Sermon Tone Analysis

We come to our text for today.

A very familiar text of John 3:16.

We do well to remind ourselves.

The text is so familiar, at times, I tend to forget the context of the text, which is always important.

That is Jesus is speaking to a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who has come to Him and has asked, "What must I do?

What is the key to make sure I have entrance into the kingdom?

What law must I be sure to keep?

Which way do I need to walk?"

With a great deal of respect he comes to whom he perceived as the rabbi, Jesus.

Jesus perceiving the needs of his heart told him, you remember, /"You must be born again."/

You must be born from above.

There has to be a new birth.

Jesus expands on that as we come to our text today to describe this undying life that really doesn't just begin at physical death but begins at spiritual birth.

One of the nice things is we have an overlapping eternity to our living.

We have a physical life that ends at physical death, but we also have a spiritual life that is eternal and begins at our spiritual birth, and the two overlap.

So the joy and abundant living the spiritual life provides is something we have access to in our remaining physical lives as well.

Jesus says there's a serpent problem.

It's because of the serpent problem that Jesus said you have to be born from above.

If it wasn't for the serpent problem, maybe the answers of Nicodemus or his thoughts on how to obtain eternal life, live a good life, walk properly, keep the Sabbath and the festivals…maybe those would be good things, but the problem is there's a serpent problem.

Now we first see the serpent problem back in Numbers.

God was judging the nation of Israel, because its sinfulness was so great that God decided on this occasion He would punish them.

He would destroy them by sending snakes into the camp; some serpents to come in and kill off the nation of Israel…serpents executing the judgment and wrath of God upon sin.

The people of Israel had a serpent problem.

They needed to get rid of the serpents.

In John 3:14, Jesus said God offered an answer to the problem.

He said, /"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.

That whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."/

The problem is solved by looking upon a bronze serpent lifted up high on a pole, so high that all the inhabitants of the camp of Israel could see.

If they would look at that serpent and would trust in God and have faith in God, they would find that the serpent problem… the effect of it, the judgment of it…would not affect them.

See they had a serpent problem.

We have a serpent problem.

I think sometimes today, we try to address our sin problem, our serpent problem in many crazy ways.

Imagine if Israel had approached their serpent problem the way sometimes we approach our sin problem.

What if they had said, "Well, you know what we need to do?

We need to make some medicine.

We need to make some anti-serpent venom.

We need to get busy about inoculating ourselves against the serpent problem."

So many people today have decided,…You know what I'm going to do?

I am going to straighten up my life.

I'm going to put the TV in the trashcan.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do that.

I'm going to inoculate myself from the problem.

But there are just too many serpents.

There are just too many snakes.

There are just too many opportunities to get bitten.

Making medicine for it does not work.

Doing work and trying to overcome the effects of the venom by trying to be better than a venomous bite is never going to work.

Another thing they could have tried that we often try is just to pretend the snakes are not there.

We just pretend we really don't sin.

We just pretend our addictions, our habits, our movie preferences, our tongue, and our temper is really not sin.

You see we just pretend like we're not snake bit.

We just pretend like it never really happened.

We get latched onto by a viper, and we just say, "You know that's really not going to bother me."

Imagine Israel trying to just pretend it never happened.

I tell you another thing they could have done.

They could have gathered the elders together and passed anti-serpent laws.

Now that would have done it.

Right?

Just make serpents illegal.

You know just change the morality.

Just enforce a code that makes it illegal to do that.

That does away with sin.

Doesn't it?

Whenever we pass laws that makes sin illegal like murder.

That stops murder.

We make DWI's illegal.

That stops drinking.

Doesn't it?

I mean that's what we think.

We just want to get our government involved.

We have a bad moral problem.

So we need to elect people who will just enforce morality, and life will be so much better.

God won't be made at us anymore.

Anti-serpent laws wouldn't work.

I guess they could have climbed the pole.

You know we try to do that.

Don’t we?

We try to come into the church, and we try to get really involved.

We basically…rather than trusting and looking at the serpent at the top of the pole...just want to climb the pole ourselves.

Just get away from it as far as we can.

Get to a far away mountain as we can.

Try to isolate ourselves from the world as much as we can.

But that's not the solution.

Jesus said, /"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up."/

Really, lifting up is taken two ways.

One of course, Jesus would be lifted up on the cross (literally lifted up).

As much as that bronze serpent was on that pole, Christ was on that pole.

But also He's lifted up in that He is proclaimed.

He is lifted up in the proclamation of the disciples, of the apostles, of the church, of all of those who would come down through history.

When people hear the lifted up words of the gospel…When they hear the message of the Savior…If you look to Him and you trust that His sacrifice, that that Savior on that cross will pay the penalty for the serpent bite of sin that has its venom in you and that you will not die, then you have eternal life.

That's what Jesus said in verse 15, /"That whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."/

Jesus gives us an undying answer here.

We looked to verse 16.

It says, /"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.

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

He who believes on Him is not condemned: but he who does not believe is condemned already..."/ Why?

Because he already has the serpents venom in him.

That's why.

Because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.