This is a short living parable, and it’s hidden in a book we seldom read, but it packs a punch when we see how Jesus referred to it.  In the book of Numbers, the Israelites grumbled and complained to Moses about how hard their lives were in the desert, regretting they had ever left Egypt.

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom.  But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  There is no bread!  There is no water!  And we detest this miserable food!”

Numbers 21:4-5 NIV 

As a result of their grumbling, the people found themselves disciplined by a plague of deadly serpents, so they turned to God for deliverance.

Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.  The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you.  Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.”  So Moses prayed for the people.

Numbers 21:6-7 NIV

The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.”  So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole.  Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

Numbers 21:8-9 NIV

The story is confusing until we see how Jesus refers to it in the Gospel of John.  Jesus has been visited by Nicodemus, a teacher of the law.  He begins by telling Nicodemus that the kingdom of God is for people who have been born again.  In other words, for people who have been reborn by the spirit, remade by God, with new hearts and new spirits, just as the new covenant promises.

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”  “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked.  “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 

John 3:3-4 NIV

What Nicodemus didn’t understand was that Jesus was talking about our spiritual life, not our earthly life. 

But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?

John 3:12 NLT

Then Jesus used the story from Numbers to illustrate his mission, and we realize that the bronze snake lifted up by Moses was always intended to be a picture of our redemption to eternal life.  Jesus would be “lifted up” in crucifixion so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:14-16 NIV

Jesus refers to being “lifted up” twice more in John’s gospel:

So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.

John 8:28

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

John 12:32

It’s used in three senses – Jesus being lifted up on the Cross, lifted up at his resurrection, and lifted up into glory at his ascension.  If Nicodemus didn’t understand the picture on the night of his visit, Jesus knew he would certainly connect the dots after his crucifixion and resurrection.

In addition to a picture of Jesus drawing people to himself, this is a picture of Jesus bringing healing to everyone who looks to him.  Healing is an important facet of redemption, and the root word for salvation is the word for “to heal”. 

N. T. Wright explains it this way:

“Humankind as a whole has been smitten with a deadly disease.  The only cure is to look at the son of man dying on the cross, and find life through believing in him.

… the evil which was and is in the world, deep-rooted within us all, was somehow allowed to take out its full force on Jesus.  When we look at him hanging on the cross (or ‘lifted up’, as John says here and several times later in the gospel), what we are looking at is the result of the evil in which we are all stuck.  And we are seeing what God has done about it.”

“Humankind as a whole has been smitten with a deadly disease.  The only cure is to look at the son of man dying on the cross, and find life through believing in him.

… the evil which was and is in the world, deep-rooted within us all, was somehow allowed to take out its full force on Jesus.  When we look at him hanging on the cross (or ‘lifted up’, as John says here and several times later in the gospel), what we are looking at is the result of the evil in which we are all stuck.  And we are seeing what God has done about it.”

Isaiah described the coming messiah’s mission elegantly:

He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.  Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.  Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:3-5

And in 1 Peter:

“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

1 Peter 2:24

Serums for snake bites are made by injecting the snake venom into a related but much stronger creature, generally horses, then collecting the antibodies it produces.  By analogy, Jesus took our sin upon himself, (as the stronger creature took on the poison) in order to heal us from the effects of sin.

One of our pictures for sin was idolatry, valuing created things above our Creator.  Crucifying the God who created your world and gave you the gift of life is beyond ungrateful, even beyond atrocity.  We see sin most vividly in how mankind treated their Creator there.  In that respect, Jesus on the cross represents the fullness of sin. 

Paul tells us Jesus defeated sin and death when he nailed the charges against us to the cross:

He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.  And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Colossians 2:13-15

The snakes in the desert were just as deadly as sin has been for mankind.  But if the Israelites looked at the bronze snake held high on a pole, they were healed.  They all knew that looking at a bronze snake wouldn’t heal a snakebite; they needed to trust God to save them, and in the way he provided.

Jesus on the cross presents a clear contrast between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.  People are either drawn to Jesus, like moths to a light, or repelled by Jesus, like cockroaches scurrying away from a light.  Even after 2000 years, Jesus on the cross is still a pivotal event in human history, probably because it was the pivotal event in God’s plan of redemption.

I’m sure the Israelites were hoping that Yahweh would strike every serpent dead, with lightening, or fire, or maybe just open cracks in the ground and swallow them all.  But God used this as a picture of how faith, trusting God and his plan, would one day rescue mankind from Satan’s attacks and redeem the world.

Facets of redemption found in this picture:

• Sin can be viewed as an illness; healing humanity would be part of Jesus’ mission.
• We only need faith in God’s plan to be healed.
• On the cross, Jesus was judging sin and evil by holding it up on full display.
• Jesus dying on the cross has certainly “drawn all mankind” to himself.