Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. (John 3:14-15, ref Numbers 21:4-9)
What does it mean to be lifted up? What are the mental images that come to your mind when you listen to Chris Tomlin’s “Uncreated One”? In the chorus, it prays that God would be lifted high, that He would be magnified as we lay down our lives. It then declares “there is none like You.”
It’s easy to see the first, obvious, almost ethereal meaning of “lifted up”, the one we’re used to. After all, Christianity is supposed to be all about singing praise to God, particularly in light of the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus. Look at most praise songs; they’re about giving glory to God. Pardon the comparison, but it’s almost as if God is the ultimate artist, and we’re all at a concert, screaming and yelling, hooting and hollering in celebration. And let’s be honest; there’s nothing wrong with celebrating God, but let’s examine this idea of being “lifted up” and get a better understanding for why God deserves a sell-out crowd.
Come back to those two little verses at the beginning of this piece. They come right before one of the most famous verses in the Bible, so it’s understandable that you may have glossed over them and never sat down and considered them before. But let’s set the rest aside and consider the picture that Jesus is painting here.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert,” Jesus said. This had a very particular and powerful meaning, especially to a man as educated as Nicodemus, his guest on the rooftop that evening. The Rod of Asclepius, still used as a symbol for the medical profession today, was an old and powerful image, uniting the snake with a rod, often to represent the itinerant nature of doctors in antiquity. But if Nicodemus wasn’t familiar with this old Greek idea, he was certainly familiar with the image Christ was painting, similar in appearance though vastly different in meaning.
You see, as Moses led the Hebrew people through the desert, they complained. A lot. Now, this isn’t a trait peculiar to Hebrew people; how many of us have heard or uttered “are we there yet?” while on a long trip? Or “I’m hungry!” or “I’m thirsty!” or even the old standard of siblings in the backseat: “He’s touching me!” Add in the chorus of “We’re lost, aren’t we?” from a frustrated navigator, and you get the idea… or, rather, the very beginnings of the idea.
Take that same sort of grumbling and multiply it. This is thousands of people, all on foot, leading small children, cranky kids, know-it-all teen parents, old grandparents, walking through a desert climate, for years. Everything they own, they’re carrying with them. Every so often, someone has another baby, and the group grows again, until someone else dies of old age or something. HUGE group, MASSIVE trip.
And they’re all complaining. “Why did we come here!?!” and “At least when we were slaves, we had food and water and a place to sleep.” I mean, seriously, these were some unhappy people. It got to the point where they even started moaning about the food they had.
That’s where they made their mistake. You see, the food they had was provided for them, miraculously, every day. It was manna, little loaves of bread. All they had to do was go gather enough to get them through the day, and they were fed. Now, granted, you and I live with the luxury of choice, and eating the same thing day after day after day is inconceivable to us. But this was free food, provided every day, enough to satisfy and satiate them, and they didn’t have to work to grow the grain, fretting over the amount of rain they were or weren’t getting. They didn’t have to harvest and then thresh the grain, then mill it into a flour, make the dough, and then bake it. Nope. This was ready and waiting in ample supply. You ever heard of looking a gift horse in the mouth? That’s what they were doing; they were taking a gift God had given them to provide and care for them and saying it wasn’t good enough.
The nerve! “I don’t like it. I’m not going to eat it. You can’t make me.” The disobedient, rude, unrepentant people were bit by venomous snakes and started to die. Hey, at least no one had to listen to them moan and groan anymore, right?
Ah, but it got their attention. The people came to Moses, the man leading this crazy wagon train through the middle east, and admitted they’d been wrong, and begged for help. “We screwed up, Moses, and offended God and you. Please go talk to Him and get Him to take the snakes away? Please?” And Moses, being good leader he was, prayed for the people.
God gave moses some very specific instructions. “Make a fiery serpent,” He told Moses, “and set it on a pole. Whenever anyone looks at the snake, they will live.” Make a substitute, He said, and lift it up so that all the people can see it. When they trust that I will provide for them through this substitute, when they trust that I will provide for them, then they will live. That’s what happened, too. Moses had the snake made from bronze and lifted high, so that the people could see it. Anyone who trusted God enough to look at the snake lived. The others died.
So when Jesus refers to Moses lifting up a serpent in the desert, it’s a very specific image, one Nicodemus, as a Pharisee, one who has studied the history and scripture of their people his entire life, would recognize immediately. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert,” Jesus said, painting a very clear and specific image in Nicodemus’ mind. It’s a dividing line between life and death, this serpent in the desert. It’s a portrait of God’s provision of a substitute for the people, lifted up for all to see.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” Jesus told Nicodemus. The first, He explains, is the lens through which you must understand the second. You see, the other thing about Nicodemus being a Pharisee is that he was very much invested in the prophesies of the the coming anointed one of God, the Son of Man. He’s studied these prophesies his entire life, looking for ways to bring them about, to bring the salvation of his nation to pass. He’s a good leader; he wants what’s best for his people. So when he hears about this Jesus, he comes to explore.
And Jesus lays it out, if Nicodemus can just follow. Just as Moses lifted up a substitute in the desert, and everyone who believed that God would provide their healing through that substitute, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. The Son of Man must be made the substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of the people, so that anyone who looks to Him for life, trusting that God will provide it in this person of the perfect, sinless Lamb of God, the Word made Flesh, will live. Jesus is telling Nicodemus, if only Nicodemus will have ears to hear it. “I must die for them all,” He says, “lifted high so that my death can’t be ignored or overlooked. I have to die,” He says, “that everyone who believes in me may have eternal life.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.” It’s all there. The purpose of the Christ laid out in beautiful simplicity, expounded on by the next thing He says. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever should believe in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Can you hear his voice as he reveals this to Nicodemus? “I have to die for you all, that you may life, because God loves all of you so much that He’s giving Me, His only Son, so that all you have to do now is believe… and you will have eternal life. Forever, Nicodemus.”
I come back to that chorus again, the one that sings “O Great God, be lifted high! There is none like you.” Beloved, that is our Jesus. The one who was like no other was lifted high, crucified on a cross on a hill, so that whoever looks to Him for life can find it. He had to be brought to the lowest of lows – a criminal’s execution – in order to be lifted high. In all the faith systems in all the world, is there any like this Jesus?
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