Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And of all the movies that I've never seen, but that I think I totally understand anyway, I think Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson, has got to be the most that way. Here's what I think happens. And if you haven't seen it and you're planning to watch it with the family tonight, I'm sorry, I think I'm about to ruin it for you because again, this is the movie I think I most understand without having seen it. I bet there's a plane, and I bet you it's a populated, there's people on the plane. And then I bet somebody puts a bunch of snakes on there. Maybe it's a terrorist. Maybe it's somebody who just doesn't respect nature or the beauty of these creatures, and it's his hubris that betrays the flight. And then up in the air, sure enough, the snakes get out, and rather than doing what you would expect snakes to do, which would be to curl up in a corner and try to avoid detection, uh-uh. Instead, they just go savage and they attack everybody on the plane all at once. And then I'm guessing that at some moment Samuel L. Jackson is going to have to look straight to camera and deliver some poetic, artful, Shakespearean-level, emotionally complex line that just grabs you by the heart and tells you what needs to happen in order to solve the problem. That's just a guess. Again, please let me know if this is a film that you've watched or if you are a film student and this has come up in a film studies class. Feel free to clarify anything that I got wrong here plot-wise. But whenever I picture that movie and I do reflect on it often, daily even, it always takes my mind back to Numbers chapter 21 and this story that we've been talking about a little bit here over the last few days, with the story of the snakes in the wilderness with the Israelites and the bronze snake that God told Moses to make and that he could raise up. And then if people got bit by the snake, they could look at the snake and they would get better. And it's relevant to our conversation because Jesus himself references this weird, obscure story of this unavoidable snake infestation, much like snakes on a plane, where I guess just probably everybody's getting bit. He references this as a way to signal to Nicodemus, a teacher in the law, an expert in the Bible, what the deal is with Jesus, what role Jesus is going to play in redemptive history. And it's a weird reference. Like if I studied the Old Testament for 50 years in preparation for one quiz question, and the quiz question, I knew it in advance, it was going to be what thing in here is Jesus going to point to to explain who he is and what he's going to do when he sits down and talks with the teacher. I never would have come up with this one. I have other guesses I wouldn't have come up with this one because it does just feel like you know, such a quick little uh jaunt as you're cruising through it. But after a few days of thinking about it with you, I think more than ever, I see the genius in why Jesus is bringing this up. I see the layers of meaning here. Think about the situation once again. So the Israelites they traveled from Mount Horror along the route to the Red Sea to go around Edom, but the people grew impatient on the way. They spoke against God and against Moses and said, Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There's no bread, there's no water, and we detest this miserable food. Okay, so they're being they're being dumb. They have some ownership here. And if you go back through numbers and the whole Torah back to Exodus, you'll see, okay, like they've been spoken to about this. This is an ongoing problem. It's not like we went from zero to snakes in one gripe session. They've been stiff-necked and rebellious to God, even though God has broken the laws of time and space to deliver them. So, you know, we're away, just we gotta remember we're a ways into the conversation here. Okay, we keep going. Numbers 21, six. And the Lord sent venomous snakes among them. They bit the people, and many Israelites died. Well, the people came to Moses and said, We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you, prayed that the Lord will take the snakes away from us. So Moses prayed for the people. All right, so God sends a plague of snakes. And when we think about plagues in the Old Testament, my mind at least goes to the plagues that God visited upon the Egyptian people to punish them for their mistreatment of God's chosen people. Some of those plagues are pretty elaborate, but there's some other plagues in the Old Testament as well. There's a plague of lions that shows up at one point. There's a plague of snakes right here. So this isn't like an epidemiology plague where you got boils or sickness or some contagious disease. There's just a whole bunch of snakes on the plains with the Israelite people who are out camping in this expansive wasteland because they refuse to obey God and go into the land that He's promised them. And there's nowhere to go, apparently. There's just a ton of these snakes show up, and I guess they do what snakes are doing. They start biting people, have no idea what kind of snakes these are, other than they have the, they must have those kind of diamond-shape heads, because that's how you can usually tell when they're venomous. Well, apparently it's really nasty venom, and people start dying. And it kind of looks like the way the story goes, there isn't really an option not to get bit. The the camp is they like there's not an option to get off the airplane and snakes on a plane. Again, I have not seen the film, I just haven't had a chance to do so in the 20 years that it's been out. But I think about it nearly every day. And I when I think about that situation, you're in that metal tube in the sky. There's nowhere to go. You're just stuck there with the snakes. Well, it seems like the same kind of deal here. They're just stuck there with the snakes and they keep getting bit. And so, in part, this is their own dang fault. But also, if you wander out alone into that desert, I guess you're just gonna die. You have to stay with the community. It's not like you can flee the snake infestation. And so people are getting bit. In other words, they are in a situation where the default setting is we're yeah, everybody's gonna die. There's