The Messianic Fingerprints of Jesus Christ

THE MESSIANIC FINGERPRINTS OF JESSUS CHRIST PART ONE 
The deeper one digs in the Old Testament the more clear the revelation of the coming Messiah Jesus becomes. The Bronze Snake that The Lord asks Moses to craft is one of those clear Messianic illustrations that Jesus Himself referrs to in John 3:14-15. But there's another tricky aspect of the bronze snake; the Second Commandment forbids the carving of any graven image. Is God asking Moses to violate His own Commandment? It would seem to the skeptic that God's contradicting Himself, so let's take a closer look at the Commandment. 
  
Exodus 20:4-6. "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth below. You shall not bow down to worship them for I, The Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the father to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but showing love to a thousand generations to those who love me and keep my commands." 
  
The Bronze Snake is a graven image but since God does not contradict Himself, it must represent something else. Here's where the compatison to Jesus deepens. We know Christ said that the Son of Man would have to be raised up like the bronze snake in the wilderness. We know the serpent represents sin and Christ took on all our sins on the cross at Calvary. 2 Corinthians 5:21 nails this meaning when Paul says, "He who was without sin became sin for us". There's more than just a family resemblance between the snake on a pole and the Messiah on a tree. They are literally connected.  
  
Then there's this contradiction revolving around the very same snake on a pole. But consider what Jesus was crucified for. Remember that He was judged because He had claimed to be God. This is blasphemy unless the man calling himself God was God. And that would also explain why Moses could make a graven image that represented the essence of God Himself being a foreshadowing of Christ's work on the cross. God is saying, "This is me, essentially. Look on me and live." God would take the very thing that repulses us and make it the most beautiful thing ever, salvation itself.  
  
And that is what the cross has become. Imagine how horrific the sight of the brutal blunt instrument would have been to a First Century Jew. Yet it evokes the very essence of love to us today. And that's the other piece to this puzzle; us. He loves us even though, as Stuart Townend puts it in "How Deep the Father's Love for Us", it was our sin that held Him there. Look on Him and be saved.  
  
I don't need this information to prove to myself that Jesus Christ is the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament. But it amazes me how absolutely perfect He is and how it was always going to be Him descending from Heaven to save us just as God the Father said when He said, paraphrasing, "I'm going to do it myself!" (Isaiah 43:19). From the beginning it was the same story, the same foretelling of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Look on Him, know that it is our sin that held Him there, and be saved. Love wins. Amen. 

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