Creation and Sin

This transcript has been automatically generated

Welcome to the theme of the cross. Why don’t we pray as we, as we begin?

Father, once again we thank you for bringing us together this weekend to discuss what is at the very heart of Mark’s Gospel and what is at the very heart of the Gospel, the good news about Jesus. And we pray, Father, that you would expand our understanding and give us solid grounding in the things that You teach about Your Son’s death. We pray that these will be things that we live by, that we’re willing to fight for, and which we have a real grip on in our hearts. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Well, welcome to the Weekend on the Cross. Welcome to a weekend of recent controversies. Um, because of my interest in this kind of debate, I suppose— we’re not interested in debate, I don’t enjoy debates— but because of my concern about this debate, um, I occasionally do Amazon searches for books on the cross. And it is amazing at the moment how frequently are being published books which attack the central traditional evangelical understanding of the cross. So, a few years ago, in 1994, was published The Lost Message of Jesus by Steve Chalk and Alan Mann.

You might know Steve Chalk, he was president of the Oasis Trust. He’s often been on the TV, kind of Christian celebrity. He wrote in that book, as I said last night, that the idea of Jesus bearing our punishment would be like cosmic child abuse. Quote, a vengeful father punishing his son for an offence he has not even committed. He calls it a twisted version of events that’s barbaric and not befitting of the Christian gospel.

It caused a big furore. Spring Harvest, you may know, a big kind of evangelical convention, had Steve Chalk on its board, and they refused to discipline him about it. And as a result, Spring Harvest kicked out Word Life, which is the kind of more Bible teaching week of their conference. And so this year we’ve got New Word Life. So a real split down the middle of a partnership that had been going for 12, 15 years because of this.

In the States, you may have heard of the Emerging Church movement. Very influential church movement, people like Brian McLaren. In his book, The State We Find Ourselves In, he attacks the traditional view of the cross in the same way. Child abuse, he calls it. In America, there’s a whole movement called the Nonviolent Atonement Movement.

Seems a very strange thing to me, because you don’t have to know much about Jesus’ death or the atonement to know that it was very, very violent. And yet there is a group of teachers, Bible teachers in America, who are wanting to put forward the idea that violence is always bad, inherently bad, an evil thing, and that we must overcome violence with non-violence. And so they try and reinterpret the heart of the gospel as, as Jesus not giving in to violence, a non-violent atonement. So any idea that, that God was punishing Jesus or that God was somehow intending violence against Jesus, must be rejected. The traditional view of the cross has got to go, people say.

I mean, it no longer makes sense in our culture, it doesn’t make any sense to people in the 21st century, and we need to move on. It is a battle. There is enormous confusion around it. And as Rob said, we’ll only understand the cross rightly if we understand something of the problem that we face. And I think that one of the keys to all of these attempts to revise the teaching about the cross in the Bible come down to a misunderstanding of what we’re going to look at in this session.

I think this is the thing that people get wrong that means that they get the cross wrong. And I’ve called it the Bob the Builder complex, or if you want a more technical name for it, it’s called Pelagianism, which is is what theologians call it. I call it the Bob the Builder complex. And that’s because, who knows Bob the Builder? Hands up, come on, admit it.

Yeah, I think you all do, don’t you? Some people are keeping their hands down. Who knows the Bob the Builder theme tune?

Okay. Well, I think we’re gonna do it together as a kind of participatory event. I’ll sing the embarrassing line. It goes, Bob the Builder, and then you— Bob the Builder. Yes, we can.

Excellent. See, you don’t need any— well done. No one needs any drilling at all. That is the Bob the Builder complex. It’s not that we don’t have a problem, but it’s that if we’ve got a problem, it’s a problem that we can fix.

It is not an unfixable problem that we’ve got. It somehow lies within our capacity to sort it out. And I think that misunderstanding of the Bible is at the heart of most of the misunderstandings of the cross that there are. Now, there was a bloke called Pelagius, um, he was officially condemned as a heretic, um, and he denied original sin. Um, he denied any such thing as original sin, but, um, he didn’t deny sin.

