Deserts | Week 4 | Sermon

So if you've never gone to IKEA, let me just tell you don't do it. Okay? Whatever you might save in furniture costs, you are going to more than have to pay for the marital counseling that will be on the other side of building said furniture. Right?

I wish somebody had told us this because I don't know, was ten years ago or so. We were in San Diego getting ready to like remodel the first little house that we had bought and through a series of events we got told, hey, you should guys should check out IKEA. And one of our friends who was in construction was like a lot of custom cabinet makers even use IKEA's boxes.

So we got sold on this whole thing. You go to IKEA, they have to teach you how to speak Swedish first so you can like, you know, walk in there. And then you sit with one of their technicians and they build out your whole kitchen. In three d you can see it and it's kinda cool. You can like actually get the visual of what it's gonna look like and we're like, all right, we're in, let's order it. So we press order and she's like, it'll be delivered in three to five days. Awesome.

Delivery day comes and what began to get unloaded from these trucks were like 10,000,000 boxes that were all this big. And I'm like, how does a cabinet fit into a box this big, you know? And the driver was like, what are you talking about? I'm like, we ordered kitchen cabinets. He's like, these are them.

You have to assemble them. And I'm like, what? I don't, not only do I have to install the cabinets, I have to first build the cabinets. Nobody left that out or nobody had told me that. A little piece of information had been left out in the buying process.

And so I'm sitting there looking and literally our entire house was covered with these boxes. Had

to have been three or 400 boxes that are scattered throughout the house. And I'm sitting there looking like, I got two options. Option one is just tell my wife like, hey, we've had a good run, but like, let's end it here. Like, let's just get divorced. We'll try again next time. Or two,

the only other option is to open the IKEA instruction manual. Have you ever seen one of these things? For some of you, I'm gonna trigger some PTSD. I wanna show you what one of these things looks like.

Okay? You open this manual up and it's like, what is poang? Like, what does poang even mean? And then you have like an alien that has these alien tools with his alien friends. And somehow, at the end of this whole process, you get a chair. And I'm like, how? Like, this makes zero

sense to me. And I'm looking at this kitchen, like, cabinet manual. I'm like, there's a 185 steps in this process.

And so I called my dad and I was like, dad, you are not gonna like this, but we we have to assemble all these cabinets. And it took us two and a half full days to build these cabinets. Right? And then we had to actually install the cabinets. But the funny part, the lesson that I did learn was that as much as I didn't understand it and it seems completely crazy to me, that apparently IKEA employs some pretty smart people that design these things and put them together.

And if you just kind of trust the process and go step by step, at the end of it, you will have something that resembles some type of furniture. Right? And I kind of learned that you don't necessarily have to understand the whole process

to just kind of take the next step. And at the end of it, you'll potentially have something that is something you couldn't have understand at the beginning of the process.

I I say all of that because what we're going to look at today in Numbers chapter 21 is one of the most important lessons that I think you and I, as humans who have grown up in a very westernized world that have been taught a very specific way of thinking,

it's a thing, it's a lesson that we need to learn because sometimes what God will ask

instruct us to do things that we we don't completely understand. We don't understand how step one gets to this finished project,

but maybe we don't need to understand it all and we can just trust the guy that is the intelligent designer behind it all and say, maybe there really is a designer behind all of this and maybe he knows what he's doing. And if that's true,

then I don't necessarily have to completely understand it to trust him and say yes to what it is that he's asking me to do next. And maybe just like with IKEA furniture, like with our lives, if we continue to take steps of obedience,

at the end of it, it will build something that we go, okay, this thing made a massive difference. This changed my family story. This changed our legacy. This changed our dynamics.

Here's what I wanna look at in this story in Numbers chapter 21. The big idea, if you will, we're gonna look at for the next few moments. It's the gospel. The gospel is the good news, the hope for humanity. The gospel doesn't have to make sense to make a difference. Sometimes

our own thinking and way of processing can be one of our greatest hindrances to us fully experiencing who God is. Remember what Paul would say is that the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Right? The idea that Jesus simply being on a cross could be the hope for all humanity,

it's foolish. It doesn't make any sense. It's not logical. But maybe

it doesn't have to make sense for it to be effective and for it to work and to truly make a difference in our life. Numbers chapter 21 where we're gonna be today, if you're just joining us, again, the book of Numbers records the nation of Israel, God's people, their journey from captivity in Egypt to being in freedom in Canaan,

where they would be in the promised land with God. And for forty years they wandered the desert because of their disobedience.

