Will You Accept The Offer of Salvation?

Will You Accept
The Offer of Salvation?

Good Morning Friends,

Today we look at the prescribed method whereby we must be saved. The method might at first seem odd or maybe even crazy. But it really amounts to denying ourselves so we might follow Jesus. So today we face our sin and connect the Bronze Serpent of Moses and the Cross of Jesus. Will You Accept
The Offer of Salvation?

Scripture: From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

Numbers 21:4-9 (NRSV)

¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.^*16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’^*

John 3:14-21 (NRSV)

Message: Ok let us face the problem we have with this story of Snakes in the Assembly. We do not like comparing Jesus the man and Jesus our Lord to a snake. Our idea is of the snake in the garden with Adam and Eve and we reject this idea, at least at first, of linking Jesus to the snake…to sin. But Jesus compares Himself to a snake and for that reason alone we need to pay a little more attention to this story. To make sense of it we need to put it in the spiritual and historical context of Moses on the journey to the Promised Land and us on our journey of Lent as well. Perhaps then it will seem less bizarre. You see both the Hebrews in the desert and we today are the beneficiaries of a God who gives and gives and gives getting in return whines and whines and whines. I think we can and should relate to that reality. What we deserve is punishment and that is what we are going to get if we do not learn from God’s response and solution. Sure God could have just taken the snakes away, but instead He offers a better way that gives us the dignity of choice. God provides a way for people to survive the bite of the apple…the bite of the snake and live.  God offers a simple and merciful way to save us from our sins…from death. We are to look up and live.

Pray we understand the message of the serpent and the cross…of life…mercy… forgiveness and love.  Pray we raise our eyes to the offer of salvation. Pray we face our deliverance. Pray we repent. Pray we look to Jesus and ask forgiveness. Pray that the poison leave our system and the healing begin. Pray we take up our cross…His will for us… and choose to follow Him out of our desert. Pray we not try God’s patience. Pray our sin dies on the cross.

Blessings,

John Lawson