Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

A Snake in the Past

by Dave Wilkinson

2 Corinthians 5:14-21

October 3, 1999

Today is Worldwide Communion Sunday. This is the one day when Christians all around the world gather at the Lord’s table. This morning I want to focus on a promise that Jesus makes to us — and to all the peoples of the world. It is a great promise. But it comes out of a strange background.

The story starts in the Old Testament Book of Numbers — chapter 21. Here we read about a curious event that happened in the history of Israel during the forty years wandering in the wilderness.

The twelve tribes are traveling around the edge of the country of Edom when they become fed up with the journey. If you saw the movie, "The Ten Commandments" you will remember that they became fed up pretty often--usually at the instigation of Edward G. Robinson. They begin to talk against God and his servant Moses saying: "Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread and no water and what food there is we don't like."

However, the rebellion doesn't last for long. For the Bible says that the Lord sent serpents of fire into the camp of Israel and that many people died from their bites. The people get the point. They come back to Moses and say: "We have sinned because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord that He may remove the serpents from us."

So Moses goes to God with the people's confession and request. And God tells him to make an image of a serpent and put it on a pole above the camp of Israel. "If anyone is bitten," God promises Moses, "he will live if he looks at the serpent."

Now there are a lot of interesting questions we could ask about this passage. For instance, why did God tell Moses to make the serpent of bronze instead of just removing the serpents as the people had asked? Or what is the relationship between the healing serpent on the pole and the serpent entwined pole, which is the symbol of our modern medical profession? I've also wondered if a serpent of fire might not be a good way of keeping kids from complaining on long vacations.

But it is not until the New Testament that we find the full meaning of this event.

That's the way God works. He plants these time bombs in history that explode down the line. Then we look back and say, "So that's what that was all about." This is what we find here. For Jesus declares in the Gospel of John that the serpent on the pole is a "type" or symbol of His own coming death.

In John 3, we find Jesus deep in conversation with Nicodemus, one of the rulers of Israel. After being confronted by Jesus with the need to be born again, Nicodemus asks: "How can these things be?"

Jesus answers: "Are you the teacher of Israel and do you not understand these things? Truly, truly I say to you, we speak that which we know and bear witness of that which we have seen. No one has ascended into heaven but He who has descended from heaven, even the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted; that whoever believes in Him has eternal life." Then comes the most famous verse in the Bible -- the one waved in football end zones and printed on the bottom on drink cups at "In-and-Out": "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through Him."

God plants the time bomb in the strange event of Numbers 21. Finally, twelve hundred years later, it explodes. That whole snake event was about Jesus. Jesus said to Nicodemus: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

A serpent on a pole? What an image of our Lord on the cross. A lily, a star, a sun, a "rose e're blooming," a spotless lamb -- all these are clearly fitting symbols of our Lord. But a snake? A snake is not a symbol of beauty but a symbol of evil -- under the curse of God ever since Genesis 3.

And yet, in a way, the serpent hanging on a pole is a most fitting symbol of the sacrifice of our Lord. There is a marvelous connecting thread that runs through scripture that leads us to a great truth.

Deuteronomy 21:23 declares: "if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, you shall hang him on a tree; his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him the same day--for he who is hanged is accursed of God."

The Apostle Paul picks up the thread and shows how this declaration applies to Jesus when he writes in Galatians 3:13: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us -- for it is written, 'cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree!'"

It is in these verses -- Numbers 21, John 3:15, Deuteronomy 21:23 and Galatians 3:13 -- that we find much of the meaning of Jesus’' death -- that in some way Jesus came under the curse of God on the cross so that we might be free of the curse of God -- that in some profound and mysterious way Jesus took our place and died the death that we deserved to die.

As our text, 2 Corinthinans 5:21, declares: "God made him (Jesus) who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

What this verse is saying is that Jesus didn't carry our sins to the cross like they were in a backpack or suitcase. He carried our sins to the cross in His own person — He became sin! The one who had never sinned -- the spotless Lamb of God -- became the very symbol of evil -- the serpent on the pole.

Jesus died under the curse of the Father. That what the Bible clearly says. A holy God cannot look upon sin and Jesus had become sin. When Jesus cried out on the cross: "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", it was at that moment that the separation between Jesus and the Father became total.

That was the true agony of the cross. Throughout history, many had died through crucifixion. After the Spartacus slave revolt was crushed, thousands of crosses dotted the hills around Rome. The death of these persons did nothing for our salvation. But when Jesus died He bore the sins of the whole world. We can hardly stand to bear our own, Jesus bore them all. The message of Easter is that sin lost.

Now in John 12:32 Jesus says something else about His crucifixion that brings us at long last to today. He says that His crucifixion is powerful and attractive. He said: "I, if I be lifted up, I will draw all people unto Myself."

That is the promise that we celebrate on this Worldwide Communion Sunday -- that Jesus is drawing all persons unto Himself.

We celebrate the fact that there is no country in the world today which is without a Christian witness -- even in the face of terrible persecution. We celebrate the fact that the church is not made up of persons from one nation, color or ethnic group but of persons from every nation in the world. We may not have much in common except the Lord--and that is enough for in Christ we find our common ground.

As C.S. Lewis writes in an essay on Christian apologetics, "One of the great demonstrations of the truth of Christianity is the way it breaks down barriers -- that it takes a convert from central Africa and teaches him to obey an enlightened universal ethic and takes a twentieth century academic prig from England tells him to go to a mystery and eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord. The two have little to draw them together but they are brothers."

There are about 380 members here at Moorpark Presbyterian. But outside these walls are well over two hundred and nineteen million Christian brothers and sisters who are celebrating this Lord's supper with us this morning. The number may well be closer to a billion. We’re part of a big family.

And each of these people is sharing with us for one reason -- Jesus has drawn them unto himself. They, like we, have looked at Jesus Christ --the serpent on the pole in the wilderness--and have lived. They, like we, have become the righteousness of God in Him. It is for this reason that we come this morning to the table of the Lord. Jesus has died for us. He has taken our place. And now, as we share at His table, we acknowledge the good news of our forgiveness -- and our place in the great community of forgiveness.