And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son
of Man be lifted up. John 3:14
The Lord Jesus had
a wonderful way of meeting with people at their point of need; He offered
living water to the Samaritan woman at the well and promised that He would
become in her a fountain of living water springing up unto everlasting life.
To the hungry crowd
He was the Bread of Life to the lost He was the Good Shepherd. To the sick He
was their Healer and to the disciples He was Christ, the Son of God.
But to
Nicodemus He was an honoured Rabbi, a teacher from God for he recognised that
no one could perform the miracles that Jesus did unless God were with Him. But under cover of darkness this respected
teacher of Israel came to learn from Jesus, yet the truths that he was to hear
dumbfounded him provoking a series of questions.
How can a man be
born when he is old? How can God’s Spirit give birth to spirit?
How can a righteous
teacher such as I neither enter nor see the kingdom of God? But as with the
woman; the hungry; the hurting and lost Jesus met his specific need.
He used the book of
Moses and the wilderness wanderings as a startling picture. As Moses
raised the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so
that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life.
This
learned teacher of Israel knew that Moses represented God’s Law, the serpent
stood for sin and death, and the bronze metal was illustrative of God’s
judgement.
Though
he could not have understood the poignant significance of what was to happen on
Calvary’s cross, in the days to come Nicodemus must have recalled this
conversation, when the sinless, Son of Man was cruelly lifted up on the
cross, as the Law required so that all who were bitten by the curse of sin
could look and live.
He
could not have understood there and then, that the full weight of all
humanity’s sin was to be poured out over Jesus nor could he have known that
full fury of the wrath of God would rain down upon His own beloved Son for
all his guilt too.
Christ
met Nicodemus at his point of need as He does with all who come to
Him, for Nicodemus was one of a race of guilty sinners who were in need of
a redeemer. Christ patiently started to open the eyes of this blind leader of
the blind, who himself must come to terms with the truth that the penalty of
the Law for ALL is death.
And as
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Jesus too must be nailed to the
tree so that all who look to Him in faith will be saved but those who do
not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name
of Jesus.
We will
never know when Nicodemus finally came to an understanding of what Christ was
teaching him, when he came to Jesus by night but he probably began to be
aware that the justice of God demanded that one Man die so that others might
live.
