NUMBERS: MY BRONZE SERPENT.
NUMBERS 214-9
What do you think of snakes? What image do they conjure up in your mind? Some people keep them as pets. Some people eat them as a delicacy. Legend has it St. Patrick drove them out of Ireland. Maybe like me you have never really given them much thought. In the reading from Numbers this morning snakes play a central role in the life of the people of Israel in this wilderness episode.
VERSE 4 - Let me set the background to this incident for you. The people of Israel have left Egypt and because of their disobedience and lack of faith in God they have been condemned to wander for a generation in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land. God has not abandoned them – he has provided manna and quail for their daily bread and he has protected and guided them throughout this wilderness period. Aaron has just died on Mount Hor, they have just won a great victory over the Canaanites and the King of Edom has just refused them permission to pass through the land of Edom. So they must go on a long trek around Edom in order to get to the Promised Land. They are heading South and East when they really want to be going North and West. The people have grown impatient with God and with Moses and they begin to grumble and complain. They are impatient to with Moses and the direction which the Lord is leading them. The desert is no Promised Land flowing with milk and honey.
VERSE 5 – well here we go again. This seems to be a recurring complaint with the people of Israel. Life was better in Egypt. Why did you bring us out into this desert to die? They had uttered the exact same words on many occasions before and would again in the future. The people of Israel were quick to disparage their deliverance from the bondage of slavery. They had quickly forgotten the oppression under which they had toiled for many years. Funny isn’t it that when difficulties come we always want to go back to the old familiar ways. The people of Israel wanted to go back to Egypt because of the difficulties of life in the desert. They had failed to learn their lesson – it was their own sin that had brought them into this desert in the first place and they had forgotten the bitterness of bondage.
Look their complaints. There is no bread. There is no water. And there is only this miserable manna. This is their most vitriolic attack on God. They had spurned the very bread of heaven (Psalm 7823-24). In disparaging the provision of God they were denying, decrying and denigrating his grace and favour towards them. What they were actually saying was “your gifts are no gifts at all. Your grace is no grace at all. You do not care. You do not provide us with blessing but curse.” When you think about it it is a pretty dreadful thing they have just said to God. How could they be so ungrateful? Have they so quickly forgotten their deliverance? Obviously they have. But let me stop you there and ask you a personal question: Are you any different? Have we all not been quick to condemn God? Have we not grumbled against God? Why have you let this happen to me? You do not care? Let me read to you what Adrian Plass says in a prayer in his book ‘The Unlocking’ (page 35). Ever felt like that? I have and I have even said it on occasions to God? Let me let you into a secret – He knows it all and he is able to cope with it all. The difference here with the people of Israel is that they are condemning God by disparaging his provision for them. The rejection of manna is a rejection of the grace of God which provided it for their daily nourishment.
You know the habit of complaining can easily grow in the life of God’s people. It is nothing new and each time the complaint grows, the venom with which it is expressed also grows. Invariably like the people here in Numbers 21 it is directed towards the leader but note will you that it is actually directed at God. The leader just happens to be the most visible symbol of God in their midst. In their case it was Moses.
VERSE 6 – well God is rejected by his people and so they bring his judgement down upon themselves. Snakes are a naturally occurring phenomena in a desert but they arrive in the midst of the camp in unnatural numbers. The people have rejected a blessing from heaven so now they receive a curse from the desert. They were offered nourishment and life in the form of manna but they reject it and receive disease and death from snakes. They face death instead of receiving life by ‘this miserable bread.’ The Lord sends the snakes. He sends punishment for sin. They rejected his grace and his provision and so they must face his judgement and wrath. It really is as simple as that.
VERSE 7 just like the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 the people of Israel come to their senses and ask for forgiveness. They come to Moses and note will you what they say to him. We have sinned. We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and you. They did not make excuses. They did not try to justify what they had done because of the circumstances in which they found themselves. They admitted their sin and that it was first and foremost against the Lord God. Friends listen to me now. Here were a people wandering in a desert, wearing the same clothes and shoes day after day. Eating the same food day after day. Walking over the same landscape day after day and if they had no excuse for rebelling and rejecting God’s provision then what excuse have you in the lap of luxury today? If they admitted ‘we have sinned against the Lord’ then what have you to say?
I want to point out to you that 4 chapters later the people rebel again. And on down through their history they continued to rebel and repent. The only thing which is remarkable about it all is the graciousness of God in dealing with them.
Moses prays to God and the Lord God answers his prayer in a most unusual and surprising way. Look what the Lord instructs Moses to do.
VERSE 8 can you imagine Moses reaction to this instruction? “But Lord you have told us not to make any graven image.” Can you imagine the reaction of the people to this? Now there are a few simple lessons here for us this morning.
It would take time to make the bronze snake and all the while people were being bitten and dying. Even in the midst of a crisis we need to move purposefully and surely. The people may have been impatient but God was not – his timing was perfect and their impatient attitude would not sway his hand.
