The following is a lesson I taught at Wears Valley Ranch in 2008.
Think about being in a place where you are totally helpless and will not live unless someone or something saves you. What would you hope to happen in that situation? Say you were drowning in the ocean; would you want someone to throw a rock to save you? Would you count on another drowning person to rescue you? Not likely. You would probably be much happier if Superman showed up and carried you to the shore or perhaps if a boat came by and pulled you on board.
This morning, we’re going to look at a story from the Bible where help comes to the Israelites in a much unexpected way. The help these people received might even seem foolish and stupid.
This story takes place in Numbers 21, so if you turn there, we’ll read from God’s word.
Numbers 21
1 When the Canaanite king of Arad, who lived in the Negev, heard that Israel was coming along the road to Atharim, he attacked the Israelites and captured some of them. 2 Then Israel made this vow to the LORD : “If you will deliver these people into our hands, we will totally destroy their cities.” 3 The LORD listened to Israel’s plea and gave the Canaanites over to them. They completely destroyed them and their towns; so the place was named Hormah.
4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 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!”
6 Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 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.
8 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.” 9 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.
When Pastor Wood finished Genesis in June, the Israelites were living happily in Egypt. Exodus chapter one tells us that the Israelites were so prosperous and their families were so large that the Egyptians started to worry that the Israelites might try to take over their country. So the Egyptians force the Israelites to be their slaves.
After many years of slavery, the Israelites were very burdened by the oppression of the Egyptians, and they called out to God to rescue them. God chooses Moses to lead his people out of Egypt to the Promise Land.
But when they reached the border of the Promise Land, Moses sent twelve spies into the land to see what was there. When the spies reported that the people living in the Promise Land were very strong and lived in mighty cities, most of the people were too afraid to take the land, though God had promised them success!
God punishes the people for their lack of faith by keeping everyone who was afraid from ever entering the Promise Land. He sends them to wander in the desert for forty years until all the fearful are dead. See, God cannot leave sin unpunished. Moses tells the people, “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty.”
The story we read is near the end of this forty years. As the Israelites are heading back towards the Promise Land, they want to take a shortcut through a country called Edom. But the king of Edom will not let them through. Right before they started to go the long way around Edom, the king of Arad attacks the Israelites. But God gives them a great victory.
So this brings us to the beginning of the story of rescue. Let’s read again verse four, “They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way.”
Though God had just given the Israelites a great victory over their enemies…Though He had shown that even in punishment, they were still His people… the Israelites were satisfied with God’s timing. They didn’t trust that He was working things out for their good. Their sinful hearts grew impatient with God Himself. We, too, can struggle with this same sin—impatience with the sovereign God.
The impatience of the people turns to grumbling against God and Moses. Verse 5, “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!’”
Certainly this desert was a sad and barren land. Even today, it’s not somewhere you’d want to live or even take a hike. Yet God had again and again shown the Israelites that He was with them. He was God and would provide for their needs. The people were without excuse in their complaining.
They said that they didn’t have water, but God had provided a way for them to get water out of rocks in the desert! God had provided for the people by causing water to flow from rocks in the desert. To satisfy their hunger, He provided manna—a sort of bread that fell from the sky every morning! God had given them food to eat and water to drink from His hand, yet they were not satisfied.
The people treated God as if He was the bad guy for freeing them from slavery! And because Moses was God’s servant, they hated Him too. But if you are frustrated with the Israelites for their sin… for their complaining… this is an opportunity to look at your own heart. Are you ever discontent with what God has given you? Even though God gives you three great meals each day and a beautiful house to live in, do you ever complain? God has given us even better bread than manna, the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ. Do you ever act as if Jesus wasn’t enough for you? When you think about it, we’re not so different from these Israelites.
But God will by no means clear the guilty! We read in verse six, “Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died.” A better translation of venomous snakes is fiery snakes. Some people believe the snakes were “fiery” because of how they made a person feel if he was bitten! The snakes would cause an unquenchable thirst. You would feel like you were burning up on the inside.
The people, you see, were dissatisfied over nothing; they had water to drink and food to eat. But God gave them something to be truly dissatisfied over. To punish them for their grumbling, He gives them something truly worth grumbling over. God will by no means clear the guilty!
Maybe you say, “That’s not fair! They complained a little, and God kills them!” But God was not being unfair or unjust to the people. The pain and death caused by these snakes is only a little, tiny picture of the eternal judgment of Hell for those who do not have God’s forgiveness.
Fortunately, the Israelites got the hint. They recognized that God was punishing them for their sin, verse 7: 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 people realized that they were wrong and had sinned. They recognized that they had no hope at all in themselves. Only God could save them from such a thing. Yet, notice that they don’t go directly to God but instead confess their sins to Moses. The Israelites realized that their wickedness was so great compared to God’s holiness that they could not approach God alone. Instead, they ask Moses to be their mediator before God. We’ll talk about this more in a minute.
Look at the kindness and forgiveness of Moses. His own people had complained against him and been angry about him. It seems like he has every right to say, “No way I’m praying for you. You’re getting what you deserve.” But he doesn’t. He prays for them. He forgives them.
Should we not be more like Moses… and Jesus Himself… when people wrong us? Instead of holding a grudge, we should be quick to pray for those who persecute us and forgive those who wrong us. Forgiveness should be a defining characteristic of a Christian. If God has forgiven you of your sins, do you have any right not to forgive others?
