Fourth Sunday in Lent

Fourth Sunday in Lent (B)

March 14, 2021

Text: Num. 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

            For God so loved Israel, that He commanded Moses to make a fiery serpent of bronze and set it on a pole, that everyone who was bitten, but looked at the bronze serpent, should not perish, but have life. 

            The people had sinned.  They became impatient.  They grumbled.  Against God.  And against God’s man, Moses.  And the charges they brought against God and Moses are nothing short of astounding.  They were angry that God freed them from slavery in Egypt.  And they actually said of His salvation that it is anything but.  That He only saved them so He could murder them in the wilderness.  Yes, they were making the argument that God’s salvation is, in fact, damnation, and the bondage from which He freed them is their salvation.

            And then, this worthless bread.  The Hebrew word actually is “bread,” לֶחֶם, (you know, as in בֵּית־לָחֶם, Bethlehem, “House of Bread”), not just food in general, as our English translation has it.  Because they are complaining about something specific; namely, the manna, the bread that miraculously appears on the ground like dew every morning except for the Sabbath, free for the taking, delicious, like wafers made with honey (Ex. 16:31).  In fact, they say there is no bread… except for this worthless bread God sends us each day (Num. 21:5).  Never mind the quail God had sent on another occasion when the people grumbled about the bread (Ex. 16:13; Num. 11:31-35).  Like a hungry teenage boy (no offense) with his head in a refrigerator full of food his parents bought him, complaining that there is nothing to eat.  And there is no water, they complain, although we know of the miraculous rock struck by the staff of Moses that gushed forth water (Ex. 17; Num. 20).  St. Paul tells us that rock followed them in their wandering, and that the Rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4).  And it should not be lost on us that Christ was struck by a staff, a soldier’s spear, and out came blood and water (John 19:34).  So to sum up Israel’s charges: God’s salvation is bad.  We preferred slavery in Egypt.  And we really hate the food.  We’d rather starve than eat it. 

            God sent the fiery serpents with their mortal burning bites as a chastisement for His grumbling children.  It was a wake-up call.  Why serpents?  Isn’t it obvious?  Adam and Eve weren’t content with the food God had given them, either.  A serpent came along and offered them other food, the food God had not given them to eat, and the bite was mortal, and it ignited the burning fires of hell.  God sent serpents to expose the demonic nature of the people’s sin, a sin that flows from rejection of God and His Word, or in other words, unbelief.  It is not that the people didn’t believe there is a God.  It is that they believed He was out to get them.  They did not believe in His salvation. 

            But in spite of it all, God loved His people, and His love moved Him to hear their cries for mercy, and do something about their misery.  The bronze serpent is a conundrum for many Christians.  Aren’t we not supposed to make graven images (Ex. 20:4)?  Well, the issue is, we are not to make them so as to worship them, as idols (v. 5).  That is a relief if you were worried about having a crucifix, or pictures of Christ, or even graven images of your family members on the walls at home.  You are not to worship a crucifix or a picture of Jesus, but you are to worship the One that image represents.  And when those images aid your faith in the One they represent, God be praised.  God commanded Moses to make the graven image of the serpent, so Moses was bound to obey.  And, by the way, some centuries later, under the reign of Hezekiah, the bronze serpent became an idol for the people, so faithful King Hezekiah destroyed it (2 Kings 18).  He broke it in pieces.  Because now it had become the kind of graven image prohibited by the Commandment.

            But there is something even more perplexing about the bronze serpent.  How is it that simply looking at that image, the image of sin, of death, and even of the devil, could give life?  Well, certainly not just the image does these things.  It is the image included in God’s Command and combined with God’s Word that does these things.  It is God’s Promise that those who look upon the image will live.  That Promise cannot fail.  Not everyone looked at the image.  Not everyone had faith in God’s Promise.  So they died.  But to look upon the image… that is faith!  It is faith that trusts God, that believes this Word of God in the image.  Do you see what God has done by means of the serpents, and the bronze serpent on the pole?  The people didn’t believe.  The serpents bit them.  God gave His Promise, which Moses preached.  The people then believed and looked toward the Promise.  And so they lived.  This is Law and Gospel.  It is repentance and forgiveness.  It is death and resurrection. 

            And this whole episode is nothing less than a prophetic picture of our Lord Jesus Christ and His love, not just for Israel, but for the whole world.  For “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up”… on the cross, for the sins of the world (John 3:14; ESV).  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (v. 16; KJV).  Whoever looks upon the Son given into death, believing the Promise that this lifting up is for the forgiveness of sins, does not die, but lives.  And not just lives to die another day, as was the case with the Children of Israel, but lives eternally… eternal life in Christ, who was crucified, and is risen from the dead.

            We have sinned.  Here we are in the wilderness of this world, and we become impatient.  We grumble.  Against God.  Against His preachers and His Church.  Against His means of providing for our salvation and feeding us.  This bread, this manna… we’re tempted to call it worthless.  Just a little wafer, not even made with honey, and a little sip of sickly-sweet wine.  This water from the Rock… just a splash or three, just a drop on the tongue, cannot possibly quench our thirst, can it?  And is this really God’s salvation?  Or is He out to kill us?  Though the Light has come into the world, we are in peril of succumbing to Old Adam’s love for the darkness.  God sends fiery serpents to chastise us.  Suffering.  The preaching of God’s Law.  Death.  These call us to repent, to turn from our grumbling unbelief and sentimental pining after Egypt, to Jesus, lifted up, like the serpent on the pole.  God promises life through Him.  When we look to Him, we do not die, but live. 

            But there is yet one more thing that bothers us about the bronze serpent: How are we to compare Christ, who is the Image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15), with this serpentine image of sin, death, and the devil?  It is, as St. Paul says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21; ESV).  Jesus becomes the picture of the serpent, that the image of God be restored in us.  He who knew no sin, had no sin of His own, became our sin by taking it into Himself.  So when we look at Christ on the cross, we do see our sin.  We see our death, the death and hell our sins deserve.  And we see the eternal fate to which Satan would lead us.  But so also, we see God’s love for us.  Remember that the “so” in “God so loved the world,” is not an indication of His warm fuzzy feelings for us.  We like to think it means that, because it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  But that isn’t salvation, and this love is not about feelings.  The “so” may indicate the extent to which God loves us, and that is all the way to the giving of His Son into death on the cross.  But it is even better translated, “God loved the world in this manner”…  In other words, this is the way He loved the world, what He did in loving us… He gave His only-begotten Son.  To be our sin.  To die for our sin.  To be lifted up on the cross for our sin.  To pay the capital penalty.  To undergo the sentence.  For us, and for our salvation.  And in so doing, to crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). 

            God so loves the world, loves you, and loves you in this manner: He gave His Son Jesus to die for you, for the forgiveness of all your sins.  And when you believe in Him, you are not condemned, and you will never perish.  You have eternal life.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.