7072012liftinguptheserpent

7/07/2012 recording date. audio/video is 10 minutes
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Coming live from turtle30cshell home I am your host
Christina Farris. I here to present

Lifting Up the Serpent and
Lifting Up The Son of Man

I think one of the hardest thing for many people to have
is faith. It not that they believe not that there is God but
that He loves them and cares for them as individuals as
well as in groups. The idea of God loving man, when so
many bad things are happening in the world seems to
confuse people. The punishment from God seems to
confuse people too. People have no concept of what
they do against God or their own disobedience to God.
Our world is vastly in a disarray of hopelessness when
they think of God. Yet society corrects children, allow
their toddlers to fall and skin their knees. And even
allows people to receive their own knots in life. Yet when
God does it, it seems unfair to people. However we were
created in the image of God so why would it surprise
anyone that we imitate our Heavenly Father in the way
society and parents deal with their own children.

When a child skins his knee we want him to come
running to us so we can mend it. We desire our kids to
come tell us the truth when they are in trouble. We
desire the honesty of our children despite what they do.
God is no different in the regards of desiring us to be
honest and open with Him though He knows us already.
Being honest with ourselves is half the problem.

Today’s passage talks about a particular issue that
Moses had to lift up the serpent wilderness. I like first to
read this passage and then read the passage that we will
be discussing. What I hope to show is the connection to
faith and God’s mercy.

Numbers 21:5-9 KJV
(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.
(7) Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We
have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and
against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the
serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.
(8) And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery
serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to
pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon
it, shall live.
(9) And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon
a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten
any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

Basically the story of serpent being lifted up is about
faith in God and the mercy of God. If a child speaks
against a parent, a parent has no recourse but to correct
the child. God used fiery serpents to teach Israel not to
speak against Him. Just like every leader to maintain
power, sometimes muscles have to be flex. It not about
culture, it about leadership and maintaining authority
among people that were his own. Though God gives free
choice, He also desires to keep us from harm, but when
we refuse to listen the devil comes to bite our heels.
God had given the people manna from heaven, they
were sick of it. When the serpents began to bite and kill
the people the people asked Moses to plead with God to
remove the serpents. God said put a brass serpent on a
pole and have the people look at it. And if they look upon
it they would be healed. Sometimes we need to see evil
to look to God. Sometimes the devil must be in place on
the earth for people to draw to God. The fact these
serpents bit and killed many Israelites show fierceness
of world without God. Adam and Eve listen to the
serpent in the garden and when God put them out of the
garden with the serpent they lived on earth, with him
biting at their heels. A reminder of why God allows the
devil so much power for a short time period. It allows
man to remember how good it was under the authority of
God.

However if the devil been in power to long then the
power of God must be shown. A Savior like the leader
Moses taking the people out of the hands of the
Egyptians who were killing the children of Israel. Moses
was one child who had escaped death. He lead his
people out of Egypt only to have them grumble against
him. So God sent serpents to teach the people the
difference between good and evil. Was this a generation
that had not first hand experience of the Egyptian rule,
probably so. Each generation must understand the
difference between good and evil.

For Evil to rise a Savior must come and save the people.
A person with strong leadership, but also compassion
for the people that is godlike in quality. God sent His
Son at a time that people were under Roman
government. A government that allowed many faiths to
interact, but allowed them no power to govern. A power
that money and wealth and more power was it focus.
Our next passage is:

John 3:12-21 KJV
(12) If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not,
how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
(13) And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he
that came down from heaven, even the Son of man
which is in heaven.
(14) And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
(15) That whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have eternal life.
(16) For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should
not perish, but have everlasting life.
(17) For God sent not his Son into the world to
condemn the world; but that the world through him
might be saved.
(18) He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he
that believeth not is condemned already, because he
hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son
of God.
(19) And this is the condemnation, that light is come
into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light,
because their deeds were evil.
(20) For every one that doeth evil hateth the light,
neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be
reproved.
(21) But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his
deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in
God.

First all the Savior came to teach us how to live, yet He
also came to draw all men to Him that whosoever might
believe would not perish but have eternal life. Religious
government had become corrupt. God is not a God of
corruption. Neither does He need to do evil in order for
man to know the goodness of God. Yet God allow the
enemy to arise so we know the difference in who He is.
Just like He allowed His Son to come to demonstrate the
difference in who He is compared to the world and
religious corruption.

God is a God of love. A God of compassion. A God of
mercy. A God that sent His Son that if we would look to
Him we would be saved. God’s Son took the torment of
the enemy and rose again out of the grave. His body in
the flesh perished, but He arose again with incorruptible
destructible body. Jesus did not come to condemn us at
this time, but to show mercy. To show who God the
Father truly was. That just because God allows evil,
does not mean He does not love us. To demonstrate
compassion for all mankind despite what we do. Despite
how the word of God is destroyed and corrupted.
Despite how His Word gets twisted. God desires to
demonstrate truth to us of who He is.

In order to know the difference between light an
darkness one has to be able to see a light and to see a
light go off. To feel the emptiness of darkness is not to
be able to see a foot in front of you because of all the
evil around you. To be in the light is to be able to see the
goodness around you. To see that goodness of God.
Jesus was such a light. A light of goodness and
compassion and not without correction for the
hypocrites. Not without mercy for those sick and
afflicted both spiritually and physically. Are we like
Christ do we have compassion for the sick and the
dying? Christ must be lifted up so we understand the
difference between serpent and Jesus. Both must arise,
so the mercy of God in any situation can be seen.

Isaiah 11:6-12 KJV says
(6) The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the
leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the
young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall
lead them.
(7) And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young
ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw
like the ox.
(8) And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the
asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the
cockatrice' den.
(9) They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of
the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.
(10) And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse,
which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall
the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.
(11) And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord
shall set his hand again the second time to recover the
remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria,
and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and
from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from
the islands of the sea.
(12) And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and
shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather
together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of
the earth.

God is calling his people from each generation to live at
peace with those around them. Christ is the ensign the
Messiah to the people. As a believer we to are to teach
they ways of Christ to point to the Savior that anyone
that will look to Jesus will be saved.

Lifting up the Serpent and the Son of Man by Christina Farris is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.turtle30cshell.com.