Look Up and Live

Date: Thursday, February 19, 2026

Numbers 21 takes a hard left turn from wilderness wandering into one of the strangest and most prophetic moments in the Old Testament. The people are complaining again (shocker), this time about the bread and water situation. God sends venomous snakes as judgment, people start dying, and then the solution God provides is… a bronze snake on a pole? Look at it and live? What kind of remedy is that?

Here’s what’s wild: this isn’t arbitrary weirdness. This is a picture of the Gospel carved into Israel’s history fifteen centuries before Jesus shows up. The snake represents the very thing that’s killing them. But when God makes it the instrument of salvation, He’s showing us something crucial: He doesn’t just remove our problems. He transforms the symbol of our death into the means of our life.

The key is in the looking. Nobody gets healed by understanding the metallurgy of bronze or the biology of snake venom. They get healed by trusting that what God said would actually work, and then acting on it. That’s faith in its purest form: believing God’s Word enough that we’re willing to live our lives as though it were true, even when the truth seems absurd.

Jesus Himself connects the dots back to this event in John 3:14-15: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life.” The cross is God’s bronze serpent. The instrument of our condemnation (sin and death) become the very place where we find life. You look to Jesus lifted up, and you live. It’s that simple and that scandalous.

Let’s also not forget the connection back to the Garden in Genesis 3:14–15, the serpent who started all this, and God’s words there. Are you starting to see God’s grand narrative yet? It’s “Plan A” in action. Even from the beginning, it points to Jesus.

But before we get to the healing, notice the pattern: sin, suffering, crying out, salvation. The Israelites didn’t get bit and then casually wander by the pole later. They were dying, and they knew it. Desperation drove them to the remedy. Sometimes we have to feel the venom of our rebellion (or the inevitably of death) before we’ll look to the Savior for salvation.

Psalm 43 echoes this cry: “Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me.” When you’re dying from snakebites, literally or metaphorically, you need more than good advice. You need divine intervention. You need light in the darkness and a guide to the remedy.

Devotional Prompts:

What “venomous” consequences of your own choices are you currently experiencing, and are you willing to look to God’s remedy even if it seems too simple?
How does the simplicity of salvation, just looking to Jesus for life, challenge your tendency to complicate faith with performance or understanding?
What about the good works you do; are they just to make you feel more “Christian” so others will notice you, or are they expressions of gratitude that allow others to see Jesus?
When have you experienced God transforming the very thing meant to destroy you into something that brought healing or redemption?
Who around you is dying from spiritual snakebites, and how can you point them to the lifted-up Savior without getting preachy?

Prayer: Jesus, You were lifted up on that cross so we could look and live. Forgive us for the times we’ve thought faith needed to be more complicated than simple trust. When we’re dying from the poison of our own sin, turn our eyes to You. Thank You for making the instrument of death the source of eternal life. We look to You now and trust in Your finished work. Amen.