You Say: Snakebit pt3 - Audio
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
>> Junior high school are in the service on convenience Sundays. Come back. Oh, my gosh. You can see Lindsey's wearing the Jesus' essential shirt. That's the -- not that we're sexist, but that's the more feminine version. This is the more Tesla version. All are available for Purchase soon. What are we charging? 80 bucks a shirt. 15 or 16. Maybe just a 20 and I'll pocket the rest. Yeah, we should have those relatively soon. You can have your coast Bible swag. Look at that. Yeah, cool. We're continuing our series this week. Last week we met Nicodemus and he was going Through an identity crisis. And Jesus was like the only solution for this identity crisis is for you To start recognizing who you really are is the son of the father. The son of God, a child of God. You need to have that be your primary identity. But what Jesus didn't tell him last week was how to get in on That. How to make that real. How to make that happen. And so we're going to take a look at that today. I remember about 10 years ago there was an article by Peggy Noonan who used to -- I think she was a Speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and then she got into the business of writing opinion editorial type things. And 10 years ago in 2010, let me set the stage for you, kids, junior hires, you were basically unconscious at this time. But what had happened was there had been this big oil spill. BP, I think, had a big oil spill next to New Orleans. And there was oil everywhere. And it was summer time. And the country was -- America was going through this Really kind of just one thing after another going wrong. And then there's all these dead seagulls popping up to the surface. And everyone's just kind of looking at what the heck is going on. And Peggy Noonan, she said we're snakebit. And that's a slang term. But what it means is it means that anything that can go wrong is going to go wrong. And that's what's happened to the United States. She said in 2010. Peggy, let me tell you about 2020. You have no idea what snakebit is. I don't know about y'all, but at the beginning of this year, nothing that's happened. Was it all on anyone's radar? And it seems like we really are in this place where, you know, you're tempting fate if you say, well, I can't get any worse. Because it does consistently. Like, holy moly, when on Friday I woke up and like all my friends were texting me and they're like, Trump's dying of COVID. I was like, what the heck is going on? Like, is there any more insanity that -- and I like stopped myself because the answer is clearly yes. And I do not want to invite any more nonsense craziness. And we're snakebit. 2020 is snakebit. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. And we've still got three months to go. It's like, I'm telling you, pretty soon like that movie Armageddon, that's going to be real. It's going to be like an asteroid and we're like, Ben Affleck blow that thing up. What's so weird, what's so interesting is that when Jesus is answering the question, the Nicodemus is asking, how do I become born from above? How do I make God my father? Jesus answers. His answer has to do with being snakebit. And so I just want to read the continuation. We're in John 3 and this is verse 14 to 16, 3, 14 to 16. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted. What? Okay. So that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him won't perish but have eternal life. Now, you may remember from last week that Nicodemus wasn't an ordinary guy. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and he was a ruler in the Jewish ruling council, which means he knew his Old Testament. They thought of it as the Bible or the Hebrew Scriptures, but he knew it really well, better probably than most of us. In fact, almost certainly better than most of us. And so when Nicodemus heard this just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, he wasn't like most of us. We're like, what? What? No, why? Just as who did what? The Greek, they're cathos, cathos, just as in exactly the same way that Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. And I suggest to you that what Nicodemus is doing is he really wants to know how to be born from above. And Jesus is telling him, if you want to get it, if you really want to get it, you've got to remember this story. So I want to read you the story that Jesus is referencing. It's from Numbers 21. This is taking place when the people of Israel, that's Nicodemus and their ancestors, they've left Egypt and they're wandering around in the wilderness trying to get to the Promised Lands. Numbers 21 says, "They marched from Mount Hore on the Red Sea Road around the land of Edom." What's going on is that Edom was a place that was hostile to Israel and so God sends them around Edom so they don't get in any fights, so he's like avoiding combat. But the people became impatient on the road. They spoke against God and Moses, why did you bring us up from Egypt just to kill us in the desert where there's no food or water? We hate this miserable bread. So Yahweh sent poisonous snakes, literally fiery snakes. Fiery snakes among the people and they bit the people. Many of the Israelites died. The people went to Moses and said, "We've sinned for we spoke against Yahweh and you. Pray to Yahweh, pray to the Lord so that he'll send the snakes away from us. Get rid of these things." So Moses prayed for the people. Yahweh said to Moses, "Make a poisonous snake and place it on a pole. Whoever is bitten can look at it and live." Moses made a bronze snake and placed it on a pole. If a snake bit someone, that person could look at the bronze snake and live. What an odd story.
Transcription truncated.
The Bible's answer to being snakebit.