Sermons 2024

Video

Text: Numbers 21:4-9

Sermon Outline
    3.    Despite their complaints against him that they were figuratively snakebitten, God saved Israel from their literal snakebites by the bronze serpent on the pole.
    2.    We are also snakebitten—spiritually—by our impatience with God and going our own way.
    1.    But God graciously delivers us from our snakebites by raising up his Son on the pole of the cross.

BY HIS GRACE IN THE CROSS OF CHRIST, GOD SAVES HIS SNAKEBITTEN PEOPLE.

Sermon

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Have you ever seen a snake? They can sometimes be pretty scary, especially if they bite. That’s what we call Snakebitten.

Sometimes that word can mean that someone was literally bitten by a snake. Also, the word can mean that someone has had what we might call a run of bad luck. One thing after another just keeps going wrong.

For example, to describe a baseball player who’s in a batting slump, we might say that he’s “snakebitten.” This simply means that the player is doing poorly at the plate and we’re jokingly suggesting that the reason for his batting slump is because he was bitten by the “snake” that causes bad luck! Of course, there is no such thing as a “bad luck snake”; we simply say that in an effort to try to explain the oftentimes unexplainable. How do the people of Israel react when God sends snakes to bite them? How does Jesus save us when we are bitten by the snake of sin? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

3. FIGURATIVELY SNAKEBITTEN, SAVED BY SERPENT ON POLE

If we had been with the Israelites who are described in today’s Old Testament Reading, they would probably have told us that they were “snakebitten” in both ways that I just described!

First of all, they would have said they were “out of luck.” They would have blamed both God and Moses for leading them out of Egypt into a desert wilderness and then abandoning them.
They think that they were better off in Egypt rather than following God. For over four hundred years, the Israelites had been in Egypt. While there, a score of generations had died in slavery. Once freed from slavery, another generation had, by and large, died on the journey to get to this point. And now, the Israelites were ever so close to entering and possessing the Promised Land for which they had hoped for so long. But the king of Edom had seemingly clobbered their plan. He had just forbidden them to pass through his land to get to their destination!
 

Frustrated and exasperated, the Israelites resorted to a “trick”. A trick that every one of us is also intimately familiar. In their disappointment that God did not make things go according to their plan, they became impatient with him! Their impatience turned into complaints, and their complaints turned into self-pity. And, sadly, all of that then turned into rebellion.
 

Of course, even those with a cursory understanding of Scripture know that God does not and will not tolerate rebellion. Sometimes, he acts right away, and sometimes, he does not, but he always addresses it! Count on that. In this case, God moved quickly! Immediately, he sent poisonous snakes to punish the people for their open rebellion. So, sure enough, the Israelites were snakebitten in the other way too, and many of them died. 
 

By sending the snakes, God showed three things to the Israelites. First, he showed his just anger with them for their rejection of his grace and protection given to them for the past forty years and even before that.
Second, he wanted to show them (again!) that their own rebellious action was the direct cause of their problems. Remember, it was their rebellion forty years earlier that caused them to have to wander in the desert and not be able to proceed immediately from Egypt to the Promised Land!
 

And third, God brought the deadly snakes among them in an effort to show them their sin and lead them to repentance. He wanted to show them (again!) that their rebellion, their rejection of him, would lead to his rejection of them and their subsequent death apart from him in hell.
 

2.SPIRITUALLY SNAKEBITTEN
 

By now, you might be saying, “Well, that’s a good story, but how does that affect me . . . in my life . . . right now? After all, that was several thousand years ago. What does it have to do with me at all?”
We can all take a lesson from our forefathers in this story. We, too, often become impatient with God’s timing, don’t we? We, too, want to take matters into our own hands without first seeking God’s direction through his Word and going to him in prayer. And we, too—even if we do seek God’s direction for our lives—often find ourselves ignoring his promises and striking out on our own. Here, you see, here is where we all enter this story. Just like the Israelites, we, too, go against God and his direction and leadership for our lives. We complain when things to not go exactly how we think they should go. God gives us many blessings and we decide that we are better off using them for our own wants and desires rather than meeting the needs of our neighbors. We take small minor things that happen and use them as excuses to avoid worship or gathering around God’s word.
 

