Greetings to you, my friend. When Adam sinned, God promised to send His Son to the world to redeem the world. Jesus came. He was rejected by men and crucified. But God raised Him from the dead. Today He is our Savior and He sits at God's right hand in heaven, making intercession for us. And that is the gospel we believe and preach and; that's our message this week.
Oh say! What a joy it is to be in your home for Bible study today. We are being told by those of whom it's said, "They know!" that we shouldn't refer to our program as a "Bible study," because that's offensive to some people. Well, they that are said to know don't know about you then, because your response to these programs is growing! And growing! And growing! We are receiving the largest responses to our programs in our twenty-eight year history. God bless you for that. We love you! We pray we'll both be blessed by our study together today.
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I haven't been to Rochester, Minnesota in awhile, but several years ago when I went there to preach what then was called "revival" meetings, I was impressed with the large emblem on the side of the Mayo Clinic building: a serpent on a staff. I don't know whether it's still there or not. I presume it is. Perhaps you have seen that emblem somewhere and wondered about its significance. It's a symbol of healing, and it has its origin in the Scriptures, in the passage we are looking at today as a matter of fact, as well as some others. After Ken Helterbrand leads us in a hymn, we'll be back for Bible reading and prayer. And we will study some of those passages.
We are reading from John, chapter 12. We will begin at verse 27 and Jesus is speaking. He says, “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name. Then a voice came from heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said it had thundered. Others said an angel has spoken to Him. Jesus answered and said, This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself. This He said, signifying by what death He would die.” And I read through verse 33. Now let’s go to God in prayer. Holy Father, we are so thankful for this teaching of Jesus, for these words that He spoke concerning His death. We are thankful that You sent Your only begotten Son into this world to be our redeemer, and that through His death on the cross, His crucifixion, His lifting up, that we can be saved and justified before You. And it is in His name we pray. Amen!
Perhaps you have noticed that the emblem used by the medical profession is a snake or a serpent draped around or hanging on a staff. We don't see it as much as we once did, but in days gone by, it wasn't uncommon at all to see a metal plaque or a seal on an automobile, perhaps on the license plate, with a serpent on a staff. That indicated the driver or the owner was a medic of some kind. Perhaps the best known, most loved and most often quoted verse in the Scripture is John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." But there is a beautiful and very powerful message in the two preceding verses, actually climaxing in verses sixteen and seventeen.
In those verses Jesus is concluding His conversation with Nicodemus, and He says, "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 everlasting life." Then He said, "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 sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved."
Without at least some knowledge of the Old Testament, we would be completely without an understanding of that very meaningful and very powerful message. What is He talking about anyway? Well, He’s talking about, “Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness." The force of it's made even stronger by the fact that Jesus uses the type and the anti-type reference to Himself. Let's go back to the Old Testament book of Numbers, chapter twenty-one for a moment.
And this is the passage that God delivered to the children of Israel when He delivered them out of bondage in Egypt by a miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. And He had set them on their journey to the promised land-- the land of Canaan, the land that flowed with milk and honey, which He had promised to Abraham, and to Isaac and to Jacob as a homeland for their descendants. But the way was rough. God knew it would be difficult, and lest they should grow faint and want to go back to Egypt, He didn't send them the direct route that would take them by way of their enemies, but He chose to take them the longer way around.
Well, when they needed water, God provided that. When they needed food, God fed them with manna-- and even when they were ungrateful and complained about the manna God fed them with meat-- with quail. But, it was a long journey; forty years as a matter of fact; and most of them died along the way. And, verse four says "the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way." Some of the modern versions use the word "impatient." Discouraged or impatient or-- ungrateful (whatever the word is for it), they complained against God and against Moses, their God-appointed leader, "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." My! My! What these detestable attitudes will do for people!
"So," the Bible says "the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died. 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. And Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone that is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live. 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."
Well, centuries passed. And Jesus came. And He said, "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 everlasting life." What is He talking about? Why, it's about His death, of course! Just as Moses made that serpent of brass and put it on the pole in the midst of the congregation of Israel, even so must Jesus be lifted up on the cross.
The snake bites were a type of sin. They were fatal. People bitten by the snakes died. But, the ones who would look in faith to the bronze serpent on the pole would live. I say "look in faith," because there is no doubt many of them did look in disbelief and skepticism. They would see the snake; they were aware of its presence there, but they put no confidence in it. But, the people who would look upon it with a trusting faith in God's promise could live!
Sin, immorality, disobedience to God is like the deadly venom of the viper. The Scripture says, "The soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:20). "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). It's understood, of course, that this death is spiritual. "Literally," death is a "separation." That is what it means. The physical death occurs when the spirit leaves the body. The body returns to the dust, whence God made it in the beginning, and the spirit goes back to God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Spiritual death is separation from God. The Bible speaks of those who live in sin as being "dead in sin," separated from God. That is what it means in Ephesians 1:1 and 2; and those who are forgiven and reconciled to God through Christ Jesus as being "dead to sin," meaning, separated from sin, dead to sin, separated from sin (Romans 6 and 2).
Just as the brazen serpent on the pole was God's solution to the problem of sin, the sin of Israel, in this particular instance, the death of Christ on the cross is the solution to our problem of sin. All who look to Christ for salvation are saved. The apostle Peter was quick to say, "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4 and 12). Our very pluralistic religious community today would disagree with that, but if that isn't the lesson Jesus taught, I'm at a loss to know what He was saying. If men can be saved from sin by the teaching of some other prophet or priest or person, then Christ died in vain. He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me" (John 14 and 6). The Holy Spirit teaches in Romans 10:13 that, "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
Well, that thought is offensive and objectionable to many people. And I'm sure the thought of having to look upon that brass serpent on the pole was offensive to a lot of people, too. It must have appeared to have been sort of a foolish way for healing a snake bite. But, the Holy Spirit says, "The message of the cross is foolishness, too, to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the Scribe? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1, verses 18 through 24).
