You know, one of the most inexplicable things in the Bible is that little incident in the Old Testament where God commanded Moses to make a brass statue of a snake, of all things, to heal the people.

It came about like this. God had had it up to here with these rebellious Israelites, (a recurring theme throughout the Bible) and so He cursed them by sending fiery serpents among them to bite them. The people realized their mistake as they began to die by the boatload (another recurring theme) and begged God to forgive them. God in His near-infinite mercy gave Moses instructions to build a brass snake and place it on top of a pole, and promised that anyone who had been bitten and looked at this shiny snake on a stick would be cured, and surely enough, they were. And so Israel moved on to someplace else, soon to once again tempt God and repeat the scenario from the beginning.

Doesn’t this seem like an odd story? Consider; this is the only time God ever commanded Israel to use anything remotely resembling an idol. It’s the only time that merely looking at something healed anyone. And it’s the only time, throughout all of Biblical architecture and history that God sanctioned the use of a serpent for anything. I mean, the serpent is the symbol of the devil, isn’t it? Why would God use THAT to HEAL people of their sin, of all things??

And to top it ALL off – and this really is the capstone of the incongruity, the quintessential conflict of logic – Christ compares HIS sacrifice, His own perfect body hanging on the stake, to this statue of a shiny snake on a stick!

John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

Does that make sense to you? No, I don’t suppose it does. Most of the many odd things about scripture I’ve heard many ministers attempt to explain – attempts that usually failed or missed the point, true, but they tried. But this is one incident so odd that almost nobody is willing to touch it. And I concede it has troubled me for a long time… but I think that now is finally the time to understand it. So let’s get with it.

First off, let’s establish what this Brass Serpent WASN’T. For one thing, it wasn’t an idol. It does sort of have all the earmarks of one, yes, but it wasn’t. This wasn’t a god for Israel to have, nor a special thing to reverence. Of course, Israelites being Israelites, they made it into one anyway…

2 Kings 18:4 He [Hezekiah] removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

So it wasn’t an idol, and it wasn’t a miraculous healing device – it was a symbol. A symbol that somehow allowed God to take away the penalty for the sins of the people. Now for the rest, we need to go through the primary scripture in question in some detail…

Numbers 21:4-5 And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way. And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.

So they were griping about Manna again. They wanted something with a bit more spice evidently. But let’s be fair – 40 years of eating oily honey would have to get a bit old, wouldn’t it? I mean, once in awhile a hamburger would have to sound pretty good. And so it is no surprise that the Israelites weren’t too fond of it after a while.

Unfortunately for them, this Manna represented the body of Christ (John 6:48), and so it was very important to God…. which meant He took it quite personally when they didn’t like it…

Verse 6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

And so God killed many of them with fiery snakes. Incidentally, fiery snakes seems to be a metaphor for “snakes with fire in their mouths” – meaning poisonous snakes. However, God chose the concept of fiery for a good reason… but before we can go too far into that, we have to cover another point…

1 Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for OUR admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

All of the things that happened to the Israelites, from the 10 plagues in Egypt (and the fact that Israel was protected from the last 7), to the fact that their shoes didn’t wear out during the 40 years in the wilderness, all the way down to Moses striking the rock… these things ALL happened to them as an example for us, today.

(…And before you ask, I have no idea what the shoes-not-wearing-out thing means on a spiritual level, but you get the idea…)

In any case, these were all physical types, or metaphors, or allegories for things that we as spiritual Christians would go through, or have gone through, or just for some part of the plan of God in general. So to understand what we’re working on in Numbers 21, we have to bear in mind that this is just a physical type of a deeper meaning. So working from that, let’s read the last verse again…

Verse 6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

There is a curious anomaly here. You see, Hebrew has a word for serpent. It is “Nachach”, and it is used in Genesis 3 and most other places in the Bible. But here, God chooses a different word. The word is the Hebrew “Saraph”. Now that SHOULD look familiar to you already, but in case it doesn’t, think… angel. That’s right. The identical word is used in

Isaiah 6:2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

You see, Saraph comes from a root word in Hebrew which means “to burn up”. The logic for applying that to these serpents has been explained, and it is no stretch at all to see why God calls His angels by this name, since He says elsewhere that…

Hebrews 1:7 And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.

The point of this is to firmly establish the connection here between what God did with those rebellious Israelites, what He did with Egypt, and what He does with you and I when we are, shall we say, less than eager to walk the straight and narrow.

Psalms 78:49-50 He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them. He made a way to his anger; he spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence;

One of God’s primary methods of punishing people is by sending evil angels among them, to trouble them, and to cause death, sickness, and disease. You might say, metaphorically, that God sends angels… fiery serpents… seraphim… whatever… to cause you trouble, or even… bite you. Couldn’t you?

And so, this is what God was doing, in a physical sense, to Israel. And He was going to kill them for their sin, since after all, the wages of sin was death. But the Israelites wimped out under the punishment and threw God a curve…

Numbers 21:7-9 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

And so God instructed them to a hang a representation of one of these fiery serpents on a pole, and that when the people saw this shiny snake on a stick – I just never get tired of saying that – they would be healed. But how can this happen? What is it about seeing the snake lifted up on a pole that could allow God to heal people?

