Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Fiery Serpents

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Fiery Serpents

Genre:

Track: 40

Dictation Name: RR181V40

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thy honor dwelleth. I was glad when they said unto me, “Let us go unto the house of the Lord.” Praise ye the Lord, sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise in the congregation of saints, for the Lord taketh pleasure in His people. He will beautiful the meek with salvation. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come to thee joyfully, for thou hast made us thy people. Thou hast surrounded us with thy mercies and thy blessings. They are new every morning. We come to thee mindful of our daily need of thy grace and of thy protecting care. Watch over us and our loved ones. Make them thine through thy grace and use them mightily for thy kingdom. And now Father, bless us as we give ourselves to the study of thy word, and the things of thy kingdom. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Hear now the word of God as it is given to us in Numbers 21:1-9. The Fiery Serpents. Numbers 21:1-9. “And when king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies; then he fought against Israel, and took some of them prisoners. And Israel vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities. And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah [Utter Destruction]. And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.

And the people spake 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. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses 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.”

In verses 1-3, we have a brief account of a military engagement. A Canaanite king, Arad, whose realm was in the south, moved against Israel when they approached his realm. Some prisoners were taken. Adversity often makes men prayerful, so Israel prayed and vowed to devote the cities of this realm to God, that is, to destroy them and to give all the wealth thereof to the Lord. God answered their prayer, and Israel successfully destroyed this realm for the time being.

Now it is interesting that in this predicament, the people did not call upon Moses. In desperation, they prayed directly to God. The attacked by the forces of King Arad were apparently devastating. Their religious revival, however, was a short-term thing. They complained about the poor terrain, which was true. They were in the general area of the Dead Sea. They whined about having only manna, this light bread, to eat. They spoke against God and against Moses, and they again charged that they had been brought up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. Well, because of their whining unbelief, they were going to die in the wilderness, but the fault was their’s, not God’s. Men find it easier to blame God than themselves.

Because of their rebellious whining, God punished them once again. The area was and is an area of many venomous snakes. The term “fiery serpents” has reference to the effect of their bites. Many died as a result of these snakes bites, so once again, they got religion. They came to Moses confessing that they had spoken against the Lord and against Moses, and they asked Moses to pray for relief. God ordered Moses to make an image of a poisonous serpent out of brass, and to set this image on a pole. Everyone bitten who looked at the image lived, and this is what happened. This image was kept in the sanctuary as a reminder of the event. However, in time, the people began to worship this image, and so King Hezakiah ordered that it be destroyed, we are told in 2 Kings 18:4.

Now there are references to this episode in the New Testament. According to 1 Corinthians 10:9, “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted and were destroyed of serpents.” The word tempt in the Greek means to test thoroughly. It tells us that the whole natural order of things was reversed. God, as the Lord, has every right to test us, to try to demonstrate to us what we really are. Man has no right whatsoever to test or to prove God. To do so is to play God and to sin even as Adam did. Charles Hodge said of this verse, “Men are said to tempt God when they put His patience, fidelity, or power to the test. It was thus the Israelites tempted Him in the wilderness. They tried His forbearance, they provoked Him. The exhortation is that we should not thus tempt Christ. This supposes that Christ has authority over us, that He is our moral governor to whom we are responsible, and who has the power to punish those who incur His displeasure. In other words, the passage assumes that we stand in relation to Christ, which rational creatures can sustain to God alone. Christ therefore, is God.”

Golday also threw much light on this text in his commentary, “The expression ‘to tempt God’ is often used in scripture, signifies to put God to the proof, to try whether He will manifest His goodness, power, and wisdom either by suffering us from a danger to which we have rashly exposed ourselves, or by extricating ourselves from a difficulty which we have ourselves willfully created while reckoning on him or by pardoning a sin for which we had beforehand discounted His grace. This, according to the biblical view, is one of the greatest sins man can commit. The Jews committed it in the wilderness by their murmurs, because they sought thereby to challenge the display of divine power in the service of their lusts. The Corinthians, in their turn, committed it by pushing to the utmost limits the use of their Christian liberty in regard to heathen feasts.”

Man demands that God meet his expectations instead of himself meeting the requirements of God’s law word. There is another interesting reference to this episode in the New Testament. Our Lord says, in John 3:14-15, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The commentators who have wrestled with this text shy away from a very obvious fact. Some kind of relationship is posited between Jesus Christ and poisonous snakes, the one sent by God to punish Israel. Now this is not a comparison that pleases a sentimental church which is determined to see a Jesus, sweet and mild, who radiates only Matthew Arnold’s variety of sweetness and light. Mush-head religion, in other words. The Medieval depictions of the Last Judgment with Christ as the great judge were closer to the truth. If Jesus Christ is everlasting life and salvation for His people, then the reverse is obviously true that He is judgment and death for the ungodly.

