The Bronze Serpent and Jesus

[Music]

Hi and welcome to this week's episode of reading the gospels through Hebrew eyes. We're going to take a look at a section of John chapter 3 today. It's the gospel reading for this coming Sunday. It includes that most well-known passage in the Bible, John 3:16, but some other material as well. We're going to focus primarily upon John 3:14, 15, and 16.

And the reason we're doing that is because part of this section takes us back to the Old Testament. This is reading the gospels through Hebrew eyes, and here we have an explicit reference to something in the Hebrew scriptures. It's in Numbers chapter 21. It's a story, the well-known story of God sending these serpents to bite the Israelites, and then Moses lifting up a bronze serpent. And Jesus is going to refer to that particular episode as a foreshadowing of his lifting up.

And there's a couple of different things going on here. In the Greek, this "lifting up" has a couple of different meanings, a double entendre. So we're going to look at the Greek, we're going to look at the Hebrew background, and we're also going to look at a very interesting Aramaic word, which itself is a double entendre, meaning lifting up as well as crucifixion or impalement. And talk about how that is possibly behind John's double use of his Greek word, meaning lifting up as well as being crucified.

So we've got some real fascinating material to get to. We're going to look at Numbers 21, a little bit of Isaiah 52, and John 3, as well as a few other passages. So some real interesting material to get to.

As you might know, the chapter we're looking at, John 3, is primarily about this dialogue that Jesus has with a guy named Nicodemus. Now, we're going to jump into the middle of that conversation. You may remember that when Jesus and Nicodemus begin to talk, their discussion revolves around this idea of new birth. And Nicodemus is confused when Jesus talks about being born again or born from above, because Nicodemus says, "Well, how can I enter a second time into my mother's womb?"

And Jesus directs the conversation to this idea of moving from death to life. So life is going to be a prominent theme in John chapter 3. It's also going to dovetail well with the passages that we are looking at in 14, 15, and 16. So let's begin with a couple of the verses. Again, we're jumping into the middle of the dialogue, so if you're looking at this, you want to look at it in its entire context, but this is how we're going to start out.

John 3:14-15: "No one has ascended into heaven," Jesus says, "except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

Well, first of all, who's Nicodemus? Well, we're told at the very beginning of the chapter that he is a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, and that he's a ruler of the Jews. Now, of course, there were various groups within the first century, like the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Zealots, the Essenes. So Nicodemus belongs to this group called the Pharisees, and he's not just a typical Pharisee; he also is one with prominence and authority. He's a ruler of the Jews.

We're also told that Nicodemus came to Jesus not at the temple, or not during the day, but he came to him at night. Now, this is important. It could be for practical reasons. Maybe Nicodemus is trying to do this surreptitiously; he doesn't want to be seen publicly with Jesus. But the fact that he comes at night is significant for theological, as well as metaphorical reasons. In John's Gospel, as well as throughout the scriptures, day and night, or light and darkness, are often metaphorical for belief and unbelief. So light and day is associated, of course, with faith, with the works of God. And then darkness is associated, darkness and night are associated with unbelief and the works of the evil one.

I think what's going on here in John chapter 3 is we have an episode that is intended to mirror what was happening back in the wilderness years between God and his people. Nicodemus is thus sort of a representative Israelite. He's from the Pharisees, he's prominent, he comes to Jesus by night, and he's struggling with questions of faith and unfaith, of believing and not believing. And in that way, he's very much like the Israelites throughout, of course, the wilderness years. You had this struggle between Yahweh and his people, all revolving among the matters of faith or the lack thereof.

So Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, and we have this confrontation between God and Israel, between God's Son, and between this representative Israelite. And so we'll see how this conversation progresses.

Now, there's a lot of Exodus as well as Moses themes that we have scattered throughout John's Gospels. Let's take a quick look at those, because we're going to situate what happens in John 3 within the broader context of John's discussion of the prominence of Moses in Israel's history, as well as the prominence of the wilderness or Exodus themes in Israel's history.

So, for instance, just a couple of examples from John of how Moses is so dominant in his Gospel. Chapter 1, we have a couple of instances where there's mention of the law being given through Moses, grace and truth coming through Christ. Philip tells Nathanael, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote, Jesus of Nazareth." Jumping forward to John chapter 6, after the feeding of the 5,000, the people, when they had seen this sign – and "sign" is another one of these Exodus words – when they saw the sign, they said, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world." They're hearkening back to the promise of Deuteronomy chapter 18 of this prophet like Moses who was to come. And then Jesus himself says in John 5, "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote of me." So you have Moses being a dominant figure in the in the Gospel of John.

Of course, this is going to become significant because his name is mentioned in John chapter 3 as the one who lifts up the bronze serpent. But we also have a number of wilderness motifs in the Gospel of John. Let's take a look at a couple of those.

