Look and live

Israel was in the wilderness again, and complaining again. They spoke against God and against Moses, sick of the manna and sure they would die out there. Then venomous snakes came into the camp, and people began to die.

When they cried out, God's answer was strange. Moses was to make a snake and mount it on a pole. Anyone who was bitten and looked at it would live. Not fight the snakes. Not make medicine. Not earn it. Look.

Think how that sounded to someone with venom in their blood. It was humbling. It took no strength, only trust. And the cure looked like the curse: a snake, lifted up where everyone could see it.

Centuries later, Jesus told Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.” His very next words are the most famous verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world.”

On the cross, Jesus took the shape of our curse. Paul writes that God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. The thing that kills us was lifted up in Him, and anyone who looks to Him in faith lives.

There's a warning in the story too. Hundreds of years later, King Hezekiah had to smash that same bronze snake, because Israel had started burning incense to it. They took the thing God used to point them to Himself and turned it into an idol.

We can do the same with good gifts: a church, an experience, a tradition, a leader. They are meant to point us to Jesus. The moment they replace Him, they have to go. The cure was never the bronze. It was the God who said, look and live.