Snake on a Stick
Numbers 21:4-9
John 3:14-21
From Mount Hor they set
out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the
people became impatient on the way.
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 detest this miserable food." Then the LORD sent poisonous
serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many
Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have
sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD
to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the
people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent,
and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and
live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole;
and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the
serpent of bronze and live.
Numbers 21:4-9
In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul
acknowledged that God’s wisdom seems like foolishness to the world
and yet God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. Nowhere is that more
apparent than in our Scriptures today.
By worldly standards, God’s actions make no sense and yet God
works in these unexpected ways to do extraordinary things!
Take this story about a snake on a stick!
With a mighty hand, God had delivered the Hebrew
children from slavery in Egypt. Through
a series of plagues that hurt Egyptians and let the Hebrews untouched,
God forced Pharaoh to let them go.
Through Moses, God led them through the Red Sea. Moreover, God graciously
provided daily bread in the form a sticky substance called Manna. And God led them
gradually toward the Promised Land as a pillar of cloud by day and a
pillar of fire by night.
God had been very good to them.
Still they complained. They were tired of manna. They were tired of worrying
about where and if they would be able to find water. They were tired
of the long arduous journey toward the Promised Land. Therefore, some formed a
“Back to Egypt” party, which said that the best thing to do was to
consider this journey to the wilderness a bad mistake. They suggested
a return to Egypt where they may have been enslaved but at least they
knew where food and water would come from and they had something to
eat besides sticky manna! They
grumbled and grumbled and, in the process, lost all perspective on
their situation.
Then came the snakes and suddenly manna didn’t
seem all that bad!
Can’t you just hear them? “Hey, Moses! We were wrong! We know that now. And since you and God are such
big buddies, would you please speak a word to him on our behalf? Tell
him we are sorry and ask him to please get rid of these snakes!”
Then God does the unexpected!
Despite their obnoxious complaining and short
memory, God forgives them!
I really do think that folks who talk about the
vengeful God of the Old Testament haven’t spent much time reading
this fascinating book. Granted
the Old Testament shares story after story of God getting fed up with
people’s violence and complaints and injustice toward others. Nevertheless, every time God
gets mad, God also forgives. Every
time, one would think God would throw in the towel and start over with
a new species, a new nation, a new people, God gives them another
chance. God hear their
cries. God remembers them. Then God reaches out and
rescues them.
Of course, the rescue operation isn’t always
what one would expect. They
ask God to remove the snakes and God totally ignores that request. Instead, they find themselves
standing knee-deep in poisonous snakes and having to make a choice: Do they trust the power of the
snake’s poison to kill them? Or do they trust the promise and love
of the God who wishes to heal them?
It’s as simple as that! The snakes are still present. The bites are still lethal. The reality of their situation
is dire. They have been
poisoned and they have a choice: let
the poison take hold and kill them or look to the snake on the stick
and be healed.
This sounds a bit like some sort of pagan act.
God tells Moses to make a serpent of bronze, place it on a stick, and
instruct those bitten by the snakes to look at the snake if they wish
to live. This is an
extremely strange instruction given the fact that we know God
doesn’t like his people putting much stock in idols! That’s one of the big 10
commandments!
So I kept thinking.
Why a snake on a stick? Why
not just tell them to call on God or go to the priests and beg
forgiveness. Why use a
snake on a stick?
God wanted them to choose to live. God wanted
them to choose to trust him.
In our Wednesday night Bible study, we have been studying C.S.
Lewis’ Screwtape Letters and one of the observations from that
book is that Satan and all the powers and principalitie which wishes
to oppose the will of God want nothing more than to defeat us. The forces of evil, like the
Greek and Roman pantheon of gods, thinks of human beings as mere
playthings that exist for their use and enjoyment then to be tossed
aside. God, on the
other hand, wants to be in relationship with us, and, therefore, God
wants us to choose to trust, love and serve him. As C. S. Lewis observes God can
woo but God cannot ravish. God
does not overwhelm or take by force.
God calls us into relationship but God does not force us into
relationship. God
wishes and provides healing for the Hebrews, but they must choose to
accept God’s offer.
This then was the judgment of God that day: if they chose to live, they
lived and if they chose to die, they died. The judgment was that
they received what they most wanted.
As for the bronze snake on a stick, I think God
wanted the people to remember that God was stronger than even the
worst thing that could happen to them.
In God’s hands, a writhing, cold, disgusting serpent was no
more dangerous than a bronze sculpture on a pole.
In the crazy, upside down wisdom of God, the cure
for snakes is a snake.
Now let’s skip forward 1200 years to 1st
century Palestine. Here we
encounter a late night discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a Pharisee,
he comes to talk to Jesus by night, and that seems appropriate because
Nicodemus seems to remain in the dark about who Jesus is and what
Jesus has come to do.
Nicodemus tells Jesus he must come from God or he
couldn’t do the things he does.
And Jesus informs Nick that if he wants to see the Kingdom of
God, he must be born anothen,
a Greek word that could mean again
but could also mean from above or
anew.
So Nick, being a practical kind of guy, goes with the literal sense of
the word. “You mean I
have to enter into my mother’s womb a second time?” Jesus responds by saying,
“You must be born of water and pnuema,
a Greek word which can mean wind
but can also mean Spirit. Once again, Nick sticks to the
literal meaning and misses the point.
