Have you ever given it much thought about the phrase, “Lift Christ up with Praise?”
Posted on 06/29/2014 7:59:20 AM PDT by OneVike
Have you ever given it much thought about the phrase, “Lift Christ up with Praise?”
Quite often you will hear a pastor use this phrase as he instructs you to give glory to God though His Son. But have you ever really consider what the significance of the phrase? Give me a moment of your time and allow me to introduce you to something very few Christians have actually ever considered when hearing this phrase, “Lift Christ up with Praise.”
Most people know the verse, John 3:16, many have even memorized it. For me, that was the first verse I ever memorized in Sunday school as a child. If there is any verse that says it all, it’s John 3:16. God’s gift to mankind was His only Son Jesus. With the death of His Son on the Cross, all we need to do is confess Him as our Lord and Savior and our sins have been paid for in full. It’s Salvation in a nut shell. Praise God for simplicity! Now, this verse is great, but what is truly interesting to me is the verses that precede it. (John 3:16) I lose count of how many times I have read these verses, only to have my mind mentally skip over and almost ignore their meaning.
When you read John 3:14, it should take you back in time to Israel’s past. It was a time when Moses was leading the twelve tribes through the wilderness of Sin, a time when God was showing them His power and love firsthand. In the Old Testament, we read that the children of Israel had grown discouraged and spoke out against Moses and God. (Numbers 21:4-9). As punishment, God sent down fiery serpents that would bite the Israelites and many would eventually die.
Realizing their sin, they went to Moses confessing and asking him to pray to the Lord that He might take the serpents from their presence. Well God would not remove the cause of their plight, but He did instruct Moses to make a serpent and erect it on a pole.
Moses told those who were bitten by the serpents to come to the pole and gaze upon the image of their pain and they would live. At that time, to look upon such an image erected on a pole would have been considered repulsive, and many would instinctively look away. However, if they wanted to live, those who had been bitten were required to look upon the image of the serpent, or they would die.
You may wonder what this has to do with Christ’s crucifixion. At the time, the Jews looked at crucifixion as the sign of a curse, just as the Israelites looked upon the sign of the snake on the pole. At the time when Jesus walked with men, death by crucifixion was only used for the worst of criminals. Thus, to see Christ lifted up and crucified meant that He was considered cursed under Jewish tradition. After all, God instructed the Israelites as follows:
“If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.” Deut. 21:22-23.
This is the verse Paul brought to mind when he wrote to the Galatians:
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Galatians 3:13)
So, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness to save his people from death, we too must look at the uplifted Son of Man to be saved.
Christ couldn’t just die. He had to die the death of a sinner, lowly and cursed. Lifted up on a pole, He was an image many found repulsive. He could have just come down and said, “Not today!” But he stayed. He died a death of pain and shame for sins he never committed. Sacrificed from the beginning of time, for sins He saw us commit, yet turned His eyes every time we did.
Every time you are tempted by sin, try to remember how the King of kings and Lord of lords was so humbly lifted on a pole for you. Take a moment and look up at the cross, and do not allow your head to turn away, or you very well may find yourself giving in to the temptation to sin. If you find yourself stumbling into sin, then take a moment and pray, take a moment and ask the One who stayed upon that cross for you, to take away your shame of sin. His arms are outstretched and waiting for you, all it takes is for you to look up willingly and accept His Father’s gift to you.
I pray that those who have ears to hear will listen to His voice and call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen
In English that would be "Angels with Hot Nacho Sauce".
That, I don’t know. But good question.
So... the serpent was not a 'snake' to begin with, right ?
A snake is a figure of evil in the bible. Yes I know people have perfectly tame pet snakes, and that’s not what is being talked about here.
The snakes were sent among the disobedient Hebrews, it looks to me, as an object lesson in the peril of inviting evil into one’s life and the need to deal with it. This problem will snowball unless and until taken care of. Evil has to be removed if permanent destruction is not to result.
