DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, THERE IS A DELAY IN POSTING BOTH THE COMPLETE SERVICE AND SERMON IN VISUAL FORM. WE WILL BE ATTEMPTING TO REPAIR THE PROBLEM.
March 11, 2018 Text: Numbers 21:4-9
Dear Friends in Christ,
What does the word snakebitten mean to you? Literally it can mean someone bitten by a snake, but more times than not that is not how we use it. We use for it someone who has a run of bad fortune.
The washing machine springs a leak, a child is suspended at school and the flu hits the day you have a presentation at work. That person is snakebitten. In sports, the basketball shot is not falling, the hard hit balls in baseball are caught and the hockey puck is just missing the net – snakebitten.
Let’s journey with our Old Testament ancestors and see how this word affected them and how it affects us . . .
“SNAKEBITTEN”
The Israelites described in our text were snakebitten in both ways. Literally and figuratively. Egypt? Come on God. Moses, we have no food or water, what are you doing to us? This then led to one of the great sins of all time when the Lord does not do things in a timely manner – impatience. Impatience then turned to complaining and complaining turned to self-pity and self-pity turned to rebellion.
If you know Scripture, you know that God will not tolerate rebellion. So he sends poisonous snakes to punish their open rebellion and these snake bites cause the death of many. He also sends these snakes to show them their sin and lead them to repentance.
As we examine our forefathers this is where we enter the story. We often become impatient with God’s timing, don’t we? Marriage challenges, job upheaval, children decisions, chronic pain, recovery from surgery, political expediency and church building challenges. We want to take all these matters into our own hands without first seeking God’s direction through His Word and prayer.
The British/American rock band Fleetwood Mac sang it so well in the 1970’s with “Go Your Own Way.” We are our own mapmakers. We are the cartographer for our life. “Where’s Waldo?” Where are we? Taking a path right into the den of snakes? Rebelling against God and complaining about His directions and accommodations along the way.
God sent those snakes to induce repentance and bring them back to faith in Him. The incredible part of this story and most of the Old Testament is how the Lord continued to love them in spite of their open rebellion!
To this very day, God continues to use adversity and the various problems that we have to draw us back to Him or keep us by His side. And, by the way, many, not all, but many of those problems we actually bring upon ourselves – just as did the Israelites. But God will see us through them.
God had a solution for the rebellious Israelites. Those dying of snake bites were to look at the bronze snake that He had directed Moses to lift up on a pole. Those who looked at the bronze snake, not as a god, but as a symbol of God’s promise and protection, were saved. Those who were dying were given life. Their faith in God – that He still loved them in spite of their rebellion – healed them and saved their lives.
Out of that same love, God also provided a solution for our rebellion and us. The words of Jesus in our Gospel: “And 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 was lifted up on a cross to suffer the punishment, the condemnation, the eternal death that each of us should have received for our own rebellion. We, who were snakebitten with sin – and were dying from those wounds, are now saved from an eternal death in hell just as surely as the Israelites were saved from death in the desert.
Two things we’ve discussed today go beyond human reason: the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert and Jesus’ being lifted up on His blessed cross. Neither action makes sense. But that’s the whole point. Jesus forgives your sin of impatience and going your own way and gives you eternal life solely by grace through faith in the unlikely, improbable, but totally true fact of his death on the cross in your place. God would have us look at him alone for life and salvation. Therefore, by his grace in the cross of Christ, God saves his snakebitten people.
We’ve talked about things being raised in today’s sermon, but there is another thing yet to be “raised up.” We should say there is another person yet to be “raised up.” You and I and all believers in Christ are that person.
Paul describes it in our Epistle lesson. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Fellow snakebitten believers, by God’s grace through faith in his one and only Son, you and I will be “raised up” from the dead on the Last Day. We will not only be raised from the dead, but as God promises, we will be raised up to heaven, where we will live with him forever. Thanks be to God!
Amen.