Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: Numbers 21:4-9

Theme: Look to the Cross to be saved

Doctrine: Justification

Image: cross lifted up

Need: joy of salvation

Message: remember your saviour

 

*Bronze Serpent*

Num 21:4-9

*Intro*

Edom, who were the descendants of Esau and thus related to the Israelites, had just refused access to their land.

Moses had sent an envoy of people out to ask the King of Edom if they could pass through.

“We promise not to take anything from your land,” the messengers said.

“We will pass through on the kings highway and step off of it.

Brother, you know how we have been mistreated by Egypt and how God brought us out of there.”

But Edom answered, “You may not pass through here; if you try we will march out against you and attack.”

So Moses sent back to him saying, “Please, we will go along the main road only, and if we drink any of your water we will pay for it, just let us pass through.”

Again the king answered, “You may not pass through.”

They came out against the Israelites with a large and powerful army, so Israel turned around to go back into the desert.

After refusing to follow God's guidance to enter the land of Canaan, the Israelites tried to enter the land anyway, without God's permission, and they were soundly defeated.

They were forced back out into the Negev.

Thus, they had to travel around to the other side of the Dead Sea, to approach the promised land from the other side of the Jordan.

The land of Edom lay on the south side of the Dead Sea, and the refusal of Edom to allow the Israelites to pass through forced them to take a very long, circuitous route south of the land of Edom.

After being given the hope of entering into the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the people are forced back into a long trek in the desert.

*Page 1: The Israelites grumbled against God and were punished.*

This was another blow to the pride of the Israelites.

They were defeated when they tried to enter Canaan without God's blessing, and now the Edomites had refused passage.

On top of all this, Aaron, their beloved priest, had just passed away.

Moses, Aaron, and Eleazar, Aaron's son, went up Mount Hor because God had told them Aaron would die.

When Moses came down with Eleazar, dressed in the priestly clothing of Aaron, the entire community learned of Aaron's death.

They mourned for him for thirty days in the desert.

They sat weeping and wailing in the scorching heat of the sun.

They dressed themselves in sackcloth and sat down in ashes for thirty long, hard days.

Then, when the period for mourning was over, they got up and began their long journey around Edom.

In order to avoid the whole country of Edom, they had to go back the way they came.

They had to turn their backs on the promised land, and put their faces toward the Red Sea, back toward Egypt.

This is the middle of the fortieth year of wandering around in the desert, and the people are getting rather sick of it.

You can hear them saying, “What's the deal here?

I thought we were only supposed to be in the desert for forty years.

Now we have to go back out into the desert the way we came?”

The people grew impatient along the way.

They people's souls grew short.

They became hot tempered.

They began to argue with each other and get on each other's nerves.

It didn't take much to set people off.

The blistering heat during the day, the frigid cold at  night, the travelling, the same food day in and day out, these things have cause the people to get grumpy.

They do not limit their complaints to other people, however.

They are even dissatisfied with everything that God has done for them.

The spoke out against God and against Moses.

They complained, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt?

Why have you brought us out into the desert?

Why could you not leave us alone?

There is no bread here.

There is no water here.

We detest this miserable food.”

God did not take this kindly.

He did not appreciate having everything he had done for them, in spite of themselves, derided like that.

No bread, what about the manna?

No water, God had just brought water out of the rock at Meribah.

The manna which God had given them, and had sustained them throughout the forty years in the desert, plus the time in took them to get there from Egypt, this they now detested, they loathed it, all they wanted was to have some real food for a change.

Something, anything would be better than another meal of that manna,” they said.

So God sends venomous snakes into their camp.

The people were going about their various duties, cleaning the tents, feeding the livestock, gathering and preparing another meal of manna.

They did not notice the silent serpents slithering into camp.

They did not notice as they found their way into the tents and corrals.

They did not notice that anything was wrong, until they suddenly stumbled across one of them and were bitten.

It took quite a while for the venom to take effect.

It began with a very sharp burning sensation around the wound, something like being pinched with red hot pliers.

As the venom became mixed with the blood, the pain would move throughout the body.

The people who were bitten felt like their whole bodies were on fire.

The venom destroyed the blood and fragile tissue of the victim.

It broke down the tissues in the lungs and the blood vessels causing them to rupture and causing the person to bleed internally.

The venom also prevented the blood from coagulating and so the ruptured blood vessels could not stop bleeding.

It sometimes took days for the victim to finally die of the snake bite.

The Israelites had grumbled against God.

They had disobeyed him numerous times and now they were heaping scorn on all that he had given them.

They were not satisfied with what they were given.

They wanted to be brought back to Egypt, or to have been allowed to enter the land of Canaan.

They were not satisfied with what God had provided him, and they detested his miraculous provision for them in the desert.

They tested the Lord, and were bitten by the snakes.

(1 Cor 10:9)

*Page 2:  The world is cursed because of our disobedience, we are all bitten by the serpent (the devil) and are destined to die from the sting of sin.

*

We too tested the Lord.

Our father and mother, Adam and Eve, tested the word of God and ate from the tree of which the Lord had commanded them not to eat.

He told them that they would die if they ate from the tree, but they ate it anyway.

They caused us all to be bitten by the serpent, bitten by the Devil.

We are all now destined to die from the venom of sin.

All of us have been affected by the sting of the Devil's bite.

We have all turned away and fallen short of the glory of God.

Our world was not meant to have all this evil in it.

Often we ask why a good God could have allowed our world to be filled with all the sin, evil, pain, and heartache that it has.

How could a loving God allow his people to suffer so much?

We suffer not because God wanted it that way, but because we have brought sin into the world.

We have ruined God's good creation and stained it with our sin.

Our testing of God led to the curse which has marred God's good creation.

My grandmother died when I was about 12.

She was my grandfather's second wife.

His first had died before I was born, and Grandma Jean was the grandma I knew.

She became infested with brain cancer at a rather young age.

I think she was in her 60's when she passed away, though I can't remember specifically.

She lived with her cancer for many years.