Facing the Serpent Inside Us

In Numbers 21, the Israelites are in the desert grumbling against God and Moses. So God sends poisonous serpents among the Israelites to bite them, causing some of them to die. The Israelites then cry out to God to take away the serpents. But instead of just taking the snakes away & healing them immediately, God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent and show it to the people so that anyone who looked at that bronze serpent would be cured.

It’s fascinating because in order for the people to be cured, God made them gaze at the very thing that was killing them. Jordan Peterson once said that in psychology it’s only when people finally face the thing they’re most afraid of that they're finally able to be free from it. It’s as if God is making the Israelites take a hard look at what they have become- like poisonous snakes, devouring one another and rebelling against God. But why so harsh? Why would God send poisonous snakes among them to kill them? I think because of this:

Sometimes you don’t know that you’re dying until you’re really dying.

The sin in our lives is a toxic poison more deadly than we realize. But we often normalize it, accept it, make excuses for it and get into ruts, not realizing that it’s slowly killing us, until God graciously wakes us up. And sometimes the only thing that can wake us up to our sin is to be on the edge of death itself.

It's then fascinating that in John 3:15 Jesus says, "just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so the Son of Man must be lifted up (on a cross) so that anyone who gazes on Jesus (believes in him) will be cured. Whatever sin in your life that you have, God says the cure is to face it. In order to be saved you have to look at that poisonous serpent, that ugly part of your life, head on.

And then you turn and you gaze at the cross- and you see Jesus, the most innocent person to ever live, pure truth, pure light and pure beauty, become a mangled, bloodied corpse- crucified by our mockery, pride and jealousy. All the agony you see and horror you feel as you watch him die, is the agony caused by your sin. Only in gazing upon Jesus’ agony at the cross can you fully see your sin for what it really is.

And yet, as you stand gazing there, you see an extremely bright glimmer of light and hope, because you see the other angle of the cross. You see that it’s not just a man, but the all powerful God of the universe, hanging bloodied and mangled there. Why? Not because he has to be there, but because he chose to. Why? Because God loves you that much. And this is the most unbelievable part of the story. Despite all the ugliness of your sin, no matter what you’ve done in life, God still loves you so crazy much that he chose to suffer, die and be utterly shamed in this way to save you. Jesus chose tremendous suffering so that you could be healed. He chose to die so you could live.

And so if you want to be cured from any sin, if you want to be free from any bondage in your life, the answer is to stand here and gaze at Jesus on the cross. Because here you will finally face the reality of your sin- that ugly serpent, but also discover God’s deep deep love for you. Your sin is far worse than you ever imagined and yet at the same time you are far more deeply loved than you could have ever possibly hoped for. If Christ chose to die for you, knowing all the bad things you ever did or ever will do, do you really think his love could ever give up on you? God’s love for you, shown at the cross, is the most stable thing in your life and more constant than the sunrise. Eternal hope, eternal life is found gazing at the cross.