This Week's Message

The 4^th Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2009 Series B: LSB

Text: John 3:14-21

Title: “Look on Jesus the Christ and LIVE!”

 Prayer:        “…so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”

Far be it from us to complain about how the Lord God brings His grace into the lives of His people.  Far be it from us to grow cold with His living presence and His daily care and love.  Far be it from us to rise up against His servants of grace when they try to be faithful to the way and the work of the Lord.  Far be it from us to seek out other gods in which to put our trust.  What’s with those Israelites in the desert journeying to the land of promise?  Do you get the full gist of their complaint to God and to His servant Moses?  They said, “We loathe this miserable food.” 

We like to say hindsight is 20/20.  But can we not see some of our own complaints in theirs?  Can we not measure some of our own coldness of faith and lack of trust in the daily living presence of God in our own lives?  We might not be so brave as to say out loud that we loathe the way our Lord is caring for us, but can we remove ourselves from the complaints we sometimes raise to heaven as seen reflected in our deeds?  Sometimes the choices and decisions we make reflect our lack of trust in our gracious God.  We don’t always trust our loving Lord as we should.  We are not always content with His care from day to day.  In our hearts we might say something like this, “Lord, You have given me this, but I really want that.”  “You have given me this burden of sickness to bear in faith, but I really want it to be gone and my health to be better, do You really love me?  Then take away this burden.”  We sometimes “play the harlot” seeking after some other way and some other god to put our trust in, a god that will sometimes fulfill the short-term cravings we have for the moment.  “Do we have to have this tasteless manna and this wine so often here in our assembly?  Give me something more dynamic, and anyway it takes up too much time each week.  I’d rather You would give me something other than this to quench my spiritual hunger.” 

For many of us it might be said, “I would never say out loud what those foolish Israelites did on their journey to the promised land.”  We often fail to remember that the Lord can see what is written on our minds and hearts.  And isn’t it from these that our daily lives proceed in the decisions we make and the actions that come from such decisions.  Our faithlessness starts inside and proceeds out from here.  Do we sometimes love the darkness rather than the light?

Maybe in hearing this story of the deadly serpents sent by God to destroy His people you conclude that the Lord is too severe in His punishment and judgment against His own people.  What’s a little complaint against food and against the servants of God?  Where would such unchecked complaint against the Lord and His servants lead?  The Lord God needed to punish their sin severely.  For without this severe punishment, in time all the people would have thrown away their faith in the Lord forever.  All would be lost.  The world would be lost forever.  But we are told that God loves the world.  And He loves the world in a much greater way than the world so often loathes His love.  For His people Israel God directed Moses, who is shown as a type of Christ for the people in his intercession for them, to form a fiery serpent out of bronze, one that looked like the serpents that were bringing pain and death upon the people, and to set it up high on a standard.  Everyone who was bitten by a deadly serpent and looked upon this standard would live.  I wonder, were there those who didn’t believe this Word of God spoken by Moses, and though this raised serpent could be their salvation and rescue them from pain and death to life rather disregarded it and died.  We would say about such people, “What utter foolishness.” 

But we live in a world today in which the cross of Christ is not only disregarded but utterly loathed by many.  There are too many that love the darkness, even though God sent the brightest Light of salvation to save them and rescue them from the sure and painful deadly bite of the serpent Satan and the sin he holds forth as his deadly gift to the world.  To too many people this death of sin is life to them.  Jesus says it this way, “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”  Too many are too proud to acknowledge their life of sin, rather they revel in it and mock the very salvation that the God who loves them offers.   

Here is One, like one of us, but much more.  How does the prophet Isaiah put it, “He was despised and forsaken of men… like One from whom men hide their faces… He was despised, and we did not esteem Him… We esteemed Him smitten, stricken of God and afflicted.”  And indeed Jesus was.  But we must see more here at the cross as we look at our Savior here.  We must see these things too that the prophet puts before us: “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried…But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed… the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”  This is the great richness of God’s mercy of which the Apostle Paul speaks.  Though we were children of God’s wrath and deserved only the bite of the fiery serpent and the painful death that came from this, God in this rich mercy sent forth His own beloved Son, His most precious treasure, even while we were still dead in our sins.  He made us alive together with Christ Jesus by grace alone, His grace that He continues to pour into the lives of His people in the simple ways and means by which He stills saves and nourishes us.  Surely we are not to loathe His means of grace, His Word and Sacraments that seem so simple and powerless, but in which we find the sure salvation that our Lord offers through the forgiveness of sins. 

We are drawn not to a bright serpent to find life and salvation, but rather to the brightness of Christ raised on the standard of the cross.  We are drawn from darkness to light here, from sin and death, to forgiveness and life.  We need look nowhere else.  Look to Christ upon the cross and be saved.  Amen.