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SNAKE ON A STICK Numbers 21:1-9 Moses was God's appointed one. God's testimony of Moses was that, as a servant, he was faithful in all his house. (Hebrews 3) Journeying through the wilderness, Moses led the Israelites. God had been merciful to deliver the Israelites, but they rebelled against Him when they took their eyes off the Lord. They had an evil heart of unbelief; that is why they were discouraged. (Hebrews 3:12) The people complained against God and Moses because of the way God chose to take them. How often do we complain with the way God takes us? The word complain means to express grief, pain, or discontent. The Israelites were discontent with God. In judgment, God sent fiery serpents into the camp which bit the people and many died. The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23) Pleading with Moses to pray to God, the people wanted relief from the serpents. In His merciful kindness God sent a remedy. The remedy wasn't just sending the snakes away. The people had to look up at a serpent of brass on a pole made by Moses. Everyone that beheld the serpent was blessed with life. Those who were stubborn, and did not look, died. And it came to pass... in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son. (Galatians 4:4) Jesus was God's Anointed One. God's testimony of Jesus was that as a faithful Son, He was counted worthy of more glory than Moses. (Hebrews 3) For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) Jesus was born clean. Once, Nicodemus, a man who might have thought that he was saved just because he was a religious man, came to Jesus seeking God. Jesus told him, “You must be born again.” Nicodemus answered in the usual response, “How can a man enter into the womb and be born again?” We were not born clean like Jesus, but we can be born again by the Spirit and be cleansed from the filth of the world. Comparing Himself to the serpent in the desert, Jesus said this to Nicodemus, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3) Jesus, the pure One, became sin for us and redeemed us from the curse of the law. (Gal. 3:13, 2 Cor. 5:21) He became the sacrifice for sin on the cross and He took the sin of the world for all that look to Him. Those who do not look up to Jesus, perish in their sins. Neither let us tempt Christ, as others tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. (1 Cor. 10:9) Those who look to the Son shall be saved. Behold, the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world. ~ Anthony Parrotta, age 11
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