To The Crooked

The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

— Genesis 3:4-5

And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.

— Numbers 21:9

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.

— John 3:14-15

Reflection:

When the serpent said to Eve “you surely will not die”, it was looking to supplant the rule and judgments of God with its own. If Eve believed the serpent’s words more than the words of God, she would essentially be bowing before the snake as her king and lawgiver rather than to God. The whole time this exchange was happening, Adam was just sitting there, wetting his lips like a sleezy, porn-sick spectator watching this seduction unfold. God told him to GUARD the Holy zone of the Garden from intruders. But Adam just sat there. “There was no fear of God before his eyes.” (Romans 3:18)

But there was plenty of desire. And THIS is what the serpent targeted - - desire. In this way, the serpent became the biggest champion for every human right under this sun; autonomous human rights that is, unmoored from Divine Law. Can we see shades of the archetypal “politician” whose interests for the people went no further than “votes”?

So, by eating of this fruit, Adam and Eve changed kingdom allegiances. By refusing God’s voice, and listening to the serpent’s voice, they essentially became like a “mob mentality”, symbolically pulling God down from His throne, and placing a serpent there as their king! The apostle Paul said it this way:

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened…. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

— Romans 1:21, 25

In this symbolic act of pulling down the Creator God from His throne and “raising up” a new lawgiver in His place, mankind “fell” BELOW the level of the serpent they made king, becoming the very “dust” the serpent was “cursed” by God to eat!

And ever since, man has been worshipping and serving “nature” MORE than the Creator who made it all!

And if you think we in our modern day are more “enlightened” than this “primitive story” tells, think again! For what is “science” today but the “serving”, “stimulating” and “slavery” to the “natural forces” we choose day after day over God!

It has to be emphasized strongly, that the serpent who eats us has NOT changed his strategy. We are chasing phantoms under his bewitching “laws” in this world in our “quests” for the gifts of Life, Glory and Wisdom seen “in” the fruit of political power - - fueled by “natural knowledge accumulation.”

As Bryan Cross writes concerning our “Babelic projects” on this earth:

“Man’s attempt to do so (achieve Life, Glory and Wisdom according to our “natural powers”) apart from Christ is the mission of the Antichrist.”

The serpent “tempts” us with the lie that by our own “natural reasoning” and power we can

“recover each of the preternatural gifts lost by Adam’s sin: immortality (by genetic and transhumanistic manipulation), impassibility (by pharmaceuticals), integrity (technological dominance over nature), and infused knowledge (by electronic technology, internet, news media).” - Bryan Cross (Pentecost, Babel and the Ecumenical imperative)

Like the old dragon myths of yesteryear, modern man thinks he can heroically “slay the dragon” at the gate and “seize” the guarded treasure of Life, Glory and Wisdom and avoid the “flaming sword” (i.e. the dragon’s fiery breath). But it is all a fantasy. God stationed the “Cherubim” to guard the REAL gate, and the only “WAY” through the Cherubim to receive “the treasure” we all so desperately seek is through “the Tree” of Jesus Christ.

In other words, only Christ can slay the dragon. And He did that on the cross two-thousand years ago.

Now, when Jesus Christ came to this earth, the dragon knew that God was instigating something big, nay - colossal! The “heavenlies” were stirring. Angels were being activated in ways never before. John the apostle was given a vision of this “stirring” and saw this:

“Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon…., his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.”

— Revelation 12:3-4

As it has been mentioned , and as the Scripture apocalyptically reveals, the serpent dragon eats people like “dust”, and NOW it positioned itself to eat ‘the child” of “the woman” as soon as He was born! We see this event happen in “real time” in Herod’s political decree to slay all male children two years and under. The dragon is “in the shadows”, slithering “behind the scenes”.

NOTE: Pause for a minute and remember this as you approach the season of Advent and the celebration of Christmas. For this is the backdrop behind it!

Moving on…..

The serpent knew God was up to something. But He didn’t know exactly what it was. It went on a rampage, stirring up hate and a love for power as is “its way” on this earth. What the serpent didn’t know - and what mankind under the serpent’s bewitching power could never have guessed at in a million years - was that God’s plan to slay the Dragon was that He would “win” the battle by “losing” it!

You see, when mankind chose the voice of the serpent over the voice of the Creator, we became like what we worshipped for that is the principle of worship:

“Their idols are silver and gold,

The work of man’s hands.

Those who make them will become like them,

Everyone who trusts in them.

— Psalm 115:4-8

Because of our worship of the serpent, making him king and “ruler of this world” by our allegiance to its voice over God, we “became like it”.

This is why when John the Baptist came as a voice crying in the wilderness, he spoke to the gathered crowds in this way:

“You brood of serpents, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

— Luke 3:7

The People became the children of the devil! Enemies of God!

Paul says it in much starker terms in this way:

“There is none righteous, not even one;

There is none who understands,

There is none who seeks for God;

All have turned aside, together they have become useless;

There is none who does good,

There is not even one.

