Numbers 21:4-9

The Israelites are in the middle of their years wandering in the desert, looking for the Promised Land, and they're impatient. They complain about the lack of good food and water, and they wish they'd never left Egypt in the first place. God, hearing their complaints, sends poisonous snakes among them, and many of the Israelites get bitten and die.

Ah, the joys of the Old Testament. Am I right? Complain about how God's treating you? Here are some poisonous snakes! So the people come back to Moses and they say: "We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live."

There are a lot of foreshadowing elements in this story. Jesus references it in John 3 when He says that He, too, must be lifted up. In the same way that the elevation of the snake on a pole is the avenue for the Israelites' salvation, Jesus' hanging on a cross is the way in which eternal salvation comes to the world.

A particularly fascinating thing about this story is that God chooses the serpent to be the image lifted up on the pole - the very thing that is killing the people. Again, He is foreshadowing the final act of His plan of salvation. Jesus, who knew no sin, because sin on the cross so that we might become the righteousness of God. The very thing that is killing us - sin - is laid on Jesus and lifted up on the cross. The bringer of death - the serpents and the cross - becomes the way of life.

Today, know that Jesus took your sin onto Himself and gave you His righteousness, so that you might live, and live forever.

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