Snakes & The Cross

Numbers 21:7-9

The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

The Israelites sinned against God, and the consequence of that was that God put poisonous snakes among them. They obviously weren’t stoked, it made them realise what they had done and who God was, and they cried out to God to take away the snakes.

God heard their cry, but didn’t answer them in the way that they asked, God didn’t take away the snakes, and in fact He said that they would be bitten by the snakes. But what He did do is give them a lifeline, a way to live through the snake bites. All they had to do was look to the bronze snake on the pole and they lived.

The same goes for us. We have sinned, and always will sin against God. And for our sin there are consequences, things that aren’t generally great. We often cry out to God to take the consequences away. He hears us, and in Exodus 2:23-25, it says that God hears our cry and is moved with compassion.

Yet He does not take the snakes of our sin away, instead He gives us a way out. He offers us life amidst the poison of death that will bite us. All we have to do is look to Jesus [Hebrews 12:1-3], God’s Son, and the Cross, and we’ll live.