FIRST READING Numbers 21:4–9
4 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. 5 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.” 6 Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7 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. 8 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.” 9 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.
PSALM Psalm 107:1–3, 17–22
1 Give thanks to the LORD, for the LORD is good, for God’s mercy endures forever. 2 Let the redeemed of the LORD proclaim that God redeemed them from the hand of the foe, 3 gathering them in from the lands; from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. 17 Some were fools and took rebellious paths; through their sins they were afflicted. 18 They loathed all manner of food and drew near to death’s door. 19 Then in their trouble they cried to the LORD and you delivered them from their distress. 20 You sent forth your word and healed them and rescued them from the grave. 21 Let them give thanks to you, LORD, for your steadfast love and your wonderful works for all people. 22 Let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and tell of your deeds with shouts of joy.
SECOND READING Ephesians 2:1–10
1 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
GOSPEL John 3:14–21
14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that 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. 18 Those 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. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But 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.”
WE LOVE DARKNESS MORE THAN THE LIGHT
How often do we really stop and think about the gospel passage I read a moment ago? Of the verses I read, John 3:16 is probably the most recognized in America. Thanks to football fans draping sheets with John 3:16 on it and athletes like Tim Tebow writing it on their eye black, this passage has become as well known as the 23rd Psalm. But how often do we really consider the words and what’s being said. Verse 16 of course carries tremendous comfort for all who believe because it holds a promise that even though we don’t deserve it, God loves us and promises eternal life with Him for those who believe. But what about verse 19: And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
I can’t think of a greater condemnation to be levied against a people than this: They loved darkness instead of light. How many of us would ever want this statement to be said of us? But the truth is, that’s the way God sees the world. You and I see the world as it is right now. As Christians, who most often associate with other Christians, we recognize that most of the people around us try and do the right thing and when we’re wrong hopefully we apologize. So we tend to think well of most people. But look out on the passage of time….
The Ancient World of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hellenism, Rome, Persia, India, and East Asia was filled with the ignorance of hundreds of thousands of gods, magic, rituals, superstitions, human sacrifice, including child sacrifice, conquests, garbage thrown to the dogs in the streets and rats that carried disease. Did you know that priests attempted to foretell the course of a disease by examining the livers of sacrificed animals? But the list doesn’t end there: ethnic bigotry, civil wars, persecutions, despots, tyrants, class rule, and the systematic murders of tens of thousands.
The Middle Ages of Persia, Constantinople, Islam, Britain, China, India, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, Timur and the Turks, Europe, African Empires and the Americas. All of them covered in the darkness of man’s inhumanity to man: Revolutions, expansionism, Mohammad’s Conquest and Christianity’s Crusades, warlords, heretics, witchcraft, increased trade bringing death and plagues to millions, and the overcrowding in the cities spreading the misery all the more. And on top of this misery, wars fought for every ridiculous reason known to man.
The Enlightenment and the Modern world also have faired no better. We too have loved the darkness instead of the light. Europe, Africa, Mid-East, India, and the Americas have all dipped their finger into the cesspool of sin: Gambling, the destruction of traditional marriage, sexual immorality, murder justified under the name abortion, drugs, the wanton spread of disease, slavery, oppression, massacres, socialism, resistance to democracy, Fascism, Communism, The Holocaust, greed that lead to the market crash, The Depression, world wars, The Bomb, and lest we forget 9/11. And this list goes on.
It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to identify the millions, especially the children, who have been exploited and suffered throughout the ages at the hands of a few ruthless leaders. We painfully must ask, how can history be accurately written when so much is hidden from the pages of history? If history has taught us nothing, it has taught us that history is written by the victor. And these so called victors want these events to remain hidden because people have loved darkness rather than light. History has also shown that there’s a morbid destructive tendency in all of us. We dabble in the diabolical. We revel in revenge. And we hate in our hearts. It’s amazing how we love to live in the shadows! When all things are considered, what must God think of us?
The answer lies in today’s Johanian reading and the verdict is as true today as it was when it was pronounced over 2000 years ago: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil. This is Jesus’ description of humankind. And can any of us really argue His assessment? If we could just, even for a few moments, look at the world through the eyes of God, what would we see?
First we’d see those who refuse to acknowledge the darkness. God sees all those whose deeds are evil, who fear being exposed by the light. There is no mistake; all humankind can be lumped together into one category, sinners. But, among us there are those in this world whose hearts are hardened which forces us to ask, are they beyond hope since they fear the light? Now I know it seems improper for a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to consider, that some may be beyond hope. We know that the Holy Spirit can open the hearts of anyone, at any time, even the most vial criminal, so that they can repent and believe, but it disturbs us to hear our Lord tell us, that everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. It’s troubling for us to realize that there are some who will not come seeking God’s mercy because they hate the light. Jesus even instructed His disciples to shake the dust of a town off their feet, when they were not received. They were to go and look for more fertile soil to sow the seeds of the kingdom.
This past century has been a century characterized by darkness. For all the advances that mankind has made, there were some very dark days in our recent past. The age of enlightenment promised through science, medicine and industry to usher the world into a utopian society. Indeed it looked like it might actually happen, and then WWI slipped in to dash these hopes. Nationalism reared its ugly head and brought our head down in shame. The thought then after the war was that it was the war to end all wars; one last final dying breath of man’s inhumanity to man. We had gotten it out of our soul.
We convinced ourselves that we had washed our hands of the dirty business of war. Now we were set to build the society we’d dreamed of. The peace of Versailles would insure this. Albert Einstein formulated his Theory of Relativity. Airmail service was established in the United States. The 19th Amendment gave American women the right to vote. Gandhi emerged as India’s leader in its struggle for independence. Charles Lindbergh flew the “Spirit of St. Louis” from New York to Paris. The world it seemed, and was, indeed getting smaller.
