JOHN STUDY

Meeting at 6:30pm Friday 6 July

Our over-arching aim is to understand how it is that we get LIFE – not just a life or a tolerable life, but eternal life. This passage explains the connection between God making a person spiritually alive (new birth) and Jesus dying on the cross.  Those two things are inseparable. The first is only possible because of the second.

John 3.14-21

¹⁴ “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. ¹⁶ For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. ¹⁹ This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. ²¹ But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”

Higher learning isn't high enough
Nicodemus was perplexed. Jesus had taken his thinking into new, unfamiliar territory.  Usually Nicodemus felt he had mastery of his subject – the Scriptures – but suddenly a flood of doubt and incredulity over-whelmed his self-confidence. Again, Jesus tells Nicodemus (v12) that he isn’t equipped to understand spiritual matters. No matter how high his intellect he couldn’t reach into heaven and know the mind of God. Rather, Jesus says, the Son of Man has descended to bring God’s Life to people.

People speak of going to University for ‘higher learning’ – meaning knowledge that is high above what the ordinary person can understand. But that is not how we know God. And it is not how we get the Life of God into us. We must be born of water and the Spirit. Then we can put our faith in what God will show us and do in us.

Two wrong directions
The apostle Paul wrote something that fits Nicodemus’s situation perfectly.

Romans 10.6-8

⁶ The righteousness that comes from faith speaks like this: Do not say in your heart, “Who will go up to heaven?” that is, to bring Christ down ⁷ or, “Who will go down into the abyss?” that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. ⁸ On the contrary, what does it say? The message is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. This is the message of faith that we proclaim.

Paul had in mind two wrong directions to go in seeking to be righteous. One is what Nicodemus was trying: Riding his soaring intellect to measure the thoughts of God. There is a Greek myth about a foolish mini-god called Icarus. In the myth, his father made him some wings with feathers glued on with wax.  His father told him to stay at low altitude – but Icarus was so exhilarated by his powers of flight that he went up and up high above everyone else but got too near the sun. The heat melted the wax, the feathers fell off and Icarus plunged into the cold sea and drowned.

Such a great illustration of pride in our intelligence. We will never soar into God’s presence and know the thoughts of God by approaching him on our terms. Our ideas will turn out to be dead feathers and melt in the presence of God.

Paul says that we must not try to fly high on our own cleverness (nor should we dig down deep into our own misery) to find the Truth. No, the Truth comes to us. The Word is near you.  Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man has come to us. The Word became flesh and lived among us. He brings understanding – he brings LIFE to us.

How does he bring it and where is it found?  Paul says the Word is spoken to us by the Spirit so that we can confess it (that is, speak the YES of faith to it).  The Word is near you. In your mouth and in your heart.

Nicodemus needed to lay down his theological, cultural and traditional ammo - to stop his arguing and debating, and just listen. Be quick to listen and slow to speak. (James 1)

Learning new things from old snakes

Then Jesus takes Nicodemus back to an event in Israel’s history. Something that Nicodemus would have known inside out. But while he knew the words and the background and the outcome of this event – he had never understood what it MEANT. He thought he had – but Jesus was about to show him the astonishing meaning that Nicodemus had never grasped.  In fact, no Israelite had ever grasped what this event really meant – until this moment when Jesus tells Nicodemus what it means.

Jesus only had to mention the incident about the snake and Nicodemus’s mind would immediately fill with all the details - he’d known them since he was a child.

There are things that you and I have known from the Bible since we were little children. But we may have totally missed their meaning. When we are born of the Spirit, he comes to fill those empty shells with the living revelation of Jesus. It’s more astonishing than CGI that colourises a black-and-white picture and then animates it.  The Spirit makes the Word so alive we can feel and taste its effect in our lives.

 Numbers 21 ⁴ Then they set out from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea to bypass the land of Edom, but the people became impatient because of the journey. ⁵ The people spoke against God and Moses: “Why have you led us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread or water, and we detest this wretched food!” ⁶ Then the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and they bit them so that many Israelites died. ⁷ The people then came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Intercede with the Lord so that he will take the snakes away from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. ⁸ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake image and mount it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will recover.” ⁹ So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole. Whenever someone was bitten, and he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered.

Jesus told Nicodemus that this event was a foreshadowing of something Jesus would do very shortly. A foreshadowing means an indicator of something that hasn’t happened yet.  The business with the snake was speaking forward to something that Jesus would do.

Fresh meaning

We’ll unpack what Jesus said.  First, remember that John the Baptist and then Jesus, came to announce the arrival of God’s Kingdom. Jesus is its king – the Messiah (God’s One and Only Chosen Leader for Humankind). Nicodemus was expecting a messiah and was wondering if Jesus might be him. But he and all who were expecting a messiah at that time thought he would come in power to overthrow the Roman Kingdom and establish Israel as the kingdom above all kingdoms.

