Look Up to the Cross and Live Numbers 21:4-9; Eph. 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God our Father, and our Lord, Jesus Christ, who gives us life and healing.
Look Up to the Cross and Live is our message today, taken from our Old Testament reading, where God saves His rebellious people, as they look up to the bronze snake on the pole, and are healed.
Everyone has something they look up to. What we look up to impacts the kind of people we are or become.
In our Old Testament reading, looking up at something meant even more than that; for the children of Israel, it was the difference between living and dying in that moment in the desert.
Looking up to the cross, and believing in the One who died there for us… is the difference between dying and living for eternity.
The people of Israel were always a handful for Moses. They often weren’t easy to lead and serve. Leading and shepherding them was like “herding cats”, as they say.
In Exodus 32:9, the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen these people, and they are a stiff-necked people”…
… in other words, stubborn and rebellious against God… in other words, by nature sinful, mistrusting, and disobedient toward God, as all people are, because of our fallen, sinful nature.
When Moses was on the summit of Mount Sinae, receiving the details of God’s Law for His people, and it was taking many days…
… the people rebelled and cast a golden calf for them to worship with acts of intoxication and immorality and violence, rather than worshipping the true
and only God, Yahweh, the name God gave His people to know Him by…
… who is holy, and isn’t honored by acts selfish desire, but by acts of love and holiness…
… as He says in Leviticus 19:2, You shall be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.
Building and worshipping the golden calf, was a slap in God’s face, a blatant and heartless rejection of God, who had led them out of slavery, and saved them from being slaughtered by the Egyptian army, by parting the waters of the Red Sea…
In worshipping the golden calf, they were looking, not up, toward the summit of Sinai, where God was, and His Word was being given, instead they were looking down, toward themselves…
… and the worst part of themselves, the part that despises God and disdains His Word, and wants to serve and gratify our own selfish desires, rather loving and serving God and our neighbor.
In Exodus 17, as they were running out of water in the desert, the people blamed Moses for it, but really they were blaming God for their troubles.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. We sometimes do the same.
Exodus 17, verses 3 and 4 say: 3 The people thirsted for water, and they grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”
4 So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are about to stone me.”
God had Moses strike a great rock with his staff, and water came gushing out, and all the people and all their animals, were saved.
In the waters of Holy Baptism, God saves His people from spiritual thirst…
… and in His Word, and His body and blood in the bread and the wine, God saves His people from spiritual starvation.
The people of Israel were acting in character, and bad character at that, when again they rebelled, and blamed, and grumbled against God.
Our lesson says, 4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom…
… probably because the Edomites wouldn’t let the Israelites pass through… and if they had done it anyway, it likely would have resulted in a battle, which God didn’t want for them right then.
And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food”…
… the bread sent from Heaven, manna, meant not to satisfy their cravings for fine food, but to keep them alive, and trusting God, and looking to Him every day for all their needs of body and soul.
6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.
In the form of a serpent, the devil misled Adam and Eve into sin, and so
the serpents, or poisonous snakes, represented their sin, and the consequences and outcome of it; sins poisons the boy and soul for physical and eternal death.
But Jesus heals the soul with forgiveness, and raises the body of the faithful for eternal glory.
7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you.
It was harsh punishment, but that’s what it took to bring them to their senses, and back to looking toward the One who could save them.
Pray to the Lord, they said to Moses, that he take away the serpents from us.”
So Moses prayed for the people. While he was frustrated with them, Moses did love and care for them, so he prayed for them…
… we pray for the things and the people, we care about, which is what godly, caring people do.
8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
Look up and live!
Jesus said to Nicodemus in our Gospel, 14 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
In the Garden of Eden, the snake was the really the devil, the original tempter and author of sin and evil.
The snake on the pole represented Jesus, not that He is sinful or tempts anyone to sin, but that He became sin for us, in the sense that He took our sins upon Himself on the cross, and suffered the punishment for them all.
And so He won our forgiveness, and restored our lives.
I Peter 2:24 says, He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
Look up to Him, call on Him, trust in Him, and live!
On a hill overlooking Rio de Janeiro, stands the 98 foot high statue, known as, Christ the Redeemer, depicting Jesus with open arms, inviting all to look up Him and come to Him and believe and live.
Looking anywhere else for life and salvation is in vain.
There are a lot of worldly distractions, that seem so big, but lead only to death and destruction.
Learn to look past them, and see, towering above them and above everything, the cross of Christ, rising above it all, offering grace for you for today, and life and joy for eternity.
As we sing, “In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.”
Above the troubles and chaos of this fallen world, is our mighty, loving Savior, for us to look up to, hold on to, and be lifted up for life with Him.
There’s no better life!
Look up to cross of Jesus and live, and believe, and at last receive, the peace that passes understanding, and guards our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, who lifts us up to live in His love forever. Amen.