I hate snakes. End of story. There’s only one good type of snake in my book—a dead one! I can see a snake crawling on the ground and immediately it makes my skin crawl…it feels like the snake is crawling all over me. Yes, I know. It’s an irrational thing, and no, I don’t know where it comes from. I just know I don’t like snakes.
I know you’re probably asking yourself “What do snakes have to do with covenants?” That’s a fair question. Actually, snakes have little to do with covenant, but in this short passage in Numbers, these snakes become a foreshadowing of the fulfillment of the ultimate covenant God would make with creation. Let’s make that connection.
The book of Numbers reads a lot like an operations manual. Our English title comes from the Greek translation arithmoi, but the Hebrew title gives us a better clue to what’s actually happening in the book of Numbers. The Hebrew title is “in the desert of,” and Numbers, though it has a lot of numbers in it, tells the story of the nation of Israel’s wandering in the desert for nearly 40 years.
The episode we read this morning happened during their desert wanderings. The nation is coming near the end of its 40 year journey, and it has not been a smooth journey. The journey has been filled with multiple rebellions and corresponding consequences. Actually, the nation was a very whiny bunch from the beginning. The people were closing in on the place where they could finally call home. The Promised Land—the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham.
The Israelites were thickheaded, though (not like any of us). When it came to the discipline of God, they followed the instructions on the shampoo bottle—wash, rinse, repeat. They would disobey, suffer the consequence, repent. Disobey, suffer the consequence, repent. Disobey, suffer the consequence, repent. A vicious cycle! Chapter 21 begins with a skirmish between the Israelites and the Canaanites. Israel didn’t start the fight, but they finished it. The Canaanites attacked them and Israel sent them packing.
Now, the nation comes to the border of Edom. The Edomites were distant relatives of Israel, and the Edomite land was not part of the Promised Land, so verse 4 tells us they went around the Edomite territory, and going around is always longer than going through, so guess what happened? Yup! They began to complain. What did they complain about? Food and water—again. Twice before the nation complained about food and water. Actually, Moses lost his ticket to the Promised Land because of the people’s complaining about water. Once before, Moses struck a rock when God told him to speak to it, and it cost him his trip to the Promised Land. That’s tough stuff, but it’s yet another example of rebellion and consequence. We cannot escape the reality that sin has consequences.
That’s what we find in Numbers. The people simply couldn’t stop rebelling. They worshipped idols! They complained about water! They complained about manna! They complained about Moses! They complained about water again! They complained about Moses again, and again, and again! And, here they are complaining about the manna and water—again! At every possible turn they were ungrateful to God. They showed contempt for God. They questioned (and even opposed) what God was doing. They wanted to go back to Egypt (even after 40 years). Instead of being special, and chosen, and set apart for God, they wanted slavery.
How could they keep rebelling against the Lord like that? An equally important question is “How can we?” It’s tempting to criticize the ancient Israelites, to shake our heads in disbelief as we read about their mistakes. After all, they’re dead so let’s talk about them. But, we bear a striking resemblance to those desert wanderers. In fact, from Israel’s story, we’re reminded of a foundational Biblical truth about humanity—all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That is Christianity 101. Every person who has ever lived, and every person who will ever live, will sin. White people, black people, and all shades of people sin. Rich people, poor people, Christian people and non-Christian people sin. You sin. I sin. Our children sin. Someone said there are two certainties in life—death and taxes. Let me add a third—sin.
The Bible confirms it for us.
• 1 John 1:8—“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
• Isaiah 53:6—“All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own.” In Hebrew, “all of us” literally means “all of us!”
• Romans 3:23—“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
The Israelites were terrible sinners, but so are we. “We are thirsty, we don’t like the food, and we don’t want to go hiking all the way around Edom!” Sounds to me like the family vacation!
We get the sin and consequence thing, right? But, this time we read about this strange episode with snakes. Snakes were biting and people were dying. They were in that shampoo cycle once again—sin, consequence, repent—and repent is what they did. The people came to Moses and said, “‘We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.’ So Moses prayed for the people.”
