John 12:31-33
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of God’s word to John chapter 12. Our reading
will be John 12, 31 to 33. We continue in our worship of
almighty God as he now comes into our midst to speak to us
by his word and spirit. And so as we prepare to give
attention to his word, we want to ask for his help and blessing.
Pray with me. Lord, we have ears that are itching. for things that we want to hear
so that we can go and do that which we desire to do. Lord,
heal us of that now and let us hear and heed the voice of the
shepherd. Lord, our hearts desire to go
after things that do not please you. And so we pray that you
would melt our hearts now, mold them and shake them and fashion
them so that we will do what is of great value and of glory
to your name and your kingdom. And we need your help. So we
ask for it now. Let us hear, believe and treasure
these things and put them into practice in our lives. We pray
in Christ’s name. Amen. This is John chapter 12,
which we read all of last week. Today, we want to zero in on
a portion of verses 31 to 33. And Jesus says this, beginning
in verse 31, now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler
of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to show
by what kind of death he was going to die. Amen. The word of the living God, please
be seated. Well, I think every one of us
are used to $4 a gallon gas now. We’ve made adjustments. Maybe
you’ve quit brushing your teeth or You know, you’ve sold a kid
or something, but you’ve made an adjustment where you can afford
gas. And most of you are probably still going to do your summer
travels. You’ll still go on your trips. You’ll still make those
summer treks. And always, always, always it
happens. And it comes from the back seat.
Are we there yet? Those are the inevitable words.
And they aren’t words inquiring about the progress to our destination. Now, when I was a kid, we’d ride
with the map in our laps. We knew the exit numbers, and
we could count them down. We knew that we were not there
yet. Nowadays, our children ride in
the back of the car, and they have their Apple Maps, and they
know the ETA, right? They know exactly when we are
going to be there. The question, are we there yet,
is not about progress to the destination. No, it’s generally
about amenities along the way, comfort along the way. And nowadays,
aren’t we so privileged? We watch TV in the car. We used
to load up on gummy bears, gummy worms, and there’s Cracker Barrel. The smartest people in the world
have made traveling the U.S. roads so wonderful you can stop
and have comfort food and shop and do all the things you need
to do, but not so for Israel. Israel was traveling in the wilderness
and their trip should have been a quick trip across the wilderness
and entered, they should have entered into the promised land
rather quickly after their exit from Egypt. I know when we talk
about travels across the ancient near east. Like on our Wednesday
night study, we’ve talked about Abraham coming from Mesopotamia,
you know, several hundred miles. It would have taken weeks or
months. Um, that, that’s all it should have taken for the
Israelites to have made it from Egypt into the promised land.
Just, just weeks, just months. But God had a generation of spiritual
lessons for them to learn. They had to learn these lessons.
And so the trip was not going to be quick, was not going to
be easy. And throughout their wilderness
experience, which lasted 40 years, it was characterized by unbelief.
It was characterized by murmuring and complaining and whining and
disputing. And this was in spite of all
of God’s promises. God had said to them, I will
bring you up out of Egypt. I will bring you up out of the
house of slavery. I will take you across the wilderness.
I’ll provide for you along the way, and I will land you safely
on Canaan’s shores.” And you think about this, and it should
have been an easy one for the Israelites. After all, they had
seen the showdown between Yahweh and Pharaoh, 10 plagues, Yahweh
10, Pharaoh zero. They should have understood this
more and more as they crossed the sea on dry land, as their
enemies pursued them and God let the sea fall back upon Pharaoh
and his charioteers. They should have believed that
when they saw water come from a rock and bread come down from
heaven, that this God could indeed spread a table in the wilderness. They could banquet, they could
feast on their way across what is probably the most desolate
land on the face of this earth. But their unbelief persisted
and they continued to ask, are we there yet? Now, a few moments
ago, when we read in the book of numbers that the people were
impatient, this wasn’t a little foot tapping. This wasn’t a crossing
the arms and this wasn’t, you know, the audible sigh. You know, that’s what we do when
we’re impatient. We tap, we cross and we, well, this was impatience
at the God of Israel. This was murmuring against the
creator of the heavens and the earth. This was whining and complaining
and disputing against the one who could provide for them every
good thing which they needed. And so we ought to take great
care when we hear that phrase, are we there yet? We’re not asking about progress
and provisions. We’re not asking about the destination
in the ETA. No, we’re really fussing about
our conditions. The back seat’s cramped. We’re
out of gummy worms. Cracker Barrel has worn off.
