A WORD FOR TODAY, February 25, 2026
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, February 25, 2026
Lectionary Scriptures for March 1, 2026, Second Sunday in Lent: Genesis 12:1-9; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-8, 13-17; John 3:1-17
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from Yahweh, who made heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1, WEB
It would be very easy to write several sermons based just on the Gospel lesson for this day. It reads almost like a list of the most important things Jesus ever said.
“Most certainly I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can’t see God’s Kingdom.”
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
“The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
“Most certainly I tell you, we speak that which we know and testify of that which we have seen, and you don’t receive our witness.”
“No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.”
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only born[c] Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
“For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.”
Each one of these statements has a powerful message for us today and for us particularly in this season of Lent. They speak of transformation, renewal, the deeper things of God, the witness of Christ in the world, and faith. Each one brings to mind a message that could easily make a sermon for this coming Sunday. Unfortunately, we don’t have a month of Sundays to expound upon this text, so we either need to focus on the story, or find the message that is woven in the midst of all our texts for today.
It is so easy to focus on the most familiar verse from today’s Gospel lesson as many people do. John 3:16 is recognized the world over. Anyone who has ever seen a football game on television has seen signs raised above the crowds beseeching people to believe in God. Even non-Christians know what it says. It is the foundation of our faith. This is a favorite passage because it shows both God’s gospel and man’s response. God loves and if we believe, we will not die. Jesus reminds us that God promised this salvation long before He was born in flesh.
In Numbers 21, Moses was leading the Israelites through the wilderness, but the people grew impatient. They were wandering in circles. They were far from the life they had known in Egypt and did not seem to be getting anywhere. They began to complain. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, there is no water, and our soul loathes this disgusting food!” God answered their complaints by sending venomous snakes among them. Many died from their bites. I suppose it is stories like this that make some people dislike the Old Testament. What sort of loving God would do such a thing?
The people had turned away from God, no longer trusting Him. They doubted His faithfulness; they grumbled. They despised God’s grace. The attack of the snakes helped them to see the error of their ways. It seems too simple in this passage. Snakes bit them and they repented. They went to Moses and confessed their sin. Could it really have been that easy? They were wandering through the desert, a desert undoubtedly filled with poisonous creatures. The people probably saw them constantly, but the creatures did not attack. When they complained, God lifted His hand of protection from their presence. The snakes that were held at bay by God’s grace were free to do what they do naturally. The people needed to look to God again, to seek His grace.
God commanded Moses to create a bronze snake to lift high in the camp. All who looked upon that snake were saved. God so loved the Israelites that He sent that snake to be lifted among them, so that all who believed and looked toward it would be saved. Sound familiar? God could have simply sent the snakes away. He could have killed the snakes. He could have made them unable to bite or the poison to be useless. He gave them a sign of His grace so that they would look toward it and be saved.
God forgives. God forgives because He loves, but love is not the foundation of our faith. We are saved by God’s mercy, by His forgiveness. Nicodemus went to Jesus in darkness, seeking answers to the questions of his heart. There was something about Jesus, but Nicodemus was afraid. What did it all mean? What was He saying? Nicodemus was a teacher. He was responsible for the spiritual lives of the people, yet he could not understand what Jesus was saying. Nicodemus understood the Law.
It is easier to respond to God’s word than it is to accept His grace. How can we be certain? The Israelites got tired, scared, hungry, and then they began to doubt. During our own wilderness journeys, we also get tired, scared, and hungry. We complain. We doubt. We look away from God and try to make our own way. But God has given us His Son, lifted on a pole, so that we can see our sin and remember His grace. There, on the cross that seems to defy love, we see God’s forgiveness and our salvation.
I went camping with my Girl Scout troop when I was a teenager. We went to a camp in a state park a few hours from home. It was a nice park, with amazing waterfalls and exhausting hikes. Our camp was at the top of the mountain, near the beginning of the string of waterfalls. We had some rain that weekend, rain that nearly washed our tents down the mountain. It was frightening, but the rain passed and we could hike the falls the next day. We went back to our tents exhausted from the climb and the lack of sleep, but we were amazed when we looked at the sky above us. It was so full of stars that it was difficult to distinguish between the stars, and it was impossible to count them.
