The Bronze Serpent

This is the appropriate and faithful response to God’s wrath. To repent as they did shows that they know that God is just and would not give them a punishment they did not deserve. To ask for forgiveness shows their faith that God is not only just, but merciful. They ask because they know it is in God’s nature to forgive. That is how the faithful respond. Often our response to God’s wrath is something like, “That is cruel and harsh. I can’t worship a God like that.” OK, so how smart is that? If God has just blasted you with a plague of poisonous snakes as an attitude adjustment, what sense does it make to refuse to do what God wants? If you’re going to refuse to worship God because God gets mad on occasion, then please go live over there and keep the snakes to yourself. I will opt for the repentance, thank you very much.

Anyway, the people ask Moses to pray for them that God might take away the snakes and Moses does as they ask. God’s answer is perfect, I think. God does not take away the snakes. But God does provide a way for people who are bitten by the snakes to be healed. Moses is instructed to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. From then on, whoever got bitten had to look at that bronze snake to be healed and live. It seems like a weird solution, but I think it shows a lot of God’s wisdom.

Think for a minute about the solution proposed by the people: take away the snakes. Given what we have seen of Israel in the story so far, what do you think are the chances that when the snakes were gone they would remember the incident so vividly that they would not complain anymore? I can tell you what the chances are...nil. This is not the first incident of punishment. After the little incident with the Golden Calf, God sent a plague. When Korah incited the people to challenge the authority of Moses and Aaron, 14,700 people died. But none of that seemed to change behavior. If God just took away the snakes from the people here, it would be just like it had never happened and the people would be right back to their old ways.

But consider God’s solution. The snakes stay. And the snakes continue to bite people. God could have just rendered all the snakes harmless. But the snakes stay and they stay poisonous. But God does provide a way for people to survive the bite and live. Which, by the way, is merciful. You may not agree, but I think God has every right to send poisonous snakes or a plague or whatever else God deems necessary. God is God and we are not. We forget that sometimes. What I find amazing is not God’s harshness but God’s mercy. Why the human race has survived this long after all the atrocities that we have committed both against each other and against God is way beyond my comprehension. God has had ample reason to flatten us all time and time again. But God is merciful.

God has every right to send the snakes to Israel, but there is nothing anywhere that says God has to provide a way for them to live. The bronze serpent is a symbol of mercy...a gift...a way out. More than that, it is a way out that teaches. In order for someone who was bitten to live, they have to be willing to look square in the face of their trouble. They have to look at that bronze serpent and remember everything about it. In looking at that bronze serpent, they will remember that God sent those serpents as punishment. And when they remember that the serpents were punishment, they will also remember their sin. If they are willing to look at the serpent and be reminded of all of that, they will be healed.