Book Review: 3:16 The Numbers of Hope

Book Review: “3:16 The Num­bers of Hope” by Max Lucado

Read­ing Max Lucado’s writ­ing is like sit­ting on your front porch on a warm sum­mer evening with a glass of iced tea, enjoy­ing an occa­sional light breeze, and an equally refresh­ing and delight­ful con­ver­sa­tion with your favorite neigh­bor. 3:16 The Num­bers of Hope marks my first read­ing of a Lucado book. It won’t be my last.

That Lucado is an expert story-teller is evi­dent from the first sen­tence of the first chap­ter wherein he sets the stage for what he deems “The Most Famous Con­ver­sa­tion in the Bible” — the clan­des­tine meet­ing of Nicode­mus, a Phar­isee, and Jesus Christ. Nicode­mus acknowl­edged Jesus’ birthright as the Mes­siah, Sav­ior of the World, telling him dur­ing that secret meet­ing with Jesus and his fol­low­ers, that he real­ized “no one could per­form the mirac­u­lous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Jesus’ dec­la­ra­tion that no one can see the King­dom of God with­out being born again, lead Nicode­mus and, ulti­mately, the rest of mankind to what Lucado refers to as the “Hope dia­mond of the Bible:”

For God
so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son,
that who­ever belies in him
shall not per­ish but have
eter­nal life.

Sys­tem­at­i­cally, Lucado dis­sects that “twenty-six-word parade of hope” chap­ter by chap­ter, focused upon bring­ing the reader to an under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of the verse’s key terms and phrases: God, the world, loved, one and only Son, gave, who­ever, believes, in him, eter­nal, life. Each dis­cus­sion is replete not only with other Scrip­tural ref­er­ences and back­drops that pro­vide con­text and clar­i­fi­ca­tion, but also mod­ern, “real life” illus­tra­tions of the power of each of those twenty-six decep­tively sim­ple words.

For instance, in Chap­ter Four, “When You Get Booted Out,” Lucado describes God’s bound­less, unend­ing love by using a new word: Plu­toed. He describes how annoyed, upset, and unhappy the planet Pluto must have felt when he was “down­graded … to aster­oid #134340″ because he did not meet “solar-system standards.”

Can’t fault Pluto for being ticked. One day he’s in, the next he’s out; one day on the squad, the next off. We can under­stand his frus­tra­tion. Some of us under­stand it all too well. We know what it’s like to be voted out. Wrong size. Wrong crowd. Wrong address.

Plutoed.

Lucado aptly describes the human con­di­tion with which every reader is famil­iar: We have all felt “demoted and demeaned,” but he empha­sizes that “loved” is the “lead­ing verb” in John 3:16 and con­vinc­ingly uses other anec­dotes to drive home the point that fickle and con­di­tional human accep­tance pales in com­par­i­son to God’s unwa­ver­ing envelop­ing of each and every indi­vid­ual in His safe embrace.

Lucado could eas­ily have fallen back upon famil­iar, cliched analo­gies to make his point. How many times have preach­ers and authors talked about being the last kid picked for the bas­ket­ball team in ele­men­tary school, being the one not wel­comed at the pop­u­lar kids’ table in the school cafe­te­ria, not being the boss’s favorite, employee, etc.

Instead, he employs a totally unique, clever and, ulti­mately, mem­o­rable hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nario to drive home the point. It is all the more effec­tive because he chose the plight of Pluto, the last out­post of our solar sys­tem before ven­tur­ing into lim­it­less and unend­ing space, as the back­drop for the story.

Every time I feel shut out, rejected, or down­trod­den by per­ceived unfair­ness or mis­treat­ment, I will think, “I have been ‘plu­toed.’” The word has already become part of my ver­nac­u­lar and I’m bet­ting that, as you read this, it will become part of yours. That’s not just bril­liant writ­ing; it’s an exam­ple of writ­ing inspired by the Holy Spirit, designed to res­onate with believ­ers and, more impor­tantly, nonbelievers.

Lucado is an extremely effec­tive teacher. In “Believe and Receive,” he explains the ref­er­ence to a ser­pent in the wilder­ness which pre­cedes what he calls “the 3:16 offer.” Jesus said, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that every­one who believes in him may have eter­nal life.^”

The wan­der­ing Israelites were grum­bling at Moses again. Though camped on the bor­der of the Promised Land and ben­e­fi­cia­ries of four decades of God’s pro­vi­sions, he Hebrews sounded off like spoiled trust-fund brats: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilder­ness?” (Num. 21:5 NKJV).

Same com­plaint, sev­en­ti­eth verse. Ex-slaves long­ing for Eqypt. Dream­ing of pyra­mids and curs­ing the waste­land, pin­ing for Pharaoh and vil­i­fy­ing Moses. They hated the hot sand, the long days, and the manna, oh the manna. “Our soul loathes this worth­less bread” (v. 6 NKJV).