We returned home from that camping trip, and the sky never looked the same; I even wondered if the stars were still there. I understood the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 15 much better after my night on the mountain. God told Abraham that his offspring would outnumber the stars in the sky. It was an amazing promise, especially since Abraham and Sarah were well beyond child-bearing years. The promise is unbelievable. How could Abram become a nation over such a vast wilderness when he was just one man? He feared he would have to give his inheritance to a servant.
The story of Abraham begins a few verses before today’s Old Testament lesson. He was called Abram. He lived under the faith of his forefathers. The LORD God Almighty was unknown to his people. Yet we see in today’s passage that Abram believed and followed Him.
Abram lived with his extended family in Mesopotamia; he had great wealth with servants, flocks, and many material possessions. He worshipped the moon god and other local gods with the rest of his family and friends. Life was pretty good for Abram. One day the LORD spoke to Abram, which must have been a very strange experience for him. The gods they worshipped had no voice, no form except that which were created by human hands. This strange voice told Abram to leave his home and go to an unknown land. The voice promised Abram many blessings: he would become a great nation and be blessed, his name would be great and he would be a blessing, all those who bless him will be blessed and those who curse him would be cursed. The greatest promise reached far beyond Abram himself: the entire world would be blessed through him.
We also see Abraham’s faith when God sent him to the altar of sacrifice with his son Isaac. Isaac was the seed of the fulfillment of the promise, the first of a long line of offspring that would be beyond number. Yet, Abraham obediently took Isaac, knowing that God would provide the sacrifice. God had provided the son; He would provide whatever was needed to fulfill the promise.
These amazing stories show us a man who believed and trusted God, but Abraham’s faith began and His life was changed when he believed that strange voice that came to him out of the blue. Would you decide to leave everything you know to follow the LORD into the unknown?
It was a voice out of the blue. Abram grew up under the religious practices of Ur. He worshipped the gods and goddesses of Ancient Mesopotamia. He followed his father to Harran, whose people worshipped the same gods by different names. They worshipped the gods of the sun, moon and other created things. Out of that faith, Abram heard a voice and though it was different from anything he knew, he believed. He was an old man at the time, seventy-five. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?
Abram believed and he did as God told him. His faith is credited to him as righteousness.
We often think that Paul was referring to Abraham’s faith when he took his son Isaac to the altar of sacrifice. That was certainly the most painful act of obedience a father can do. Yet Abraham’s whole life was changed when he believed that strange voice that came to him out of the blue. Would you decide to leave everything you know behind to follow God into the unknown?
God promised Abraham that his offspring would outnumber the stars in the sky. That might seem possible for those of us who are used to seeing the sky as it appears blocked by light pollution in our cities, but Abraham was in the wilderness, thousands of years before electricity. The sky he saw was more like the sky I saw on the top of the mountain, with so many stars that it would have been impossible for him to count.
Abraham’s righteousness was not an indication of good works or right living. His righteousness was living in a right relationship with God, dwelling in His presence, following His voice. Abraham was willing to go even into the unknown. His faith was not in the promise but in the LORD who made the promise. The promises were ridiculous, but God is faithful. So, Abraham had faith in God. Abraham never saw the fulfillment of those promises, but he did see the seed. He gave birth to the son with his beloved Sarah. In that son he saw the promise of more, but his faith was in God.
I wonder how often Abraham doubted God’s promises. Abraham and Sarah tried to take matters into their own hands, seeking a child through Sarah’s maidservant Hagar. Sarah laughed when the LORD said to Abraham that she would bear a child. Did Abraham also wonder at the ridiculousness of that statement? Yet, through it all, Abraham lived in the presence of God, and that is righteousness.
