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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Numbers 21:4-9), while going through the wilderness around the land of Edom on their way finally to enter the Promised Land, the people of Israel became impatient and spoke against God and against Moses. They grumbled about the daily bread that the Lord was providing them, so the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. But, the people confessed their sin, Moses interceded for them with the Lord, and, the Lord said that it was necessary for Moses to lift up a serpent in the wilderness, that whoever was bitten and looked at it believing that God would deliver them could live.
Fast forward some fourteen-hundred years to Jesus’s dialogue-with turned monologue‑to Nicodemus, the last part of which we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, when Jesus is said finally to be answering Nicodemus’s question about how the things Jesus was describing could be (Brown, ad loc Jn 3:9-15, pp.145-146). Jesus says that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. And, not only was it necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up for eternal life, but we might also say that, in the verses following that statement, Jesus essentially says that “Believing in the lifted-up Son of Man is necessary for eternal life”.
Whatever relationship might obtain between the two events, whether prophetic type pointing forward or Scriptural analogy reaching backward, and whatever necessity the will of God and any resulting Scriptural prophecy might create for their fulfillment, ultimately Moses’s lifting up the serpent in the wilderness was about saving sinners who had confessed their sin, and ultimately the Son of Man’s being lifted up is likewise also about saving sinners who confess their sin, God willing that includes you and me. The people of Israel’s grumbling about their daily bread was one thing, but the judgment Jesus describes is another. Jesus says that the light has come into the world, that people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil, and that everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his or her works should be exposed. We should not only think of the evil and wicked works of others, but each of us should also think of our own gross immorality, ungodliness, self‑righteousness, perversions, fleshly and material hopes, and every action and practice related to them (Lenski, ad loc Jn 3:19, p.272). In today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 2:1-10), the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul writes well to the Ephesians how we all at least once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind, and so were spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins. (As some of you have heard me say repeatedly: we were dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.)
But, even when we were dead in our trespasses (confer Romans 5:8), God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Put another way, God enables us to confess our sin and be forgiven and so saved, by grace through faith, as a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
We certainly can see an example of God’s love for His rebellious people in the Old Testament Reading’s account of Moses’s lifting up the serpent in the wilderness (Roehrs‑Franzmann, ad loc Jn 2:23-3:21, p.89). And we may well hear in Jesus’s description of God’s love references to Abraham’s love for and sacrifice of his only son Isaac, for whom God provided a lamb (Genesis 22:1-19; confer Hebrew 11:17). But, the greatest revelation of God’s unconditional, self-sacrificing love is His sending His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him (1 John 4:9). When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His pre‑existent Son, born of a woman (Galatians 4:4), to go to the cross as the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36). Jesus says elsewhere that the Jews would lift Him up (John 8:28; confer Isaiah 52:13), but, even if the Romans did their dirty work, it was ultimately your sin and my sin that put Jesus there. Our redemption cost Jesus His life. Yet, look at the good that comes from there! Jesus says elsewhere that, when He is lifted up, He draws all people to Himself (John 12:32-34). Jesus died for all people, and God certainly wants and tries to save all people (confer Formula of Concord Solid Declaration II:49; XI:28).
You know what determines whether or not someone actually is saved, right? Faith! “Believing in the lifted-up Son of Man is necessary for eternal life” (confer Pieper, II:336). In today’s Gospel Reading Jesus repeatedly says that whoever believes in Him is not condemned and has eternal life, but whoever does not believe is condemned already and will eternally perish because He has not believed. God’s read and preached Word, His Word applied with water in Holy Baptism, His words applied with the laying on of a hand in individual Holy Absolution, and His Words with bread that is Christ’s Body and with wine that is Christ’s Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar—they all are signs that testify and, as appropriate, are available to all people for their forgiveness. Someone’s not using those Means of Grace, and so someone’s standing outside of God’s Church where there is no salvation, is not God’s fault!
Jesus was not sent to condemn, yet for some people condemnation nevertheless results. Likewise, the Church at times must use Christ’s keys to close heaven and open hell to those who do not believe, and the Church uses those same keys to close hell and open heaven to those who do believe. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus says that whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his or her works have been carried out in God. Similarly, in the Epistle Reading, Paul says that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. We do those good works according to our various vocations, and we recognize that ultimately we are not doing them but they are being done by Christ living in us (Galatians 2:20). And, where we fail, as we will, with daily contrition and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins, until God ends our earthly lives or our Lord returns, whichever comes first. For, as Jesus said elsewhere, all those who believe in Him, though they may die in this world, yet shall they live eternally, and all those who believe in Him, if they live until His return, then they shall never die (John 11:25-26).
Considering primarily the Gospel Reading, this morning we have realized that, just as it was necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up, so “Believing in the lifted-up Son of Man is necessary for eternal life”. Every indication is that Nicodemus, to whom Jesus was speaking in the Gospel Reading, became a believer and did not perish eternally (John 19:39). In the Gospel Reading Jesus is also speaking to you and to me, trying to lead us to confess our sin and believe in the lifted-up Son of Man as necessary for eternal life. Do we resist Him and stay in the darkness? God grant that we come to the light now, that we might also do so for eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +