The Bronze Snake on The Pole

Well, good morning, Crossing Church.

How are you doing? Nine people are doing really

good. How are the rest of you doing?

So that song has some pretty profound lyrics.

I've tasted and I've seen the goodness of the Lord.

How many of you tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord?

Look at your neighbor and say someone needs to tell your face

that just because. Just because we've tasted and

we've seen the goodness of the Lord doesn't mean we live that

way. We're in for a little bit of a

ride today, so put your seat belt on.

Want to welcome all the campuses that are joining with us from

all across this region? If you're inside or online,

We're so thankful for each and every one of you.

And whoever came up with having me preach this sermon on

complaining does not know me. Like this is like you're going

to watch a total lesson in hypocrisy today because I

struggle with it. But I don't think I'm alone.

How many of you struggle with complaining?

Some of you go, I don't struggle with it at all.

I just do it. I just it's just natural.

I don't have. I don't have a problem.

Yeah. So maybe you should ask yourself

this question. If you were put on trial for

complaining, would there be plenty of evidence to find you

guilty? Probably.

I know there would be for me. I would.

I would go into some sort of plea bargaining right away.

And by the way, there's a lot of complaining in the Bible.

You know, there are a whole Bible books that are dedicated

to complaining. There really are, like, weird.

There's a book called Lamentations.

I mean, the whole book is not just about being sad, but it's a

lot of complaining. I mean, there are 150 chapters

in the book of Psalms, and about half of them are complaining.

So there's a lot of complaining in the Bible.

So does that mean that what those authors, those biblical

authors said was sinful? It's really a more complicated

question than that. Because see, sometimes when I

think people might, you know, put that title of complaining on

things, maybe we're mourning. Maybe we're grieving.

Maybe we're trying to understand the why behind something and

it's escaping us. And so we asked the question and

maybe we say it, you know, in a, in kind of a strong imperative

way like God, Why? Why would this happen?

Is that really complaining? It might be labeled that, but I

don't know that that's sinful. But when it comes to fault

finding and murmuring and griping and gossip, and then

you've crossed the line. Why is that?

Well, there's something inherently wrong with

complaining because it's rooted in the most base sin there is,

and that is Pride. Pride says you had a better

idea. Pride says you had a better

solution. Pride says you would have

handled it right. When it comes to God and the

things that you and I can't control, complaining means that

you would have handled it better than God, or that you're better

than God, or that you'd be a better God.

You know what is that? When we do that well, it's a lot

of bad things. You're actually breaking the

three first 3 commandments at the same time.

You know that I'm the Lord thy God who brought you out of the

land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods

before me. But when you think you'd be a

better God, even though maybe you don't put it into those

words, you're putting yourself before God, breaking the first

commandment, second commandment, right?

Well, you're not supposed to make, you're not, you're not

supposed to make any graven images.

You're the you're the idol. You're not supposed to take the

name of your Lord, your God to any idol purpose.

You've taken him for the most idol purpose because you have

substituted him with yourself. Yeah, it's really bad.

So we're winding down a series called Decisions in the Desert,

trying to learn how to trust God and trial and triumph.

We're following Moses and the nation of Israel out of the land

of slavery and into the land of promise.

But if there was anything that the Israelites really did well,

it was grumbling and complaining.

So I'm going to take you on a complaining journey with them.

That doesn't sound like any fun at all.

And it really won't be. But you need to go on this

journey. You need to see yourself on this

journey. And the thing I really want to

preach to you is right at the tail end of it, OK?

So you're going to have to just hunker down and go through this

with me and see during this journey kind of what this whole

complaining and murmuring thing is, because there's a great

destination we're heading to. When Moses first went to Pharaoh

after the burning Bush, he told him to let God's people go, and

Pharaoh decided to teach him a lesson.

What he did was he doubled the workload of the Israelites, but

he didn't give them the raw materials that they needed to do

that doubled workload. And so they had to take whatever

margin time they had to go get the raw materials themselves to

do it. And, and so when Moses went back

and he told the nation what Pharaoh had said, guess what

they did? Grumbled and complained.

What they didn't see was that God was in the process of

setting up a confrontation that would lead to their freedom from

slavery and it would lead to the judgement of the Egyptians.

Later, after the 10 plagues had decimated Egypt and the

Israelites were set free, Moses LED them to the Red Sea.

