What is Really on the Pole?

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; (John 3:14)

I keep having more questions coming up in my mind each time I come back to ponder this passage. My imagination goes back to the story of the Israelites dying in agony, terror and guilt as the fiery serpents slither through the camp biting person after person. There is no place that is safe. Men, women, children – all are in constant danger and terror of the unexpected strikes of these silent terrorists. The people turn in desperation to Moses, the very one they had so recently been denouncing and for which activity the protection of God had been withdrawn. They now beg him to seek God for a solution to their terrifying circumstances.

This is very clearly an analogy of the situation we all find ourselves in with our relation to sin. However, it is not nearly so clear to us how much our danger, our pain, our discomforts are directly connected to the effects of sin in our own lives. We are very often much like the Israelites in tending to blame God and those who are trying to lead us to God for many of the problems that we are experiencing. It is almost automatic in our response to tragedies and difficulties in our lives to immediately wonder why God brought such problems into our lives instead of seeking to perceive things from heaven's perspective. We very seldom are willing to embrace the truth that, it is very often our own attitudes and choices that contribute to the situations that we find ourselves in and that prevent us from living under the covenant protection of our faithful God.

But there is much more than just that going on. It is not only our own choices that contribute to our problems and pain but the evil choices of others around us that sometimes cause immense pain and suffering in millions of lives. God does not prevent sin from affecting innocent victims for that would be undue interference and would violate His respect for freedom of choice. He does sometimes step in to protect or deflect certain conditions from taking their natural course when it will bring glory to His name. But God's ultimate purpose is to let sin be exposed for the horror that it really is so that there will never be any chance of it being repeated after the final revelation of truth and sin on the last day.

But there is a place of relative protection if we are willing to live within the terms of God's covenant with us. I know that there is a lot of confusion about covenants and most Christians have very mistaken opinions about the difference between the Old and New Covenants. They wrongly believe that all of God's previous revelations about His character and the principles of reality were swept away in the transition from the First Covenant to the Covenant that Jesus revealed. But this is total nonsense and is yet another deceptive ploy of Satan to keep people away from the protections of God's covenants.

It is true that the Old Covenant was put away because it was insufficient to provide complete salvation for sinners. But the real problem with the Old Covenant was not that God made a mistake when He set it up and had to try another one. Neither is it the case that those who lived in Old Testament times were saved differently than we are today as many teach and believe. God never changes. It is people who introduce problems into the way that they insist on relating to God due to the lies they believe about Him.

The core problem that made the former covenant unworkable for salvation was that it was partly constructed on the promises of fallen sinners responding in fear to the awesome revelation of God on Mount Sinai. This covenant got off on the wrong foot because the people promised to obey everything that God had said based on their motives of fear. Fear is never a valid foundation upon which to build our faith and relationship with God. Fear may be useful initially to get our attention about the deadly effects that sin will cause in our lives, but it is too unstable to build the genuine relationship of intimacy that is needed to secure our saving relationship with our Savior.

But God starts working with us where we are currently, and so if fear is where we insist on living then He will work with that until He can draw us beyond that to a healthier model of connection with Him. The Israelites present to us a long history of improper ways to relate to God. If we dismiss the Old Testament as irrelevant to our lives today we just doomed ourselves to repeating many of the mistakes that were so eloquently demonstrated in the lives of many who have lived before. And that is simply unacceptable when we have so much advantage to learn from the mistakes of others.

What comes to my attention this morning as I ponder this story about the deadly snakes that represent the dangers of sin and rebellion in my own life is the symbol that God chose for Moses to make in His plan to save His people. God told Moses to make a likeness of the very snakes that were bringing the most pain to these people needing relief. That means that the people were being asked to turn their attention to look at a picture of the very thing that had originally inflicted the most trauma to them and had delivered the deadly venom into their bloodstream to begin with.

I find it compelling that God did not use a more hopeful-looking symbol that would bring to the imagination something more positive, say something like a piece of fruit or some other symbol more closely linked with life instead of death. But even as I write that I realize that this is exactly what was being done by all the false religions around them in the world. There was an abundance of carvings being worshiped that represented different things associated with life, many of them quite sexual in nature. Since the most obvious things associated with new life coming into being on earth were the sex organs of humans, these had become objects of worship and all sorts of perverted activities were incorporated into the religions of the various nations of that day.

