Scripture reading: Psalm 107:1-8.

Sermon text: Numbers 21:4-9.

“Stop, Look, & Listen.” “Look both ways before crossing the street.” “Look before you leap.”

Most of us know of some catchy phrase that emphasizes the importance of looking ahead before making a move. Most of these phrases warn us of moving ahead without a clear knowledge of what lies ahead of us.

Today’s sermon text give us another piece of crucial advice: “Look and live.” If we ever need help in life — and I know we do — we must first look to a loving God who provides for us, cares for us, and helps us overcome the trials we face. The lessons of the Hebrews in the wilderness will reinforce our reliance on Our Father as we walk through life.

Moses and the Hebrews had just won a major military victory over a Canaanite king in the verses prior to the sermon passage. The king of Arad, one of Canaan’s major fortresses, had attacked the Hebrews and captured some of them. The Hebrews defeated Arad and the surrounding cities and destroyed the cities in retaliation.

The Hebrews could never have defeated the Canaanites in Arad
without God’s help. I’ve visited Arad and seen the ruins of
its defenses; its walls, even today, are still several feet thick,

and you can see the 150’ deep cistern that would have helped
the city withstand a siege. This city would never have fallen to
an army of desert nomads without divine intervention.

This great victory makes the sermon text even stranger.
How could the Hebrews have experienced God’s mighty aid
in their victory and then grumbled against Him within such a
short time? How could the Hebrews have forgotten God’s care
for them?

Let’s examine the complaints in detail, because I think we often hear the same complaints today, even if we hear them in slightly different forms.

First, God brought the Hebrews out of Egypt because the Egyptians had enslaved them and they had cried for deliverance. Somehow, the Hebrews forgot they had cried to God for Him to bring them from slavery. Then, when God answered their prayers, the Hebrews complained that He had taken them from the comfort of Egypt into the dangers of the wilderness.

It’s no secret at New Hope that I love The Lord of the Rings. In one point in the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo Baggins tells his nephew Frodo, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” I often see people cry to God for help in a situation, only to hear them grumble later when God answered their prayers by taking them in an unexpected direction.

We don’t serve a safe God; we serve a mighty God who reserves the right to answer our prayers in a manner of His choosing. God took the Hebrews into the wilderness to forge a nation out of a rabble of slaves. Forging a nation requires discipline — i.e. laws — and, quite frequently, the shedding of blood as the fledgling nation develops the military power required to defend itself. God gave the Hebrews their law at Mt. Sinai. He then spent 40 years helping the people see the importance of keeping that law and giving them the military experience necessary to develop a fighting force that could defend their nation. In our case, we need to remember that God takes us into situations to develop us into the believers we’ll need to become for future service to His kingdom.

Then, we have the Hebrews’ complaint about “food and water.” I’ve seen the Negev, and trust me, it’s a dry place. However, springs of water pop up in that area in the strangest places. The Negev’s a hot, dry, dusty place; however, the springs of En Gedi flow year-round from the hills in the Negev. David would hide in En Gedi roughly 400 years after Moses. In other words, you can find water in the Negev if you know where to look.

And what about their “worthless food?” God had graciously provided manna for the people of Israel beginning shortly after they cross the Red Sea (Exodus 16). The people didn’t have to plant and tend crops, nor did they have to hunt; the manna appeared every morning for 6 days a week, and had done so for years. Now, the people began complaining about free food provided for them in the middle of a desert. Do we often complain about God’s provision in our lives? Do we give Him the praise He deserves for His gracious provision for us?

In addition to the catch phrases about looking, there’s another phrase that applies here: “If you can’t be a good example, you’ll just have to serve as a horrible warning.” “Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.”

A little research will tell you about the snakes in the region where this event occurred. One site I found listed 7 different poisonous species for the area, all of them highly venomous. One of them, the Israeli burrowing asp, has the third most highly toxic venom in the world, and it doesn’t have to bite you; it has sidewise fangs that spring  from its mouth to stab its victims. The most common poisonous snake, the Palestinian viper, can grow as large as 5 to 6 feet long. Most of these species will try to avoid humans, but they’re all highly aggressive when provoked, preferring to strike first and ask questions later. Regardless of which species of snake invaded the camp, the Hebrews experienced my worst nightmare: snakes everywhere! Forget Snakes on a Plane; the Hebrews faced “Snakes in the Camp,” and not even Samuel L. Jackson could have helped.

