The Israelites were led by Moses in the desert when they left slavery in Egypt. Then they grumbled. So God sent a plague of snakes. They were bitten. Moses begged for mercy on their behalf. God gave an odd but spiritually effective way to heal them. Spirit is odd. We have scientific materialistic doctrines taught us about spirit not existing, so we do not learn about spiritual matters. Science either dismisses them or calls it all mystery. Anyway the spiritual power of symbols is real sometimes. God told Moses to use a symbol to convey God’s healing. A snake made of bronze was put on a wooden pole and held up in the camp of people. They looked at it and there it was symbolising that snake nature which afflicted them with poison. That snake nature was spiritually held up there crucified, and it got spiritually destroyed with a spiritual curse, so that they would have healing from the venom. It worked. Spirit is real sometimes. They were healed by looking at it. That is power of the spirit of God. Now we have a much bigger problem. The venom we suffer is not from snakes. It is from humanness: our own and the humanness of those around us. It makes us do wrong. We fall short. Our ethical standards are beyond our human ability to achieve. If we cannot meet even our own ethical standards, so much more with God’s. This poisons our lives. Jesus Christ got crucified on a cross to make the spiritually healing symbol of a human on a cross of wood. That humanness was made a curse on a cross for our healing and ethical shortfall. That was effectively our humanness up on that cross being crucified and its poisoning power was being destroyed. We died on that cross. Our human venom was rendered into nothing. The Lord Jesus rose from the dead and the curse was finished forever. We therefore share that end of the curse. We have newness of life because we are dead on that cross, and because Jesus rose from the dead, ending that curse. The symbols are more effective than mere symbolism. They are spiritually the power of the spirit of God for our healing. It works. We have life welling up in us because the humanness is crucified in the crucifixion Jesus endured. He bought us life. With the holy blood of the Lamb of God that Jesus is. We should no more let failing be our thing. It is for life that we are healed.