Now that would be a fairly stupid and obvious thing to do, wouldn’t it? I mean, if you— you only have to look at a newspaper to find out that people do sinful, horrible, selfish things. I mean, it’s just obvious that the world has got selfishness and evil thoughts and murder and adultery and all the things that Jesus speaks of in Mark 7 coming from the heart. It’d be very hard to try and be a Christian teacher and deny sin. I mean, some people have tried.

So the Christian Science cult says that sin is an illusion, and so is evil, and so is suffering. It’s just an illusion. Which always amused me. We used to, on my way to lectures in Cambridge, I used to walk past the Christian Science reading room, and occasionally for a laugh we’d pick up their kind of newsletter, and it would have these Christian Science healing testimonies in the back. And things like, you know, my daughter was vomiting and she was throwing up everywhere, but I said to myself, no, this is an illusion.

It’s not This is not really happening. And my wife was very concerned. My wife is not a Christian Scientist. But I said to her, you know, and it’s this kind of fanciful idea of the world that everything’s okay and that everything’s good and there’s no evil or suffering. It’s just a fanciful, clueless head in the clouds.

No one really seriously denies sin. And Pelagius didn’t deny sin. Pelagius denied that sin was unfixable.

For him, it was like a sickness that we’ve got that if you take enough vitamin C and bed rest, you might be able to pull yourself out of. Yes, of course there’s a problem, but it’s not unfixable.

And Pelagius taught that each one of us has got free will to choose either what’s good or what’s bad. And we don’t have to choose what’s bad. Now, as I put it like that, it sounds slightly more uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Because that idea is pretty alive and well around Christianity nowadays. The highest value for Pelagius was our free will to choose either what’s good or what’s bad, and we don’t have to choose what’s bad.

Here, let me give it to you in Pelagius’s own words. Here’s the heretic himself in the 4th century in his letter to Demetrius. I don’t know who Demetrius is, but someone that Pelagius wrote to. This is what he said: It was because God wished to bestow on the rational creature the gift of doing good of his own free will and the capacity to exercise free choice by implanting in man the possibility of choosing either alternative, that he made it his peculiar right to be what he wanted to be, so that with his capacity for good and evil, he could do either quite naturally, and then bend his will in the other direction too.

That sounds very contemporary, doesn’t it? It was God’s intention that he should give you the chance to choose to do good if you wanted to. Otherwise you’d be a robot, people would say nowadays, wouldn’t they? So God’s made it so you can choose to do good if you want to. He’s given you the possibility of either alternative.

You can be what you want to be You’ve got the capacity for good or for evil. You can bend your will either way, says Pelagius. And that’s a very contemporary idea, isn’t it? And here, here is Pelagius kind of sneaking into the, um, the scriptwriter’s room in Hollywood. I’m sure it was him because cheque out this quote.

Okay, I’m one of those sad Christian speakers who in the cinema gets out a notebook and starts scribbling. I’m sorry. But it’s just— this has just amazed me. Look at this bit. Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice.

My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It’s the choices we make— so it’s the choices that make us who we are, and we can choose to do what’s right. Now if you’ve seen the film, you know that is really the It’s not just a kind of a fantastic quote that I grabbed from the middle, it’s really the theme of the whole film. That you’ve got baddies, but actually in Spider-Man all of the baddies apart from one turn good.

They’re just kind of misunderstood, they just didn’t realise they were being so mean. And when it’s pointed out to them they go, oh, I see, you know, and they fall in love with the right person, they see the possibility of redeeming themselves and doing something more significant in the world if they’re only given to their good side rather than their bad side. And there’s only one, I think, only one baddie doesn’t work out that way. And even then you feel it was a bit of a tragedy because he was so close to realising and just opted the wrong way in the end. And it’s the idea that before us we have good and evil choices and we are free to choose either.

