So close, and yet so far.
That phrase has a sting to it, doesn’t it? When your destination is right there. When what you’ve longed for is finally within sight. When you can feel the finish line in your bones… and suddenly the road you’re on dissolves beneath your feet.
Israel knew that feeling.
The Promised Land was in view. The horizon wasn’t just hope anymore. It was geography. Mountains rising like the edges of God’s painted promise. Everything in them said, “We’re almost home.”
Then Edom said, No.
Permission denied. Road closed. Detour.
The long way around.
Not back into comfort. Not back into Egypt where at least the rivers ran deep. No. Back into the oven heat of the wilderness. Back into rocks and vipers and thirst and waiting.
You can almost hear the groan move through the camp like a slow wave of despair.
“So close… and now we are farther than ever.”
The text says their souls grew short. Their patience ran out. The wide freedom of God’s deliverance suddenly felt tight and suffocating. Liberation turned into claustrophobia.
When disappointment lingers long enough, frustration becomes its native tongue.
They began to speak against Moses… but eventually the mask slipped and they spoke against God. Complaint always works its way to the top.
“Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! We hate this miserable food!”
The same manna that saved their lives and sustained them day after day suddenly became “worthless” in their eyes. Grace became boring. Miracle became monotony.
Breakfast manna.
Lunch manna.
Dinner manna.
Repeat.
Even the extraordinary becomes invisible when the heart stops giving thanks.
That still happens.
Blessings we begged for can become burdens we complain about. The job we prayed to get becomes the job we grumble through. The marriage we once celebrated becomes the relationship we resent. The Savior who rescued us becomes the One we question when life isn’t what we imagined.
Israel isn’t a strange foreign story.
Israel is a mirror.
And what that mirror shows is not flattering.
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The Snakes
So God sends snakes.
Venomous. Crawling. Striking. Pain rising fast through the limbs. Fire in the veins. People falling to the desert floor.
It feels harsh to us. It feels unfitting for a God of mercy. But Scripture is painfully honest: the venom that appeared around them first existed within them. The serpents slithering through the camp simply revealed the serpent that was already whispering in their spirits.
They had become bitten from the inside long before the fangs pierced their skin.
And the people realize it. Their complaint melts into confession.
“Moses! We have sinned! We have spoken against the Lord! Ask God to take the snakes away!”
Moses prays. God does hear. God always hears confession prayed through an intercessor.
But God does not remove the serpents.
He gives them something stranger.
He instructs Moses to take bronze, shape a serpent, and lift it up on a pole. Anyone bitten who looks upon that image will live.
You couldn’t invent a more paradoxical cure if you tried.
The very thing that revealed their sin becomes the very thing God uses to heal them.
That’s not just clever imagery. That’s a preview of the plan of salvation.
There is only one cure to the venom of sin:
Look and live.
Not look and improve.
Not look and fix yourself.
Not look and prove yourself worthy.
Not look and earn anything.
Just look… and live.
Healing does not rise from human effort. It falls from divine provision.
Salvation is not a ladder to climb. It is a Savior lifted up.
This is grace in its purest form.
God did not ask the bitten to walk. Some couldn’t.
God did not ask them to run. Many would stumble.
God did not ask them to fight. They had no strength.
God asked them to look.
The bitten were saved by beholding.
Deliverance was in the direction of their gaze.
The wilderness remedy is the gospel in miniature.
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The Venom That Still Strikes
Let’s not miss something important: the snakes were still there.
God did not give them a quick escape from a hard world. He gave them a way to live in the midst of it. The serpents still coiled. The fangs still sank into flesh. The wounds were still real.
Grace does not always change our environment. Grace changes the outcome.
Death does not always leave us.
Fear does not always evaporate.
Pain does not always disappear.
But Christ does not allow the venom to define the verdict.
To live in a broken world is to feel the bite. To live under a lifted Savior is to refuse the bite the final word.
If all Scripture taught was the first story — the story of Israel — it would already be breathtaking. But God goes further. That serpent of bronze does not just sit on one page of the Old Testament. It leaps centuries forward into the New.
Because somewhere in the city of Jerusalem… a familiar set of questions returns.
