You think the picnic went great until you start to itch and realize you brought ticks home with you. What tick bites—those sneaky sins whose venom is already inside before you notice—do you have? Those are the ones Jesus came to rescue us from.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
I suppose maybe not this Easter but maybe some other Easter, an Easter that wasn’t hinting at rain, you might have decided to have an Easter picnic. Anyone ever had an Easter picnic? Maybe? No? Hey, we have an Easter picnic over there. So Jenny has been on Easter picnic and you know maybe this week have a little time off. We get some beautiful days between the rainstorms and you decide I’m going to go have a picnic, right? And you pack some of those Easter ham sandwiches and you go out to a nice park and put down the picnic blanket and you sit down on the picnic blanket and you have a nice picnic. And the clouds pass by, gets dark for a moment, but doesn’t rain. And you think, ah yes, this is great. And then you get home. You start to itch. And then you realize that you brought some friends home with you. They’re now hanging on to you.
Anyone ever go out into a park and come back with some uninvited friends, some ticks? I’ve shared before, I, if you want to find the ticks in your yard, invite me over. If they’re there, they’ll find me. I promise I will find them for you. Just leave me out there for a few hours, you won’t have any anymore. And so it is, you know, I think everything is going well, you know, and then you do have that darkening cloud go by, it clears up, everything feels good, until you realize that. And then you start to wonder, well, what if I got one of those tick-borne illnesses? I wonder if I’m okay. Or you encounter some of the other wildlife on your picnic. See, this is a great advertisement, Missouri Parks Department asked me to do this. And something bites you and you wonder, do I need to get shots? Do I have rabies now? You know, what am I going to do? Do a snake, they love to come out this time of year, we’ve been talking about sneaky snakes, that snake comes out and it bites you. Was it venomous? Am I, do I have minutes to live? What am I gonna do? See, aren’t you ready for this Easter picnic now?
I want to ask you a question today. What tick bites do you have? What venomous animal bites do you have? And by that, I don’t mean the kind that you encounter on your Easter picnic. What kind of, as we’ve been thinking about sneaky snakes, those sins that sneak into our lives, what things do we have in our lives we don’t even realize? We come to this weekend and we think about what we remembered on Friday and Thursday night here, and then where we are today. God’s confronting us with that question. Because here’s the thing, we often think things are going pretty well, that cloud passes by and we’re so excited because the lights come back on, the sun’s back out, everything’s good, and we don’t realize that every single one of us has a deadly venom inside of us. Do we realize that?
Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this day, this day that we come before you and celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. As we do, Lord, would you help us to see our own state, our own need of you? Help us to respond. Respond not just in that initial acceptance, but the continued realization of our need and the needs of those around us. Help us to share the only antidote. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So today’s Easter, right? We know where the story is going. He has risen. Yeah, yeah. He has risen. You know, the thing I love about that ancient call and response is that there’s one time of year, at least, you can say something and maybe not everyone, but certainly probably the vast majority of people you’ll encounter will actually respond to you with a theologically true statement. Isn’t that amazing? I mean, announcing the Savior, that’s embedded in our culture. It’s embedded in our minds. And so we know that, but do we understand exactly what all we are saying behind that? And that’s where we’re going tonight.
We’re going to go back to John chapter 3 tonight. We know one verse really, really well. Everybody, right? John 3, 16. But there’s this amazing conversation we’re going to spend the next couple of weeks on around that verse. And tonight we’re in John 3, 14. As we do, we’re encountering a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a teacher of the law. He knows God’s Word very well. And he’s heard about Jesus. He’s curious about Jesus. He decides to talk to Jesus. But as Jesus explains the truth of what he’s here to do to him, Nicodemus is having a hard time getting it to actually sink in. And so Jesus refers back to a story from the Old Testament. He explains exactly what he’s going to do this way. He says,
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
That explains what we mean when we say he is risen perfectly, right? Everyone, we have that down now, right? Well, for Nicodemus it actually would have been a really good explanation because someone like Nicodemus had probably memorized the entire Torah, if not the entire Old Testament. He knew it. And so when Jesus refers to a particular incident in it, he’s got it. He’s got it completely.
