Numbers 21:4-9
March 18, 2012
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
The prevalent thinking now is focusing on what’s indigenous. Rather than to plant flowers and trees from other parts of the country, we are putting in more grasses and non-water dependent varieties in our arid climate. But in our increasingly global interactions that we see in travel, trade, and communication, there’s great amount of mixing and the problem of invasive species that come on shore.
The Chinese mitten crab cruised over on a ship, disembarked and started eroding our riverbanks with its relentless burrowing. There’s an Asian carp in the Mississippi that has no natural predators so restaurant cooks are now coming up with new recipes to eat them—sounds like the Chinese! There are bugs, snakes, barnacles that are causing havoc to our ecosystems. Invasive species are dangerous because they have no natural enemies in our country; no native predators to control their growth.
Poisonous Serpents
In the book of Numbers, the people of Israel are on the move, heading toward the Promised Land. As they pass around the land of Edom, the people become impatient, and they speak against God and Moses, saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food” (Numbers 21:4-5).
Suddenly, they are invaded by a species of poisonous serpents. The creatures bite them, and many Israelites die. Like that Asian carp that’s eating up all the other fish in the Mississippi, God sends these snakes and they kill people. The people are saying, “It would have been better for us to die in Egypt than here in this desert without food and water.” So God says, “Okay, I’ll put you out of your misery, you faithless, gutless, whining, complaining people.”
Then the people rush to Moses for help, crying out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us” (v. 7). They were telling Moses, “We didn’t mean what we said.”
God offers Moses a solution to their problem that is as unexpected as the introduction of a non-invasive Chinese mitten crab. “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole,” says the Lord; “and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” Moses crafts a serpent of bronze, puts it on a pole, and it works perfectly—whenever a serpent bites someone, the person looks at the serpent of bronze and lives (vv. 8-9).
True Invasive Species
This is a great story but what are the true invasive species here? Not the poisonous serpents, but instead the impatience, complaints and anger of the people of Israel. These are the pests that infected the Israelites with disastrous consequences, and that continue to afflict us today. Let’s look at these three invasive species that can poison our lives and our community as a church.
Some of us think that the pest of impatience is a “respectable sin.” We think impatience is a sin we tend to tolerate in ourselves. But impatience is a sign of a bigger problem, namely “our own attitude of insisting that others around us conform to our expectations.” That’s what got the Israelites in trouble, right? They demanded that Moses and God conform to their expectations of a quick and comfortable trip to the Promised Land, along with good food and abundant water. They wanted a vacation on a tour bus.
As people of faith, we are supposed to conform to God’s expectations, not the other way around. Impatience can shift our focus away from God and toward ourselves, so that we begin to believe that the world owes us a life of safety, comfort and convenience.
We have been without a regular pastor for the 9:00 congregation for over two years. Some of us are impatient and we have good reasons to be. But I would invite us to trust in God’s time rather than on our timeline and focus on God’s plan unfolding before us. Two years may feel like a long time but the Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years.
I confess I have the sin of impatience. My 5 year-old MacBook is too slow. When my car needs maintenance, I would rather wait for it. When I put some tomatoes plants in the planter box, I can’t wait to see some fruits. And when it comes to planning programs, I want to see results immediately.
The second pest is complaints. If someone asked you to name the number one sin in the world, what would you say? Pride, lust, envy? I would say it’s complaining because it’s so universal that many of us aren’t even aware that it’s a sin. Everybody complains about stuff all the time. We start off with what we say is constructive criticism and end up with complaining. We even invite people to complain with evaluation forms and customer surveys. We say it’s a Suggestion Box but it’s really a Complaint Box. We are surrounded by everyone complaining that we hardly notice it; unless, of course, the complaints are directed against us.
But God is not oblivious to complaints. God is so serious about it that he tells the church to “Do everything without complaining or arguing” (Philippians 2:14). Complaining is an expression of our pride—a sign that we think we know better than God.
The Israelites complained, “We detest this miserable food” (21:5). They are not actually starving since God is sending them manna in the wilderness, but they are sick of it. Thinking back to Egypt, they remember feasting on fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. Because of their complaining, they get a bite they aren’t expecting—the bite of poisonous serpents.