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A Teacher in the Dark
A man finds his way through the narrow alleyways of night. The lanterns burn low. The courtyards sleep. He moves with purpose, and yet with caution.
His name is Nicodemus.
He is the kind of person we would trust to teach the Scriptures. He is the kind of man we would assume is spiritually confident. He is respected, educated, morally upright, and devout. If anyone knew how to please God through devotion, it would be Nicodemus.
But the truth is quieter and far more painful:
Nicodemus has been bitten.
Not by literal serpents, but by the venom of his own insufficiency.
He knows the motions of religion, yet something burns in him that all the rituals and righteousness cannot cool.
So he comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness.
He does not come to challenge. He comes to understand.
He tells Jesus, “We know you have come from God. No one could do these signs unless God were with him.” It’s a respectful start.
Jesus answers with something Nicodemus never saw coming: “Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus is rattled. He knows the Scripture. He knows the Law. He knows the expectations. But he does not know this.
“How can this be?” he asks. “How can a man start over?”
Jesus sees right through the mask. He sees a teacher who has taught the truth but not yet tasted it.
So Jesus reaches back to a story Nicodemus knows by heart.
A story of disappointment.
A story of serpents.
A story of venom and death and grace lifted high.
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”
Nicodemus freezes.
He knows that story. He has read those words. He has preached that text.
He has seen the bronze serpent in synagogue illustrations.
Jesus is saying, That was Me. That was a foreshadowing of this moment. That was prophecy and promise wrapped in bronze.
The serpent lifted up in the camp pointed forward to the Savior lifted up on the cross.
The One who knew no sin would become sin…
so sinners could be made whole.
Death would bite Him.
Poison would pierce Him.
Wrath would strike Him.
And He would offer His healing to all who look upon Him in faith.
Not try.
Not perform.
Not climb the ladder of good works.
Simply look to Christ crucified.
Look… and live.
Believe… and be saved.
Behold… and receive eternal life.
This is the heart of the Gospel.
No wonder Jesus continues with the most famous verse in all Scripture:
“For God so loved the world…”
Love does not leave the bitten to die.
Love makes a way in the wilderness.
That is where our rescue begins.
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The story of the bronze serpent does not end with Moses. It lives on in every heart that has ever felt the fire of guilt, the sting of unworthiness, the fear that maybe the poison inside is too strong to heal.
It lives on in us.
Every one of us has moments when we realize that our problem is not outside of us. The problem is in our bloodstream, in our history, in our desires, in our thinking, in our private regrets. Sin is not a bad day or an unfortunate mistake. It is venom. It spreads. It corrupts. It kills.
The serpent in Numbers 21 exposes the truth:
We do not die because the world is poisoned.
We die because we are.
This is what Jesus wants Nicodemus to see. He is not just a curious teacher visiting Jesus at night. He is a man whose soul has felt the fang of sin, even if everything on the outside looks polished.
Nicodemus had truth in his mouth.
But he did not yet have life in his heart.
And so Jesus connects the dots:
“As Moses lifted up the serpent…
so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
The word must hangs heavy.
Not “might.”
Not “could.”
Not “maybe.”
Must.
Redemption was never Plan B.
Grace was never an afterthought.
The Cross was always the center of the story.
In Eden, the serpent won a battle.
On Calvary, the Serpent Slayer won the war.
Christ would be lifted up high above the earth on a wooden pole. The poison of the world would be poured into His veins. The judgment we could not survive would fall on Him instead.
Not symbolically.
Literally.
This was not a gesture of love.
This was love breaking open its veins.
The bitten are told:
Look to Him.
Believe.
Live.
The gospel is not an improvement project. It is a resurrection project. Christianity does not begin by making bad people better. It begins by making dead people alive.
That’s why Jesus doesn’t tell Nicodemus, “Try harder. Study longer. Tighten your grip.” He says, “You must be born again.”
Not reorganized.
Not remodeled.
Reborn.
Because venom doesn’t need advice.
It needs antivenom.
Sin doesn’t need a second chance.
It needs a Substitute.
Humanity doesn’t need a coach.