The bible clues us in that “Jesus became sin” when He died upon the cross. That does not mean that Jesus did something He was not authorized to do. Rather, His spirit took our part and lifted our burden of sin, taking the wrath of God the Father upon that sin as He did so. And so our sin, lifted by Christ who had been incarnated as Jesus, was condemned on the cross.
And so the serpent lifted on the pole by Moses became a figure of the sacrifice which was to come. A serpent, because it represented evil being dealt with. A metal figure, rather than one of the actual serpents, because it was a substitute.
In a world filled with figures, care needs to be exercised since the devil can lay his falsehoods upon us about what the figures’ rightful use are. Later on, there was shameful worship of that same metal snake.
There is some cultural commonality between dragons (which we know mythically) and snakes. This particular serpent “could” have been dragon like with capability of walking until God took away its legs. This could symbolize evil being doomed to defeat. It can slither but it is going to have trouble if it tries to walk. In fact it really needs to hijack other beings that CAN walk if it wants to go about by walking.
An interesting follow up to that serpent ...
Revelation 12:
1 Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars.
2 Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.
3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.
4 His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born.
5 She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne.
6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
7 And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought,
8 but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.
9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
10 Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.
11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
12 Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”
13 Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child.
14 But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent.
The woman is Israel, the child is the Son of God, the fiery red dragon and serpent is Satan, the third of the stars are the third of the angels who defected with Satan, the place prepared for Israel is over in Jordan, the time period is the last 3-1/2 years of the 7-year Tribulation, starting at the midpoint when the Anti-Christ stands in the Temple in Jerusalem and declares himself to be God.
— — —
Revelation 20:1-6
1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
2 He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years;
3 and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
5 But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
6 Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.
Great essay, Preacher. Thank you.
It clarifies many things about the Lamb of God and the
process of His Blood taking away the Sins of the World.
I would say yes
Yes, thanks.
No, a serpent yes, not a snake until after.
Thank you for more than just the compliment.
Look sin in the face then? Look at the pain of sin in the face? Is it both?
You’re most welcome, my friend.
They're not embarrassed or repulsed by it.
The objection is that Jesus work on the cross is done, finished. The cross is empty for a reason.
It's not Jesus dying that saved us, it's His death (past tense) that saves us.
Having the image of Jesus on the cross indicates that His work isn't finished and that is not the gospel.
More like a serpent which was cursed to become a snake.
IOW, it was a serpent with legs before it was cursed.
2 Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Another part of the Bible that has to do with lifting up the Lord is the commandment of the Ten Commandments that is typically translated “thou shalt take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” in Exodus 20. You might have heard this and just not included this but I’d like to mention it anyway. I’d never heard this until I was looking in the Bible for more passages on the idea of “not giving even an appearance of evil” (I can’t think where there is in the N.T., but that passage itself can be translated different ways too).
Anyway, that commandment actually means, more literally, “you shall not lift (nasa) up the name of the Lord your God in an unworthy manner,” meaning to bring shame on it by lying in His name, etc. And this commandment is the only to hold a negative consequence, “The Lord shall not hold him guiltless who does so,” so the Jews regarded it as like an unpardonable sin. The church hasn’t done well to teach that this is just about swearing.
Oops. Should have read “you shalt *not* take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”!
Nope, the Image of Jesus on the cross reminds us what He did for us. An empty cross is merely an object used for torture.
Look around yourself, we are still suffering — in fact for many members of mankind, rich or poor, life can be almost unbearable.
My Church teaches me, and I believe it, that we are members in the Body of Christ. If the cross was good enough for Christ, it is certainly good enough for me. Many of my brothers and sisters experience deep distress in this life.
The Corpus reminds me that mankind hangs on that cross and I am a member of it.
I don't think a 'snake' at all...
'crawl on his belly' ... Think Gollum.
'Eat dust' ... Men are made of dust...
When the Bible speaks of serpents and scorpions, I don't think it is talking about snakes and scorpions.
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