I'm Scared to Look

There's a song coming to my head. It's like, "Your love, it never fails. " That, anyway, we didn't do it, though, I didn't do it. It's too late.

It's official, they've left the stage, not the building, they're still on that side. Anyways, I've been having a dream lately, guys, and it's weird.

Anyone have dreams in this place? Couple? Anyone not have dreams? Okay, so you need some REM sleep.

If you're not having dreams, you get healthy.

I finally got REM sleep recently, and I had a dream, and this dream is similar to probably 15 to 17 other dreams that I've had. And what happens in the dream, you—you know when you wake up in a dream, you're not really awake, you wake up in the dream? Anyone know what I'm talking about? So I woke—I wake up in this dream, and I'm always land somewhere in my current house, but then I walk, and it's like it's got the scope of my current house, but it's like 50 times larger, and for some reason it looks like it's in the 50s.

It's like—that's so it doesn't look modern at all.

My house is 2016 built, 1950s feels like this is some Stephen King novel style of dream I'm living in right now. So anyways, I have this dream 15 times, and I don't know why I'm even telling you this, but I'm telling you so don't judge me, don't try to interpret my dream like Joseph or anything, you ain't that cool. But I'm having this dream, I'm sure there's something, some psychosis I'm dealing with that my brain's trying to tell me, or the Lord speaking through it, it's one of the two, and those are big either-ors. But I'll get up, I'm always on my couch.

I fall asleep, REM sleep, on accident, on the couch, and I'm in this dream, and I walk upstairs, and, like I said, it's old school, so I'll be walking to my bedroom, but then on my way to my bedroom there's this big, like, closet that doesn't exist in my real life, but there's this closet, every time I pass it, it's like some crazy dread.

It's like, it's like, I don't know, one of them scary movies where when you pass by you're like, "Don't look at it, " because something bad's about to happen to you. And so I go in, then I lay down, and 15 times in a row, every time I pass this room, there's this weird dread again. I don't want you to interpret my psychosis today. I tell you that because I had it probably Friday night, and I woke up on the couch, I was like, "Oh, I thought that was real, it was vivid.

" And I start walking up, and I pass my wife's office, and I'm like, "Don't look in my wife's office. " Now, there's nothing wrong with her office, but I felt—you've had dreams like that, right? Like, I just felt weird.

And then I went to my room and I laid down, and I thought, that'd be a great first chapter of a horror story book. But then I started thinking more, and I was like, "Huh, there are some things in my life that I don't like to look at. " That's where I was going with the dream. Maybe I'm overly interpreting it or something like that, but I was like, "Hey, what are the things in my life—let's revolve this around Jesus, let's not just think it's some random thing—let's revolve this around Jesus.

What are the things in my life that I'm scared to look at, that I really need to look at, but I don't because they cause me dread, or it causes a lot of intensity for me to actually have to engage with that? "

a good example would be, you know, I've been through seasons of life where financially has been harder than other seasons, and during those hard seasons, I'll get to the end of the week and I'm like, "I don't really want to look at the spreadsheet, I don't want to look at the bank statement, I don't want to see where we're at and see what the balance is." You—anyone else know that feeling? It's like, I know it's not going to be where I want it to be, so I'm scared to look at it.

There are some people that you guys are trying to avoid in your life, you won't even drive down the same street because there's a confrontation that needs to happen that hasn't happened yet, and your refusal to engage in it just fills you with dread every time you pass a certain street, and you're like, "I'm gonna go down this way just in case I see him, I don't want to see him. " And you could keep going on with different situations, right? I—I'm going to procrastinate this task because every time I look at it, I realize that I'm not where I need to be, and I feel inadequate, so I'd just rather go watch something or have a conversation with somebody, let me just call my—call my family member, as opposed to doing my job. I want to look at it, there's—there's a dread that comes when I look at it.

And I guess I'll give you my sermon title. "I'm Scared to Look" is the sermon title, and we're going to be in John chapter 3 today, and I hope y'all need to pray for me on this one, because sometimes when trying to tie together, philosophical concepts with what the Scripture says, the Scripture says it, but to tie them together when you're standing in front of 120 people is tough sometimes.