We’ve got all the license plates from every state. We’ve counted
down the exits. But can it get messy in the spiritual
realm? Can’t it get messy in our spiritual
lives? We complain and we dispute against
God’s providence over us, his work in our lives. Too much suffering,
not enough money. The Joneses are prospering. We’re
not as prosperous as they are. And on and on we go. Well, the Israelites from time
to time would say something that should never be said. We wish
we were back in Egypt. Remember when Moses was a sheep
herder out in Midian, he had met his father-in-law Jethro
and he was 40 years old. He had left the palace and he
had, he had killed a Hebrew for, or Egyptian for killing a Hebrew
or hurting the Hebrews. So he had fled to Midian. He
was his father-in-law’s sheep herder. He married his wife.
He had boys and the cries of Israel had gone out to God. And
God came to Moses in the burning bush and said, now you go and
you rescue my people. You tell Pharaoh to let my people
go. Well, it was a great thing for
those Israelites to be rescued. They were under Pharaoh’s tyranny.
They were making bricks without straw. They were working in the
hot sun. They were beaten. They were mistreated.
It was a great tyranny. And so for them to say, we wish
for the days when we were back in Egypt. That would be like
you saying today, this Christian life is for the birds. Put me
back in Satan’s dungeon. Reverse sing and can it be that
I should gain. Let everything that you have
in Christ be taken away from you. This Christian life is just
too much. This wilderness living is too
much. That’s what they were saying. We missed the leeks and the cucumbers
and the onions. And we wish the fish, we missed
the fish, which we ate in abundance. We take that any day. over trusting
in God and in his provision. There’d been a couple outbreaks
like this in the camp of Israel and God had dealt with them in
various ways. But the one we just read of really
scares me. He sent serpents. He sent fiery
serpents and you can imagine they were everywhere. The other
morning after one of the spring rains we just had, I was walking
down the sidewalk of my neighborhood on the a little morning route
I take with the dog, and there were worms everywhere. And a
few of them were still wiggling, but most of them were dead. And
as you walk down the sidewalk, just the dead, dried out worms
all over the place. And I’m glad they weren’t snakes.
But could you imagine in the camp of Israel, some couple million
people, fiery serpents everywhere, under your rugs, under your bags,
in your food sacks. You go to sit down, you go to
sleep, you go everywhere. And the judgment of God in fiery
serpents is everywhere. Now God has a sense of humor,
we know that. And his sense of humor in this situation, and
it’s not a sense of humor here, it’s a rather dark irony. The snake was one of the great
symbols of Egypt. And he says, you wanna go back
to Egypt, huh? You remember my first miracle, the first plague.
Or the first miracle that Moses did, he put his staff down and
it became a serpent. He picked it up and it became
a staff again. A snake was highly symbolic of the power and the
majesty of Egypt. So you want Egypt, I’ll give
you the finest of Egypt. I’ll give you fiery serpents
and they will bite you and they will bring death into the camp
of Israel. Well, this is a rather interesting
way for God to bring judgment on his people. There was this
death, this outbreak in the camp. The people cried out to God.
They came to Moses and said, we have sinned. And let me stop
here for a moment. We talk a lot about sin in the
church. We talk a lot about forgiveness in the church. We talk a lot
about grace in the church. But one thing we don’t often
talk about, and it’s a reality that we need to understand well,
If you are living in sin as a Christian, if you have a sin in your life
that you are, you’re keeping special, you’re keeping secret,
you’re feeding it and you have it worked out in your mind that
I can do this and keep asking for forgiveness and this sin
will never harm me because I’m in Christ. Let me warn you today,
dear Christian, that if you are harboring and living in a secret
sin, God will send serpents, fiery serpents into your life.
And yes, you may be in Christ, you may be justified, you may
be in heaven one day, your salvation firm and fixed and secure, but
God does not take sin lightly. And he sends judgment into his
people’s lives when we murmur against him, when we live in
sin, and when we continually ask, are we there yet? And so take care. from this biblical
spiritual account of the lives of the Israelites. God does not
take lightly when we are living in sin. But they come to Moses
and say, what can be done? And so God tells Moses, fashion
a bronze serpent, fashion a fiery serpent like the ones that have
infested the camp, put it up on a pole, and whoever looks
upon it will live. Now, we live in a day where Graphic designers have, I don’t
know, they do funny things with people. You go to a hospital
now and it’s, well, it’s some funny little green thing. But
do y’all remember just not too many years ago? What was the
symbol for most hospitals and doctors? It was the bronze serpent. It was on the chiropractor’s
advertisement. It was on the doctor’s advertisement.
It was on the hospital. It was on the poison control.
It’s a symbol I can remember from childhood. Now, graphic
designers have taken that away, but for centuries, medical doctors
used the symbol of the bronze snake up on a pole. Look to medicine,
look to God, and you will live. This is a mighty image, isn’t
it? A mighty image that God simply
said, look, I’ll be merciful to you. I won’t make the snakes
go away. That would have been best, probably.