This is where the really awesome stuff starts to unfold. I love this part! It is connected to so many parts of the Bible, and it is so foundational, and so vast, and yet so simple. As we know, healing is the forgiveness of sins…

Matthew 9:2-5 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

Christ said that He said it this way so that they would know that He could forgive sins. But as a sidepoint, we can see that Him FORGIVING this man’s sins HEALED him. This means that the healing of a person IS the forgiving of their sins. In this case, logically, the sins that caused the problem in the first place, though not necessarily ALL of his sins. But how is this possible?

Well, we know that God cannot forgive a WILLFUL sin, or a sin that you REALLY knew was wrong when you did it. Fortunately for you, you’ve never committed a sin like this. Of course, you may have done things you suspected were wrong, or thought might be wrong, but you couldn’t know ALL the trouble they would bring.

You don’t even know for ABSOLUTE certain that God exists. I mean, have you met Him? Does He invite you to His home for dinner? I didn’t think so. So disobeying the orders – which don’t always make sense – of an invisible being who may not even exist – doesn’t always seem like such a big deal to us.

What this means is that you’ve never committed a TRULY willful sin, because even Paul only saw “through a glass darkly”! This means that God CAN forgive your sin, because of your ignorance… but now we have to ask WHY do you see through a glass darkly? What KEEPS you from seeing God as He is?

Or maybe I should ask… WHO?

You see, God and Adam and Eve were all on pretty good terms until Satan walks in and starts lying to Eve. Then the relationship eroded rather quickly. All deception and lies in the universe started with the devil, of course (John 8:44). So logically, if there was no deception, then there would be no excuse for sin – right? Without that cloak of deception, ANY sin, would be a WILLFUL sin! (John 15:22)

If there was no EXCUSE you could offer, no “But God, Satan lied to me, I didn’t know!” that you could offer up to God by way of explaining your actions… then ANY sin, any disobedience at all to what God commanded, would be INEXCUSABLE, and WILLFUL, and ETERNALLY UNFORGIVEABLE!

But where is all this going, you wonder? Well, I apologize for coming about it in such a roundabout fashion, but where we are going is a bit… radical… Biblical, to be sure, but radical nonetheless… and so to be fair to my argument, I have to make sure I’ve established my foundation beyond reproach.

And to that end, there is one more step in the process of forgiveness of sins I have yet to cover, and here at last we start to drift back to our main subject. Because all the ignorance in the world just doesn’t help a bit, UNLESS there is a sacrifice to pay for your sins. And here of course, we find Christ…

1 Peter 2:24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Christ bore those sins – the ignorant sins, remember – to the tree, for us, so that we could live. And by His stripes, and His shed blood we have access to the miracle of healing. Which is the forgiveness of sins, don’t forget.

John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

And here Christ, Himself ties His sacrifice back to the serpent in the wilderness. These were similar… but very different. Let’s recap before I explain just how they were different. The Israelites sinned, but it was a sin of ignorance and deception, as all of our sins are, to some extent or another. When they realized the consequences of their actions, they looked to God and asked for forgiveness of their sins, and healing.

In other words, they were asking God to apply the stripes of His Son to their sins and and wash them away. But God refused to do it, UNTIL they looked at the shiny snake on a stick. Then – and ONLY then – He forgave them. So the question we have now, is WHAT did looking at the serpent on the stick change in God’s mind? What was the significance? And to answer that, we must go to Leviticus 16…

In this chapter, the details of the day of Atonement are laid out for us. In brief, the high priest first makes a sacrifice for himself and his house, to make sure his sins are paid for. Then…

Leviticus 16:8-9 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the LORD’S lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering.

This goat, the sin offering, is Christ. And his blood is sprinkled in various places in the holy of holies in the temple of God, as a yearly sacrifice for the sins of the entire nation of Israel. Notice that this goat is the sacrifice whose blood PAYS for the sins of the people.

Verses 10,21-22 But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an ATONEMENT with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness… And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.

Read that carefully. This second goat is also a sacrifice, also for ALL of the sins of ALL of the people! But we just read of the sacrifice of Christ, which PAID for all of their sins! Why do we need another sacrifice, wasn’t Christ’s enough?? But notice a careful distinction… the first goat PAID for the sins of the people… But this time, Aaron CONFESSES all the sins of all the people on the head of this goat, and PUTS them on HIS HEAD, and he BEARS their sins, or the BLAME for their sins, on HIS head!

We know that this is Satan, but the deeper point here is that Satan is represented as part, as a NECESSARY part, of the yearly cleansing sacrifice of the nation of Israel! This may not seem important to you, but it will shortly, trust me.

You see, this goat makes the ATONEMENT with God – not the other one! SATAN makes the atonement for you with God! Read it again if you don’t believe me! How does he do that? By GIVING GOD AN EXCUSE NOT TO KILL YOU!

Verses 30, 34 For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD… And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year….

