4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” 6 Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 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. 8 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.” 9 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, he lived.

2.  Why were they impatient (disappointed) on the way? Several reasons:

a. The easiest way to Canaan after 38 years in the wilderness would be through the land of Edom. The Edomites were the descendants of Esau and would have been expected to allow Jacob’s descendants to pass through but even with all the promises to not go through any field or vineyard or drink water from any well they were turned down forcibly.

b. As a result they are having to turn around and go back the way they came and eliminate what progress they have made toward Canaan. They are headed in just the opposite direction they want to go. It’s not an uncommon experience, is it?

c. They are in the worst part of the wilderness they have encountered until now. Why me? Why now?

d. Aaron has just died after being told he will not enter into the Promised Land. They have lost a hero along with a good number of their original group.

e. They continue to be dependent on God for their survival and they want more than they are getting. Like us sometimes, they envy the success and experiences of others. I read a great article by Arthur Brooks yesterday about happiness and unhappiness.

“If you ask an unhappy person why he is unhappy, he’ll almost always blame circumstance. In many cases, of course, this is justified. Some people are oppressed or poor or have physical ailments that make life a chore. Research unsurprisingly suggests that racism causes unhappiness in children, and many academic studies trace a clear link between unhappiness and poverty. Another common source of unhappiness is loneliness, from which about 20 percent of Americans suffer enough to make it a major source of unhappiness in their lives. Circumstances are certainly important. But paradoxically, a better explanation for our unhappiness may have been our own search for well-being. And the same might go for you. For decades, psychologists have been compiling a vast literature on the relationships between different aspirations and well-being. Whether they examine young adults or people of all ages, the bulk of the studies point toward the same important conclusion: People who rate materialistic goals like wealth or fame as top personal priorities are significantly likelier to be more anxious, more depressed and more frequent drug users, and even to have more physical ailments than those who set their sights on more intrinsic values.”

3.  But they are not just unhappy. They are beginning to growl and grumble again. Remember what we said about this word “grumble” last week? It is the sound a dog makes before it attacks. It is not just complaining or whining. It is a signal that they are angry enough to be violent and, of course, it is their anger that has a hold on them even after all these years.

I like what Tim Keller says about anger, idolatry and unhappiness. They are all related.

“When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.”

This is why they could not break the cycle of unhappiness, discontent, and impatience that led to idolatry and anger. We want what we cannot have and that desire consumes us in one way or another.

4.  God sends “fiery serpents” among them. We don’t need much description of the fear and chaos this created. How many different ways have authors and film makers used our natural fear of snakes to frighten us. I never saw “Snakes On A Plane” with Samuel Jackson but I can imagine that is exactly what this must have been like. Do you remember your reaction when Indiana Jones was thrown into the pit of vipers? The whole audience screamed. It’s just natural, isn’t it? We, as a rule, hate snakes anyway but the thought of “fiery serpents” everywhere we turn does not need much help to get the point across. I imagine the panic must have been like the one the Egyptians experienced when the Angel of Death killed all the first-born males…and their response was the same. Pleading for Moses to intercede. This is actually the only time in the whole story of the wilderness journey where the people ask Moses to pray for them. Until now, they have complained and murmured – even repented – but never prayed.

5.  What is God’s solution? It’s odd, really. While he could have simply taken away the serpents or healed all the people miraculously, he chooses something else. Something symbolic of what is to come thousands of years later. Instead of eliminating the snakes – he provides a solution. Death is still an option for those who choose it.

“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 up at the bronze snake, he lived.”

Why a snake? Why not a symbol for something more pleasant and positive? Why hold up what was most feared and loathed instead of something comforting and encouraging?

It’s ironic, isn’t it? The very thing that was killing them is the symbol of life for them.

It must have been received as a cruel joke by some or as mockery…but it wasn’t. It was the only way to live.

I think that is why Paul says “the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Probably all of us would rather have another symbol. The cross is foolishness. The cross reminds us of our sin and convicts us of our corruption.

It is irrelevant today.
It is embarrassing.
It is unsophisticated.
It is intellectually unsatisfying.
It is out of step with the times.
It is not inspiring or encouraging.
It is offensive and divisive.

