The Bronze Serpent

Numbers 21:4 Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. 5The people spoke against God and 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 miserable food." 6 The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 So the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us." And Moses interceded for the people. 8 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live." 9 And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.



Within this passage is one of the clearest revelations of the Life and Ministry of Jesus in the whole of the Old Testament.


As I have said in my other posts here Israel has once more arrived at the intersection of the Cross and their lives. In spite of seeing the life giving miracles at every point that the Cross came into view.... Instead of understanding that this place of death was there for them to trust in the author of Life to walk them through the valley of the shadow of death to defeat its power and influence.... Instead of embracing the moment as a moment of potential triumph they once again chose to panic. The faithless refrain was the same every time they came to this point of desperate need, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" So God once more allowed the consequences of their unbelief to be felt. They asked for death and they found it in the form of fiery serpents. The bite of these messengers of truth was death. Many died from their poison.


True to form they once again realized that the God they had accused of desiring them to die in the wilderness was the only one they could turn to when they received the death they asked for. How like us. When we are miserable we accuse God of desiring evil for us..... but when we are beyond miserable to a place of actual desperation we turn (repent) and call out to Him to save us.


In His unfailing love the God of Grace always responds even when we would not. He could have said, "You got yourselves into this mess, you blamed me of seeking your death when I was trying to give you life. To bad. I've had enough of you! Figure it out yourselves." But He didn't. Instead He took an event that would happen thousands of years later and brought it back in time. He told Moses to fashion a bronze serpent and attach it to a piece of wood. In spite of their actual guilt..... in spite of their faithlessness..... in spite of the reality of the plague of death through the serpents, all a person had to do when they were bitten was to look at the serpent on the pole and there would be a life giving flow into their lives to heal the consequences of their wrongs.


Looking ahead to that day he would fulfill the prophetic symbol given by Moses Jesus said.


"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him." John 3:14-17


What a wonderful God we serve. Even after years of hearing the cries of a nation that continually rejected His love and His life, He showed the full extent of His love in symbol to them and in a prophetic picture through them to us. His own son would become sin for us who knew no sin that the serpent's ancient power of death would be overcome. A serpent on a pole.... His son on a cross. Thousands of years from the time Moses lifted up the Serpent to bring life to those who were bitten by the snake and were dying until Jesus was lifted up on the Tree of Life to bring life to a world dying from the serpent’s beguiling bite of sin. What a wonderful gift! All we have to do is look in faith!