And do you see that if that’s the case, if we’re not stuck in sin, if we’re only sick rather than terminally ill, well, there’s at least the possibility that we could sort it out. There’s at least the possibility that we could somehow be motivated to start choosing what was right rather than what’s wrong. So of course Adam and Eve, they chose what’s wrong. We all know that in the Garden of Eden. But if we’re still just sick, then we could choose to do what’s right.

Bob the Builder Can you fix it? Bob the Builder, yes, we can. Now that is the heresy of Pelagianism. But I want us to just think a minute. If that was our view of the— of human nature, if we went with Pelagius, what would that leave for the cross to do?

What would the cross have to do if we were just sick? It had to do something. Let’s, let’s be honest, no one is saying sin is not a problem. Pelagius is not saying that. He’s saying that we do do selfish things, we do evil things, we turn away from God, we don’t love God as we should.

Yeah, we agree with all of that, but we’re free to choose an alternative if we want to. Now, what does the cross have to do in that situation? Why don’t you just turn to your neighbour and just discuss yourself what, what kind of view of the cross you think you might have if you were a Pelagian. And I’ll give you just a couple of minutes to do that.

Okay, let me stop you there.

Okay, if you were, if you were Bob the Builder in the moral realm, what would you need the cross to do for you?

Any thoughts?

Mark? Give you some tools to fix the job. Okay, yeah, okay, so you could do some tools. You might want some help of some kind, and so Jesus being able to help you out somehow, that might help you to fix things. Yep, yep.

Maybe you might need him to discharge the punishment. I’d imagine if I went out and smashed up a car, but because I had the capacity to choose good, afterwards I could stick my life in order and stop smashing up cars myself, I’d still need someone to go to the magistrate to pay the fine off. Yes, you would, if you believed that there was a fine. Yes, that’s certainly true. Not all Pelagians would go with that, but yes, you might still have a problem you need Jesus to help with.

Yeah?

Any other thoughts? It would just be simple conviction, so it would be like, he wouldn’t have any power, it would just make you choose. Yeah, all you need Jesus’ death to do is to help you to choose one of the alternatives that’s before you. So you can go either way. You’ve gone the wrong way.

So, so maybe if Jesus’ death was a really inspiring thing, if, if Jesus’ death showed you how much God loved you, it might somehow kind of capture your imagination. It might show you that God was your friend after all, that he was He was worth loving back. It might rouse your heart. So here’s someone, they’re not a Christian, and really their problem is they just don’t realise how much God loves them. They just don’t realise how good God was.

If they knew how good God was, if they knew how much He loved them, they’d probably want to be God’s friend, wouldn’t they? They just mustn’t realise very much. So as long as the cross can show us how much God loves us, that surely will be enough. And it will have the power to spark off within us a kind of recognition of a relationship that we wanted again. Again, it’s not too far from things that we’ve heard, isn’t it?

You’ve heard that idea. It’s not— of course there’s truth in there. Of course God’s love is demonstrated in the cross. But if you’re a Pelagian, that’s all it needs to do.

Or here’s a little variation on Pelagianism. The devil is quite mean and horrible, and he has kind of enslaved us with our sin. Now basically, I’m not bad, I’m kind of morally neutral, but the devil’s kind of locked me up. So all the cross has really got to do is defeat him. If it only could get rid of the devil, take away his influence on me, set me free from him, well then I’d be free to go God’s way.

So again, it’s like God and I, God and I are friends, And our common enemy is the devil. And so God says, well, let me help you. I’ll see if I can break you free from his clutches, and then you and I will be free to get on with our being good in the world programme that we both want, really.

The 2 biggest alternative views for the cross of what I’m about to tell you this weekend are called the moral influence theory, the idea that Jesus’ death is an inspiring example, Or what’s called Christus Victor, which is just a way of making something sound better because they put it in Latin. All it really means is Christ has victory over the devil, and so everything’s okay.

