Numbers 21:4-9 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Fourth Sunday in Lent Sunday, March 10, 2024 “See God’s Surprising Solution”
What should you do if you get bit by a rattlesnake? That’s actually a worthwhile question to ask yourself if you spend time outside in this area, especially as the weather warms up. It’s even better that you know how to avoid rattlesnake bites, but if you get one, what do you do? There are lots of ideas that sound like they could be solutions, but they aren’t really the right answer. Don’t put ice on the bite or try to fashion a tourniquet. Don’t try to catch the snake or figure out a way to remove the venom. What should you do? Call 911, stay calm, and back away from the snake. Remove anything that might be too tight if swelling occurs, like jewelry. Gently clean the bite with soap and water and wrap it loosely with a clean bandage. So what would you think if, instead of any of these things, someone would suggest staring at the snake as a solution to the bite? What would you think of a plan to make a statue of the snake and raise it up on a pole and look at that? That’s pretty strange. It’s downright bizarre and ridiculous. It doesn’t even sound like it could possibly help. At least we can see some thought behind the other wrong approaches, but this one doesn’t make any sense at all. There must have been at least a little of that reaction for the Israelites when that’s basically what they were told. Venomous snakes had infiltrated their camp. Many people were dying from snakebites. They cried out for a solution, and instead of one that seemed to fit the context or make sense, the instruction was to put a bronze snake on a pole and lift it up so that those who were bitten could look on it and be saved. That’s God’s surprising solution. If we’re going to look closely at a solution, we also need to look at the problem. Our reading comes from the time when the people of Israel were basically in sight of the Promised Land. If you recall Israelite history, they were in roughly the same place where they had sent twelve spies into the land. The report of the spies at that time and the reaction of the people led to God taking the Israelites back into the wilderness for forty more years. They wandered in that wilderness until all who had rebelled against God had passed from this life. And forty years later, the Israelites came back to where that wandering started. There was a short way into the Promised Land. It went through the land of Edom. The Israelites had a plan. They would ask the King of Edom to allow them to walk carefully through the main street, through his land. They would pay for anything they needed along the way, and they would pass right through to the Promised Land. It would benefit everyone. Or so they thought. The king refused. So the people had to take a detour. They had to turn back toward the wilderness from which they had come and work their way around Edom before they would reach their destination. That’s why the people became impatient. They spoke out against Moses. They somehow remembered the good old days of their slavery in Egypt. And instead of staying there, where they seemed to remember being safe and comfortable, which of course they were not, they had come out to this vast wilderness to die. There’s no food and there is no water. That was true enough of the wilderness itself, but God had provided food and water. Water poured out of rocks when the Israelites needed it. Bread appeared miraculously on the ground every single morning except for the weekly Sabbath Day. On that day, the people ate what they had saved from the day before. For forty years God had provided everything these people needed, even making sure that their shoes did not wear out. And all they could say was, “we are disgusted by this worthless food.” There was no doubt about the problem. It was the grumbling and anger and disappointment in the light of God’s amazing providence and blessing. It was a lack of appreciation. It was a lack of perspective about a relatively small detour on the way to God’s promised blessing. And the problem got worse for the people because a consequence was inflicted. The snakes were unleashed on them. The consequence was severe and deadly. And the consequence did its job. The people recognized without a doubt that they had sinned. They had disobeyed the God who had rescued them and blessed them. They came to Moses in repentance. They