So y'all be praying for me that I tie it together in a way that honors God. But in John chapter 3, many of you are familiar with this scene where Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, and we went through the first part last week, and Jesus has this conversation with him. Nicodemus walks up to Jesus, he's like, "We know that you're from God because you're doing these things, " and Jesus is like, "You don't know nothing, bro. " That's a long story short, MRV, of that passage.

And they have this conversation where Jesus is informing Nicodemus that there are things that are greater than what he currently understands, and Nicodemus was good enough to come in with a posture of teachability. And my encouragement to you guys last week was to come to Jesus with this humility that enables you to actually hear what he has to say, rather than with barriers built up that will prevent you from ever understanding what God has for you.

So that was last week, and this week we continue this conversation, maybe you might say part two of this conversation, and he's still talking with Nicodemus, and here's what he says. I'm going to give you the first, verse, it's in verse 12. He says, "I have spoken to you about earthly things and you do not believe. How then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

" This conversation he's having with him, because Nicodemus is like, "How can I be born again? " And Jesus says, "It's a spiritual rebirth, it's not you going back into your mother's womb, you got to see above and beyond these things, you got to engage with things you're not currently comfortable able with engaging with. "

And in verse 14, I'm going to continue this. "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him." Y'all might be familiar with this one: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only son. This is the verdict: light has come into the world, but people love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed, but whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

"

And so this is where—like, it might sound a little complicated, but it's actually very simple—the way this passage works out is Jesus is having this conversation with Nicodemus, and he says, "You're not seeing heavenly things, you're seeing earthly things, " and he gives an example that probably went over a lot of people's heads. He gives an example of Moses lifting up a snake in the wilderness, and then your popular verse comes in: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting, " or eternal, "life." And then he continues the conversation and talks about people preferring darkness over light.

This is where my sermon title comes in, this is where that weird dream I told you about has become relevant to me in this season, is that in order to apprehend the love of God, which is weighty, it's heavy, it's complex, it is full of, history and context—in order to apprehend the love of God, I have to understand at least at some level why that love is necessary. I have to understand some of these things I'm unwilling to engage with. I—I—I've got to come to grips with my sin. This is what this Scripture overall is trying to communicate.

It's communicating, hear me, the love of God, but in order to comprehend the love of God, you've got to understand some of the weight that the love of God lifts up.

The first example he uses is Moses. Now, for years, when I read this passage, I didn't know enough about the Bible, right? So I—I didn't know much about the Old Testament, I was great reading the New Testament because it was more interesting than the Old Testament—they're both super interesting, but for me, that's how it felt—and so I avoided Old Testament like the plague, and I kept reading the New Testament. But there were these citations, or we call them intertexts, these hyperlinks that they would be referring back to the Old Testament, that I would just avoid, but I kept seeing them, and I'm like, "Maybe I should learn the Old Testament.

" But for the first several years, I'd go through this passage and I was like, "Oh yeah, like in, like, The Prince of Egypt, when Moses throws the staff on the ground and it becomes a snake, and then he picks it back up, that's what it means. " No. There's another scene in the Old Testament, where the Israelite people have already been delivered from the hands of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, they cross the Red Sea, and they're in the wilderness awaiting the time where God would bring them into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, present-day Israel.

And while they're waiting, they struggle—I struggle while I'm waiting—the Israelite people are waiting for full deliverance, they're in this in-between phase, and they become disobedient, they start—they start forgetting what God has already done for them, and they operate in sin and disobedience. And there's a scene in Scripture, and I can't tell you—not today, I don't have time to describe the theological underpinnings of this passage, so you're going to have questions from it, go look it up, ChatGPT—GPT can help you, like, go look this up—but what happens in this passage is that because Israel was disobedient, God sent, or allowed, snakes to be through the camp. These are probably asps, current European, North African asps, they were poisonous, and the people were getting bit. The Bible says, because of their disobedience, God sent snakes into their camp, and they were biting people, and they were dying.

Again, go look it up, learn about it, can't talk about it here, I got a New Testament passage to preach.

It's a crazy story, but John's using it here. So how do we comprehend this a little bit more when he's talking about deliverance from sin? How do we comprehend this Old Testament passage, utility by John here? And so, when you keep reading, what you find is that Moses approaches God, and they discuss an option for deliverance from the snake bite, and here's what happens: Moses fashions a bronze serpent, and he lifts it up on a pole, and the instruction is, "When you get bit by these snakes that are presently going through the camp because of your disobedience, look at the snake on a pole, and you will be healed, you won't die.

