All right, we're gonna have some fun. Let's start in John three. So John 316 is probably the most famous scripture ever for God. So loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The number of people that can recite this
or who are familiar with. It is much greater than the number of people who have read the surrounding verses or who have any clue what this verse is all about. If you ask a Christian who's familiar with this scripture, if it represents what the gospel is in a nutshell, they'd say. Yeah, sure. But what
is, what is actually going on here? Is this about what or is this about why or is this about how they would tell you? It's a what Jesus came and he died and he was resurrected. Therefore, but it's actually about why and how the Lord did not come here and an end as an end in and of itself. There was a
reason, the reason starts before here and it gives us a very important clue what I want to do with this is use it as a, as an important example of why you need to know what the scriptures actually say and how you can't just go off of what you hear from other people, what you've heard your whole life
or what you've seen your whole life because there's more to it. And I'm going to show you this is the King James, but we're going to go to Bible hub, which is a very useful website for looking at Greek and Hebrew uh words in the scriptures. They also have other translations there which are less useful
but sometimes useful. In verse 15, we read that whosoever believeth him should not perish but have eternal life. Now, just a, a plain old reading of this, you'd probably read eternal life here and everlasting life in the next verse and say, well, these must be the same and if one is everlasting shouldn't
, the other one also have to uh pertain to the duration. Isn't this a question of duration? Doesn't this mean that whoever believes in him will live forever? Which that's an interesting thing because every person that quotes this verse seems to be ok with the idea that people die. But they just say,
well, it means that you're resurrected and then you live forever. Ok. Fair enough. And you could say, well, Jesus came and he was resurrected. Therefore, we all get resurrected too and then we live forever if we believe in him. But you have to read the surroundings. So we read the previous verse, we're
gonna go back even even further as Moses lifted up the servant serpent in the wilderness. Even so must the son of man be lifted up? And the one before that and no man hath ascended up to heaven. But he that came down from heaven and before that, and I won't continue reading. But basically, Nicodemus
comes to him and ask him some questions. And Jesus says, why should I tell you? Because I've told you of earthly things and you don't believe me and what you're asking me, the answer is even higher than that. And so if you're not believing me in these earthly basic things that you have plenty of reasons
to believe me on, then why should I tell you more? And then he continues and he says that he came down from heaven and therefore he knows what he's talking about. That's up here. We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen and ye receive not our witness. He's calling out Nicodemus as a the
pharisee is as part of the governing council of the Jews religious Council. He said, you have no idea what you're talking about. I know what I'm talking about. I'm telling you what I know you don't believe me. And yet you're asking me further questions of, of things that are even greater. Why do you
expect them to answer those and that you'll believe anything I say because you're not believing the simple stuff that you have a reason to. Ok. How is this relevant? Let's go back to this. Why does he say as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness? Even so must the son of man be lifted up? Well
, if you know the Old Testament, you know that Moses was commanded by God to put a brass serpent on a stick and the people were getting bit by these poisonous snakes. And the Lord said that those that looked at the, the brass serpent would be healed of the, of the venom. And so he's saying as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up? What is this talking about? Let's go to the the source. Here's numbers 21 8. So um the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people and much people of Israel died. Therefore, the people came to Moses and
said, we've sinned for, we have spoken against the Lord and against thee, pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses make thee a fiery serpent and set it upon a pole and it shall come to pass that everyone that is bitten when
he look upon it shall live. He did it. And that's what happened. So it's worth noting here that they were complaining to Moses and blaming him for their plight and complaining about their situation. So the Lord made it worse so that they would recognize that their situation was beyond their ability to
improve. And then they turned back to the Lord. And Moses see we have sp spoken against the lord and against thee. And Moses prayed and the, the, the lord solved the problem and Moses did his part and the people got back into the structure they needed to be and to receive the blessings of the Lord, which
included overcoming the challenges that would otherwise overcome them. So this is what the Lord does. He exposes you to greater consequences when you don't recognize the value of what you have and you're not acting appropriately within it. That's going to be an important lesson to remember as things
roll out anyway. So what's this business about a serpent? And this is our first dabble in the, in the languages. Here, we're going to go to Hebrew because this King James translation is wrong. And the Lord said unto Moses make the a fiery serpent and set it upon a pole and it shall come to pass that
everyone that has bitten when you look upon it shall live. This is an example of a translation that's limited. I shouldn't have said wrong. It's very limited though they've taken a word that has multiple senses that are all important and they've reduced it down to one because a pole in English just means
a pole. However, that word in Hebrew means several different things. So now let's go to Bible hub numbers 21 8. And here we have the various translations that they track. Pole, pole, pole, pole bueller, Bueller. OK. Then we have flag pole. That's interesting. Then we have standard, huh? Standard. Standard
. OK. A couple more poll. Standard. That's interesting. Let's check out what the Hebrew has Hebrews. Uh sorry. Numbers 21 8, go down to the word. This also says a pole, right? But you can highlight if you mouse over this. It gives you an abbreviated definition, gives you a clue. Something lifted up.
