Jesus the Lifted

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 21.9)

The desert journey of the Israelites is replete with Messianic allusions and Christological foreshadows. As the pages roll past we (who live on the far side of the cross) see God revealing Himself and His plan of salvation. The people of Israel were being bitten by poisonous snakes, exposed to a deadly venom that promised certain death. What could one possibly do? How could certain death be transformed into restored life? There can be only one answer: Jesus.

Our self-revealing God directed Moses to take the very image of the destroyer, the snake, and fashion a raised staff with the bronze serpent lifted up. When the people believed in God’s promise and looked at the raised serpent they would be healed. And God sets into the hearts of His people this plan. Jesus would come, not in His eternal, divine glory riding in all power and authority. No, He would come clothed in the very image of the death causer: humanity itself. Jesus would take the form of humanity and be raised up, crucified for our sin, and on the cross draw out the poison from our decaying souls.

And if we will come to the cross, if we will set our eyes upon His lifted form and believe, we will live. It is that simple; that profound. When we look upon Jesus, the life-restoring Savior foreshadowed in the desert of sin, we are detoxed of our self-inflicted death. In Jesus the lifted we find ourselves miraculously raised from the dead into new life, everlasting life.

Jesus, thank you for revealing yourself through humanity’s history so that I might recognize your beauty all the more when you died on the cross to purchase my redemption.