" I know, go look it up, it's a crazy scene, but he uses it here, and then he gives us the most popular passage in Scripture. And we all get excited about the popular passage about God's love, but we miss the context that he's giving us, that's right before this popular passage.

So I start comparing this, and it's a pretty common comparison, you may have heard it before, but I started to think about what John is actually trying to communicate, because the snake on a pole, it—yes, it communicates God's love, to be willing to help redeem people who, because of their disobedience, have fallen away. He's—he's protecting people who are willing to look toward him. Yes, it shows God's love, but if you look in the Old Testament, that doesn't really talk a whole lot about God's love, it talks about Israel's disobedience. And if you even look at what he's telling them to do, it gives us a lot of clarity on how we should understand our relationship with Okay, it's good, it kind of looks like Jafar's staff.

Y'all remember that, in Aladdin?

Why in the world would God use this as an instrument of deliverance? Just look at this thing. I want to look at that. I just get.

Okay, here's what I—I got bit by a poisonous snake because of my disobedience.

Without deliverance, I'm going to die. And the solution is to look at the—at that—the thing that bit me. Now, I don't know if that's what that looks like, that's AI generated, I don't even know what kind of snake that is, I have no clue. It looks like a mixture of a dragon, snake, but it looks cool and scary and stressful.

I don't want to look at it.

In fact, I'm—I'm kind of hesitant, maybe, maybe scared even, to look at that—not the snake, I don't like looking at snakes, I want to be very clear. Anyone see my Facebook, or Instagram, where I posted a story of that sidewinder we found in my neighborhood? I—I—I—I was running at night, and I stopped running at night after that, cuz I almost stepped on it. And, and then I ran around it, and it was chill, it didn't chase me.

And then I went home and I got my kids, and we went to go see if it was still there, and we found it.

The video I posted was it just side-winding, whatever that cool thing is. The video I didn't post was the one of us messing with it, and, y'all would have judged me for that. I don't even know why I'm telling you about it right now. But snakes kind of—they kind of scare me.

I don't like snakes very much, they stress me out.

But there's something deeper to what's happening here. They're getting bit because of what—their disobedience. They're going to die because of what—their disobedience. And the solution is for them to look at the result of their disobedience.

That's interesting to me, because if you take that to your popular passage, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life, " there's something cool that happens in the Greek, in the syntax.

He says "that whoever believes"—eis—"in him. " You don't care about that, it just simply means this: it's not whoever believes intellectually in him, not whoever believes emotionally in him, it's eis, eis, it's directional. It's whoever believes in the direction of him. And so when you take his use of the Old Testament passage and you blend it with what he's actually saying here, what is he saying?

He's saying, "You were born into sin. As a result of your sin, you're going to die"—but not just death, it's going to be eternity separated from God—"and as an object of deliverance, I'm going to give you something to look at, to push toward, to live your life for. " And it's not a snake—can we give him the other picture? —it's the result of your sin.

We don't—we don't really understand John 3:16 unless we understand the weight, or the toll, that our sin produced. And you might be thinking, "Well, gosh, I didn't do that, Adam and Eve did that, that's their fault. " Whoever's fault it was—whether they did it, whether someone before me did it, whether it was my environment, or whether it was genetic, I don't know—but we were all born into sin. The Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

To sin means to miss the mark. That means that there was a mark, there was a destination, there was a goal, there was an ultimate direction that God had for us, and we missed it.

It's not saying that you're not a nice person once in a while. I got all these people, they're like, "I'm a good person, does God hate me? Am I going to go to hell? I'm a good person.

" And I'm like, it's not about whether you're nice to people, whether you help the old lady cross the road—if you're old, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to make fun of you—like, it's not about the things that you do right, and it's not about some of the things that you did wrong. They're related, but it's about the fact that all have sinned and fallen short.

There was an ultimate, there was an ideal that God had in mind, and we missed it. And, simply put, because we missed it, we will spend eternity separate from God, right? Disobedience produced a result, and the only way to remove that result is to look in the direction toward deliverance. For the Old Testament, it was the snake.

Just look at it, just—just look at it.