But none of those views really explain why Jesus has to die. That’s the problem. It doesn’t really make sense of why you’ve got to die. I mean, if I’ve just got to show you that I really love you, Well, okay, death is a pretty ultimate thing, well, but only if it helps you in some way. I mean, how odd it would be if for Valentine’s Day last, was it Thursday?

See, you can see how much that was kind of featured in my life, I can’t even remember what day it was. But imagine for Valentine’s Day, I thought chocolates, pah, you know, everyone does that. I’m gonna do something much better than that. So I say, dear whoever it is, I love you and I climbed to the top of the Gherkin. And throw myself off without a parachute and die.

Ultimate demonstration of, well, not really love, is it? Ultimate demonstration of pointless death and idiocy. Why does dying show you love per se? You know, what’s the key to that? And come to mention it, why does dying defeat the devil?

It’s not obvious how that would work. So yeah, sure, we— it’s nice if Jesus’ death shows us how he loves us. It’s good if his death defeats the devil. We’ll look at both of those things. But by themselves, why has he got to die?

But more than that, the Bible denies our Bob the Builder confidence. The Bible says we’ve got a problem It’s not just that we’re sinful, but that we are bound in sin. We’re slaves to sin. We can’t fix it. Now you’ve seen that a bit already in Mark’s Gospel.

I want to show it to you from John’s Gospel so you get a different, um, different take on it. Jesus says we’ve got a big problem. Now look just back at that bit of John that we had read. John chapter 2, verse 23.

Now you think, if we were, if we were in the Pelagian problem, we were just sick, then maybe a demonstration of amazing miraculous power would be enough to fix it. I mean, that’s, that’d be pretty cool, wouldn’t it? Jesus coming and doing a miracle, someone’s not God’s friend, and then they see his amazing power. Well, that might win them over. Let’s have a look at that.

So chapter 2, verse 23: When Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them. He knew all men. He didn’t need anyone to bear witness about man, for he knew what was in a man. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know you’re a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now what’s going on here? Lots of people have seen Jesus do some pretty amazing miracles, and they believe in Him. It looks just like Spider-Man 3, doesn’t it?

They’re living their kind of lives without God, someone comes along, starts doing amazing miracles for God, they say, wow, we’ll follow you! And Jesus gets this massive crowd of followers because of His miracles. And you think, fantastic! But just look what Jesus thinks about it. Verse 24: Jesus on His part did not entrust Himself to them.

Jesus isn’t impressed at people who are impressed with miracles. He’s not impressed with that. Jesus won’t trust Himself to people who trust Him. Because of miracles. Because he knows all men.

He knows what men are like. And actually, as it happens, in John’s Gospel, the, the big crowds you start with turn into big crowds who want him to be killed. And it is the same people, the same crowds who love him, who love the signs, who follow him. Sign chasers going around getting as many miracles as they can in their collection. Are the same people who turn against him.

And Jesus knows that. And so he’s not impressed just because they’re impressed. He doesn’t entrust himself to those who trust him just because of miracles. So Jesus himself, on his part, didn’t entrust himself to them. He knew all people, and he needed no one to bear witness about a man, for he knew what was in a man.

Now there was a man, a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler And he came to Jesus and what did he say? He says, Rabbi, we know you’re a teacher come from God because of— well, because of the signs, because of the miracles. And Jesus says, I’m not very impressed. Miracles are not going to sort you out. You’ve got to be born again.

See the shock? He’s not just somebody deciding which of 2 alternatives to choose for their life. Do I choose good or do I choose bad? I’ve been choosing bad so far, but you know, I’ll consider the good option. What kind of trailer?

Oh, you do miracles? That’s interesting. I might consider that. Jesus says, it’s not going to work that way. An inspiring example is not enough.

