Num 21,4-9 John 3,14-15 The brazen Serpent
SERMON/PREDIGT WORKSHEET
Date: March 30, 2003 Where: SHMC
Sermon Title: God Provides a way of Salvation
Text: Number 21:4-9, John 3:14-15
W. L: Ewald Goetz
Major Recent Event: War in Iraq is raging on
I’m terrified of snakes!
They give me the creeps.
Oh, I know what they say about snakes
snakes are harmless
they only attacks in self-defense.
But I don’t trust them…
When Karis came home from school one day
with a picture of her and a snake around her neck
I had a fit…
You see, when I was a child
my mom and dad would tell us stories
from their childhood
growing up on the farm
with all kinds of animals
cows, horses, chickens, dogs, cats
and snakes.
When my older brother was a toddler he once came home
holding a dead garder snake in his hand.
My mother almost fainted.
He must have grabbed it and strangled it
As a little 2 year old
he was proud of his hunting skills
We’ve often laughed about that story…
Then, one day, my brother became a father of twins.
As they grew the boys were healthy,
and like many twins
they were up to no good
Two brains can dream up
more mischief than one.
One day, they were about 2 years old,
their mother had just given them a bath
after David got dressed he went outside.
Suddenly, he saw something that fascinated him.
It was a full grown rattle snake…
Her head propped up
in a “ready to strike” position
and shaking her rattles
to ward of the predator.
As a curious little 2 year old
David was attracted
to the sound of the rattles
Like father like son,
He wanted to play…
When he stretched out his hand to grab her
the snake struck him several times
and injected her deadly venum
into his body.
You can imagine his mother’s horror
when she went to check why he was crying
and she saw this vicious rattle snake
next to her son.
My brother is a Medical Doctor
so he knew what to do immediately.
He gave him all the anti-poison treatment he knew of…
and then they drove 80 Km to the city hospital.
There he would get the best available treatment.
For weeks they watched and waited
as their son hovered between life and death.
His hand, where he had been bitten,
was so swollen from the poison
breaking down the cellular tissue
that the skin ripped open
and left him with permanent scars.
My nephew survived his close encounter
with a deadly serpent.
And he has some nasty scars to prove it.
Have you ever been bitten by the snake?
Struck by the mortal enemy?
I don’t mean literally, like my nephew…
I mean, have you ever felt
the poisonous attack of the devil?
Maybe you thought that you were
looking at a harmless plaything…
And zing…
you were struck…
Maybe you never even saw it coming…
and the poisonous strike
left you dazed and confused
The snake is in the camp…
Satan is at work in the world.
From the time of creation
then serpent is a symbol of evil,
the personification of Satan,
the tempter,
the one that leads us away from God,
the one that causes bad things to happen.
We think of evil in two ways:
There is first of all natural evil…
the bad things that are out of our control…
diseases such as Juvenile Diabetes,
Cancer, Downs Syndrome,
natural disasters, such floods, tornadoes,
airplane and car crashes.
There is also moral evil…
- what we call human sin -
relationships that go sour,
marriages that break up in separation & divorce,
people can’t reconcile their differences,
parents and children…
too caught up in their pride
to say “I’m sorry”,
lack of forgiveness,
people holding a grudge for years and decades,
people seeking false intimacy…
in premarital or extramarital sex,
in an Internet chat room,
or even pornography,
people destroying their lives
with destructive thoughts and behaviours,
greed that sucks the joy out of doing good to others.
Do you feel the sting?
Have you been bitten by the snake?
I know I have…
and I have the scars to prove it…
But, just a minute…
We don’t like to show off our bite marks.
We don’t want others to know that we have been bitten,
even though sometimes it is pretty obvious.
Some scars are difficult to hide.
Some of us grow a pretty thick layer of skin
over top of our bite marks,
and we often pretend that we are “just fine”…
I know… I can be pretty crusty sometimes
The miracle of God’s love for us
is that healing comes as a result
of confessing our need for God.
Regardless of the nature of our wounds…
Matthew Henry’s Commentary suggests that:
God’s people had been slaves in Egypt
for four hundred years.
Now they had escaped from Egypt,
and they were wandering in the dessert
toward the Promised Land.
Moses led them on a detour around Edom,
because the Edomites wouldn’t allow them
to go through their territory.
God had provided them with food and water,
the basic daily needs for their journey.
Heavenly manna (bread from heaven)
and water from the rock.
That was pretty amazing stuff!
And yet, the people began to grumble and complain.
They were discouraged.
They had imagined a relatively easy trip,
straight through the dessert
to the promised land,
without any glitches along the way.
Now they were starting to murmur and complain
against Moses and against God Himself.
Because of their ingratitude
God sent an infestation of fiery snakes
to strike them with fury…
and many Israelites died.
Overcome by God’s wrath,
the people turned back to Moses and to God
begging for mercy.
