With Eyes Fixed on God: 1. Snakes in the Desert

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”

Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 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.

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, he lived.

I've always loved the movies and among the many movies I have watched, I have really enjoyed the Indiana Jones series. I guess it appeals to the child in me. There is one scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark that was memorable. Indy falls into a dark pit and it seems to him that the ground under his feet is moving. He strikes a match and to his horror he finds the floor crawling with hundreds of snakes. "I hate snakes," he says, his fear of them very evident in his eyes.

I suspect that most of us hate them as well, and it isn't very surprising when we think of the painful death they can cause when they bite us. This is what the Israelites suffered during their travels through the desert. Scripture says that "the Lord sent venomous snakes among them" but as we are learning, we can't take everything in the Bible literally. What the writers probably meant is that the Lord withdrew his hand of protection over the Israelites and let the snakes bite them. But why would he do this? To teach them a lesson perhaps. Let's see what happened just prior to this.

One, the Israelites grew impatient along the way. We may be inclined to feel a little sympathetic towards them considering that they were on the road for a long time until we understand that it is this impatience that kept them on the road for so long. The journey from Egypt to the Promised Land was barely a few weeks, but it took them forty years to make it!!!

God puts us through situations in our lives to teach us patience, to teach us to wait upon him, and the quicker we learn these lessons, the quicker we get out of the situations. Unfortunately, like the Israelites we too get impatient, and then we too wander around, sometimes for years, until we get to where we want to be.

Two, they spoke against God and against Moses, which is never a good idea, because when you speak against someone you are, in effect, rebelling against them. What do you want God to make of rebellion?

I know of people who are constantly speaking against God, sometimes even cursing him because they aren't happy with the way he is working in their lives. I'm no Moses, but they speak against me too, sometimes for the strangest possible reasons.

Three, they whined and moaned, asking God why he brought them up out of Egypt? Obviously, they had forgotten that they had begged and pleaded with him to get them out, fed up with the years of suffering they had underwent at the hands of the Egyptians.

We, too, make prayers of God, sometimes perhaps not realizing that God does answer prayers, but in his own fashion. Unable to deal with this, we question God in a similar manner, presuming we know better than he does.

Four, they exhibited a tragic lack of faith when they spoke of dying in the desert, indicating that they had also forgotten everything that God had done to ensure they were safe. He got them out of Egypt without so much as a scar, gave them safe passage through the Red Sea when a blood thirsty army chased after them, kept their clothes, foot wear and health intact over the years, and they implied, by this question, that he was now incapable of keeping them alive.

I am sure that this, too, is familiar to us. We receive blessing after blessing — and we only have to take a cursory glance at our lives to see how true this is — but the moment we face something that is a little difficult, we believe God has abandoned us and we're headed for defeat and destruction.

Five, they complained that there was no bread or water, and in a shocking display of ingratitude, whinged about how they detested the manna God was giving them — given at no cost, without toil or labor!

Again, they didn't do anything we don't do.

I figure God must have decided if they really wanted to complain, he'd give them reason to, and when they came across a patch of desert sand infested with snakes, he withdrew his hand of protection, leaving them to ponder the consequence of a life without him to help them.

They began to get bitten and die painfully and not knowing what to do they turned to the same person they spoke against — Moses — to ask for help from the same God they spoke against — the mighty I AM. Fortunately for them, Moses was not one to hold grudges and he interceded with God, who also didn't hold grudges. He told Moses to "make a snake and put it up on a pole and get the people who were bitten to look at it for healing."

It seems here that God is breaking one of his own commandments about not fashioning any graven images (Exodus 20:4-5, 32:31), something that he appears to do again when he gives instructions on building the ark of the convenant (1 Chronicles 28:18-19), orders the carving of statues of angels (Exodus 25:18-20), and commanding that Aaron's priestly robes have pomegranates on them! (Exodus 28:31-34), but obviously there are circumstances in which God is okay with such things. (We are not going to talk about idol worship here; to understand more about this may I refer you to an article by Patrick Madrid).

So why is God doing this? To point people the way to salvation by making them aware of their sins and its consequences! What would the people who were bitten by the snake see when they saw an image of it nailed to the cross? They would see how their sins were causing them a painful death and repent of whatever they had done. This repentance would bring healing.

Do you recollect another instance when something was nailed to a cross? Of course you do. Many years later Jesus would say, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life" (John 3:14).

The serpent is not a representation of Jesus, but of the sin that Jesus took upon himself when he was crucified on the cross. If we want to stop sinning all we really need to do is to look at Jesus on the cross, understanding how much he suffered because of the things that we did. Most of us have looked at the cross and found forgiveness of our sins, but we tend to treat this as an event that took place two thousand years ago in another time and place, not realizing that it is a lifetime process of looking, and repenting.

I have reproduced a still from Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ here. It is a particularly bloody picture of Jesus on the cross. Take a good look at it. Everytime we give into temptation, giving into thoughts that are sinful, it is as though we are piercing a new thorn into Christ's head. Everytime we give into temptation, doing things that are wrong, it is as though we are piercing a nail anew into his hands and feet. I don't know about you, but it makes me never wanna sin again.

What else do we find when we look at Jesus on the cross? Freedom! Romans 6:1-14 says this. It is a little long, but worth reading carefully.

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

With eyes fixed on God, we get victory over sin and temptation, but that's not the only thing looking at God does to us. It gives us victory over overwhelming odds! Coming up next.