Standard signal, signal. Pull inside. Hm. Inside. We've got a lot of use of that word all over the scriptures, don't we? And it's pretty important. Banner sign sale. Interesting. A rallying point. A signal. Hm. All right. So we click that it's worth looking at, get rid of the stupid ad. Now, the thing
about Bible hubs Hebrew is you're hitting the strong's concordance. There are strengths and weaknesses of this. But, but one thing I like about it is you're kind of zooming out a bit and um I, I guess I'd expect that that people who are well versed in Hebrew probably don't like the strong's concordance
because it mashes things together that uh might be otherwise separated. But I quite like that because if you're looking at a noisy picture in image processing, if you're looking at a noisy picture and it has artifacts of noise in it, meaning additions and subtractions and things then sometimes blurring
the image will actually get you a more accurate picture, especially if you know what you're looking at. And I've just mentioned a few very important keys for figuring out scriptures say. But anyway, so um blurring this out a little and looking at the Strong's Concordance here for Hebrew, we see one thing
I don't like about Bible hub is you have to actually scroll all the way down for the, for the actual um definition and, and you can go to the roots and that helps sometimes, but you have to go through everybody's opinion about this and then that, that is helpful sometimes, but it's not the most important
thing and the translations that other translators use are also less important. So this down here is actually typically the most important one to start with. So we already read all of those. Sometimes that summary, I'm not exactly sure where it comes from, but sometimes it matches this. Sometimes it doesn't
, sometimes it includes some of these guys. Now we go to the Brown Driver Briggs opinions and we've got standards. So it's all the same. I don't have to read through there. This is actually pretty consistent. Usually there's some, some real important subtleties here. You can look at all of the uses of
the word and if there's more than a few. You actually have to open it in its own page and you can read through them quickly. It'll give you a sampling of what the English translations say. And then the word in question is in italics colored here. And so we see you can scroll through here and see some
familiar scriptures here and you can click on these to look into them, but here's one lift up a standard toward Zion. Well, that's interesting. Right. Let's look at that. Set up the standard to Zion. Take refuge not to delay for disaster. I will bring from the north and destruction. Great. So here's
a warning from Jeremiah. You can go to the English translations. Raise this. Well, let's do the King James set up the standard toward Zion. Retire. Stay not for, I will bring evil from the North to great destruction. So this is not a pole. This is a flag, right? A signal, set up a signal toward Zion
and, and that signal, it could be a flag and sometimes it's a horn which is a sound, it's not an object, it's a sound. Anyway, let's try not to make this too long. But again, you could go here. Thus says, the Lord God behold, I will lift in an oath to the sometimes is get a little weird to the nations
my hand. Let's go to the parallel. So you recognize what this is actually saying because it's a familiar one. Uh behold, I will lift up my hand to the gentiles and set up my standard to the people and they shall bring thy sons in their arms and thy daughter shall be carried upon the shoulders. Did you
realize that this verse is linked to Moses raising the brass serpent in the wilderness and to Jesus being lifted up on the cross. So you're probably just confused now and we may or may not resolve that. But these things are linked. It turns out there are a lot here. Let's go to this one. See when you
, when he lifted up an ensign on the mountains and when he blow a trumpet, hear you, right? So it's a spoken message and a visible demonstration. Then we've got, we got back here. This one's fun. Sounds fun. Um The English, sorry. The king James says lifting up a banner upon the high mountain exalt the
voice unto him. Shake the hand that they may go into the gates of the nobles. What, what does that even mean? Who knows right now? Let's go to Hebrew. Uh Wait, where did I just see this? Sorry. Oh, before we go there, look at the other translations banner on the high mountain signal flag on a bare hilltop
that is very different. That is very different. OK? Because a banner and who knows what that means, right? You could have different ideas about that. A signal flag on a bare hilltop that is very precise, um raise your voice to them, wave your hand versus call up an army against Babylon, wave your hand
to encourage them. So that's there's some interpretation going on there, but um enter the gate of the nobles. So if you go through this, there's a lot here that's really important. And we're going to talk about it at some point. And it turns out that when you start putting these things together, you
see like 1000 entry points into the same exact message over and over and over again all throughout the scriptures. And what is that message? Let's get to it. We got to back out of all this. Uh We were talking about Moses and the serpent. Here we go. Mm Let's talk about a standard. Standard is, is a flag
that you raise up, right? What does a standard do? Well, it is also the root of where we're coming from. When we say if you measure up to a standard like a weight and measure the standard is the example. It's the example. So on this you have with this word, you've got several ideas wrapped into one.
