The depth of God's Love and Mercy

People in the Exodus had to look at the brazen serpent to be healed from the venom of fiery serpents.  They made the disastrous spiritual mistake of accusing God of not caring for them or even thinking that He intended to destroy them and their children.  They committed the capital sin of grumbling against God! (Numbers 21:4-9) The apostles made the same mistake much later at the storm on the sea in Mark’s gospel when Jesus was asleep at the helm of the ship— “It does not matter to you that we are perishing!” (Mark 4: 35-41)

The people of the first covenant had to look at the cause of their pain, the Bronze serpent, to remind them how terribly wrong they were about God’s love and care of them.  It was only by seeing the snake they could be healed.  To complain about God not caring for us is indeed a deadly mistake!

One of the worst things we can do is to accuse God of not being lovingly and intensely affectionate to us!   One of the greatest reasons He chose to suffer and die on the cross was to show us how very fond He is of us.  Grumbling against His providence must hurt Him very deeply after all He has done for us!

If we learn to look on Christ crucified with honest eyes, we’ll learn the depths of God’s care for us.  Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM” (John 8:21-30).  When we gaze on the uplifted Christ on the Cross, we begin to understand how passionately He cares about us.  God is love, and nowhere else can we see this better than the explosive figure on the Cross.  That the God Who created the universe was so anxious to prove His fondness for us that He asked His Son to die a horrifying death on the cross should utterly boggle our minds and hearts!