When The Serpent Bites

On a vacation I took years ago, my family and I stopped Caprock Canyons state park in Texas. At the edge of the parking lot, I noticed a peculiar warning sign. The notice had a huge picture of a rattlesnake and a warning to walk along the path at your own risk. As I read the fine print of the sign, it informed us that nearly 8,000 people a year are bitten by snakes. Despite the warnings, my kids and I walked on. About fifty feet down the trail we ran into our first rattlesnake, a tiny baby snake just lying in the middle of the trail. I bent over to examine it, noticed the head was flat, (the snake wasn’t moving), so I figured it was dead. I called the kids forward, just in time to see the serpent come to life and wriggle inches from my feet. I made it back to the car in about 5 seconds flat.

There is a passage in the book of Numbers that gives me the creeps every time I read it. And it involves snakes. Lots and lots of snakes. The children of Israel had been walking through the desert for forty years and for most of the way, they had grumbled. They complained against God and Moses and murmured about God’s choice of food. It was basically, the “I hate manna” speech God had heard a thousand times before.

What does God do? He sends thousands and thousands of “fiery serpents” to bite and kill the children of Israel. Imagine the sight. Watching as the people are frantically beating back the serpents, but just as they land a blow on one, three more appear from the sand. What must it have been like to hear the hiss of a thousand serpents, to feel their constant bites, to have the burning fire of poison cursing through their bloodstreams? Glance to the right and see a loved one fall, covered in the writhing asps, screaming for help. Raise your head forward to see the dirt shifting back and forth, seeing hordes of bodies falling by the hundreds. Can you imagine the frenzy of that moment? The screams. The stomping. The utter chaos of slithering terror.

As the children of Israel cry out, Moses intercedes. The one who has been misunderstood and insulted pleads for mercy. There is no grudge that is held. There is no look of satisfaction from Moses as he delights in the fact that the Israelites are getting what they deserve. There is only love. Love for the people who are dying before him. Oh, that you and I might see those around us the same way. What might happen if we looked on our fellow mankind the way that Moses did? What if we only saw the death that sin brings? The sting of the grave? What if we started begging for mercy for others the way Moses pleaded for those who had wronged him? How many more of those who are perishing might live?

God tells Moses to fashion a bronze serpent, place it a top of pole and raise it up. Anyone who looks at the serpent will live! Moses gets busy, grabs his tools, stokes a fire, and begins hammering out the image, working as fast as he can. He knows that with each blow of the hammer against the metal, hundreds more of his beloved will continue to die. Feel the urgency Moses has. Feel the tears that must have fallen from his face. Feel the frenzy of his hammer. Every second he delays will cost another precious soul.

It strikes me that God could have removed the curse and the poison, instantly healing everyone, but He did not. While God does provide a cure, He does not remove the cause of the curse. People are still dying, even as Moses is hammering out the imperfect image of the very thing creating the havoc. Even as he finishes, he knows that this serpent on a pole is not exact, not perfect, that it is not even close to good enough, but by faith Moses must trust that anyone who looks and believes will be saved. He must trust God’s word even as he lifts the pole and screams for those nearby to look and live.

The witness that you and I have is not perfect, but praise God, it doesn’t have to be. Like the bronze serpent of old, our testimony seems primitive and poorly fashioned. We know that if we had more time to prepare, we could have done better. We make mistakes with our words and deeds. We offer our crude witness like a frantic Moses, hoping that God will do as He says. Can He really use us and our meager testimony to lead others to life? Even Jesus sees the parallel here. He tells us that He must be lifted like Moses lifted the serpent in front of the people. (John 3:15). The bronze serpent is a picture Christ and his crucifixion, but it is also a picture of our witness before our fellow men.

God could have removed sin the moment that Christ was crucified and rose again. But He didn’t. Instead, sin continues to bite and sting, as we crawl through the sands of our lives. We watch the evil and suffering all around us. We weep as sin bites and kills those we love. Nothing we can do will remove the curse. Each person must look and live. All we can do is point to the crucified Christ and pray, even plead for others to find the cure that we ourselves have experienced.

So, today realize that your witness may not be perfect. Your responsibility is not to save others, only God can do that. Our duty is only to point toward Jesus and hope that the person you love can take a moment to look up in faith and believe and live. Perhaps God desires to show the power of the Risen Christ, who bestows life to those who will just but raise their eyes in faith.

Today, my prayer is that we will be Moses. May our hearts make our hands hurry because there is a cure to made known to the dying masses. May we run through the sands, from person to person, even though we may be misunderstood or maligned. May we trust God to use our imperfect words and deeds to lead others to His glorious salvation. And may our urgent pleas slice through the hissing of the serpents, before one more person falls. Run, child of God. Run. Run and lift the imperfect, ugly cross of Christ. Cry out as you have never cried before. May our desperate pleas rise above the hissing of snakes! May we offer the cure to every person the serpent bites! Run, child, run. Run, as if every second matters, because frankly, it does.