That Whoever Believes In Him - Sermon, Mar. 18, 2012

Sermon: March 18, 2012 The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B¹

(James W.)

Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

Let us pray.

Living God, help us so to hear your holy Word that we may truly understand; and in understanding, we may believe, and, believing, we may follow in all faithfulness and obedience, seeking your honor and glory in all that we do; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

There are times when I look over the Sunday lectionary readings that I just can’t spot very many connections between the readings. But not today. Today’s readings are all on the same topic, and what a topic it is. No less than the very heart of the Gospel.

In today’s reading from John, we join the middle of Jesus’s reply to Nicodemus, a Pharisee. Nicodemus had asked Jesus to explain salvation. Jesus told Nicodemus that there are two options – and only two options. Spiritual death or everlasting life with God through entry into the Kingdom of God. One way to think of this is that Jesus has just told Nicodemus that all humanity has a deadly condition that leads each one of us to spiritual death. This is exactly what Paul writes in the Ephesians passage when he says we “were dead in our transgressions and sins” and “were by nature deserving of wrath”. Jesus says quite plainly in John’s passage “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

But Jesus tells us that there is a remedy and we join Jesus as he explains this remedy to Nicodemus. Jesus begins by pointing to a curious story from the Old Testament book of Numbers, which we also heard this morning. (See the connections?) This story takes place shortly after Moses had led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, after God had saved them from the Egyptian army, after God had provided for their many needs and given them victories over their enemies. But the people of Israel were bored and so turned against God and spoke against him. In response, God sent venomous snakes amongst them, and many people died.

The people, out of desperation, turned back to God and God rescued them. He ordered Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Anyone who was bitten by a snake only needed to look upon the bronze snake and they would live. But in order to survive, the people needed to trust God and look to the bronze snake. Don’t you think that a lot of the Israelites would have thought to themselves “Wait just a minute here. This is silly. Surely God should send us some anti-venom, or lead us to another place where there aren’t any snakes.” But God’s solution was the bronze snake, and in order for the people to live they would need to trust God’s solution and look to the snake.

This is what Jesus points to as the illustration for how we can be saved from our spiritual death. This illustration is so very rich. Just as the Israelites needed to be saved from the snake’s venom, so we need to be saved from the venom of sin. Just as the snake’s venom would kill the Israelites, so sin’s venom will kill us. But Jesus says “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” In one of the most quoted passages in the Bible, Jesus goes on to say, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Jesus tells us that the remedy to our spiritual death is to “believe in him.” That sounds simple enough doesn’t it? All we need to do is “believe.” But what does it really mean to “believe in him”? It must mean more than just believing that he existed two thousand years ago, or even believing that he still exists today. It must even mean more than just believing that He is our Savior or that He died for our sins and rose again. In James chapter 2, verse 19, we read that even the demons believe in God. Mere intellectual assent is not what Jesus means here. Think about it, the people of Israel might have believed in God, and they might even have believed that looking at the bronze snake was likely to cure them. But they had to trust enough to actually look at the snake. So we must trust Jesus. And if we trust Jesus, we need to actually do what someone would do if they did believe and trust in him.

We often forget that our relationship with God is a personal one. We sometimes get into a way of thinking in which our Faith is merely a set of assertions that we believe in, or not. It can become almost like an insurance policy. “Yeah, I’ll believe in Christianity. Just so long as it doesn’t impinge on the rest of my life. But I’ll believe if that’s what it takes.”

Believing in a person is different – yes you must believe that the person is what they claim to be, but it is more. You must be willing to trust the person, and trust demands action. Let’s return to a poisonous snake analogy. Suppose that you are on vacation in an exotic land and you go hiking with a tour group. On this hike you step on an especially dangerous poisonous snake and it bites you. You grow weak and your tour guide rushes to get the help of a prominent doctor, recognized as the leading expert in dealing with the poison of this particular snake. After a while, he returns with the doctor, who has a vial of anti-venom and tells you that your only chance to recover fully is to drink the anti-venom and spend two months in physical therapy working your muscles to recover from the snake’s venom. Failure to do either will result in either your death or your paralysis. The doctor is holding the vial and offers to personally guide you through the therapy.

Now you might believe that the snake is poisonous, you might believe that anti-venom will save your life, and you might also believe that only physical therapy will repair your damaged muscles. But will you “believe in” the doctor? Will you trust her? Will you do as she directs you? Or will you want to see if there is a short cut? Or maybe you will want to watch to see if a late-night informercial will promise a miracle cure. Or maybe you think you are done for and all this talk of getting cured is just wishful thinking.

