Sermon Notes – Sunday 10th March
Fourth Sunday of Lent
I wonder…have you ever made a decision and then, as it started to happen, you thought you might have made the wrong one?
Perhaps you have moved house and once you’d moved into your new house you started to find all the things that were wrong with it.
Perhaps you started a new job only to find out it wasn’t all you had expected.
Maybe you booked a holiday and arrived to find the hotel half-finished or in an awkward location.
Maybe you’ve joined a group or a course and then realised it wasn’t for you. I once signed up for 6 weeks of Pilates but by week 2 I knew it wasn’t my thing.
Have you ever made a decision…and then started to think it was the wrong one?
Because this is exactly what has happened to God’s people in our reading from the book of Numbers today.
For years they had been slaves in Egypt. Moses comes along, convinces Pharoah to release them, and they are free! They are joyful, full of hope, life is going to be fantastic! And then…they walk and walk and walk, there’s not much to eat and very little to drink. They become hungry and thirsty and tired and bored. It’s not all they thought it would be. They become impatient and discouraged.
“The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way”.
They grumbled, they whinged and they whined. They spoke against God and against Moses. And they were more than a little dramatic.
“Why have you saved us from Egypt to die here in the wilderness?!” “There is no water and we don’t like this light bread”.
And if they didn’t think life was bad enough, then came the fiery serpents that bit people and lots of them died. At this point, only at this point when they’re surrounded by people dying from snakebites, did they decide to turn to Moses and to God for help. Like so many of us still do nowadays, they waited until things got really bad before turning back to God and asking for help.
And the solution was simple, albeit a little weird. Moses needed to make a serpent of brass, put it on a pole, and when people were bitten by the snakes they should look up at it and they would be alright.
It wouldn’t stop them being bitten by the snakes, actions have consequences – they had grumbled and now there were snakes. But with faith, with action showing their faith, those snakebites are painful but no longer deadly.
All they need to do is have the faith to look up at the serpent on the pole to be saved.
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It is this story that we need to know in order to make sense of the first verse of the gospel passage today.
Verse 14 says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life”.
Can you see the connection?
Moses lifted up the serpent and God’s people that looked at it and believed had earthly life.
The Son of Man, Jesus, is lifted up and whosoever looks and him and believes has eternal life.
It is all explained by the next verse, verse 16. It’s verse that we often see on billboards, it’s become the ‘go-to’ verse for street evangelists as a summary of the gospel.
It sounds so simple but it is a passage that so often gets misconstrued. Somehow the message becomes ‘God hates the world because of all your sinning and sent his only son to die because of all bad things you have thought, said and done’.
That…is not what it actually says though. It says ‘love’.
And today I want to draw your attention to two key words in this verse. The first is ‘world’ and the other is ‘whosoever’.
Moses lifting up the bronze serpent was for God’s people only. They were the only ones there so it wasn’t too much of an exclusive act…but the instruction and intention was to save the Israelites, the people of God.
Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, was given for the world, for whosoever believes in him. There are no limitations.
This week was International Women’s Day – which has no relevance to this sermon apart from, because it was IWD, I was reading stories of strong women that are often unknown. Whilst doing this I read of Mary MacLeod Bethune, an American Civil Rights Activist. She led an interesting life but I just want to share this quote with you, in it she is talking about the verse John 3:16…
“With these words the scales fell from my eyes and the light came flooding in. My sense of inferiority, my fear of handicaps, dropped away. “Whosoever,” it said. No Jew nor Gentile, no Catholic nor Protestant, no black nor white; just “whosoever.” It means that I, a humble Negro girl, had just as much chance as anybody in the sight and love of God. These words stored up a battery of faith and confidence and determination in my heart, which has not failed me to this day.”
‘Whosoever’ is just one word that opens up the gospel message to everyone with no limitations. Mary has mentioned some that made a difference to her but we can expand this further as we consider the world we live in today.
- Neither Jew nor Gentile nor any other ethnic group;
- Neither Catholic nor Protestant nor those of any other or no faith at all;
- Neither Black nor White nor Brown nor any other race;
- Neither straight nor LGBTQ+;
- Neither those belonging to any of the opposing political parties
- Neither young nor old;
- Neither able-bodied nor disabled
- Neither rich nor poor
- Neither neurotypical nor neurodivergent
I’m sure there are more but you get the idea. Whosoever…no limitations.
Despite our human tendency to create exceptions and divisions, to put barriers in place, to create hoops to jump through, the heart of the gospel is both simple and inclusive.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.
Amen
