"The Serpent"

Lent • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

0 ratings

· 2 views

Goal: That the hearer find comfort knowing that their salvation is procured by Christ alone, on the basis of grace alone, through faith alone.

Notes

Transcript

From 1890 came this incident: A noted wild beast tamer gave a superb performance in London. As a closing act, he introduced a boa constrictor, 35 feet long, which he handled for 25 years when it was two or three years old and supposed it to be harmless.

The curtain rose on an Indian woodland scene. A rustling is heard, and a huge serpent is seen winding its way through the undergrowth. It stops. Its head is erect. Its bright eyes sparkle. Its whole body seems animated. A man emerged from the heavy foliage. Their eyes meet. The serpent quails before the man. Man is victor.

Under the man’s signals and guidance, the serpent performs a series of frightening feats. At another signal, it slowly approaches the man and begins to coil its heavy foils around him. Higher and higher they rise, until man and serpent seem blended into one. Its hideous head is reared above the man.

The man gives a little scream, and the audience unites in a thunderous applause, but it freezes upon their lips. The trainer’s scream was a wail of death agony. Those cold, slimy folds had embraced him for the last time. They had crushed the life out of him. The horror-stricken audience heard bone after bone cracked. The man’s plaything had become his master.

We have had issues with serpents since the Garden of Eden. It was the serpent that led Adam and Eve into shame when he lied to them about God and His Word. The serpent’s deception led Adam and Eve into sin and shame. And with his deadly coils snuffs out life as now Adam and Eve will surely die, as well as all their descendants after them. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned...” (Rom. 5:12).

If this incident with the serpent was not enough, later serpents would be the death of thousands of Israelites in the wilderness. If we turn our attention to the Old Testament reading for today, we are met with the Israelites wandering in the desert. They have been wandering for some time now, been recipients of God’s grace and mercy that redeemed them from Pharaoh and slavery in Egypt. They were eyewitnesses to some of the Lord’s mightiest power over creation with the ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea. They have received God’s commandments and His special food, manna.

We find Israel setting out from Mount Hor in order to go around the land of Edom (v. 4). However, the people became impatient, and they started to do what they have tried before, albeit unsuccessfully. They began to grumble and complain against God and His servant 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.” (v. 5). This is nothing more than the direct result of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Sin entered the world through that detestable creature which leads every human being to behave shamefully and thoughtlessly. God’s provision for His people was not accepted with thanks and praise but with disgust and loathing. After all that God had done for them, and they wanted to go back to Egypt and the slavery they were freed from because things weren’t going their way.

So, our benevolent “Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died” (v. 6). When the people of Israel experienced the death they brought upon themselves, they repented and lamented to Moses, “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” (v. 7).

The Lord heard the cries of His people once again and He had mercy on them all. He commanded Moses to craft “a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live” (v. 8). And that’s exactly what happened. The Lord didn’t take away the death sentence He levied against complaining and grumbling Israel, but He did bring a solution to their problem, the bronze serpent on the pole. In faith those who were bitten simply looked upon the serpent on the pole and were instantly healed of the serpent’s deadly venom.

The text for our consideration today is the Gospel reading from John’s Gospel. Here we are brought into a conversation Jesus was having with Nicodemus, the Pharisee who came to Jesus at night out of fear of his peers. Fear is one of the byproducts of the serpent. The serpent from the Garden injected his poisonous venom in our original parent and his deadly venom still affects us today.

Fear grips us tightly these days. What with all the Covid !9 related illnesses and deaths many have locked themselves in their homes and have not been out of them much since last year. Fear is the least of our concerns. As a matter of fact, we should have fear…the fear of the Lord. But that seems to be an issue for us as well.

The serpent’s effect on us has turned lives upside down. From God’s beautiful creation where everything was “very good” the serpent and shame have destroyed everything. So, instead of fearing the Lord, we tend not to. The reason being that we have become too complacent in how we live our lives and have allowed the serpent’s deadly venom to run our lives.

Therefore, now we live in fear of things we should not. The perfect faith that sustains us takes a back seat to sin and shame. Instead of running to our Lord for all good things, we tend to run to other things or people. People look to the government for all good these days and have made the US government their god. Free money, free cell phones, incentives to continue to undermine independence and freedoms, and the non-stop invitation to live your life as the government says you can, all the sex you can have with whoever you want, medications to make HIV undetectable in lab testing, yet still enough virus to spread to others. Pregnancy is looked at as an inconvenience these days so if one finds themselves in that condition, it’s not an issue, just go to your local Planned Parenthood and they will assist in removing your problem and another human being dies. Parents are no longer to be obeyed and honored as God commands because in the world’s eyes, it takes a village to raise a child, not parents. So little ones are fed lies about life, lies about their parents, lies about the world they live in. These are just a few example of how the serpent affects us today. We are not satisfied with what the Lord has provided us, His Word, His food, His love.

“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” are the words that Jesus spoke as nails were driven into hands and feet as they lifted Him up to crucify Him. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent int he wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life” (vv 14-15). The serpent’s venom enables people to do things they should never do; such as the crucifixion of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

Yet Jesus did not go unwillingly. “He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearer is silent, so He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of My people’ (Is. 53:7-8).

One thing that humanity needed the most, being afflicted by the serpent’s bite, is deliverance from that deadly curse. So, our Lord took matters into His own hands and allowed wicked and evil men to falsely accuse and arrest Him. Men who would flog and torture Him. Men who would nail Him to the cross and lift Him up for the world to see and mock. But this was all God’s plan from the beginning. God sent His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (v. 16).

Jesus was lifted up, just as Moses lifted the bonze serpent on the pole, so that everyone who looks upon Jesus, just as those who looked upon the bronze serpent, with repentant hearts, will be saved from the serpent’s venomous strike.

The Old Testament lesson shows us Israel’s repentance before God had Moses craft His promise of deliverance that pointed to what Jesus would do, not just for the Israelites, but for all of mankind. The text states, “And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you” (v. 7). That is the sound of repentance. It is what we do every Sunday morning here, where we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean, and that we have sinned against our Lord in thought, word, and deed. And when we do, with pure and contrite hearts, our Lord is eager to lift up His Son before our eyes so that we who look upon Him and His cross find deliverance, peace and health. And that is only given to us through the precious blood of Christ who became the serpent for us. The serpent in the Garden brought sin, shame and death into this world, into the heart of every person born. Yet, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

On the cross, Jesus became the serpent, sin itself, as He carried all our complaining, our rebellion—all our filthy rags on the cross and there He died, as did all our sin, all our shame, and all our suffering. And He tenderly invites us to look upon Him through eyes of faith and repentance, and He heals us of that serpent’s curse.

Therefore, now the curse of the serpent has been removed from us. We are like snake bitten Israel who repented and confessed their sin, looked upon the bronze serpent through eyes of faith in the promise of God, and were healed. Even though bitten and afflicted with the serpent’s venom, they lived. They were brought from death to life.

Our Lord has done the same thing for you. Jesus promises you, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears My Word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life. truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (Jn. 5:24-25).

May we then rejoice ever so much more that our Lord has taken care of our deadly snake bite. May we rejoice in Him who knew no sin, yet became sin, on our behalf, so that we could be healed of its effects on our lives. And by grace alone, through faith alone in the promises of God, fulfilled by Christ Jesus Himself, we who look upon the Son of Man lifted up on the cross are forgiven and have the promise of everlasting life with Him. Christ is victor for us!