And that forty years is recorded in the book of Numbers. In Numbers chapter 21, we're at the very, very end of their journey. We looked last week at Moses' kind of fatal leadership decision that he makes at the end, that tarnishes his entire legacy.

What we're gonna see today is the nation of Israel, they have essentially two countries that they need to get through. Two cities that they need to push through to get to the promised land. The first one are the Canaanites. They're an army that's way bigger than them, way stronger than them, but God is with them and they completely annihilate the Canaanites. They just mow through them. Now they get to the place called Edom.

The nation of Israel is assuming that God's gonna do the same thing with them that he just did with the Canaanites. That he's gonna be with them, that they're going to mow through them. But what they don't understand is with Edom, there's a ton of history here. The Edomites are direct descendants of Esau. Remember the whole Jacob and Esau and Jacob stole Esau's birthright. The nation of Israel are descendants of Jacob.

The the descendants of Edom are from Esau.

And so there's a ton of history here that doesn't really matter. But because of that, God tells them we're not gonna mow through them. I want you to instead turn around, and I want you to take a long journey around them and avoid them. And the nation of Israel says, this doesn't make sense.

I don't agree with this, and I don't like this. And this is how the story begins in Numbers chapter 21 verse four. It says, Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey.

And they began to speak against God and Moses. Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness? They complained. There's nothing to eat here and nothing to drink and we hate this horrible manna. Gangster verse, verse six. So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people and they were bitten and died.

Like where was that one in Sunday school, right? Like the little felt board. And this is the snake kids and the snakes goes and they bites the people. Everybody say snakes, right? Like this one wasn't in my Sunday school class. God tells them to go around, to take a long journey, to do something that doesn't make sense.

I know this is what just happened, but now this is what I've asked you to do. And what do you and I do when we're asked to do something that doesn't make sense? That seems to go against what we thought the plan was. Oftentimes we will do exactly what the nation of Israel does. We just get frustrated with God.

We just start to get annoyed that the process is taking longer than we thought it was going to. Do you notice why they're upset? That it's a long journey.

And now what are they doing? They're complaining again about the manna. And you're like, I feel like we've heard this before. If you've been joining us, this is the fifteenth time they've complained about it. At some point you have to just accept what the reality is. Complaining doesn't actually change anything,

but they're just frustrated. And I think the reason that they're frustrated is because they are doing exactly what you and I will be tempted to do as well. We treat God like he's some cosmic Coke machine that is supposed to perform how we want him to perform. And when I press B2,

I know what's supposed to come out of the machine. And the problem is, is when you press B2 a few times and it doesn't work, what do you do as a vending machine?

Eventually you get frustrated and you start to shake the thing, right? You get some buddies, you try to reach up in there, you try to figure it out on your own. And this is the danger when we approach God as if he's somebody that's going to always make sense to us.

That he's only gonna ask us to do things that we go, I completely agree with that. I understand what you're doing. I understand the whole ten year plan of what we're doing. I get why this is gonna lead to this. And that isn't what happens most of the time.

What God will often give you is what your next step of obedience looks like. For the nation of Israel, it was to not go through Edom but to turn south, take the long journey, but God was doing something.

But the people just do what they've done this entire forty year journey. They just complain, they get frustrated and they go to God. They go to Moses and say, Moses, can you pray to God? Make something change. We don't like this. We don't wanna be here. And what is God's solution?

He sends poisonous, in some translations, poisonous, fiery snakes to bite the people and some of them die. I'm like, that is amazing. Like what is happening here? And this can be one of those stories that can be hard to reconcile because we often go, but isn't God a God of love? Which he is,

But how and why would a God of love send poisoning fiery snakes to go and bite the people that are complaining and kill them? Because God, yes, he's love. God is, yes, our friend. But God is also omnipotent, omniscient. He's holy. He's set apart. He is other than. And God is orchestrating something that oftentimes

we don't get the full picture of. We don't fully understand. And God is a good father. And like a good father with their children, there are moments when you realize that getting down on their level, speaking to them in soft tones going, please buddy, would you do this? At some point when that stops being effective

and they are convinced that they wanna play with the chainsaw with their sister, you have to at some point change your tactics. And what God does in Numbers chapter 21 is he changes his tactics. He sends a punishment, which is the snakes, but it's a punishment that has an intention behind it of love.

The nation of Israel was willing to go back to slavery. Every time they complained, go, just take us back to Egypt.