And the incident that Jesus is referring back to is out in the wilderness. Israel’s out in the wilderness and they are doing what they like to do best, complaining. And God’s just helped them out. He’s just again helped them. He’s already brought them out of Egypt. He’s been with them. And they say once again, “Why did you bring us out here so we can just all die?” And in their unbelief, God brings a judgment upon them. These fiery serpents, they’re called. They come out and they start biting people. And these serpents aren’t like the little snakes that have been hidden around the church the last few weeks. These serpents, it’s very obvious what they’re doing because people get bit by these serpents and they die right away.
In a way, that’s actually a blessing over the sort of serpents we’ve been talking about, the sort of snakes we’ve been talking about. Because sin that bites us, but sneaky about it, we don’t even realize it’s happening. But here, they’ve been attacked by those sneaky snakes. They’ve gone into unbelief again. They’ve gone into complaining again. They’ve gone into thinking about how surely something is better some other way once again. And you know what? You know what they haven’t done? They haven’t been thankful. They haven’t focused on what God has done for them.
Take a look at Numbers 21 verse 5. “And 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 loathe this worthless food.’ Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people and the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live.’”
So God does something a little different. He says, Moses, I want you to make this model of the very thing that’s happening to the people, the very bad thing that’s happening to them, I want you to put it on a pole and I want you to hold it up. And the people that look on that will be saved from otherwise certain death. And what do you know? It works. Those who will believe the Word of the Lord, they look to that serpent and they’re saved.
So why are we talking about Israel? It’s Easter. Well Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus what he’s going to do for us, what we are celebrating. And if we want to know what’s really behind “He is risen,” this is where Jesus actually takes a teacher of the law. He says, this is it.
So why is this it? Well the first part that we need to see on that is that the Israelites thought they knew what they needed. They thought they knew. They needed food. Not just any food. They were tired of the food they had. They needed more water. Now God had never let them actually go hungry. God had never actually let them become overly dehydrated. He had taken care of them and yet they thought they needed this. This is what they need. This is how everything’s going to be okay.
So that sneaky snake comes and it bites them. The venom now is inside of them and the question is what are they going to do now? They need an antidote of course. But they’re not a people with a modern health care system that has that sort of thing on hand. And so what are they going to do? Well they do the same thing that we should do when we realize that we’re in sin as well. They cry out to the Lord and say they’ve sinned and God offers them exactly what they need.
But Jesus wasn’t just going over history. He really was speaking to what was going to happen. It hadn’t happened yet, but what was going to happen. John chapter 12: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. You see when Jesus says “lifted up,” that’s the term he’s using to refer to his execution, to going to the cross. And so while Nicodemus wouldn’t necessarily have understood that in this time, Jesus is laying a foundation for the future for both Nicodemus and for us because of course we also get to read this story. Jesus is saying this is the model but I’m going to do something better than that.
Because as we’ll see as we go on in John chapter 3, that one incident, what did it do? It saved the people from a particular sin and the particular judgment that came upon them in that. But Jesus was going to do something that would save people from all sin and all time if they would simply look to him.
You might say, well Jesus certainly is being rather indirect about this. Couldn’t he say it a little more clearly? I’m going to be crucified. I’m going to die and I’m going to die for your sin Nicodemus. But notably while it feels a little obscure to us that term lifted up they were probably speaking Aramaic when they were speaking to each other at this time, more than likely the two of them. And as they did the term likely written “lifted up” was the term they used to refer to the gallows. So Nicodemus as he heard that very well could have understood that Jesus was saying he was going to die for the people. He may not have understood how that all could work, why that was significant, how to make sense of that. But he certainly was being told enough that this wasn’t some strange completely disconnected reference that we have to somehow puzzle back together. This was something that Jesus was saying long before he actually was going to the cross, let me tell you when you see this you know what’s happened. Because the point wasn’t just for Jesus to go to the cross and if someone could figure it out, wonderful. It was to actually explain it to people so they could believe.