I got to help you guys out a little bit, I'm not saying you're dumb, I—I'm dumb, and so I want to help you guys out, knowing my own inadequacy of understanding the—the importance, or the weight, of this passage and how it's helpful. You might think, "Man, if I was an Israelite and I got bit by a snake, it'd be easy to look at that. " But you forget about the fact that we've got problems in our life all the time, and there's a solution that the Bible prescribes. Are you looking toward it?

The world knows there's a problem. Just go talk to people, they're like, "Our world's going to hell in a handbasket. " I don't have to believe in God to know what's going to hell, they know there's a problem, and they know that there's some sort of deliverance necessary, but they're not looking in the direction that God would tell them to look in.

It would be as if you got bit by a snake and Moses, your leader, is telling you that there's—hey, here's a solution guys, just look at this bronze pole that I fashioned and put up. It's this ugly snake on here, that's the result of your disobedience. If you just look at it, it's going to be good. Sounds simple, but then I—but then I go to my human condition and I'm like, "Whatever, Moses, that's crazy.

That's—you're asking me to believe in something that I can't see.

You're asking me to believe in something that has not been empirically proven. There's some evidence out there, but I can't test it, not really. " We all act like, "Israelites, just believe that stuff because that's what they did. " No, they would go through the same process we would go through.

The Gospel is very simple: it's if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you can be saved. If you confess your sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Jesus came—God's one and only son—and he died on the cross to offer us forgiveness of sins, and the way to him is to believe toward him.

It's that simple. How are you living your life? Are you believing in the direction of Jesus? It's not so simple, is it?

Because there are things I don't want to look at.

I don't like to look at snakes. I definitely don't want to look at the result of my sin, which is the cross of Christ. That's just a struggle. I don't like looking at blood, makes me feel—it's not good.

I don't want to see the—the hands pierced, I don't want to see the feet pierced, I don't want to see the crown of thorns.

That stresses me out. A lot of people went to go watch The Passion of the Christ. I was in high school when that came out. A lot of people went to go see it, and they were all appalled when they were watching it—if you—how many of you were in the theater when you saw that?

You know what I'm talking about.

It was like people didn't know that it happened, because they looked at it and they weren't used to looking at it. The—the—the beauty of the Gospel, yes, is God's love expressed through the death of his one and only son for the forgiveness of your sin. But to comprehend that, you might need to come to grips with the weight of your sin. It's—it's—it's like that, it's like my wife's office, which is, code for that weird room that I'm scared to go into.

In my—my weird dreams, is I don't want to go in there, I—I don't want to encounter whatever it is.

But there's a—there's a part of all of us—you're avoiding that thing, you're avoiding looking at that thing that makes you feel icky, the thing that causes you dread. And we all avoid—dude, our culture avoids looking at sin. If you tell someone they did something wrong, you see the response these days. Paul would not do super well in our current culture—I mean, power of God behind him, of course it would work out—but goodness, picture Paul coming here, not even to the outside world, of the church, to the church.

If he would have come up to you and say, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"—but he did it in the Paul way, not the nice, matte way, trying to like make you feel good about yourselves, in the Paul way, where he's like, "I don't care what you think, this is what the Gospel says, you better figure that stuff out.

All of sin, fall short of the glory of God. " If he would come here and look at the outside world, people would not take that very well. And they struggled back when he was doing it, because we like to look at what makes us excited and happy. But when we are confronted face to face with the result of our sin—can—can I go a little deeper with this, do you mind?

Trying to process through how I want to say this. There are some people in your life—there might be some people that you were avoiding because you did something to them.

It could be—it could be crazy. It could be like you have not contacted your son or daughter, or have you not contacted your parents, for the last several years, because of something you did? Maybe it's something they did to you, but maybe it's something you did, and you're caught up in this avoidance. You don't even want to—you don't want to interact, because you know as soon as you interact, you've got to engage, you got to go face to face with the result of your bad actions.

You know that feeling that comes when you think about interacting with that?

That is the feeling you have to step through in order to understand and receive forgiveness of sins. It's not that I'm trying to make you feel bad, it's just—yes, there's a pain that leads to destruction, but there's a pain that also leads to deliverance. And sometimes you have to encounter, come face to face with the weight of your bad decisions. You got to come face to face with the weight of your sin.

God did not consider it a bad thing for the Israelites to have to look at the very thing that bit them as a result of their disobedience.