In the Scriptures the snake is always connected with evil and the evil one. From Genesis 3 right to Revelation 20 the snake is the symbol of evil and sin. And yet here in Numbers the symbol of evil and death would be the means of healing and life restored. Moses is called to make a symbol of something detestable and to raise it up on a pole in the midst of the camp so that the people might look up to it and be healed.
VERSE 9 well Moses obeys the Lord God’s command and he makes the bronze snake and he raises it up on a pole. God is faithful to his word and when anyone is bitten and they turn and look up to the snake they are healed. Now listen to this very carefully – the snakes were not removed. The snakes remained with the people of God. In fact some commentators speculate that the snakes remained with them all through the wilderness years. God could have removed the snakes but the people would not have learned a lesson about the consequences of their sin of rebellion. Also the bronze snake would remain in the camp as a symbol of God’s gracious dealing once more with a wayward people.
So the question Where is Jesus in all of this? Well the answer is twofold:
Firstly – Jesus is the Bread of Heaven. We read this in John 648-51. he is the means of grace and of nourishment in the life of the people of God. By rejecting the Bread of Heaven, manna, we reject Christ. The manna prefigured Christ coming from heaven to bring God’s grace to mankind.
Secondly as we read from John 3 this morning the bronze serpent was a prophetic illustration of what would happen to Christ Jesus. It was Jesus himself who applied this incident to himself. God would use the means of curse and death – the crucifixion, to be the means of blessing and life for all mankind. The Lord God transforms the symbol of death into the source of deliverance and life. The rejection of God’s grace brings death but God uses the symbol of death to restore his grace and to bring life.
You see the two parts to the bonze snake on the pole were actually symbols used in Egypt. In Egyptian hieroglyph the serpent {(d.t) jet} meant ‘eternity.’ And the pole was ‘ankh’ which means ‘life.’ When we combine ‘jet’ and ‘ankh’ we get ‘eternal life.’ Now just maybe the Lord used their memory of these hieroglyph to remind them that ‘eternal life’ was to be found in him alone. They were not to treat the serpent as a magical thing but to look behind it to the one it pointed to – God and realise and understand in him alone is eternal life. You see in 2 Kings 5 the people are condemned because they had made an idol of this bronze serpent. In fact Hezekiah tears it down and destroys it. They had stopped looking to God and started to worship the symbol of their deliverance.
Is it not the same today. The cross adorns many a neck but those wearing it have no understanding of what it means and certainly no knowledge of the one who hung on it for their sins.
You see the people rebelled and rejected the provision of God’s grace. God sent punishment for their sin. They repented and confessed their sin. God in his mercy heard their prayer and commanded Moses to raise up a bronze serpent so that when the people were bitten by the snakes they could turn and look up to the snake and be healed. People continued in their sin. Snakes continued to bite and they continued to need to turn in repentance and faith and look up to that snake. Many centuries later God would send his Son into this sinful and sin filled world. He would be raised up on a cross. The symbol of being cursed by God. The symbol of death – the cross. A thing detestable and despised by God’s people was the means chosen by God to bring salvation and eternal life to a sinful world. The means of death became the source of eternal life. And nothing has changed 2002 years later. We are still in our sins. We still fell the bite of the serpent and know the venom of the poison of sin in our lives. The means of healing, of salvation and of life is freely available to us. We need only turn our eyes upon the cross and the one who died there for our sin. As the hymn writer put it: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.
Just as the people of Israel in the wilderness had to turn in faith and look in order to be healed so we too have to turn from our sin (repentance), ask forgiveness and look up to the means of salvation – the Cross of Christ. When we do God promises to hear and to forgive, to heal and restore and to assure us of eternal life. We will always have sin with us until heaven – but we have the means of healing and forgiveness, of salvation and life eternal with us also – Jesus Christ crucified so that I might have life. The question for us all is quite simple: have I turned and lifted my eyes to the means of salvation? There was no healing for the people of Israel in common medicine. There was no healing of snake bite without repentance and looking up to the symbol of salvation. For each of us there is no answer to our sin and eternal death other than looking to a man crucified on a cross, risen and ascended – Jesus Christ.
If we had been in that camp with Moses – we would have been with the grumblers and the complainers. We would have been the ones being bitten. But the question is would we have turned and looked up to the means of healing and salvation. We are here today and I want to ask you this morning:
Are you still rebelling, grumbling and complaining against God?
Are you going to die in your sin?
Or are you going to turn from your sin, repent, ask forgiveness and look up to Christ and receive healing and salvation?
What are you going to do with Jesus today?
The snakes were the source of their pain, the means of God’s judgement, rejection and forsakenness and they brought death. A bronze snake was raised publicly and transformed by God to become the source of healing, the means of blessing, a sign of his presence and the way to life. In the Cross of Christ, raised publicly, God transformed the source of pain, rejection, and death and it has become the sign of his love and presence, the source of his blessing and the way to eternal life. And the requirement is that we turn our eyes upon Jesus and by faith receive salvation.
AMEN.