God clearly did not want His people to have any part of these false religions or the mistaken ideas about life and death that filled the minds of pagan worshipers. God never even intended for this image to become an object of worship at all. False religions always pervert the truth about God and about sin for they are all inspired by the greatest enemy of God himself. Instead, God chose to have Moses create a picture of sorts to bring to people's attention, both then and now, that we cannot be delivered from sin by ignoring the causes of our pain and suffering. It is not in suppressing the memories that cause us dysfunction and keep us triggered every time someone touches a wounded place in our heart. It is only by facing the roots of those triggers and allowing faith in a Savior to bring truth, life, hope and peace to those dark places of death deep in our own hearts and memories.

But in some way it seems a little difficult to comprehend why facing a symbol of the cause of our greatest pain would bring us the healing so needed to keep us from being fully consumed by that sin. It seems counter-intuitive. But then, many things that God does in our salvation seem counter-intuitive because our natural logic and intuition are all affected and distorted by sinful logic and twisted reasoning. Our fallen nature will never lead us to the right solution for sin no matter how much sense our ideas seem to make for us.

It is only by believing in the methods and words of God that we can experience true freedom. And that will always force us outside our normal box, beyond our own comfort zone. It is only there that we will ever find true life and deliverance from the helpless condition we find ourselves in. God will never work with our natural reasoning and assist us in our ideas of how to be saved. He generally always presents options to us that make us uncomfortable and require us to choose to trust in His ways that seem to contradict many things we have figured out in our own minds. This is partly due to the fact that when sin entered this world our minds and hearts became separated in their internal integration and from God, and so we have to trust God to show us the way back to life instead of being able to find it for ourselves.

I understand the theology that teaches that the serpent represented Jesus “becoming sin for us”. But at the same time I sense a danger in embracing the assumptions and implications of what many people believe when this statement is made. It is very easy to use this logic to reinforce all sorts of false ideas about an offended, angry Deity up in heaven needing to be appeased by a gentle, loving, submissive Jesus being tortured and crucified in our place here on earth. This is the belief of millions of people but is also the core of the massive system of lies produced by false religion. There are elements of truth in these teachings which make them all the more difficult to expose. But the error in them can be just as fatal to our souls as the poison of the fiery serpents was to the bodies of the ancient Israelites.

I have been led by the Spirit over the past few years to challenge many false assumptions about God as I have discovered more clearly the real truths about God that expose so many false teachings. As I compare the teachings I grew up with, along with many being circulated in the world today against the real truths about God revealed in the life and words of Jesus, I find so many inconsistencies that must not be ignored if I want to really grow in the truth. But what I am also finding is that the more revelations about God's true character and the true nature of different pieces of the puzzle are analyzed in the clearer light of Jesus' life and teachings I find that the doctrines, teachings and Bible stories all fit together much better when viewed in the light of the real gospel.

I am still seeking to understand more clearly how this bronze serpent represented Jesus on the cross without becoming entangled with false ideas of Him trying to appease an angry God or some other notion of justice. Yet I am also aware of many statements in Scripture and other writings that seem to reinforce some of these notions about salvation. It is not simplistic and easy to unmask the lies about God that He has been seeking to unravel for millenia. The whole great controversy between Christ and Satan will not be fully revealed and made plain until the final day of revelation and judgment. But God does desire each of us to be moving in the direction of truth instead of remaining stuck in false ideas about Him without challenging them.

One thing that does jump out at me when I think about God's choice of symbol for Moses to make was that it would be very clear to all the surrounding nations and religions that Israel was not trying to imitate the example of other religions in worshiping a symbol of life. It was very clear that this image represented the very thing that was bringing the most pain and death into their lives. This placed it in stark contrast with most other images used in popular religions.

And maybe that is why I feel reluctant to buy into the typical explanations for this symbol that I have heard in the past. Maybe part of the mistakes of our typical reasoning about this involves a subconscious association with making Jesus out to be the source of our pain. After all, if we carefully consider what our logical mind will do with these symbols below our level of consciousness, we might have to realize that at some deeper level our hearts may believe that God really is the source of our problems and pain instead of sin itself.

This thinking is in fact the core of the whole battle for our minds. The arch-deceiver is ever seeking to associate God in our minds as being the core problem in our lives. If we could somehow figure out how to live successfully without having God interfering with our plans and our search for life we feel that we just might be better off. Many people feel this way openly and many more believe it in their hearts but are too afraid to admit it openly. But at its core, the seed of sinful logic and reasoning that infects every one of us causes us to believe at some level that God is at least part of our problem and this leads to mistaken notions that infiltrate our philosophies and our religions in many and various ways.

Think about it for a few minutes. Put yourself in the place of a person who has just been bitten by a poisonous snake and is suffering extreme bodily pain as the poison seeps into the bloodstream of your body. The chemical reaction inside of you is like fire surging through your veins and arteries and the pain is overwhelming. You know that after a period of intense and unimaginable agony and extreme torture you are going to lose your life altogether. There is no known cure for this situation.