I won’t make the snakes go away, but anytime you’re bitten, Instead
of the judgment of death, you can look up and receive life. Now, isn’t it interesting that
Jesus would take this deadly outbreak in the life of Israel
and say about his upcoming death on the cross, that was this,
and now this is me. And I can save you not from the
death of a fiery serpent, but I can save you from everlasting
death, everlasting torment, everlasting darkness. You see, one of the
things we have to understand when we read this passage in
the book of numbers and we understand it through the lens of Jesus
and John chapter 12, it wasn’t the manna that they were rejecting. It wasn’t the little coriander
seed that they would put in their meals and make into bread and
cakes and they ate it day by day. It wasn’t the groceries
they were rejecting. It was God himself. they were
rejecting. And that’s the danger for us
as God’s people to say, you know, God, you owe us better. And here’s
the interesting little tidbit that I think will help you. They
had just won a great battle. They’re making their way to the
promised land. The Edomites, the sons of Esau said, you’re
not coming through our land. So we’re going to have to go
this little longer route. And so they had just finished
a battle with some of the, well, some of the Canaanites. And what
happens to us after we win a spiritual battle? We’re doing well, we’re
eating right, we’re reading our Bibles, we’re losing weight,
we’re praying and things are going good in our lives. We’re
coming to church, we’re not skipping, we’re putting something in the
offering plate. People know our name at church.
We’re just climbing spiritual mountains. What always happens
to us? There’s a crash. And that’s what takes place here
and ought to give us great warning as well. You can be bumping along
in the Christian life And you can get yourself into a place
where you’re rejecting the bread that is from heaven. You can
be rejecting the manna that God provides. You can reject the
bronze serpent and not look and die. Remember Naaman, Naaman
was a foreign king in the old Testament and he got leprosy
and he somehow ends up over in the promised land and The prophet
says to him, just go wash in the Jordan River. And Naaman
was too good for that. He wouldn’t wash. And so therefore
he continued in his leprosy. But finally he came to his senses
after the prodding of some that said, just do what the man of
God says, wash. And he became clean. And we wonder
sometimes, is the gospel just that simple? Is the gospel just
that simple? Must we simply look to the bronze
serpent and live? Must we simply look to the cross
of Jesus and live? And it’s a, well, it’s a yes
and no kind of answer. It’s a yes, yes, faith is that
simple. But there’s much to see. The
cross appears to Jesus’ enemies to be a victory. We’ve got Jesus. He’s no longer an enemy of the
Jews. He’s no longer an enemy of the Pharisees, the Sadducees.
He’s no longer an enemy of the council, the Sanhedrin. The cross
appears to be a great victory for Satan. But at the cross,
Jesus passes judgment on sin. At the cross, Jesus exposes the
sin of his enemies, and he puts a judgment on it. Chapter 12
of John says, the prince of this world is driven out, he’s given
a mortal wound. But Jesus on the cross, and this
is the thing I want us to zero in on and understand today, Jesus
on the cross is the son of man lifted up. He is lifted up and
hanged on a tree, him who knew no sin, became sin for us in
order that we might become the righteousness of Christ. Jesus
was lifted up and in his death and humiliation on the cross,
there’s also an enthronement. And that’s a little hard to see,
I think, but the cross was, yes, a sign of his death and humiliation,
the shame, but it was also the beginning of his enthronement.
This was God saying, I am exalting my son and his death to be the
propitiation, to be the sacrifice for sins. And Jesus says, in
my lifting up, I will embrace all kinds of people. All kinds
of people will look to the cross and they will live. Just before
chapter 12, some Greeks came to the disciples. They came to
Jesus. They wanted to see him. And Jesus was beginning to show
his disciples. He was beginning to show the
world and even the Jewish nation, look, you’ve been rejecting me
for centuries. And now look at those who are
seeking me. And so that’s why Jesus says,
the son of man, when he is lifted up, he will draw all kinds of
people to himself. And so, yes, it is that simple.
Look at the cross, look at Jesus, and yes, you will live. But look
at him, understand the cross, understand the grave, understand
the resurrection, acknowledge that it was your sins that put
him there. Acknowledge that he died in your
place. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
receive and rest in him alone, understanding that he gathers
all kinds of people from all kinds of places around this whole
world and he frees them from the devil’s hands. He pours out
his spirit into each and he gives them new life and he raises them
up with him and seats them into the heavenly places. It is that
simple, isn’t it? Look to the cross. and receive
everlasting life. Pray with me. Our God, we thank
you for your word to warn us of our unbelief, to impress upon
us the fact that we should never reject the bread from heaven.
And that, yes, it is that simple. We can look to the cross and
we can live. We thank you for the blessings
of Jesus that are ours through faith. And we pray now that these
Cross and grave and resurrection realities would be ours so that
we can live forever with you in your glorious presence. This we pray in the name of Christ,
amen.