What Jesus wanted Nicodemus to know as he heard this and he said I’m going to do the same thing as that serpent being held up. Was to say Nicodemus you might not have a fiery serpent bite on your flesh you can look at, but Nicodemus you have deadly venom inside of you. And every one of us when we come to God’s word, God’s word says to us we have deadly venom inside of us. Do we recognize that?
Because you know a lot of the time I think my biggest problem is when that cloud passes over and blocks the sun and I don’t really see what’s going on for a moment and then it clears back up and I think oh it was just a little cloud. And it’s not until later that I realize I had those bites. And it’s not until it’s too late to do anything about it, right, well do something about it, you don’t just leave them on there, but I’m going to have the bite, I’m going to deal with the consequences of the bite. It’s not until that point that I realize it. And Jesus wants us, each and every one of us, to realize the consequences of sin because there’s good news today. There is the fact that he has risen and he wants us to confront why it is that he died and was raised from the grave. So we don’t miss that.
Because notably the thing with that snake being held up, they had to believe, they had to look. And that’s exactly what Jesus is challenging each and every one of us to do as well. Are we looking to him?
You’ve got Good Friday. Good Friday is the result of the fact that you and I have venom inside of us, the venom of sin. When we think about the pain of Good Friday, when we think about the ugliness that the only one who ever lived on this earth who didn’t deserve to die, the only one who’s never sinned, that he was the one who went to the cross. It’s because of that venom. The cross is the symbol of our sin. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
Here’s the thing that we sometimes miss. It wasn’t just that God randomly got mad. When those serpents came out, the people had sinned. They deserved it. I don’t like to think about it, but I deserve it. I deserve a fiery serpent to open that door right now. There’s a miraculous serpent that could open the door. Open that door, crawl up here and bite me. How often do I focus on myself rather than God? How often, even when I’m trying to glorify God, am I really trying to glorify myself or make things about good because I think I’m the one that’s going to do it?
Every single one of us is like the Israelites there. God’s rescued them. God’s shown his love to them. We get so focused on everything else, we’re complaining again. We lose sight, we lose faith in what God is doing.
Think about the very thieves on the cross, the two thieves on the crosses next to Jesus. The one is mocking Jesus. He’s dying and he’s mocking Jesus. Might as well mock someone while you’re up there dying, right? But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our sins, of our deeds. But this man, this man has done nothing wrong.”
See, one thief understood. He couldn’t say he was risen because Jesus hadn’t risen yet, but he still looked at that symbol of the perfect one going to the cross and he said, I don’t need to have it all solved. I don’t need it all to be worked out or it all to have happened yet even. I know who I’m next to here. He doesn’t deserve to be up here.
Jesus responds to him, invites him into his kingdom. See, it’s not about having everything exactly lined up and understanding it all. It’s not about knowing exactly what it is. It’s about trusting in God.
And you think about, if you’re dying of a snake bite and someone comes up to you and says, just look at this piece of metal on a stick. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Just look at this metal on a stick. You’d say, really? You really want me to just look at this piece of metal on a stick?
See, he found the cross. The one who believed, as he looked at Jesus, he looked at something that seemed even less likely to work. At least Moses was holding that stick. But here was a man placed on a stick. Here was a man nailed to a cross, dying. What was he ever going to do? What could he possibly do?
And you see, the Israelites, they were insurrectionists against God and against Moses as a leader. But here we have three men who are considered insurrectionists to Rome, the power of the world, and you’d think, well surely if God’s in charge, if he has a plan for this man, he’s not going to be up on that cross.
But Rome said he’s just someone who’s trying to subvert their power and he’s left them there on that cross, left him there with the others on the cross, and that’s just some weird symbol.
Think about for a moment this cross up here. This cross that we see, sometimes I’m standing in front of it there, but you think about that cross there that you see, and as Jesus was there, what was he doing?
