Look and Live!

Numbers 21:4-9,

4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” 6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

What do you want from me?!

This is a question that’s probably been asked more than once, but I’m thinking about a scene in one of my favorite movies, Simon Birch. It’s a good movie; you should go watch it; I won’t ruin it for you; but there’s this one scene when Simon, a 12-year-old kid, is visiting the grave of his best friend’s mom. It’s in the evening and Simon is alone at her grave; he is blaming himself for her death; and his best friend, Joe, is looking for him. And in the distance, Joe is calling his name, Simon! Simon! And Simon hears his name but thinks it’s God talking to him, so he looks up in the sky and says, “I’m right here. What do you want from me?” It’s a great scene.

Have you ever asked God that question? You ever wondered it?

I think we all have — or we will — come to certain places at certain times in our lives where we just want to know as plainly as possible, “God, what do you want from me?”

Well, this morning, I think we find the answer to that question in Numbers 20–21, and put most simply here it is: God wants your faith.

Whoever you are, if you want to live, God wants your faith. And in today’s sermon, I want to show you how Numbers 20–21 make this clear. Let’s pray:

Father in heaven, we ask now, with your Word open before us, that you would help us open wide our hearts to you and what you want to do in these moments. Speak to us and accomplish what you will, in Jesus’s name, amen.

The first thing made clear in these chapters is …

1. God wants your faith whoever you are.

Now a lot has happened since the last time I preached. It was only three Sundays ago, but we’ve covered Chapters 13–19, which means almost 40 years have passed in this story. Throughout those years, the people of Israel have been in the wilderness of Paran as the consequence of God’s judgment. And that wilderness judgment, remember, goes back to Chapters 13–14.

Chapters 13–14 are really important in the Book of Numbers. Back in Chapter 13, remember, God tells Moses to send 12 spies into the Promised Land, one spy for each of the tribes of Israel, and these spies were supposed to go into the Promised Land to see if the land was good or bad, and if the people who lived in the land were strong or weak. 

Well, after 40 days of this spy mission, the 12 spies return to Moses and the people, and they all said the land was good, but 10 of the spies said the people in the land were too strong for Israel to overcome. They said that if Israel attempted to go into the land, they would be destroyed. But then two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, disagreed and said, No, we shouldn’t be scared! Let’s take the land. God will give it to us.

And so, of the 12 spies, the two spies Caleb and Joshua represented faith and courage, the 10 other spies represented unbelief and fear — and the people sided with the 10. All the people rebel. They don’t trust God. And so God brings judgment. He says that every person who is part of the people of Israel from 20 years old and upward — everyone except Caleb and Joshua — are gonna die in the wilderness. 

God sentences the people to 40 years in the wilderness — one year for each day the spies were spying out the Promised Land. That’s what has been going on from Chapters 15–19.

Miriam and Aaron Die

And we see at the beginning of Chapter 20 that this 40 years is coming to a close. We are now in the first month of the 40th year, which means we are about to turn the page. A transition is coming. 

We see the hint of this transition right away in the death of Miriam, Moses’s sister, in Chapter 20, verse 1. The story doesn’t elaborate anything here, it’s just one sentence, but this is important. Y’all find this sentence with me. Chapter 20, verse 1. And the very end of verse 1:

“And Miriam died there and was buried there.”

Why is this important? Well it’s because Miriam, along with Moses and Aaron, were leaders among the people — Aaron was the high priest, and Miriam was a prophetess and song leader. Well, Chapter 20 starts with her death, now look how Chapter 20 ends. Skip to Chapter 20, verse 28. I think you need to see this too. Chapter 20, verse 28,

“And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on Eleazar his son. And Aaron died there on the top of the mountain.”

So Chapter 20 starts and finishes with “And Miriam died there…” and “And Aaron died there…” 

There’s been a lot of death over these almost 40 years, but now it’s the leaders. Two of these leaders die; they don’t enter the Promised Land; now only Moses remains — but we need to look closer at Moses in Chapter 20.

