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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Based on the Message, 'Numbers 21:1-9, 2 Kings 18:1-4, John 3:13:16: No Nehushtan' presented to Swift Current corps of The Salvation Army, 21 September 2014 and Toronto Warehouse Mission 614 both services by Captain Michael Ramsay, 13 November 2017
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