What appears to be exclusive to some disappears, though, when we consider the wisdom of the Master in John 12:32. Speaking of the death that He would die, He said, "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples unto me." Whether, Jew or Gentile, slave or slave-holder, male or female, Jesus Christ brings us together in one body in Him by the cross (Ephesians 2, verses 12 through 19).
The message is that all people, whoever they are, without regard to their skin color, or their national origin, or their wealth or fame, or lack thereof, or their educational background, whatever, find eternal life by looking to Him who was lifted up on the cross of Calvary. The verse says, "That whoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life."
The faith of John 3:16 is not to be mistaken for mere historical faith, or a faith in an historical Jesus; nor is it mere assent to the fact that of His death or the efficacy of it. It's lasting; it is trusting faith; one that trusts enough to act-- to obediently look and to live. Yes! We live in a time of "easy believism." The sinner is being told, "Just believe; that's all it takes. It is all of grace; you don't have to change anything. God doesn't make any demands of you.”
My friend, that is a cheapening of God's marvelous grace demonstrated at the cross. Indeed, Jesus would be the last preacher on earth to have preached an "easy believism." He preached a lot about repentance, even making it a condition of salvation. Of course, there are conditions of salvation! Of course, there are! Faith in and of itself is a work of God (John 6:29), and a condition of salvation (John 8:24). The kind of faith that Jesus was talking about in John 3:16 is a living, active, obedient faith that brings the sinner to the cross in real life, when he's baptized into the death of Jesus; when he is buried with Him, and raised to a new life by the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the grave (Romans chapter 6, verses 3 and 4; and Colossians chapter 2 verse 12).
Those people in the wilderness who had the faith to look on the brazen serpent lived. And those who have the kind of faith to obediently believe in Jesus Christ, die with Him, be buried with Him, raised with Him will live and not die. We have our Lord's own words on that. If you haven't done it already, oh, I hope you will, my friend.
Christ died for your sins-- and mine. Our very first response is an awareness of our sins, then the humility to look to Him for forgiveness, and an opportunity to begin life anew-- in Him. Then, the Lord's Supper is given the Christian as a weekly reminder, upon the first day of every week that we are saved; we are saved by His death on the cross. It keeps us constantly near the cross. And we often sing, Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross; that is our prayer. Let us pray. Holy Father, we pray that we will never drift away from the thought of the death of Jesus on the cross for our sins. Help us to keep this in mind that if “I be lifted up, said Jesus, “I will draw all people to Myself.” In His name we pray, Amen!
Many centuries after the children of Israel suffered that bitter experience in the wilderness, after they had occupied the promised land, and had become a world super-power as a matter of fact, their faith was corrupted with the faith of the nations around them. In Second Kings chapter 18 it's said that King Hezekiah ordered a restoration of the Temple and temple worship in Jerusalem, and in a house-cleaning the workmen came upon a copy of the Scriptures that God had given to Israel. They also came upon that serpent that Moses made (or maybe it was a replica of it) to which they had been burning incense. Hezekiah gave it a name. He called it "Nehustan”, meaning "a mere piece of brass," and he broke it to pieces. They had violated the second commandment and made it an idol-- an object of their worship.
Well, there is a lot more that could be said about that, not the least of which is the fact that God does care about our worship-- whom or what we worship and even how we worship. The point in mentioning it in this lesson is that there is ever-present the danger of rendering the cross a mere religious relic to which we attach some superstition of mystical power or healing or success or maybe even purification, instead of a real living experience in baptism and the Lord's Supper.
Well, I'm glad you were with us today, and I pray that if you are not a Christian that you will remember that Christ died for your sins as well on that cross, and will immediately be baptized into His death because your faith in the reality of His death for your sins. Our program is presented by your caring friends in some churches of Christ, just like the ones right here in your area, who would delight in having you worship with them very soon. Tell them we invited you, will you? If you would like a free CD, an audio cassette tape or a printed transcript of this or any of the other programs, simply write us. Our address is: In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083. By e-mail our address is searchtv@searchtv.org. Please mention the title of today's program, If I Be Lifted Up, and tell us whether you want the tape, a CD or a transcript. Don't forget to give us your address now. We'll mail it to you as quickly as possible-- at no cost to you. It's free. We have never sold anything or asked for money on this program, and we are not beginning now. If you prefer, you may use our toll free telephone number to call in your request. And that number is 1-800-321-8633. And you might want to visit our website, too. It has a lot more information about churches of Christ, about our program, and a lot of other things. It's at searchtv.org. People all around the world tell us they receive the program by means of the website. They can do it anytime it is convenient for them-- early morning, late at night, during the day, and they can either see it, or hear it, or read it as they like. So you might want to tell others about that access, too. Now, also on the website is the weekly, regular reading program. That is a tongue twister. But anyway, it is the reading program that we offered before. We ran out of those to mail out. So if you would like to get it, why turn to the website and you can have it there. We hope you will join us again next week. Maybe you will have time to tell somebody else in the disposition also to tell somebody else about the program. Will you do that? And we hope you will be with us again next week. We love you.
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