Look Up and Live
See on YouTube
https://youtube.com/live/rprLiCQ9QvE
Look Up and Live
Numbers 21:4b-9
Psalm 78:1-2, 34-38
1 Corinthians 1:18-24
John 3:13-17
I have always found that the book of Numbers or really the well known as a book of grumblers to be an interesting insight on humanity and the relationship between God and humanity. It is called the book of Numbers because it does contain a lot of statistics and numbers which many people find to be boring. However, among these statistics we find a repeated pattern with the people. The blessings of God are not good enough for the people and they start to grumble and the Lord then must discipline them to bring them back on track. This discipline is the most loving thing that the Lord can do for his chosen people. All discipline is meant for the purpose to guide one towards a path of righteousness.
Psalm 78, in our call to worship describes this relationship as well and it describes the goodness of God through the grumbling of the people. God would discipline them so that they would understand their wrongs and once again seek him. They would be reminded that God was their rock and their salvation and eagerly turn towards him again. However, the truth of the matter was that their hearts were not loyal to him because they would speak with lying tongues just to appease the Lord. The people were not loyal to the covenant with God. However, even then God was merciful towards them, he restrained his anger and continued to forgive them.
The people were taking the long way around in the desert in order to avoid the Edomites as Edom was a brother to Israel. When ever a nation of people would come against Israel the Lord made Israel victorious. However, as they are traveling through what seems to be the long way around, the people begin to grumble and complain that they had it better in Egypt and they complained that they didn’t have bread and water and they complained about the Manna that the Lord was providing for them. They all sounded like spoiled and impatient brats. So, the Lord sent them venomous snakes to help wake them up and bring them on track. Many of the people were bitten and many of them had died. The people woke up to their guilt again and asked for the snakes to be taken away. However, God did not take away the snakes. The snakes still served as a purpose. God, did provide them though a way in which they might live. God told Moses to make a bronze snake on a pole and to set it up in the view of the people. If the people would merely look up to the bronze snake, then they would live. In mercy God loved the people even when they did not deserve it. When someone was bitten by a snake it was still painful and still deadly. There was no anti venom or treatment given and there was nothing special about the snake, yet when they looked up at it in faith, they would live because looking required faith in the heart.
Nicodemus had approached Jesus in the night to question him, not for the purpose to trap him but for the purpose that he was beginning to genuinely believe that Jesus was in fact the Christ. Jesus explains to Nicodemus this comparison to himself with the snake that Moses lifted up in the wilderness. Jesus says “just as the Moses lifted the snake in the wilderness for the people to live, so too will the Son of Man be lifted up that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” All it takes is a look. Just look to Jesus in faith and you will be saved from eternal destruction. Perfection is not required nor is it even possible. All that is needed is a look and just like the faith of the people with that bronze snake so will the faith of the people in Jesus also save.
Paul talks about this very thing in his letter to the church in Corinth. To those who live according to the world this idea that a look can save is just foolishness. The idea of a statue of a snake in a desert can prevent death from a snake bite is also ridiculous. For the world needs medicines and scientific treatment and this is satisfactory to save life and it is believed that this is the only truth that saves life. The notion that a look will save sounds ridiculous. This must have been certainly true for the people of Paul’s day as well or else he would have no reason to write these things. The world views salvation differently than a believer though. The world sees salvation in tangible means involving only the body. All of their medicine a science can only focus on the body itself. However, Jesus was talking about saving the soul for the soul is eternal while the body is temporary. The world cannot understand the eternal and for that reason they see salvation through Christ as foolishness.
However, just as we read in Psalm 78 that the Lord is merciful. Verse 38 says, “Yet he was merciful; he forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time he restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath.” We often like to talk about the wrath of God as if we have already witnessed his wrath. However, when we read this Psalm, we understand that we have not seen anything yet. For God has restrained his wrath until the appointed time. We ask so often about all of the evil in the world and how God could allow such evil to exist. We say this as if it is God’s fault for the evil hearts of man. However, the fault is on man alone. The Lord though is merciful and withholds his wrath so that we might live. He gives everyone the chance to accept the foolishness of salvation. If we want something to be done about the evil in this world then we need to first look to the evil in our own hearts and address that issue. After we accept this then all it takes is for us to look up and live. Look up to Jesus and live. Our body may die and return to dust but our spirit will live eternally with the Lord. Preserving life is very important to the Lord but preserving the soul is what is most important as the soul is life. Therefore, when you find yourself in turmoil and living in sin and with seemingly no way out, just look up to Jesus, and through the faith of that simple look, you will live.