He was on that cross, and what could that cross possibly do? What could that do for anyone? Wasn’t he just, wasn’t it just hopeless? Wasn’t it just meaningless? We put all kinds of flowers around it now because we know what that cross does, but what could it possibly do?
A couple of pieces of wood. And then you put a person on it. What could that person do? That man believed.
I was thinking back this week, for some reason I’ve been really thinking back to 2015. I’m not really sure why, but I just found, here we are in 2025, thinking back 10 years, and one of the things that occurred to me is that it was 10 years ago, later this year, that there was a series of terror bombings in Paris.
Remember that? Horrific. 130 people died. Some of them were at a soccer match, they were watching the game, having a wonderful time, families, friends, all that, cheering, cheering for their team, having a great time. Others were at a concert, others were dining and enjoying an evening in Paris, when all of a sudden it ended.
130 people died, many more were injured, and of course an entire nation was wrapped up in the fear that some of us remember, if we think back even further to 9-11, and you think about that fear, what’s going to be next? Is another plane going to crash into something? What’s going to happen?
And just like what happened around the world towards us at 9-11, so too with France in 2015, people started putting up French flags who weren’t French. I remember driving around the area here, and you’d see French flags up, where people would take the lights and you’d have the blue, white, and red, you know, reverse it so it’s clearly French, not for patriotic American purposes, but patriotic French purposes, showing solidarity with these people that have been attacked by the terror.
We see that over and over again, right? Some other bombing happens, some unfortunate war happens, some other ugliness happens, and we put up a flag, or we turn on some lights, or we put on a nice post on social media, and it kind of feels like, just a symbol. What’s that symbol going to do?
And here’s the reality, oftentimes, it’s not going to do anything. When we, for a week, put up French colors on everything that we do, and then forget about it again. What did it do? Well, it made us feel good.
But, you know, if you are the man on the cross next to Jesus, you’re not worried about, does it make me feel good to say something nice about the man next to me?
The thing he had to wrestle with, and the thing that each of us has to wrestle with on Easter is, is it more than simply feeling good for a moment? Are we gathered here today because it feels good to be celebratory? Or is it something more?
Because we can put up all the awareness colors and flags, but if it’s just a symbol, if that snake, even, had been just a symbol on that pole, and everyone felt good as they looked at it, as Moses held it, as they then collapsed and died, they wouldn’t have felt very good for very long.
And so much more so, even if we’re not on a cross right now confronting our death at this very moment, how much more so is it important that it’s not just a symbol for us? And here’s the good news, when we say, He is risen.
The empty tomb, the other half of that symbol, is a symbol that’s the reality of our salvation.
Next verse in John 3, 15.
Now, the snake wasn’t just a symbol either on the pole, because God said, if you look at that symbol, I’m actually going to act.
When I put up a French flag, because something horrible has happened in France, I’m not saying, and I’m going to go over there and solve the problem for the French.
I’d be really crazy if I did, right? Because what am I going to do?
But more than that, I don’t even mean that.
I mean, I feel bad for them. I feel I’m praying for them. I wish it were different for them.
Hopefully, as believers, we’re praying for them, and that’s a very important thing to do. I want to be clear on that.
But it’s not me volunteering to actually do something myself.
Now, when Moses held that snake on a stick, Jesus, pre-incarnate, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we can get into the mystery of the Trinity here, but God was saying to them, I’m actually going to do something.
You’ve done something. You’ve been sinful. You’ve been insurrectionist. You deserve death. You deserve death on a cross that hasn’t even been applied yet, because you haven’t heard of the cross.
You haven’t heard of the Roman Empire yet, because it doesn’t exist yet.
But if you look at that, I’ll allow you to live, and give you a chance to turn and repent and believe.
Well, that’s nice, right? Wonderful, even.
But Jesus encounters us with something even more.
Think about those snakes and our snakes.
The first thing we need to hold on to is the fact that we really are the ones that bring it on to ourselves.
