The Son of Man Must Be Lifted Up (John 3:9–21) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:02 I'll begin reading this morning from John chapter 3, verse 9 and following. Nicodemus answered and said to him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him, Are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things? Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, that is the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

1:08 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.

2:18 he who has ears to hear the word of God let them hear shall we pray Father, as we continue to give our attention to this discussion that Jesus had with a member of the Sanhedrin, we ask that what is there for our instruction may pierce our souls and our hearts. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Last week I spoke briefly on chapter 3, verses 10 following, ending at verse 13, No one has ascended into heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is the Son of Man, who is in heaven. Now Jesus, in this discussion with Nicodemus, uses this title, which is his favorite title for self-description, the title Son of Man.

3:32 And that title has its origin in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, where the Son of Man is a heavenly being who attends the throne of the Ancient of Days. And when Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of Man, this is not simply an expression of humility by which He identifies with our fallen humanity, but He is referring to a title that has a rich history in the Old Testament. And He's saying to Nicodemus, Nicodemus, you're talking to the One who has come down from heaven. You are talking to the Son of Man in person, and you don't understand these basic truths that my Father has revealed in the Old Testament.

4:30 And now after having this claim, he answers the question that Nicodemus had raised, How can these things be? And Jesus now directs him back to the pages of the Old Testament when He says in verse 14, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Well, this reference back to an event that took place in the wilderness experience with the Israelites in the Old Testament is recorded for us in the book of Numbers. In Numbers chapter 21, beginning at verse 4, Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom, and the soul of the people became very discouraged along the way.

5:38 Does that sound familiar? That's the daily description of the attitude of the children of Israel during the wilderness experience. And so the people spoke against God and against Moses, saying, why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There's no food, no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread. And so the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and many of the people of Israel died." You get the picture. God has delivered these people from slavery, from bondage. He's now provided for their physical needs supernaturally with the manna on the floor, And now these people are so ungrateful that they begin to speak against God and they speak against Moses and they say, why have you brought us out of Egypt?

6:37 Why have you brought us to this terrible place, this dreadful wilderness, terrible desert with this stinking manna that has become loathsome to us that we have to collect every day in order to live? And so God responds to this rebellion of His people by sending a plague on them. This time the plague is not against the Egyptians, it's against them. He sends an infestation of poisonous snakes whose venom is described as being like fire. I mean, I don't know if you've ever contemplated this particular episode in redemptive history. I can't think of a few things that are worse than imagining being just thrown into a pit of vipers where all around me are these fiery serpents, one bite of which can be fatal. It's something like out of the Temple of Doom or the Raiders of the Lost Ark when you begin to graphically understand what's going on here. And again, this is God's judgment against His own people.

7:51 Therefore, the people came to Moses and said, we've made some bad choices here. That's the way the next edition of the New Testament will be in our culture. We have sinned. And we have spoken against the Lord. And Moses, we've spoken against you, so please pray to the Lord that He will take away these serpents from us." And so Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent, set it on a pole, and it shall be that everyone who is bitten when he looks at it shall live.

8:48 So Moses made a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and so it was if a serpent had bitten anyone when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. Now what's left unstated in this narrative is the number of people who in their death agony in the throes of their terror and pain inflicted by these serpents. who died anyway. They were so preoccupied with their own circumstances that when God gave them a way of escape, when God instructed Moses to make this bronze serpent, attach it to a pole, lift it up in the middle of the camp, and said simply, if anyone wants healing, healing, if anyone wants redemption from this plague, if anyone wants rescue from My judgment, from My wrath, let them simply look at this and they will be healed.

9:59 The implication of the text, ladies and gentlemen, is that some looked and some didn't. What a strange incident in the life of the Jewish people. We are told later on in the Scriptures that Hezekiah had to destroy this bronze serpent that had been preserved by the people because they turned it into an idol. God used it once as a symbol of His grace, as a symbol of His mercy, and human nature being what it was, before long they start worshiping the bronze serpent just like they They worshiped the golden calf at the base of Mount Sinai.

10:41 But now Jesus is listening to Nicodemus, and Nicodemus is listening to this discussion about a second birth and the kingdom of God and seeing the kingdom and entering the kingdom. And Nicodemus says, how can this happen? And Jesus said, remember what happened to those people in the Old Testament who were bitten by those serpents? He said, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Now, if you look at the language of John's gospel and you pay close attention to the way in which Jesus uses language in the gospels, you see that here He uses an expression that carries more than one meaning.

