Israel wasn't dying because of reptiles. They
were dying because they decided the bread from
heaven was poison. So God says, fine, you think
the cure is killing you? I'll lift the problem
high enough you can finally look at it. And if
you've got the guts to look, you live. You're
out there in the wilderness before you even know
you are. Sand in your teeth, same horizon as
yesterday, same manna on the ground. The pillar
still ahead, but your soul too tired to call
any of it mercy. Somewhere near the cook fires,
somebody says the quiet part out loud. This bread
is worthless. We were better off in Egypt. And
once those words get loose, they move through
the camp like fever. Then something in the sand
begins to move and the people who forgot how
to read grace suddenly have to look up if they
want to live. And now you've stepped into our
sanctuary in this little town in Oklahoma. It
is the middle of Lent where the church dares
to call this Latare Sunday, a day to rejoice
before the road gets easier. Because it doesn't.
The rose candle is lit. The wilderness is still
real. So is mercy lifted high enough to see.
So stay with us and I'll see you on the other
side. So as I begin this morning, I realized.
Many of you were with us on Wednesday night in
Bible study, but not everybody. So for those
of you that were, I'm going to just give you
a little bit refresher. And for those of you
that weren't, I'm just going to remind you perhaps
of a familiar Bible story that you may be aware
of and that you kind of take a gander at how
we had reframed that familiar Bible story. Before
I jump in to kind of the next part of the story.
Because Wednesday night, we stood in the wilderness
and we heard something most of us have been stepping
over all of our lives. That the ground Moses
was standing on was already holy. And that the
wilderness isn't necessarily the waiting room.
And the manna doesn't require you to feel grateful
before it nourishes you. It just asks you to
reach down. And then we said that the enemy of
manna isn't disbelief. It's exhaustion. Because
when we are tired enough, A miracle on the ground
can just feel like more work. And I need us to
hold on to that. Because today, the story gets
worse before it gets better. Israel isn't just
tired anymore. Israel... Israel has started to
tell a different story about the bread. And the
story that they're telling is about to bite them.
And the camp, it smells like sweat and sand and
40 years of the same arguments. The tents are
pitched on the ground and they look exactly like
the ground they were pitched on yesterday and
the day before and the day before and the month
before. Pillar still ahead of them. The manna
is on the dirt somewhere near the cook fires.
Someone starts to say it out loud. But everyone.
has begun thinking, but no one had the nerve
to speak and say, the food is garbage. This bread
is worthless. We were better off in Egypt. And
those words begin to move through the camp like
sickness moves, to tent, family by family, until
the whole congregation is saying it, not whispering
it, weeping it. Something in the sand begins
to move. Friends, tune your ears to the reading
of Holy Scripture this morning. Two portions
this morning. Our first portion comes to us.
From the book of Numbers, Hebrew scripture, beginning
with verse 4 of chapter 21. They traveled from
Mount Ord by the way of the Red Sea to go around
the land of Edom. The soul of the people was
much discouraged because of the way. 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 bread, there's no
water, and our soul loathes the light bread.
And Yahweh sent venomous snakes among the people,
and they bit the people. Many of the people of
Israel died. The people came to Moses and said,
we have sinned because we have spoken against
Yahweh and against you. Pray to Yahweh that he
take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed
for the people. Yahweh said to Moses, make a
venomous snake and set it on a pole. It shall
happen that everyone who is bitten when he sees
it shall live. Moses made a serpent of bronze
and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten
any man, when he looked at the serpent of bronze,
he lived. Now, let me jump ahead to our gospel
reading this morning. From the gospel account
according to John, chapter 3, we're getting real
close to familiar language, but verses 14 and
15. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Whoever
believes in him should not perish, but have eternal
life. Thus ends the reading of Holy Scripture
this morning, my dear friends. In the Hebrew,
the word for serpent is nakash. The word for
bronze is nakoshet. It's the same root. It's
the same mouth feel. The killing thing and the
healing thing. Share a name. The only difference
is where it's placed and what it's made of. One
crawls in the dust when you can't see it coming.
The other is lifted onto a pole where you can't
look away. And let me go back to what they actually
said, because the words matter more than the
snakes do. Our soul loathes this light bread.
The light bread is the manna, the bread from
heaven, the daily unexplainable provision that
shows up every morning when the dew is lifted.
wafers with honey lying on the ground like frost,
placed there by a God who has not yet failed
to feed them in 40 years. And they called it
loathsome, not insufficient, not inadequate,
loathsome. Their soul despised it. And some of
you were here Wednesday night and you heard the
manna story and you know what manna costs God.
Every morning, 40 years provision that couldn't
be stored, couldn't be managed. And it's intimate
provision that required you to keep it close.
And Israel looked at that 40 year track record
and said, the words that changes the whole story.
Why? Have you brought us up out of Egypt to die
in the wilderness? Here's what they're actually
saying. They're not complaining about the menu.
They're rewriting the Exodus. The God who parted
the sea. Drowned Pharaoh's army and led them
by fire and cloud. That God had brought them
out to the desert to kill them. And they are
standing. In the middle of daily miraculous provision
and telling a story that says God is a murderer
and that bread is poison. Here's the hard part.
And I'm not going to talk around it because the
text doesn't. The serpents come after the story,
not before, not during, after. Israel tells a
story. The Exodus is nothing more than a death
march and the bread is garbage. And God is trying
to kill us. And then the snakes come. And then
they die. And I want to pause here. Because I'm
not going to pretend, my friends, that I can
fully explain the mechanics of divine judgment.
I can only tell you what I'm seeing in the Bible.
