Num 21:8, Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live." 
When we first started to read and study the Book of Numbers, we did so with great trepidation to see what God would reveal in this book. The whole idea of dealing with lists of numbers of the tribes of Israel was not so exciting. However, Lord willing, we have come to appreciate this book as far more than simply a counting of the tribes and the peoples. It is revealing the glorious aspects of God in the praiseworthy manner in which His grace and His mercy overshadowed the entire history of the wandering of the people in the wilderness. 
We have been using rather extensive quotes from Dr. Ronald B. Allen in his writing on the Book of Numbers contained in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary. We are doing so as the means of gaining a greater understanding of what God has put forth in this book. We will again invest ourselves accordingly this morning as we are at a section of our reading that demands a far deeper understanding than we might realize to this point.
Dr. Allen picks up for us after the great victory of the Children of Israel over the Canaanites as detailed in the opening verses of this 21st Chapter. Quote, It is not unusual in Scripture, or in our own lives, to have a story of defeat follow quickly on a story of victory. The author of Numbers places two such contrasting stories side-by-side in this chapter, perhaps to show the reader that while progress was being made toward dependence on the Lord, there was still a long way to go for these desert people! Right on the heels of the story of Israel’s great victory over the Canaanites of the Negev, they fall on their own swords on the issue of food again in the rebellion that leads to the story of the bronze serpent.
	…Again, as their fathers, they asked why they had not been left back in Egypt and why they should be brought into this awful place to die. They did not deny the miracle but disparaged their deliverance from Egypt. Again they complained about the lack of food and water. But then they went beyond their fathers and mothers. They not only spoke of the monotony of manna, but they described it as “miserable bread”… In their styling the “bread of heaven” (see Ps 78:23-24) as something vile and despicable, the people were actually contemning the Lord its giver.      
(Ps 78:23-25, Yet He commanded the clouds above, And opened the doors of heaven; And He rained down manna upon them to eat, And gave them food from heaven. Man did eat the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.) 
	The venom of the people’s anger led them to blaspheme the Lord (v.4), to reject his servant Moses, and to contemn the bread of heaven. This is the most vitriolic of their several attacks on the manna… Just as the attack of Moses on the rock was more than it appeared to be…, so the contempt of the people for the heavenly bread was more serious than one might think. The Lord Jesus speaks of the manna as a type of himself, that he is the true Bread from heaven (John 6:32-51). A rejection of the heavenly manna is tantamount to one spurning the grace of God in the Savior. End quote.
	As this is so vital to our understanding of the tremendous and awesome gift of God’s grace in the gift of His Only Begotten Son, let us read together John Chapter 6, verses 32-51. Please turn to it.
John Chapter 6, verses 32-51. Jesus therefore said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. "For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world." They said therefore to Him, "Lord, evermore give us this bread." Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. "But I said to you, that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe. "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. "And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." The Jews therefore were grumbling about Him, because He said, "I am the bread that came down out of heaven." And they were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I have come down out of heaven'?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Do not grumble among yourselves. "No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. "It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught of God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. "Not that any man has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. "I am the bread of life. "Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. "This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh." 
	It is so readily apparent why the Lord took such a course of judgment upon these unappreciative and grumbling people who were spurning His grace and His mercy. They were turning His provision of the manna into something that they reviled, and He would not countenance it in any measure. Therefore He loosed the fiery serpents upon that ungrateful and petulant people. 
	Again quoting Dr. Allen, Nonetheless, there is a change of sorts in the people as they are described in this chapter. They continue to rebel (and they will rebel again in ch. 25), but now they ask for forgiveness. They were sinners, but they were confessing their wrong. They scream out to Moses, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you.” In this act of repentance, we have the seeds for renewal. In their desire for forgiveness, there is hope for their future.
	So Moses prayed for the people as he had prayed before…. And God answered, but in a most unusual way. In the case of the fire that flashed from heaven at the beginning of their troubles …, the prayer of Moses eventuated in the fire dying out. 
(Num 11:1-3, Now the people became like those who complain of adversity in the hearing of the Lord; and when the Lord heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. The people therefore cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died out. So the name of that place was called Taberah, because the fire of the Lord burned among them.) 
In this case the snakes did not slither away, nor did they lose their fangs; the fiery serpents continued to plague the people with their horrible bites, and the people continued to grow ill and die. End quote.
	The people had to come to the end of their grumbling and complaining about the bread from heaven. They had to understand that the mercy and the grace of God needed to always be appreciated and valued and never disparaged. Their hearts had to come to the place in which they would appreciate the manner in which the Lord provided for them day after day after day, without fail, even when they cast aspersions against Him and against the food that He provided. They also had to recognize that their vile treatment of the holy things of God would not be taken lightly, nor would it be just tolerated. God would not allow His Holiness to be sullied by their ingratitude and disreputable treatment of His honor.
	Quote, Instead of losing the snakes, the people had to get their fill of them, as they had been forced to stomach quail at another time…. (Num 11:31-34, Now there went forth a wind from the Lord, and it brought quail from the sea, and let them fall beside the camp, about a day's journey on this side and a day's journey on the other side, all around the camp, and about two cubits deep on the surface of the ground. And the people spent all day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered ten homers) and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very severe plague. So the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had been greedy.) 
