“Hope is for people who have no power” my friend said at Bible study on Monday. He was quoting his sister’s boyfriend who’s name escapes me.
This sentence has been rattling around my brain all week. Then I started reading the book of John. I got into chapter three and I saw something I’d never noticed before.
In John 3:14 Jesus says “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.”
Here Jesus is referring to four verses in Numbers. It’s a really weird story.
Numbers 21:6-9, “The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.”
“Hope is for people who have no power.”
The people of Israel were being bitten by fiery snakes and were dying. Running to family or physician didn’t help. The only thing that could cure the bite was to look upon the bronze serpent. Jesus has taken the place of that bronze serpent.
However, we are still being bit. We are dying and in need of healing. We are all incomplete, longing, hurting, searching for something to fill the gap. Are we trying to hold onto power and suck the poison out ourselves or have we surrendered?
The truth is the only way we can be healed is by look to Jesus and surrendering any small bit of power we have. That is the only way we find hope and begin living to our fullest potential, healed.
