Presented to the Alberni Valley Community during the Ministerial Lenten Service at Christian life Church, 10 March 2024 by Major Michael Ramsay
The following is allegedly
from a Peace Corps Manual for volunteers working in the Amazon Jungle. It tells
what to do in case an anaconda attacks you:
1. If
you are attacked by an anaconda do not run. The snake is faster than you are.
2. Lie
flat on the ground. Put your arms tight against your sides, your legs tight
against one another.
3.
Tuck your chin in.
4. The
snake will come and begin to nudge and climb over your body.
5. Do
not panic.
6.
After the snake has examined you, it will begin to swallow you from your feet
and always from the end. Permit the snake to swallow your feet and ankles. Do
not panic.
7. The
snake will now begin to swallow your legs into its body. You must lie perfectly
still. This will take a long time.
8.
When the snake has reached your knees, slowly and with as little movement as
possible, reach down, take your knife and very gently slide it into the side of
the snake’s mouth between the edge of its mouth and your leg, then suddenly rip
upwards, severing the snake’s head.
9. Be
sure you have your knife.
Our Gospel reading today is
also about snakes. At least the first verses, John 3:14&15: “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.”
We know to what this is
referring, right? Remember the Exodus? God delivers the Israelites; they began
complaining and so suffer the natural consequences. In this case the
consequences are snakes. Numbers 21:6-7:
6 Then
the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many
Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke
against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away
from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.
Who
here likes snakes? Who here likes big snakes and poisonous snakes? And there is
even more. “The Hebrew phrase hannehashim hasserapim, [here means
literally] ‘the burning snakes’ or ‘the snakes that produce burning’. The Lord
sent these poisonous serpents among the Israelites and they bite them and they die
- probably painfully.
So the Israelites then realize
what they are doing by blaming God and rejecting the very life that He is
providing for them. They realize their sin and they repent of it. God then
tells Moses that He will yet again save these people. Vss 8-9:
“The
Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten
can look at it and live.’ So Moses made
a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake
and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.”
This is great and this is
exciting. This deliverance from the serpents meant so much to the Israelites
that they actually kept that bronze snake around for a long time to remember
this miracle. They kept this symbol of what God had done with them their whole
time in the desert. They kept this bronze snake with them throughout the whole
life and leadership of Joshua, son of Nun during the conquest of Canaan. They
kept the bronze snake safe and secure for generations. They kept it through the
roughly 400 years of alternating oppression and liberation in the time of the
Judges. They kept this bronze snake with them through the entire existence of
the United Kingdom: through the reigns of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon. They
kept this bronze serpent during the divided kingdoms, using it during worship,
through many kings and political administrations, through many wars and trials
and tribulations and throughout all these generations. They used this snake in
worship for much longer a time period than Canada or the US has even existed.
For hundreds of years they used this bronze snake as part of their worship and
then, 1 Kings 18:1-4:
In the
third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of
Judah began to reign… He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as
his father David had done. He removed the high places, smashed the sacred
stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake
Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to
it. (It was called Nehushtan.)
To worship also means to
adore. They had started to adore, to worship a symbol of their salvation
instead of or as well as God. We know it is only Jesus - as John 3 reminds us –
through whom our salvation actually comes.
A question for us here today
then: do we commit the same sin? Is there anything in our life or our worship
that needs to be smashed like Nehushtan? is there anything that we have used as
an aid to worship God that now we may adore alongside God? Maybe a church
practice – singing certain hymns? Maybe the way one dresses on Sunday, the
church choir, the pipe organ – these are historical things that maybe have been
broken from our worship?
One of the Good things that
came out of the Protestant Reformation was the smashing of many ceremonial Nehushtans.
Sadly they possibly took up some new ones.
What about us today? Are there
practices that maybe we have used as part of worship for hundreds of years that
may need to be smashed because we adore them too much? What about our sermons?
