The Ones Who Looked Lived

In one paragraph

This message was the latest in Pastor Nathan's series working through the 12 steps with their biblical foundations. He focused on steps six and seven, the readiness to have God remove our defects and the humility to ask him to do it, and traced both back to a strange and often-skipped story from Numbers 21. Communion closed the service. Steps one through five had already been covered in earlier...

Read together

1. 1 John 1:9 cited as biblical support for step five, confessing sins to God
2. James 5 cited for confessing sins to one another and praying for each other
3. John 5 the man at the pool of Bethesda, lying there thirty-eight years, Jesus asks if he wants to be made well, used to introduce step six
4. John 3 Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, Jesus tells him he must be born again
5. John 3:16 whosoever believes will not perish but have everlasting life, cited as the familiar conclusion to the Nicodemus passage
6. Numbers 21 the bronze snake lifted on a pole in the wilderness, cited as the Old Testament callback Jesus uses with Nicodemus
7. John 3:14-15 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
8. Romans 15:13 spoken as the benediction, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing

Talk about it

1. The pastor shared a personal story about throwing his daughter's toy cow out the car window and lying awake that night feeling like he just couldn't get it right. When have you had a moment like that, where your own failure made you look honestly at yourself?
2. The 12 steps move from 'I can't' to 'God can' to 'I'm going to let Him.' Which of those three is hardest for you personally, and why?
3. Step four calls for a fearless and searching moral inventory, looking honestly at yourself against what God says is wrong. What makes that kind of self-examination so difficult, and what tends to stop people from finishing it?
4. The bronze snake story in Numbers 21 struck the pastor as genuinely strange: people who were bitten simply looked up at the snake on the pole and lived. What do you make of the fact that salvation, then and now, is that simple and that strange?
5. Alan Levi's reflection said the cross is not a place for argument with God but a place of surrender and humility, and that we simply confess Jesus' death was made necessary by our sin. Is there any part of that which you still find hard to accept, and what would it mean to stop arguing and just look up?