They’d had all the manna burg­ers and manna casseroles and manna peanut but­ter sand­wiches they could stom­ach. And God had had all the moan­ing he could take. “So the Lord sent fiery ser­pents among the peo­ple, and they bit the peo­ple; and many of the peo­ple of Israel died” (v. 6 NKJV).

Horror-movie pro­duc­ers long to spawn such scenes. Slith­er­ing vipers creep out of holes and rocks and ser­pen­tine through the camp. Peo­ple die. Corpses dot the land­scape. Sur­vivors pleaded with Moses to plead with God for mercy. “We have sinned.… Pray to the Lord that He take away the ser­pents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the peo­ple. The the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery ser­pent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that every­one who is bit­ten, when he looks at tit, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze ser­pent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a ser­pent had bit­ten any­one, when he looked at the bronze ser­pent, he lived” (vv7-9 NKJV).

This pas­sage was a solemn prophecy.

And it was also a sim­ple promise. Snake-bit Israelites found heal­ing by look­ing at the pole. Sin­ners will find heal­ing by look­ing to Christ. “Every­one who believes in him will have eter­nal life” (John 3:16 NLT).

Lucado writes the truth, as he under­stands it, in an unapolo­getic man­ner. He debunks the notion, adopted by many mod­ern Chris­tians, that Hell does not actu­ally exist (“a lov­ing God would not send peo­ple to hell”) by point­ing out that “Jesus spoke of hell often. Thir­teen per­cent of his teach­ings refer to eter­nal judg­ment and hell. Two-thirds of his para­bles relate to res­ur­rec­tion and judg­ment. Jesus wasn’t cruel or capri­cious, but he was blunt. His can­dor stuns.”

So too does Lucado, who acknowl­edges that no one wants to think about it and chas­tises any­one who refers to it “glibly or pro­claims it glee­fully,” opin­ing that such an atti­tude sug­gests a fail­ure “to pon­der it deeply.” Accord­ing to Lucado, “Hell, like heaven, is a loca­tion, not a state of mind, not a meta­phys­i­cal dimen­sion of float­ing spir­its, but an actual place pop­u­late by phys­i­cal beings.” Lucado’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture places respon­si­bil­ity for one’s ulti­mate des­tiny with his read­ers, the log­i­cal out­come of God’s give of free will. “How could a lov­ing God send sin­ner to hell? He doesn’t. They volunteer.”

To be fair, mature Chris­tians seek­ing a detailed Bible study guide that plumbs the nuances of each included Scrip­tural ref­er­ence will be dis­ap­pointed. So will read­ers who seek com­par­i­son and dis­course about the var­i­ous Bib­li­cal trans­la­tions he employs.

The slick mar­ket­ing tech­niques employed to assure this volume’s suc­cess are assaultive. For instance, a wide vari­ety of deriv­a­tive mer­chan­dise is adver­tised in the final pages and includes base­ball caps, t-shirts, study guides, CD’s, DVD’s, and greet­ing cards. More dis­turb­ing, how­ever, is the bla­tant cap­i­tal­iza­tion upon the events of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, despite the fact that the book lacks any ref­er­ence to that day and is devoid of a dis­cus­sion of evil in the world. The tie-in to 9/11, espe­cially a full six years after the attacks, seems gra­tu­itous and cheap.

3:16 is an excel­lent start­ing point for a non­be­liever who wants to under­stand the cor­ner­stone prin­ci­ple of Chris­tian­ity, but is only that: A start­ing point that must be fol­lowed up by seri­ous Bible study and delib­er­a­tion upon many key points that are beyond this book’s cov­er­age, not the least of which are the con­cepts of grace, for­give­ness, faith vs. works, and why it is imper­a­tive that Chris­tians commune.

In the lat­ter half of the vol­ume, enti­tled “Only Jesus: 40 Days with the Son,” Lucado presents a “scrap­book” of the Savior’s life through one brief read­ing per day, from the “ordi­nary night” when a young girl gave birth to the point that the Son refused to be “guided by any­thing other than his high call,” sum­ma­riz­ing his life in one sen­tence: “The Son of man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10 RSV).” ((I am work­ing my way through this 40-day devo­tional and Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life in tan­dem, an inter­est­ing and thought-provoking jour­ney about which I will write more soon.)) As with the main vol­ume, the devo­tion­als are engag­ing, enter­tain­ing, and can serve as either intro­duc­tory, foun­da­tional mate­r­ial or spring­boards for fur­ther study, depend­ing upon the reader’s back­ground, inter­est, and needs.

Lucado writes: “But God reaches and touches.… He’s even been known to touch peolpe through para­graphs like the ones you are read­ing. If he is touch­ing you, let him.” Therein lies the power of 3:16 The Num­ber of Hope. It is nei­ther a per­fect nor com­plete book, but it is, like the 26 words upon which it is based, an uplift­ing reminder for any Chris­t­ian of the force of that verse and vested with the power of the Holy Spirit to touch the heart of its read­ers and change the course of their lives.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Book Reviews

• The Second Agreement
• In everything … give thanks
• Book Review: On Their Own