[Steve Myers] I was watching a nature program the other day about the most dangerous things in the world. And you know what? Almost all of them were, almost all of them were snakes. And in in fact, they talked about snakebite being one of the most deadliest things of all these different creatures in the entire world. One thing that came to mind is that the Bible has a remedy for snakebite. Have you ever thought about it this way? Christ talks about this in the book of John. In John 3:14, He makes an interesting reference that connected these things in my mind. He said this. "Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so, must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." And so here, Christ is referring back to a time in ancient Israel when they were coming out of Egypt. They disobeyed God, they disrespected God, they questioned him and snakes came among them and started to bite them and they were dying. Well, Moses then was instructed to put a serpent on top of his pole. And they were to look at that serpent and if they did, they didn't die. So, you had in a sense a remedy for snakebite.

Now, Christ then refers to this all these years later and he was inspired to harken back to that same story. Now, what does that have to do with a remedy for a snakebite for one thing and what does it have to do with Christ? Well, Christ says that he had to be lifted up. So, like that image of that serpent on the pole, Christ will be lifted up. He will be crucified and ultimately, people have to look to Christ. He will be really lifted up in the resurrection and people would have to look to Christ as they did in Moses day looking to the pole and that serpent on top if people want to be ultimately fixed, if they need that remedy for snakebite, and what is snakebite in a spiritual sense?

Now, we're talking about sin. If you want the remedy for sin, you better look to Christ. We have to look to him. And so that's why he says, "Whoever believes in him." We must believe it, we must obey Christ, we must do what God says, that's where the remedy for sin is. Ultimately, we look to Christ and we won't perish when we put him first. So, the resurrection is a kind of lifting up that will ultimately provide the remedy for the deadly bite of sin.

That's BT Daily. We'll see you next time.