It needs a Savior.
This is the heart of Christ lifted up.
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God’s Strange Antidote
If God had said, “Perform great deeds and live,” some would have boasted.
If God had said, “Pray seven hours a day and live,” some would have tried.
If God had said, “Earn My love and live,” every one of us would have died.
Instead, God said, “Look.”
There is no self-congratulation in looking.
There is only honesty and trust.
God’s antidote requires humility.
Israel had to admit, “I cannot cure myself.”
Nicodemus had to admit, “My religion has not healed me.”
We must admit, “The poison is deeper than my performance.”
And then we look.
We turn our eyes away from our failures, away from the world’s distractions, away from the serpent’s lies…
and we fix them on the wounded Healer.
Christ is lifted up not only to pay for sin, but to pull our eyes toward Him.
Where else shall we look?
There is life in no other gaze.
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A Cross in the Wilderness of Today
We still walk through deserts.
We still face detours we did not want.
The future still closes doors without explanation.
We still taste manna and call it boredom.
We still let complaint rise where thanksgiving used to dwell.
We still feel the bite of serpents that come in different forms:
• The serpent of shame whispering, “You’ll never be free.”
• The serpent of fear saying, “The future will fail you.”
• The serpent of bitterness hissing, “You deserve better than this.”
• The serpent of temptation promising pleasure that always poisons.
• The serpent of regret that says, “Nothing can change now.”
And God, in staggering mercy, has done the same thing He did in Numbers 21:
He has lifted up the cure where every bitten soul can see it.
The Cross stands in the center of our camp.
Not tucked away in a shrine.
Not hidden in a secret scroll.
Not reserved for the deserving.
It stands openly, publicly, undeniably.
It stands in the desert of our disappointment and declares:
Death is not your destiny.
Look and live.
The snakes may remain. The wounds may sting. The tears may fall. But the venom no longer commands the ending of your story.
Christ lifted up changes the verdict.
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Look Long Enough
Some people talk about Jesus simply enough. They mention Him occasionally. They believe in Him conceptually. But they never look long enough for healing to take root.
The bitten could not glance at the serpent and turn away in a hurry. They had to fix their gaze. They had to behold.
Salvation is not a glance.
It is a gaze.
Faith sets its eyes and refuses to look away.
When guilt cries out, look to Christ.
When fear shouts loud, look to Christ.
When failure burns, look to Christ.
When shame rises like fire, look to Christ.
He is lifted up for the long look.
The healing look.
The life-giving look.
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The Proof of the Cure
What happened when the bitten looked?
The poison stopped its deadly work.
That is still the miracle.
Some of us know what Christ has lifted us from:
Once addicted… now free by grace.
Once bitter… now softened by mercy.
Once ashamed… now clothed in righteousness.
Once hopeless… now anchored in promise.
We do not point to our efforts as proof.
We point to the Cross.
We don’t brag about how strong our faith is.
We brag about how strong our Savior is.
We do not boast in how high we have climbed.
We boast in how high He was lifted… and how low He bowed to save us.
Nicodemus didn’t understand everything that night. But later, when Jesus was truly lifted up… Nicodemus looked again. And he believed.
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Bringing It Home
Every one of us has felt the venom of sin working in our bloodstream. We know the pain of our decisions and the consequences of our rebellion. We know the sting of this broken world.
We will still walk through days of wilderness.
We will still feel the bites of life.
But the cross tells us the poison is no longer fatal.
Jesus Christ has conquered death.
Jesus Christ has crushed the serpent’s head.
Jesus Christ has poured out mercy where judgment was due.
We are saved by a look — a look to the Crucified, a look to the lifted Savior, a look to the One who became our sin so that we might become His righteousness.
Look and live.
Believe and be saved.
Behold and become new.
He is lifted up still — not on a pole anymore, but on the throne of grace — calling wounded wanderers home.
Everything changed the moment the Son of God was lifted high.
There is enough power in that moment to rewrite every destiny in this room.
There is enough mercy in that moment to heal every heart that has ever beaten.
There is enough grace in that moment to raise the dead forever.
Look to Christ…
and never look away.
