Early and often did the LORD, the God of their fathers,
send his messengers to them,
for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place.
The LORD had from the beginning offered his people light and life, but always as a choice. As with Moses, he before them life and death, blessing and curse, desiring always that they would choose life and blessing. But this was seldom the choice they made. They grumbled against Moses in the desert. "[T]hey mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets", bringing down judgment on themselves, not because God desired their ruin, but because they themselves rejected God's attempts to rescue and restore them.
Their enemies burnt the house of God,
tore down the walls of Jerusalem,
set all its palaces afire,
and destroyed all its precious objects.
The people chose the curse with discouraging consistency throughout the history of Israel. Yet even in that choice God was able to work out a plan for their good, for their restoration. The temple was not allowed to continue as it was, polluted by the abominations of the nations. But if the temple was destroyed, he could send one like King Cyrus to rebuild it.
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (see John 2:19).
There would need to be a time of rest, while the nation reclaimed the Sabbaths it lost in the years of infidelity, a truly Holy Saturday. The people, for their part would realize the seriousness of what that in which they were implicated. They would weep for what was lost by the streams of Babylon
and, as another scripture says, “They will look on the one they have pierced.” (see John 19:37)
The Lord would not leave his people as victims of the seraph serpents, nor forever in exile. He would not leave his Son in the tomb. But the consequences of the choices of the people required that they be willing to face and understand and come to terms with those choices in order to be healed. The resurrection would come, but if the Cross needed to be first, and to be accepted first, so that resurrection could be received and understood.
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
In looking at the Son of Man lifted high on the cross we are able to receive and welcome the light. But because the cross is a judgment on sin, including our own individual sin, we often prefer darkness. We prefer to hide from anything that would call us to account, or force us to change. But in the darkness we do not actually have the freedom we imagine. It is rather that therein sin maintains its hold over us, for only when sin is exposed does it loses it power over us.
The Son of Man knew that his offer of light for the world would be seen as hostile, as hard for those living in darkness to receive. So he spoke to reassure our hearts that, though seeing the crucifixion would be painful, though it would call for contrition from our hearts, it was not done as a judgment against us, but rather as an offer of restoration, and more than that, eternal life.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
He destroyed the old temple and sent the people into exile so that they could realize what they had lost. But he was not content, in the final verdict, to give them another temple of merely earthly substance. Rather he established them as members of the temple of his resurrected and eternal body, seating them, and us, with Christ in the heavens.
even when we were dead in our transgressions,
brought us to life with Christ — by grace you have been saved —,
raised us up with him,
and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus
It is Lent, and so there is a way in which we are in voluntary exile from some of the goods of the world. And though we often look at the more sorrowful aspects of salvation history, though we allow ourselves to be thereby convicted of our own need for conversion, there is nevertheless still more cause for joy than sorrow here. We no longer need to wait for God to send someone like King Cyrus. Nor do we need to wait for Moses to lift up the pole to heal our wounds. The Cross has been lifted, indeed exalted on high. In looking on him whom we have pierced we already see by faith the resurrection. We are joined to the temple not made with hands. We are seated even already by faith in heavenly places and begin to taste eternal life even here and now.
For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works
that God has prepared in advance,
that we should live in them
It is from this position in heaven, given to us by grace through faith, that we are truly joined to Christ, and can share in the works God has prepared for us. Therefore let us not only live in them, but do so with joy, participating in God's own joy in loving us.
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