Day 11: Jesus Is the Bronze Serpent

Day 11: Jesus is the Bronze Serpent in the Wilderness

Prayer: 

Father in heaven, help us to understand a little more clearly what Jesus bore for us when He died for our sins. Please touch our hearts with the depth of this truth. Help us also to understand the depth of our sin that we might worship Christ with more humility and more gratitude. Amen.

Primary Scripture:

John 3:14-15: And 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.

I find myself recoiling at this depiction of Jesus, as I think most of us do. Identifying Jesus with a poisonous serpent is too loathsome, too hideous to contemplate, especially when we consider that Satan disguised himself as a serpent. This metaphor is too confusing, too easily misunderstood and seems to convey the wrong message. But as I've thought more about it, I've realized that as difficult as it is for us to embrace this concept, this is the essence of the Gospel: "[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us" (II Corinthians 5:21). Picturing Jesus as a poisonous serpent on a pole, as much as our hearts recoil at the thought, shocks us into the reality of what He did for us. Perfect, spotless, holy, righteous Jesus took upon Himself not only my sin but also the collective sins of the whole world—and did so willingly. How aptly the hymn writer has penned the words, "What wondrous love is this?"

When Jesus said these words to Nicodemus (John 3), He was, of course, referring back to a historical event in the nation of Israel. It is recorded in Numbers 21. After being sabotaged and attacked by some Canaanites, the Israelites had vowed to destroy this king and his people if God would give them into their hands. The Lord answered and gave them a decisive victory. Then their journeys continued through the wilderness and "the soul of the people became very discouraged (or impatient) on the way" (Numbers 21:4). Food and water were scarce and they were sick and tired of eating manna. Rather than turning to God in faith and trust, having experienced how He had delivered them, provided for them, and helped them at every juncture of need, they began to complain and spoke against God and against Moses, accusing them both of bringing them out of Egypt just to let them die in the wilderness. And they added, "Our soul loathes this worthless bread" (Numbers 21:5), which Psalm 78:24-25 tells us was the bread of heaven and the food of angels.

Their soul loathed God's provision, the miracle bread that faithfully fell from heaven to meet their daily needs. Discouragement can do this to us: it can so warp our perspective that we treat miracles as common, just because they've become familiar. We start to loathe the wonder of God's sustaining, strengthening work in our lives. It's no longer enough. And we even forget the recent victories.

So God sent fiery serpents among the people and many died. Is this because God is an angry, vicious, vindictive God who doesn't like to be unappreciated? Some interpret it that way and don't like the God of the Old Testament. But that view of God doesn't sync with the rest of Scripture—even with what God revealed about Himself in the Old Testament. Perhaps there's another way to look at this seemingly harsh action on God's part. Was He trying to reveal to the people the truth about where this kind of thinking would lead them and what it really does to them? Was this a vivid external picture of the internal reality God saw was going on in their souls? If anyone knows the truth about sin and its consequences, it's God. For this reason He tried to warn Adam and Eve from the very beginning (Genesis 2:16-17, 3:22-24).

It is our enemy who is vicious, masking the true nature of sin, legitimizing it in our minds and then twisting it around to make it look like it's God who is vicious and unreasonable. It's the enemy of our souls who is seeking to destroy us. Yet how often we fall for this, as the children of Israel did time and again. Should we despise God for telling us the truth about our sin? It's hard and it's ugly. It’s death to our eternal souls.

But God, in His mercy, ALWAYS provides a way of escape (I Corinthians 10:13), even from His punitive revelations of sin. For Adam and Eve He promised a Savior, One born of a woman who would one day crush Satan's head; and He sacrificed an animal to clothe them (Genesis 3:15, 21). For the people of Israel in Numbers 21, He told Moses to make a bronze replica of the fiery serpents and put it on a pole where everyone could see it. All a person had to do was look at it. The choice between dying from the poisonous venom of a snake bite or being healed and having a new lease on life came down to this simple instruction: Just look up. Look at the bronze serpent. Who wouldn't do that?!

But there are many times when we refuse to look. What all was entailed in that most easy of remedies? Wouldn't there have to be a willingness to lay down the complaint, blame, and anger toward God? And wouldn't there also have to be an acknowledgement of personal blame and the ugliness of my own error? Aren't we also, like the people of Israel, so often reluctant to do that? Imagine yourself for a moment in the realism of that context. What will you allow to rule the day in your heart? Discouragement and drudgery? Boredom with same-old, same-old? Anger at God and at the circumstances? The pleasure of complaining and playing the victim? The enemy's lies that God is a vicious tyrant? Are you willing to take an honest look at your own sin? The picture won't be pretty. But it is the only path to healing, freedom, and life. Or will you close your heart and look away?

I wonder how many times God pleads with people—with you and me, "Just look and live! I've done all that's necessary for your healing." "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." Stark, horrible truth, lifted high on a pole for all to see: God's offering of life.

Think about the words of II Corinthians 5:21: Jesus Christ became sin. Became SIN. What can adequately express the depth, the intensity, the repugnance and repulsion of those words? Only in thoughtful, silent meditation can we begin to grasp their meaning. Yet even that falls far short, for we have never known a purity such as He had. We have no contextual grid whatsoever to comprehend such a thing.

Yet He did it that we might become righteous—as pure and holy as He Himself is. Years ago when I was helping my children memorize that verse in II Corinthians 5:21, I asked my husband if he could come up with an illustration to help them picture it. He drew a hand reaching down from heaven holding a pure white garment, offering to exchange it for the filthy rags a boy was holding up. This is the heart of the Gospel: God exchanging His garments for our garments, clothing Himself with our sin and in doing so, taking off His garments of righteousness and giving them to us to put on. The Gospel is not about a ticket to heaven; it's about exchanging the death and poison of sin for the life and freedom of righteousness. “[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

As you celebrate Christmas this year, stop to take a long look at Christ Jesus raised up on the cross. This is why He was born, why He came into the world. Speaking of His soon coming death on a cross, Jesus said, "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself" (John 12:32). By this obedient, sacrificial act, God judged the world and cast out the ruler of this world (John 12:31). This was the mission God had sent Him to accomplish: to become sin for us that we might actually become the very righteousness of God—and live. Jesus, the Son of God, was nailed to a cross to effect our salvation, that we might look and live. Will you come with your sin, your destructive, poisonous filth, and look to Jesus? This is all we ever have to do with our sin. Look to Him. And receive the gift of His righteousness.

Family Worship:

If you have a cross or a picture of a cross in your home, set it in the center of your family circle. Take a few moments of quietness to just look at the cross and reflect on the sin-righteousness transaction that occurred there.

Conclude your family time with prayer, thanking God for what Christ has done for us through His death on the cross.

Jesus Christ: the Bronze Serpent on a pole in the wilderness, lifted up for all to see, to look and live.

Other Related Scriptures:

Isaiah 53:

Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked—but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.(Bold emphasis added)

John 12:31-32: Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.