A while back, Paula asked me what ‘propitiation’ meant. There may be some of you that don’t know what propitiation is either, but it’s very important to each and every one of us.
To find out what this word really means, we are going to go to the scriptures, and we’ll start in the Old Testament. Let’s look in the book of (Numbers 21:4-9):
They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!" Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us." So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.
I remember Bill Gaither once talking about a woman in his church whose personality was so negative that, whenever she came into the room, the lights seemed to go out. Have you ever known anyone like that? I’m sure that none of you are that person, but you probably know someone like that. They have nothing good to say about anything and you don’t dare ask them how they are because they’ll spend the next 15 minutes telling you exactly how they are.
Some years ago, Paula and I went on vacation to Sandpiper, Florida to play some golf. We were really looking forward to it! When we landed, the resort people picked us up in a charter bus. It was a 45 minute bus ride to the resort from the Orlando airport.
It just so happens that there was a large Jewish family on the bus that was having a big family vacation. The patriarch had paid for 30 people or so to take this vacation with them. My original thought upon hearing this was, that is such a great thing to do for your family. That thought quickly left my head!
The matriarch began complaining about the heat and the humidity… Now, being an optimist by nature, I’m thinking, ‘I may lose a few pounds with this heat and humidity. Cool!’
She began complaining about the heat, the humidity, the bus size, the distance from the airport, the flight they had been on, the time they had had to get up, her irregularity, whatever she
could think of. She started this about two minutes after we got on the bus and hadn’t quit when we got off the bus at the resort.
Now you can tell that I grew up in a Bible-believing house because, at one point in this bus ride, I leaned over to Paula and told her “that’s why they were kept out of the land!” I was visualizing this very passage during most of our bus trip. I guess God has a funny way of reminding us of scripture.
Now take the vision of that complaining matriarch in your head and magnify it by thousands. Moses had a whole bunch of those folks!
The Israelites spent much of their time murmuring and complaining. They complained about the lack of food, so God gave them Manna. It not only tasted good, but met all of their dietary needs. God reminds the Israelites in Deuteronomy that their feet never swelled and swelling feet is a symptom of a diet without some much-needed nutrients.
As wonderful as this gift was, they began to complain about it as well, so God gave them meat. They complained about the lack of water. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that we aren’t told about a lot of their complaining because Moses probably became rather numb to it all.
Our passage is the 8th and final time that the Israelites complain to God. God finally got tired of hearing their constant griping and complaining. He sent some snakes to start biting the Israelites. Isn’t it amazing how God can just talk to His creatures and they instantly obey Him? (except for you and me of course) Jesus wants fish in the net? No problem. God wants flies and frogs, yes sir! Here, God wants snakes to start congregating, which by the way does not happen in nature, and they come together for a meeting and start biting people. Now this is so obviously out of character for snakes, and on such a grand scale that the Israelites realize pretty quickly that this is no coincidence. They immediately run to Moses and ask him to talk to God on their behalf.
Isn’t it interesting how quickly we go to God when a crisis arises in our lives? Whenever our children are sick, it becomes very easy to go to our knees in prayer even if we have completely ignored God in our day to day lives for years. The people of Israel were at this place of crisis and they cried out to Moses. Once again, God’s infinite mercy and grace is shown here because He relents and has Moses make a bronze snake and put it on a pole. When the people that have been bitten look at the snake, they live.
The word ‘propitiation’ has a two-part meaning. First, it implies an appeasement of anger, especially from God. Next, it means that there is a reconciliation between the two parties. The word actually means “to make favorable.” In order for the Israelites to appease God, they had to look upon the statue, and God reconciled them to Him and healed them.
The Israelites had been poisoned and God gave them propitiation through the bronze statue that allowed them to live. They could not DO anything to heal themselves. God didn’t tell them to suck the poison out. He didn’t tell them to boil down an aloe plant and make a salve and put it on the bite. The plan of action was as simple as look at the statue and you’ll live. God had done all the work by accomplishing the healing. You might be saying, ‘well God brought the snakes in the first place.’ In a way, you would be right. It was by God’s command that the snakes began biting the people, but was it really His doing that caused them to become sick and die? I don’t think so. It was their sinful murmuring and complaining that was the root of the problem. The snakes were just a symptom of the problem, in the same way that war, sickness, and death are a symptom of a fallen, sinful world.
I think that it is important to note that the Bible does not say that God takes the snakes away, He just provides a means by which the Israelites’ lives can be saved. This is an important concept to grasp because it has special significance for us that we will look at in a bit.
There is another cautionary verse about King Hezekiah that I want to show you that doesn’t pertain to my main discussion of propitiation, but is an important reminder for Christians (2 Kings 18:4):
He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.)