11:46 There's a kind of symbolism in this, a kind of hidden meaning that's thinly veiled in the way he says it because usually the primary understanding of being lifted up in Scripture is to be exalted. Lift up your hearts, lift up your voices, lift up your hands. the way through the Old Testament liturgy of worship, the idea of exaltation, the idea of glorification is communicated with this idea of being lifted up. And so Jesus says, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so now must the Son of Man be lifted up. And we could easily see the end of that statement simply to mean, so must I be exalted. so must I be glorified, because that's what it's going to take to accomplish this kingdom that I've just announced to you.

12:53 But when Jesus uses this phrase, lifted up, I think He certainly does mean that nobody's going to get into the kingdom of God who does not exalt Christ. must lift him up. But Jesus is speaking more directly to what has to happen for people to enter into His kingdom, that He must be lifted up upon a cross, that He must be the substitute serpent, if you will. He has to take upon Himself the sting of death. He has to take upon Himself the poison of sin on the cross. So there's little doubt in the minds of the commentators that when Jesus says to Nicodemus that I, the Son of Man, must be lifted up even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, that He's referring not simply to His glorification and His exaltation.

14:02 but He's referring primarily to the cross. What did we sing this morning when we began our worship? When we came into the sanctuary remembering that the architecture of this building in which we worship follows the medieval cruciform, that the shape of the building is in the form of a cross. With the arms of the cross off to each side and the center of the cross down the middle of the nave. And we begin our worship with the procession of the cross, and we sing, lift high the cross because we are people, ladies and gentlemen, who are snake bit. who have a poison that goes into the depth of our souls in our fallen humanity. And our only hope is the cross.

15:10 And that's why when we come into the sanctuary, our mind is on the cross and on the One who was lifted up for us and for our sins. That's your answer, Nicodemus. Just like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must I, the Son of Man, be lifted up. And then he goes on to say what? that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Now, there's something significant about the word order here in John 3.15, that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life? No. But first what is stated is the negative. believes in the one who is lifted up won't perish. Do you see how that draws the parallel exactly from the situation in the wilderness? These people who were bitten by these poisonous snakes were going to die.

16:19 They were in a predicament where they were bent on perishing. And so the remedy that God gave was a remedy to preserve them from certain destruction. And what Jesus is saying here to Nicodemus is we're in that same state by nature, that But apart from Christ, apart from the cross, we are as exposed to perishing and destruction as those people were who were bitten by deadly snakes. And Jesus is saying, there's many who believe on Me. they won't perish. Just as those in the Old Testament did not perish if they looked to the bronze serpent. Now, in verse 16 in the Bible that I'm using here, I'll just lift it up and let you see it, and you can see there's something unusual about this little Bible, and that is that it's a red letter edition. Can you see that, Joe? See the red letter?

17:37 And I don't know whoever invented this idea of having a red letter Bible. I didn't order this Bible because I wanted a red letter edition, because I don't need to have a red letter edition. That don't really always help me. But the idea here is they put in red what was said by Jesus. And if you notice, see that, Deisa? You notice that almost this whole page is in red. And right up here is verse 15. That's red, right? And there's verse 16. What color is that? Now, have you ever heard of John 3, 16? Ah, good. Well, in this book, it's in red letters. I don't think it ought to be. Because I don't think Jesus said to Nicodemus, for God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever, you know, believes in Him. I don't think He said that.

18:29 He may have. But it's difficult to tell in the text where Jesus stops talking and John's editorial comments begin. Usually, the commentators see John 3.16 as an editorial comment made by John as he's recounting this episode. That doesn't make it any more or less the Word of God or any less true by having John saying it rather than Jesus saying it. I'm just saying in all likelihood this is John speaking now, not Jesus. But let's look at whatever John or Jesus says in verse 16. For God so loved the world. that He gave His only begotten Son, and whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. This surely is the most famous verse in the New Testament. It's the one that people color their hair all different kinds of shades and hold up in signs at sporting events, John 3.16.

19:41 It's probably the most distorted verse in all of the New Testament as well. Because people who love the universality of this verse hate the particularity of this verse. And let me show that to you. It begins by saying something about the love of God and the object of God's affection. God so loved what? The world. And let me finish this for you according to contemporary understandings of John 3.16. God so loved the world that He gave Christ and saves everybody in the world. People draw from this text a doctrine of universal salvation, that God loves the world so much He saves everybody.

20:44 But obviously that's not what the text says. And those who are particularists and Arminian say that God loved the world enough to provide a way of salvation for everybody in it. Let's get rid of this election business and predestination doctrine. John 3 doesn't say that either. What John 3 says is that God's love is so deep and so profound, He loved the world enough to send His only begotten Son. Now let me tell you what this doesn't mean. He did not love the world enough to send five Saviors.

