From Death For Life

Sick And Tired? Look and Live!

3.10.24 [Number 21:4-9] River of Life (4th Sunday in Lent)

(Ps. 107:1) Give thanks to the Lord. For he is good. His love endures forever. Amen.

Have you ever been sick & tired?

When you’re young maybe you’re sick and tired of the monotony of school. Drilling math facts. Diagramming sentences. Studying for spelling tests. For so many, our first experience of sick and tired was homework.

But it didn’t end there. Then you got a job. After the novelty of a getting a paycheck disappeared, the sick & tired struggle began. Especially, if the job wasn’t a career and the work was repetitive or not so interesting.

Even if you’ve reached retirement age, you still didn’t leave the struggle against sick and tired behind. If anything now sick and tired has a more literal sense than ever. You wake up tired. You feel sick but can’t figure out why. And you’re fed up with doctor visits and seeing specialists.

Whether you’re a student, a working stiff, or retired and creaky, you know what it’s like to feel sick and tired. When you’re sick and tired, you know that how you act and react can cause you a lot of trouble and doesn’t always make a lot of sense.

In Numbers 21, the children of Israel were feeling sick and tired. As a people they had been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. In those years, they had crossed the Red Sea, received the 10 commandments on Mt. Sinai, fashioned a golden calf, and sent spies to explore the Promised Land, only to give into their own cowardice. Along the way, their clothes and their sandals did not wear out. They ate bread from heaven—manna—every single day.

But they were not in the wilderness for 40 years because Moses had a poor sense of direction or God had a poor sense of timing. They were in the wilderness for 40 years because they were stiff-necked. They had rebelled, complained, worshiped false gods, ignored God’s commands, and questioned Moses’ authority. Most of the first generation that had been slaves in Egypt died off and had (1 Cor. 10:5) been scattered in the wilderness.

But even though their bodies were left behind, their stories stayed with the next generation. They still thought fondly of Egypt, as hard as that is for us to believe. And they grew to detest God’s manna.

Not only that, but as they were right on the edge of finally entering the Promised Land, they ran into a roadblock. Edom, descendants of Esau (Jacob’s brother) refused to let the Israelites pass through their land. Israel was forced to walk an additional 70 miles.

Finally, these sick and tired people broke. Their patience ran out. They spoke against God and against Moses. (Num. 21:5) Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!

None of what they said was true—other than the part about how they felt about the manna. Neither God nor Moses brought them out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. The only reason they were alive in the wilderness is because God had provided for them every single day. But they were sick and tired. So they (Num. 21:5) spoke against God and against God’s servant, Moses. They let low-level frustration and sinful impatience give birth to high-level fault-finding and rebellion.

You don’t have to be wandering in a wilderness for most of your life to fall into this sin trap either. In fact, you can be living in a time and place that would put the Promised Land to shame in many ways and still struggle with impatience and ingratitude. You can be sitting in the relative lap of luxury and still feel sick and tired.

Think about all the things we are sick and tired of right now. How expensive everything is right now. Traffic. Stress at work. The next election. Dealing with health insurance plans. Fixing all the broken and breaking things around the house. Family drama. How hard it is to find anyone willing to work hard. Chronic health conditions. The list of things that make us sick and tired could go on and on.

Imagine if God heard our sick and tired grousing and got sick and tired with us. Imagine if God did what a frustrated mother might do with picky eaters. You don’t like what I’m giving you. Take care of yourself!

Imagine God just threw you by yourself on a desert island. Nothing would be too expensive anymore. You wouldn’t have any traffic or stress at work. In November, you’d be elected president because you’re the only resident. You wouldn’t have any family drama. You wouldn’t have to deal with unreliable people. That hidden health issue would go undiagnosed because there are no doctors on the island and no insurance plans.

Now maybe that doesn’t sound too bad, right now. But give it some time and it would break you down. You’ve seen those survival shows. How long do they last? 40 days and we’re impressed. Not 40 years. By then you’d be longing for the life that you’re sick and tired of now.

But that’s not what God did. He didn’t take away their bread and water or cut off their supply of manna. God did not leave them to fend for themselves in the wilderness. Instead, God sent venomous snakes. Which sounds worse, even if you aren’t scared of snakes. But venomous snakes only accelerated what would have happened to the people if God stopped providing for them. Venomous snakes were the wages of their sin. They brought dying and death in the camp.

The Israelites came to Moses with a confession and a request. (Num. 21:7) We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us. They’re praying for the Lord to send someone to do what the legends say St. Patrick did. Get rid of the snakes.

But God doesn’t give them what they asked for. He doesn’t do the logical thing. God does them one better. Instead of just taking away the snakes, he takes away the death these snakes injected. God tells his servant, Moses, to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole and that everyone who looks at that symbol of death would live.

What mysterious mercy! Instead of God telling the Israelites that he is sick and tired of all their grumbling and complaining he says Look and live! Why? Because God has promised that it would.

When you’re in the dust of death, with the venom of a snake coursing through your veins, it might seem absurd to look to a snake on a pole.

But imagine explaining anti-venom to these Israelites. Imagine saying you need to inject some venom into a sheep & then harvest the antibodies its immune system creates. When you’re in the dust of death, what you need to be healed, to be saved, to live can seem rather odd. But don’t forget God designed that system too.

In this moment, God wasn’t foreshadowing what medical science would discover about snake venom. He was giving us a picture of how God would save sinners. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus connects the dots in a way that we would never conceive of.

God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son into a world that had been injected with the venom of sin by the serpent. People were dying. Yet, when Jesus came to earth, it is not that sin stopped being a thing. Nor did God take away the serpent. Yet, God did not leave us to fend for ourselves. He knew we were helpless on our own.

In fact, throughout Jesus’ ministry we see an increase in the activity of the serpent. People are sick and dying. People are demon-possessed. People who were considered to be the religious leaders grew intoxicated with pride and power. They called the One who is the Word of God a blasphemer. People who were called to be Jesus’ disciples tried to talk Jesus out of accomplishing his mission. The suffering that the venom of sin caused in mankind continued throughout Jesus’ life. The serpent seemed to be winning.

Until God did the absurd. He had his Son lifted up on the cross. Jesus was condemned as a criminal. Mocked by men that had made a mockery of God’s Word and his servants. He was stricken, smitten, and afflicted so that we might live by looking to him.

When we look to him we see that our God does not do what we ask of him. He doesn’t take away the snakes or the suffering we have asked. He does more. He does better. He takes away the ultimate result of the snakes, of our sin. He conquers death.

This is our hope—even when we are sick and tired. When we are sick and tired of the rat race, we have a God who has promised us an inheritance in heaven that doesn’t fade in value due to inflation or rust or spoil. When we are sick and tired of our struggle against sin and living alongside sinners, we have a God who has promised us his mercies and forgiveness are new every morning. When we are sick and tired and physically dying, we have a God who has promised life to all who look to his Son as their Savior and live. Amen.