Moses Does Not Make It

Chapter 20 is where we find the famous tragic story of Moses striking the rock. It’s almost an exact repeat of a story in Exodus 17, and it starts with the same situation we’ve seen over and over again with these people: The people have a need; they think God won’t meet the need; so what do the people do? — They complain. They whine. They grumble. They shake their fists at God. And Moses says, God, what do I do?

Well, in Exodus 17 when the people were thirsty and did this, God told Moses to strike a rock, which made water gush out, and God provided for the people in this amazing way. 

But here, in Numbers 20, verse 8, look what God says to Moses. We need to read this carefully. Numbers 20:8, 

“…and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 8 Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.”

Y’all double-check me here, but does anybody see the word “strike” in Numbers 20, verse 8? …

God tells Moses to speak to the rock. Agree?

Well look what happens in verse 10. Moses got the people together and said, verse 10:

…“Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock.

And it seems like, Oh, okay. That worked out. But then look what God says in verse 12: 

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”

Heads up: Moses doesn’t make it into the Promised Land. 

This is a big deal, and the Bible wants to make this clear. We don’t just see this here, but it’s said again in Numbers 27:12, in Deuteronomy 3:26, in Deuteronomy 32:51 — Moses does not make it! 

Whoever You Are

Moses will die in the wilderness because, according to the text, he does not believe God. That is what the text tells us, and I don’t think we need to speculate more details than what we’re told.

If we’re reading carefully, we see that Moses does something different in verse 11 from what God says in verse 8 — he doesn’t speak to the rock, he strikes the rock — and then God says in verse 12, “you did not believe in me.” 

Later on, referring to this event, in Numbers 27, God says Moses rebelled against his word; in Deuteronomy 32, God says Moses broke faith with him in the midst of the people. 

So the Bible makes this clear: Moses did not believe God, which was evidenced in that he did not do what God said, and that’s why Moses didn’t make it into the Promised Land.

Which means, God wants your faith whoever you are. It doesn’t even matter if you’re Moses … or Miriam or Aaron. It doesn’t matter who you are, God wants your faith.

At the very least, this gives us some wonderful clarity, because it means that from the greatest men and women to ever live, to the simplest person you could ever imagine, God requires the same thing. He wants every type of person to trust him.

So, get this: for everyone in this room, you don’t have to wonder what God wants from you, because what he wants from you the same thing he wants from every human, whoever they are. God wants your faith. He wants you to trust him, which means you do what he says.

So we’re all in this together: whatever we got going on, wherever we’re coming from, God wants our faith whoever we are. Chapter 20 makes that clear. Now let’s look at Chapter 21.

2. God wants your faith if you want to live. 

We’re gonna focus here on verses 4–9. You heard it read earlier, but let me set up the scene for you. We have another situation yet again when the people became impatient and they spoke against God and against Moses. They did the whole: You brought us out of Egypt to die here! There’s no food and no water!

And Chapter 21, verse 6 shows us God’s response. It’s straightforward. This just happens. Ya’ll look at Chapter 21, verse 6. You’re gonna wanna see this. Chapter 21, verse 6:

“Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.”

Now this is just one verse and the story moves on right away, but wait a minute! Can you imagine this? “Fiery serpents” is another way to say poisonous snakes — these are the kind of snakes that if they bite you, you die. And this makes sense to us because these kind of snakes exists today. Snakes like the black mamba, king cobra, saw-scaled viper, diamondback rattlesnake — these are snakes that when they bite you, they inject hemotoxins into your body that destroy your red blood cells; your blood clots, it basically turns into concrete, and you die in agony. Can we give thanks to God that we don’t have any of these snakes in MN? I know people complain about the cold, but it’s a good thing we don’t have poisonous snakes. It wasn’t like that for me growing up in North Carolina.

We were doing an ice-breaker question at a big staff meeting a few weeks ago, and the question was about your greatest fear. And if I’m honest, since I was a kid I’ve had this fear that a snake would be hiding under the rim of a toilet, waiting for me. Just imagine that. … When you least imagine it, bitten.