They were willing to just go back to slavery and God was saying, you don't understand what I'm doing through you. You don't understand what you're a part of. The nation of Israel, these monkeys wandering through the desert, they never understood what God was doing. Through them was going to come the Messiah. Through them would be a lady named Mary who gave birth to Jesus. And if God had just allowed them in their frustration, in their disappointment

to just go back to slavery, then the fulfillment of Jesus coming to save the world never would have happened. And so what we have to see in this is that sometimes God will in his omnipotence, in his knowing all, God will often allow hard things in our life to teach us lessons that we can't learn in easy seasons.

Sometimes God will, as a good father, send some things that course correct us. And this is exactly what happens to the nation of Israel. He sends these poisonous snakes and it's amazing, but look at how quickly it's effective. The very next verse

says that then the people, they came to Moses and they cried out, we have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.

Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes. So Moses prayed to the people. And then the Lord told him, make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it. So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole, then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed.

And then the story just continues on and we just move on to the next thing. And I'm like, wait, what? Like, what did we just read? Like, what does this have to do with anything?

God sends the fiery snakes because they're complaining. The people come to Moses, they course correct, they realize that they're wrong and notice what God does and doesn't do. God doesn't remove the snakes. He doesn't just eliminate the problem, but he gives them a solution to the problem if they'll take action.

He tells Moses, here's what you do. Take a pole, put like a fake snake on it, make it out of bronze and stand up in the middle of the crowds and tell the people, if you will just look at the snake that's on the pole that I made, you'll be healed.

And it's one of those stories that is like, what are we even talking about, right? Like the most bizarre story, but for whatever reason, the people when they would walk out who had been bitten by the snake, if they looked up, they were healed. If they looked at the snake on the pole, they were healed.

But God doesn't remove the snakes. But he gives them a solution to fix the problem that they're in. And this is one of those stories, again when you read it, if you were a part of the nation of Israel, you would have been left with just like, man, what was the point of all of that?

I understand that my friend that was bitten by the snake, he looked at it and he was healed. But like, what was the bigger purpose of that? Was it God just course correcting? Was it him just trying to get us to change? And I think that was part of it. But the beautiful part for you and I is we know now because we have the perspective of history,

we know Jesus actually uses this story when he was on this earth and he explains to us the whole purpose of this entire thing. He shows us what he was doing. So I wanna show you kind of the solution, what this whole thing in Numbers 21 is about, what the snakes in the wilderness is really about. But you gotta flip your Bibles over to John chapter three. Okay? New Testament, John chapter three. And if you don't have a Bible, can follow along on the big iPad Bible next to me. But what Jesus is going to address in John chapter three,

again, just context for you while you're turning there, John is an entire book. It's one letter that John is essentially writing to build his case. And John's goal is really simple. It is not to show what Jesus did. John's primary purpose in writing his gospel was to prove who Jesus was.

That Jesus was not a good teacher. Jesus was not just a moral person. Jesus was not just a miracle worker. Jesus was God in human form. And you are supposed to read John's entire letter in one sitting. It's a start to finish argument about why Jesus

was really who he claimed to be. But here's again the danger when we go look at John chapter three,

we now have these chapter and verse breaks that weren't meant to be in there. And when you just jump into chapter three, you'll miss some of the context that helps set up chapter three. So I wanna read a couple verses at the end of chapter two before we read the story in chapter three. Look at how chapter two ends

in the gospel of John. It says, because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many people began to trust in him. Verse 24 says, but Jesus didn't trust them because he knew all about people.

Last verse, no one needed to tell him, Jesus, about human nature for he knew what was in each person's heart. So what John is telling us is that because of the miracles that Jesus was doing,

people were starting to believe that maybe there's something to this guy. And people were starting to believe in him, but Jesus didn't believe in them, why? Because Jesus knew what was in the heart of every person. Jesus knew the intentions behind what people were not saying when they were coming up to

him with pleasantries. He knew what was in their soul. He knew what was in their mind. He knew what was really happening inside of their heart. And because of that, he didn't trust them. So now here's what when you're reading your Bible at home and you go from chapter two to chapter three,

what we should almost put there in our mind is at the end of chapter two, it's like Jesus knew what was in the heart of every man. For example, that now sets up John chapter three. Okay? So Jesus knew what was in the heart of every single person that was there. He didn't have to wonder about human nature. He knew and could read their thoughts in their minds. For example, John chapter three verse one. There was a man named Nicodemus,

a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee.

After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. Rabbi, he said, we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you. Okay. John three begins with a man named Nicodemus. The Bible gives us some context clues into who he is. He's a Pharisee and he's a Jewish leader.