When poor Nick expresses his confusion, Jesus
says, “You’re a teacher and you don’t understand!” Then Jesus goes on to say this:
14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that
whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may
have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the
world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved
through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but
those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not
believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19And
this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and
people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
20For all who do evil hate the light and do not
come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But
those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly
seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
John 3:14-21
Just as the snakes injected venom into the bodies
of the Hebrews so too sin has injected poison into our lives and the
life of the world. The
effects of sin go far beyond individual human lives. Because of sin, our entire
world—in fact, the entire cosmos—was changed—broken. God, the one who created all,
looked at the cosmos—humans, animals, planets, stars, oceans, lakes,
forests, everything!—and declared it good. Then sin entered the picture. And just as snake venom enters
through a small puncture and infects the whole body, so too sin
entered into the world and infected everything. The cosmos became sin sick and
needed healing. And just as God once provided healing for the Hebrews
in the wilderness, so too God had a plan for the healing of the
world—the gift of his son, Jesus, who came among us to allow himself
to be lifted up for us—not on a stick but on a cross.
We do indeed live in a sin sick world. We live in a world full of
darkness. Like Paul, we
recognize that we do not do the things that we ought, but the very
things we ought not to do. Beyond
that, we also sin against others and fail to acknowledge it as sin. Even before we are born, our
lives are impacted by the sin of others.
We breathe air contaminated by others. We drink water polluted by
others. Even natural
catastrophes are the result of the world’s great illness. So we call out, “God, forgive
us for what we have done wrong. Remove
sin from the world. Remove
evil from the world. Save
us from ourselves!”
And God responds, but not in the way we asked or
expected.
Like so long ago, God didn’t take away the
threat. Instead, God
defeated the threat. He
pulled the teeth from the serpent, so that sin did not have the last
word. So like those
ancient Hebrews, we find ourselves standing knee deep in evil and we
have to make a choice: Let
the evil destroy us and our world or look to the cross and live
This is the gospel:
For God so loved not just individual humans but the entire
world—the entire cosmos—that he sent his only son so that any who
looked upon the cross and believed could not be destroyed by evil and
would live. Like the snake
on a stick so long ago, Jesus is raised up because God wants us to
live and God wants us to live now!
The good news of Jesus Christ is not that we get
to live forever! As sin
sick as we are, living forever would be miserable! T
he good news of Jesus Christ is that when we
believe the Kingdom of God breaks into our lives, we experience life
in a new and powerful way. Eternal
life is not something that begins after death but a quality of life
that defies our understanding of life and death. Eternal life is a life lived in
relationship with God and with God’s world and it begins the moment
we first believe! Eternal
life is a life still impacted by the effects of sin, death, and evil,
but a life that is victorious over sin, death, and evil because God in
Christ acted on our behalf!
God in Christ has acted on behalf of the entire
world when he allowed himself to be lifted up on the cross. For us—the world, Jesus
came. For us, Jesus was
betrayed. For us, Jesus
died. For us, Jesus was
resurrected. We are
saved. We are healed. We
are granted eternal life now because Jesus was lifted up on our
behalf!
Some folks ask, “When were you saved?” And they are expecting a date
and time when you finally said, “I believe.” However, if we take the words
of Jesus seriously, then we know that we were not saved the moment we
said we believed, we were saved the moment Jesus gave himself for us. The answer to when where you
saved is “We were all saved 2000 years ago on a hill far away on an
old rugged cross!”
God so loved the world! And because God so loves the
world, there is no one who is beyond God’s love. There is no sin too
large that it can’t be forgiven.
There is no life so broken that it can’t be made whole. There is no person so vile that
he or she can’t be accepted.
God loves us all. Jesus
died for all. Consequently,
God has no desire to condemn anyone.
God desires a relationship with us all!
Nevertheless, like the Hebrews so long ago, God
gives us a choice. Remember
God cannot ravish. God can only woo.
God wants us to choose him.
God doesn’t force love or salvation or healing upon us if we
don’t want it.
This is the message that Jesus gave Nicodemeus
that night—the message Jesus still desperately wants us to
hear—God loves you. God
loves everyone. And you
have a choice, you can choose the light and life that comes from God
or you can choose to remain in darkness and death.
God never condemns anyone for God wishes all to
be saved. However, people
bring judgment on themselves when they chose the darkness rather than
light, death rather than life, and brokenness rather than wholeness. The only sin that can’t be
forgiven is the sin we don’t want forgiveness for and that is our
choice and it has eternal consequences—not just hell after we die,
but hell here and now! God
does not condemn us but because God allows us the freedom to choose we
can condemn ourselves!
Christians like to
quote John 3:16, but I believe we shouldn’t stop there. We should always add verse 17.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may
have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to
condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through
him.”
Jesus on the cross is
good news for those who are perishing and foolishness to those who
don’t believe. But
remember, it is not our job to condemn those that God would not
condemn. Our job is to
share the gospel with others so that they—like us—have the
opportunity to look to the cross and live. We call that
evangelism—sharing the good news!
Most of us are here because at some point in our
lives we looked to the cross and said, “I believe.” However, do you believe enough to give
your life for the world Christ so loves?
Do you believe enough to keep your eyes on the cross, to be
light in a darkened world, and to share that light with others? Do you
believe enough to let God’s Holy Spirit work within you to heal your
sin sick soul so that you can join God in the holy work of healing a
broken and hurting world?
This is the gospel of Jesus Christ—not that you
say, “I believe” and get your ticket to heaven—but that you can
look to the cross and be healed so that you may live a cross-shaped
life which reaches up to God and out to the world God so loves.
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