The Serpent on the Cross

This is the Lenten banner we have hanging on the east side of the church. It is the serpent on the cross. Why?

Numbers 21:4-9 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!" 6 Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, "We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us." So Moses prayed for the people. 8 The LORD said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.

The Israelites were being bitten by fiery snakes whose venom was deadly. And God directed Moses to make a bronze model of the snakes and put it on a pole and lift it up before the people so that everyone could see it and live. The snake-bitten people didn’t have to do anything but see the serpent on the stick, a sacrament of life, a gift of God. And notice that the cure looks just like the disease, a snake.

John 3:14-15 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

The serpent on the cross was a “type” of Christ. Jesus was lifted up for a snake-bitten world. He came into a world that had fallen for the words of the silver-tongued serpent in the Garden. Jesus is the cure that looks like the disease. Death. He is lifted up so that all who look on him in faith will live. Jesus is the anti-serum of death, the One who took the sting of death and the venom of the Law into His own body. He is the medicine of immortality for the snake bite of sin that has poisoned us all to death. And it doesn’t matter how good or how bad or even how ugly you are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, or who you are, or how much or little you worked. Just look on Jesus lifted up for your life, and trust Him, this Jesus who died for you and in whom you died. In whom you live. In whom you are glorified. In whom you are already a new creation.

The season of Lent is about living as that new creation. Focusing these 40 days of Lent on sorrow over sin, repentance, promising to amend our sinful lives.

But what do we possibly have to repent of? We aren’t anything like those Old Testament Israelites are we? Surely we don’t ever become impatient. There’s no way that we complain to God about our circumstances. Of course we don’t grumble about food or water, our jobs or our homes, our spouse or our children. We are completely satisfied.

And if you believe that last paragraph then you have one more sin to repent of – lying.

We repent for having chosen the way of death rather than the way of life. We choose it every time we make our happiness an idol, and like the children of Israel, grumble against God. When we grumble that what He has given us is not good enough for us. When we go running after images of pleasure in this world, thinking they will give us what we want. When we become too busy for God, because the pursuits of this world are consuming us. When we use the life and freedom God has given us in the forgiveness of our sins as an excuse to sin more! That the life of faith and freedom He gives us is a freedom for sin, not a freedom from sin.

Do you ever think that you can handle the serpents around you – drugs, alcohol, sexual images, lying to your boss, cheating on your taxes, anger while you are driving, etc.? They may hurt others but they won’t hurt you. Really? I think hell is full of folks who thought they could charm the serpent, and lost.

So repent. Have you been bitten? Fix your eyes – and your faith – on Jesus. For He is the Life who came into this world of death, to give life to us who were dead in our trespasses. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That’s Numbers 21:9 with a New Testament twist! That we who have the venom of sin and death coursing through our veins might by faith receive the antivenin of the blood of the Son of God. The blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins. The blood and forgiveness washed upon us in Holy Baptism; the blood and forgiveness spoken upon us in Holy Absolution; and the blood and forgiveness drunk into us in Holy Communion. The blood and forgiveness of Christ that raises us from the death of sin and our self-centeredness and gives us new life. Though we live in the midst of the serpents and turmoil in our lives, though their bite and our sins can kill or condemn us, we are not afraid of them, for we have been set free by the forgiveness of our sins and healed by Christ’s blood shed when He was lifted up on the cross.

We live in the shadow of the serpent on the cross.