A Snake Saves??

There is a story in the Old Testament which seems really weird. Venomous snakes had moved into the Israelite camp and all who were bitten were dying. And God told Moses to make a bronze snake on a pole and lift it high! Anyone who gazed on that snake would live, even though they'd been bitten! Now there was no magic in the bronze snake that healed them. It was God teaching something in symbolism.

Way back in our dim, dark past, something entered our world and began killing us. That thing was "sin" - distance from God - choosing our way instead of his. And it entered through the treachery of a snake. The snake then, came to represent sin that had come into our lives and was destroying it.

Then we skip through history, past the story of the bronze snake on the pole, and we are shown in the New Testament, the solution to our sin problem, lifted up on a cross! Jesus took that sin upon himself, "became" the snake, and took it down with him into the grave!

He was the "snake" lifted up, and if we turn our gaze (our life direction) to him, we will be saved! Grateful for a way - but it cost him so much.

No photo credit