Easter 6
Num
21:4-9
5/10/15
You are driving along and
approaching some railroad tracks. As you
get closer, you see that the railroad crossing lights start to flash and the
crossing gate is beginning to lower. When this happens, what is your reaction?
Now hopefully, your first reaction
is not to push your foot down on the gas pedal. For the most part, train crossing accidents
fall into two categories. A larger
number that you would like to think are not in fact accidents at all. They are
instead suicides as a person uses the train to take their own life. More
frequently, it is simply a matter of a person trying to beat the train to the
crossing. To do this successfully requires
correct perceptual speed judgment of both the driver's own vehicle and the
train. Accidents frequently happen because the driver underestimates the
approaching train's speed. The reason for this is to be found in the way that
the retinal image of our eye works and the fact that the person is viewing the
train at an angle. And it’s a simple
fact – when the driver misjudges and there is impact, the train always
wins.
Now most likely your reaction when
you get stopped at a railroad crossing for a train is different than mine. You probably view it as an
inconvenience. Perhaps it makes you get
a little impatient. On the other hand,
getting stopped at a railroad crossing and seeing a train go by makes my
day. I love it. I mean, after all, I use vacation time to go
watch trains.
However, there is one scenario when
I don’t feel that way. If you live on the
west side of Marion and you are going to go to Ray Fosse Park for baseball and
softball, or if you are going to go to the Marion Soccer Complex, you have to
cross over the Union Pacific tracks. If
I have left later than I should have in order to take one of the kids to a
practice or game, the last thing I want to see is a 125 car coal train. The difficulty involved in being late changes
things for me, and even I get impatient when I have to wait at the crossing.
In our Old Testament lesson this
morning we hear that Israel became impatient on the way. And in this case too,
it was because of difficulty. Our text
takes place after Israel had rebelled against God and had refused to enter the
promised land. As a result of this, God
declared that those who were twenty years and older would not enter the
land. Instead, Israel would have to
wander in the wilderness for forty years.
During that time the generation that had refused to enter the promised
land would die off.
Our text begins by saying, “From
Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of
Edom. And the people became impatient on the way.” As I was preparing for this sermon, I became
curious about the Hebrew verb that is translated as “became impatient.” It doesn’t occur all that many times in the
Old Testament and when I looked at all the instances the thing that became
apparent is that often it is associated with difficult circumstances. So Job in the midst of his suffering says, “As
for me, is my complaint against man?
Why should I not be
impatient?” Or as Delilah tried to learn
the source of Sampson’s strength she nagged him with the question. We are told, “And when she pressed him hard
with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death.”
The people of Israel became
impatient on the way because things were not easy. Yet they weren’t just impatient. They also acted upon these feelings for we
are told, “And the people spoke against God and against 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.’”
Of course their statement ignored a
couple of important facts. First, Yahweh
had rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt in response to their call for
help. We hear in Exodus, “the people of
Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for
rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God
remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” They wanted
to be rescued.
And second, they were wandering in
the wilderness because of their own sin.
God had brought them to the land of Canaan just as he said he
would. He wanted to give the land to
them but they refused to enter because they did not trust God in the face of the
report brought back by the spies who had scouted it.
In addition they complained that
there was no water, in spite of the fact that God had provided water for them
in a miraculous fashion on multiple occasions – the most recent being in the
previous chapter. And on top of this
they complained about the manna – the bread of heaven – that God was providing
to sustain them. In fact they said, “we
loathe this worthless food.”
But then you are really no different
from Israel. You complain about the
hardships of living as a Christian in this world, and in so doing ignore the
fact that God has saved you out of this world and made you a child of
God. You complain about the hardships
that you experience in life. And yet you
have created so many of those hardships for yourself by disobeying God in
the first place.
You become impatient on the way in
this pilgrimage of life because of the difficulties, and like Israel your
reaction is to ignore and even to denigrate the gifts that God provides. You forget about the water that God has
provided in the past – the water of your baptism and what it means for your
present. You look at the challenge of
walking by faith when faced with cancer or mental illness and you question
whether God can’t give you something more than just bread and wine on an
altar. Or perhaps your actions say that
you consider it inconsequential as you let weeks pass without coming to receive
it.
Israel sinned against Yahweh in the
wilderness. And he acted in judgment
against them. We learn that God sent
fiery serpents among the people who bit them and caused many to die. Eventually the people had to confess. They came to Moses and said, “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.”
Moses prayed for the people and God
responded, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is
bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” And then we learn that Moses made a bronze
serpent and set it on a pole, and if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the
bronze serpent and live.
In our Old Testament lesson, Yahweh
provides rescue through a bronze serpent lifted up on a pole. During his ministry, our Lord Jesus applied
this event to himself. He indicated that
it was a type – something in the Old Testament that pointed forward to a
greater reality that God would carry out in Christ. Jesus said, “And as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever
believes in him may have eternal life.”
The Son of God entered into our
world in order to be lifted up on the cross.
He came to bear our sins and die as the substitute who received God’s
judgment in our place. Through Moses God
declared that all who looked at the bronze serpent – all who believed God’s
word – would be delivered from death.
And now the word of the Gospel declares that all who look in faith
towards the crucified Lord receive forgiveness and eternal life. They receive this because Jesus was lifted up
on a cross and then taken down and laid in a tomb. But he did not remain in the
tomb. Instead he burst through death and
defeated it forever.
Like the Israelites, we too are
journeying on the way. We are on this
pilgrimage of life. For us too the way
is difficult. Some of this is caused by
the fact that we live in a fallen world.
Some of it we cause for ourselves because of our own sinful decisions.
Yet because Jesus, like the bronze serpent, was lifted up we now have
forgiveness and life.
God has provided the means by which
he gives this forgiveness and life to us as he sustains us on the way. And we
see in our text the model and pattern by which he works. In our text God
attaches his promise to the located means of the bronze serpent on a pole. He uses something that is located in the
midst of the people. They are told what he is using and where it is found. And
through faith in God’s promise the people receive rescue and life.
God has not changed the way he does
things. He provided the serpent on a
pole as the located means of his rescue.
In so doing he pointed forward to the located means of the flesh of incarnate
Son of God who was nailed to the cross and rose from the dead. And now God works through the located means
of water, and bread and wine. Like the bronze serpent on the pole, God takes
these things and adds his promise to them.
He adds his word to them so that they become the means of his
forgiveness and salvation.
In this sermon I have repeatedly
drawn out similarities between Israel in the text and our life as Christians
today. But there is one very important difference. The people of Israel were on the way. But the
majority of them would never reach the goal. They would never enter the
promised land because of their rebellion.
You are on the way too in this
pilgrimage of life. But in your case,
you know with certainty that you will enter the promised land of resurrection
and the new creation. You know it for
sure because Jesus has already entered for you. As those who have been baptized into his
death, you know that you have died with Christ.
You also know that you will share in his resurrection.
So like the Israelites in our text,
let us look in faith at the bronze serpent on the pole. Let us look at Jesus who was lifted upon the
cross in order to give us forgiveness and eternal life. Let us look in faith at the water of our
baptism, for their your sin was forgiven and you have the assurance that you too
will be raise. And let us look in faith at the bread and wine of the Sacrament
of the Altar. Through this located means Christ gives us his true body and blood
given and shed for us. He give us
forgiveness of sins and life. Through
this food God sustains us on the way as we journey towards the promised land.
5 points for a railroad reference
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