We live in a time when everything is reversed. The whole moral order is turned upside down. Spotted owls are more important than people. Capital punishment for capital offenses is seen as morally wrong, and every kind of legal action is taken to thwart the death penalty. The average prison time for those given a life sentence, as I’ve said before, is six years. Let me give you an example of the evil that our courts have become. One gracious woman, a faithful supporter of Chalcedon, a woman who is, in the old fashioned sense of the word, a gentlewoman, was sexually assaulted almost a year ago. Now finally, on August 8, almost ten months after the incident, the culprit was finally sentenced. Twenty-seven years for armed robbery with a deadly weapon. He held up a convenience store the same night of the sexual assault. Twenty-seven years for that. Twenty-seven years for sexual assault. Fifteen years for assaulting a person sixty-five or over. It’s his third term at least in prison. After three years, he will be eligible for parole; after only three years; whereas the law of God specified the death penalty for habitual offenders. Is it any wonder our nation faces the judgment of Almighty God, and the whole world?

The hatred for all who protest this kind of injustice in the courts is intense. The champions of the abolition of the death penalty are numerous in the church and out of it. As a result, the idea of Jesus Christ as the great judge who sentences reprobates to hell is very unpopular, and so our Lord’s very words in John 3:14-15, comparing Himself to that serpent in the wilderness are evaded, and the meaning is passed over, but our Lord is salvation to those who believe and obey Him. He is deaf to those who will not hear, nor believe nor obey.

Now it was God who sent the poisonous snakes into Israel’s encampment. At every turn, they were surrounded by them, bit by them, and died by their poison. The Bible is very clear here. We are told, “And the Lord sent fiery serpents among His people,” in verse 6. When Moses erected the copper or brass serpent and put it up upon a pole, only those who came to it lived. To come to it meant to confess that God’s judgment was altogether just and righteous. It was an admission that they deserved to die at God’s hands, and that only He could save them. The fiery or poisonous snakes therefore represented God’s judgment, and the copper snake on a pole, God’s grace. Our Lord makes exactly this point and identifies Himself with the snake on the pole. He contrasts perishing with eternal life, and it is He who makes the difference and totally so.

We do not come to Christ honestly if we assume that He is a ticket to heaven. We see Him first as the great judge whose sentence is death to all rebels, but whose grace to us is eternal life. Snakes have usually been symbols of evil. In a sense, this is still true here. Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For He hath made Him, Jesus Christ, to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness or justice of God in Him.” All our sins were laid onto Him, the sinless one, who made atonement for our sins, and the purpose in this is plainly stated: That we might be made the righteousness or justice of God in Him. The purpose of the cross, therefore, remains a very clear one. We are redeemed to represent and further God’s justice in the world. This episode in Numbers, and the interpretation of it by our Lord, is a very clear one. It is either God or His judgment. There are no other alternatives, but this is what our world wants. Neither God nor His judgment, but man’s way, and all our politics and so much of our religion is an effort to find a way apart from God and His word, and the result will only be His judgment. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that Jesus Christ was made sin for us, that all our sins and all the sins of thine elect from Eden to the end of the world were laid upon Him, and in effect made one with Him that they might forever be wiped out, atoned, and done away with, and that we have thy promise that thou wilt remember them no more. How great is thy grace, oh Lord. We pray, oh Lord, that this age which despises thy grace and judgment may be brought to its knees, may confess that Christ is Lord, sovereign of all, and savior of all. Bless us, Lord, in thy service. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson?

This episode is one of the best known in the book of Numbers in terms of references to it in the Bible, and yet, one of the least popular episodes. Now, one of the things this episode has to say, on a slightly different subject, has to do with graven images. What the Bible forbids in the Ten Commandments, is the worship and adoration of graven images, not their use. After all, in the holy place of the temple, there was this image of the brazen serpent. It was only destroyed when the people began to worship it. There were other carvings, embroidered depictions and what not, in the sanctuary. That was not against God’s commandment. That was not regarded as idolatry. It only became idolatry when men began to worship those things as this brazen image of a serpent. So, this episode also tells us how much misunderstood the commandment in the Ten Commandments is that Thou shalt have no graven images before me. That is, to bow down to them, to adore them, to worship them. So, the extreme hostility to any kind of art in the church which began with Zwingli, is not biblical. Are there any questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word. We thank thee that thy word speaks to our needs, and to our condition. Thy grace, oh Lord, abounds unto us, and day by day, we live, move, and have our being in thee and in thy mercies. Give us a grateful heart. Give us joy in that which thou hast done and will do, so that day by day, we give thanks unto thee. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape