John 3:14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”   

I took my car to my mechanic because I spotted a little puddle of antifreeze on the garage floor. The car wasn’t overheating. I suspected a hose might need to be replaced. An hour later he calls me and tells me I need over a thousand dollars worth of repairs. The radiator is leaking. The water pump is shot. Those weren’t the answers I was looking for.

One night a man named Nicodemus went to Jesus to get a few questions answered. He wanted to understand better who Jesus was. “We know you are a teacher from God,” he said. “No one could do these miraculous signs unless God were with him.” Nicodemus himself was regarded as a knowledgeable person of faith. “You are Israel’s teacher,” Jesus called him. But what Jesus tells the man is a challenge to his entire faith. His Jewish heritage, his Biblical knowledge, isn’t enough to save him. Nicodemus needs a second birth. He needs to be born of the Spirit. He needs to lay aside his religion based on externals and put his faith in Jesus if he wants eternal life. Those weren’t the answers Nicodemus was looking for.

But this is the information Nicodemus truly needed to know. Jesus starts with a picture Nicodemus could understand. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus’ picture suggests that the real problem is worse than people think. When Israel grumbled about the free food the Lord had been feeding them in the desert, the Lord sent poisonous snakes into their camp, and they were biting people, and some of them were dying. When the people repented, God had Moses make a snake of bronze, put it on a pole, and anyone who looked at the snake with faith in God’s promise was healed. It was a matter of life and death.

Jesus tells us that he himself, the “Son of Man” had to be lifted up as well. In his case it wasn’t a pole, but a cross on which he was lifted. The bronze snake was just a statue that hung there, but Jesus hung on the cross to die. Again, it was a matter of life and death, “…that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” In other words, without him being lifted up, and without faith in him, there is no eternal life. There is eternal death. That’s not the problem, nor the solution, Nicodemus expected to learn about when he came to see Jesus that night.

But none of the answers to any of his other questions would make any difference if he didn’t know this answer to this problem. The same is true for us. Jesus is the answer for sin. He is the answer for salvation. He is the answer for death. Put your faith in him, and no matter what else you may wonder about in life, no matter what else may happen, eternal life is waiting in the end. Question answered. Problem solved.