And the reason it’s not enough is because it doesn’t lie within our power to fix things. Look again at what Jesus says, chapter 3, verse 3. Can enter the kingdom of God unless he’s born again. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he’s old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?

Jesus answered, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes.

You hear its sound, you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who’s born of the Spirit.

Now Jesus is kind of using a couple of illustrations here. I think both of them say to you, you can’t fix it. First of all, Jesus says, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. And it seems that he’s flashing back to the prophet Ezekiel when he talked about a new start for the people. And he talked about water and the Spirit.

Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 25. If you want to write down in your notes, Ezekiel 36:25. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you’ll be clean from all your uncleanness. From all your idols I’ll cleanse you. I’ll give you a new heart, and a new spirit I’ll put within you.

I’ll take away the heart of stone in your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I’ll I’ll put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. So God says, I’ll give you a new heart. I’ll give you my Spirit. I’ll wash you with clean water.

And Jesus is saying, that’s what I’m saying, Nicodemus, you need. You need a new birth. You need a new heart. You need my Spirit. And the one thing that’s fairly obvious about heart surgery is that you cannot do it on yourself.

Now I know some of you have seen Casino Royale where James Bond does, but believe me, you can’t. You cannot change your own heart to a different one. Jesus’ illustration is basically saying, Nicodemus, if you’re going to the Kingdom of God, it’s not within your power to do so. You can’t do it. Can you fix it?

No, you can’t, says Jesus. Well, that’s one illustration. The second illustration Jesus gives is of just of the idea of being born again. And Nicodemus is a bit confused. He says, hang on a minute, are you saying that I’ve got to kind of go back inside my mother?

I don’t think she’s going to be very happy about that. It’s going to be difficult. I’m a bit bigger than I was, you know, 36 years ago, however old he is. Um, that’s not going to work. And Jesus says, no, no, you’re misunderstanding me.

I’m not saying you’ve got to be born again flesh. I’m saying you’ve got to be born again of the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. It’s got to be the Spirit who gives birth to you. Well, you can’t do heart surgery yourself.

The other thing you can’t do to yourself is give birth. In my conception and my birth, I was one of the people kind of least involved in coming up with the idea. I did very little to help. I certainly did nothing to help with my conception. And with my birth, I mostly just cried and struggled, I understand.

And my mum did all the work. You cannot give birth to yourself. And that is Jesus’ point. It’s not something you can do. It’s something the Spirit’s got to do.

And then he gives another illustration of the same thing with a little play on words. The word in Greek for spirit Spirit is pneuma, like pneumatic drills, spirit drills. I don’t know what the significance of that is, but that’s the word. And it’s the same as the word for wind or breath. And we saw that last weekend, didn’t we, on the last RML Mark weekend.

It’s the same word. And so Jesus is doing a little pun when He starts talking about the wind. He’s talking about the Spirit, same word as the wind. He says, the wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, you can’t tell where it comes from or where it goes.

In other words, the Spirit is not in your control. You can’t control the wind. You don’t decide. The Spirit decides. The wind decides.

And you can just see His effects. Well, that’s the position you’re in when it comes to the new birth. You’re like a leaf in the wind. You can’t control which way you’re going to be blown. You can just see which way you are blown by the Spirit.

In other words, Jesus says 3 times virtually in 3 different ways You cannot fix this. God’s got to do heart surgery. The Spirit’s got to give birth to you. The Spirit’s going to blow you where he wants to. Bob the Builder, you cannot fix it.

You cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you’re born again. It is impossible for you to do. Well, you think, okay, fair enough, I get the point, you know, Jesus, you’re being pretty clear, but How does the cross fit into all this?

Well, in John chapter 3, Jesus says it is because He dies that this new birth is going to be possible. A new start for you, a new birth, a heart operation, is going to be paid for at the expense of Jesus’ life. And for this, we need to look at the most famous verse of the Bible. John 3:16. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

Now just look at that verse carefully and tell me why it doesn’t make any sense on its own. If you had that up on your fridge, or on your Christian calendar, or on a kind of corny motivational poster with a sunset on your wall, and you just had that verse, how do you know that it does not make sense on its own? Just look at verse 16. This is a how to understand the Bible question. What’s wrong with verse 16 as a self-contained statement?