He said, "Look at it, just look at it, for a second. " He's not trying to make them feel bad, he's trying to help them understand the weight of their actions. The Bible says, in—I believe it's Colossians, if I'm wrong I apologize, you biblical scholars out there, but I think it's Colossians—it says that Jesus was put on public display, referring to him on the cross. God is telling us, by putting his son on the cross, he says, "This is the result.

I need you to look at it. I need you to come face to face with it.

I need you to think about the relationships you've torn apart by your actions. I need you to think about how you have missed the mark in following me. I need you to think about this stuff, because if you don't engage with it, you're going to miss the love that I have for you. "

He's saying his love for you is so great that even in spite of your ungodliness, your misdirection, you're missing the mark, your opposite trajectory—in spite of all of these things, I'm willing to forgive you. But your forgiveness will not be felt, you will still feel condemned daily, guilty, and you will not be able to experience the—the grace of salvation, unless you come face to face with your sin. This is why, in every prayer that we lead, we say—every prayer that we're talking about when it comes to salvation—this is what we say: "Father, forgive me of my sin, make me a new creation, and I will follow you for the rest of my life. " Embracing God's love cannot be felt unless you have experienced and understood, at some level, the weight of your sin.

This is—this is where I think John, is bringing in the Old Testament passage, and it's very helpful for us, because John 3:16, doesn't—it works, but you won't experience it truly unless you understand John 3:14 and 15. But let's go to 17. He says, "For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only son.

"

Now, I was wrestling with this a little bit, because the scene—the scene in the Old Testament with Israel and the snakes biting people, and then looking at the pole with the snake on it for deliverance—it's a crazy scene, but also it's—it's a scene where it seems like, "If I mess up, ", "God's unhappy with me. If I mess up, that means separation from God." And as I'm wrestling with that, I—I'm seeing a level of, hey, there's condemnation attached.

To sin, and there is—but then Jesus comes in, and Paul clarifies. He's like, hey, I don't come into the world to condemn the world but to save the world. Okay, I'm going to spend eternity separate from you, condemned because of my sin, but you came to save. And what he communicates in the next passage, right here in verse 18, He says, "Whoever believes in him though is not condemned, " and he says something interesting.

This may not mean as much to you as it means to me—it was something that hit me really specially.

It says, "Whoever does not believe stands condemned already."

I think a lot of people hear the message of Jesus and they hear it, maybe because they've heard pastors that—I'm trying not to be, you know, those pastors who, "You're a sinner! "—the ones with the bullhorn or whatever they call that thing, megaphone, they're standing out there on the side of the road. Nothing wrong with megaphones, nothing wrong with standing on the side of the road. It is an interesting message when you're like, "You're going to go to hell because of your sin, you're going to go to hell because of your sin.

" True. Yeah, maybe a different method, you know, could be a little more helpful. It's a message of condemnation, not one of salvation.

Now, they flower the salvation in there, but it feels pretty condemning. But Jesus says something very similar, right? He says, "You can come to God if you believe in me, but you're condemned otherwise. " It's a message of salvation with condemnation recognized.

And when Jesus comes, he's not saying that if you screw up you're going to be condemned for all of eternity. He's saying you're already condemned from Adam and Eve—you have been condemned.

I said it earlier, not because of you being a bad person or a good person, not because of you messing up a couple more times than you should have. You're not separated from God because of your acts of commission or your sins of omission—the commission, things you commit, things you do wrong, or the things you should have done that you didn't do—that's wrong too, you know, like that's not good either. He's not saying that you were condemned just because of your actions. He's saying your starting point is condemnation because of what happened with Adam and Eve way back in the day.

I don't want to blame them.

I think it just happened, you know? I think Adam and Eve made a decision because they were influenced negatively, by the serpent in the garden. And I think every single one of us have fallen into that place. Like I said, nature, nurture—I don't know how it came, but the Bible's very clear: I was born into it, and all sin and fall short of the glory of God.

And what Jesus is saying, before he came, you didn't stand in a good spot—you were condemned.

And so when Jesus comes, the message that we preach of Jesus isn't one of condemnation. It's not one where I say, "Hey, you're going to go to hell, " stating the obvious—that's where you were going to go before you trusted in Jesus. That's where every human being goes when they don't know Jesus. And what Jesus is saying, that was the natural state of things before me.

And so when he comes, he is preaching fresh a message of salvation for people who were standing condemned.

