Bible Strands
Day 3: Lifted up
Read
Notice
- Nicodemus comes at night. Note what he says he already knows, and where the conversation goes instead.
- Twice Jesus answers a question Nicodemus did not ask. What is he answering?
- Verse 16 is the most quoted sentence in the Bible. Read verses 14 and 15 first, and see what it is joined to.
Follow
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,John 3:14
The strongest thread in the chapter runs backwards, out of the Gospel and into the wilderness.
Read together with:
- Numbers 21:7 80 votes
- John 8:28 38 votes
- John 12:32 25 votes
"Lifted up" is one word doing two jobs, and John uses it in four verses: 3:14, 8:28, 12:32 and 12:34. It means raised on a cross and it means raised in honour, and John never separates them. Read all four and watch the crowd in 12:34 fail to understand which one he meant.
Numbers 21 at eighty votes: a bronze snake on a pole in the desert, and the people who looked at it lived. Jesus reaches back fourteen hundred years for the picture he wants, and the cross-reference is one generations of readers drew before you.
Keep
The people in the desert had to look at the thing that was killing them. What are you not looking at?
Tomorrow: a conversation at a well, at noon.
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