So, as I already said, the signs and wonders that Jesus does are mirrored after the signs and wonders that Moses performed in the land of Egypt, as well as in the wilderness. In John 1, we're told, "The Word became flesh and did what? Tabernacled among us." Again, the tabernacle is closely associated with the wilderness; that's where it was constructed. John says, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." The lamb being connected with the Passover. John is in the wilderness; that's where he preaches; that's his ministry. And of course, once more, the wilderness of John's ministry is associated with the wilderness of Israel. And then in John 6, you have the Bread of Life discourse about the manna, and of course, the manna is a wilderness food. And then in John chapter 7, there's talk of the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, which was the time when the Israelites would commemorate, they would remember their time in the wilderness.

So in John's Gospel, you have a lot of talk about Moses, you have a lot of talk about the wilderness. These are important thematic concerns of John, and this is going to help us to understand why Jesus would pick an example of when he's talking to Nicodemus, he's going to pick an example that is connected to Moses, and not just to Moses, but to Moses in these wilderness years, the story of the serpent and the bronze serpents.

So if you go back to Numbers chapter 21 and read that entire story, you'll get the entire picture of what was happening. We're just going to focus on a few elements of what happened in that particular account. We could spend a whole video dissecting all the various details in this particular story, but we just want to focus on a few that are going to become significant for the way that Jesus uses this particular story when he's talking to Nicodemus.

So let me just give you a very brief summary of what happened, if you're not familiar with it. This is toward the end of the 40 years of Israel's wandering in the wilderness. This is not the beginning, this is not the middle; they are just about done with these 40 years of wandering. Aaron is already dead; it's toward the conclusion of their time of 40 years of punishment. This happens when they speak against God and Moses, and this is in contrast to what happened at the Red Sea back in Exodus, when they believed in God and Moses.

So they're they're grumbling because of the food, because of the manna. They're not believing in God; they're grumbling against God and his servant Moses. And so God sends fiery serpents, or they're sometimes called seraph serpents. There's a there's some disagreement as to how we should translate the Hebrew there. The important thing is that these are serpents that God sends to bite the people. What do they do? They they cry out to Moses to intercede for them. And so Moses does intercede for them.

And what God tells Moses to do is highly significant. He tells him to take a serpent and to put it on a pole. And so Moses makes the serpent out of bronze and he mounts it on a pole, so that all who are bitten by these serpents can look at the bronze serpent and live. Okay, so that's the basic story. And again, there's, I hate to rush through it, but there's there's too much there for us to spend a lot of time talking on talking about, but you get the basic idea. Israel rebels, and because of their unbelief and their rebellion and speaking against God, he sends these serpents. The serpents bite the people, they're dying. When they cry out to Moses, Moses cries out to God in intercession. And the means of life, the means of healing, the means by which God saves his people, is in an image that it is associated with, reflects the very source of their death and their pain: a snake.

Okay, so Moses puts the serpent on the pole, and Jesus then refers to that particular incident when he says, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

Now, this particular verb, Greek verb that John uses, or that Jesus uses in John's Gospel to describe the lifting up, this Greek word is *hupsao*. Now, *hupsao* is significant because it occurs multiple times in John's Gospel. I have them listed out here in this screenshot from Logos Bible software. Notice that four different times in John's Gospel, we have this Greek Greek verb *hupsato*.

So, John 3 is listed there. If you go forward to John 8:28, Jesus said to them, "When you have lifted up" – again, *hupsato* – "when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he." Again, move forward to John 12. Jesus says, "And I, when I am lifted up" – when I am lifted up from the earth – "I will draw all people to myself." And then later in John 12, the crowd answered him, "We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?"

So, in John's Gospel, what's happening here is that this verb for "lift up" has a dual meaning. It means, first of all, the lifting up of Jesus to the cross. So, "lifting up" becomes synonymous with being lifted up in crucifixion. At the same time, however, this "lifting up" is also the glorification or the exaltation of the Son of Man. So that the lifting up to crucifixion is synonymous with the lifting up to glorification. So the lifting up the Son of Man, that is his crucifixion, is at the same time his glorification or exaltation. It's not a step-by-step moving from A to B, but they're both the same thing. The crucifixion of the Son of God is his glorification in the Gospel of John.

Now, where did John get this? Where to get this idea of this dual meaning of *hupsao*? Well, he probably got it from the Old Testament. If you look at Isaiah 52:13, this is the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew. And of course, Isaiah 52:13 is leading up to the famous chapter, Isaiah 53, which is all about the suffering of the servant, the crucifixion suffering of the servant. But in Isaiah 52:13, it says, "Behold, my servant," God speaking, "behold, my servant shall understand and be *hupsato*; he shall be lifted up and glorified exceedingly." So Isaiah 52:13 uses the same verb that John then uses four times in his Gospel to talk about the lifting up of the Son of Man.

Now, there's a possibility that behind John's usage is an Aramaic verb that also has this dual meaning of lifting up literally, and then also of crucifixion. The Aramaic verb is *zakhaf*. It occurs one time in the Old Testament in the book of Ezra, chapter 6, verse 11. This is part of the decree of Cyrus, which allowed the Israelites to leave Babylon, to go back to Jerusalem, and to reconstruct the destroyed temple. And here's what it says, if this is Cyrus speaking: "I make a decree that if anyone alters this edict" – that is, the edict about the rebuilding of the temple – "a beam shall be pulled out of his house, and he shall be lifted up and impaled on it, and his house shall be made a dunghill."