King Hezekiah was a good king and did right in the eyes of the Lord. He understood that, though the bronze snake had been the instrument of God’s salvation to the people of Israel, it was not to be worshipped. Many times, when God does something in our lives or in our churches, we begin to worship the instrument through which the thing was done rather than the God who accomplished it. As you have heard me say in our Bible studies, it was not Mt. Sinai that was holy, but God’s presence. There is no building that is holy because God resides in the hearts of each of us that love Him. We need to make sure that we don’t turn an instrument of God’s work in our lives into something or someone that we worship.
Let’s get back to our main discussion. Our next passage of scripture is found in the gospel of John 3:14-15. Oddly enough, the verse that follows these two verses may be the most widely memorized verse in Christianity, yet we rarely see these two verses tied with it unless we are reading the entire third chapter of John. Let’s read:
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
Jesus is speaking quite plainly here of His death. As you can see, He points us right back to our previous scripture. Why is that? Other than being ‘lifted up,’ what corollary is there between Jesus Christ and that bronze snake? Romans 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Paula and I love to watch the Olympics. One of my favorite events to watch is pole-vaulting. I had a good friend in college, Dave Johnson, that was a decathlete. He won the bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics. Prior to that Olympics, Reebok was running these ads that featured Dave and Dan O’Brien. It cost them millions. Dan was the leading decathlete in the world and Dave was close behind him. The Olympic trials came around and Dan was on his third try at the pole-vault. Rather than going for the minimum that would put him into the Olympics, he tried to raise the bar. He failed and didn’t even get into the Olympics that year. It cost Reebok a ton of money. Though Dan O’Brien returned to win the gold medal in the 1996 Olympics, no matter how good you are at pole-vaulting, even the winner is going to fail sometimes because the bar keeps getting higher.
The Pharisees tried very hard to obey the commandments. Every letter of the law. But the commandments weren’t put there just to show us all the things that we had to do to remain reconciled to God. They were also put there to show us that we cannot be reconciled to God on our own. There is no way that we can be good enough to get into heaven. There are no works by which we can be saved. John the apostle tells us in his first letter (1 John 2:1-2):
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. (NASB)
Do you see that word ‘propitiation?’ You could substitute the words ‘a way out.’ Maybe you could think of it as a vaccination. Christ’s sacrifice provided the means by which we could live, though we have contracted and passed on the sinful condition.
When you read about the Israelites and their constant whining and unbelief, you might be tempted to ask how God could put up with such a stiff-necked people. Unfortunately, you and I are no different from them. I know that I have failed God time and time again. The Hebrew people saw God work many miracles as Moses led them out of bondage, but I have seen miracles in my own life as well. There have been times when I should have faced dire consequences because of sin in my life, yet God spared me. My son was born to us even though we were told that we wouldn’t have children.
Still, I do the very things that I do not want to do and I fail Him miserably. I don’t know how He could still love me and forgive me, but I know that His Word promises me that He does. In that same letter John tells us (1 John 4:10):
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (NASB).
See, God tells us in His Word that we have all sinned and that the wages of sin is death. The Israelites, because of their grumbling, were bitten by the snakes and the inevitable results of those bites were death. But God also provides propitiation, a way out for us; a spotless, willing sacrifice that once and for all reconciles us to God and atones for our sins. And just like the Israelites and the snake, there is no work on our part required.
Everyone in this world has been bitten by the same snake and unless they have put their trust in the One who was lifted up, they are dying and they don’t know it.
John tells us again “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from unrighteousness (1 John 1:9 NIV).” Jesus is telling us “here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with Me.”
Here I am. I was lifted up for you, and you, and you. As we bow our heads and close our eyes, I want to ask you: have you ever come to the place in your life where you have realized that you are full of crud? Have you asked Jesus to cleanse you of that crud in your life? Have you asked Him to come into your heart, so that He can replace that crud with love and kindness? He wants to do just that today! He loves you. He wants you to be far more than you are and only He knows how to accomplish that. If you need to ask Jesus to come in and work that miracle of propitiation in your life, do that right now. There are people that can talk to after the service about your decision. Step out right now and come down and we will pray with you.
Christians, you may know that you have been doing some things that you and God both know isn’t what He wants you to do. Like the Israelites, you may have been griping and complaining. You may be angry about something. You may have been holding a grudge against a brother. Whatever the sin is, no one else might know about it, but you and God do and He wants so much more for you. He wants you to have life more abundantly. Do you need to again look at the one that was lifted up for your salvation? He’s waiting for you. Maybe there are things that you have been holding back from Him. Maybe there is something that He has been asking of you and you have been unwilling to obey Him. Give Him control of your life. Don’t hold back. Give it all. He did. He gave everything for you. Give Him all that you are in return.
(Prayer)