Continuing with this lengthy quote then, Meanwhile Moses was told to make an image of a snake…! As we think about this, we realize several levels of incongruity:
1.	The description of the plague seems to be of something that was spreading very quickly, yet Moses had to take the time to fashion, or direct the fashioning of, a metal image of one of the poisonous snakes. Sometimes even in a crisis one needs to move purposefully, surely.
2.	Moses had transmitted to Israel God’s prohibition against making images of any animal or other life form because of the dangers of idolatry that were so inherent in graphic art in the biblical period; yet now he was asked to make a graven image. This command must have been inordinately surprising, even to Moses.
3.	There are few things so intensely disliked and feared the world over as snakes. Herpetologists cannot understand the revulsion seen in the lay opinion of snakes, and they seem to suffer umbrage at what they regard to be terrible misinformation about snakes in popular culture. No matter. Most people simply do not care for snakes; we may presume (from the tenor of this text) that this is a value we share with people thirty-five hundred years ago.
4.	More specifically, in biblical culture it was a snake that became associated with the Evil One himself (Gen 3). Satan’s first manifestation in the biblical story is serpentine; he is later to be called the primordial serpent, the dragon (see Rev 20:2). There is a sense in biblical thought that snakes are not only detestable in themselves, but they may even be symbolic of the prince of darkness himself.
With all these factors in view, now we think again of the enormity of what Moses was asked to do, of the taboos he was asked to break. This is not unlike Peter being told to kill and eat food that he regarded as unclean (Acts 10). The people had called the bread of heaven detestable. Moses is commanded of God to make an image of something truly detestable in their culture and to hold that high on a pole as their only means of deliverance from disease. Only those who looked at the image of the snake would survive the venom that coursed through their bodies. This is an extraordinary act of cultural shock, an exceptionally daring use of potent symbols. As the people had transformed in their own thinking the gracious bread of heaven into detestable food, so the Lord transforms a symbol of death into a source of life and deliverance. The rejection of God’s grace brings a symbol of death. The intervention of God’s grace brings a source of life. 
	What is distinctive in this essentially judgment text is the unusual symbol of God’s grace that reaches all the way to the Savior. In the earlier judgments there was regularly the demonstration of the wrath of God, the prayer of Moses for help, and the repentance of the people. These acts would then usually lead to some lessening of the pain of the plague until the evil ebbed away. In this plague there is something that is truly different: there is a symbol of hope that is disgusting in nature but has healing properties that are most surprising. Here we find an amazing sense of God’s presence in the most unlikely of places, the symbol of evil-a snake. 
	This was not magic but the dramatic provision of the Lord to demand personal responses from the people. Similar actions demanded of people are found elsewhere in the OT; an example is the story of the leprous Naaman who was told to dip seven times in the Jordan to be cleansed (2 Kings 5:10). The healing of the afflicted people of Israel was not in the efficacy of the metal snake any more than the cleansing of Naaman was in the purging waters of the Jordan; the issue was a purposeful and deliberate response of faith in the mercy of the Lord. The improbability of a person being able to survive a deadly snake bite simply by looking at a metal image of a snake held high on a pole is seized on by our Lord to affirm an even greater imponderability: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14+15).
	The reader of John 3 is impressed with the interplay of judgment and salvation themes. This creative admixture lends itself splendidly to the interplay of serpents and deliverance. By the initiative of God, the curse becomes the basis for salvation. This is a paradox that spans the testaments.
	No one reading this can shirk the sense of foreboding the snake conjures in most people. The snake reaches all the way back to the Garden, the unwelcome and cunning intruder…. Yet it is principally to the Gospel of John that this text drives us.
	The contemptible bread - relates to John 6:48-51.
	The contemptible snakes – relates to John 3:14.
	In both there are the portraits of the Savior Jesus… 
	If ever there were a less expected pairing of types, this would be it. The manna was an altogether gracious gift of God, which the people turned against with stomach revulsion. The snakes were an instrument of God’s judgment because of the peoples’ ingratitude and rebellious spirits; yet it was a metal copy of just such a snake that became the means for their deliverance.
	The bread is a picture of Jesus; as the Bread of Heaven he is the proper nourisher of his people. The bronze snake is a picture of Jesus, who became sin for us as he hung on that awful tree. The manna had to be eaten. The snake had to be seen. The commands of Scripture are for doing. The manna was no good if left to rot. The metal snake would not avail if none looked at it. The manna and the snake are twin aspects of the grace of God. End quote.
	We must never allow ourselves to be anything less than absolutely and eternally filled with gratitude and with awe at the incredible eternal splendor of God. His grace and His mercy are so immeasurably and richly supplied through the gift of His Only Begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our bread of sustenance and He is the One to Whom we must look for our everlasting salvation. So be it! 
	Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live." Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 9:11. Sing praises to the Lord, who dwells in Zion; Declare among the peoples His deeds. Amen.