Backtracking

Scripture:

John 3:14–21 NLT

And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”

The Old, Old, Story

The biggest joy I find in ministry is watching the eyes of people open up and hearing them talk about seeing God working in their lives. I love it because I’m not spoonfeeding them things to say or do to be accepted into the Christian club. No, I get to learn myself from what God is doing in them.

God loves people so much that He works with them individually, meets them right where they are, and helps them grow and become more like Jesus, one step at a time.

What I also find really exciting is when different people begin sharing some of the same things in their own experience. I hear stories about discovering new purpose, finding forgiveness, and experiencing healing - not just from physical ailments, but healing from sin.

One of those powerful stories goes back at least over 400 years before Jesus was born, to a story told by Socrates and his disciple Plato. Neither of them were Jewish, but they had an instinct that there was more to the world than what they could see themselves.

They told a story of people locked away as prisoners in a cave, watching shadows on the wall in the flickering firelight behind them, and trying to make sense of their world. Then they asked the questions,

“What would they do if someone came in from the outside and tried to tell them about fresh air and sunlight, if they had never seen it?

Would they believe it?

And if their chains were broken and they were set free, would they go live outside the cave, or would they prefer to stay in the darkness they had always known?”

2,000 years after Socrates, a former slave-ship owner turned pastor would put that same story in his own words: “I once was lost but now and found, was blind but now I see.”

Forgiveness, Healing from sin, and new purpose.

Thesis: God puts the light on our sin so we can be forgiven and healed.

Snake on a Pole

To really understand what Jesus was teaching in John 3:16, we have to know the story he referred to from Numbers.

Numbers 21:4–9 NLT

Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!” So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed!

This story sounds like a story about Healing, but Jesus referred to it in a teaching about belief. Why? Because without belief (and the actions that back up that belief) you won’t receive healing from sin.

Sin is not just a thing you do, it is something that takes you over - like a disease. In the story of the bronze snake, the Hebrew people thought thier problem was the snakes. Jesus shows us in John 3 that the problem was the lack of belief the people had in God. Why? Because God sent the snakes and the snakes showed woke them up to their unwillingness to trust and obey God as He took them to the Promised Land. They wanted to go back to Egypt.

Light and Darkness

Looking at the snake was a reminder of their sin. Looking closely at Jesus shows how far we are from being Christlike ourselves.

God’s job is to open our eyes to see sin and righteousness, light and darkness. Without Christ, we would not even know there was a problem. We would believe that killing one another over a pile of scraps was the normal way of the world - because it is.

Our job, is to choose to live in the light, and make room for that light to live in us.

Here is what John wrote to the churches about choosing light or darkness.

1 John 1:5–10 NLT

This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

Do you have fellowship with God?

John says if we are still under the power of sin, we are not being honest. Anyone can call themselves a Christian, but the proof is in how you live your life. John says if you have fellowship with God than you will also have fellowship with one another. If you don’t have fellowship with God, you won’t have it with one another, and Jesus cleanses us from sin (present tense - as in He is still doing it).

If we claim that we are good, no I’m just fine, no problems here… we won’t receive help. Even worse, we are calling God a liar and we are telling God and everyone else that we don’t need Jesus.

I can remember, in the first few months of dating Bekah, a moment where we confessed some of our deepest struggles to one another. It was difficult, and there was no one there making us do it. But we both understood that if this relationship was going anywhere, we wanted it to be real and we wanted to be honest with one another. What we were sharing was not the things we were ashamed of in our past, but the ways sin still challenged us. We were asking each other for help.

That is what fellowship, living in the light, being the family of God is about. You cannot direct people to the light while hiding in the darkness yourself. Those that cannot ask for help themselves struggle in successfully helping others. Those that continually ask for help, but do not do not do their part won’t get out of the darkness either.

John 3:16 to me

John 3:16 NLT

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

There’s no herd immunity to sin.

It’s not a vaccine either - not a one time shot, nor one that you have to get every so many months.

It goes much deeper than that.

It’s a heart transplant.

It cost God the life of His only son.

And if we refuse to backtrack to the root of sin in our lives, it won’t work out well for us.

The heart of Jesus won’t let you continue to live in the darkness. You have to make a choice.

If we believe enough to follow Jesus, His light will lead you and show you where you need to go back to and what you need to do to find forgiveness, to be healed from your sin, and to live with new purpose.

If we don’t get to the root of the problem, we will end up rejecting the very gift that was given to save us.