Do we worship those? Do we say we are not a church if we don’t have a 15-to-45-minute
sermon? (I was actually scolded once for have too short of a sermon, believe it
or not?) What about our ceremonies? Do we worship ceremonies alongside or
instead of Jesus? What about something as important – or not as important – as
baptism? Do we say that if you don’t baptise people the ‘right way’… immersion,
as an infant, as an adult believer, by sprinkling, or by some other means… Do
we say that if you don’t utter the correct words when you baptise people… or if
you don’t offer them communion in the right way then God can’t, won’t or didn’t
save them? Our ceremonies, our traditions, or anything else that has been
ordained to help us worship God – they are a benefit as long as they bring us
closer to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. As soon as we worship them alongside
God even if we have practiced them for millennia, they need to be smashed like Nehushtan.
Now our relationship with God
is corporate but it is also individual so if there is anything in our lives: a
person, place, or thing, that is a rival for God in our hearts – someone or
something we adore more than or as much as Him. That is a Nehushtan and needs
to be destroyed.
I think it is significant that
God and the Bible placed this reminder right here in our text and our story,
right before one of the most memorized verses in the Bible. God reminds us here
that our salvation is only through Jesus and adding anything to that is
idolatry. It is only Jesus through whom our salvation comes. And that brings us
to John 3:16.
John 3:16 is one
of the verses in the Bible that almost everyone knows. If people memorize no
other verse in the Bible, they usually memorize this one. Let me hear you all
say John 3:16 together: “For God so loved the world that He sent His only
begotten Son that whosever believeth in Him shall not perish but have
everlasting life, John 3:16.”
The fact that we pretty much all know it is neat because here today, we have
people of many different ages from many different parts of the country who were
brought up in many different traditions and yet we all know John 3:16 by heart.
I think that points to its importance. Martin Luther said the words of John
3:16 are “able to make the sad happy,
[and] the dead alive if only the heart believes them firmly”[1] John 3:16 has long been my favourite verse in the Bible.
Now maybe I am dating myself a bit. Any of you who are at least my
age and who are or used to be sports fans do you remember back in the 1980s
when it seemed that you couldn’t turn on a sporting event even without seeing
someone hold up a sign that said ‘John 3:16’ on it? Do you know the story about
how that got started? (The following is based on the account by Dr. David
Wendel)
In 1976, hoping to gain some
attention, Rollen Stewart had the idea to become famous by popping up in the
background of TV sporting events… It didn’t work – not at first.
Then in his depression after
the 1980 Super Bowl, he had a conversion experience while watching a preacher
on TV. he then began showing up at sporting events holding the soon to be very
famous sign which read, "John 3:16". Later accompanied by his second
wife, he spent his time traveling to sporting events around the United States,
living in his car, existing on just savings and donations. All in all, he
figures he was seen on TV and in person at more than a thousand sporting events
causing many people to open their Bibles and read, starting with John 3:16, the
Gospel of Salvation…. Until… his wife left him… because he choked her for
holding up a sign in the wrong location… his car was totalled by a drunk driver…
his money ran out, and he wound up homeless in L.A.
Feeling harassed and convinced
that the end was near, he then set off a string of bombs in a church, a
Christian bookstore, a newspaper office, and other locations. He sent out
letters warning of the end time and compiled a hit list of preachers. On September
22, 1992, Rollen, the man who brought the gospel in John 3:16 to the North American
sports fan, believing in the Rapture, that it was only six days away, and
wanting to make a big media splash; he took a maid and two other workers
hostage in an LA airport, and demanded a three-hour press conference. Instead,
the police threw in a grenade, kicked down the door, and Rollen was sentenced
to three life-sentences. [2]
As Paul Harvey would say…now you know the REST of the story.
This anecdote
actually brings us quite nicely to John 3:17. John 3:17 always reminds me of Jolene. Jolene
was a young lady in a youth group we led when Susan and I first came to a
Salvation Army as young marrieds many, many years ago. Jolene and her family
are wonderful, faithful people. John 3:17 was her favourite verse. John 3:17
records that Jesus did not come to condemn the world but rather He came so that
the world may be saved through Him.
