Introduction: Grace be to you and peace, from God our Father, and from our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. Our text is the Old Testament Lesson just read, from Numbers 21. We begin with prayer.
Dear fellow disciples of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ:
- It is difficult to read a text like this from Numbers 21. It is drama, but not the kind one might expect, and certainly not reasonable drama. Strangely, the people themselves provide all of the evidence of their own guilt and shame – they acknowledge God’s deliverance of them from slavery and bondage in Egypt; they acknowledge that God has been providing them with food; they acknowledge that it was through Moses that God had blessed them. Yet they are discontented, angry, ungrateful, rebellious, impatient, and they vent their frustrations on God and Moses. In fact, they “speak out against” God and Moses.
- It is a very sad and insane thing when people look at the blessings of God and instead of receiving them humbly and thankfully, they instead choose to define and consider such blessings to be a source of misery and malaise. We might think that such incidences would surely be quite rare, and that most people would immediately recognize the insanity. In reality, this irrationality toward God and spiritual insanity is quite common among human beings – even within the church. Consider the question that children might ask: “Do we really have to go to church this Sunday?” Then consider whether or not you have had the same thought from time to time. Think about the blessings God provides to us through His Word and Sacraments. This is the same insanity toward the gifts of God that infected the children of Israel in our text.
- We have a lot of these kinds of thoughts – wishing we had a different house, or car, or bank account balances, or spouse, or children, or job, or location to live in, or health, or physique, or facial features. The length of the list of our discontentment – if we wrote it all down – might be quite surprising to us. So this account is important for our learning, our insight, our growth in wisdom, and for our repentance and faith in God’s gracious mercy and love. But sadly:
I. Our Rebellion Against God Is Often Directed Against Those Speaking God’s Word To Us And Leading Us In His Ways – But This Is Always Rebellion Against God Himself
Text: “The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness.”
Statement: The actual words were spoken directly to Moses, but God immediately responded because they were spoken against Him. The people later acknowledged the same thing when asking Moses to pray to God for deliverance. Often people think that they can somehow divide God from His servants, and separate the servants off – as though God can be honored when His servants are being dishonored. But the reality is what it is – that God seeks to work with us through His Word, and that He has determined to provide His Word to us through His servants.
Application: Now if those seeming to be servants of God teach against His Word and lead us in ways contrary to God’s ways, they are not truly His servants. However, if in fact they are teaching us His Word and leading us in His ways – but we don’t see this or judge this properly, and we then decide to rebel, we must be certain that we are not just opposing men but rather are opposing God Himself. We should also be certain that there will be no blessings for this, but rather judgment and punishment. So great care and caution should be advised and utilized, for as we all know we are easily misled by our sinful nature and have often come to the wrong conclusions when we refuse to receive instruction. And our text makes clear that:
II. Such Rebellion Against God Can Bring Dire And Loathsome Consequences – Yielding Circumstances Far Worse Than What We Originally Complained About
Text: “Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.”
Statement: We see that God takes all of this very seriously, and that rebellion against Him and against His servants is a “life and death” matter. The people of Israel thought of this as merely a logistical disagreement as to the procurement of provisions and the pace at which the Promised Land was being approached. I suppose they figured they had every right to question Moses and God about these things – after all it was their life and existence and happiness that was being impacted. But that’s not how God looked at it. Rather, their attitude constituted a challenge to God’s prerogatives, His wisdom, His power, and His love. And this included their attack on Moses.
Application: Our sinful nature can move us to the same kinds of conclusions – to look at matters of God’s will, His provision, His prerogative, His plans, and His methods, as mere “logistics,” subject to our “superior” approval or disapproval. We may become convinced that our concerns, our judgments, our conclusions, and even our anger and sense of injustice, are fully rational and justified – that we have every right to call God into account and demand changes. But while it is true that God is merciful and kind, and usually overlooks these kinds of sinful weaknesses, it is also true that we can push Him too far so that He calls us to repentance with terrible consequences before we destroy everything of our spiritual life and lose our place in His kingdom. So let us beware – especially in matters of rebelling against God, His Word, and servants of God’s Word.
Transition: But even in the face of such wickedness and punishment, we clearly see from our text that:
III. God Is Eager To Show His Gracious Mercy And Forgiveness, And To Give Salvation To The Repentant And Believing
Text: “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.’”
Statement: It is important to note that the people first repented. Second, that they knew that their healing was dependent upon the prayer of Moses, that he too needed to be reconciled to them in spite of what they had done to him. Thirdly, that their deliverance and salvation was provided through Moses, through the Word of God that he gave them in regard to the bronze serpent. And finally, their deliverance required faith – faith that by looking at the bronze serpent God would heal them and they would live rather than die. I’m sure that to many of these people this seemed a preposterous proposition. But it was the Word of God!
Application: We might also look at these prerequisites to forgiveness, healing, life, and restored relationship with God as unreasonable – but as Jesus taught Nicodemus in our Gospel Lesson, the principles of eternal life and salvation in Christ Jesus are the same: “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. . . . Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.” And we should remember that it is this same Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Who “gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; to equip the saints for the work of ministering, for building up of the body of Christ.” [Eph. 4:11,12] The principles are the same today as they were for the children of Israel in our text, and we should keep all of this clearly in mind.
But the good news is that God is eager to forgive and to save us, to give us life in place of death. But we are called to this through repentance, and through the ministry of God’s Word administered by His servants, and to receive His gracious salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Those who resist, who refuse God His prerogatives and reject the protocol He has set in place, are condemned already because of their continued rebellion against Him. And He will not be separated from His servants – they are doing His bidding.
Conclusion: So let us take care in how we look at the blessings God has provided for us – all of the good things in life that we have received from His hand, but especially the great spiritual blessings that He provides to us within the fellowship of the church and the ministry of His Word.
There is no doubt that there will be times when we wish things could be different, when we will wonder about the effectiveness of God’s way of doing things, and in regard to the advisability of remaining humble and acquiescent to God’s Word. However, we should think very carefully at such times – recognizing our own fallibility and the grave danger of opposing God.
So let us pray that we never succumb to such temptations, and let us pray for one another in this regard. God has provided us with His great salvation in Christ Jesus – the only Son of God. Through His servants, the ministry of His Word, He also calls us to repentance, to faith and trust in His Word, and He has promised eternal life to all who believe the Son. May He grant us peace and joy and contentment in His good gifts to us, that we enjoy His continued blessings and never fall into rebellion against Him. Amen.
Votum: And the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds in the true faith, which is in Christ Jesus, even unto life everlasting, Amen.