March 1, 2023
It has been the nature of mankind, ever since The Fall in The Garden, to turn away from Jehovah God the Giver of nature, to nature itself. To worship the gift, before the Gift-giver—the experience, instead of the One from whom the joy was experienced—the deliverance, before the Deliverer. There are many examples of this tragic phenomenon in The Holy Bible, the Word of God. One of those examples being the brass serpent of Numbers 21. The Israelites were in one of their murmuring moods. (Would you and I do any better?) They had fought off an attack by the Canaanites, “And they journeyed from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea, (haven’t we been here before?) to compass the land of Edom, and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.”
In Numbers chapter 13, twelve spies had been sent into Canaan to spy out the land that the Israelites were to possess as God had promised. They returned to camp with the report of “giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” God was very displeased with their false humility that He saw as exposing their lack of trust in Him. Though Joshua and Caleb tried to dissuade them from their “evil report” the voice of the ten remaining spies prevailed and the whole congregation of Israelites mourned, murmured, and there was talk of making a captain to lead them all back to Egypt. There was discourse between God and Moses, after which God sentenced the Israelites to forty years of wandering in the wilderness. It was during their wandering that they “journeyed from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea,” the same Red Sea where God had parted the waters and they had walked across on a dry sea bottom that had been dried by a wind God had sent through the water-walled passageway. This same Red Sea now separated them from Egypt to which they at times, when pressed by difficult circumstances, wished to return. Travel-weary and age-worn, it may have been a “deja vu” of physical presence, but certainly not in spirit as their frequent despondence contrasted sharply with their former rejoicing after their God-given victory over the Egyptian army attempting to pursue and re-capture them.
Now, in their discouragement, they spoke up again against God and against Moses, “Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.” To put this into proper perspective, “this light bread” which they were now loathing was the six-days-per-week manna that God was sending them since they left Egypt. It was their daily bread and though plain, it was nourishing, keeping them in healthy condition as they wandered. But they were tired. And weary of plain food. So they murmured against their circumstances including the miraculous nourishment God was sending via a daily miracle six days per week.
Into this setting “the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.” The people were then sorry, and repented, upon which Moses, following God’s instruction, “made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” (Numbers 21:9) God had wrought a marvelous deliverance.
However, the instrument that God used, the brass serpent on a pole, later became an idol to the Israelites and years later the godly King Hezekiah “broke it in pieces,” together with the other images in the high places, in his call to cleanse Israel of all false gods. Let us follow Hezekiah in worshiping Jehovah God. To appreciate His deliverance, His creation, and all of His gifts, but above all to worship the gift-giver, the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
Life Matters!