just too many snakes, and they're just gonna bite everybody, and everybody's gonna die. And part of what I would submit to you as evidence for that is their reaction. They're like, whoa, we got to come to our senses. This is not a natural amount of snakeage. It's too much snake. This has got to be judgment from God, who I guess did specifically say that if we obeyed him, he'd bless us, and if we disobeyed him, he'd punish us. This seems to be in keeping with the deal. We all ratified with him just here not very long ago. Ah, dang it, we blew it. Okay, we gotta ask Moses if if maybe if maybe God would do something about the snakes, since he's the one who brought them here. So you get this situation where everybody is pretty much just condemned. If you really think about the anatomy of their scenario, and all they can do is turn to God through their intermediary, which at this point is Moses. So then verse 8 it says, The Lord said to Moses, make a snake and put it up on a pole. Anyone who is bitten can look at it and live. So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then, when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived. Isn't that an interesting solution? I mean, I suppose God could have just been like, All right, some of you seem sorry. We'll call it even. I think everyone learned their lesson here today. Snake be gone, and then that's just it. He doesn't do that. He he lets the state of perpetual danger and death. He lets the consequences of the sin and rebellion of the people sit with them. He does not lift it off of them. What he does do is he provides a way out. It's this snake that is lifted up. Yeah, y'all are still gonna get bit, I guess, is the message that's being sent. You're still in this conundrum, but there is a way out that can rescue you from the default situation you find yourself in. The default situation here is that you all have no home. You are in the middle of these great wilderness plains. There is nowhere to go. It is a horribly inhospitable environment. If you try to go it on your own, apart from the community, bandits or nature's gonna get you. You're gonna die. So you're stuck here with this mess and with this difficult situation. And if you get bit, or I should say, when you get bit by the serpent, because everybody's gonna get bit, here's what you do. Look at the thing. That's it. Just look at the thing. You don't really do much of anything at all, but it's a reminder that your deliverance is entirely the miraculous work of God. Justice and judgment is God's to give, life is God's to give, He is a just God, He's also a gracious God. Look, look at the thing. That's it. Behold it and live, behold it, and the venom will be defeated. Okay, why are we talking about this again? Uh-huh. Because still, John 3, the conversation that we're looking at these couple of weeks between Nicodemus, the Bible teacher, teacher, the law guy who isn't really getting it, but he's trying, and Jesus, who definitely gets it. He's doing a really great job. They have a six-part conversation, three remarks each. Nicodemus goes first, Jesus replies. Nicodemus goes second, Jesus replies. Nicodemus is now baffled, and he asks, How can this be? He just isn't getting it. And Jesus replies, saying the stuff about, like, yeah, you're Israel's teacher and you don't get this stuff. I'm talking to you about earthly things, and you're not getting that. How are you going to get spiritual things? And then this again is how Jesus chooses to spell out to Nicodemus who Jesus is, what Jesus' role is, and how life comes through him. He says to Nicodemus, Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. Now, Jesus says that. Nicodemus rolls back to Numbers 21 that we were looking at a few days ago, that we're talking about today. And he's like, Okay, what did they do to have life? To have the effect of the serpent be defeated. They beheld. That's it. Again, to be explicitly clear, Nicodemus would have remembered, and Jesus is pointing to the reality that to be saved from the venom of the serpent, they just beheld what God had provided for their deliverance. Full stop. You know who else was saying stuff about behold for your deliverance? John the Baptist, two pages earlier. Remember it? Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So, two things here. Number one, then, this is not the first time. John three is not the first time in this gospel that the idea that Jesus is going to be the one who is lifted up, and we're supposed to behold him and believe, and by believing, have life in his name. That it's been all over John. And we get that right at the beginning in John 1. We get that from the John the Baptist stuff right there. Now we're getting that in the conversation with Nicodemus. This isn't new material Jesus is giving us. Rather, he's fleshing out the image and pointing us back to other Bible stuff. He's filling it in, and just like the disciples believed and then kind of believed harder and got it more as John goes along. So it is for us, the readers. We're getting it more. If he'd hit us with the snake thing in the wilderness right from the beginning, maybe it wouldn't have made as much sense. But now that we kind of glance back, usual suspect style over the first couple chapters, we're like, ah, I see it. There it is. So there's the first thing. Behold, believe, and have life in his name. But the second thing is that snake that got raised up in the desert was both a proclamation of the judgment and the situation and the crisis, but it was also a proclamation of life from God. And what we're gonna see is we pivot from Jesus' snake that's lifted up, reference here in verses 14 and 15 and of John 3 into verses 16 and 17 that we've already dipped our toe into. What we're gonna see is that Jesus being lifted up is the same thing. The fact that Jesus is here is in itself an announcement from God of what we should already know. We got snakes in the camp. This this is a serious problem. But it is also to be received as, and there's life. Behold, believe, have life in his name. And I got a sneaking suspicion. This is not the last time that John the Evangelist is going to put that three-part instruction in front of us as we work through his gospel. We'll keep pressing forward tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.