Looking up for hope

We are victorious.

God’s people are a victorious people. The Lord gives us the victory whenever we engage in a battle that we trust him to win. Sometimes a victory might not seem what we expect, maybe someone else might reap the rewards. The bible tells us that we are more then conquerors through Christ who loves us (Ro8:37). Deuteronomy tells us that the Lord is the one who goes with us to battle and gives us the victory (De20:4). The Apostle Paul tells the church that God gives us the victory only through Christ Jesus (1Co15:57). Our state of victory comes only when we stay focused in Christ and on him. But when we start paying attention to our circumstance, we become distracted and start to feel less victorious. The Children of Israel went through a period after the exile of Egypt of victory. They were conquering lands and taking down mighty kings. But when they found themselves having to back to a path in today’s age called memory land, the way of the Red sea their victories stopped. 

Number 21:4-6

⁴ And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.

⁵ And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.

⁶ And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

The people became faint hearted. All their memories from the Red sea such as, when Pharaoh’s army was menacing at their backs and the sea at their front came back. Their only thoughts was on the stress and hardship and not on the manifest power of God via the cloud by day and the fire pillar at night guiding them. They did not even remember how God opened the Red sea and made them to walk on dry ground, how they did not have any water or food during their journey. These thoughts filled their minds and caused their hearts to faint and be discouraged. Jesus said do not let your hearts be trouble or afraid (Jh14:27), because reminder triggers of negative situations will cause us to faint. So, like many people that when their comfort zone is shaken they begin to complain many of them did just that against God and Moses. 

God sent fiery serpents to bit the people and so the people repented. They begged Moses to pray for them that God would take the serpent away, but God did not. Instead he commanded Moses to make one out of brass and set it on a pole, so that anyone who would be bitten when they looked on it would be healed. Now, fiery serpent’s are deadly serpents. These serpents would leap and fly on people and bit them. This symbol of danger and threat became a symbol of hope for them. There was a species of serpent which the Greeks called Acontias, and the Roman Jaculus, from their swift darting motion, and perhaps the same species is here referred to which Lucan calls Jaculique volucres. 

The question is why would God use the same thing that was killing his people to save them? Jesus quotes this very instance of Moses lifting the snake on a pole as a means of salvation (Jh3:14) to everyone who believes on him. Jesus was not a symbol of the snake, but was carrying everything that it did in the garden that plaque man on the cross. In order for people to be healed they needed to look with faith at the snake on the pole. 

Spanish