You have a pole which is like the cross. You've got an example, which is the serpent, which is a symbol of Christ in this case. And that example, it's supposed to call us all to look upon it right now. Look is another word that we can't go into right now. But um it's to orient yourself towards. It doesn't
just mean look with your eyes, it's become or line with or adopt the purpose of. So this miracle where they looked at this brass serpent, by the way, brass is the, the lowest grade metal out of the three classes they used for holy purposes, which is brass or copper, silver and gold. It was the lowest
grade. It was the first thing that could go through the fire unscathed, which is important. So we have this example of the minimum it takes to go through the fire and when you look upon it, you'll live. Ok. And we could go into this because of where we came from on John three. This word does not just
mean normal life and, and this is an example of words that um mean different degrees of the same thing with the same words. So you, you, you could be talking about both of them at the same time or one or the other. Um the tree of life. That's the word. So we're talking about not just earth life, mortal
life, but there's a connection to eternal life. So let's just keep unfolding this. So now let's go back to John three and Jesus said that he was going to be lifted up just like Moses, lifted up the the serpent in the wilderness that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Now
, the people that looked at the brass serpents still died. So there are different grades of blessing here, different forms of life. But what I want to do now is, is, is turn towards this coupling of eternal or everlasting life in verses 15 and 16. So the first question I ask is, are these talking about
the same thing or something different? So let's go over to the Greek and in verse 16, we've got 2222 and 166 in 15, they're exactly the same and the conjugations are actually exactly the same. So here's a case and you'll see lots of these where the translators use different words, even though the words
in Greek were exactly the same. This means something very different in English. A naive reading would lead you in a very different direction, but they're the same exact thing. Ok. Now, we could keep reading and we don't have time for that. But this passage is amongst those that I quote most often. And
um it's all about turning toward the light. So the Lord comes as the light and he shows you darkness that's inside of you. And then you get to respond by accepting his light in its place. And that's a process and you keep doing that. That's all right there in John 316 and no one pays attention to that
. They dumb it down to this idea that because Jesus came and lived and died, that's all there is. And we have no part in that except to say we believe it happened. And a hallelujah, we have everything there is to have we become everything that he intended, we become ok. Now, if we were to click through
what that act, that word actually is as far as everlasting or eternal, this is what we get to and look right here. So if we start at the bottom, like I said too, you do have this sense of time forever. But there is just eternal and eternal means much more than a span of time. So you do have this sense
of without end, never to cease everlasting. You can go look up all these scriptures if you'd like. But there is this question of look at this having a particular character or quality. Well, that's funny because none of these other usages indicate anything except span of time. But here you have an age
in terms of a particular character or quality, right? That's not time, it's type not time. All right. So now let's go, I'm just gonna show you this one more time, should not perish. So his purpose is that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life, eternal life. Now let's
jump to John 1010, which I wish was quoted as often as John 316. This is what he's explaining that he is a good shepherd and he says what his purpose is. I'm come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. This coupling is this same coupling. So this is resurrection. This
is the quality of life that follows, this is resurrection. This is the quality of life that follows kind of cool. Huh? And you can look at these words in Greek if you'd like if you were to ask me what the Lord's purpose is, I would say our improvement. He rescues us from death which comes through sin
and he provides everything necessary for us to have something better than what we had before. That is to be something better than we were before. But that second part, you will not get it from any mainstream Christian because they have taken away the plain and precious part of John chapter three, which
is that he did not just come so that we could live again. If that were the case, the best thing to do would just be for us to not come in the first place. All of this is so that we can have everlasting life, eternal life, a higher quality of life to come, that changes everything that changes everything
. And what's the key back to the Old Testament? From the very beginning we're told it's to learn what Jesus is like and to live more like he does see that. All right, this I hope has been beneficial.