We hide the cross and hold up other things. Things that remind us of healing – not something that reminds us of our sin. We put education or liberty or freedom or economic justice on a pole and look up to them. We put satisfaction, significance, purpose in life, security on a pole and hope it will give us our lives and free us from the snake – but they don’t. It is only the thing that seems like a mockery of our intelligence and sophistication – the cross.

“The icon of Christianity is not an Oscar but a cross.” I’ve never heard it put better.

6.  But even then their tendency toward idolatry continues – as does ours – but in a way we could not have imagined. There is something in our very nature that makes idols.

Someone must have waited until the snakes left the camp and then taken down the pole and wrapped it up in a blanket. They probably hid it and kept it just in case there was another plague of serpents. I say that because eight hundred years later, the bronze serpent has become a part of Israel’s worship. Look at 2 Kings 18:4: “He (Hezekiah) removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.)”

A whole cult of worship had grown up around the bronze snake. It had magical powers to heal they believed and after 800 years it had become another idol to be smashed. We do the same in many ways. We make symbols into icons and then into idols. I imagine they had some form of serpent bumper stickers, serpent publishing, serpent knick-knacks, serpent jewelry. You get the idea. We take a symbol and make it magical. The symbol of the serpent did not heal. The symbol of the cross will not either. That is superstition.

How many of us have seen the relics of the early church – like splinters from the cross or the shroud of Turin? The whole industry of shrines depends on our desire to turn symbols into sacred places. We often do it without meaning to but we do it nonetheless. We start with reminders that become relics and then rivals for God himself.

Some have turned Scripture into an idol. They worship the Bible. We even have a word for it – bibliolatry.

Some have worshipped Christian celebrities or joined movements.

Some even worship the church. But they worship it for their own benefit.

“We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire.” N.T. Wright.

Not only do we persist in making idols but we do it by domesticating what was once dangerous. Over time, the serpent was no longer fearful. It had become a lucky charm and something that served their desires. It’s sadly the same with the cross. We’ve robbed it of it’s fearsomeness by turning it into a charm. We always want to tame things that are naturally wild. We want them to be comforting instead of convicting. Whether we do it the way Delilah did with Samson or the Israelites did with the bronze serpent, we want to make dangerous things safe.

One of the reasons I like the story of David taking the sword of Goliath from under the altar is he saved it from becoming a relic. He used it for what it was so it did not become another lifeless sword to be turned into a shrine.

God is not safe. In the “Chronicles of Narnia” the children are asking about Aslan and whether or not he is safe. The response is, “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

7.  However, what Hezekiah’s reforms illustrate is everything we follow except Christ is “Nehush tan” or “merely brass”. Hezekiah showed the people that every idol is in the end “merely brass” and there is nothing but our own self-deception that gives it power over us.

And idols must be smashed. Not put away into storage. Not disproved. Not argued away. We must destroy those things we have turned into idols. We must finally realize they are merely brass.

I’m not calling for book burning or taking away jewelry and reminders of our faith but whenever these reminders turn into relics and then lucky charms we use for our own purposes we need to smash them before we begin to serve them.

8.  Finally, we see the ultimate symbol for healing in the book of John. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 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.”

Elsewhere in John he says, “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”

There was only one thing on that pole. The personification of what was killing them. And God was in Christ doing the same thing. He became Sin for us. He became what was killing us. That is our hope – but only if we recognize and admit that we have been bitten and it is fatal. Nothing else can save us. Not education or politics or a better economy or democracy or even justice – just looking to Jesus. No one can force them but if they merely look they will be saved from anger, from idolatry, from violence and from death.

When I was a teacher at the Stony Brook School there was a small plaque on the podium that read, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” It was there as a reminder to every speaker who stood there that we were not there to dazzle with our own wisdom or to entertain or to demonstrate our own eloquence. We were there for one thing only. We sometimes need those reminders, don’t we? We need to remember we are not here to model our perfection or demonstrate our the rightness of our theology and practice but to point people to Jesus.