Enter your e-mail address below to get Musing Upchurch sent directly to your in-box!

Past Ponderings

Saturday, August 30, 2014

PONDERING... Killer Snakes and the Promise of Eternal Life

In John 3:14-15, right before arguably the most famous passage in all Scripture, Jesus alludes to Numbers 21:4-9, and compares Himself to a bronze snake. Let's look at that.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,  15  that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.-John 3:14-15

"4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food." 6 Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live."-Numbers 21:4-9

There are so many awesome parallels between these accounts. 

The people had sinned and were punished for this by killer snakes. In order to provide salvation from this punishment, Moses was instructed to make a bronze snake--the very image of what was killing them only without poison--and have people look upon it. 

We have sinned, and our punishment is also death. We might not be attacked by fiery serpants, but we are heading for the full wrath of God in fiery Hell. Jesus came and...2 Corinthians 5:21- "21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Our situation is equally dire. God, in His mercy, has provided us with an escape. By looking unto Jesus for our salvation, we will be given life!

Look, also, at it this way--Christ being lifted up (that is symbolic of His death and resurrection)--was an imperative for our salvation. This wasn’t an optional thing. Now, that is not to say that He had to die for us. We did nothing to impose this upon Him as a necessity. He could have left us in our sin. The imperative reflects our desperate need. There is only one way that we can be saved from our own death-leading, sinful condition. For that to happen, it was a must that Jesus be lifted up. Because He has been lifted up, anyone who believes in Him will have eternal life. 

Consider what the Israelites did with the bronze snake, however.

"1 In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. 3 And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that David his father had done. 4 He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).
"-2 Kings 18:1-4

Let us not be tempted to worship any sign of Christ in the place of Christ Himself!

Ponder, pray, and propagate your perceptions!

Upchurch-out

No comments:

Post a Comment