Presented to Swift
Current corps of The Salvation Army, 21 September 2014 and Toronto Warehouse
Mission 614 both services, 13 November 2017; and Alberni Valley Ministries, 07 May 2023 by Captain (Major) Michael Ramsay.
Click here to read the Saskatchewan 2014 version: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/09/numbers-211-9-2-kings-181-4-1.html
To view the 2023 Alberni Valley Version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2023/05/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
This is the
Toronto 2017 Version.
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.
10. If at this point you notice that you have
forgotten your knife, you may wish that you had paid attention in class; and
now would be a good time to pray if you aren’t already.
Our
pericope today is also about snakes. It is actually a passage that has
interested me for quite a while, Numbers 21:1-9. We notice in Numbers 21:1-3
that the Israelites are on a spiritual high. They have just made a vow to the
Lord and the Lord has given them a victory against the Canaanites.
Victory: people
in Saskatchewan are watching their TVs now hoping that they can win a victory
to go on to the next round of the play-offs. Victory: hockey season has just
begun and TML has Austin Mathews. Can you imagine if this is the year that the
Leafs raise the cup again?
It is very
much this kind of feeling that the Israelites have as the Lord delivers them,
verses 1-3, but there is even more than that. They have just won a military
victory, a physical contest. They are excited. The Lord has delivered them. They
are celebrating and telling all the stories, I imagine.
And then,
right away, the very next verses, 4-9, the people revert to the complaining
that led to the Exodus generation forfeiting for themeselves the salvation of
the Promised Land. They complain against God and against Moses and they even
refer to the very bread from heaven that God has been lovingly sending to them
to keep them alive. They refer to this bread from heaven through which God is
saving them from starvation, they refer to this bread from heaven – to which
the Lord Jesus Himself is compared (John 6:22-59) – they say about this
sustenance and salvation from the Lord – they say, “We detest that miserable
food” (Numbers 21:5). How does that make their Heavenly Father feel?
Just like
there were consequences for the Exodus generation complaining consistently
about the Lord so too there are consequences for this generation rejecting
their bread of God’s salvation. This time 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, [here means literally]
‘the burning snakes’ or, better, ‘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.” The Lord sends
these poisonous serpents among the Israelites and they bite them and the bitten
Israelites die probably painfully. They perish from the venom of the serpents.
Just as Adam and Eve died at the hand of the serpent – so to speak - (Genesis
3) so too the children of Israel.
At this
point they realize what they are doing in blaming God and complaining and
rejecting the very life that He is providing for them. They realize their sin
and they repent of it. They call out to Moses; they beseech him to speak on
their behalf to God, saying that they are sorry and they ask for deliverance
from the consequences of their sins.
God then
tells Moses that He will yet again deliver these people. God will save them
still. 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, son of Nun during the
conquest of Canaan. They kept the bronze snake safe and secure for generations.
They kept it through the 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, Montreal, or later landed on Plymouth Rock. For hundreds of years they
used this bronze snake that Moses had made in the desert as 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 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 himself make hundreds of years earlier in the desert
to deliver the people from the serpents. This is a heritage item, an historic
artifact; this is a part of worship. This snake is a symbol of the healing that
God did in the desert and this snake was 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 a tool to worship God; they began worshiping
the bronze snake instead of or alongside God. It had become an idol. Are there
things like this in the churches today? What are the important aspects of our
worship? Music, Mercy Seat, Communion, Baptism? These tools that help us
worship God; can or have they become ‘Nehushtan’? Can people come to think that
they are saved by being baptized or taking communion rather than or as well as
by Jesus? Can people take good things that may have even been ordained and
commissioned by God Himself – like the snake and maybe like some contemporary
church practices - and adore those things more than, instead of, or as well as
God?
The word ‘worship’
roughly means ‘to adore’. Are there things in the churches, in our religions,
in our lives; are there things – or even 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 this flag? What if
we removed this uniform? What if we removed the Mercy Seat, 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 to refine them through the fires of
prayer anymore? But just accept them blindly? All of the words of great people
and the sacraments and great traditions of the churches and the Church, even
though they may have been ordained to point us to the very power of Christ and
Salvation, as soon as we start thinking that salvation comes through any words
like a preacher’s, any item like the Mercy Seat; any food like communion; or a
rite like baptism, we are in trouble. If we think that without that rite, item
or other we are going to hell, when really salvation comes from Christ alone,
then that symbol of God Himself could very well become ‘Nehushtan’ in our lives
and need to be removed.
Hear me
correctly: it is when we start to adore things in and of themselves that are
meant to help us adore God that they 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 important they are to us: no matter how long we
have used them as part of worship, if we start to adore them alongside God than
they become ‘Nehushtan’.
Now that
being said – listen carefully to me here - communion, baptism, the Mercy Seat,
and any other aid to worship, as it is a very important aid to bring us close
to God and as any of these aids help us express our love of Christ and our joy
at communing with Him, as these things bring us close to God and lead us to
think of and adore Christ then these are very important but anything or anyone who we adore alongside or worship
instead of Christ needs to be removed from our life so that indeed we can
worship Christ alone for Salvation indeed comes from Christ alone.
There is
one more thing that I want to point out here. Just like 1 Corinthians 10 points
out that water is a symbol of our very important baptism into Christ; so John
Chapters 12 and 3 point out that that snake in the desert is a symbol of our
all important salvation in Jesus Christ.
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 for the very hearts and minds and adoration of
His people. But what that bronze snake represents is alive and well and 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 good 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 this
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 can 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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