
TBS..Then the people repented and cried out, “We have sinned”
And God responded and made a way of salvation…
What he did was..He commanded Moses to make the image of a serpent from bronze and to hang it from a pole.
And all the people who were bitten and were dying could be healed only by lifting their eyes and looking at the serpent.
Nothing else would work to make a way for salvation…
Except by doing what God told them to do..
There stature in the community had no effect…
Their ability to do things and all of that…
There tears, there pleas, nothing they tried would work
Only their faith in what God had Moses tell them to do...
would set them free
They would be saved by an act of faith, and ALL those who looked up at the serpent were indeed..saved.
It goes without saying that the solution proposed by God through Moses was one that they hadn't thought about
Nicodemus understood that it was sin that had brought the judgment of God upon the people. It was a result of their sin that they were dying..
the only people who were saved by looking to the bronze serpent were those who acknowledged that they were dying. These were people who were perishing because of their sin and they knew it!
we dont want to overlook the importance of the “look of faith," it had nothing to do with their ability..
But everything to do with the promise from God for salvation..
it was only by their faith that those who were bitten looked at the bronze snake lived.
Moses lifted up the serpent in the camp and all the dying Israelites had to do was look at the pole and they would be saved.
“No matter how horribly they were bitten, no matter how many times they had been bitten or how sick they were, the opportunity for salvation was there..
For total restoration! Amen?
The story represents Jesus on the cross..and the way to salvation that we have today
And we like the children of Israel have been given a way of salvation… Only by looking to Jesus and his finished work on the cross..and accepting Him as Lord and Saviour is going to get it done..
the world may tell you a different story..but Jesus is the only way to salvation
and salvation is the key to every benefit and promise God has ever made to us. Amen?
It was not enough to know that salvation was offered..
each man had to look for himself otherwise God’s provision was useless.
Salvation comes through the simple look of faith to Jesus and that's it..not by having a perfect faith.
The Bible says come as you are… And God will do the work in your life
So many people think that they have to change their lifestyle..
or change the way they are, or clean up the way they live before they can come to..
Or be worthy of receiving a way of salvation
All the while still dealing with and living with the consequences that they face every day..while still being bitten over and over, by whatever comes along the path of life.
And all the while they have no peace, no rest, no comfort...
When you are willing to use your faith and look to Jesus and rest alone in His finished work on the cross…
There's nothing that can come against you that He has not already provided the way in means of escape from. Amen?
No matter what you may come against… He is already provided the answer and the salvation for your protection from it..
But there are those who might say what about Ebola?
What about it?
Do you not think that what Jesus did on the cross was enough for Ebola..to be covered under the healing that is the benefit of what he did when He died on the cross for us!
Isaiah 53:5 NKJ
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
Right now the world is in fear of this new infectious disease..
No one knows that much about it…
The doctors don't know, the government doesn't know
The good news is is we don't have to know..
God knows..Jesus knows.. And that's all we need to know
There's one thing that we know for sure… And the Bible tells us
He already paid the price..He already made the way..
all we have to do is look to him as the author and finisher of our faith
and the completed work of what he did on the cross for us
And by His stripes we are healed..
Not one day might be..but we already are healed!
Say it out loud and get used to hearing yourself proclaim this promise..
"I AM HEALED" say it with me "I AM HEALED"
We already have the way of salvation..
We already have been inoculated from whatever may come our way
as long as we look to Jesus as a guarantor of the inoculation
John 3:16,17 NKJ
For God so loved the world that He (already made the way)
He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Jesus didn't come to condemn the world… He didn't have to
The fall of man had already done that..He came to save it!
Condemnation is serious business folks..
It can kill you..its Damnation by a con
When you say that way it sounds a lot worse… that's because it is..
Fact matter is most people don't realize..
that it is an ongoing round-the-clock event that is happening to them on a daily basis..
By that I mean.. Catastrophes come and go..
Damaging Storms
Hurricanes of destruction
Terrorist incidents
Diseases like polio, aids, H1N1, Ebola
And through faith in God and praying Christians a cure comes..
and after a while..the condemnation and fear is no longer felt
in its full force..like it is in the crisis mode
When in fact.. If you don't know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior
the condemnation never ends..
it is an ongoing affliction supplied and applied by the accuser..Forever!
It may seem lesser or greater at times… But that doesn't change the fact that it never ends
It's only in those times when it seems less or that the accuser tricks you and makes you think in those times that you have a handle on what's happening to you and that things aren't so bad
John 3:18,19 NKJ
18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
MSG says it this way..
Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
Jesus did not come to condemn an already condemned world, what good would that do?
He doesn’t say that those who refuse the Light will be condemned at some future date. He says that they are “already condemned” they are just waiting for the sentence to be carried out!
What a terrible plight to be under and not even realize it..
If you were to make a trip to federal prison…
You would find there are those who are on death row
and they are condemned with the sentence that they know
there's no getting around
and they know what their fate is..Death
People in the world who don't have Christ in their life are no different..
All the catastrophes, diseases, and anything else that the accuser throws in our pathway..
All fail in comparison with the death sentence and eternal damnation..
that awaits those who are unprepared for eternity..
The only way to escape the condemnation now and for all eternity..
is to look to and believe in Jesus.
Romans 8:1-4 MSG
1-2 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
We can choose to walk in victory during a crisis…
Or we can choose fear and doubt during the crisis
and act like we were walking in victory afterwards..
We don't have to fight the Victory..
The battle has been fought, Jesus was Victorious
and thankfully the victory is already ours..
All we have to do is look to Jesus and to lay claim to and grab ahold of..
the victory that Jesus already has provided on our behalf
Illus.
On April 21st, in the year 1519, the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez sailed into the harbor of Vera Cruz, Mexico. He brought with him only about 600 men, and yet over the next two years his vastly outnumbered forces were able to defeat Montezuma and all the warriors of the Aztec empire, making Cortez the conqueror of all Mexico. How was this incredible feat accomplished, when two prior expeditions had failed even to establish a colony on Mexican soil? Here’s the secret. Cortez knew from the very beginning that he and his men faced incredible odds. He knew that the road before them would be dangerous and difficult. He knew that his men would be tempted to abandon their quest and return to Spain. And so, as soon as Cortez and his men had come ashore and unloaded their provisions, he ordered their entire fleet of eleven ships destroyed. His men stood on the shore and watched as their only possibility of retreat burned and sank. And from that point on, they knew beyond any doubt there was no return, no turning back. Nothing lay behind them but empty ocean. Their only option was to go forward, to conquer or die.
We often tend to look to our own understanding and to only look back at what we know..to figure out the answer to our dilemma..
But truly the answer to all of life's dilemmas can only be found..when we look ahead
When we Look to Jesus Victory on the Cross.
I have decided to follow Jesus;
I have decided to follow Jesus;
I have decided to follow Jesus;
No turning back, no turning back.
Let's pray