We hear about Nicodemus three times in the book of John. Today’s Gospel lesson is the first. In the second story, which is found in John 7, the chief priests and the Pharisees were concerned about the way Jesus was speaking in the Temple. They sent officers to arrest Him. Some believed His words and others rejected them. Even the officers were divided. They went back to the chief priests and Pharisees without Him and when questioned said, “No man ever spoke like this man!” The leaders wondered if the officers had even been led astray. Nicodemus stepped up and said, “Does our law judge a man, unless it first hears from him personally and knows what he does?” They called Nicodemus foolish. In John 10, Nicodemus made one last appearance. After Jesus died, Joseph of Arimathea sought permission to take down the body and have it entombed. Nicodemus joined him with a large amount of myrrh and aloes to prepare the body.
In these three stories, we never see Nicodemus confessing faith in Jesus. He didn’t even claim to believe Him. He did, however, act as an advocate. He reminded the others that it isn’t fair to condemn a man on the word of the witnesses alone. He simply wanted them to hear Jesus and judge for themselves.
Each time Nicodemus is mentioned, John notes that this was the man who first went to Jesus at night. Had Nicodemus found the light? Did he believe? Did he ever truly confess his faith in Jesus? He never does so in words, but he seems to do so in action. We are left wondering about his faith. In time, Nicodemus was made a saint. There is an apocryphal gospel attributed to him. It is likely that he believed, but we can’t know for sure without a public confession.
There was a time when this distinction was very important. Things were difficult for Christians in England when the dominant Church switched between Catholic and Protestant over and over again. Unfortunately, those who followed “the other religion” (whichever it might be) often risked severe punishment. Many martyrs were made in those days. At the time, a disparaging term came into use, thought to have been introduced by John Calvin. It was the term “Nicodemite” which referred to someone who was suspected of misrepresenting their actual religious beliefs by exhibiting false appearances and concealing true beliefs. Calvin considered a lack of public confession an act of duplicity; he originally used the word referring to hidden Protestants in a Catholic environment, but it was later used in opposite cases.
So, are you a Nicodemite? Are you one who believes but you would rather not take the risk by making a public a confession of your faith? Do you seek Jesus in the dark, or perhaps just on Sunday morning, but keep Him hidden from the rest of your life? Do you quietly serve Jesus in the background while never being seen as an active, faithful disciple? I think many of us can say “Yes” to these questions.
The confidence with which Abram entered into his journey required seeing the world through the eyes of faith. Abraham saw things differently and he left his old life to follow God into something new. Paul reminds us that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. He was not blessed because he was doing the right things or because he was obeying the right laws. Abram was blessed because he believed God and followed His voice. Abraham was made the father of many nations by the one in whom He believed. The God of Abraham, the God in whom we also believe, brought a nation out of one man who walked in faith.
Paul tells us that we don’t receive the gracious gifts of God because we deserve them. We can’t trust enough, believe enough, work enough to deserve God’s blessing. We don’t deserve heaven. We don’t deserve the gifts that God gives. If we deserved these things, if we have done something to earn them, then they aren’t gifts and everything about the Jesus story is pointless. But we receive heaven and God’s blessings because He has offered them to us, and we believe Him. That’s righteousness; we aren’t righteous because we’ve done something or because we are somebody who deserves what God has given. We are righteous because we trust in God and believe what He has said.
Nicodemus knew there was something to what Jesus was preaching, but he didn’t understand it. He knew Jesus came from God, but he didn’t have the heart connection. His faith was still in himself, his family ties and his position. He confessed faith in Jesus, but Jesus knew that it was not complete, that it was upside down and backwards thinking.
Jesus answered his confession, “Most certainly, I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can’t see God’s Kingdom.” Jesus was talking about faith. He was telling Nicodemus that faith had nothing to do with the ties that bind us to the earth. You have to be born again, in heart and in spirit.
Jesus tried to explain the deeper things of God. He told Nicodemus about new birth and about the anointing of the Spirit of God, but he couldn’t see these things beyond the thinking that had been conditioned by his religious and cultural point of view. To him, birth happened once and righteousness came from the law. He knew Jesus came from God, but he couldn’t understand the deeper purposes of His life and future death. Jesus pointed to the cross in this passage, telling this Pharisee that He would be lifted up in death to bring life for those who look and trust in Him. It is no wonder that Nicodemus was confused; this was a very radical revelation for the Jews.
