We will be moving on to the book of Joshua this Sunday, but we don’t want to miss the story in Numbers of the bronze serpent. This is the final and ninth murmuring story in the wilderness, and everything has escalated. In this biblical story the Israelites had to make a detour from Mount Hor to the Red Sea around the land of Edom. Again, they complain and are impatient with God and Moses. In response God sent “fiery serpents.” Now in the Bible, snakes generally have a negative connotation, but in the ancient world they have both a negative and positive connotation and are symbols of death, danger and fertility, life and healing.
7 The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So, Moses prayed for the people.8 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.”9 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.(Numbers 21: 7-9)
By looking at the bronze snake on the pole they were healed. In the book of John, Jesus has offered this story as a comparison to what He has done to heal and save us. In John 3:14-15, Jesus refers to Moses’ lifting up the bronze serpent to give life to the people as a metaphor for Jesus’ being lifted up on the cross and then raised from the dead. In His willingness to die, we were made whole—in his resurrection we are given life eternal. Praise God!
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