2011 A.D.: 6th Day Series: The Large Intestine....Curiously Snake-Like!
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How about this idea.... maybe the experience of a person becoming a Christian and part of the Body of Christ (meaning the Church) is like food becoming part of the body of a man. After all, people ready to be told about Jesus are likened in the scripture to kernels of grain, several times in fact.
When we eat food, our teeth break it up, our saliva softens it, the tongue moves around, bringing the food back time and again to the teeth, until the food is humbled (that word actually means 'broken up into little pieces') then it goes to our stomach where 4 different enzymes dissolve it. Then it is released into our intestinal track.
First, the small intestine receives it and continues to break it down and absorb the food, making it part of our bodies. Finally, the large intestine receives it. What could not be digested moves along, and what is rejected from the body tissue and processes also joins it. The large intestine also removes much of the water from the soon to be rejected mass. Then, out it goes, into the pit (if you're camping, I mean!)
And that is kind of how the Christian process works. Man is like the food. We approach, and we see Christ. We become familiar with God's laws (laws were written on tablets of stone, teeth are like little tablets of white stone) and seeing our short comings, we are broken up inside. Teeth are like white stone tablets. Some of God's laws have been written on stone tablets, right? Saliva is watery, and one symbol of the Holy Spirit is water. The Holy Spirit enters us and helps us to change as we need to. And we hear some preaching of the Gospel (we are moved by their tongue sort of like food is...but in this case it is the tongue of someone preaching the Gospel), and the Gospel reminds us repeatedly of where we sit with regard to having followed the Laws of God. We are brought back over and over to the white stone tablets.
We decide to get right with God. We go to church. (We drop into the stomach.) After we are ready - after we have been broken down into a humbled, reformed, and usable new Christian, just the basics, our old man mostly gone, we are released into the small intestine, and begin the winding twisting path of a Christian living on this Earth, never seeing what's around the next corner, but becoming more and more a part of the 'body of Christ' as we progress (just as food becomes more and more absorbed into the human body as it progresses.) It's like the 40 years that the Jews wandered in the desert. We learn to just trust and follow God.
Just as food enters the small intestine, it receives 'bile' from the liver, and 'gall' from the gall bladder. The gall bladder looks like a fig, and a fig signifies Jews, doesn't it? The figs weren't ready to eat when Jesus was hungry, so he commanded the fig tree to wither. The Jews weren't ready for Jesus to reign, so Jerusalem was soon destroyed, in 66 - 70 A.D. I think that, in the Bible, figs nearly always signify the Israelites, or at least Judah and Benjamin and their Levites. The juice from a fig is like the blood shed by the Jews, perhaps. God's anger seems to have been spent against them for the way they rejected and crucified his Son so long ago. But their sacrifice - their loss - helped to make it possible for the message of the Messiah to be taken to the gentile. It was meant for the Jews, but when they didn't choose it, it was taken to the pagans. Perhaps, in the digestion of food, the receiving of juice from an organ that looks like a fig signifies something like that.
Or perhaps it signifies the spirit of God as it comes to us through reading the Old Testament, the Testament of the Jewish faith. We learn much about God through the Old Testament, and it helps shape our journey as Christians. But, in any case, there is an organ called the gall bladder that resembles a fig, and it supplies juices to the food just released by our stomachs which aids in the digestion process that goes on in the small intestine.
And the liver is all about purifying blood, and it sounds like laver. The laver was an article - a bronze pool of water - in the Holy Temple of Yahweh where you were to wash in water to ritually purify yourself. So, the laver held blood and water if bloody hands were ever washed in it, or just water otherwise. So, the juice of the 'fig' which is the gall from the gall bladder (the blood shed by God's holy people the Jews when they were defeated by Rome, or perhaps the blood line of the Jews through Abraham...either might be represented here, or I might more easily just have guessed wrong) and the water and possibly blood from the liver (laver) (water and blood are things which Jesus provided on the cross) are applied to the 'food' which has freshly left the stomach, to make it more easily accepted into the body.
Eventually, if we are usable, we are no longer in our old original form, but we have been incorporated into the Body of Christ, which is the Church, Jesus' Church, on Earth. That portion of us that was unacceptable (or the whole of us, if we do not repent and accept the process of becoming Jesus's servant) is then sent on to the Large Intestine. The water (Holy Spirit) is removed, and whatever is rejected from the body joins with whatever couldn't become a part of the body in the first place, and the whole rejected unusable mass is moved to the end of the process (judged) and sent to the pit.
Narrow is the way that leads to life, and few are those who will find it (the small intestine is narrow). Broad is the way that leads to destruction (the large intestine is broader).
Who will decide which people are rejected? Jesus. (He will judge us rightly, and as His Father would judge, but He may offer His mercy). And so Jesus will direct the rejected to the pit.... the fiery pit. The place of punishment.
Sometimes Jesus is portrayed as a snake, like when the snake bit person would look up at the bronze snake and be cured, back when Israel wandered for 40 years in the desert. That snake pre-figured Jesus. And Jesus was 'made into sin' for man, to atone for mankind's sins, and sin is often portrayed by a picture of a serpent. So even though Satan is portrayed as a serpent, Jesus is sometimes portrayed as another type of serpent.... a serpent that can protect our souls. Remember when the staff of Aaron turned into a serpent and then ate up the two serpents which Pharoah's magicians had made from their own staffs? That staff of Aaron is likened to Jesus sometimes.
So, whether it was intended to be seen this way or not I am not certain, but the large intestine seems to wrap around the small intestine almost like a snake might enclose it's young to protect them. If we should go so far as to mentally allow that the large intestine looks like a snake, it must be admitted that it doesn't seem to be trying to constrict (harm) the mass of the small intestines, which it sort of encircles. It looks more like it's just guarding the small intestines. And for that reason, the large intestine could be interpreted to be a symbol of Christ Jesus, protecting whatever is in the small intestine that is trying to become part of the body. In just that same sort of way, Jesus guards and looks after those people that are in the process of trying to become part of the body of Christ (the Church, Jesus's bride.)
Some people will say that snakes don't guard their young, but a couple of types actually do. The Rock Python encircles it's eggs and guards them, keeping them a little bit warm as well. Out into the sunlight it goes to warm its body. Once it's warm, it returns and encircles the eggs with its newly warmed body. And it repeats the process. It will sometimes have a couple of days of motherly protective feelings after the eggs hatch, as well.
Cobras lay eggs, cover them a little, then the 'couple', mom and dad cobra, will hang out on the dirt that covers their eggs, adding some warmth and offering protection. And there are surely other types of snakes that I don't know of. Do rattle snakes guard their eggs in their dens for a while? Don't get me wrong, snakes don't immediately spring to mind when I think of parenting skills, but...there are snakes that guard their developing young. A few species.
The Large Intestine...it is sort of like Jesus in its configuration and its function in some odd ways. Look at the picture and see what you think. And God designed man 'in His image'. And God is the designer of all designers, I'm sure we all agree. So maybe...just maybe.... the intestines were designed to remind us of how Jesus is both protector of those He chooses, and rejector of those He cannot accept into His kingdom because they won't repent, seek Him, be baptized, and obey Him, not turning back, but persevering until the end.
