Most Christian churches display at least one. This church is no exception. On the crest of our steeple, you’ll find one, our building’s highest point. Another is atop a wooden rod, on display, when we begin the service with a procession. Behind the altar, you’ll spot one, the size of a monument, made by carpenters of this congregation. Of course, I’m speaking of the cross—the symbol of the Christian faith.
This morning, we focus once more on the old, familiar cross with a new set of eyes. Let us step back in time more than 1,000 years before Jesus’ birth. To do so, we must step into the desert, into the suffocating heat of Sinai, to behold a creature shaped from metal, placed on top of a pole.
The Messiah Himself, Jesus, made this comparison as He spoke one night to Nicodemus. “In the desert, Moses lifted up the serpent. So must the Son of Man also be lifted up, so everyone who believes in him will receive eternal life” (John 3:14-15).
Picture a snake on a shaft of wood, but do not be blind about the turmoil behind the event. The first people to walk beneath its curved and sinewy shadow burn from snake bites on a desolate journey. For almost 40 years, they stumble on the scorching sand. The supplies are wanting, dry on water, famished of food, and short of patience.
With pierce of fang and serpent’s bite, Satan punctures their confidence in their Rescuer from sin and slavery. A killing toxin courses within, weakening and wounding their oneness with God. Embittered by resentment, their words now expose the festering rebellion in their hearts. The venom inside them pierces the air with their unconcealed words. “Why did you bring us in the desert to die? No food and no water, and we’re disgusted with this worthless manna!”
Such spoken fire—and the Father burns hot with a stinging response. Soon, reptilian creatures are slinking among the people, hissing, striking, and winding around their legs. The poison from their fangs stings with a burning pain. The victims become paralyzed, falling on the sand with failing limbs. Without medicine, they will die.
A stark picture of sin at work. Through an experience they can grasp, God brings them to understand the undying goal of the ancient serpent. The people run in panic, calling out to Moses. “Pray for us,” they cry. “Tell the Lord to take away these serpents.”
Does this venom course through your veins? For Satan also slithers into your life, claiming you for his camp. Like the Israelites of long ago, you also gripe and groan. Weighed down with some nagging worry, your stomach in knots, and sleep becoming a stranger, you take your eyes off your Savior. Trouble besets your conscience, stalking you with some old rebellion against your God. Perhaps, you are bitter, with a toxic poison burning in your belly.
Help is needed, but where can you find what you need? Say your car is short on fuel. Go to a gas station. A headache is troubling you. Seek out the nearest store to buy some aspirin. Now many of our problems run much deeper. Consider the toxin of sin poisoning your heart, mind, and spirit. What can you do?
A man once visited a mental-health counselor, with a blank stare now his norm. Mumbled words entered the therapist’s ears, “I’m depressed.” To every suggestion, the man moaned. “Nope, I tried what you said. Doesn’t work.” “Well,” his therapist trying to stay optimistic, “you need a refreshing diversion, something to make you laugh! Go to the park. A delightful clown performs an act every weekday afternoon.” The man’s voice cracked, his tears revealing the inside of his soul, “I am the clown.”
Here is the truth—we are the clown. Like him, we are powerless to change our reality. So, where can we go to find help in our trying time of need? For the desperate and dying Israelites, Moses turned to Yahweh, who told him to make a fiery serpent for the people, set on top of a stick. Whoever gets bitten can glance up and live.
So, Moses obeys. Red-hot embers from the smelting fires flicker in the evening air. The whoosh of bellows brings the burning coals to radiate a fierce heat. With the mold now cast, they pour the molten metal into a new shape. Atop the beam, in the center of camp, goes the bronze snake, before all, to stand sentinel. Each person can view the brazen form, hoisted high, which will give life to those bitten by the venom of death.
Those who take in the prophet’s words, trust what he says. In faith, they stare at the serpent and live. Now, if someone thinks Moses is talking nonsense, why bother to gaze on some bronze casting atop a pole? What the Father demands, requires trust.
