From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea,£ to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” 6Then the LORD sent poisonous£ serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous£ serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. Numbers 21:4 - 9 (NRSVA)
14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.£ 16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”£ John 3:14 - 21 (NRSVA)
Snakes…
I’m reasonably certain there are some people in this world who just adore snakes like “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin did; just nobody near this pulpit! Last year while cutting the grass in our backyard a four-mile-long man-eating snake suddenly appeared just a few feet from me; OK, he was around 4 feet...but my heart has only recently returned to a regular beat this month.
A few weeks ago Odell Routh told me about a 90-pound rattlesnake killed in Asheboro recently. Aaron Nixon was sitting next to us. I asked Aaron how much he weighed, and he said “about 90 pounds”. He smiled, and I could swear there were fangs showing. Snakes! You gotta love ‘em (who said so?).
The Florida Everglades total 1.5 million acres that team with a huge variety of exotic species, many of which are not native to the area but are the descendants of escaped pets.
After Hurricane Andrew destroyed much of the Miami Zoo in 1992, thousands of animals roamed free and reproduced in the vast confines of Everglades National Park. Animal Control people recently captured a Burmese python that was under someone’s house in Fort Lauderdale. This python was 22-feet long! Of course, experts remind us that these pythons are harmless. Right!
This morning’s Old Testament text has the stage set with zillions of vipers biting and killing Israelites. Let’s do a “CSI” kind of investigation this morning and find out where they came from. Let’s examine the trail of evidence back to the crime and catch the killer.
There’s no great surprise that the killer’s name is rebellion! God’s people rebelled, and it got them snakes! If we go back in Israel’s history we find they had been enslaved by the Egyptians for over 400 years. Moses, God’s deliverer led the people out of that bondage, but their disobedience and failing to follow God’s leadership into the Promised Land caused them to wander about in the wilderness for 40 years.
The incident before us is one of many recorded in Scripture of how unbelieving God’s people can act. In their discouragement
• they grumbled about God’s man, Moses
• they grumbled about God’s plan for them
• they even grumbled about the free food
“Moses, God…..have you all brought us out here just to die?” This grumbling was rebellion – a statement of disbelief that God could actually take care of them. Imagine the audacity of that;
• They had walked out of Egypt years before without so much as a squeal out of the Egyptian bosses, and God buried the Egyptian army in the Red Sea just for punctuation.
• Their clothing and shoes didn’t wear out for forty years of wilderness wandering.
• Their food was consistently provided, just lying on the ground every morning….no hunting, fishing or farming…just pick it up and chew!
How could they be so unbelieving that God could or would take care of them? He had been doing that in the most open and measurable way for four decades right in the middle of a barren wasteland.
Rebellion doesn’t make sense, and it is nothing new. If we take our CSI investigation back a little farther (actually a lot farther) we see that Adam and Eve started the whole process. Eve saw the fruit that they’d been warned wasn’t for them. It went something like this: she wanted it; she took it, and he went right along! And rebellion has been man’s condition ever since. The Bible calls this rebellion against God “sin” and the condition is more than epidemic; it is endemic – everyone is a carrier as well as a victim! …all have sinned Romans 3:23b (NRSVA)
As a side note – rebellion has been man’s chief reason for attempting to discredit the creation account, replacing it with “the big bang” and other spurious so-called scientific theories of man’s beginnings. By refusing to allow that God created everything or anything, man denies God Himself. This allows him to don the fig leaf to cover the nakedness of his rebellion against God.
It is similar to whistling in the dark. Why do people whistle walking through a graveyard at night? They’re afraid. The organization “People for Freedom From Religion” have a doubt campaign going on. If they can assert loudly enough that there’s no God, then they feel better about the possibility that there might be one.
Why Rebellion?
Why do men rebel against God? It is a basic belief we all have inside, deep-down that there are things, powers, and places to which we feel entitled, but we don’t have. We want what we want; this is the root cause of rebellion against God.
In so many ways the story of Israel, God’s chosen family, parallels all of mankind. In fact their story is given to us in the Old Testament as the example, so that we can learn how to have a right relationship with God.
The account of the brazen serpent upon a pole, and the rebellion that made it necessary was held up by Jesus in our Gospel reading as the very picture of what the cross would mean to us spiritually. We have a rebellion inside of us that can only be healed by what Jesus did on the cross.
There are some immutable principles contained in this story of rebellion and redemption. I want to share four:
Rebellion Causes Suffering
Principles apply no matter the circumstances. Up is always up, no matter which way you’re facing. The principle of suffering whenever we rebel against God’s way is immutable; it cannot change. All sin causes the sinner to suffer in some fashion; it also tends to cause the sinner’s family and friends to suffer.
Husbands and wives who give-in to infidelity, or make a shambles of their marriage always suffer; so do the children and extended family. Ministers who murder their integrity also suffer and cause their congregations to suffer. Those who rebel against God suffer!
Cadi Forbes is the central figure of “The Last Sin Eater” [1] The movie is set in the early 19th century in the Appalachian back mountain country. The community is steeped in superstition and there is a shameful secret about its past that lurks in the background. As poor Welsh immigrants the people of “the cove” know little of God, other than they all have truly sinned, and something must be done with it (their sins) in order to rest in peace when you pass. Their solution is to elect a sin eater; one of their own who would ceremonially consume their sins whenever one died.
