The Bronze Serpent. Look and Live

Read the passage first

Read Numbers 21:4–9, just six verses. Then turn straight to John 3:14–16 and read on. You will see Jesus talking about the very story you just finished.

This lesson is shorter than the others, because Jesus explains the meaning himself. We only have to follow along.

What happens in this passage

Grumbling in the wilderness (21:4 to 5). Israel has been out of Egypt for years and is still traveling through the wilderness: hot, tired, sick of the same food God gives them every day. They begin to complain, not only against Moses but against God, asking why he brought them out to die in a dry place like this. They have forgotten everything: that God had just rescued them from slavery, forgotten Passover, forgotten the sea parting. Their hearts have turned away from God again, just as in the garden of Eden.

Venomous snakes (21:6). God lets venomous snakes into the camp, and many people are bitten and die. That may read as harsh. But think of it this way. Their sin, their refusal to trust God, now takes a visible form: venom spreading through the body and leading to death. That is what sin does to everyone already. We just do not usually see it.

The cry for help (21:7). The people come to their senses, go to Moses, confess that they have done wrong, and ask him to pray that God will take the snakes away. Notice that God does not take the snakes away. Instead he gives a very strange way to be saved.

A serpent on a pole (21:8 to 9). God tells Moses to make a serpent out of bronze (a reddish metal) and lift it up on a tall pole in the middle of the camp, and says that anyone who has been bitten and looks at the serpent on the pole will live. That is all.

Imagine someone who has been bitten, the venom spreading, lying in a tent. Someone tells him, "Go out and look at the bronze serpent on the pole." Some might think that is absurd. How could looking cure anything? Some might want to do something that seems more sensible, find a medicine to apply, or cut the wound to drain the venom. But God gave one way: look. And everyone who looked, lived.

What God did not command. Look at this carefully. God did not tell them to do good deeds to make up for complaining. He did not tell them to offer anything. He did not tell them to prove they were truly sorry. He did not tell them to walk over and touch the pole. He did not say how long to look or how to look correctly. Just turn and look, trusting that God meant what he said. Someone too weak from the bite to stand could look. The loudest complainer could look. The healing did not come from the sick person's effort, but from what God lifted up.

How this points to Jesus

This lesson does not need us to make the connection, because Jesus made it himself.

• Jesus chose this story himself. One night a religious teacher named Nicodemus came to Jesus to ask about life with God. Jesus told him that just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, he himself would have to be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him would have eternal life (John 3:14–15). And the next sentence is the best-known verse in the Bible (John 3:16): God loved the world, so he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes will not perish but have eternal life.
• Lifted up. By this Jesus meant the cross. He would be lifted up on wood, for people to see, like the serpent on the pole. And here is something worth thinking about: the serpent was the symbol of the very thing killing them. What was lifted up had the shape of the problem. The Bible says that on the cross Jesus took our sin onto himself, until he became like the very thing that was wrong with us, so that we could be cured of the venom (2 Corinthians 5:21 speaks of this).
• Look means believe. Numbers uses the word "look." John uses the word "believe." Both mean the same thing: turning away from yourself, turning toward what God has given, and trusting. Not doing, but receiving.
• Nothing to do to cure the venom. The Israelites did not heal themselves. They did not make merit to compensate. They did not first get themselves good enough and then look. They looked while the venom was still in them. And this is what Jesus invites everyone to do, including you: come while the sin is still there. You do not have to wait until you are clean.

Words to know

Eternal life (ชีวิตนิรันดร์) in John 3:15 to 16 does not just mean a life that goes on without end. It means a new kind of life, with God, beginning now and not ending even at death. It is different from the cycle of rebirth, where life goes round and round, and different from the heavenly realms from which one must return to be born again. Eternal life is being with God with nothing to separate you ever again.

The word perish (พินาศ) in John 3:16 means to be destroyed, to be utterly lost. It is the Bible's word for the final result of sin that is never dealt with, like a person bitten by a snake who never turns to look.

One more small story worth knowing. Hundreds of years later the Israelites kept this bronze serpent and began to bow to it as if it were a charm. A king finally smashed it (2 Kings 18:4), because the power that day was never in the metal, but in the God who spoke and the trust of the people who looked. The cross is the same. The wood has no power. The one lifted up on it does.

Reflect

1. The Israelites complained because they forgot the good God had just done. Why do you think we humans forget so quickly? Have you done the same?
2. If you had been bitten in the camp that day and someone told you simply to look at the serpent on the pole, would you have looked at once? Or would you have wanted to do something more sensible first?
3. Jesus says that looking equals believing. For you, what does looking to Jesus with trust look like in real life?

Pray

"God, I have the venom of sin in me too, and I cannot cure myself. You say that all I need to do is look to Jesus with trust. I want to try to look. Please help me believe. Amen."