Grace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 21st Chapter of the Book of Numbers; Verses 4 – 9 (Old Testament Reading); and in the 3rd Chapter of the Gospel according to St John: Verses 14 – 21.
Numbers 21: 4 - 9
4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” 6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he takes away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
John 3: 14 - 21
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
Most people don’t like snakes. Some people have ophidiophobia, which is the formal term for an abnormal fear of snakes. Even people, like me, who don’t mind snakes, are quick to jump when they see a “stick” lying in their path and it suddenly moves. Some people I know say that the only good snake is a dead one! But the fact is that most snakes are beneficial predators that help control the rodent population. It’s also a fact that most snakes are more afraid of us than we are of them.
Snakes don’t get a real good portrayal in the Bible; the devil used a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve; also in Genesis God created a deep animosity between the snake and women; bad people are described as vipers; and then Revelation 12:9; 20:2 refers to the devil as the ancient serpent. Today’s reading from the Old Testament also contributes to our bad attitude toward snakes.
The Old Testament for today from Numbers is the account of the Children of Israel after they leave Mount Sinai. Exodus tells us that before the Children of Israel arrived at Sinai they were a scruffy mob of slaves. While they were at Sinai, God organised them. He put the moral law into the words we know as the Ten Commandments. In the last half of Exodus, all of Leviticus, and the first half of Numbers, God gave Israel the civil law for governing themselves as a nation. He also gave them the ceremonial law of offerings and feasts that were the shadow that pointed forward to the Messiah. When the Children of Israel left Sinai, they were an organized nation headed for the Promised Land.
God disciplined the people differently before and after Sinai. Before Sinai, the people grumbled, and God fed them with manna. He sent quail into their camp for meat. He gave them water. God recognised their ignorance and disciplined them gently. This all changed after they left Sinai.
When Israel left Sinai, God expected His people to know better than to grumble. They had seen the plagues in Egypt. They had seen the water of the Red Sea part for them and drown the Egyptians. God had given them the Tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant as tangible reminders that He was with them. God was more stern with them than before.
So when we read the Old Testament reading for today, once again we see the Children of Israel complain. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” Notice the contradiction in their complaint. They say that there is no food, but then they go on to say that they loathe the food. How can they loathe the food if they don’t have any food?
Of course, the food they loathe is the miracle food of manna that God gives them every morning. The people of Israel have judged God’s food and found it to be worthless. These people are incurring the wrath of God by casting judgement and ridicule on His grace; especially when in John 6:25 - 59 we hear Jesus compare Himself to the manna as the Bread of Life from Heaven.
Just as in the past, God disciplined all those who opposed Him. Here we see His own people standing against Him, complaining about Him, criticising Him by bringing their complaints to life. Deadly serpents invaded the camp. Their bite began killing many in the camp. Sadly, the people wouldn’t listen to God when He merely spoke to them. He had to allow death to enter their camp in order to get their attention.
The people finally confessed their sin and asked God to take away the serpents. God heard their prayer but gave them an answer that they did not expect. Instead of simply removing the serpents, He gave them salvation from the serpents. He gave them what we know to be ‘a means of grace’.
God ordered Moses to duplicate one of the serpents in bronze and place the bronze serpent on a pole. Moses did as God commanded and everyone who looked at the serpent on the pole survived the snake bite.
Now, just so you don’t get a false picture of this situation, remember that Israel had a population of about 600,000 men of military age. If you multiply that by wives and children, it doesn’t take long to estimate a population of 2.5 million people not to mention livestock and luggage. This meant that the Israeli camp covered many square kilometres. You didn’t just poke your head out of tent flap and glance at the serpent on the stick. It was a long walk to the bronze serpent on the pole.
A most important point here is that the healing powers of the bronze serpent did not depend on the quality of the bronze that Moses used. It did not depend on the quality of the wood used in the pole. Instead, the healing power of the bronze serpent depended entirely on the promise of God.
In a way, the bronze serpent is like all the means of grace that the Holy Spirit uses to bring salvation. Whether we consider hearing the Word of God, Confession and Absolution, Holy Baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, they all depend on the promise of God for their effectiveness. It is a long-established sound theological principle that “Without God's word in Holy Baptism the water is plain water and there is no Baptism. But with the word of God it is a Baptism, that is, a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit.” (Luther’s Small Cat.: art. iv, par. 7–10) It was the promise of God working through the bronze serpent that healed the snake bite.
Jesus used this Old Testament event to point to Himself. In today’s Gospel, He compared Himself to the bronze serpent in the wilderness. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. With these words, Jesus gives the promise of eternal life to all who believe in Him as He is lifted up. The promise of God healed the Israelite when he looked upon the bronze serpent. In a similar way, the promise of God in Jesus Christ heals and gives eternal life to the sinner.
Jesus then expanded on the meaning of this comparison with one of the most famous verses in the Bible: God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. The word “Whoever” means that this promise is for all people. As the bronze serpent hung on a pole in order to save Israelites from poisonous serpents, so Jesus hung on a cross in order to save the entire world from sin.
If God allowed our sins to turn into snakes, our infestation would dwarf the problem Israel had in the desert. Sadly, our sin is more subtle than that. Once in a while, we recognise our sins, but most of the time, they are like the serpent in Eden, crafty – slithering into our lives in ways we just don’t recognise. Some of the sins we know. Most of our sins are known only to God. Jesus knows all of our sins whether we know them or not. He has taken all these sins to Himself. He has taken them to the cross. There on the cross, Jesus battled for us. It was a battle to the death.
To all present Jesus’ death for our sins meant that he lost the battle. But it wasn’t over; in a few days later, Jesus came back to life. He rose up from the grave. He was the victor of the battle on the cross. He defeated sin, death, and the power of the devil with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. That ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan has been defeated, he has no glory, no future, but he does have a burning desire to drag as many souls as possible with him into the darkness of eternal banishment.
On the other hand, those who belong to the victor, Jesus Christ, have an eternal future of celebration with Jesus. Those who have the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith in Jesus Christ will live forever with the victor. They will forever enjoy the eternal reward of Christ’s victory over the serpent of sin.
God does not turn our sins into snakes. Instead, He forgives them for the sake of His son’s innocent suffering and death. For the sake of Jesus, He makes us His own that we may live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. We shall rise from the dead just as Jesus rose from the dead. We shall reign forever with Jesus. For we have the promise of Jesus, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Amen
The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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