It is a radical revelation for us, too. We still believe that we’ll get the blessing of God based on our works, our attitude, and our qualifications. When we say, “She (or he) deserves to be blessed,” we are thinking from the same frame of reference as those Pharisees and other Jewish leaders. We speak of our loved ones deserving heaven because we know they lived good lives and did the right things. We pray for our neighbors to be blessed because they are good people. We thank God for graciously rewarding our good works but do not understand that we are seeing God’s grace from the wrong point of view. God doesn’t bless us because we have been a blessing. We are blessed so that we’ll be a blessing to others.
God didn’t send Jesus because we deserve to be saved; the reality is quite the contrary. God gave us Jesus because He knows we can never save ourselves. Because we’ve been blessed by the saving grace of Christ’s blood, we have been sent into the world to tell others about Him to be saved. It is tempting to think that we deserve heaven, especially if we have done something extraordinary, but Jesus is calling us to look at it differently. We have been promised eternity in heaven not because we deserve it but so that we’ll live lives of thanksgiving and praise to God, blessing others with acts that come from faith. We get to go to heaven because we trust in God’s word and His promises, and respond to His grace by faithfully living in the reality of His faithfulness.
God invited Abram on a journey to a place he did know. He would never see the fulfillment of the promises, but he trusted God and went on that journey in faith. God may not be calling us to go to a new nation or leave behind everything we know and love, but He is inviting us on a journey of faith, too. We don’t know where the road will lead. We don’t know who we will meet. We don’t even know what we’ll be expected to do. But we can travel with Him, trusting that He knows and that we’ll end up in the Promised Land, just as He has promised. In faith we join in a journey with Abraham and share in his righteousness.
We have been blessed to be a blessing and called to look at the world in a new way. We need not worry that this journey is dangerous, for God is with us in it. Our God does not watch us like Santa Claus watching to see what we will do wrong. He watches because He loves us. He will keep our going out and coming in from this time on forevermore.
Abram didn’t know anything about God. He followed a different religion which worshipped a multitude of gods they thought would meet their daily needs. He heard a voice that told him to pack up his entire life, leave everything he knew and loved behind to travel to a place he did not know. The voice promised Abram that his name would be so great, that he would be so blessed, and that everyone would be dealt with, good and bad, according to their relationship with Abram.
If you heard an unknown voice calling you to follow, what would you do? In today’s modern age, everyone around you would say you were crazy. They might even lock you up. We don’t know how Abram’s family and friends reacted; perhaps they threatened to do the same thing. It didn’t matter to Abram. He packed up his life and went into the wilderness following a voice that he trusted. It took faith to leave the past behind and go into the world chasing after ridiculous promises. Abram was righteous from the very beginning, so much so that God renamed him Abraham as He confirmed the promise. Abraham had a right relationship with God from the moment he heard his voice. His righteousness did not come from his work; he was righteous because he believed. Through it all, God was faithful to His promises.
The psalmist understood the fears of the journey and the assurance found in God’s grace. “I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from Yahweh, who made heaven and earth.” The question is answered with the assurance that God will keep his going out and coming in from this time on forevermore. Such a promise would give anyone the confidence to go forth into the unknown. Somehow Abraham must have had such assurance, a seed of faith or a flicker of the Spirit. He could journey forward with confidence if he knew that the God who was leading him into the unknown could guard and protect him through every difficulty.
Abraham left behind a world where the people thought the gods of the sun and moon could destroy a human being just because they felt like it. What a great promise! Trust in God gives us the assurance that the gods of this world have no power over our lives. Our God will walk with us on our journey.
Where does our help come from? Jesus calls us to look at the world through the eyes of faith, to trust that God has done exactly what He promised to do. It comes from the God who loves us and who has given His own Son to save us from sin. It comes not because we deserve it but because the God who loves us has promised and is faithful. So, during this Lenten journey, let us be transformed by the journey, trusting in God and His amazing grace. We may feel more like Nicodemus than Abraham, but we need not hide in the dark. God calls us out of the world we know away from the gods that have no power. Hear God’s voice and follow Him wherever He may lead, for it is there that you will be the blessing His has blessed you to be.
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