In the book of Numbers, the Israelites are doing what we left them doing after the story of Exodus, wandering around the desert and constantly panicking that God has abandoned them. By this point, they’d been on the cusp of entering the promised land when they’d given into fear and are now set to wander in the desert for forty years. Nice going, guys. Then on one particularly long journey, the Israelites’ attitude slips once again with their old complaint.
“They began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”” (Numbers 21:5)
Honestly, these guys need a new catchphrase.
Disregarding the fact that they’re suggesting slavery was better than freedom, they also want it known that they have some issues with the divine menu. Their complaining (original or otherwise) is not missed by God. Numbers goes on to tell us what happened next.
“So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed.” (Numbers 21:6-9)
Now, there’s a lot we could unpack here. Like the creativity of a plague of snakes and the strange solution of looking at a pole with a replica snake on it. Nevermind the medical miracle of snake venom being healed from looking at a statue. But setting the snakes aside, there’s a lot in this story about forgiveness and consequences.
For having so many complaints about God’s faithfulness, the Israelites are awfully quick to want God to poof their problems away. But their attitude problems go even deeper. There seems to be an opinion that since they said they were sorry they are now entitled to have their problem solved. But that’s not how wrongdoing works.
I think many of us have heard the analogy of apologizing by the broken plate. The idea being if you smash a plate on the floor you can apologize to it, but it won’t make the plate magically go back together.
Our actions will always have consequences.
The Israelites repented (for the hundredth time) but the snakes didn’t simply vanish. God rescued them once again and saved their lives once again out of his mercy, but the consequences were still present. The consequence of their sin was still among them and still wrecking havoc. Every day the Israelites would have had a means of saving their lives, but every day the need for such a measure remained.
So what does this mean for us? I don’t think (fortunately) that many of us are suffering from a plague of snakes, but we all of us have things in our past that had far reaching consequences, even after we sought to make amends. This story serves as a reminder to us of the seriousness of wrong doing. We cannot be flippant with what we get wrong.
And yet we know how prone to sin we are, so what are we meant to do? I’m certainly not going to advocate for perfectionism here. All of us have naively said “Well I just won’t do that anymore!” and then find ourselves running straight back to wrong. Nor am I advocating for doom and gloom and just sitting in our shame. Because that’s the other takeaway from this story.
Even in the darkest of our shortcomings, God always comes for us with hope. Even as the Israelites were hurling insults and complaints to break God’s heart, he had a plan to save the world. Even as he gave them a way to escape the snakes, he was working on a path to redemption that would crush the ultimate serpent’s head.
That’s part of what made Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross so mind blowingly loving. By taking on all our sins past present and future, someone had finally come who could put the plate back together. Someone had finally come who could save us fight not just sin, but its far reaching grip on humanity. Jesus fought sin head on and won and because of thatwe can have peace and safety.
So take heart, Christian. Guard your actions carefully, make whatever amends you can when you fall, but live in the hope that is Jesus’ gift to you. The plate is being put back together.
Let’s find some joy,
A
Avalon Robinson Author 