First Baptist Church, Montgomery
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in Him. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:14–16).
A good friend of mine named Chad Cross recently suffered the experience of being bitten by a rattlesnake. He was turkey hunting and stepped over a fallen log into the strike-zone of a huge timber rattler. The snake struck with speed and power. Chad said he felt like a baseball bat struck his leg. He fell to the ground and dropped his shotgun. The snake slithered into the pine straw. Chad remembered he had a venom extraction kit in his turkey hunting vest. He prayed for God’s peace to cover him and he successfully removed much of the deadly venom. He walked back to his truck and drove himself to the hospital. The medical team administered anti-venom and his life was spared.
God’s Word gives us another vivid illustration of the deadly venom of sin that has been injected into the bloodstream of humankind. Jesus explained in John 3 that His offer of salvation is akin to what happened in Numbers 21. The children of Israel rebelled against God’s leadership and encountered deadly serpents. The people were dying from snakebites. They cried out for help. God instructed Moses to create a symbol of their sin in the form of a brass serpent and put it in the middle of the camp. He then told the people to look at it with faith and they would live. God’s message of how to be cured from the deadly snakebite was astonishingly simple: look and live.
On the cross, Jesus became sacrifice for our sin. Because of God’s immeasurable love for His creation, our Savior invites us to find the cure for deadly poison of sin as we look to Jesus and live. Hear God’s urgent call to admit that you are a snake-bitten sinner in need of Christ’s cure. With childlike faith, ask God to inject the anti-venom of His love that cancels your sin debt and enables you to become part of His forever family.
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