But another spirit had landed in Europe: The spirit of fascism. Hitler was building his Third Reich, and with it death and horror on a scale which humankind had never known. Entering into that war almost too late, the United States turned the tide, righting one of history’s greatest wrongs. A great hope dawned as a result of that tremendous victory; prosperity, beyond any ever known, improved lives around the world. But there was a shadow that was cast in the dawn. For the war was won in 1945 by the invention of the bomb. And today the threat of nuclear war still casts its long shadow.
Since then the Korean and Vietnam Wars were reminders of just how chaotic the world could be. And then we seemed so close to a lasting peace. The wall had gone down in Berlin. Eastern Europe had opened up. The cold war with Russia had thawed and at that time in the early 1990s, we thought, “Finally! At long last, we can have a peaceful world.” But then suddenly on August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait launching a crescendo of tension-packed events that led to the Persian Gulf War. Then, ten years later, we experienced the horror and tragedy and heart-wrenching pain of September 11, 2001, which led to the War on Terror, prompting military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. And conflict still rages on. We seldom hear of the cost in lives but make no mistake there are those who hate the light choosing instead to live in the darkness.
We must regrettably admit that there will always be dictators, tyrants, wars, and rumors of war. We must recognize the sad reality that until the Son of Righteous returns, there will always be the darkness. The story is told of a young man who entered a very strict monastic order. It was so strict that members were permitted to speak only two words per year to the abbot. At the end of year one the young man appeared before the abbot and spoke his two words, “bad food.” At the end of the second year the young man appeared before the abbot and spoke two more words, “hard bed”. At the end of year three he came to the abbot and spoke his last two words, “I quit.” The abbot responded, “Well it’s about time, because all I’ve heard you do is complain, complain, complain. It’s all you’ve done since you came here.”
We humans are people of darkness. We complain, rebel, work against the Kingdom of God. Death is all we know. Lives filled with the patterns of sin. These are the first things God sees as he looks down upon us, those whose deeds are evil, who fear the light because their evil deeds will be exposed. But despite our sin loving ways, something amazing occurred.
God does the most astonishing thing. He brings the Light anyway. He erects a cross of death that we might look up and live. He leads us out of the darkness. He loves the world and doesn’t condemn it. He does not condemn any, anyone who does not fear the light…if we will believe. Faith, Trust, Belief that’s the second thing that God sees as He looks out over the world: There are those who acknowledge the darkness. There are those who live by the truth, who have allowed themselves to be exposed by the light. And that’s the difference. It’s not those who are evil and those who are good. The difference is this: There are those who don’t want to be exposed and there are those who are willing to be exposed. There are those who hide their evil deeds and there are those who allow God in Christ to shine His light and expose those deeds. In a word, we all sin, but we must be truthful and willing to have these sinful deeds exposed.
I recently read an interesting story that comes out of California. Police there were staging an intense search for a vehicle that was stolen, even to the point of placing announcements on local radio stations to contact the thief. The reason for the intensity of the search lay on the front seat of the stolen car, a box of crackers that, unknown to the thief, were laced with poison. The car owner had created the poisonous crackers intending to use them as rat bait. Now the police and the even owner of the VW Bug were more interested in apprehending the thief to save his life than to recover the car. So often when we run from God, we feel it’s to escape His punishment. But what we’re actually doing is eluding His rescue.
When we open ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit and allow our deeds to be exposed, we can be saved. Jesus said, whoever lives by the truth comes into the light. Which brings us to the final thing we see through God’s eyes, those who confess that they need the Light.
Finally, in God’s eyes we see those who acknowledge their need for forgiveness. When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he did so under cover of darkness. Jesus said to him, Nicodemus, you must be born again. You must go through a rebirth and learn to live all over again, because up until now you’ve tried to please God by the Law. You’ve tried to be righteous through your own efforts. And you see the mess that’s gotten you into. You see all the destruction in the world. But now, Nicodemus, God requires one thing. Acknowledge your need for forgiveness, acknowledge that you need to go in a different direction with your life, and acknowledge God’s love for you in Jesus Christ.
That’s what this world needs. We need the love of God. We need His forgiveness. We need to recognize our need for forgiveness. We need to be convinced of this love. Looking back on just the last 100 years, we see humankind’s ability to be intolerably cruel to one another. God looked down and saw the evil, but did what we need most. He says I like you anyway. I love you regardless. I will provide a way. I am sending you my Son so that you might be saved. And He will tell you and show you of My love.
Charles Shulz, creator and author of the Peanuts cartoon characters, often conveyed a message in his comic strips. In one strip, he expressed through Charlie Brown the need we have to be loved and through Lucy our inability to love one another. Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning over the proverbial fence speaking to one another: Charlie says to Lucy: All it would take to make me happy is to have someone say they like me. To this Lucy responds: Are you sure? Charlie says, of course I’m sure! Lucy then says: You mean you’d be happy if someone merely said he or she likes you? Do you mean to tell me that someone has it within their power to make you happy merely by doing such a simple thing? Yes! That’s exactly what I mean, replies Charlie Brown! To this Lucy says, Well, I don’t think that’s asking too much. I really don’t. Then standing face to face, Lucy asks one more time, you’re sure now? All you want is to have someone say, “I like you, Charlie Brown,” and then you’ll be happy? Yes Charlie Brown says, then I’ll be happy! Lucy looks at Charlie Brown, turns and walks away, saying, I can’t do it!
What Lucy cannot do, sinful as she is, God does. What Charlie Brown needs, lost and alone as he is, God supplies. God loves us and is telling us today, “He loves us!” “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It’s the most reassuring promise given to anyone who believes in and welcomes the Light of God.
Amen
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