So, it was a shocking thing for Nicodemus when Jesus who claimed to be Messiah (Son of Man v.14) and Son of God (v.18) likened himself to the snake on the pole! 

That snake business was a grim event in Israel. Their rebellion against God had run so deep that it attracted God’s direct judgement. A plague of poisonous snakes poured through the Israelite camp. People were bitten and dying from the snake poison. A delegation went to Moses – they understood the connection between the plague and their rebellion. They didn’t regard this as a freak event.  They asked Moses to confess their sins to God on their behalf and plead with him to withhold the judgement.

God instructed Moses to make a bronze model of a snake and impale it on a pole in the middle of the camp. Anyone suffering a poisonous bit could go there, look at the bronze snake and recover.

Before we go on to see why Jesus said this illustrated him – let’s work out what was happening back in the Israelite camp all those years before. The metal snake had no power to heal (obviously!). It was not set up as an object of worship. Looking at the snake was not just seeing the snake. To look was to realise and acknowledge that their sin was the cause of the judgement.  A person looking at this metal snake was saying something like this in his heart, “God, I know you are against me because I have abandoned you and sinned against you. This is the reason the snake poison in my blood is slowly killing me. God, I confess my sin – heal me as you have promised.”

Now we can see how appropriate it was that Jesus identifies himself with the snake impaled on the wooden pole. He knew he was shortly to be nailed to a Roman Cross for the same reasons.

Poisoned blood
All men and women have snake poison in their blood – our sinful nature – and it is slowly killing us. Death is our Creator’s judgment because we have chosen to use our lives and his resources against him and waste them on our own reckless and destructive pleasures.

Jesus was lifted up on the cross – a vivid confirmation that God was dealing with our inward plague (our poisonous sinful nature) by judging his Son instead of us.  As the metal snake impaled on the pole was a representative of all the poisonous snakes – so the Son of Man is the Representative of all of us who should be judged but by God’s grace are forgiven and healed of our sin. God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5.21)

The same kind of ‘looking’ that temporarily saved those Israelites is required by us who would be forgiven and restored from sin’s poison. “God, I have a sinful nature that is slowly killing me and will abandon me to hell. I’m looking at Jesus on the cross and I confess my sin put him there. Heal me and restore me to become a true child of yours – just as you have promised.”

Love finds a way

¹⁶ For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 

The apostle John gasps in amazement at this love. He wrote in his letter, 1 John 3

This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. See what great love the Father has given us that we should be called the children of God – and that is who we are!

Billions of vulnerable campers
There are 7.6 billion souls camped briefly tonight on the surface of the earth – all poisoned by a sinful nature and slowly (some quickly) dying. God in love has bought time and opportunity for us to seek him. He paid for that opportunity by the death of his Son. But the payment must be received. It is not a blanket forgiveness. A major plank in the Enemy’s strategy is to deceive people into thinking that because Jesus died on the cross we all go to heaven! Everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus was lifted up a little way and above everything
First, he was lifted up on a cross – we have the accounts of it here in the Gospels. But now he is lifted up to a throne in heaven far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given. Everything is under his feet. Eph 1.20ff. From this impregnable position he continues to make his offer to humanity:  “Look and Live!”

¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

Jesus came as the Rescuer – or, using the old word, Saviour. He is still in rescue mode. He could have come to condemn the world and end it in Nicodemus’s time. But he hadn’t come to condemn but to save. And that is still his programme until he takes human history to its last day.

At his first coming, he fully completed everything needed for ANY person who is thirsty to drink his life. Whosoever wills, may come. Revelation 22.17.  Both the Spirit and the bride (Church) say, “Come!” Let anyone who hears, say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life freely.

We see Jesus still gathering people
It’s our turn to live, seek, find and be rescued for we are the ones alive and camped in the world. And right at the heart of humankind – in the centre of the camp - we see Jesus. We recognise him as the One who was crucified and who drank the poisonous cup for us.  We see him now as the glorified King. The King of Love who for a time is still welcoming people everywhere to come and drink his Water of Life freely. The price is paid.

 Hebrews 2.8/9 For in subjecting everything to Jesus, God left nothing that is not under him. As it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him. ⁹ But we do see Jesus—made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God’s grace he might taste death for everyone—now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death.

Jesus stood with Nicodemus that dark night 
Jesus said to Nicodemus:¹⁹ This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. ²¹ But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”

Nicodemus, you came under cover of darkness to debate with Jesus. But there is a greater darkness - it is in your own mind and heart. Look, the Light is standing in front of you. Come into the Light. Bow to your King. Look and Live.

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