SDfAoWOP: As Moses Lifted Up the Serpent in the Wilderness

We memorized this last year after also memorizing a goodly portion of John 3. It seemed the obvious next text. This has a certain rhythm to it if you go over and over and over it. Anyway, we talked about the text a lot as we learned it and it may be that I sometimes descended into preachiness.

Day Eleven

Number 21:4-7

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way.5 And 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 loathe this worthless food.”6 Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

The people became impatient on the way. They'd gone up to the edge of the promised land and decided they didn't want what God was giving them. They saw the goodness of the land and thought to themselves, “God must really hate us.” He's brought us all this way and here's this beautiful land and the people are so huge that they'll definitely win. What a terrible God to bring us all this way and show us what he can't give us. Not only is he small, he is unkind and evil.

And so 'the men delivered a bad report' and God, not surprisingly, was very angry. Somehow he could part the Red Sea and bring water out of a rock and rain down bread from heaven but he was going to prove much much too weak against some big strong men. But he is powerful enough, at least, to show us what we can't have.

And so, steeped in this wrong terrible picture of God, the people became impatient. They hated the manna so much they didn't the even count it as food. And they grumbled.

And so The Lord killed many of them, though certainly all of them should have been killed.

Just as I, standing at my sink, grumbling about the dust and the endless gray sky, look up at heaven and shake my fist. God must really loath me to give me a big house and some healthy children. He's given me life but he is too small to give me whatever else it is that I think I want.

And yet he stays his hand. His mercy matches his strength and goodness. The serpent that Moses lifts up in the wilderness, the snake that the people must look upon to live, is the Son of Man covered over, steeped in their grumbling and mistrust and sin. When they look at him, The Lord will forgive.