With their tongues they keep deceiving,

The poison of serpents is under their lips”;

— Romans 3:10-13

The poison of serpent’s issues from the lips of the serpent people! It seemed that the serpent had won. All human beings on earth - who once imaged the Creator God - NOW imaged the serpent!

What was God to do? Would He justly judge the whole situation and wipe the “serpents” off from the face of His good earth? This was the dilemma that God faced. HOW He could keep His Covenant promises which He made to the Covenant people - which was to Judge and remove the treacherous from the community either by legal execution or by exile - And still preserve a people who would inherit the promised blessings He made to Abraham? For it was the Covenant people themselves - whom God chose to inherit the blessings - who fell to the level of becoming “a brood of serpents” ripe for Judgement?

“Who can be saved?”

— Matthew 19:25

What the serpent - and the “enlightened” in our day - never saw coming was God’s secret mission of “increasing sin” through the Covenantal arrangements and stipulations of the Law of Moses in order to definitively deal with it once and for all in His own person. For example, we think that we can be made right with God by pursuing virtue and preserving what Tim Keller calls a “validating performance record” by adhering to God’s Law. But this has it exactly backwards! God didn’t give the Law to save us, but as Pastor Mark Horne writes in his article “The Key to Romans”:

“God Wanted & Needed More Sin in Order to Save Us from It”!

And the way God increased human sinfulness to a fever pitch was through the Covenant arrangements He made with Israel!!

“God was about to destroy the world. Israel was given the law and they had only become worse sinners as a result. To whom much is given much is required. And if Israel was under judgment–they whom God had given the task of being a light to the nations–then the rest of the world was surely doomed as well. The wrath of God was about to fall. And Jesus both provoked the world to the ultimate sin and then stepped in the path of that wrath. He came at the right time just when the priestly people who had been given the covenant law had become the worst offenders. He literally came on Judgment Day. And the only reason there is a world of human beings today is because that judgment fell on him instead of the ones who deserved it. We still have a planet to live on because Christ became the target of God’s wrath.” - Mark Horne (The Key to Romans)

N.T. Wright says it this way:

“Do you know how a fox gets rid of its fleas? The fox goes along the hedgerow, and collects little bits of sheep’s wool. Then he makes it all into a ball of wool, which he holds in his mouth. Then he goes to the stream, and slowly, slowly, walks down into the water. He lowers himself right down into the water, with the ball of wool in his mouth, until at last he is totally submerged; then he lets go, and ball of wool floats away downstream, carrying all the fleas with it. The fox emerges, clean. In this image, Jesus is the ball of wool. The spotless Lamb allows the evil of the whole world to be concentrated on himself. He doesn’t keep it in circulation by reacting with violence; nor does he escape into the ineffective innocence of quietism. He takes the weight of the world’s evil upon himself, so that the world may emerge, clean.” (N.T. Wright, Following Jesus)

This is what the serpent never saw coming. Nobody did! There were hints of it in the Law, but nobody would have guessed in a million years that YHWH God was going to “come in the flesh” and literally “become the serpent on the pole” by concentrating the world’s sin upon Himself and Judging it according to His Covenant promises made in the Law!!!

Karl Barth said it this way:

“God plunges into His own wrath on the cross in order to dissipate it!” - Church Dogmatics

King David caught a glimmer of it and sang this:

“With the kind You show Yourself kind; With the blameless You show Yourself blameless; With the pure You show Yourself pure, And with the crooked You show Yourself astute.”

— Psalm 18:25-26

Or better yet…. “To the serpent, God showed himself “serpentine” and “cunning” :)

The measure of “craftiness” the serpent used to deceive human beings in instigating a revolt against God, God measured back against the serpent!

And now those born into sin as children of wrath, enslaved to the bewitchment of the “serpent king” in this world, are being “stolen” back from the serpent and made children of God again by the “craftiness” of God - who became an “ambush predator’ on the cross, killing in order to save!

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” — 2 Corinthians 5:21

“It is finished!” — John 19:30

“Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. — John 3:14-15

Here’s the sweet exchange:

God becomes our sin nature. We become His “righteouesness” simply by believing this message.

This is the authorized Word of the Creator God sent out into the whole world to be preached until the end of time. When we look at the cross of Jesus, we see ourselves - the brood of vipers - “set” on the pole. The cross is a mirror to us of what we deserve for our participation in evil. On the cross, our hands have to be “bound” from ever performing evil again. On the cross are feet have to be “bound” from ever running to evil ever again.

In Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, He became united with “the brood of vipers” in order to “fulfill all righteousness”. Instead of using the “axe” to cut down the “trees” which produce bad fruit. Jesus gets “cut down” for us. And instead of “clearing the threshing floor” with the “winnowing fork” and “burning the chaff”, Jesus becomes “winnowed” and “gets roasted” on our behalf.

And in this incredible act of love we can start over again everyday and walk in the newness of resurrection life, “born again” to eat of the good fruit which has been placed back on the Tree.