It’s got a— yeah, yeah. What word is Peter referring to when he says— it’s for, yeah. So it starts with the word because, basically. Because God so loved the world. Because of what?

It tells you John 3:16 is not a self-contained verse. Because of what? Well, because of verse 14 and 15. So let’s look at the most famous verse in the Bible in its context. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Now, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, another Bible interpreting thing. What should we do now?

Just, just maybe lift up the snake in the desert? Anyone know about that? Maybe not. So why don’t we look at the Old Testament? Excellent.

So 2 marked tools, linking word, therefore, takes us back to verse 14, then that takes us back to the Old Testament. So Numbers 21.

And can somebody read to us verses 4 to 9 of Numbers 21? Miriam, do you mind? Would that be okay? Thank you very much.

Why don’t you just turn around or stand up and then people can hear you?

That’s fine, that’s fine. They travelled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea to go along I’m sorry, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way. They spoke against God and against Moses and said, why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread, there is no water, and we detest this miserable food.

Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them. They bit the people, and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord may take the snakes away from us. So Moses prayed for the people.

The Lord said to Moses, make a snake and put it on a pole. Anyone who is bitten can look at it and live. So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake and looked at the Thank you very much. Now, it’s, the storey’s so short that you almost miss it.

You almost miss how massively significant it is in the history of a nation. So I want you to just for a moment close your eyes and imagine yourself back to the days of numbers. So about, what, 3,300 years ago, something like that. So close your eyes. You’re a camper, you live in a campsite, kind of gypsy I suppose, but you’re one of God’s people.

You live on the campsite and you’ve got the tabernacle in the middle of it, God’s tent, pretty cool. But you’re a miserable bunch, you’re in the desert, you don’t like the local food. The local food’s pretty amazing actually. The local food comes from heaven, it’s not the local Tesco Metro. No, rather God, because you’re in the desert, there’s not much food about, so God gives you food from heaven.

And every morning, just imagine, you go out in the morning, it is your normal routine, you just go out collecting flakes from the ground that God has sent from heaven like dew, and you eat them and they’re sweet as honey. So like kind of Honey Nut Loops or something like that, breakfast cereal, but it’s It’s amazingly, miraculously provided by God. But the thing is, because you’ve had it every day for the last, you know, 40 years, and you’re getting a little bit tired of it, so you grumble and you say, I hate this food. This is no good. In fact, I hate God.

Because if all he can do is send me miraculous miracle food every day to provide for me, I just hate him. I can’t stand him anymore. It’s an amazingly ungrateful thing to say, isn’t it? It’s amazingly evil-hearted thing to do to God who loves you and has saved you and has provided for you, but you grumble. And God is angry with you.

And then this terrible thing happens. These snakes start turning up around the camp. You imagine one day you’ve got a young son, he’s 8 years old. He goes out to play football with his mate from the tribe of Benjamin over in the spare bit of grass behind the Benjamin tents and He’s just there, the ball goes out under a tree, and he goes to pick it up, and suddenly, ah!

He’s bitten by a snake. And you see him at a distance, his friend’s carrying him, and he’s looking not too well, and your heart’s in your stomach because you— You just fear what might have happened. And he gets a bit closer and you look at his arm and you see that there’s these 2 little teeth marks on his arm. And you know what that means, you see, because it happened to the neighbours and it happened to your auntie’s husband and it’s been happening to all kinds of people around the camp. It’s a terrible thing.

And you know that his You’re not going to have long to live because these snakebites, they’re deadly. And worse than that, you know that this is God’s punishment on the people for your grumbling.

