Look and live! Can anything be more simple than this?
In answer to Moses’ prayer, God asked him to make a serpent and put it on a pole. So any one of the impatient, grumbling, fault-finding Israelites bitten by venomous snakes can look at it and live!
There was nothing magical in the bronze serpent. In later years as people started worshipping this bronze serpent, the godly king Hezekiah destroyed it (2 Kings 18:4).
So then what was the power that made snake-bitten people look at the bronze serpent and live? It was the look of faith. Jesus commented on this incident and said that just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, he must also lifted up. That everyone who believes in him may have eternal life (John 3:15).
Bronze in the Biblical accounts stands for judgement. So Jesus lifted up on the cross is the public display of the ugliness and shame of sin. And it is the showcasing of a holy God’s wrath, anger and judgement falling on the sinless, spotless Son of God (2 Cor. 5:21). He is the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world (John 1:29)—yours and mine included.
As you look at the cross and the shed blood of Jesus with that look of faith you live! You immediately cross over from death to life (John 5:24); from darkness to light (1 Peter 2:9), from being an enemy of God to being his child and friend (John 1:12).
Look and live! For in the cross and One lifted up on it; you find the magnetic pull and attraction of the good news of God. Look to him on the cross in faith. He will draw you to himself (John 12:32, 33). Everlasting love! Sacrificial death! Look of faith! Eternal Life!
—
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” —Hebrews 11:1
We Do Not Look to Jesus Because