2018.04.03 Hopewell @Home ▫ John 3:13-21

Read John 3:13-21

Questions for Littles: Who has ascended to heaven (v13)? Who came down from heaven? What did Moses lift up in the wilderness (v14)? Who must be lifted up? What happens when someone believes (v15)? Why did God give His only begotten Son (v16)? What will not happen to those who believe in Him? What will they have? What was not the reason that God sent His Son into the world (v17)? What was the reason? Who is not condemned (v18)? What has already happened to him who does not believe? Why? What has come into the world (v19)? Why did men love darkness rather than light? What do those who practice evil hate (v20)? Why doesn’t he come to the light? Why does the one who does the truth come to the light(v21)?

This week’s Prayer for Help and Confession of Sin came from John 3:12-21. This passage includes one of the most familiar verses in the Bible. It’s a great reminder that salvation is all about the love of God.

The serpent that Moses raised in the wilderness was in response to a plague that God had sent upon the people for their sin. They deserved what was coming upon them. But God set before them a reminder of their guilt and His mercy for them just to look at, and they would not die from the venomous bite.

Of course, that was just a snake bite and an earthly death. Frightful to be sure, but nothing compared to the eternity of Hell that we actually deserve. For that, real payment had to be made, and the Lord Jesus came to do exactly that: to be our real and complete payment for sin.

But the mechanism by which we receive this far greater healing is similar to that of the bronze serpent: look to Him. Look to and hope in God’s provided remedy for your sin and guilt!

Yes, it hurts to have our sin brought out into the light. It hurts to look at the cross and know that’s how enormous our guilt is.

But it is also a great joy to look at the cross and know that our guilt has been put away there for god. Our deeds have been done in God! They are accepted as righteous, not because we have done them perfectly, but because God has put away all our guilt at Christ’s cross, and has produced in us whatever good there is, by Christ’s own resurrection life.

What does it look like to “come to the light” of the cross? What do we see there?

Suggested songs: ARP32A “What Blessedness” or HB198 “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”