This has been a harder last few days than I have had in a while. Not physically. My physical heart is doing great still. Emotionally, it has been tough.
This past Saturday, one of my daughters came into my office. She looked very upset and asked to talk to me. She had been in downtown Denver at the Art Museum. When she was walking to her car, she saw one person lying on the ground in a very unnatural position. The person was obviously homeless. She said he wasn’t moving, and looked dead. Then, at a bus stop bench, she saw two more young people slumped up against each other. Again, unnaturally, and again, possibly dead.
This was a very disturbing sight, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. She saw some people calling 911 on the two, but wasn’t sure about the other one. I had her call 911 and see if the other had been called in yet, and it had not. My daughter said there were so many sirens at that time as well, like something more was going on. And she said it was so hard to see that, because it looked like the devil had won with these people.
I haven’t seen something like this for some time, and my heart broke for my daughter. She has such a heart for others, and to see suffering like that is more difficult for her and others like her.
And then, when I landed last evening in New Orleans on my way to Baton Rouge, my phone started lighting up. There were a couple of young men from a local Denver area Speech and Debate club who had climbed one of our Colorado 14ers (a mountain over 14,000 feet above sea level). At 1:20 pm a group of 5 people, including these two young men, were struck by lightning. These two young men were airlifted to the hospital. One has passed into the presence of our Lord Jesus, and the other was placed on life support. The latest news on him is that he was fighting the the intubation tube, which is good. He and his family (Strobel family) need your prayers.
While this second incident is also tragic, and there is weeping, there is triumph in our tears for this young man. Why? Because he had put his trust in our Lord Jesus. He has passed into His presence, and is more alive now than before. And while we love this life, as Paul writes in Philippians, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
I finished Numbers and am in Deuteronomy in my reading. In Numbers there was an incident where the people were groaning and complaining (again), and the Lord sent fiery serpents among them to bite them. Many died. The people cried out to the Lord, and He had Moses make a bronze pole with a bronze serpent on it. All the people who were bit had to do was…look at the pole. When they did this, they would be healed. (By the way, this is where the medical profession got their symbol of a snake on a pole).
Bronze, in the Old Covenant, spoke of judgment. That why the altar and laver were made of wood covered in bronze. They were there because of sin. God also warned that if the people turned away from Him, He would make the sky above as bronze, and it wouldn’t rain at the right time.
Again, all the people had to do was look at the bronze serpent on the pole. But THEY had to do it. If they thought it ridiculous and would not look, they would die. If someone else tried to force someone to look, that didn’t work. No one could look by proxy for anyone else. It had to be their own decision based on faith. The work of making the pole had been done. They couldn’t make another pole and look at it.
John 3:14 says that just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.
So, the bronze serpent was a picture of Jesus? Yes. When He was lifted up in crucifixion and death, that was the judgment (bronze) on our sin. And we need to by faith look to Jesus. Or as Hebrews says, we are to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith who for the joy set before Him endured the cross.
But WE need to look to Him. This is an act of OUR faith. No one can force us to look to Him. No one can look to Him for us by proxy. And you can’t make another Jesus on your own and look to it for hope. It has to be the real Jesus, Son of God, sent to live the perfect life in our place, and die the perfect death, and be raised again, ascend to Heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand, and send His Spirit to indwell us, so that where He is, we might be also. THAT is the Gospel.
These people that my daughter saw on the streets of Denver were looking to something else for their hope. They were looking to escape pain, suffering, tears, whatever. But they were not looking to Jesus, at least as far as it appears.
However, the young man on the mountain had looked to Jesus. He had done so by faith, and he was healed of the disease that will ultimately get us all, and that bis the disease of sin and death. But God. Jesus said He is the resurrection and the life. And that whoever believes in Him will never die. Jesus has conquered sin and death. And all we need to do is look to Him. Look to Him in faith.
Have you done this? If not, or if you have questions, please ask your local pastor, or email me. But know, your pastor, nor anyone else can have faith for you. It must be authored and perfected by Jesus.
Amen
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