It would be like—I don't know if this is a good example, but it's one that I've been using—, there's a house that was judged, like, not fit for anyone to live in. It was condemned by the state, and then someone comes in and makes all the adjustments necessary for it to be livable again. Again, what Jesus is doing is he's coming to something that has already been judged, and he says, "Hey, here's an option. " This is the message that Jesus is bringing to each one of us: "While you were formerly dead in your sins and trespasses, he made us alive in Christ Jesus.

" This is what the Bible is communicating to us. And the beauty of this passage is that God's love is expressed when we understand the weight of our sin—that no matter what we did do or didn't do, we were still condemned. And when we recognize the—when we recognize the true disparity we have between us and God, that's when we start to comprehend God's love.

He said, "I didn't come into the world to condemn the world but to save it. You were condemned already, but if you believe in Jesus's name, it's going to be a different story."

And he says, "This is the verdict, " and this is where I want to tie it together: "Light has come into the world, but people love darkness instead of light. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. "

Now, remember, my sermon title is "I'm Scared to Look." I think he starts this passage—John does—with this recognition of what Moses did back in the Old Testament, where people had to look in the direction of something they probably didn't want to look at. And then he refers that to Jesus, who is crucified for our transgressions, and calls us into a life that scholars would call cruciform—forgiveness where we are regularly dying to ourselves daily, being poured out as a drink offering, as Paul would say.

We are called into this place where we regularly look at the things that make us uncomfortable, recognizing that that is the pathway to our deliverance. And then he says it again—he drives home his point that it's about where you look. He says people who are evil love the dark, and the impetus of this passage is that we would come into the light. The verdict is light—that is Jesus, just to be clear.

"Jesus, light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light. "

Hey, can you turn off these lights for a second?

See, do you like this? No. -. I mean, some of y'all like it 'cause I probably got, like, too much grease on my forehead and you're like, "It's blinding.

" Guys, I'm balding here a little bit, so you're like, "All right, that's a little more, that's a better view. " Maybe I got a pimple on my chin that you see that I don't see or feel—I don't know. But for me, I hate this.

I can see you guys a little bit better, but I recognize that there is a beauty to the light. But what he says here—you can turn lights back on—what he says here is that they loved the dark. I don't know that there's anyone in this room who would admit readily that you love the dark. And by dark, I'm not talking about a dark room—sometimes we need a nap, you know what I'm saying.

I'm talking about darkness metaphorically speaking, regarding spiritual darkness.

You don't like it. None of us like it. We don't like to be in the dark when it comes to information. We don't like to be in the dark when we're by ourselves.

I don't like to walk down a dark hallway—I'm scared there's something behind me, you know?

Some of y'all are more—yeah, I've watched way too many scary movies in my day. But I don't like being in the dark. But he says we love the dark, like it is our natural state to love the dark. And what he's telling us is that there is something that we feel negative about when light is shown—when it's dark and then a light shines, like if I were to turn all the lights off and then shine a bright light into your face, you would know what he's talking about.

You'd hate it because it's blinding, it hurts a little bit.

You become accustomed to a lifestyle, that is different than one with the light. And so what John is trying to communicate to us here—through the Moses illustration, through what he says in John 3:16, and what he says here about light versus dark—is he's saying you don't like to look directly into the light. You don't want to look directly at the snake. You don't want to look on him who was crucified for your transgressions, that was pierced—you don't want to look at him.

You don't want to look at this stuff because it is discomforting.

Why? Because you have been conditioned to something that is lesser than you should be conditioned to. And it's a process. And what he says here is that everyone who lives by the truth will come into the light.

Here's my encouragement to you guys today—it's not an encouragement, it's a plea.

I'm begging you: start looking, coming face to face with the things in your life that are discomforting rather than just disassociating with it. I think we live in this cognitive dissonance between us—and for me, metaphorically, that room that I dread every time I pass by. But when you start engaging with that darkness in your life, when you engage with the result of your sin, when you engage with your need for forgiveness, that's when you start to understand things at a deeper level. If you want to embrace Christ's deliverance, you've got to move away from this cognitive dissonance that you're comfortable living in.

I might even say cultural dissonance, where we just want to be constantly comfortable, stagnant in whatever aspect of it is.