Because the text shows that when you live inside
of a story that says God's provision is actually
poison, something venomous starts moving. in
the can. When you're able to rewrite deliverance
as murder and bread from heaven as this worthless
food, the false story begins to grow fangs. Not
because God is petty, because false stories about
the nature of God are lethal. And eventually,
They bite. And we know this. Not from theology,
from life. You watch a person decide, I mean
deep in their gut, below the level of argument,
that they were set up to fail, that the good
thing happened actually. was just the beginning
of a bad thing, you watch them live inside that
story long enough and it will eat them alive.
Not because God sent a punishment, but because
the story itself is venomous. Israel had been
bitten by its own narrative before a single snake
broke the surface of the sand. So, They're dying.
And they come to Moses and say, rightly, we have
sinned. And Moses prays, and God's answer is
the strangest remedy in the entire Bible. God
does not remove the snakes. Sit with that one
for a second. They asked Moses, To pray that
God would send the serpents away. God doesn't
do that. Snakes stay in the camp. Instead, God
says, make one. Cast it in bronze. Put it up
on a pole. And everyone that has been bitten,
when they look at it, they'll live. God took
the thing that the story produced and lifted
it up where all could see it, not crawling down
in the dust where it ambushes you, up on a pole
named visible and unavoidable. And the instruction
is not understand it, not repent harder, not
feel the right thing about it. The instruction
is look. Look at the thing your story has made.
See for yourself what God has brought us out
here to die actually produces when it takes shape
and starts. Biting people. Look at it. And live.
That's not gentle. That's not God rubbing Israel's
nose in it either. But here's where the grace
breaks through. The result of looking isn't shame.
It's life. The confrontation that should have
been the final humiliation turns out the doorway
to healing. Nobody earns that. The text doesn't
say they got their theology straight first. It
says they looked up and they lived. And the word
for serpent and the word for bronze again share
that same root. Nakash and makoshet. Because
the text is telling you at the... at the level
of sound that the killing thing and the healing
thing are made of the same stuff. The difference
is altitude. One is in the dust. One is on a
pole. Same word, different direction of eyes.
And then Jesus, centuries later, standing in
the dark with Nicodemus, man, who he himself
organized his entire life around not being seen,
says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. The
cross is the bronze serpent, the thing that kills
humanity. The whole machinery of sin and violence
and the stories we tell ourselves about God who
doesn't love us, taken up, cast not in bronze,
but in flesh, lifted up on wood where everyone
can see it. And the instructions are the same.
Look and live. And the very next sentence out
of Jesus' mouth is John chapter 3, verse 16.
The most famous verse in the world. And most
people do not know, they've heard it a thousand
times, but they don't know it actually is completing
a snakes on a pole argument. Centuries later,
Israel is burning incense to that bronze serpent,
worshiping it for remedy instead of the God who
gave it. Until a king named Hezekiah smashed
it into pieces and called it buhushtan, just
bronze. That's a different sermon for a different
day, but I did want to point out that the bronze
serpent doesn't stop here in the wilderness.
And today, as I mentioned, is Latare Sunday.
The rose candle. The breath in the middle of
Lent. Church has been walking for four weeks
through dust and ash and honest wait. And today,
the calendar says rejoice. Not because the desert
isn't over yet. It's not. There are two more
weeks before Palm Sunday and the road ends at
the cross. But the rejoicing is real. Because
the bronze serpent tells you something the wilderness
has been whispering all along. You don't have
to leave the desert to be healed. You don't have
to arrive at the promised land before life breaks
through. Healing is available inside the wound,
not after it, inside it. The snakes are still
in the camp when the pole goes up. Nobody has
crossed the Jordan yet and people are living
anyway. And some of you have been bitten, not
by snakes, but by the story you've been telling
about your own lives. Story that says God set
you up, that the provision is worthless, that
the good thing that happened was actually just
the setup for the bad thing. And friend, that
story has fangs. You've been feeling them. I'm
not going to ask you to stop telling that story
today. I'm just going to ask you to look up.
The thing that has been biting you, it's been
named. It's been lifted. It's up on a pole where
you can now see it. And the God who put it there
isn't asking you to understand it, earn it, or
feel the right way about it. He's asking you
simply to look and to live. That's the tare,
joy in the middle. Not because the snakes are
gone, because the pole is up. And the looking,
which should be the hardest thing you have ever
done before, turns out to be the thing that finally
lets you start breathing again. So go from here
carrying this, my dearest. The fangs of the snakes
are real, and the remedy is real, and neither
one of them cancels the other out. May the God
who did not remove the serpents but lifted one
up where you could see it give you the courage
to look at the thing you've been avoiding. May
the Christ who said, I must be lifted up, who
became the bronze serpent for a world that had
been telling the wrong story about God since
the garden, meet you in the looking. May the
spirit give you this. Not escape from the wilderness,
but life inside it. Real life. Like bite marks
and breath and bread on the ground tomorrow morning.
Look up, my dear friends, and live. Amen. Amen.
Maybe something in that story found you today.
Maybe you recognize the road, long, dusty, familiar.
Maybe you heard your own voice in the camp, tired
enough to start calling God's provision something
else. If that's you, take heart. The wilderness
doesn't cancel mercy, and the snakes, they don't
get the last word. Same God who let Israel see
the wound also lifted the remedy high enough
for them to live. Grace doesn't wait for you
to get the story perfectly straight. Sometimes
it simply asks you to look up again and breathe.
And remember that life can break through right
in the middle of the desert. And if somewhere
in all of this you heard something, maybe something
you'd never quite considered before, something...
You've heard a hundred times, but today it just
landed differently. Well, that's the moment we
used to recognize back home when we'd throw that
old like in the offering plate, not pressure,
just witness. And if you'd like to walk with
us the rest of the way through Lent as we head
towards Jerusalem and Resurrection Sunday, go
ahead and tithe your subscribe. That way, you'll
know when we've set our eyes on the Holy City
again. And until then, friend, be blessed.