Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 21 September 2014 by Captain Michael Ramsay. And Toronto's Warehouse Mission 614, 13 November 2017 and Alberni Valley Ministries, 07 May 2023
This is the 2023 Alberni Valley version. To view the 2017 Toronto version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2017/11/numbers-211-9-2-kings-181-4-john-31316.html
To view the original 2014 Swift Current version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2014/09/numbers-211-9-2-kings-181-4-1.html
Elements of this sermon were incorporated into Major Michael Ramsay's sermon to the Alberni Valley Community Lenten Service, John 3:16-21: Snake Clowns, 10 March 2024 which you can view here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2024/03/john-316-21-snake-clowns.html
The following is allegedly from the US
Government Peace Corps Manual for its volunteers who work in the Amazon Jungle.
It tells what to do in case an anaconda attacks you:
1.
If
you are attacked by an anaconda do not run. The snake is faster than you are.
2.
Lie
flat on the ground. Put your arms tight against your sides, your legs tight
against one another.
3.
Tuck
your chin in.
4. The snake will come and begin to nudge
and climb over your body.
5.
Do
not panic.
6.
After
the snake has examined you, it will begin to swallow you from your feet and
always from the end. Permit the snake to swallow your feet and ankles. Do not
panic.
7.
The
snake will now begin to swallow your legs into its body. You must lie perfectly
still. This will take a long time.
8.
When
the snake has reached your knees, slowly and with as little movement as
possible, reach down, take your knife and very gently slide it into the side of
the snake’s mouth between the edge of its mouth and your leg, then suddenly rip
upwards, severing the snake’s head.
9.
Be
sure you have your knife.
Our pericope today is about snakes. It is
actually a passage that we have spoken about a few times in Bible study,
Numbers 21:1-9. We notice in Numbers 21:1-3 that the Israelites are on a
spiritual high. The Lord has delivered them. The Israelites have just won a
military victory, a physical contest: the adrenaline is flowing. They are
excited. The Lord has delivered them. They are celebrating and telling all the
stories, I imagine.
And then, Verses 4-9, the people revert to the
complaining that led to an earlier generation forfeiting entrance into the
Promised Land.[1] They complain against God and against Moses and about the bread
from heaven that God has been sending to them to keep them alive. They say of this
bread from heaven through which God is saving them from starvation, they say of
this bread from heaven to which the Lord Jesus Himself is compared (John
6:22-59) – they say of this sustenance of salvation from God – they say, “We
detest that miserable food!” (Numbers 21:5). Parents, how do we feel when our
kids say they hate the food we made? How do you think God feels?
There were consequences for rejecting their bread
of God’s salvation. The consequence is a plague of snakes. Who here likes
snakes? Who here likes big snakes and poisonous snakes? And there is even more.
“The Hebrew phrase hannehashim hasserapim, [means literally] ‘the
burning snakes’ or…‘the snakes that produce burning’. The ‘fire’ was in their
venom, of course… The poison in these snakebites must have been particularly
virulent, leading to horrible, agonizing deaths.”[2] The Lord sends these
poisonous serpents among the Israelites and they bite them and they die
probably painfully. Just as Adam and Eve died at the hand of the serpent – so
to speak - (Gn 3) so too these children of Israel.
At this point they realize what they are doing wrong
in blaming God and rejecting the very life that He is providing. They realize
their sin and repent of it. They call out to Moses; they beseech him to speak
on their behalf to God; they ask for deliverance from the consequences of their
sins.
God then tells Moses that He will yet again
deliver these people. Verses 8-9, “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.’ 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,
they lived.”
This is great and this is exciting. This deliverance from the serpents meant so much to the Israelites that they actually kept that bronze snake around for a long time to remember this miracle. They kept this symbol of what God had done with them their whole time in the desert. They kept this bronze snake with them throughout the whole life and leadership of Joshua. They kept the bronze snake safe and secure for generations. They kept it through roughly 400 years of alternating oppression and liberation in the time of the Judges. They kept this bronze snake with them through the entire existence of the United Kingdom: through the reigns of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon. They kept this bronze serpent during the divided kingdoms, using it during worship, through many kings and political administrations, through many wars and trials and tribulations and throughout all these generations.