Now look at God’s response in verses eight and nine: “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.”
This seems crazy! The serpents were the very thing that was killing the Israelites, but God told Moses to make a metal snake and put it up on a pole. This doesn’t make any sense.
But notice what God requires of the people to be healed. They don’t have to dance around the pole or climb the pole. They don’t have to run to a far-off mountain, find a magical flower, and place it at the foot of the pole. No, they simply have to look at the bronze snake. They only had to have faith that God would do as He said and heal them if they looked at the pole. Anyone could receive this healing: an old man on the brink of death, a young woman who had just been bitten, a child… He only had to look, and God would rescue his life.
It’s interesting that God didn’t remove the serpents like Moses and the people had wanted. The passage even implies that people continued to be bitten after the pole was built. God knew what was best for the people. John Calvin explains,
If the serpents had been immediately removed, they would have deemed it to be an accidental occurrence and that the evil had vanished by natural means. If, in the aid afforded, anything had been applied, bearing an affinity to fit and appropriate remedies, then also the power and goodness of God would have been thrown into the shade. In order, therefore, that they might perceive themselves to be rescued from death by the mere grace of God alone, a mode of preservation was chosen so discordant with human reason as to be almost a subject for laughter.
He’s right. Looking at a bronze serpent to be saved from the serpent’s poison is almost laughable. It doesn’t make sense. Or, it didn’t make sense then.
Fifteen hundred years later, there was a teacher in Israel named Nicodemus who came to talk to Jesus at night. Finally, Jesus let Nicodemus in on the secret of the bronze serpent. “…As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” said Jesus in John 3, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
You see, just like the Israelites in the wilderness had sinned against God, all people everywhere have done the same. In our sin, the only place we might find hope is in God. But like the Israelites, God is too perfect and too holy for us to approach. In His perfection, He cannot look on our sin.
You see, every person, by his very nature, is an enemy of God. Because of your sin and my sin, we must be reconciled to God in order that we might be saved. A man named J.I. Packer said, “Reconciliation of the warring parties is needed, but this can only occur if God’s wrath is somehow absorbed and quenched and man’s anti-God heart, which motivates his anti-God life, is somehow changed.”
Remember how the Israelites wanted a mediator to bring their needs to God? Well, we have a mediator. A mediator is a person who is able to bring together two groups that are at war with each other. God loved mankind so much that He sent His son into the world to be that mediator. 1 Timothy 2 says, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.”
Jesus, the Son of Man, was lifted up on the cross so that we might look to Him for salvation and be at peace with God. There is nothing we can do but look to Christ for the forgiveness of sin. Nothing we do… no action we take brings us to God. It is because of God’s mercy through Christ that we are saved if we simply look to Him!
And unlike the bronze serpent, which only added a few years to the lives of the people, Jesus brings a salvation that is infinitely better. “…whoever believes in him may have eternal life!” Eternal life in the presence of God Almighty maker of heaven and earth! Eternity in God’s glorious kingdom that doesn’t need the sun to make light because the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb, Jesus Christ! Eternity separate from all evil where even our sinful selves will be made perfect. This is a great salvation indeed!
Remember how it seemed so strange that it was a serpent that brought healing from the snakes’ venom? This bronze serpent represented the sin of the people of Israel. This pointed ahead fifteen hundred years to Jesus would come to earth as a man “in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Jesus took on a human body, and every other human body that has ever existed has been sinful. But Jesus, although He was in the likeness of sinful flesh, never sinned.
Instead, He took in His body the sin of all His people. 2 Corinthians 5 says that God “made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Moses was right when he said, “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty.” God cannot simply pass by your sin or mine. But if you look to Christ for forgiveness, he has taken the punishment for your sin on the cross, so you are no longer guilty! In Him you are cleansed of your sin.
Would you look to a dumb metal snake to be saved? Maybe you’d try to treat yourself instead. Would you look to a foolish street preacher nailed on a cross by Roman soldiers to be saved, or do you think you can fix yourself? Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Jesus is your only hope. Look to Him and be saved.
Most of us here today have already turned to Christ to receive salvation. Perhaps you say, “What does this have to do with me? I’m already saved! It’s time to move on to bigger and better things! Let’s talk about loving one another and helping the poor and not lying or stealing.”
Friends, if you are already a believer, there is much, much more to talk about. But the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, is never behind us. In fact, you need to hold it right in front of your face of you every day. In Romans chapter 1, Paul tells the people how he has heard of their great faith in Jesus. Does he then say, “You’re thinking about your salvation too much? Let’s move on.” NO! Instead, Paul spends the rest of the book telling them about the infinite greatness of their salvation.
Everything the Roman Christians did… everything you and I do… is in response to this gospel, in response to Christ crucified for us. Never grow tired of this Bread of Life. Never grow wearing in learning about the depths of God’s love.
About a hundred years after the Reformation, a group of Christians in Holland got together to write a book called a catechism about the basic beliefs of the Christian faith. This book is 129 questions and answers about their beliefs. The first question sums up how Christians are to live each:
What is your only comfort in life and in death?
That I am not my own, but belong– body and soul in life and in death–to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.Because I belong to him,Christ, by his Holy Spirit,assures me of eternal lifeand makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.h