Here is where trust comes in. If you really do trust her, you will do as she directs. But if you don’t do what she says, that is a sign that – no matter what you say – you don’t really trust her. Trust demands action. And so the Bible, in James chapter 2, verse 17 says “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

This doesn’t mean that the actions that we take in response to our faith, are what save us. Paul writes “for it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift from God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” Again, remember that we are in a personal relationship with God. We are not saved because we guessed right on the divine multiple choice quiz, or because we did this thing or that thing.

Salvation is not an end in itself. Rather, the end of our salvation is a relationship with God. Or we might say the purpose of our salvation is so that we can be in a relationship with God. Relationships require actions by the parties, not just words. How would your marriage work if all that you did on Valentine’s Day was tell your husband or wife that you believed that he or she existed? Or recite knowledge about your spouse, such as the location of his birth, or where she went to college, or what his height was? It won’t work!

To be saved means to be in an active relationship with God – and that means being in a relationship with our creator, God the Father, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and our guide here on earth, the Holy Spirit. This is what salvation is all about. You can’t just passively be in a relationship with somebody – that’s not a relationship. So it is our actions which point to whether we really are in a relationship or not.

If we truly believe in and trust Jesus, we will act on that belief. But the key is that it is God who pursues us, not we who pursue God – this is the grace that saves us. Jesus tells Nicodemus “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” God does not want anyone to experience spiritual death. God would love for every person to be in a relationship with him – but it is always our choice. In the Ephesians passage, Paul writes “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ” and further Paul writes that “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

God has pursued us. Think of it in this way – you are teetering on the edge of a pier and you know you are going to fall into the ocean. But Jesus is there holding out his hand to you. Will you take it? Will you trust Jesus’s diagnosis of your life and heed his prescription?

Trusting Jesus is our only hope for life, but we need to understand what that means. In Ephesians Paul writes “for it is by grace that you have been saved.” The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis for standing up for his trust in Christ during the Second World War, wrote about this grace, what he called costly grace. Bonhoeffer said “Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”

Following Jesus costs us our previous life which ends in spiritual death, but gives us a much better, everlasting life lived in relationship with our God. Recently Pastor Barbara shared with us a quotation from the missionary martyr Jim Elliot, who wrote "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." We cannot keep our life here on earth, that life filled with sorrow, decay and death. But when we accept new life in Jesus, we cannot lose this new life.

When we decide to trust Jesus and follow him, one of the things we do is follow his teachings and allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit, thus becoming more like Jesus. Then we will become new people – desiring to be God’s people. And, according to the Bible, this is what we are all called to. Paul writes “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’

So we have heard Jesus’s diagnosis of our condition. Jesus said “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” And Paul wrote “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” But Jesus has offered us a remedy from this spiritual death, if only we believe in him and trust him. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The ball is in your court now – will you take sin’s anti-venom that is trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and live? Your move.

Let us pray:

O Lord, we acknowledge that we are dead in sin without you, and we thank you for sending your Son Jesus Christ to die for us, and redeem us from spiritual death. We pray that you give us belief, faith and trust in you. Belief that you are our Savior, faith that you alone can save us, and trust so that we can take your hand and follow you. Amen.

¹I am indebted to this sermon from Pastor Jeff Chapman at Faith Presbyterian Church in Sacramento.

Lenten Greetings

Dear friends in Christ,


On the first Sunday in Lent we read the Gospel of Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism and his time in the wilderness. It is a very brief account, but we learn that God the Father was well pleased with God the Son, Jesus our Lord. Jesus’ baptism was, in a way, a commissioning and a strengthening for his life, ministry and special vocation or calling as our Savior. In a similar way we are commissioned in our baptism. God adopts us as His children in baptism and God commissions each one of us for our life of ministry and discipleship with Him.

After Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness where Satan tempted him. We like Jesus, will also spend time in the wilderness…times when we might feel challenged in our lives of Christian discipleship. Jesus was strengthened by his time in the wilderness. He trusted God’s will for His life and He trusted God’s ways. Jesus was steeped in the Bible and when tempted by Satan, Jesus was able to stay faithful by claiming the truths and promises of Scripture.

The Lenten season is always a wonderful time to strengthen our relationship with God and to deepen our trust and faith in Christ. May we spend more time praying and meditating on God’s word as we seek to draw nearer to God. And may we prepare ourselves to join in the events of Jesus’ last week of earthly life and ministry.

During Holy Week we will gather in the courtyard and new memorial garden on Palm Sunday at 10 am. At 7 pm on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday we will remember our Lord’s passion and his death on the cross. Then on Easter Sunday we will celebrate with joy the victory of Christ’s resurrection!

Blessings to you this Lenten and Easter Season,

Pastor Barbara Elizabeth+