Then someone comes along and informs you that the leader that you had the least amount of faith in and had been loudly denouncing and complaining about over the past few days and weeks has erected a symbol of the snakes that have caused you all this pain. That is enough to add insult to injury. Just what you need, you think to yourself. Now we not only suffer from extreme agony from these deadly snake-bites but now they are erecting images of the very things that are causing all the problems around here. What does he expect you to do, break the law of God and worship this image of a snake? Is he trying to get you into even more trouble with God than you already feel you are in?

But you are told that the only hope for you, according to this leader that you have distrusted and have been criticizing for some time, is for you to look at this snake on a pole. He claims that God told him that anyone who would just look at this metal snake would be healed and become freed from the poison in their bodies. You are urged to do the unreasonable, to defy all sense and logic and to perform some pilgrimage of insanity while your body is wrenching in pain and your mind is wracked with fear and guilt.

Everything you are being asked to do seems backwards from common sense. It is ludicrous to think that just looking at an image will somehow bring supernatural intervention and healing into your body. And what about all the mental agony and guilt you are feeling as your body is quickly dying? You are realizing that most people now believe that it was your complaining and fault-finding of Moses and the other leaders that brought all of these horrid snakes into the camp to start with. Now you are feeling the potential wrath of everyone around you as you are viewed as the primary cause for all of this pain and suffering by those who did not participate in your rebellion.

So now you not only have the life-sucking poison destroying your body but you are also feeling the shame and guilt and condemnation of being guilty for bringing this on to not only yourself but all of your family and friends as well. The poison of the snakes is being paralleled by the poison of fear, shame and guilt in your conscience. You need more than just physical healing as desperate as you need that. You also need a change of heart and a reconciliation with those you have been condemning and blaming for all the problems that have been taking place. And to top it off you are quickly running out of time for your life is quickly slipping away by the minute in extreme torture.

But you do have a choice. That choice is to admit your helplessness and your guilty condition and to follow the directions given you to receive this life asserted to be within your reach. But no one can make you choose to do what seems so absurd as looking at an image of a poisonous snake. No one has ever heard of such a bizarre idea but then, what is your alternatives? You can either stick with your pride and refuse to let go of your animosity against the leaders and continue to blame God for all of this pain and suffering, or you can humble yourself and admit that you really are the cause for what is happening in and around you and obey the leaders and the God whom you have been reviling for so long. The choice is all yours.

This really does alert me to various truths that I have been learning over the past few years. Some are in relationship to my tension with various leadership roles in my life. One of the most important ones as I mentioned previously was my need to face head-on the roots of my fears and pain instead of suppressing or hiding from them. I see this principle in this illustration of the need to look at the snake instead of following the natural repulsion to turn away from anything resembling the causes of our greatest fears and pains.

We can only be truly freed from our painful past when we allow God to accompany us back to terrible memories and to revisit them in the light of new truth about God while having His presence with us. As many people are starting to find out today, when we allow God's presence to take us into our past and confront the monsters that live in our memories, the light of God's love and truth about both us and about Him suddenly disarm the powerful forces that have held us hostage for so many years. Nothing can withstand the light of God's truth in Jesus, and when we choose to face our deadly serpent monsters and allow God's Spirit to expose their true nature, we will suddenly discover that our prisons will collapse and our pain will vanish never to torture us again. The serpents will then become as harmless as the metal serpent on the pole. It only serves to be a reminder of God's deliverance in our lives, not a threat from which to hide.

As I think even more about this analogy of the serpent on the pole, I also realize that from a distance through the eyes of pain and lies about God, that Jesus may look more like the source of our problems than like our solution. But as we choose to face what appears to be the source of our problems and pain and begin to experience more and more healing, upon closer examination we discover that what is on that beam is not really a serpent after all but is the Son of God dying from the poison of our sins in order to change our minds about the Father. It is not unlike the encounter John had in the book of Revelation when he was told that there was a lion in the area. But when he turned to look at it what in fact he saw was a lamb that looked like it had been slain and that represented Jesus.

What I have been discovering is along that same line. The closer I get to really understanding the what's and why's of what really happened at the cross I begin to perceive things dramatically differently than what has been portrayed to me in the past. Instead of seeing a substitute sacrifice to mediate and appease the tension between me and an angry Father, I am seeing much more clearly a heart of infinite forgiveness, compassion and love that is seeking to change my feelings and opinions and heart-beliefs about God, not trying to change God's ideas or feelings about me.