For our cultural context, this would be the equivalent of taking a member of Congress, combining it with the Supreme Court and putting them together. This was a person who had unbelievable clout,

power, influence, was probably the wealthiest person in his city. This was a man that every single person growing up in church would have said, my goal in life is to be as good as Nicodemus. This man had status and I know oftentimes in church today as we read the New Testament, we vilify the Pharisees,

but in this day and age, this man was revered. And he comes to Jesus at night. If this was a Netflix episode, this episode would be called Nick at Night. Okay? Shout out Nickelodeon. All right? If you're laughing, that means you're old.

Nicodemus comes to him at night and theologians have kind of argued, why does he come at night? It's either because he's afraid that the other religious leaders are going to see him or he's just trying to get a one on one audience with Jesus. But either way, he comes alone and he comes to Jesus and he comes with all kinds of pleasantries. He calls him rabbi,

he calls him teacher. He acknowledges that there's some things about him, but Nicodemus begins to make a fatal flaw with Jesus. He begins to put him in a category that you cannot put Jesus in. He says that you're a good teacher. We know that God has sent you to teach us some things.

And we know that the miracles that you do, they show us that you're from God. But it wasn't what Jesus was doing. Jesus was God in human form. And here's what's really interesting when you read the gospel of John. Again, it's one of the four gospel accounts, but John is the last one written.

John writes it as an old man And he's gotten the opportunity to watch how the church has functioned after Jesus went back into heaven and now the church has started to form. John has perspective and he started to realize here's what's kind of happening in the church.

People have heard that Jesus is a miracle worker. The word has gotten out that he can heal the blind, that he can make the deaf people hear again. He can fix marriages. He can restore finances. He can break the chains of addictions. And people come to Jesus because they want what Jesus can do for them.

They've gone all the way back to Numbers 21 and God just being a cosmic Coke machine again. And they go, look, I know I've heard that if I press B two, this is what comes out of the machine. And here's what's really interesting. What John will do,

of the 38 miracles Jesus did while he was on this earth, John only records seven of them. And of the seven, every time he talks about them as signs, he calls them miraculous signs.

What John is trying to do is to get you to see the reason Jesus did the miracles wasn't so that we could flock in droves to get him to fix our marriages and fix our finances. Jesus did miracles to prove that he was a savior that you could entrust your soul with. Jesus was proving to the world, I'm not a good teacher.

I'm not a moral person. I am God. And if you've seen me, you've seen the father. And in Jesus, the invisible becomes visible. The unknowable becomes knowable. The untouchable becomes touchable. But the miracles were the byproduct, not the goal.

And this is the problem when we've been raised in a church that has a gives us the context. It says what Jesus really ultimately wants to do for you is to be your miracle worker. But friends, what happens when you get the cancer diagnosis and you come to God and you ask him for healing and the healing doesn't come?

What happens when you come for God to bring your wayward son back home and they don't come back home?

What happens when our theology is based on God being basically a God that we can understand, a God that is ultimately there to make our life better? And when I put this into the machine, I know what's coming out of it. I promise you if that's how your theology is developed,

you will begin to miss the powerful work of what Jesus can actually do in your life. The saddest part of this story, what we're gonna keep reading into, is Nicodemus leaves this thing, a brilliant man who had the majority of the Old Testament memorized,

knew more things about God, was more pious and religious than all of us in this room combined, yet he missed Jesus, primarily because he expected God to operate in a way that he could understand. He believed that he could, in his logic and reasoning, begin to wrap his head around who God was.

And it is one of the most dangerous mistakes that you and I will make. And sometimes we will miss the God that is right in front of us because it doesn't fit into the framework of our logic and our reasoning.

But remember what Paul says in the New Testament. I didn't come to the knowledge of Jesus by man's teaching. I came by revelation of Jesus Christ. That at some point you and I can get ourselves close

to understanding who Jesus is purely by logic and reasoning. I'm not saying shut your brain off, but what I am trying to convince you of is you can only get to a place of faith.

You can only get so close through logic and reasoning. There And will come a point where you'll go, I think the evidence of Jesus being who he says that he is, it does slightly outweigh the evidence of the things against him. But you will have to by faith make that jump.

So Nicodemus comes to Jesus and remember Jesus knows what's in his heart. Nicodemus is giving him pleasantries

but Jesus knows what's really going on inside of his heart. And this is where Jesus now is going to give the greatest answer to the question that was never asked. Verse three, Jesus replies to Nicodemus, I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.

