Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Unbelievable Prayer

You won’t believe what happened to me yesterday. It is quite possible that you won’t believe it. But it is also an assertion that it did in fact happen whether you believe it or not. Well, you won’t believe what happened to the people of Israel while they journeyed from Mount Hor to go around the land of Edom.

It is an unbelievable account. That is, people are able not to believe it. That is not, that people should not believe it. Fiery serpents. Does that mean dragons? A bronze image on a pole for healing. Does that mean a powerful talisman? Did this story really happen to the people of Israel in the wilderness on their way to the promised land?

The Bible is full of unbelievable things, things that might not be believed. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot believe them, or should not believe them or that they didn’t actually happen. It only means that the Bible is full of exciting and wondrous things that serve to teach us something about God (not only through analogy, but through historical experience).

Because some people have a hard time believing in God sending fiery serpents among His people with a bite that kills and then providing them a snake on a pole so that if they just looked at it they would be healed, they file this account from the Book of Numbers with legends of King George and the Dragon, and such like. But if we are not going to believe that this happened to the people of Israel, how then will we believe anything that God has done for His people? How then will we believe that God would do anything for us?

Water turned into blood; plagues of frogs and flies and locusts; fire raining down from the sky; the sea dividing into two to make a path for the people of Israel to cross; water gushing out from a rock; bread from heaven covering the ground every morning; the earth swallowing up a group of rebels. All of these unbelievable things led up to the account in today’s Old Testament Reading.

“The people spoke against God and against Moses.... Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it shall live.’” (Numbers 21:5, 6-8).

What is so unbelievable? Fiery serpents? They already had Aaron’s wooden staff turn into a serpent and eat up two other serpents before becoming a staff once again. A bronze snake on a pole? They already saw Aaron’s staff of dead wood sprout leaves and produce almonds. What is so unbelievable about this Bible reading?

Isn’t it even more unbelievable that the people of Israel complained against God and against Moses again, after having done that so often before. And it is the same complaint, that God so often miraculously satisfied before. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water”. The same accusation and the same complaints. And God had miraculously given them water from a rock and manna, the bread of the angels. To which they reacted, “we loathe this worthless food” (Num 21:5). That is what is unbelievable!

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it is quite believable if we stop to think of the things we complain about, things that we have been delivered from many times in the past; things that are truly blessings that we have come to despise. Why is the service so long? Do the communion wafers have to taste like styrofoam? Can’t we use a sweeter wine?

So maybe it is not so unbelievable that the LORD who had Aaron’s staff turn into a serpent and devour the serpents of the wicked Egyptian magicians, then sent fiery serpents among this people that complained about His acts of salvation and providence for them. It is not so unbelievable that He would punish them for their lack of faith and their despising of His grace.

But the unbelievable gall of the people to then go to Moses and ask him to pray for them, that the LORD would take away the serpents. How dare they? How could they think that the LORD would change His mind? How could they believe that Moses would do what they wanted after they had just accused him of being God’s dupe in leading them out to die in the wilderness? How could they expect him to go before the LORD God, when they were too afraid to do so themselves?

And still more unbelievable, perhaps the most unbelievable thing in the whole account (beyond fiery serpents and a healing pole) is that God again provided a means for their salvation. As unlikely as it is that He who commanded, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4) would have Moses make such an image of a serpent, how much more unlikely is it that He would save this complaining people from death by means of it. Yet, the LORD heard their prayer, confessing their sin against Him, and He answered their plea for salvation.

Is it because we find this so unbelievable that we are reluctant to pray to the LORD against whom we have sinned? Jesus said to His disciples, “Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). This was on the night when Jesus was betrayed, the night before His crucifixion and death. He knew that the disciples would be in desperate need. Their guilt and grief would sting them like the bite of a venomous serpent. And in that time of sorrow and fear that the same authorities might soon come to arrange for their deaths, Jesus reminded them to pray.

All of them, including Judas who would be the betrayer, and Mark who would flee away naked when they grabbed hold of him by his robe, and Peter who would deny knowing Jesus, and John who was known to the High Priest but did not speak up for Jesus, and Thomas who would not believe the report that Jesus had risen from the dead.

All of them in all of those times of doubt and despair and remorse over their sins, Jesus implores them to do the unbelievable: to pray for their salvation, even while He knows their sins will be against Him. “Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave Me alone” (John 16:32). Yet, He tells them to ask the Father for forgiveness and salvation at that very time.

This is the same thing that Jesus bids you to do when it seems unbelievable that God would answer your prayer. When the knowledge of your sins overwhelms and you are stung with guilt and shame and in fear of death, He bids you to pray to the very One against whom you have sinned. For Jesus believed the account of the people of Israel which we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading. He believed it because He was there, as the eternal Son of the heavenly Father, the Word of God which was in the beginning.

We know that He believed in this account because He spoke of it to Nicodemas, who came to Jesus at night because he didn’t want to be seen with Him in the light of day. Jesus said to Nicodemas, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

Jesus knew that He would be lifted up on the cross to die for the sins of the whole world. He knew that it would actually happen, not that it would be just be some kind of dream or vision or legend or myth. So it would not have been a very accurate comparison to make if Moses did not truly make that fiery serpent and put it on a pole for the salvation of the people of Israel. Rather, just as Moses truly did it, so it was truly done to Jesus.

It is unbelievable that the salvation of all from their sins against God would come through the crucifixion of the holy Son of God. He took upon Himself the sins of all people. Having become a human being in the womb of the virgin Mary, He humbled Himself for our salvation, dying upon the cross. Jesus Christ crucified took upon Himself the guilt for every one of your sins, dying in the likeness of the serpent on a pole, a serpent condemned like the serpent who deceived Adam and Eve, the first to fall in the Garden of Eden.

As Psalm 22 predicted many aspects of Jesus’ crucifixion, rehearsing the familiar words “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Psalm 22:1), it also ran the line, “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people” (v. 6). Jesus, the worm, the serpent on the pole, the man who had taken on Himself all of our sins of doubt and despair and complaint against the God who has saved us, is here again to today to do the unbelievable.

He is here to forgive you your sins and to give you the medicine of immortality. He is here to feed you the bread of heaven, that worthless bread that came down from heaven and was lifted up on a cross. What is more unbelievable: that He comes to you in bread and wine, or that He forgives you and saves you from the punishments you bring upon yourself? “Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”