Saved by Snakes?
In today’s bible reading (Numbers 21), we come across one of the strangest stories in all of scripture, but one that – because of Jesus – holds enormous importance. It’s the story of the venomous snakes in the wilderness.
In the words of Indiana Jones, “Why’d it have to be snakes?”
To make a long story short, God liberated Israel from its slavery in Egypt, Israel distrusted God and detested his provisions for them, and so they were made to wander for a long, long, long time before getting to the land God promised them. Along the way, they are continually rebelling and complaining against God that the food God is providing isn’t good enough – and so that God isn’t good enough and his salvation isn’t saving enough – and so maybe they’d like to go back to Egpyt, back to slavery – where at least they had more food options.
How typical of us humans.
Biting the hand that feeds.
Cutting off the branch we’re sitting on.
God not providing the best kind of food he could be…seems like a very serpent-ish thing to think… So in Numbers 21, Israel complains again – and God says to them, “fine, have it your way”. Egypt’s symbolic representation was that of the snake (think about the snakes on Pharoah’s headdresses, sarcophagus, hieroglyphics, etc.). So when God sends venomous (fiery!) snakes among them, he’s basically saying,
“You want to go back to the snake? Here’s your snakes!”
It actually teaches us a very important thing about God and the way God’s judgment works: God gives us humans the freedom to choose or to reject him, and God’s judgment basically looks like God saying, “fine, have it your way”.
And so, the poison we foolishly seek ends up being exactly we get.
And it kills us.
Think about how many times we’ve been ruined by our own ruinous decisions… But, the people realize their sin, and ask Moses to pray that God would removes the serpents from them. But very interestingly, God does not remove the serpents – the source of their pain and death. Instead, he has Moses make a bronze serpent on a pole that, whenever a person was bit by a venomous snake, they could look at it and be healed and live.
Weird, I know.
But think about it: instead of removing our freedom to choose our own path – and thus our freedom to be human, to choose to follow God or not – he provides us a way out of our error and sin and destructive choices. He ‘honors’ and respects our humanity, even while providing us a way of salvation.
God provides a way for us to be healed: to be forgiven and so saved.
Look to the bronze serpent. Place your trust in God’s means of healing and salvation.
But still – a strange story.
Where its importance lies, though, is the fact that Jesus himself directly appropriates this story for himself. In his (famous) conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 (the ‘for God so loved…’ conversation), he has this to say:
“And just 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.”
Jesus (the Son of Man) is just like that bronze snake: look to him (believe in him), and be saved, be healed – and live.
When Jesus is ‘lifted up’ in the Gospel of John, he’s taking about being ‘lifted up’ on the cross. It is in and through his death on the cross that we, as we look to him in faith, find healing, salvation and life. God didn’t send the Son into the world so that people would be poisoned, but rather, so that we could be healed from the poison we have sought out with our sin and rebellion against God. He doesn’t want us to perish, but instead, to trust in his means of healing (the cross and person and life of Christ), and so have eternal life.
It’s amazing that the very thing that killed the Israelites (the venomous snake) was used and transformed by God to be the very thing that saved them (the bronze snake) – as a gift of pure grace.
And notice: the very thing that kills us (our sin, culminating in nailing Jesus to the cross) becomes the very thing that God uses and transforms to save us too (Jesus’ death on the cross).
He gives us this salvation through Christ as a pure gift of grace.
So – for the things that poison us: will we look to Jesus and the cross for healing, for forgiveness, for salvation – for life? Will we accept the gift that God has extended to each and every one of us, or, like those Israelites in the wilderness of Numbers, will we reject God’s provision and choose the snake instead?
May we choose – and believe in – Jesus.
Join us next Friday – on Good Friday at 7PM – as we focus our attention and our worship on the death of Jesus, as he was ‘lifted up’ on the cross – for us and our salvation.