Jesus tells the most religious, the most holy, the best of all of us, I appreciate the pleasantries, but Nicodemus, this is what you really need. This is the answer for what's really happening in your life. The longings of your soul. Here's the solution. You must be born again.

And Jesus answers the question that Nicodemus never asked. But maybe what Jesus was doing is he was answering the question that he knew was inside of the heart of every human. What's my purpose here? Where is all this going? What are we doing? What is the point of all of this?

Jesus says, you will never see it unless you're born again. And he tells a man who is better than any of us could ever strive to be, Nicodemus, you're not even close to being good enough. You're not like at eight point five and we gotta get you to ten, just a little bit more fasting, a little bit more prayer,

and then you'll get there. He says, you need an entire new start. You must be born again. Jesus summarizes the entire kingdom of God in one statement. What does it mean to follow God? It means you've been born again. It means that there's been a new birth inside of you.

It means that there was a moment where the old you began to pass away and a new you came out, a new humanity. What the Old Testament referred to as the moment that Ezekiel would say that there's a day that's coming where God will be able to give you a heart transplant. He will take and remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh to where you can feel again. And what Jesus is telling Nicodemus is how you get that is not through striving, it's not through praying correctly, it's not through going to church enough, it's not through memorizing the entire Bible, it is by being born again.

To which Nicodemus will make another fatal flaw. He takes this incredibly spiritual and lofty idea and he applies it to our human logic and reasoning. And Nicodemus is gonna go, I don't think my mom is gonna be on board.

That sounds great, but she's not gonna be stoked when I tell her what you said we need to do, right? Look at the very next verse. Verse four, Nicodemus says, what do you mean? How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again?

And Jesus replied, I assure you, no one can enter. He said, you can't see it and now you can't enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and of spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don't be surprised when I say again, you must be born again.

Friends sitting in church today, what must you do to see and enter the kingdom of God? You must be born again. God did not come to make you a slightly better version of you. You are broken and fatally flawed.

But this is the good news of the gospel, is that through what Jesus did on the cross, you and I have an invitation to be made new again, to be born again, to where the old can pass away and a new life can come forth. But here's the challenge.

A lot of us who grew up in church, we hear the phrase born again and we immediately go, Oh, those are those weird people.

I have some friends who like, Yeah, I'm a born again Christian. I'm like, That means I'm not coming to your house for dinner. Right? Like those are the ones that we kind of avoid. And what we've taken is What we've done is we've taken what Jesus says is the summation

of life, how to see and enter the kingdom of God and we've reduced it down to some denominational title. And we miss it. And we don't understand that for us to even say that I'm a born again Christian is like saying you're a Christian Christian. It's like they're synonymous. They're one in the same.

To be a Christian means that you've been born again. It's an acknowledgement that you needed a new birth, that the old you wasn't slightly close enough to being good enough on your own and you just needed a little bit of an improvement. It means that you needed to be completely born again.

And Jesus uses a concept to a man that would have understood the entire Old Testament that completely baffles him. Because the idea of born again, we don't see anywhere in the Old Testament.

Nicodemus knew what the prophets talked about, that there would be a day where God would reconcile his people. He would bring a Messiah that would wash them white as snow, that he would cleanse them with water, but he didn't understand this idea of being born again. And what Jesus is saying is this isn't something that you and I can do. It's something that only the Holy Spirit can do in us. It's not something that you can control. You can't behave your way into being born again. It's something that God has to do in you. And this is the good news for those of us who were not like Nicodemus, we're the ones on the other side of the spectrum. We're the ones who aren't like, yeah, I'm the most religious person in the room. We're like, I'm the least religious one in the room.

The good news is that the standard for us is the same. Is that to be born again, all you have to do is allow the Holy Spirit to begin to do something in you. But here's where you have to be careful.

You will try to do exactly what Nicodemus is doing here. Take this, apply it to your logic and your reasoning and go, well, some of this doesn't make sense to me. And because it might not make sense to you, you might not be willing to step out and try something different.

What Jesus is imploring Nicodemus to do is to potentially try something that doesn't fit inside the frame of your logic and reasoning.

Imagine the amount of humility it would require for the most religious person there. That when he would walk into a room that everybody would go, that's the best of us. Imagine the incredible amount of humility that would require for that guy to go, even my best attempt.

Even in my most religious state, I am still a far ways off from God's standard. Because God's standard is perfection. God's standard is complete holiness in not just action but in thought. And all of us have missed that mark. But there's an opportunity to be born again.