They used this snake in worship for much longer a time
period than the time between today and when the Europeans first organized in
Quebec and Montreal. For hundreds of years they used this bronze snake that
Moses had made in the desert as a part of their worship and then, 1 Kings
18:1-4:
In the third year of
Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to
reign. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in
Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abijah daughter of
Zechariah. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father
[ancestor] David had done. He 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.)
This is the snake that God had Moses make
hundreds of years earlier in the desert to deliver the people from the
serpents. This is an heritage item, an historic artifact; this is a part of
worship. This is a symbol of the healing by God in the desert and this snake is
a symbol of salvation and now the King of Judah did what was right in the eyes
of the Lord by breaking it into pieces, destroying it forever. Why would God
have this powerful symbol of salvation created by Moses, destroyed after the
people of God had gone to great effort over hundreds and hundreds of years of
adversity and affluence to preserved it? Why would God have destroyed this
powerful symbol of salvation that He Himself ordered created in the first
place?
He had it destroyed
because instead of using it as an aid to worship God; they began worshiping the
bronze snake itself.[3] It had become an idol. Are there things like this in
the churches today? Are there tools that were made to help us worship God that
can they become idols? Can people come to think that they are saved by something
other than God, such as being baptized or taking communion or saying the
sinners’ prayer or…? Can people take good things that may have even been
ordained and commissioned by God Himself – like Nehushtan - and adore those
things more than, instead of, or as well as God?
The word ‘worship’ means ‘to adore’. Are there
things in the churches, in our spirituality; are there things – or people -
that maybe God has used to great effect in our lives that we now adore like we
are supposed to adore God? For those who grew up in the Army here: what if we
removed the flag? What if we removed the uniform? What if we removed the Mercy
Seat of if people sat on it, the very spot where we are to come to meet with
God Himself? Would we grumble every time we came here? Do we love these
articles as well as we love God? Is there an author or a theologian or a pastor
or a person that you follow so closely that whatever he, she or they say must
be correct; so much so that you don’t even bother to test their words against
the Scriptures or prayer anymore? Just accept them blindly? Some people say you
need to do some things in order to be saved: baptism maybe? Sinner’s prayer? As
soon as we start thinking that salvation comes through any item like the Mercy
Seat; or food like communion; or a rite like baptism we are in trouble. If we
think that without that rite, ritual, or relic, we are going to hell then that
symbol of God Himself may have become ‘Nehushtan’ in our lives and need to be
removed.
Hear me correctly: it is when we start to adore
the things that are meant to help us adore God that they become Nehushtan and need
to removed from our lives; when good things that used to help us worship God
become things we worship, then we need to remove them: no matter how long we
have used them as part of worship.
Listen carefully to me here - communion,
baptism, the Mercy Seat, the flag, the uniform, and any other aid to worship as
it brings us closer to God, as these things help us adore Christ than these are
very important but when there is anything or anyone who we adore alongside or
worship instead of Christ, it needs to be removed from our life. Christians, we
need to worship Christ alone. Our Salvation comes from Christ alone.
There is one more thing that I want to point
out too. John Chapters 12 and 3 point out that that snake in the desert is a
symbol of our all-important salvation in Jesus Christ.[6] Jesus says, John
12:32: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to
myself.” John 3:13-16: “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who
came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the
wilderness, so the Son of Man [Jesus] must be lifted up, that everyone who
believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that He gave
his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have
everlasting life.”
This bronze snake that God used was cast aside
and destroyed after centuries of use because it began to compete with the Lord
-whom it foretold- for the very hearts and minds of His people.[7] But what
that bronze snake represents is alive and well: that is our salvation through
Jesus Christ, through Christ alone. So today I encourage us all that if there
is anything – even something in the church or a good person or a mentor in our
lives – if there is anything that we have come to see as our salvation other
than Christ, I invite us to leave it here in the sanctuary or even on the altar
today and never to pick it up again. There is only one who can handle all of
our problems and there is not a single thing that we will face in our lives
that God cannot handle; so I invite us here today in all that we are going
through, in all that we experience, in all that we do; to always look for our
salvation from Christ and from Christ alone.
Let us pray.
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