A God Who Reaches Us; Who We Can Reach

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:14,15)

Jesus addressed these words in the Gospel of John to a man who’d come to Him secretly in the dark of night, wanting to question and learn more about who He was and how He taught. Nicodemus, was a ruler among the Jewish people. He was well versed in the law, and a member of the Jewish Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin. Even though he was a Pharisee, he didn’t join with them in their attempt to undermine and destroy the teaching and influence of Jesus of Nazareth. Instead he came secretly by night, to learn, to be instructed; and then he later defended the right of this prophet of Galilee to be heard before the law, before being rejected and condemned (John 7); and finally, it was Nicodemus, who, together with Joseph of Arimathaea, brought myrrh and spices to anoint the Lord’s body, and place it in a new tomb.
The Word doesn’t tell us much of anything about the character or quality of Nicodemus, and that’s not what’s really important anyway, because its not his personality that’s important, but what he stood for that we have to get if we’re going to understand Jesus’ words to him in context. Even though he was a scholar of the law, what’s clear is what he didn’t know about spiritual things, which he proves in his second question: “can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be reborn?” (John 3:4)
Nicodemus represented the state of the church before the Lord’s coming. The few spiritual truths that were left with the church had been completely perverted, and by the time of Jesus’ coming that church had died. People fell into such incredible selfishness and externalism that there wasn’t even a spark of heavenly light able to get through. In spiritual darkness like this, there was not way people could see or interact with their God, and so no way of seeing anything spiritual – since it all rests on a living knowledge of God. (ref. AC passage). People who were seeking knowledge of the Lord did it like Nicodemus, seeking Him in the dark cover of nighttime – seeking Him from the outside in – from externals first – where falsity could creep in and confuse people about His true nature. How could a mind like Nicodemus’ recognize who it was he was talking to – God Himself – appearing to him in a newly assumed human form? When our minds are focused so completely on the things of this world, so completely on ourselves, how can we recognize the Lord’s Divine Humanity? Jesus gave the answer to Nicodemus, although the meaning is deeply hidden: “As 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.”
So, to understand God’s words here, let’s go back to the Old Testament and the story of Moses lifting up the brass serpent in the wilderness. The story took place in the last forty years of wandering by the children of Israel in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula. Because they continued to disobey God’s laws, most of those who had left Egypt in adult life were past away, including Moses’ brother Aaron, and his sister Miriam. Although the Lord had performed many wonderful things in leading the Children of Israel out of the bondage of life in Egypt, and in all His guidance and care for them even during their time in the wilderness, they still complained to God. Even though now they were literally on the verge of reaching the promised land, Canaan, they wanted to go back to Egypt. When they were short of water and tired of eating Manna, they cried out against the Lord. When they did this, fiery serpents appeared and bit the people – severely enough that many of them died. Seeing this terrible punishment, the people repented and cried out to Moses to pray to God that He might remove the serpents. It was then that God said to Moses: “Make a fiery serpent, set it on a pole: and it will be that everyone whose bitten, when he looks at it, he will live. So Moses made a serpent of brass, put it on a pole, and indeed when people looked at it who were bitten – they lived.” (see Numbers 21:8-9)
We know from the Heavenly Doctrine that serpents, vipers, dragons, these things often stand for something evil. The condemnation of the serpent, and things relating to it or coming from it – run throughout the Scriptures. The serpent is cursed by God in the garden of Eden after Adam and Eve give in to its temptations. Even in speaking later of the journey through the wilderness itself, the Lord says: “Jehovah God led you through the great and terrible wilderness of the serpent, the fiery serpent, and the scorpion.” (Deut. 8:15) In the Psalms, speaking about people in the love of evil we’re told: “They sharpen their tongue like a serpent; the poison of the asp is under their lips.” (Psalm 140:3) And in the prophets we find many warnings like this: “They lay asps eggs; he that eats of its eggs dies, and when one presses it out, a viper is hatched.” (Isa. 14:29)
In the New Testament, Jesus called the Pharisees “Serpents; a generation of vipers.” (Matt. 23:33) He gave His disciples power to “tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.” (Luke 10:16) And finally we’re told in the book of Revelation of the war between the great Red Dragon and the God of heaven – picturing the Last Judgement in the spiritual world, where “the Great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, that deceives the whole world.” (12:19)
