And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:14-15 NKJV

In today’s digital age, only a few of us remember reading the Sunday paper. For me one of the great luxuries of a Sunday afternoon, was to peruse the headlines, then the sports section and finally the funny pages. My favorite was a comic strip named “B. C.”, by cartoonist Johnny Hart, who specialized in light humor sprinkled with a hint of Biblical wisdom. One of his most memorable scenes was a panel of the club wielding cave woman who had just whacked a dazed snake over the head. It gave us a humorous reminder of the reputation that serpents have maintained ever since Eve took that first bite of the apple. Today’s verse reminds us of a story from the book of Exodus when God sent Moses out into a crowd of folks dying from snake bites, carrying a bronze serpent on a staff. Since those snakes are a representative of evil and sin it makes me wonder why Jesus was willing to become like that.

The answer goes all the way back to Genesis, to a conversation that God had with Adam, Eve and the serpent after the man and woman had sinned. Interestingly, God didn’t begin with Adam or Eve. Instead, He started by pronouncing judgement on the serpent, and ending by saying, “He shall bruise your head, and you will bruise His heel.” So, even before Adam and Eve were given their list of consequences, God set in motion a plan for their redemption. That redemption was pictured in Exodus, when because of the people’s sin they came under attack by a slithering horde of venomous snakes. Then, right in middle of the death and chaos, God sent Moses out into the crowd with that serpent, so that anyone who would look towards it would be healed. That seemed pretty bizarre to me the first time I read it, but I realized later that it gives us a perfect picture of what Jesus did for us. While we were spiritually dying from the venomous bite of sin, God sent His Son out into the crowd of us mortally wounded sinners and allowed Jesus to be lifted up on a cross. On that dark and terrible afternoon, with blood dripping from His wounds, and drunken soldiers gambling for His clothing, He was lifted above the chaos, so that a thief dying next to Him, a Roman executioner and a cowardly disciple named Nicodemus, could look to Him and be forgiven and transformed. Jesus took the poison of sin from our bodies and accepted it into His own. God so loved the world that He gave us Jesus to die in our place, so that anyone looking to Him in faith could be healed. For six terrible hours He hung there, but now for eternity His is lifted up to Heaven offering sinners like you and me eternal life, if we will only look up to Him!