Dear Family at Christ Community,

    As we continue our series, Grace in Unexpected Places, we will be in Numbers 21:4-9 on Sunday. This brief story of the Israelite’s last episode of grumbling in the wilderness displays both the cost of sin and God’s enduring grace. We will have the privilege of celebrating the healing of our sin and the overthrow of death in Christ as signified in the Lord’s Table as evidence of God’s enduring grace in our lives. The broken bread and overflowing cup direct our eyes to behold again the person and work of Jesus Christ. The elements call for our contemplation of His atoning sacrifice for us, the beloved children of God.

    Jesus uses Numbers 21:4-9 in John 3:14-15 to explain to Nicodemus that “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Nicodemus, like so many other Jews, looked for Jesus to be the Christ with a sword in His fist who would overthrow the earthly powers by a display of earthly might. However, Jesus uses the story of the serpent lifted up on the pole for the people who were perishing from the consequences of their sin to look to in faith to be healed to declare what He had come to do instead. He too was to be lifted up on a cross, but he would do so having become sin—our sin—so that we would not die but have eternal life! J.C. Ryle writes of John 3:14-15 in his Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Volume 3: John 1:1-John 10:30:

…as the one way by which Israelites obtained relief from the brazen serpent, was by looking at it, so the one way to get benefit from Christ, is to look at him by faith. The feeblest look brought cure to an Israelite, and the weakest faith, if true and sincere, brings salvation to sinners.

As we look to the finished work of Jesus Christ as represented in the bread and cup, our faith is nourished and our assurance of our salvation emboldened in the Holy Spirit! The Lord’s Table is a reminder to us pilgrims in the wilderness between the now and the not yet of our eternal healing in Christ alone by faith alone through God’s grace alone.

    Take time this week to look to the finished work and person of Christ and meditate on His victory over your sin and death. Give thanks for the healing of the Great Physician of your diseased heart, blind eyes, deaf ears, and fallen mind so that you are now able to appreciate the glory and presence of God. Repent of your enduring sins and take comfort in God’s enduring grace. Pray for others to have this same opportunity in newness of life.

In Christ,
Cameron