Now, the verb that's used there, the Aramaic verb that's used there is *zakhaf*. So it has this idea of being lifted up, literally physically pulled up into the air, but it also has this dual, this other meaning of being crucified or impaled. So that Aramaic verb could be behind the Greek verb that John uses for the dual meaning of being being lifted up.

So, with all that in mind, go back to what's happening with this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Why would Jesus choose, of all the Old Testament examples that he could have chosen, why does he choose the bronze serpent as the analogy to his crucifixion? Well, because the bronze serpent is a is a perfect image for this kind of inglorious glory that's going on. And by that, I mean that the serpent, of course, is the image of death. The serpent is the icon of the serpents that have bitten the Israelites, causing them to die. At the same time, however, the bronze serpent is the divinely given means by which the people are brought to life and healing. So he combines both of these. He's the image of death, but he's also the image of life, combined in two. And that fits perfectly with the inglorious glorification of Christ in his crucifixion. He's lifted up in terms of crucifixion, and there you have death, and there you have the opposite of glory. At the same time, however, this lifting up is the glorification of the Son of God.

So, in short, in John's Gospel, the lifting up of the Son of Man is his crucifixion, and that crucifixion is at the same time his glorification and exaltation. That means that when we look at the crucifixion of Jesus, we are seeing the glory of God made manifest to us. God hides his glory in this inglorious act, and at the same time manifests his glory. He's hiding himself beneath his opposite, as he always likes to do. It just so happens that the crucifixion is the ultimate epiphany, the ultimate revelation of how God likes to put his glory into that which seems inglorious, working behind that which appears to be his opposite.

Okay, so that's the background of John 3:14 and 15. Let me just say a couple of things about the famous verse, John 3:16, which probably all of us have memorized from the King James: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." Well, let's look at this, and let's focus on just a couple of different words in there, which I I think perhaps they're going to give you a little bit different perspective on this verse. The first of these is "so," and the second of these is "the world."

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." It's a couple of the the Greek, the Greek word, the Greek adverb that is translated there as "so" is *houtos*. Now, *houtos* can mean a couple of different things. It can refer to a degree: "for God loved the world so much," "for God so loved the world." So it, in that particular understanding, is focusing upon the degree of God's love. He loved the world so much that here's what he did. But *houtos* can also refer to the manner by which God did something. And in that way, we translate this like this: "God loved the world in this way," or "God loved the world in this manner." How? By giving his only Son. So you could understand *houtos* a couple of different ways: "for God loved the world so much," or "for God loved the world in this way." I tend to lean toward the latter of those: God shows his love for us in this sort of way by giving his only begotten Son. That means that the that the revelation of the love of God is made manifest. The manner by which it is made manifest is in the giving of his only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life.

Secondly, the word "world." "For God so loved the world." In Greek, this is *kosmos*. That's a Greek word that we all know. So why would why does this fit so well within this particular section of John chapter 3? Well, think about it in context. Jesus has just used an Old Testament episode from Numbers chapter 21 to talk about how God manifested his love toward the people of Israel. They were dying because of the snake bites, and death was just pervasive within their camp. And so what did God do? God loved Israel so much that he gave them this means by which they could be brought into life and healing.

Well, you have that particular Old Testament episode followed directly by John 3:16, which says, "For God so loved not just Israel, but for God so loved the *kosmos*, for God so loved the world, or for God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only begotten Son, so that we might not perish, that we might not go into eternal death, but instead that we might have life by believing in his name." There's a great contrast there, I think, between the focus upon this Old Testament narrative that exemplifies God's love for Israel, and then what we have in John 3:16, where God exemplifies his love for not just Israel, but for the entire creation, for the world, by giving us his Son.

So that is a, it's a quick run through. That's not the entire gospel reading for this coming Sunday, but I just wanted to focus on those three verses, John 3:14, 15, and 16. So we get that Old Testament background, we could understand why Jesus chose the bronze serpent as this Old Testament example of God's gift of life and healing for his people, and how that fits and and and leads directly into what he's going to say in John 3:16.

The whole, the whole section is just, uh, incredibly comforting for us because it shows the love of God consistent throughout the life of Israel, and all the way up to the giving of his Son. And then it provides us with the comfort that we need as we think about God's love for us. Well, how did God love us? How did he show his love for us? And how great is this love? Well, it's this great that he gave us not a bronze serpent, but he gave us his only Son, so that we could not just be healed of snake bites or anything else minor in this world, any kind of minor pain or or minor problem or illness or whatever it might be, but so that we might be healed of death itself. So we might move from death to life, from darkness to light, and receive that that second birth that Jesus talks about earlier in John chapter 3, so that we are born again, are born from above, and enter into the kingdom of God.

I hope it's been helpful for you, this quick run through of John chapter 3. If it has, please share it with your friends. I hope that you're all doing well. Thanks always for watching, and I pray that God's mercy and peace may be yours in abundance. And we'll see you next week.