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•”The Cure Looked Like The Thing That Caused It”•By Joshua AdamsThis story becomes much stranger when you realize Jesus said it was about Him.Israel rebelled against God in the wilderness.Then came the serpents.People were bitten.People were dying.They cried out, and God gave Moses instructions that sound almost impossible.“Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole.”Numbers 21:8Moses made a serpent of brass and lifted it up.God did not tell the bitten Israelites to hunt down every serpent.He did not tell them to manufacture medicine.He did not tell them to prove they deserved another chance.He told them to look at what He had provided.“And it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”Numbers 21:9But here is the part that changes the entire story.More than a thousand years later, Jesus brought this moment back up.“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”John 3:14Jesus said the serpent on that pole was pointing forward.To Him.That means Numbers 21 was never merely a strange story about snakes.It was a shadow cast backward from Calvary.Humanity had been poisoned by sin.Death was already working through us.And God did something nobody would have expected.Christ Himself bore what condemned us.“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.”2 Corinthians 5:21The innocent One carried the judgment of the guilty.And just as dying Israelites looked toward what God had lifted up, Jesus said:“That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”John 3:15Then comes the verse almost everybody knows:“For God so loved the world...”John 3:16We quote John 3:16 constantly.But we rarely talk about the serpent story Jesus used immediately before it.That context makes His words hit differently.John 3:16 was spoken in the shadow of Numbers 21.The Israelites could not undo the bite.We cannot undo our sin.They could not save themselves.Neither can we.God provided what they could never provide for themselves.And He has done the same for us in Christ.But there is another warning buried in this story.Years later, Israel began burning incense to that same bronze serpent.Something God once used became something people worshiped.So Hezekiah destroyed it.2 Kings 18:4.That should sober every believer.Even something God genuinely used yesterday can become an idol when we begin worshiping the instrument instead of the God who used it.The bronze serpent had no power.God did.The pole had no power.God did.And Christianity itself becomes empty religion when our eyes settle on symbols, traditions, buildings, personalities, or movements instead of the One they were supposed to point toward.The serpent was lifted up.Christ was lifted up.And the message still stands:Stop staring at the poison.Look to the One God provided.#JesusChrist #Numbers21 #John316 #BibleStudy #Scripture