Israel & The Snake

I want to begin with a strange story from Israel’s past. During Israel’s wandering in the wilderness, the people begin to grumble against God:

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”

Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived (Numbers 21:4-9, NIV).

God gave the Israelites manna, but even great food gets old after eating it too much. The Israelites also suffer from selective memory and begin to long for the good old days of slavery of their slavery in Egypt. So the people start to complain about God and Moses. 

As a response, God sends venomous snakes into the camp, they start biting, and people start dying. The people immediately saw the error of their ways and repented, asking Moses to pray for them, and then God gave some very strange instructions: He told Moses to make a bronze snake and raise it on a pole. If people look at the snake, they will live.

This seems quite confusing because snakes are often symbols of evil (in the book of Genesis it is a snake that lures Adam and Eve into sin). So it’s odd that God would use that symbol as a way of saving the people. But the main point is that people only need to obey God by just looking at the snake and their lives will be spared.

Later on, Jesus uses this story to illustrate a truth about himself in one of the most famous passages in the New Testament:

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God (John 3:14-21, NIV).

So, Jesus is a snake? What!? We can push the metaphor too far, but Jesus means that In the Wilderness the Israelites were dying from snake bites, and when they cried out to God, he made a way for them to be saved, and all it required was trusting God enough to do the thing he asked–looking at the snake. They were saved by trusting God enough to act in faith. 

You’ve Been Bitten

It turns out–metaphorically–we are all dying from snake bites. In Genesis 3, we read how the Snake tempts Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. When they do as the Snake suggests, the life that God wanted them to live ends. Warning Adam not to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God warns that on the day he eats of it, he will die (Genesis 2:17). So the Snake killed Adam and Eve. 

But Adam and Eve’s story is all our stories. We know how God has instructed us to live, but we have all chosen to follow the Snake rather than God. The consequence is death. We may still walk and breathe, but we are spiritually dead and on our way to biological death. 

We see the effects of the snakebite all around us. As individuals, we see it in our culture’s attitude that we must look out for ourselves and not be concerned for others. We see it when things we know bring death tempts us nonetheless. The Snake’s bite’s effect is also apparent in the structures of our society. We see it at work when nations seem drawn into conflict with each other. We see it when systems create an ongoing cycle of poverty among marginalized people. The effects of the snakebite are everywhere.

We feel helpless to save ourselves from the snake’s bite. In Romans, Paul talks about how we struggle to live the kind of lives we aspire to because something like an unseen force frustrates our desire to live according to God’s law:

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? (Romans 7:14-24, NIV)

We feel divided against ourselves. Part of us desires life, but part of us always seems to be looking for death.

God Has Made a Way of Life for You

In the wilderness, God made a way of salvation for the Israelites who would trusted (had faith in) him. Faith was a belief (God is trustworthy) that led to action (looking to the bronze snake). God makes a similar way of salvation available to us: We believe something (God can be trusted to save us) and we look to the crucified and exalted (the word “lifted up” in our text—hypsoō in Greek—has a double meaning: exalted or lifted up, i.e. on a cross). Looking to Jesus is an act of faith that brings life. 

God doesn’t demand heroic feats of piety, just simple trust. This isn’t to say that God has no expectations for his people, but rather that salvation is offered without precondition. God expects us to change. I can’t say, “Lord rescue me from this life of greed that is killing me” and then complain that God pours out his grace on me and asks me to live in generosity. The commands God gives us aren’t our way of paying for the new life he gives us, but rather they are a part of that new life. He has freed us from sin.

We are invited to live life, not death. it is a gift from God to everyone. The universal scope of the gift doesn’t sit well with many Israelites. Many of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries believed God was on their side. They assumed that when God dealt with the pagan nations around them it would be to settle scores. But Jesus is God’s love poured out for all, even for his enemies (as Jesus said, “For God so loved the world”). We see Jesus display this impulse on the cross when he cries out for the Father to forgive those responsible for his execution. When God comes into the world, he comes not to condemn, but to save. 

Does God’s desire to save everyone mean that everyone is saved, no matter how they live? No. The scope of God’s offer of forgiveness is universal. But forgiveness can’t change the lives of people who won’t accept it. If we refuse Jesus’ forgiveness, we suffer a condemnation of our own making because we refuse God’s gift.

A joke I once heard illustrates this point:

There was a devoutly religious man who lived in a valley in a major city. The weather service warned that an incoming storm would cause catastrophic flooding, so people should evacuate the area. The man, confident in God’s salvation, said, “I’m not going anywhere. I trust God will save me.” The storm worsened. The floodwaters rose, and the man’s ground floor filled with water. He was forced to move upstairs. A few hours later, he heard a tapping on his window. One of his neighbours was in a fishing boat. The man opened the window and the neighbour said, “Hurry, climb in my boat and I’ll take you to safety.” The man refused, saying, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m trusting that God will rescue me.” The flood waters continue to rise and the man is forced to climb onto his roof. Shortly after he climbs out onto the roof, a search and rescue crew flies over in a helicopter. They hover over the man’s house and send a man out on a tether. “Grab on to me, and we’ll fly you to safety,” said the search and rescue man. But the other man still refused, again, saying, “God will save me.” 

The waters continued to rise and the man drowned. The man gets to heaven and is very angry. He says to God, “Why didn’t you save me?!” God replies, “I sent you a weatherman, a neighbour in a boat and a search and rescue crew in a helicopter. Why more did you want?” 

God can only save us when we accept the salvation he’s offering us. God isn’t the one who condemns. We condemn ourselves when we refuse the grace he offers us.

Not Everyone Will Receive It

If salvation is a gift? Why won’t everyone receive it? Jesus says that those who walk in darkness won’t receive it. People who walk in darkness are people who confuse the way of life with the way of death. They want to continue to do what is killing them because it feels good, so they assume it is good. The way of death can feel attractive. For example, if I am addicted to drugs, the high I get from the drugs feels like it’s life (even though it’s killing me). When I feel low after coming down from the drugs, do I admit that this is no way to live, or do I double down, saying, I just need to get my next fix and I’ll be living real life again? When we mistake the snake bite for real life, we’ll continually seek out things that kill us. We will see God’s true life as death (Those Christians never have any fun) so we’ll run from it right into the serpent’s arms (if serpents had arms).

God offers life. But if I don’t trust that his way is real life, I’ll spurn his offer and seek death instead. So the question is really, “Do I trust God’s way is the way of life or not?” When we hear Jesus telling us about the Kingdom of God is that a vision that appeals to us, or are we seeking our own kingdom?

Will You Receive It or Reject It?

God has made a way of life open to all people, so you have to choose whether to receive it or reject it. Do you respond in faith or disbelief? If you’ve never surrendered your life to Jesus, you need to know that his offer of salvation is open to you, no matter what you’ve done in your past. 

In the church, people may believe that this is a moot point: after all, they have already accepted Jesus’ offer of salvation. But salvation isn’t about a prayer we prayed once upon a time. Instead, it’s about our orientation towards life and away from death. You can pray a prayer of repentance, but continue to live the old life of death. 

I’m not saying your salvation is cancelled if you sin, but that trusting God means walking in the way he commands. Paul puts it so clearly when he tells the Galatian Church, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, NIV). Faith means living as if our old life is dead and gone and Jesus is living through us. And when we fail (and we will certainly fail) it means recognizing our failures and living in humility and repentance. This isn’t how we recompense God for the new life we have received. This is the new life we have received. We have all been bitten and the question is, “Do you want to live?”. If so, you need only look to Jesus.