The people of Israel gave no thought to their action’s consequences before they acted. We’ve all done this before, made a hasty decision and then regretted it. So here they are on the verge of a major season of blessing. But instead of rejoicing, worshipping, getting excited, they were reeling from the consequence of their sin. Their sin was literally killing them. That’s what sin does. Theirs, and ours.
Thankfully, God is a God of life who doesn’t forget His covenant. They cried out to God and God heard their cry. When they were snake bitten by their own sin, God answered and saved His people, but not in the way we would expect. God told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole and everyone who looks at the bronze snake will live. That doesn’t sound like something God would do. Actually, it sounds a lot like idolatry, and in time, that snake on a pole would become an idol to the people, so much so that a king by the name of Hezekiah would have it destroyed. So, why a snake on a pole?
Perhaps it was because bronze was a symbol for judgment, or that snakes are a symbol of evil in the bible. Remember, it was a snake in the Garden of Eden that tempted Adam and Eve to sin. Others have suggested that putting a snake on a pole forced the people to face their own sinfulness, but I think it’s something much more profound—it forced them to trust God. No, the bronze snake would not save them. Believing what God said would save them. When the wound of sin was fatal, the only place they could turn was to God. When we’re broken, bruised and battered, the only place we can go is the God who remembers His covenant and saves His people.
That brings us all the way over to John’s Gospel. Hundreds of years after this strange episode, a Pharisee came to Jesus in the middle of the night. His name was Nicodemus. Pharisees were those self-righteous Jews who were certain of their own goodness, but Nicodemus knew something wasn’t quite right about all that self-righteousness, so he slipped in to see Jesus when the rest of his Pharisee clan wouldn’t notice him. In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus brings up this episode. He says:
14 And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life (John 3: 14 – 16 NLT).
To treat snakebites doctors us a cure that is called “Antivenom.” It’s actually “antivenin.” To create antivenin, the venom is milked from snakes and injected in very small quantities into a horse or some other animal. The injected animal will have an immune response to the venom, producing antibodies against the venom's active molecule which can then be used to treat people bitten by snakes. It’s ironic that for us to have a cure for poison an animal has to be poisoned. That’s essentially what Jesus was telling Nicodemus.
The Son of Man is the antivenin. In the same way the bronze snake was lifted up, Jesus was lifted up on the cross. And, just like seeing the bronze snake didn’t cure them, knowing about Jesus on the cross doesn’t cure us either. There were a lot of people who saw Jesus hanging on the cross who were not saved. When the Israelites looked up at that snake, they were looking up with a desperate faith that God would save them. Unable to cure themselves of their own condition, they had to believe that God had the power to heal.
That’s what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus. When we look to Jesus, believing that he has the power to save us from our own sin, we become participants in the new covenant. The cross becomes the symbol of God’s covenant promise to his people. As we’ve journeyed through the series on covenant, we’ve discovered the sign of our covenant is baptism, the seal of our covenant is Holy Communion and the symbol of our covenant is the cross.
Jesus, who knew no sin, was made sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. God laid the sin of the world--your sin and my sin--on His Son made Man. He nailed Him to the wood of the cross and raised Him high for the world to see. Here we see the image of our sin and God’s wrath. The Son hangs dead, forsaken by His Father, cursed and damned in our place. Honestly, it’s not what we’d expect from a loving God. Because of that, too many people turn away. They refuse to look. They refuse to believe, and they fail to find the only thing that truly saves.
Here’s something we need to remember. The snakes never stopped biting the Israelites in the wilderness. That’s a reality we live in with sin. Just because we’ve come to Christ and looked to the cross, we’ll still live with the consequence of sin in this hurting world, but as we continue to look to the cross of Christ, the power of sin will be diminished. Forgiveness isn’t an event as much as it’s a life-long process of living into the meaning of that forgiveness.
John Fischer, in his book On a Hill Too Far Away, 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.
This is “look and live” – when we always have the cross in view. When we look at our family we see them through the cross. When we look at our job we see it as an extension of an opportunity to serve the Lord of the cross. The cross is our symbol of the God who never forgets His covenant.