Cadi Forbes is ten, and feels responsible for the death of her little sister. She had treated her badly and the sister had run after Cadi, only to fall off a slippery log into a raging river and drown. Cadi searches for the sin eater, but he cannot help. The weight of her sin is too much to bear. [movie clip]
“How can I get rid of what I done?” Even a ten year old who has never been in church understands how heavy it is to carry unforgiven sin!
Just as the Israelites understood about the painful bite and deadly poison of vipers, so we understand that rebellion causes suffering.
A second principle is:
Ending Rebellion Means Choosing
God provided a means of healing for the snake bites. Moses placed a brazen serpent on a pole and set it up in the camp. Whenever someone was bitten, he simply had to look to the pole in obedience in order to be spared death.
In the same way Jesus said His “lifting up” on the cross would be the place of spiritual healing for anyone who would look to him.
A third principle:
Ending Rebellion Against God Only Comes by Surrender
The Israelites were encouraged to “look and live”. It is a form of surrender that required doing things God’s way. Simply put, there are three parts to surrendering to God’s way…but they’re all so connected it is something of a seamless movement towards God:
a. You face your sin. Looking at the serpent on the pole was the last thing a snake-bitten person wanted to do. It is the same for us; it’s hard to admit to our sin. It was hard for Cadi – she didn’t even want to tell the Sin Eater what was on his menu. We call it “confession”. A person who wants the burden of sin lifted must be willing to confess, to “look” in order to live. Face your sin!
b. You forsake your sin. We call it repentance; it is a matter of turning away from something, and turning towards something else. In the case of the Israelites, they had to forsake their grumbling and turn to the serpent on the pole. With anyone who would be forgiven, repentance is a matter of turning from the sin that says, “I don’t need God” and turning towards Him.
c. You embrace the Savior. Jesus Christ is the Savior. When you turn away from your sin, you find yourself facing the cross, and in so doing you are placing your faith in the Savior to be YOUR Savior!
We will look at one more film clip to see how the “look and live” principle worked in Cadi’s life. In this scene she has a talk with an itinerant preacher who has wandered into the cove. [movie clip]
In hearing how the original sin eater has taken away sins for everyone, and how he is the only one who can do so, Cadi is transformed. She asks the preacher if he would tell the sin eater how sorry she is for her sin. The preacher’s response, based upon Scripture[2] that one believes in the heart (faith) and confesses with the mouth (repentance) that Jesus is Lord, is to tell Cadi – “You just did (tell him) beautiful girl. And your sins have been washed away. You’re as clean as snow.”
Cadi believed and acted upon that belief. That is the “looking” of “look and live”. The “live” part is up to God…and He is always true to His promise to forgive sin!
A final principle:
The Snakes Hang Around
Just as the snakes were still biting Israelites and they had the recourse of looking to the serpent on the pole – so we must realize that the sin that bit us is not going to retreat.
We live in the light of the knowledge that our adversary will continue to provide temptation. It is very seldom, even in the wake of perfect forgiveness, that the consequences of sin and rebellion disappear. But the promise from God is that the power of sin will be diminished for the believer who places his daily trust in Christ and is filled with the Holy Spirit.
This is the point at which I sense many Christians live less than an overcoming life in Christ. We have “looked” to the cross and found forgiveness for our sins, and we live! But we treat that forgiveness as if it is an event, and not a lifetime process of living into the meaning of that forgiveness.
Jesus taught His disciples a parable of talents. The story was that a landowner was going away for an extended business trip. He called his stewards, his employees together for a strategy meeting. He told them about his trip, and how they were to be in charge of all business on the home front while he was away. He divided up the tasks and the inventory and manufacturing responsibilities. He gave them “talents” depending on his assessment of their abilities; some much, and some little.
On his return the accounting began. One of the employees feared repercussions if he’d done badly, so he had kept the status quo and done nothing – in order to not take a loss. The boss was furious and punished the lazy man. The other stewards were industrious and earned some return, some more than others. The owner was pleased because of the effort and obedience.
That is the essence of “living-into” the gift of “look and live”; it is trusting the Master who died for you with everything you’ve got.
John Fischer, in his book On a Hill Too Far A way, tells of a church in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. There is a one-of-a- kind cross in that church. It’s not that the cross is overly unique. What’s really strange is where the Cross is positioned in the sanctuary. This cross isn’t behind or above the altar. The cross in this church is bolted down into the concrete floor - right in the middle of the aisle. It’s between the pews and the altar. It’s an obstruction. The pastor’s words have to pass through it. The congregation’s eyes always have it somewhere in view. [3]
This is “look and live” – when a person or a congregation always has the cross in view. When I look at my family I see them through the cross lens. When I look at my job I see it as an extension of an opportunity to serve the Lord of the cross. When I breathe my next breath I sense the cross lifting me to inhale, and laughter from above as Jesus tells the Father – “Look! He’s living!”
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ENDNOTES
1] The Last Sin Eater, novel by Francine Rivers, Movie by Fox, 2007
2] Romans 10:9-10
3] Of Snakes and Crosses by Eloy Gonzalez on SermonCentral.com