God can soften his judgment on you because, and ONLY because, THERE IS A DEVIL! If it wasn’t for the fact that you sinned partly because the Devil lied to you, God would HAVE to kill you, as He one day will kill the devil!

Remember, if it wasn’t for the devil, all your sins would be willful, and God couldn’t forgive them. But symbolically every year on the day of Atonement, our High Priest reminds God that the DEVIL is partly to blame for this mess of an earth we live in today, and God remembers that and extends you a bit of grace to cover your sins. And now, with that word, grace, we finally approach the climax of this awesome bit of knowledge!

There are two types of Grace. Actually, that’s not true, I should say that there are two USES for grace. A physical, and a spiritual. The physical grace is given to all the world, based on their ignorance. This grace allows the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, and good things to still happen to bad people. (Matthew 5:45). But this grace ONLY allows people physical life, and physical things, like sunshine and rain.

This is the grace which kept you alive before you knew you were sinning (Romans 7:9-13), and the more you were sinning, the more grace you had (Romans 5:20), because God knew you were deceived, and where there is no law, there is no sin (Romans 5:13).

But there is a deeper purpose for grace, as well. One which is identical to the other grace in every respect but two; one, that it leads to SPIRITUAL LIFE instead of just physical life; and two, that YOU are responsible for building it THROUGH FAITH.

Romans 5:13-14 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

See, until you knew about a sin, it wasn’t imputed to you. It was covered by God’s grace, His “winking” at a sin until you knew about it (Acts 17:30). But despite this grace which allowed Ahab, Lamech, and Terah and every other person from then to now to live a certain amount of time, THEY ALL DIED! EVERYONE from Adam to your great-great-grandmother died! This grace WASN’T ENOUGH FOR THEM!

Romans 5:21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

But when we take that grace that we’ve all been given, and add to it RIGHTEOUSNESS, we build FAITH! And by that faith we have access into THIS GRACE!

Romans 5:1-2 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into THIS GRACE wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

We have access by FAITH, not to that other grace that only leads to PHYSICAL life, but access to THIS GRACE which leads to ETERNAL LIFE, and SPIRITUAL existence living in the GLORY OF GOD! And we have access by faith to THIS grace BY CHRIST! By BELIEVING ON CHRIST!

John 3:14-15 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, EVEN SO must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

And now at last the significance of this is plain! Jesus Christ was hung on a stake, and bled and died for us that we might receive this grace of His which is based on more than just ignorance! A grace based on obedience and faith, and which leads to ETERNAL LIFE as a child of God!

IF you believe on the being on THAT stick. On the other hand…

In the OLD Testament when God was so angry with Israel, He commanded Moses to build a brass serpent as a symbol to make an atonement for the people! And Moses hung the serpent on a stake, and it DID give the Israelites grace! It did MAKE AN ATONEMENT with God, and it reminded God that they were just dust, and were only sinning from ignorance, and so He found it in His heart to forgive them! But THEY ALL STILL PERISHED!

That fiery serpent, Satan the Devil, allowed God to give physical Israel grace because HE HAD DECEIVED THEM! He made that atonement for them to God, as that second goat in the atonement ceremony, upon whom the SINS of ALL THE PEOPLE WERE BLAMED!

And EVEN SO, Christ was lifted up onto a pole, JUST AS THE SERPENT WAS, to pay for the sins of SPIRITUAL Israel, and to bring that Grace which comes by FAITH and leads to ETERNAL LIFE for US! And now Christ, OUR High Priest, makes INTERCESSION for our sins in the holy of holies with God (Hebrews 7:25), based on HIS GRACE, which WE have built THROUGH RIGHTEOUSNESS!

No more do we have to depend on Satan making an atonement for us with God, interceding with God’s judgment by reminding God we are only human, and causing God to remember that we are just dust (Psalms 103:14), (mind you, I don’t mean to imply that Satan does this willingly, as some sort of defense attorney, but His EXISTENCE and the deception he has caused makes atonement for us).

And no more must we rely on that atonement for a physical people which could only palliate God’s anger for a sinning people long enough to allow them to live for a few decades in relative peace. For now, we have a SPIRITUAL advocate, a defense attorney arguing our case and defending our sins of ignorance before the judgment seat of God, and reminding God that WE HAVE OBEYED HIM, and making intercession for us by reminding God that HE DIED so that we might have access into THIS GRACE which leads to ETERNAL, SPIRITUAL LIFE!

And yet we are one of a very few who have this advocate in heaven arguing our case. Most of the world’s sins are still atoned for by the other goat, and only receive the physical grace because Israel, like all the world, has been worshipping this serpent from the dawn of history with Mother Eve, and has placed him on the throne of God in their minds.

But there will come a day, in the not-too-distant future when we shall have no more need for that Shiny Snake on a Stick, and so we too will one day break him in pieces as good King Hezekiah did, and shall banish with him deception and lies and their children, suffering and pain and heartache from our universe that grace may reign unopposed through righteousness UNTO ETERNAL LIFE!

…And in the meanwhile, the entire world looks to that shiny brass snake wrapped around a stick every time they walk into a hospital or go to a pharmacy for healing.