8 April 2014 - cross purposes

8 April 2014 - cross purposes

Where do we look for help?  When we're in trouble where do we turn?  Yesterday we read that Susanna lifts her eyes to heaven whereas the corrupt judges do not allow their eyes to look to heaven.

Today we are again exhorted to lift up our eyes.  In our society and in our own individual lives we are surrounded by the serpents of sin.  Their poison is toxic and they are all around us.  Looking to the earth we find no escape. 

Fortunately the LORD first looks "down from his holy height" before we look up to heaven.  He hears "the groaning of the prisoners, to release those doomed to die."  He hears the Israel say "We have sinned in complaining against the LORD".  The people quickly understand how harmful their sin is when it stings them and poisons them.  The reality of it is entirely tangible, its severity palpable.  Their inability to escape it on their own is also an inescapable fact.  Probably they expect the LORD to go through the serpents one by one to rid the people of them.  But the LORD doesn't simply treat symptoms.  One serpent lifted on a pole stands for the condemnation of all of them.

Yet with the serpents gone, sin continues.  Their bite is no longer a threat but the poison of sin remains in our hearts even after the poll is lifted up for us to behold.   The serpents may be gone but they represent something which is within us, which remains in us. The trouble is that we are at once the serpents and the people whom they afflict.  In the desert the serpent can be condemned for all to see.  But to truly condemn what the serpent represents is to condemn ourselves, the people God wants to save.

Which is why God had to do something more much more ingenious and loving than merely lifting up the serpent.  "And 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” (cf. Joh. 3:14-15).  The serpent is ultimately condemned while still allowing the prisoner to go free.

Paul explains how God solves the problem to the Romans that "what the law, weakened by the flesh, was powerless to do, this God has done: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for the sake of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous decree of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live not according to the flesh but according to the spirit" (cf Rom. 8:3-4). 

Let us not miss the humility of the sinless one taking the shape that is also the very source of poison and death.  He is willing to do it for you and me.  He forgoes his right to honor and glory out of love for us. 

So Jesus said to them,
“When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM,
and that I do nothing on my own,
but I say only what the Father taught me.
The one who sent me is with me.

When we see the love he shows we begin to realize the truth of who he is.  He is not just innocent but purity itself.  Seeing him do this should bring us to an acceptance of our own guilt.  We realize with the good thief that "We are punished justly" when we see the only one who is truly innocent display his love for us.  When we see this love we are convicted of the righteousness of God.  Until we see this we begrudge him the serpents.  We blame him for problems we ourselves create.  But now, seeing this, we realize that not only are his ways fair they are more than fair.  They are rich in mercy.  It is a love so great it can only be divine.

Jesus speaks some harsh words today when he tells us that if we "do not believe that I AM," we will die in our sins.  "Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him."  And if we believe in him he is able to save us.  He is able to give us the blessings he wants to bestow culminating in life everlasting.  So let us hear him speaking and lift up our eyes to the cross that we may partake in his victory over sin.