Chapter 8: 7
Seven, the bronze serpent.
In the Ten Commandments, God unequivocally forbids making images or idols.
Yet soon after, God himself commands Moses to craft a bronze statue.
And not a statue of just anything, but of a Serpent, the very creature that deceived Eve in the garden, the universal symbol of evil.
Why would God use the image of his enemy to save his own people?
The answer unveils one of the deepest and most astonishing mysteries of the plan of redemption, and it all begins here.
Picture the scene.
The people of Israel are in the wilderness again.
They've been walking for years and their patience is gone.
They're hungry, thirsty, and they start grumbling against God and against Moses.
Why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in this desert with no bread and no water?
God's response is immediate and terrifying.
He sends venomous snakes.
People begin to die, bitten by these creatures, and in their desperation, they run to Moses for help.
Moses intercedes for them, but God's reply is at the very least perplexing.
God doesn't remove the snakes.
Instead, he gives Moses a startling command.
" Make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. "
And here's where the tension spikes.
Remember the commandment?
God himself had said, " You shall not make an image. You shall not bow down to them."
And on top of that, a serpent the very symbol of deception, the fall and the curse in the Garden of Eden.
Yet the divine instruction is as simple as it is radical.
Anyone who is bitten and looks at it will live.
To be saved, the Israelites didn't have to fight, offer extra sacrifices, or pledge perfect behavior.
They had only one task.
Turn their heads and look at that bronze serpent figure.
If they looked, they lived.
If they refused to look, maybe because it seemed ridiculous or illogical, they died.
This mystery sat unresolved in the wilderness for over a thousand years.
No one could fully make sense of that scene.
But here comes the twist where everything clicks into place.
Now fast forward 1400 years.
It's night in Jerusalem.
Jesus is speaking with a Pharisee, a teacher of the law named Nicodemus.
And suddenly Jesus unveils the key that ties it all together.
He drops a truth that links that strange desert episode to his own mission.
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
Wait.
Jesus, the spotless lamb, comparing himself to the symbol of a curse.
Exactly.
And this is where every piece of the puzzle snaps into place in stunning fashion.
Here's the key.
That bronze serpent wasn't an idol to be worshiped.
It was a symbol of sin being judged and defeated.
Seeing it fixed to that pole, the Israelites saw an image of the poison that was killing them.
Now stripped of power, neutralized, and publicly displayed as defeated.
Jesus was declaring that he himself would become that image on the cross.
That he would bear all evil and guilt in himself so that when we look to him, lifted up on that cross, God no longer sees our sin, but the perfect payment Christ made in our place.
That strange, almost forgotten episode in Moses's day wasn't a one-off.
It was a foreshadowing, a shadow cast ahead of God's greater work.
Think of it like this.
The camp in the wilderness was poisoned under a death sentence because of the serpents.
We as a human race are born with poison in our veins.
Sin, a condition that ends in spiritual death.
Their remedy wasn't to brew their own antidote, fight harder, or earn their way out.
The remedy was simple.
Look, lift your eyes in faith to the provision God had made, however strange it seemed.
And that brings us to the final most arresting question.
Why a serpent?
Because at the cross, Jesus became in a spiritual sense the embodiment of our curse.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
On the cross, Jesus didn't just die for us.
He absorbed the full poison of humanity's sin.
He became the very image of what was killing us so that God's judgment would fall on him and not on us.
The lesson God authored with meticulous precision across the centuries is this.
Salvation has never been about doing something to earn it.
The bitten Israelite could not save himself.
No matter how hard he tried, the poison had already condemned him.
He needed only to look and live.
His only hope was to stop looking at himself at his wound and fix his gaze with absolute confidence on the remedy God had lifted up on the pole.
In the same way, we don't heal our souls by doing more.
There's only one thing we can do.
Look.
Look to Christ, trust him, believe in his work, and by his grace live.
Chapter 9:8 ( Click here to continue )
Eight cities of refuge
Did you know that in the Old Testament there's a law so bewildering it feels like a mistranslation?
A rule that at first glance defies all logic?
Picture this.
You commit accidental manslaughter.
The law offers you a refuge to save your life, but at a price.
