Bronze serpent

Life can be many things; it could be a wonderful trip with loved ones exploring the Hawaiian Islands or a grinding work week full of unwanted overtime. Life experiences can produce the most excellent feelings of joy and heavenly bliss but the exact opposite is true too as life can shadow us with darker, harsher shades of life’s realities. As a believer in God I can’t explain to you for sure why bad things happen in this world. Some theologians would say it’s because of original sin and part of the curse laid at the feet of Adam and Eve. Whatever the source of our misery here on earth I can tell you first hand it can shake you to your core...that is if you allow it to.

As Moses continues to lead the nation Of Israel closer to their entrance into the Promised Land he watches helplessly as both his sister Miriam and his brother Aaron die out in the wilderness of Zin. Moses, not sure of the road ahead, sends out messengers to the king of Edom. In Numbers 20:14 it says “Thus says your brother Israel: ‘You know all the hardship that has befallen us, how are fathers went down to Egypt, and we dwelt in Egypt a long time, and the Egyptians afflicted us and our fathers.’” Moses is appealing to the descendants of Israel’s brother Esau; remember Jacob and Esau were Isaac’s sons and God had changed Jacob’s name to Israel. Now Moses was appealing to the descendants of Esau for safe passage through their land. It is really hard, sad even to read how Moses’ faith falters as he gets to the end of his life and becomes so unsure of God’s ability to provide for them.

Once again Moses and the children of Israel are disobedient to God’s command to take possession of the land and actually go out of their way to travel around the land of Edom just to avoid confrontation. They become very discouraged and they speak out against God and Moses; Numbers 21:5 “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.”

Now by this time if you are Moses you can be pretty certain that either the ground is going to open up to swallow them, fire is going to come down from heaven to consume them or another great deluge will overtake them. This time however, God sent fiery serpents to slither around the camp biting some and fatally wounding others. I’m glad we are New Testament believers, how about you?

In Numbers 21:8 God says “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.”

This just by itself makes for one incredible analogy  but what makes it even more important to us is that  Jesus Himself refers to this verse to expand our understanding of God’s provision not only for the nation of Israel but for you and me. In John 3:14 Jesus says to the world “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

The bronze serpent was a symbol of “sin judged” and a picture of how 1450 years later God’s One and Only Son would be falsely accused, judged for our sin, nailed to a pole and allowed to suffer and die to pay for the sin of the entire world. Many of us are like the nation of Israel wondering around in our desert grumbling and complaining about the manna that God has freely given to us. He just wants us to believe in His provisions, the death and resurrection of His Son, and invites us to enter into a relationship with Him (our Promised Land).

It was only the people who believed and looked to God’s provision of the bronze serpent on the pole that were healed and saved from the bite of the fiery serpent. Today we look to Jesus Christ, who hung on a wooden pole for the world to look upon. Hated by the religious leaders, mocked, beaten by the Roman soldiers the Son of God became the spotless Lamb that redeems us from the curse of original sin.  It was not iron Roman nails that held Him to the pole but His unfathomable love for His own creation.