What might we be complaining about today? I hear complaints about how expensive it’s to park at St Mary’s now, but we still have access to parking. I hear complaints about there’re not enough rooms at the YMCA but we have a 30-year partnership with the YMCA for the use of the gym. I hear complaints about how smelly our restrooms can be but we still have 6 restrooms. Aren’t we glad that we have people using them? The real tragedy would be that no one wants to come to our church!
Finally, the most damaging of invasive species is anger. The people of Israel should honor God and respect Moses, but instead they rail against their divine and human leaders and accuse them of leading them to their doom, saying, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” (v. 5). The people shot angry venom at Moses and God, and as the result they receive the venom of the serpents.
While I think we do a pretty good job in restraining our anger, I sense it’s there at times. We might demonstrate our anger by staying away. We hide our anger because we know it’s not politically acceptable. But like the Israelites, we confess that we have anger that dishonors and disrespects God.
On another note, we can see this deadly pest of anger in our American politics today, with insults being hurled across the partisan divide or people spewing venom on talk radio. We say things that are mean-spirited and create anger in people that lead us to become divided and polarized. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to release anger that turns into hate and violence.
After suffering serious casualties from the snake attack, the people turn from their dangerous behavior, and confess their sins to Moses, admitting that they have sinned by speaking against Moses and God. They ask for Moses to pray for them, and he does.
Impatience, complaints, anger—these sins are as real for us today as they were for the people of Israel. In this season of Lent, we take a look at ourselves and this passage in Numbers provides a self-portrait of the blemishes that we need to face.
Portrait of God
But the book of Numbers is also a portrait of God, a portrait that appears to be both harsh and merciful, severe and gracious. God flings these killer snakes at the impatient, complaining, angry people—that’s God’s punishment for our sins.
But God sends death, but offers life. God sends a means of salvation by instructing Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on the pole—that’s God merciful offer of forgiveness and new life.
Before you say you don’t like this Old Testament story, remember that Jesus knew it well. That’s why he used it to describe himself in the gospel of John, saying, “Just 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” (John 3:14-15).
High on the cross is the Son of Man, inviting everyone who believes in him to receive forgiveness and eternal life.
Moses raises the bronze serpent in the wilderness so the people may look upon it and live. God raises Jesus on the cross for all to see, so the people of the world may look on him and live. Maybe if the bronze serpent is a way for ancient peoples to deal with their fear of snakebites, then the cross of Jesus Christ is the way believers of every era deal with their fear of death.
In the wilderness, Moses elevates an image of the thing ancient Israel most fears. On Calvary’s hill, God raises up an image of the thing we most fear—death itself. Somehow, in gazing upon God’s crucified Son, we understand in a way beyond words, that there is no human suffering beyond the reach of our Lord’s healing and sustaining love.
Jesus is our bronze serpent. We only have to look up and live. The good news for us is that God has chosen to provide a means of salvation in his Son Jesus Christ. We are forgiven when we turn to him and confess our sins, and are promised new life when we trust him to be our Savior. Looking to Jesus on the cross leads us to understand God’s great love for his people, for you and for me. And even when we have sinned against God in these invasive sins, we look to Jesus and we will live.
But we still have these invasive species of impatience, complaints, and anger that continue to invade our lives. What can we do about them?
There’s a Cherokee Elder who was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me…it’s a terrible fight between two wolves.
“One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride and superiority.
“The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.
“This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”
They thought about it for a minute and then one of them asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old man simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Invasive species cannot survive if we give them nothing to eat. So when you are feeling impatient, take a deep breath and remember God’s time is often different from our own. Let’s try not to think that we can ever rush God.
When you want to complain, remind yourself of an unexpected blessing and what we have is beyond whatever we deserved. Consider the truth that in God, the cup is always half full.
And when you feel a rush of anger, remember that everyone—even your worst enemy—is a child of God. Let us never forget that Jesus Christ died on the cross for not just you and me and how we all know so well that we need this grace. But Jesus Christ came to save the whole world!
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, forgive us when we sin against you when we are impatient, when we are complaining, and when we are angry. Teach us to trust your plan for our lives and for this church by listening to your will and to be faithful. In this season when we examine our faith in light of our need for repentance and forgiveness, we pray for clarity in our minds, compassion in our hearts, and an unwavering focus on your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior whose name we pray. Amen.