The Writings tell us that all animals represent our affections. In the spiritual world where our affections come to the surface, we could appear to others as an animal, or like we’re surrounded by different animals. According to the law of the spiritual world, people’s affections – both good and evil – can be presented to others like this. It was from spiritual law like this that the most ancient people learned to tell what each animal form represented, and then would tell stories describing our affections and loves. When these things became Written Revelation in the Ancient Church – they took their information about what animals represented from these stories.
The serpent from the beginning of time stood for a person’s sensual side – sense affections. These included all the delights of the body and all the sensations that flowed through the body’s senses from the world. It included all the delights of the senses in our will and understanding, too. (AC 191:7) The serpent creeping on the ground and licking the dust of the ground meant that sensual affections were the most external of all human affection. When people turned from the Lord and started to reason about heavenly things from selfish love and intelligence – his senses were where he was most tempted to do evil in the sight of God. Finally as the hells were formed, because of their base nature, people’s affection for sensual things contained the state and love of hell. The external man was no longer a servant to the internal man, to those higher affections for things that were Godly and heavenly. Now they were exchanged for nothing but pure selfishness. Because the serpent stood for this perversion of loves with people, he was cursed above all forms of animal life. (AC 242)
The sensual person which in the Scriptures shows up as a serpent, is talked about a lot in the Doctrines. It’s a serpent we’ve all got to deal with in this life, if we’re going to exchange our will for God’s. This is why Jesus was addressing all of us, not just the Pharisees when He called them “Serpents; a generation of vipers.” All of us have to work against making this world, this life, our wants, our desires, our lusts, our demands for control – all there is to life. All of us have to look to God and shun evil to allow the inner self, our higher self, to rise up and make the external serve it.
Our love of self, if not kept in check wants to assert its independence day, rise up inside of us, and cast of the leadership of the Lord – returning to Egypt – to all those base desires we love so much. We’re tempted like this when we want to fill the holes in our lives with all those temporary things instead of what’s spiritually real and lasting. This is what Jesus meant when He said: “He who drinks of this water will thirst again, but he who drink of the Water I shall give will never thirst.” The Lord Jesus doesn’t want for us what’s temporary. He wants us to reach for what lasts – the purpose for which we were created – to love and be loved as a child of God in His heaven to all eternity.
The brass serpent Moses was told to raise up represented the sensuous of the Lord’s Divine Humanity. Moses raising the serpent was prophesying how even down to the Divine sensual things the Lord Jesus Christ would be raised up, “even as the Son of man was to be raised up” and become the means to salvation for all people. Our Lord took on our temptations and struggles, and overcame them all. He rejected the external heredity from Mary and took to Himself His own Human – Divinely ordering everything on the plane of the senses.
The message of the story, while it might sound complicated is really simple. God wants us coming to know Him at every level possible – from Divine Natural on up – but in order to do that, we first have to become like little children. The picture of God as a Man has to come first. God in His Divine Humanity. The Lord Jesus who walks with you through daily life. (AC 4211) The Lord Jesus Christ who cares for you, loves you and protects you. Who forgives you and reaches our His arm for you that you might come back to the flock. Who says: “Its okay. I know what you’re going through, but the most important thing for you to know about Me is this: I love you and I will always be there for you.” This simple concept of Jesus Christ, God come to earth in Human form – who we can now approach as human. For the Israelites, they had a much more natural perspective on God than this (with an idolatrous mindset), and still Moses raised up the bronze serpent on the pole – meaning that something had to happen to begin to move their thought from all the sensual information they were receiving being about them – to being about the life of charity – and so about heaven. It was a beginning. This is was what was represented by the bronze serpent which Moses raised up. The truth is, we can overcome our selfishness – that old Serpent called the Devil and Satan – which deceives the whole world. In this fundamental concept of God as a Man, all of our reformation and regeneration has its beginning. We begin to think of something higher than ourselves - a picture of God we can really turn to – and that starts us changing what we care about. The Son of man has been lifted up, “That whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

AMEN.

Lessons:
1) Numbers 21:1-9
2) John 3:1-15
3) AE 581:12