Staring at Our Sin

SCRIPTURE: The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived. Numbers 21:8-9 NIV

THOUGHT: I am a confirmed snake-hater. This story from the Old Testament has always bothered me, as does the fact that Jesus recounts it to Nicodemus, using himself as the stand-in for the snake on the pole, explaining to the teacher how the math works. But I saw something new yesterday in this passage. God had Moses use the very thing that he had used as judgment for the sin of the Israelites as the path to the remedy. When we remember Jesus lifted up on that pole, we can think of two things: judgment for our sin and remedy. To look on my sin is painful – ugly even, poisonous as a snakebite. But when that bite festers and starts to work its toxins through my life, there is a remedy. I can look at Jesus on the cross.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21 ESV). As I thought about it all, it became more shocking to me that Jesus was willing to become ugly for our sake. So ugly that his own father couldn’t look at him and the indestructible father/son bond was broken for a time. So ugliness and abandonment, suffered on our behalf. What kind of faith does it take to go through that?

SONG: Jesus, Messiah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdxSC1tHJn0

PRAYER: What a mystery you are, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But what holy goodness that your rescue has come, time after time, to rescue sinners like us.