We are the ones who sin. We bring out the snakes, whether they’re the sneaky snakes or the very obvious fiery snakes.
And yes, there is that symbol. We have a symbol here, right? This cross here is a beautiful cross.
We’ve had it with us here for the entire time we’ve been meeting in person as a church.
But this particular object here will not save anyone.
And in fact, actually, even the pieces of wood from 2,000 years ago, if you could acquire them,
they won’t save you, they won’t make you extra special in the eyes of God.
It can remind us of what he’s done, but it’s a symbol.
But there’s something more, and that’s the reality we’re confronted with on Easter.
You see, if you look over to our little woods we’ve had going here, and you take a look at it,
it’s kind of dark, isn’t it?
And you know what happens to a symbol that’s just a symbol in the midst of brokenness and death?
It’s dark.
Good Friday, for an awful lot of people that witnessed it, it was dark.
Because they looked, and they saw something horrible, even a beautiful horror, right?
Here is someone who’s willing to die for us. Here’s someone who loves us that much.
But it was still dark.
We need something more, because a symbol that then faded away into the darkness does us no good.
Have you ever tried to fix something, and you’re really not quite sure what’s wrong with it?
And if you talk to me, I’ve done computer support enough.
What am I going to tell you to do?
Turn it off and turn it back on, right?
And seriously, you know, this actually works a lot of the time.
It fixes a whole lot of things, and it may not be the most precise way,
but it’s way, way, way more efficient.
And if that doesn’t work, and it’s something that’s sturdy enough,
maybe, oh, just give it a good slap, see if it does something, right?
We’ll just slap on it a little bit, or kick the tires, right, mate? I’ll do it.
Maybe, just maybe.
But what do we do when it really, really, really matters?
Reading about how they maintain the Voyager space probe, fascinating.
If you follow the Voyager space probe, it’s now the man-made object that’s the furthest away from the Earth.
It’s been traveling for decades now.
And it sends back all kinds of amazing information about this universe that God’s made that we can’t reach right now.
But it’s aging, and it wasn’t really supposed to go as long as it has.
And so, as it continues, it has problems.
And when we have problems with our technology here on Earth,
when our soundboard doesn’t work as it, you know, likes to do sometimes,
or the lights decide to do something, what do I do?
I restart them.
But what do you do when it’s millions of miles away,
and you’re not sure it will start back up?
Well, you can try that.
What if it doesn’t work?
You can’t replace it, except for decades later.
And so, they’ve had to be incredibly, incredibly careful when,
for example, the thrusters that position it
so it actually can aim back and talk to us,
when they start to have trouble.
Because if they don’t do anything, it will eventually turn
and won’t talk to us anymore, and we’ll just lose it.
But if they completely shut everything down to try to get them working,
they might also lose contact with it.
It might not come back on, and they would lose it.
And so, they take enormous amounts of time
and enormous care studying the exact state of these.
Now, in the electronic world, ancient materials
is built with, right, decades old.
We’re not using much technology that’s decades old.
To make sure that as they make those adjustments,
it’s actually going to keep working.
Because it’s not enough just to try something.
When we think about our lives, it’s not enough just to try something.
Lots of things the world says we can try, even on Easter, right?
We can try to make it the best Easter ever.
We can try to make it the most festive Easter ever,
the brightest Easter ever, the tastiest Easter ever.
Try something, and we’ll feel okay for a moment.
But does it actually solve the problem,
or are we just turning the machine on and off?
It’s actually going to fix anything long term.
Because what we switch on and off actually makes a difference.
And when Jesus called people to look at him upon the cross,
he was saying, this isn’t just a symbol.
It’s not just trying something.
It’s not just slapping the thing and seeing if the machine starts back up.
It actually makes a difference.
And it’s the only thing you want to try to make that difference.
Because all those other things we try,
eventually our machine, our lives, are not going to start back up.
Not in this world.
And the question is, have we done the one thing that will make sure we’re still in communication with God, our thrusters are turned,
and we won’t lose contact?