Many years after
we met them, after we became ordained, after we moved far away and back again
to the Island and after we had grown children of our own, we were alerted -
Jolene’s mom was looking for her on Vancouver’s DTES. Addiction had wrapped its
hands around her and clenched Jolene tight in it’s grasp. She – like so many of
our friends through our life and ministry - had been struggling against
addiction for so long; for so long it had been seeking destroy her mind, body,
and soul and drag her through all the circumstances, environments and choices through
which addiction drags us and she suffered the same brutality that many suffer
when addiction grabs hold. She was found, PTL. And I hope, I really hope that
she always remembered and remembers – even in her darkest days, even when it
seemed and seems that there is no hope, even when it seemed and seems what she
has done or has had done to her is so horrible that there is no recovery, I
hope she always remembers that verse God gave her as a young child, to help her
live out her salvation, to help her grow in holiness, to help her get through
everything that life throws our way, John 3:17 – For God did not send his son
into the world to condemn the world but that the world would be saved through
him.
The other week I
had three friends overdose and two die. Tragically, this is not uncommon
anymore. The enemy seeks to destroy. A friend of mine here in Port Alberni just
lost her 28-year-old son to addiction and everything else that the Enemy throws
at people who are suffering in addiction’s grasp.
We have many
friends whom the Enemy has trapped by some other really horrible choices,
events, and circumstances. People who have lost loved ones. People who have
killed loved ones by accident or design. Many friends of ours have been
captured by sins of assault, robbery, theft and other things. I have had one
person tell me in tears that they can’t be saved because of the things they
have done. I disagree. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn
the world but that the world might be saved through him. We can all be
transformed!
My first sermon as
an ordained minister was to my friends in Stony Mountain Penitentiary. On my
first day of freedom from seminary after being ordained as a minister of the
Gospel, I walked into Stony Mountain penitentiary to see my friends as I had
done every week for almost the whole time we lived in Winnipeg. Many of them
are in the Kingdom today. Many of them have probably tripped and stumbled along
the way. Many of them were released; some of them probably returned to prison and
are still slowly be conformed to the likeness of Christ and many of our friends
-those free or caged- are living with
Christ for now and forever.
John 3:18 tells us
that any of us – no matter our past, no matter our circumstance - who actually
believe in Jesus are not condemned but saved.
It is interesting that John 3:16 says that Jesus died for the whole
world. The Greek word for world here is ‘Kosmos’.[3] It refers to all civilization, all humankind. He died for us
all so that we can now all live life abundantly and freely follow God’s will
(cf. TSA d. 6). There is no need for any to perish but yet some people do.
John 3:18 “Whoever
believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned
already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” This
is particularly sad because we know that God loves us. He loves us so much that
He laid down His life for us (John 15). God loves us so much that He sent His
only begotten, his only natural, his only sired Son to die so that we may live.
I can’t imagine how much this must hurt God that some of us do actually perish.
I have met people who have rejected God’s love and salvation. It breaks my
heart. I am a parent. I think of my friend who just lost her son to addiction.
God is our heavenly father think about how he must feel if a child perishes.
Think of how He must feel if you and I have the opportunity to tell our
brothers and sisters about Him, to point them to salvation – and we don’t. It
must break his heart. I truly believe what John 3:14-21 here says: God raised
Jesus, any of us who look to him will live – there is no condemnation in Christ
Jesus and as we serve Him, we will be conformed into His likeness. Like 1 Thessalonians
5:24 says, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” He will lead
us to walk into the light and away from the darkness.
Jesus is the light, Jesus is from the beginning. Jesus is God incarnate. He
lived, He died and Jesus raised from the dead and all who look to him, like those
who looked to the bronze serpent in the desert, are saved. John 3:18: “Those
who believe in Him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are
condemned already…” because 3:19, “people loved darkness rather than light.”
But there is hope even for those still walking in darkness and that is the good
news of John 3:16-17 which is this: as long as we are still breathing, we still
have the opportunity to walk in the Light that is Jesus; through whose death
and resurrection God made it possible for us each to walk from certain death to
certain life today for, John 3:17-16, “Indeed, God did not send His Son into
the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved
through Him”, “For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
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