Why Ministers Need the Wilderness

“It takes a crucified man to preach a crucified Savior.” –Alexander Maclaren

“I abhor the thought of God being robbed of his glory…” That was part of the response that a young man was giving in one of my seminary classes. I shudder as I type the latter part of his comment. “…and if that means the damnation of infants then so be it”.

It’s not my concern to throw this dude under the bus. Truthfully, I see some of myself in him. Getting so wrapped in theology, idealism, and the way things ought to be that I forget the way that things actually are. Grace will likely grab hold of this young man and transform him. Jesus has a way of doing that. While we roll our eyes at statements like this (and maybe rightly so) Jesus moves in and administers grace. Grace that crushes…but grace still.

I was concerned that day as I thought about this young man pastoring a church. I was worried for him and for his congregation. Mostly because broken men don’t say things like that. Even if it were theologically true, broken men just don’t speak like that. As I’ve gone through seminary for a few years now I am becoming convinced that students should have to spend at least one semester in the furnace of suffering before we can graduate.

Jesus was 30…    Continue at Mike Leake

Symbols of Christ in the Wilderness

Among the abundance of redemptive types that God gave Israel throughout the exodus experience, wilderness pilgrimage and the conquest of Canaan, I find none so fascinating as the Gospel-symbols that God gave them in the wilderness. In addition to the Tabernacle, the sacrificial system and the priesthood, the Lord intervened at specific points in time to bring about supernatural provision for their physical needs. These provisions were ultimately given as typological pictures of the coming Christ and the redemptive provisions that would come through His saving work. We know this because our Lord Jesus told Nicodemus that the bronze serpent on the pole was a picture of His being lifted up on the cross (John 3:14-15). He also taught the Jews who followed Him that He was the anti-type of the manna that their forefathers ate in the wilderness (John 6:41, 48, 51). The apostle Paul explicitly taught the Corinthian church that the rock in the wilderness–from which the waters came–”was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:3). We can add the account of the bitter water healed by the tree thrown into it (Ex. 15:22-27) to the account of the rock, the bronze serpent and the manna. Nevertheless, the question remains: How are we to understand these types without inappropriately spiritualizing or allegorizing them? A few considerations of each one will help guide us in a process of biblical-theological interpretation.

The Serpent on the Pole

 

The most explicitly cross-centered wilderness type in the Scriptures (see John 3:14-15) was the serpent on the pole (Numbers 21:4-9). Like all the other miraculous redemptive typical provisions, the serpent on the pole was given in response to Israel’s sinful complaining and in the face of the judgment they deserved. There are a series of parallels that can be drawn between the Israelites being bitten by the serpents and then given a means of healing through the serpent on the pole, and the theological truth of the redemption we have through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Consider the following:   Continue at Nicholas T. Batzig

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An Agreement Between The Serpent and Jesus Christ

For the past week I have been meditating on Numbers 21, where God sent “firey serpents” into the camp of Israel while in the wilderness for their blasphemy. The snakes were biting the people, and many were dying. They then came to Moses, confessing their sin, asking Moses to intercede for them. As Moses prayed for the people the Lord said to him, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a serpent out of bronze, set it on a pole, and lifted it up. When anyone was bit by a serpent, he could look at the bronze serpent and be healed.

Later in the Gospel of John Jesus said, “And 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.” (John 3:14-15 ESV)

Is Jesus really like a “serpent?” Not exactly. But he is like the bronze serpent lifted up by Moses. John Gill wrote some fantastic words on the “agreement between the serpent and Jesus Christ.” I have formatted it below and given subtitles, but the words are all Gill’s.

There is, in many things, an agreement between this serpent, and Jesus Christ:

An Unlikely Savior.

As in the matter of it, it was a brazen serpent; it was made not of gold, nor of silver, but of brass, the meaner metal, and was a very unlikely means, of itself, to heal the Israelites; and might be despised by many: this may denote the meanness of Christ in his human nature, in his birth and parentage, and place of education and converse; and especially in his crucifixion and death; and which, to an eye of carnal sense and reason, seemed a very improbable means of saving sinners; and therefore were to some a stumbling block, and to others foolishness:  Continue at Joe Thorn

Christological Purpose of the Exodus and Wilderness Experience