Opening Prayer
Lord, our God, explain the Scriptures to us.
Text: Numbers 21:5–9
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 our soul loathes this worthless bread.” So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died. Therefore the people 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.” So Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.
Devotion
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (Joh 3:14-15). The bronze serpent was just like the poisonous serpents, except without poison. It hung there dead and was a cure from death. In the same way “He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2Co 5:21). Bengel3 writes: “Just as that serpent was a serpent without poison, with a cure from the poisonous serpents, so the Son of Man is the Man without sin, but with a cure against that old serpent.” Another writer, Besser4, says: “Jesus hangs on the cross, not in sinful flesh, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, bearing in His body our sins. And for the serpent-bite of sin which mortally wounded our nature a cure is found, in that sin is punished on the flesh of the Son of Man, for it is condemned.” In the words of Augustine5: “A serpent is gazed on that the serpent may have no power.” What does this mean? Death is nailed fast, so that it shall no longer prevail over anyone. Or, as Chrysostom6 puts it: “There a serpent bit them and a serpent healed them. Here death destroyed us and a Death saved us.”
Should those unfortunate ones fatally bitten in the wilderness have to run here and there and do many things in order to get the grace of life? How will they be able to do it? No, they only have to look on the bronze serpent, nothing else. God Himself said: “Everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live… And so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.” Every single one had the promise of looking at the bronze serpent, yes, the command and order to do it, and never did it fail: whoever looked lived. So God has commanded us all to believe and look, so that everyone who believes in the crucified Jesus shall have eternal life. Nothing other than believing in Him, nothing else at all is required of you, nothing else saves you. Every single sinner has the promise of believing, yes, the command from God to believe. For all people, for you who are bitten by the devil, whoever you are, and wherever you are – for all of you Christ was crucified, and it shall come to pass that everyone who believes in Him shall live. God has said it, and it does not fail. Incessantly the medicine of life flows forth from Him through the Word and Sacraments, and faith in the heart receives it. But this life of Jesus which is given to us by His death and heals us from death, what is it other than love, since He died for us and conquered death? And by this we once again possess the very life of God, in which we were created, but which we lost through the devil’s envy and serpent-bite!
Closing Prayer
Praise to You, Lord Jesus! You let Yourself hang on the cross for us and, in the image of the bronze serpent, You were the Son of Man lifted up on the accursed tree! Give us grace to believe in You, to receive life from You in our souls, and eternally to live in You. Amen.
Hymn
With sigh and roar the wind does blow;
We note its sound and moving.
Its resting-place we do not know,
Nor where it may be moving;
And so it is with ev’ry soul
In whom the Spirit’s life does glow;
Anew we live and note it sure
That true and pure
The Spirit’s light arises there.
But Jesus our deliv’rance brings
Upon the cross uplifted,
And who to Him in trouble sings,
With eyes of faith uplifted,
Receives the healing that gives life
Against the serpent’s fiery bite;
Baptized into the Savior’s death,
The Spirit’s breath
Gives faith and hope against all death.
Landstad: Hos dig, O Jesus L 447:5-6 tr. DeGarmeaux;
tune: Allein zu dir (ELH 415); alternate hymn: Jesus, Refuge of the weary ELH 240:1