So the question that I would be asking if I was Nicodemus is okay, how do we do this? What do we do? Here's where Jesus starts to give him the answer where he's gonna bring in the story from the book of Numbers and the wild snakes. Verse eight,

it says, The wind blows wherever it wants, just as you can hear this wind, but you can't tell where it comes from or where it's going. So you can't explain how people are born of the spirit. He's telling the religious leader, you won't be able to explain this. It's something that the Holy Spirit does. Verse nine, how are these things possible?

How does this fit into my logic, into my reasoning? How do I make sense of this? And Jesus replied, you are a respected Jewish teacher and yet you don't understand these things. I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen and yet you won't believe our testimony. But if you don't believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe me if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ever gone to heaven and returned, but the son of man has come down from heaven. Here's where it is. Jesus is now gonna reach back fourteen hundred years in history. He's gonna pull the story from Numbers 21 with the snakes in the wilderness and he's gonna connect all the dots right here. Verse 14, And as Moses

lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the son of man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. All of this sets up the most famous verse in the Bible. The one that I thought Tim Tebow wrote, but it was actually Jesus. Verse 16,

For this is how God loved the world. He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Jesus says, you wanna know how to be born again? Remember the story

with the nation of Israel when they're wandering in the desert God got frustrated because they were complaining about the man and there was poisonous fiery snakes on the ground. And it was a story that made no sense to anybody. Remember what the cure was?

Moses went to God and God gave him an illogical thing to do. He told him to fabricate a snake on a pole, make it out of bronze, lift it up and tell people to come and look at it.

Nicodemus, what that was was a foreshadowing of the son of man that would come and be the ransom for all of humanity. To be the one who would be lifted up so all humanity could look up to him and have the plague not of the snake bite but of the bite of sin be cured inside of them. All of that was a cosmic setup

to preach the gospel. Friends, this is what the Old Testament is if you'll see it. The Old Testament is screaming if you'll listen, that there is a God that has come to save your soul. That there is a Messiah that has come, that we don't have to wonder who he is. We don't have to wonder when is he coming. We know that he's come. His name is Jesus. And two thousand years ago, God became flesh. He dwelt among us. The word actually became flesh. He became one of us. And he died a ransom that sets all captives

free, if you'll see it. But the danger is as you and I will often try to apply it to logic and reasoning and we get to a spot where we go, some of this doesn't make sense to me. Jesus tells Nicodemus, this is how simple it is. Do you wanna know how to see the kingdom of God, to enter the kingdom of God?

Do you wanna know how to be made right in the eyes of God? Believe. The thing that John will say some 90 times in the book of John, here's how the broken are made whole. Here's how the lost are found. It's not through behavior modification.

It's not through improving your life. It's not by giving enough money to the church. All of those things happen after you've been born again. All of those things happen after you've gone from death to life. But you're beginning part of the process, you have to believe

that Jesus is who he says that he is. You have to believe that God actually sent his one and only son to die the death that we deserve. And if you can just believe it, if you can just look up and see what he's done, I'm telling you friends, you might not make sense, but it can make

a difference. But here's the part that again is interesting when you look at the original language that John writes this in, right? The New Testament's written in Greek. When you look at the language and the wording that John uses for belief, it has nothing to do with an intellectual concept.

John is not sitting back, here's how you may write with God. Sit back and ponder it and think about it and then go, yep, I intellectually agree with that. That sounds great. See what you'll do is you will do what westernized American churches have done. You will create a category of followers for God that never existed in the New Testament.

When you look at the life of Jesus, there was two groups of people around him. There was disciples who had been born again, who had said, yes, we're in, we believe that you are the son of God. And now we are following you. We are being discipled into the image of you. We are walking, we are learning from you. Our lives are being shaped and transformed.

There was those people. And then there was a crowd. There was the people that were like, Oh, this is cool. Like this guy sounds interesting.

But there wasn't this third category that exists inside of our churches today. Where we're like, yeah, I wouldn't say that I'm a disciple. Like that seems a little bit extreme. Jesus has some ideas that I don't really think apply today in 2024. Like who doesn't have sex before you're married? Right? Like that sounds crazy.

I've gotta give 10% of my money to tithe. I don't even believe that's a New Testament thing. Right? Like, I I just think some of the standards that God has, I don't think they're really relevant today. So I wanna say that I'm a disciple, but I'm definitely not in the crowd because I'm I'm a Christian. I vote Republican.

Right? Like and all of a sudden what we do is we've created this category that goes, this thing is not supposed to exist.