And you can’t fix it. It’s not a Bob the Builder moment, is it, for a parent in Israel in those days? You cannot fix it. You can’t suddenly stop being grateful for the Honey Nut Leap Flakes and think that’ll be okay and kind of thank yourself out of trouble. It’s too late.

God is angry. He’s sent his judgement. You’re in trouble.

And just as you are taking your son in your arms and you’re just beginning to cry with despair, suddenly one of the neighbours comes by. She sees immediately what’s going on. She says, hey, don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Haven’t you heard that, um, and you say, what are you talking about?

They say, well, Moses has put up this snake in the marketplace, a bronze snake. And anyone who’s bitten by one of the snakes, they look at the bronze snake, they’ll live. Well, it sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? The idea that a bit of metal on a pole could possibly save your son. But you’re desperate, there’s no alternatives.

So you stumble along to the marketplace. Just about manages to open his eyes enough to look upwards at this blurry image on a stick that Moses put there. And he lives. And God has mercy on people and delivers them from the judgement that He Himself had imposed. And they’re saved.

It’s a second chance. It’s a new life for your son, a new birth. A starting over again for you, but not one that you could fix.

Something that God did. Well, John chapter 3, verse 14, Jesus says, just as, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert— people under God’s judgement, people perishing because of their rebellion against God, people in a situation That they could not fix. Nicodemus, you cannot fix it. But just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. He’s talking about this, lifted up on the cross, that whoever believes in him shouldn’t perish like those bitten by the snake, like those under God’s judgement, should not perish but have everlasting life.

For God so loved the world that whoever— He sent His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. The cross fixes it. The cross fixes the problem that we cannot fix. Jesus denies our Bob the Builder view of the world. Jesus urges us that we need His death for a new start, heart surgery.

A new birth.

And so I’ve used the illustration before. It’s coming up, isn’t it? February the 29th. I think this is a leap year this year, isn’t it? Yeah, so all I can say is, boys, watch out.

Bachelors, February the 29th, dangerous day. It’s the day that the ladies are allowed traditionally to bow the knee and pop the question. And I can’t remember if I told you this, but one of my crazy friends, it was February 29th when I was at university in 1994, I think, is that right? Or maybe it was ’96, I can’t remember. I was at university both those years.

One of them was ’96, it was a leap year. And he gave us a little briefing notice in our pigeonholes, it was kind of before email was really taking off. Watch out, beware, Tomorrow is a very dangerous day. Lock yourself in your room. Do not answer the door.

Do not open any envelopes, particularly pink or perfumed ones. This is a perilous day for the bachelor. And so he had this kind of pact of singleness. He’s now married, by the way.

Well, if you’ll forgive the illustration, if the church is the bride and Jesus is the bridegroom, It’s never February the 29th. It’s never a leap year. There’s never a day that we can opt into the relationship from our side or initiate a way back to God because we’re, we’re not able to fix it. We don’t even want to fix it. We are miles away from God and He takes the initiative And He takes the punishment in order that we could be saved.

Let’s pray and then we’ll go for coffee. Oh no, sorry, then we’ll pray and then we’ll sing. Let me pray. Father God, we are sorry that we have such a high view of ourselves, that we are free, that yes, we know we do things wrong, but it’s only something that we can sort out. We’re just ill or sick or capable of of choosing the good.

And so, Father, we minimise the work the cross has to do, just to give us a helping hand, an inspiring example, a bit of motivation, a bit of help defeating the devil, who we don’t like anyway because we’re good. And Father, we thank you for showing us, just beginning to show us, that we’re a people in great trouble, and we’re people perishing under your judgement, and we’re people who need heart surgery. And we thank You, Father, that the Son of Man was lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. We praise You for that. We pray, Father, for this weekend, for the chance to understand more and more about that, about Your solution to the problem that we’ve got, the big problem that we have.

And we pray that as we understand it, we would increase in our praise and love of the Lord Jesus. For His sake. Amen.