We now see the end of the pattern of grumbling recorded in Numbers. First, the people complain; God sends a shocking reminder of their privileged status; the people repent, and God provides a means of deliverance. In this case, the people approached Moses: “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.”

God gave Moses one of the most bizarre means of deliverance you’ll find in history. “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’” You’ll notice that Moses asked no questions; he crafted a bronze serpent, lifted it on a pole, and “if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” The people learned a new lesson in reliance on God, and they learned something about faith as well. Most people would scoff at using a bronze serpent as a snakebite remedy, but those with the faith to obey God’s command would look at the serpent and experience healing instantly.

“Look to the bronze snake, and live.” This doesn’t sound like a catchy phrase for life today, does it? Perhaps it will help if we remember that much of Israel’s history, including her wilderness experience, served as an archetype of our salvation.

Humanity entered our wilderness when Adam and Eve sinned against God and were case from the Garden of Eden. We’ve suffered slavery under sin and death ever since. Time and again, God provided means of salvation for all who believe in Him: The covenant with Noah, the covenant of Abraham, and the covenant of Mt. Sinai all pointed the faithful to the grace of God and the necessity of belief in Him as the means of salvation. Some will say, “Well, the last covenant applied only to the Hebrews.” I’d respond by asking them to read Jesus’ genealogy in the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew and highlighting the believing Gentiles in that genealogy. By the time of Jesus’ birth, most synagogues in the Greco-Roman world counted numerous “God-fearers,” or believing Gentiles, as regular worshipers. God has always accepted everyone who believed in Him, seeking a return from the wilderness.

Then, Jesus came. Forget everything you ever thought about a God who doesn’t understand humanity. God Himself became human, fully human yet fully divine. Jesus, the only-begotten, eternal Son of God, lived under the Jewish law (Galatians 4:4-6). Jesus used the story of the fiery serpents to point to His own participation in salvation history: “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” (John 3:14-15). Jesus later said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). These sayings pointed to His crucifixion and its role in our salvation. As Jesus said, everyone who looks to Him for salvation, realizing His death became our sacrifice, will receive salvation and eternal life.

I think this applies to everyone here, believer or unbeliever.

For the unbeliever, the lesson’s rather obvious. You remain in the wilderness of sin, separated from God by your unbelief and your own stubborn pride. You choose to ignore that God has provided everything you have that defines you, choosing instead to believe in the laughable farce that you’re “self-made.” You’ve suffered the bite of the serpent of sin, and you need help. For you, I say: Look to Jesus, and live. Conquer your stubborn pride, admit you’ve sinned against God, and you need help. Look to Jesus, and live.

For the believer, I think we also have an obvious lesson. We often find ourselves like the Hebrews: Wandering around in our lives, grumbling about our circumstances, instead of recognizing God’s provision for us. We grumble about our jobs, forgetting that God provided them to us so we can provide for our families and, through our congregation, for those less fortunate than ourselves. We grumble about the people in our lives, forgetting that God uses them as avenues of blessing and as means of blessing them. We must bless those around us by allowing God to work in their lives through us. We sometimes need the wilderness to remind us of how much God has given us.

And, for both groups, I believe we need to remember that this wilderness in which we live will not last forever. We’ll one day hear a trumpet and see the skies rip before us (1 Thessalonians 4); we’ll look up and see Jesus returning to take His people into an eternal city where all who dwell there will leave behind the wilderness of sin. The unbelievers will enter an eternal wilderness of separation from God, complete with the torment of knowing their own pride put them there, while the believers in Christ will enjoy His eternal presence in a new heaven and new earth. Today, I encourage you: Look to Jesus, confess Him as Lord, and live forever. Look, and live.