Given on Sunday, March 9, 2008
Sermon Title: Maybe You Deserve It
Bible Text: John 3:13-15 and Numbers 21:4-9
 
Sometimes things happen to us and we wonder why.  Assume that just before you are ready to leave on a well-planned trip, you have a major repair situation at you home.  You look up at the sky and say, "Why did this happen to me?".   Then you look again and say, "I don't deserve this."
 
Jesus certainly didn't deserve what happened to him, lifted up on the cross to suffer.  He willingly obeyed.  Endured the cross so that believers could find a way out of sin and a saving way to deal with what the world gives us at times.
 
A stirring passage in John 3: 15 touches on this idea.  Jesus says, "The Son of Man must be lifted up, just as Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness."   This is a reference to Jesus, being lifted up on the cross.  Have you ever why Jesus used this story from the life of the Israelites?  It is a story from Numbers 4, happening after God's people had beens set free from Egypt.  They had wandered in the wilderness.  They were doubting God's wisdom and complained that Moses was not leading them well.  God must have been sadded by their lack of faith.  He caused an event to happened that jolted them out of this unfaithful life style.
 
God sent poison snakes among them.  Some people were bitten and died.  They came to Moses and aske him to pray that God would take the snakes away.  "We have sinned against God and we are sorry".  They repented.  Moses prayed, but instead of taking the snakes away, God told Moses to make a bronze snake and lift it up on a pole.  All who looked at the lifted up snake would live.  This is the image Christ is referring to in John 3.  Christ becomes the one lifted up.  When we lift our eyes to Christ on the cross and believe, we have life.....life everlasting.
 
So, in  a way, the people of God deserved that happening.  It was the only way God could get through to them.  Sometimes in our live too, we deserve the event.  It is not that God is trying to hurt us, it is God doing the only thing that will break through to us.
 
The "5 ECTS Of God"   tell this too.
1.  Sometimes God uses problems to DIRECT you.
2.   Sometimes God uses life to INSPECT you.
3..  Sometimes God uses things to CORRECT you.
4.  Sometimes God uses situations to PROTECT you.
5.  Sometimes God uses life to PERFECT you.
 
Lent is that time when God asks us to look inside and see what might be there that is standing int the wayds of a new commitment to follow Christ.  For the people of old it took a bronze snake to lift their eyes to God's saving power.  For us, it is Christ on the cross that lifts our eyes to the renewal of Christ in our lives.
 
May we lift our eyes to the cross and be made new.

    
   Devin R. Jones, Pastor of St. John's Church.  Cappeln, MO


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