Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Well, hey friends, welcome to Thursday's edition of the Weekday Podcast. Super grateful you're here. If you find these helpful, if you don't mind, consider sharing it with a friend. You can just give them the link weekdaypodcast.com and that'd be an incredible way to encourage somebody today. I don't know if you've ever locked yourself out of your house, your car, your phone, and instead of calling for help right away, you tried every workaround first. Like you checked every window. You tried the code you're pretty sure isn't right anymore. Anything except admitting that that you needed somebody else's help to get you back in. Well, I think a lot of us actually do that with God as well. We'd rather try 15 creative failed solutions to Our Own brokenness than to admit the door was never going to open from our side. Nicodemus asked this question of Jesus in John 3:9. He says, how can these things be? And instead of simplifying, Jesus reaches back into a strange, specific story from Israel's history.
[00:00:52] In John 3:14, Jesus says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that whoever believes will in him have eternal life. Well, back in the wilderness, when venomous snakes came into the Israelite camp as judgment for their grumbling, God's remedy was pretty strange. He told Moses to make a bronze snake, to lift it on a pole and tell the people that anyone who was bitten could simply look at it and live. Not because the bronze had power, because it was where God told people to put their trust. Jesus tells Nicodemus, the most biblically literate man in the room, that he's about to become the same kind of rescue.
[00:01:35] Not a reward for people who've behaved well, but a remedy. A remedy lifted up for anyone willing to look, including the very people whose own complaining had caused the problem. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, half hoping not to be seen, still worried about getting caught doing something wrong. And Jesus answers to him and to you, to me is this. I didn't come to catch you doing something wrong. I came to open the door. So today, quietly, just to yourself, name the thing that you've assumed disqualifies you, something you carry shame around, and. And that thing that you can't let go of. And instead of trying one more time to fix it before you're willing to bring it to God, just look at what is actually being offered. Not condemnation, but rescue. He didn't come to catch you. He came to open the door. Every thread that we've pulled this week, not earned, not engineered, not a trap. All of it lands in one verse tomorrow. Probably the most familiar verse in the whole Bible. But I promise, once you've walked through this week to get there, you'll hear it differently. So I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow.