You're either in the crowd or you said, yes, I wanna be born again. I believe that Jesus is who he says that he is. My life is no longer my own. My life has now been crucified with Christ, Paul will say. The life that I now live in the body, I live through the power of the Holy Spirit. But my life, it's no longer my life

because I understand that what Jesus did, it actually set me free and began to give me a life beyond my wildest dreams. But I am no longer Lord. I am no longer king. My money is not my own. My business is not my own. My life is not my own.

Inside of our westernized American churches, we have this weird category that doesn't exist. And we treat God like he's a cosmic Coke machine. And then we get frustrated when he doesn't do what we say.

And what I'm saying is that maybe just maybe there's a real invitation for people who've been in church for a lot of their life, have never actually been born again to really be born again. To really see what Jesus meant.

To surrender our lives, to look up and believe. See the word that John uses in the Greek for believe, it's much more of something that takes action than it is some intellectual reasoning. What John essentially says is that it's one thing for you to stand at point a,

to look across the ravine to point b and say, I believe that this bridge will get me across. It's one thing to say that,

but the word that John uses in the Greek for believe is you don't really actually believe that that bridge is gonna get you to the other side until you step out on it. That you put your weight upon it. And when you're standing on that bridge, yes, that's the moment now that you believe. What I'm not saying is that what we have to do is work to gain God's approval. But what I am saying is that belief is much more than just an intellectual concept.

You and I do not get the opportunity to say, I'm giving you my life Jesus. But these are the things that I disagree with about what you say. There can be things that we wrestle through. There can be struggles that we take a while.

But the fact that there's so many people that sit inside of churches all over our country that would say that they're Christian, but the truth is when you walk out of the door on a Sunday, our lives during the week don't look any different. That's not belief.

That's not the thing that will help you see and enter and experience the kingdom of God. Not that is someday, but is today. Where you can begin to walk and live the abundant life that is available to us.

But the danger is that oftentimes we'll miss it and we'll do exactly what Nicodemus does. We walk away and go, it just would be too expensive. Nicodemus walks away from this exchange and doesn't give his life to Jesus. And I have to assume it's because he goes, this would cost me a lot.

It would cost me a lot to stop being the leader that everybody sees as this pious religious man. To change my tone and to say that Jesus isn't some crazy person, but he's the savior of the world. That would cost him a lot in the material world. So Nicodemus walks away, doesn't give his life to Jesus.

And we don't see the first Gentile convert, the first non Jew to give their life to Jesus until the very next chapter, John chapter four. Remember the woman at the well? The broken woman who had a terrible reputation?

It was that woman who saw Jesus for who he really was when he told her, I'm the Messiah. She said, I believe that you are who you say that you are. Her life was transformed. She changed her entire village, but it was predicated on belief that led to

action. Friends, here's what I wanna make very plain and clear to us today. What is the gospel? The gospel in its basic terms means good news. The gospel is the thing that is the hope for humanity.

Numbers chapter 21 explains the gospel in its most simple way. I wanna share it with you and then give some of you an opportunity to surrender your life to Jesus today. The gospel in Numbers 21 tells us, because of sin all people are under the curse of death.

What happened because of the snake bite is all people were going to die. You could get frustrated by it. You could disagree with it. You could go, I don't like this, but it's a reality.

All of us have been plagued with sin. All of us have missed the mark. The Bible says that there's not one among us that is holy. And oftentimes we will tempt ourselves to believe that we're good people, but it's good based on our standard of morality. And the problem is when morality is subjective,

it becomes an impossible standard.

And what Jesus was constantly doing while he was on this earth was he was reminding people, look, the people who commit adultery aren't just people who physically have an affair with somebody else. He says, if you even looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery. What was he doing? He was leveling the playing field going, all of us are flawed and broken. You might act perfectly. How's your thought life?

All of us have this thing called sin in us that is going to destroy us. It is going to kill us if we don't find a cure. Here's the good news though. God has just like he did in Numbers chapter 21, he has graciously provided a cure. He told Moses, take a snake, put it on a pole, lift it up, and if people just look at it, they will be healed. It doesn't make sense.

It requires a ton of humility, but it is effective. And maybe, just maybe, there's a cure available to you and I that doesn't completely make sense to us holistically. We can't completely wrap our minds around it, but do you have to understand it if it's effective?

I submit to you that some of the greatest evidence of Jesus being who he said that he was isn't even so much what he did or said. It's all of the lives in the New Testament. It's all of the lives sitting in this room today who have been transformed by giving their life to Jesus. Maybe, just maybe,

the proof of who he is is found in the life change that is all around us. He's provided a cure.