That kind of thing is happening in Numbers 21. It’s snakebites everywhere, and it’s not that these snakes magically appeared, but they had most likely already been in the land. There are a few other places in the Torah where God mentions the wild animals in the land (see Exodus 23:29; Deuteronomy 7:22); and in Leviticus 26:22, God says that as a curse for disobedience, he will “let loose the wild beasts against you.” I think that’s what’s happening here. Up to now, God has been restraining these creatures from harming the people, but now, as judgment, God let’s them loose, and it’s mayhem. Look what the people do in verse 7: 

And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

And God answers the prayer. He is going to send salvation to the people, but notice the unusual way God does this in verse 8. … God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, set it up on a pole, and whoever is bitten, if they look at the bronze serpent, they’ll live. That’s the only way to survive. I want you to see this in verse 9. Verse 9 says: 

“So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”

Now it’s pretty straightforward what you’re supposed to do if your snakebitten, but the question is: Why? 

Why did God do it like this?

It seems unreasonable to us, maybe even a little bit absurd in this context, that God would bring healing from a curse by looking at a symbol of that curse.

We don’t know exactly why this way — we just know this is what God said and if you’re snakebitten you better do what God says — which means you trust him — if you want to live!

So yeah, it might not make a lot of sense to you. You might have all kinds of questions, but how many questions do you wanna ask while your blood is turning into concrete!?!?

The fact is, when you realize that you’ve been snakebitten — when you get the severity of your situation — the only thing you wanna do is look! Where’s the bronze serpent?! I gotta see it! I just have to see it!

John Calvin comments on this passage that this whole thing showcases “the peculiar virtue of faith, that we should willingly be fools, in order that we may learn to be wise only from the mouth of God.” 

Calvin says, and I agree, that God is offending human reason on purpose, so that it’s crystal clear that it’s not ourselves who rescue us, but it’s only by the grace of God. 

This whole scene, then, is an amazing picture of faith in Jesus — and you don’t have to take Calvin’s word for it, because Jesus himself told us this. 

In the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, one of the most famous passages in the Bible, Jesus says this amazing sentence. He says: 

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

And I think the connection here is multi-layered. In a way, Jesus lifted up on the cross is like the bronze serpent on the pole — the symbol of judgment becomes the source of life. And this lifting up was not just the actual event of the crucifixion, but it’s the telling of that event; it’s the preaching of Jesus. Jesus lifted up is our witness to Jesus. 

But the main connection that Jesus is making is not between himself and the bronze serpent, but it’s about what we do — it’s that we must believe! The deeper connection in what Jesus says is between us and the people of Israel, and it’s that we’re all snakebitten. We’re all sinners who are under a curse and we’re condemned. We’ve been separated from God and we are going to die, and the only thing you can do — if you wanna live — is look! Look to Jesus!

Don’t look to yourself. Don’t look to how good you are or to how many decent things you’ve done or to how smart you might be. Don’t look to others — to who your family is or who your friends are or to what others think of you. Don’t look anywhere else. Just look to Jesus. Trust in Jesus — if you want to live. That’s what Numbers 21 is telling us.

And this is something that I think we need to settle. Just get this clear in our hearts. Whenever we find ourselves in a place where we wonder: God, what do you want from me? If we’re ever looking up to heaven saying that — Here I am! What do you want?

Here’s the answer that is true every time: God wants your faith. Whoever you are, if you want to live, trust in Jesus Christ.

And if you think all this sounds simple, it’s supposed to. This is God’s word for us today. Some of you who have been walking with Jesus for a long time, hear this again: keep trusting him. Keep looking to him, for eternal life and all its details here.

And for others of you who are snakebitten and condemned, what are you doing? You’re looking to all these others things, but they will not give you life. This morning, I’m lifting Jesus high for you! Look to him! It could mean that you pray a straightforward prayer like this:

Jesus, I can’t save myself and I’m sorry for trying.

I believe you died on the cross and are raised from dead for me.

I trust you. Save me.

That is a prayer of faith, and it’s what God calls us to as his people, and that’s how we come to this Table.

The Table

At the Lord’s Table, we as God’s people remember the death of Jesus and give him thanks.