Thankfully, the cross, the cross is more than a symbol.
It really is that reality.
1 Corinthians chapter 1:
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved is the power of God.”
Think about this.
These disciples who couldn’t even stay with Jesus as he’s being arrested because they’re afraid.
What if they come for us too?
What do they do the rest of their lives?
They go around and say,
hey, let us tell you about how our leader,
someone the Romans decided is an enemy of the state
and used the execution method they only use with enemies of the state.
Let us tell you about that and how he beat them
because he actually overcame it.
They killed him and he still didn’t die permanently
because death couldn’t defeat him.
Let’s tell you about that.
These are the people that couldn’t even stay by Jesus’s side.
Why?
Because it wasn’t just a symbol then.
They’ve seen what the cross really did.
That Jesus went to that cross, but that cross wasn’t the end.
Every time they claimed that, every time they told someone that,
if that person turned on them,
they upped the chance they too would experience
the exact same earthly demise.
And they said, I don’t care because it’s not just a symbol.
It’s not just something I can talk about and feel good for a moment.
I can feel like I have awareness or an appreciation or empathy or anything else.
If I look to that cross,
the venom that takes away eternal life is purged from my system.
And I’ve seen the proof because I’ve seen the risen Lord.
He is risen.
Think about the darkness of that woods.
Let’s go.
I’m being daring after talking about ticks and such.
I’m going to go back over to our woods over here.
And you think about this woods here in the dark.
But you know what about Easter morning
that shows us that it wasn’t just a symbol?
That woods didn’t stay dark.
The cross, that darkest of symbols,
has the light of life because it couldn’t hold back Jesus.
It rather shows what he did.
We think about our little woods over there
and how we laid down our burdens,
the things that we were struggling with,
the things that we are sitting and struggling to escape.
Last Sunday, we took those palm branches and laid them down
and they’re at the foot of the cross.
And if it were still dark, what would that matter?
It would be just a symbol.
But there’s the reality.
The light of the world came into the world
and not even the most brutal execution method
you’ve come up with could snuff it out.
That light, he overcomes.
As we celebrate Easter, as we sing these songs,
is that where we’re located?
Do we realize we haven’t just done some symbols
to feel good for a moment,
that we can post on social media,
that we can post on Facebook,
that we can post on social media
and feel good for a moment,
that we can sing and celebrate for a moment?
We’re actually confronting not just the symbol,
but experiencing the reality.
The other night too, we love our symbols
and they’re beautiful because they help us
to remember that there’s a reality.
The other night on Monday, Thursday,
we had our Tenebrae candles
and we saw that Christ candle snuffed out.
But we were reminded as we relight it
that it wasn’t snuffed out for good,
that the light does come back.
And if the light shines from the cross,
what does it do?
If the disciples saw that incredible light,
though they had fled, though they were fearful,
through God’s Holy Spirit,
through encountering the risen Lord,
they said, we haven’t just encountered a symbol.
This isn’t just something to celebrate
so we can have a dinner once a year
and get together with family and friends.
Or we’ll have this thing called church someday
and we need a special event at it.
What did they say?
We’ve seen the light that can’t be snuffed out,
the light that gives us life.
And for 11 of the 12 disciples,
they turned and they looked to that life-saving cross,
that symbol lifted up
and they said, it’s so much more than a symbol.
And they looked and they believed.
And we’re here today saying He is risen
because they believed,
that God’s Spirit worked in them.
And there’s our Easter challenge.
Do we believe?
And are we ready to share that light with this world?
Because those two things go together.
If we share something but it’s just a symbol,
it won’t do any good.
And if we have that light in us,
how can we not share it?
Because Easter morning tells of a cross
that isn’t in a dark woods,
it’s a cross that lights the world
as a symbol that points to the most real thing
we will ever encounter.
And we can encounter it even tonight.
Would you pray with me, please?
Father, we do pray that you would be with us this night.
And Lord, for anyone that might be with us
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