We don't want to hear any negative information that would come negatively on us—even when my wife calls me out, I'm still struggling. She's like, "Hey, you should up your game in this, " and I'm like, "Hey, don't yell at—don't talk to me about that. Don't make me feel bad about myself. Don't tell me about the areas in my life that I've been hiding, that are in the dark still, that I don't want to—Christ's light to shine on.

Don't tell me about that stuff because it feels icky, fills me with dread because now I've got to address it. "

He says anything that comes into the light—it's like the light's going to shine on it, which means all the crevices, all the pimples, all the negatives, all the bad stuff is going to be visible.

But I need you to know: a life in the light with positive trajectory is better than comfort in the dark where you're not fixing anything. God wants us to embrace some of these, like, these struggle areas—and this is both practical and theological. Theologically, there are people in this room—you have never looked face to face into your sin and recognized that your sin and my sin is why Jesus had to die savagely on a cross. Theologically, you can accept Christ today, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved.

If you do that, it takes looking in the direction of him whom we all cursed.

But pragmatically, I think this will be a helpful point for some of you, because you have been avoiding that financial spreadsheet, thinking that when you look at that spreadsheet you're just going to be depressed about your financial dysfunction. But it could be that when you look closely at your financial spreadsheet, that you'll find that you're actually not in as bad of a position as you thought you were, and now you can actually correct some bad habits and get yourself into a much better position. But you never get there if you stay cognitively away from it. There are some issues with your kids that you've been avoiding because it feels icky to address.

What if—what if you were to lean in and engage with that and start doing research on what it looks like to help in this area?

I could keep going down the list of the things that we avoid because they make us feel filled with dread, that if you—sorry, not embrace—engage those things, you'd find yourself in a good position. So both theologically and pragmatically, you are saved for all of eternity when you look face to face with your sin and embrace Christ Jesus, and honestly, you're going to find yourself in much better spots when you start addressing these areas that you've become cognitively dissonant from. I don't know about you, but some of the best seasons in my life are when the light shined on me, but it didn't feel good—when someone told me something about myself that I didn't want to hear, and it put me on a trajectory of emotional intelligence that I never expected to go on. Hardest season of my life, but I look back on it fondly because I was delivered from a mindset I didn't even know I had.

It was stuck in that room I was avoiding, but I opened the door—or somebody else actually opened the door and kicked their way in and they helped me.

We—my wife and I—are in a better position financially. I don't want you to think we were just in a crazy spot, but we're in a better position now financially because we actually sat down and we addressed the issues that we had been avoiding. And some of you, you're in the spiritual state where you feel not only disconnected from God but regularly depressed or deflated, at least about where you are in life and your lack of having a fulfilling purpose to wake up to every morning. There's a reason for that.

And if you would come face to face with it, bring it into the light and let Christ do what he will with it, you might actually find that he works miracles.

He'll do immeasurably more than you could ask or imagine. But if you keep it hidden, where does that leave you? Comfortable, eventually stagnant, and then— Stuck? No, we're good.

So let's embrace some of these things that God would call us to.

Let's look at the light, even if it's blinding. Let's look at the snake, even though it's weird to look at. Let's look at Christ Jesus, who in the midst of our hostility broke down that dividing wall so that we might have life abundantly. I want to give you an opportunity right now, though, for those of you who are ready to trust in Jesus.

I want to give you an opportunity to trust in him right now.

I can't leave today without that opportunity, because God did love the world so much that he gave his only Son, that if you simply believe in him, you'll have eternal life with God in heaven. So if we could bow our heads and close our eyes, we're going to pray this prayer together, for the benefit of those who are praying it for real for the first time. Repeat after me: God, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe he died on the cross as a result of my sin, for my forgiveness.

God, forgive me of my sin.

Make me a new creation. Help me walk in resurrection power, and I will follow you for the rest of my life. God, we thank you so much for the salvation we have in Christ, and I know there's so much everyone in this room needs to continue to learn, but I pray that you would impress upon us the importance of not focusing on our sin, but of recognizing it as we focus toward you. Help us understand the depth of the forgiveness you've offered us in Christ.

Help us live in freedom, knowing we are no longer constrained by the guilt and shame that comes with bad decision making.

God, because you've saved us, we thank you for that. We live in that, and help us, when we leave from here in a few moments, as we worship you, God, help us to lean into you, not just on Sundays but every day. So God, we love you and we trust you. It's in Jesus's name that we pray.

Amen.

Y'all stand with me, we're going to worship.