The third thing that we see in Numbers chapter 21 that shows us what the gospel is, is that that cure must be lifted up. Moses had to take the snake and he had to lift it up. Jesus says there that's what the son of man has come to do. That the son of man must be lifted up and it has a double meaning. It's yes, he will be physically lifted up on the cross but he also must be lifted up in our hearts. He must be exalted.

This is a statement that John will use three times in his gospel. That you must the son of man must be lifted up. He had to be raised on the cross, but he also must be lifted up inside of our hearts. And then here's what we do. Here's where this starts to turn personal. To be healed, we must look up at the cure.

It's not enough for you to sit in your room, to sit back and say, that sounds like a good idea, I understand it.

For the people in Numbers chapter 21, they had to get out of their tents. They had to make a decision. They had to say yes. They had to go outside and go, people might think I'm crazy. My wife came back from bridge club and said, the ladies were talking and she said, here's the cure. You gotta walk out and look at the fake bronze snake on the pole. And he's like, that doesn't make any sense to me.

But it works. And at some point the scriptures tell us that what we must do is look up and see Jesus for who he actually is. And when you see him for who he is and you invite him into your life,

what will happen to you is exactly what happens to the people in Numbers chapter 21 when they look at the bronze snake. You will at the end of this, you will find true life. The invitation of faith is an invitation to really truly actually living. A life that Jesus says is abundant.

A life that God says when you think about your life, when you think about if you could plan the most incredible life for your future, Jesus says the plans that he has for you are a thousand times better than that. But it might not look like your definition of better.

It might not look like how you would describe it today, but I promise you, if you surrender your life to Jesus and you say, yes, I'm going to put my weight onto this thing, what you will find is true life. Real meaning, soul level satisfaction, purpose, the answer to some of life's biggest questions.

But it's gonna require some of you to do something that doesn't make sense to you. And my submission is that the gospel doesn't have to make sense for it to make a difference. And here's what I believe is happening right now even in this room. Is I think this whole message God has been speaking to some of your hearts.

I think you feel like I've been speaking specifically to you. And I believe that this moment has been preordained from the beginning of time. That I believe that this is the moment that some of you right now will be for the first time born again. To truly be regenerated.

To look up and to see Jesus for who he really is. To invite him into your life. To hit for allow him to begin to do a heart transplant. To make you brand new. And so here's what I wanna do. I wanna ask everybody in this room, right where you are, just close your eyes and bow your heads.

And I wanna give some of you a moment to respond to this gospel. To respond to the good news that Jesus came. He lived the life that we could never live. He died the death that we deserve.

And that if the tomb is empty, that maybe the name above Jesus is still the name that every knee will bow at. It is still the greatest name in human history. It is still the hope for all of humanity. But it's not just for humans in general, but it's for you specifically. And if you're here right now

and you go, I wanna be healed. I wanna be set free. I want to be born again. This is your moment. Don't allow the voices in your head. Don't allow the stigma of people will look or people will see. Don't allow any of that to talk you out of it. This is your moment.

What I want you to do right now when I count to three is I want you just right where you are in your seat

To just respond physically to what God's doing inside of your heart right now. And I know it seems silly, but I'm gonna ask you to just throw your hand up in the air when I get to three and just say, yes, Jesus, this is my moment. I acknowledge you.

I acknowledge you before people and you will acknowledge me before your father. I am not ashamed of the gospel. So if that's you, this is your moment right now. One, don't let the enemy talk you out of this. Two,

just right where you are in your seats, throw your hands in the air. Three, this is the moment we say, yes, I wanna be born again. Do not be ashamed. There's hands going up all over this auditorium. Allow this to be your moment. Father, we thank you for all the hands and the hearts that are responding to you right now.

If this is you in this place, you can put your hand down. Just pray a simple prayer like this in the quietness of your heart. Say, Jesus, I might have more questions than I do answers, but I believe that you are who you say that you are.

I believe that you stepped into our mess. You became human. You dwelt among us. You lived a perfect life. You died the death that I deserve. And I believe that what you did is enough to satisfy the wrath of God. And that because of what you did, I ask you to come into my heart to set me free, to wash me new,

to make me born again. In the mighty name of Jesus, all God's people said, amen and amen. Hey, can we just give it up for all? I'm telling you, was hands all over this auditorium. And friends, that's what this entire thing is for,

is because we still believe that Jesus is the greatest message the world has ever heard. He is still the hope for all of humanity. If you said yes to Jesus, we would love to know. Go to rockpointe.io, click on the said yes tab, just so we can come alongside of you and give you some next steps in your faith journey.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure you follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.