21:40 Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius. And yet our culture tells that if God were really loving, He would provide avatars galore, that He would provide a smorgasbord of salvation where everybody can believe their own religion, and it's okay because God loves the whole world enough enough that He's not so narrow-minded, not so exclusive that He requires faith in Christ. Because doesn't the Bible say that God loves the world? Yes, the Bible said He loves the world, and He loves the world how much? Enough to send His monogenes, enough to send His one and only Son. I warn people that at the end of their life, if they stand before God, they better not say, God, why were You not loving enough to provide fifteen Saviors in the world?

22:58 Can anybody read the story of Christ against the background of fallen humanity, against the constant opposition to God the Father that is raised by fallen creatures in His world? I say to people, consider this scenario. Suppose that there actually is a God in heaven. And suppose this God in heaven created the whole world and everybody in it. And suppose among the birds and the fish and the animals He gave the most exalted position in all of creation to this one to whom He gives His image called human beings. And He says to them, you will be holy even as I am holy. And suppose fifteen minutes after He makes them, they revolt against Him.

23:53 After he says, if you do this, you will die, and they do that, and he said, well, I'll tell you what, I'm going to provide a way to escape that judgment. and he speaks to Abraham out of paganism, brings him to himself. Says, I'm going to make you the father of a great nation. Suppose he does that, and then he blesses all of the descendants of Abraham, and then expands to a whole nation, and says, through this nation, I'm going to bless the whole world. But this nation repeatedly turns against God. And so God sends prophets to these people and tells them to come back to Him, to come back to Him as an unfaithful spouse returns to their partner. And they kill the prophets. And then finally, this God says, I'll tell you what, I love you so much that even though you are stiff-necked people, I'm going to send My eternal, only begotten Son into this planet and I'm going to subject Him to you.

25:05 And He sends His Son, and the people rise up against His Son and crucify Him. yet God loves them enough in all of this that while they're in the act of killing them, God takes the sins of His people and transfers them to His own Son and said, look, if you'll put your trust in Him, if you'll confess your sins and you believe in Him, if you turn your gaze upon Jesus and you do that, here's what. No death, no punishment. I'm going to give you eternal life with no pain, no tears, no evil, no darkness. Now suppose he did that. would you have the guts to come up to God and say, God, you haven't done enough for this world that hates you? Are you one of those that gets angry when you hear there's only one way to God? The question is, why should there be one? Not why is there only one. It's why is there one at all? Well, God loves the world enough to send the only one. He doesn't love the world enough to say you can ignore the only one. We need to understand that because everything out there in that culture says if God only provides one way of salvation, Savior, then God doesn't really love the world.

26:53 But think about the depths of the love that God has displayed by giving us Christ, whose name is not worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with that of Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius or anybody else. Because God has one Son who from all eternity beheld the glory of the Father, and yet as the creed we read this morning said, for us and for our salvation came from the bosom of the Father to be lifted up on a cross that anyone who puts their trust in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. God didn't send His Son into the world in order to condemn the world, but the world through Him might be saved.

27:54 And he who believes is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already. If you do not put your faith and trust in Christ, you are like one of those people writhing on the desert floor in the wilderness in the Old Testament who's been bit by a snake and there's no pole for you to look at, you will die and you will perish in your sins if you do not embrace the One whom God has sent. He who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Why does this seem severe?

28:46 This is the condemnation, we are told. that the light has come into the world, but men love the darkness rather than the light. because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light, doesn't come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be clearly seen that they have been done in God. Do you get it? This is our natural state. We're in the darkness, and there's nothing that terrifies us more than the appearance of light. But Jesus is introduced as the light of the world in the very first chapter of this gospel, and this light shines into the darkness.

29:40 It shines into people who are groveling in pain, who are perishing in their sin, who love the darkness because their deeds are evil. That's by nature, we're told, that we are by nature, beloved, children of darkness. It is against the nature of a child of darkness to come to the light because we know what the light represents. It represents exposure. It represents humiliation. You know about the man who sent a letter to 25 guys in town. All has been exposed. Flee at once. And 25 men left town. What would happen if you got a letter like that?

30:39 All is exposed. Flee at once. Even as Christians, we still have that tug at our heart where we look for that place to hide in the darkness rather than seeking the light of Christ. God said, this is my condemnation. I sent the light, but you didn't want the light. But all who are of the light, who come to the light, who embrace the light, will not perish but have everlasting life." In a nutshell, that's the gospel that was heard by Nicodemus in the darkness of the night. Let's pray.

31:40 Father, you have lifted up your Son upon the cross for us, and then you have lifted him into heaven. Father, we lift high the cross because we turn our eyes upon Jesus by gazing at Him and trusting in Him. we are redeemed.

32:11 Father, we know that He is Your only begotten. There are no others. And give us fidelity to Him. For we ask it in His name. Amen.