Sunday, Nov. 17
Numbers Chapter 21 Click here to read
As the journey continues, Chapter 21 brings us to a story we know from its New Testament retelling.
Verse 4 begins a story that sounds similar to ones we’ve come across repeatedly: The people complain against Moses. God responds with punishment. The people repent and Moses intercedes for them, and God provides a miraculous end to the punishment.
This time, though, the punishment is an infestation of snakes, and the response becomes a powerful image in our understanding of Jesus.
God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and mount it on a pole so that anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.
Right before one of the most famous verses of scripture, John refers back to this even in John 3:14-15. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
Sin leads to death, but God provides life to those who repent and believe.
That was the way it worked in the day of Moses, and in the day of Jesus, and is still the way it works now.