You're confined there, exiled from your own life.
And your only hope of ever being truly free, hinges on something astonishing.
The death of someone who has nothing to do with you, who lives miles away, and who probably doesn't even know you exist.
But this apparent legal loophole isn't a flaw in the system.
It is in fact one of the most stunning keys to understanding the gospel, one we often overlook.
Picture the scene for a moment.
You're in ancient Israel.
You've had an argument, a mishap at work, and someone has died.
Now the law is unyielding, eye for eye, life for life.
And the dead man's family has what's known as an avenger of blood, a close relative with the legal duty to hunt you down and carry out the sentence.
But in his wisdom, God's law provided a way out.
Six sacred cities scattered throughout Israel.
Hebron, Sheckchham, Kadesh, the cities of refuge.
Your only hope was to run.
Run faster than ever toward the nearest city of refuge.
If you passed through its gates before they caught up to you, the law would shield you.
You were safe.
Once inside the city of refuge, you presented your case to the elders.
If they determined the killing was unintentional, you were allowed to live there.
You were protected.
The victim's avenger couldn't touch you.
But here's where the story takes a disquing turn.
You're safe, yes, but you're not free.
You become a prisoner inside your own stronghold. Set a single foot outside the city walls and the avenger of blood can lawfully take your life.
And the question is inevitable.
How long will you live out the rest of your days looking over your shoulder, trapped in this gilded cage?
The law gave an answer, the same one I hinted at at the start.
And it sounds so strange.
Your exile would end, and you could return to your home, your land, and your family only when the high priest serving at that time died.
The congregation shall deliver the man's layer, and he shall remain in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest.
Stop and think about that.
What sense does it make?
What connection could there be between the death of an innocent priest in the capital and the freedom of a guilty killer miles away?
At first glance, it seems to make no sense at all. It looks like an arbitrary legal quirk, but it isn't. It's the heart of the message.
Here's the twist that changes everything.
The death of the high priest wasn't just a date on the calendar.
It was an act of atonement, a payment.
In the biblical worldview, the high priest was the supreme representative of the people before God.
That's why his death carried such immense weight that in the eyes of divine law, it settled the blood debt caused by the fugitive.
The death of someone of immeasurable worth set the guilty free.
The account was paid in full.
Sound familiar?
Now, fast forward thousands of years.
The stage is no longer Israel, but the whole world.
And the guilty party, the Bible tells us, is each one of us.
For all, have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Our sin, even if it isn't literal murder, has separated us from God and placed us under a death sentence.
There is a righteous avenger, God's own law, that demands justice.
The question then is the same.
Where can we run?
The book of Hebrews gives us the answer with stunning clarity.
It says believers can hold fast to the hope set before us.
We who have fled for refuge.
See the connection.
Christ is our city of refuge.
We run to him for our lives and in him we are truly safe.
God's justice can no longer condemn us.
But the revelation doesn't stop there.
Remember that strange law about the high priest.
The letter to Hebrews tells us Jesus is not only our refuge, he is also our eternal high priest.
And this is where all the pieces of the puzzle fall perfectly into place.
The man's slayer in the city of refuge was set free only when the high priest died.
And we, the refugees in Christ, when were we fully released from our guilt and condemnation and allowed to go home to the father.
Exactly.
When our great high priest Jesus Christ died on the cross, Jesus fulfills both roles to perfection.
He is the city of refuge where you hide.
And he is the high priest whose death pays your debt forever.
That strange law in the book of Numbers wasn't a mistake.
It was a shadow.
A silent prophecy cast across the centuries, waiting to find its meaning and complete fulfillment at the cross of Calvary.
Chapter 10: 9 ( Click here to continue )
Nine. The door of Noah's ark.
Hidden in the instructions for building the ark is a secret code.
A single Hebrew word turns it into a stunning prophecy about Christ.
The story is familiar.
Noah builds the ark.
The animals go in and his family is saved.
But there's a crucial detail.
Noah doesn't close the door.
Genesis says something that sends chills down your spine.
And the Lord shut him in.
It is God himself who seals the entrance.
Why does this matter so much?
Because Noah's safety didn't rest ...