In the 1970s, there was a British/American rock band called Fleetwood Mac. One of their biggest hits was “Go Your Own Way.” I seriously doubt that they had any biblical concepts even remotely in mind when they recorded it, but that title, “Go Your Own Way,” describes our human condition. It describes the honest truth about our desire to “go our own way” rather than follow God’s clear direction and fully trust his promises.
The Israelites in the wilderness had rejected God and had determined to go their own way—apart from God. And you . . . me . . . well, it is our song too, isn’t it? We are— aren’t we? —constantly rebelling against God and his call to trust in him above all else.
 

1.SAVED BY JESUS ON POLE OF THE CROSS
 

We said earlier that God had sent the snakes among the Israelites in order to bring them back to repentance and faith in him. That was his ultimate goal, as it always is. God’s goal was not to condemn them, but to save them. And his love for them was behind it all! It is incredible, when you think about it. He continued to love them in spite of their open rebellion!
 

To this very day, God continues to use adversity and the various problems that we have to draw us back to him or keep us by his side. And, by the way, many, not all, but many of those problems we actually bring upon ourselves—just as did the Israelites. But God will see us through them.
 

As we saw, God had a solution for the rebel Israelites. They who were dying from the snakebites were to look at the bronze snake that he had directed Moses to lift up on a pole. Those who looked at the bronze snake, not as a god, but as a symbol of God’s promise and protection, were saved. Those who were dying were given life! Their faith in God—that he still loved them in spite of their rebellion—healed them and saved their lives.
 

Out of that same love, God has also provided a solution for us and the rebellion each of us has toward him. God sent Jesus into the world to be lifted up onto a different kind of pole. In today’s Gospel, John recorded Jesus’ own words regarding what would happen to him: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14–15).
Jesus was lifted up on a cross to suffer the punishment, the condemnation, the eternal death that each of us should have received for our own rebellion. We, who were “snakebitten” with sin—our own sin—and were dying from those wounds, are now saved from an eternal death in hell just as surely as the Israelites were saved from death in the desert. Every sin has been forgiven. All of those times when we have misused the blessings God has given to us. When we have despised the preaching of God’s word and gathering where He has promised to be. Forgiven because of Jesus Christ.
 

The simple act of a snakebitten person looking at a bronze snake raised up on a pole caused the “snakebitten,” dying rebels to be healed and live. They would live and be admitted into the Promised Land, where they would be safe from the Egyptians, who saw their worth only as slaves.
 

Likewise—but on a far grander scale and with eternal implications—the simple act of looking up at Jesus raised up on the “pole” of the cross for our sins causes us who are dying from sin to be healed and live. In Christ Jesus, through faith in his promise to forgive us of all our sins through his death and resurrection from the dead three days later, we are healed and will live with him forever in the promised land of heaven! Our Father in heaven sees us as valuable and precious—worthy of his own precious Son’s life.
 

The Israelites in the desert repented of their sins and received forgiveness and life. We, too, recognize our sin—our sinful desire to “go our own way.” Led by the Holy Spirit, we repent and daily return to our baptismal faith, where we live in God’s forgiveness and live out the new forgiven life.
 

Two things we’ve discussed today go beyond human reason: the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert and Jesus’ being lifted up on his blessed cross. Neither action makes sense. But that’s the whole point! Jesus forgives your sins and gives you eternal life solely by grace through faith in the unlikely, improbable, but totally true fact of his death on the cross in your place! God would have us look at him alone for life and salvation. There,
 

BY HIS GRACE IN THE CROSS OF CHRIST, GOD SAVES HIS SNAKEBITTEN PEOPLE.
 

We’ve been talking today about raising up things onto “poles.” Moses raised up the bronze serpent. Jesus was raised up on the cross for us. But the story isn’t quite yet completed. There’s another thing yet to be “raised up.” Actually, we should say there’s another person yet to be “raised up.” You and I and all believers in Christ are that person.
 

Paul told us in today’s Epistle how this will be: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4–7).
 

Dear Christians, all of you “snakebitten” people who were dying in your sins: Now by God’s grace through faith in his one and only Son, you will be “raised up” from the dead on the Last Day. You’ll not only be raised from the dead, but as God promises, you will also be raised up to heaven, where you will live with him forever! Thanks be to God! 
 

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.