For seventeen years, I wrote a weekly newspaper column. It
was called “Parables” because God gave me insight into how much the events of
this world point to spiritual truth. Through that, I realized manh things,
especially His amazing oneness, His powerful hand in all that happens, both in
creation and in the affairs of humanity.
It is easy to say that He designed the world that way, but
I’m beginning to understand that this divine ‘dot-connecting’ goes beyond the
design of a superior mind. That is, there is a cohesiveness in the created
world that parallels the nature and working of God — and it is there simply
because God is.
A crass illustration might be the presence of a large
elephant in a small room. That huge animal affects everything in that space. If
it sneezes, the entire room shakes. If it snoozes, everyone tiptoes.
Because of the working of God, an event happened in the
Old Testament that points to a greater event in the years to come, an event
that changed the world. This is a short episode, given only a few words, but it
happened so God could use it to explain a vital truth. When He delivered His
people from slavery in Egypt, they set out for the promised land, but like us,
they were a rag tag group, prone to the same sins we are, particularly when
life does not go the way we want:
“From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.’ Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” (Numbers 21:4–9)
Their complaining illustrates mine, grumbling when things
go contrary to what I want. The fiery serpents illustrate what happens to not
only the health but the lives of people who are never happy; it eventually
destroys us. Moses illustrates the role of an intercessor — a person who takes
pity on those who are continually out of sorts and sinful; he prays for them.
And the fiery serpent on the pole illustrates what happened to Jesus.
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” (John 3:14)
I’m not certain how far this illustration goes. Did Jesus
take on the pain and affliction of a people who hated the rule of God in their
lives? Certainly. What does being ‘fiery’ have to do with it? I don’t know. I
just know that this barely mentioned event in the lives of God’s people pointed
ahead to the work of Christ on the cross for the salvation of my sin. It also
pictures human responsibility — God arranged this saving event so that we who
are ‘bitten’ by sin must look at Christ on the Cross that we might live.
^^^^^^^^^^
Jesus, I’m thinking that all the events of life somehow
point to You. I am oblivious to most of them, but what You reveal is so lovely,
so profound, so grandly filled with Your power and grace. Of course, I don’t
want to see things that are not there, but am starting to think that I’ve the
opposite problem — I am oblivious to that which is there, not connecting the
dots between cause and effect, between Your involvement in the world and how
You are using it to say, “Wake up My child — this world is all about the glory
of God!”
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