OUR DEEPEST NEED

CAN

BE SATISFIED!

He was very religious.

   He was impressed by Jesus.

       He wasn’t satisfied.

He visited Jesus quietly one night.

“Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus looked him in the eye and said to him,

“I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

That was what he needed.

To see the kingdom of God,

        to experience the kingdom of God,

            to know that God was real,

               to know that God was at work in his life.

His deepest need was to be born again.

Jesus continued,

“I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”

It is one thing to be born physically.

Another to be born spiritually!

We need the Spirit of God

    to make us alive in our spirits.

Then we will be satisfied!

But how can we be born again like that?

Jesus went on to show him how.

“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.”

He was referring to an incident recorded in the history of His own people. Here it is.

“The people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!’

Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.

The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.’

So Moses prayed for the people.

The LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.'

So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole.

Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.”

The bronze snake was lifted up on a pole.

        People looked—and were healed!

At the very prime of life,

    Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed. 

They crucified Him.

            He was lifted up—on a wooden cross!

He was buried.

  He rose again.

      He is alive today!

He says to you and me,

 Look to Me and trust in Me

     as those people looked at the bronze snake,

            and I will give you eternal life!

                 Then you will be satisfied.

A young man went into a little church one Sunday morning and was exhorted by the preacher to look to Jesus.

“Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but to look and live.”

He did.

“Oh! I looked until I could have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away.”

That is all it takes. Look to Jesus—and live!

Quotations from John 3 and Numbers 21 from the New International Version, and C. H. Spurgeon as quoted in his autobiography.

© 2005 - Linton Smith.