4th Midweek Lenten Sermon: Israel and Jesus

+ 4^th Lenten Midweek Service – March 14^th, 2018 +

Numbers 21:4-9

Redeemer Lutheran, HB

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We often hear stories of lost hikers or people trapped in the rubble after an earthquake or tornado who wait to hear the rumbling engine of a rescue vehicle, the welcomed sound of a helicopter, or a voice calling out for survivors – any sign that rescue is near.

When we, or our loved ones are sick, we look to a doctor, surgeon, or nurse to give us a good diagnosis and proper treatment – a sign of healing and restoration of health.

Even stories that take place in fictional cities like Gotham City or Metropolis, people look to the sky for the Bat-signal or the Man of Steel soaring through the clouds – a sign of hope in dark times.

As we heard in Numbers 21, Israel needed sign as well. Only they weren’t plagued by a natural disaster, they weren’t sick with a bodily disease, and they weren’t surrounded by villains or enemies. The worst enemy Israel faced in the wilderness was Israel.

 “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.” 

YHWH gave them the Passover sacrifice. YHWH led them through the Red Sea on dry ground. YHWH destroyed Pharaoh and his hosts. YHWH fed Israel bread from heaven. YHWH opened the rock to quench their thirst. YHWH gave sign after sign of his love to his people. Still, Israel grumbled and spoke against God and Moses. They forgot YHWH and his promises. They despised YHWH’s gifts. They despised YHWH himself.

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

God’s sign of warning did the job. The Law did its work. The people of Israel came to Moses and confessed: We have sinned against YHWH and against you. Pray to YHWH, that he might take away the serpents from us.

Israel finally spoke the truth. They confessed. They had sinned. So have we. God sends the fiery serpent of his Law to us as well: If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Israel asked Moses to intercede for them, to be their mediator. They prayed for a sign of rescue, hope, and healing. Like Israel, we cry out, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And here is what’s always surprising and astonishing in this story. YHWH doesn’t smite Israel from the sky with lightning. Nor does he consume Israel to an ash heap in his holiness. Yes, he sends a judgment and a warning in the form of the fiery serpents but even then, he provides a sign, a signal of hope, healing, and rescue.

Moses prayed for the people.  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.”

God provided a sacrament - a bronze serpent on a wooden pole. A visible sign with God’s promise: “Anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” How can bronze do such great things? Certainly not the bronze, but the Word of God in and with the bronze serpent which did these things. It had the promise of God’s Word attached to it – whoever looked on it would live.

Still, it’s a rather strange sign, don’t you think? Why a serpent? Most of us have some level of ophidiophobia, or fear of snakes. Usually serpents are gross, slippery and slimy; bad news. Just like Slytherin in Harry Potter or Smaug the Dragon in The Hobbit.

That the Lord chose a bronze serpent was no accident. The Lord used the disease to cure the disease. The Lord used the bronze serpent to defeat the fiery serpents. It’s similar to how an antidote or an anti-venom is made; antibodies are collected from one who survives the poison.

And in our case, the poison is strong and deadly. Israel was snakebitten, and so are we. Humanity has been since Adam and Eve listened to the snake instead of God back in Genesis 3. We are born snakebitten. Dead with the venom of the Law coursing through us. “The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the Law.” That’s our condition from the greatest to the least of us. But God has provided the cure, a cure that looks strangely like the disease. His Son on the cross, dying a cursed death. He looks condemned by God, stricken, smitten, and afflicted, and He is, in our place, for us all and for our salvation.

This is how God loves this snakebitten world. He doesn’t simply love it abstractly and in general. “Oh, nice world, I love you.” He loves in the world in His Son, Jesus Christ, true God of the Father, true Man of His mother, born of woman, born under the Law, to take on the sting of death and become for the world the anti-venom for snakebitten humanity.

On the cross YHWH displays his sign, his signal of hope, healing, rescue, and salvation for Israel and for you. The prophet Isaiah foretold this sign centuries earlier:

In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious….He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. (Isaiah 11:10-12)

On Good Friday, the Lord puts his signal high on a mountain top for all the world to see. Look on Jesus crucified and believe. 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.

The Father didn’t send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to be condemned for the world. His condemnation is our acquittal; His death is our life. He came to be judged – one Man for all men, for all of humanity. He came to be lifted up and to draw all to Himself into His death. As in the one man Adam, all sinned, all die, all are condemned, so in the one Man, the second Adam, Jesus the Christ, all are forgiven, all are justified, and all live. As Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness, so the Father has lifted up the Son on the cross that whoever looks on Him with the eyes of faith, trusting in that bleeding, broken, dying Son of Man, has eternal life.

Jesus’ crucified is your antidote. No wonder the early the church fathers called the Lord’s Supper “the medicine of immortality.” Here is the cure for death and the curse of sin. Here is strong medicine that heals, saves, and forgives. Jesus’ body given into death; Jesus’ blood given for your life. The Lord who provided Israel with a sign and a sacrament in the wilderness provides you his sign and sacrament still: his very body and blood, living bread from heaven. Living water that flows from his side to the font for your cleansing. His Word and promise of life.

Here is your sign. Here is your hope, healing, and rescue – in the cross of Jesus who was lifted up for you. Here is your antidote in Jesus’ word, water, body and blood. Look here, eat, drink, and live.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.