They repent of their ingratitude and complaining,
they confess their total dependence on God,
and God provides for them a way of salvation.
Moses is instructed to craft a brazen serpent,
- that is a serpent made out of bronze -
and to raise it on a high pole
in the middle of the settlement,
so that it may be seen from any place in the camp.
Then, if anyone was bitten by a snake
they only needed to look
upon the bronze snake on the pole
and their faith would save them.
God provided a way of salvation for all who believe.
The question is not if… but when…
When we are struck by the fiery bite of the serpent,
when we fall into temptation,
when we have disagrements in our families,
when we fail God and go our own ways,
we do not need to be condemned for ever. God provides a way of salvation.
All we have to do is to recognize our need for God,
to look at Jesus on the cross,
and to claim his healing blood
for our salvation.
Unfortunately we often seek to deal with it ourselves.
We use up all our energies
to hide the fact that we have been zinged
by the fiery snake.
We devise clever disguises
and cover up our bitemarks
to make them invisible to others.
But inside of us the poison spreads.
Our consience gets dull
and we don’t feel anymore
the attacks of the mortal enemy.
Our heart grows cold towards others
who may be in the same camp.
We lash out in our poisoned,
hardened condition
and hurt others around us.
The Good News is that we don’t need to do that
because God provides for us a way of salvation.
He doesn’t remove evil from our midst.
But he gives us a way to deal with it.
The harsh reality is that
as long as we are on our human journey
snake bites will happen.
Evil will always be with us.
The fiery snake will always strike at us.
Temptation is guaranteed.
That is a consequence of sin
that was determined already
in the Garden Eden.
When God drove Adam and Eve
out of the Garden after they had sinned,
God said to the serpent that had tempted them:
“I will set enmity between you
and the human race.
You will strike them on the heel
and they will crush your head.”
Snake bites happen.
The question is,
What do we do with them?
The snake is in our camp…
And ready to strike at every opportunity…
Sin happens…
Pride, disobedience, rebelion against God
Evil happens…
Hurricanes, drownings, murder, war…
Satan will strike where and when he can…
He seeks to poison our heart against God.
What do we do when we get bitten?
In John 3:14-15 the Evangelist says,
“Even as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness
even so the Son of Man
must be lifted up
so that whoever believes in him
should not perish
but have everlasting life.”
The amazing thing is that
when we get struck
by the poisonous fangs of the snake
God doesn’t says to us
“I told you so.”
God is saddened
by the wrong choices we make…
and by the evil that befalls us .
God feels the strike of the snake with us.
And in Jesus Christ, the healer,
lifted up on the cross,
he provides for us a way of salvation.
My nephew is alive and well today.
He’s growing up strong and healthy.
But he has some visible signs
of his close encounter
with a mortal enemy.
The scars on his hand are
a visible reminder of the day
when he stared death in the face.
But, by God’s grace he’s alive.
You and I also have the scars
to prove our close encounters with sin and death. Some of our scars
will remain with us for the rest of our lives.
Others will heal.
And by God’s grace
they will makes us better people.
But we have a choice to make.
We can allow our experiences
to turn us into hardened individuals.
We can become poisoned with bitterness and anger…
all pent up inside us…
ready to break us apart.
Or we can look to the Man of Galilee
who is lifted up on the cross
for our salvation.
I invite you to take a long hard look at yourself.
Where have you experienced
the vicious bite of the fiery serpent?
How are you really doing?
How is your marriage doing?
Your relationship with your loved ones
and friends?
your parents?
your children?
How do you handle your temptations…
To cheat in school or at work?
To waste your time on questionable activities?
To engage in things that dishonor God?
What about the other type of evil?
How do you handle situations
that are beyond your control?
The loss of someone you love?
the rejection of your friends,
your work place
and even your church?
How do you deal with your grief?
When the numbing shock subsides
and reality sets in?
What do you do with the anger,
the resentment against man and God,
the anxiety and fear of the future?
Do you see yourself in the camp?
I know I am…
Have you been struck by the fiery snake?
I know I have…
And I also know that there is only one way to be saved…
namely, to look at the Cross
and to see Jesus there in faith.
The One, pure, holy Son of God…
The only One who did not deserve
the punishment…
The One who took the sting
of sin and death upon himself,
who felt the guilt of our sin…
who felt the pain of our grief…
Christ alone can heal all our pain.
When we look to Him in faith,
raised up on the pole on Calvary
we will live.
God extends his invitation to you and me.
Look to the cross…
the instrument of evil itself…
Look that evil in the eye…
look at the pain in your relationships…
look at your unforgiving heart…
look at the grief that is turning you
away from God.
Confess your need for God…
and let Christ’s death on the cross
be the healing of your mind,
body, soul and spirit.
Look at him in faith…
An live!