Dave's Diary

Daily Reading: Numbers 21:4-9

Grumbling and complaining is a powerful poison. It has a way of spreading through a person’s heart and mind, corrupting everything it touches and leaving an entire personality affected. Likewise, it can spread through a whole family or community, poisoning everyone’s outlook and mindset.

The poisonous snakes in the wilderness were a highly appropriate physical manifestation of what had happened to the Israelites spiritually. The poison of rebellious grumbling and complaining had already spread through the veins of the entire community of Israel. Without exception “they spoke against God and against Moses”. Not only did they complain and grumble against Moses (as they had before), but this time God became the target of their complaints and protests too. They had entertained the poison of rebellion against God, and they were dying spiritually. So when the Lord sent poisonous snakes, it was a profoundly fitting consequence of the Israelites rebellion and sin. Their bodies were now poisoned by the snake bites just as they had poisoned themselves with the venom of their bitter words against God.

The beauty of this otherwise disturbing account is found in God’s immediate response to their repentance. When they acknowledged to Moses, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you”, and when Moses prayed to God for their salvation, God immediately sent the solution. Moses was to cast a bronze snake and hoist it on a pole. Miraculously, anyone who had been poisoned but then looked at the bronze snake would be saved and would live. The bronze snake was a symbol of the consequences of the Israelites sin. It was a sign of what their sin was capable of doing to them and to others. To look at the snake on the pole was to face up to and acknowledge their personal guilt and brokenness, and to express their personal longing for God’s forgiveness and healing. By this simple prayer-action of repentance and faith, God’s healing power was mediated to them.

In healing them this way, God foreshadowed His plan to use the death of Jesus on the Cross to offer salvation to anyone and everyone who looked to Jesus to save them (see John 3:14-15). Jesus, the perfect, sinless Son of God was hanged to death on a Roman cross as a sign of what our human sin is capable of doing to us and others. Looking at Jesus on the Cross with a heart of repentant faith opens us up to cry for God’s mercy, and to receive that mercy.

Let us consider today: How is my life still being poisoned by my own sinful attitudes or actions? What will be the the end results of those sinful attitudes and actions (for me and for others) if I continue in them?

And then let us bring that to the Lord in honest repentance, trusting in His mercy, and asking humbly for His forgiveness and cleansing. Amen.