A strange antidote, you say? Ah, no more unusual than what God asks of us—to turn our eyes toward our Savior, hanging on the splintered beam, to find our healing. Stop a moment and compare the snake on the shaft with the Man on the cross. The one can teach us much about the other.
Every person in the desert camp can glimpse the snake on the height of the stick. The faith demanded is a tall order. For we can’t experience the All-Holy One by seeing Him with our eyes. To do so is to die, for we carry the blemish of the ancient evil within us. So, God commandeers another form to bring what He gives to His people.
To strengthen us when we are weak, the Almighty gives us something we can take in, something to deliver what He gives. The prophet Moses didn’t only bring the people a message in words. No, his words pointed them to something tangible, wood and metal, which the heavenly Physician will use to bring them healing.
For us, the Father did something much better, sending us something physical in bone and blood, of human flesh and form—His Son. For we can all be in the presence of a man and not die for doing so. So, to bring us eternal restoration, our Redeemer came to be hoisted on a beam of wood before all, like the serpent many centuries earlier.
What is attached to the peak of the pole in the barren sands isn’t strange, but something sensible under the circumstances! The graven image, the three-dimensional cure, the heavenly Physician uses matches and mirrors the problem. A fiery serpent to heal in answer to fiery serpents, which killed.
Don’t we make snakebite serum in the same way? The venom is milked from the fangs and processed to remove the water and purify the poison. A doctor injects this into an animal to develop antibodies. Those antibodies become the medicine inside the serum, developed from the killing venom. The cure resembles the curse.
Now, consider what goes on the tree of death. For our problem isn’t snakes, but our sinful selves. What fallen creatures hammer to the ancient instrument of execution must match—a human filled with our sinful toxins, injected with the burning poison.
The Christ on the cross is a human like us in every way, except sin. So, He becomes the perfect anti-toxin. Hoisted high on the pole, He carries in His body the contagion of our sins, becoming the serum of salvation.
What God demands of His people is simple. For He doesn’t command them to traverse an ocean, no He will come to them. No orders arrive, directing them to claw their way to heaven. No, He will come down! Gaze on the snake atop the stick.
Let’s say the Eternal One from above only makes eternal life available by doing some colossal task. The work is still worth the effort because nothing is more important than salvation. The God of grace, however, makes no such demands. For we can do nothing well enough to earn our salvation.
So, turn from looking within to save yourself or gauge your standing with God. To live, cast your gaze on Someone outside yourself. Fix your eyes on Jesus, for only in Him do you receive life. Behold the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.
Believe in the Lord Jesus, and His life becomes yours. Be washed—not in some secret potion or ointment—but in the waters of Holy Baptism. Can anything be easier? The youngest and feeblest among us can receive how the Lord delivers His medicine of immortality!
Does God heal as promised? Yes, but only for those who trust the promise, who glimpse on the snake. A true faith believes and so gazes on the snake. So also with Christ. With our eyes of faith, the Father also invites us to behold our Savior, where He comes to us to deliver His salvation, to find our eternal healing.
Last year, my father died, and I flew home to be with my family and attend his funeral. At his casket, I brought my grief to bear. In the sermon, my father’s pastor pointed us all to the resurrection to come, made real, all because of Jesus.
Through the preached Word, God attended to me in my grief and gave me peace as I let go of my dad. Will you do the same? Bring whatever is hurting you to the One who went to the cross. Turn your eyes to Him. Spot each misdeed, shameful thought, and infected act, nailed with Him to the wood, as He prays, “Father, forgive them!”
Fix your eyes on the crucified Christ. Find the healing, which only He can bring. Stare long, trusting in Him, for soon He will be before you in your resurrected body. With new eyes, no longer made of fallen flesh, you will delight in His presence forever. With joy, your Savior will smile, “Welcome, my faithful servant.” Fix your eyes on Jesus and find in Him the life unending. Amen.