When the Egyptian army pursued them to kill them, what did the

Israelites do? Here they are in between the sea

and an army that wants to kill him.

And they grumbled and they complained, but God once again

was only setting up an incredible miracle of parting

the sea and destroying the enemy.

After they crossed the sea and they saw their enemy defeated,

Moses LED them to the base of Mount Sinai to receive the Law.

But the food in the water began to run out along the way.

And So what did the Israelites do?

They grumbled and they complained.

What did God do? He made bitter water sweet.

He made it rain manna from the sky six days a week and on

Friday it rains a double amount so they would have enough for

the Sabbath without having to work on the Sabbath.

He brought quail down from the sky for them just to land in

front of them so they can have meat to eat.

And even with all of that complaining, God knew that these

people hadn't developed trust or dependency on Him because all

they'd ever known for generations was slavery.

And I look at that and I think God is so patient and He is so

loving and He still provides all that they need in spite of their

non-stop complaining. Now, it took about two years for

the nation of Israel to get to the promised land from Egypt,

but it was not because it was that far away.

It was because God was establishing his people in the

wilderness. He was establishing a culture.

He was a establishing their faith.

You see, this is where they received the 10 commandments.

This is where they received the law.

This is where they built the Tabernacle.

This is where they installed the priest.

They instituted the sacrifices, they practice their feast days,

and they began to understand both who and whose they were as

God's chosen people. But finally, it was time to take

the land that God had promised them.

And so they made a journey to a place called Kadesh Barnea.

It was the gateway to their ancestral home.

But once they got there, as we learned, the Tyler McKenzie,

incredible preacher, God's word, once they got there, they sent

these 12 spies out for 40 days to inspect the land.

And there was a great fear that came upon the 10 of them.

And their report reflected that. But there were two spies that

Tyler taught us about Joshua and Caleb, who were not shaken in

their faith. But their report did not prevail

with the people. It was the fearful report of the

10 and as that report from the 10 circulated, it inflated and

the description of the obstacles inflated till, you know, there

were there were fortified cities and then fortified cities became

this is a land that swallows up people.

And there were large strong warriors to We are nothing but

grasshoppers and they'll just squish us.

And then we read about it in numbers 14 one to four.

It says that night all the members of the community raised

their voices and wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled

against Moses and Aaron grumbled, good, well, what do

you know? And the whole assembly said to

them, if we had only died in Egypt or in this wilderness, Oh,

God heard that. Why did the Lord bring us to

this land only to let us fall by the sword?

They blamed God. Our wives and children will be

taken as plunder. You can't protect our families,

God. Wouldn't it be better for us to

go back to Egypt? This whole idea of freedom was a

really dumb idea, God. And they said to each other we

should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.

Person you chose was the wrong person, God.

What it resulted in wasn't just complaining, it was a complete

breakdown in their faith. They insulted God and said He

couldn't protect their children for goodness sake.

They discussed executing Moses and appointing a new leader this

time. After all they had seen God do

and the people that God had shaped them into, it was time

for some discipline. It was some time for some

punishment. And when God shared that with

Moses, Moses begged God for mercy, begged him for mercy for

the people, and then God responded.

We read it in Numbers 1420 to 23.

The Lord replied, I have forgiven them as you asked.

Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory

the Lord fills the whole earth, not one of those who saw my

glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness,

but who disobeyed me and tested me 10 times.

Not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to

their ancestors. No one who has treated me with

contempt will ever see it. And this begins what will be 38

years of wandering in the wilderness until every male 20

years old and older has died, leaving only the children that

they said God couldn't protect to take the land.

Numbers 3210 to 13. The Lord's anger was aroused

that day and he swore this oath because they have not followed

me wholeheartedly. Not one of those who were 20

years old or more when they came up out of Egypt.

We'll see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob. Not one except Caleb son of

Jephena the Kinesite, and Joshua the son of Nun, for they

followed the Lord wholeheartedly.

The Lord's anger burned against Israel, and He made them wander

in the wilderness 40 years until the whole generation of those

who had done evil in His sight was gone.

Moses recounts it in his sermon in Deuteronomy 139.

And the little ones that you said would be taken captive,

your children who do not yet know good from bad, they will

enter the land. I will give it to them, and

they'll take possession of it. And from that moment to 38 years

later, the Bible goes pretty quiet.

There's only about 6 verses that describe it.

Four of those are in numbers 1432 to 35 it says.

But As for you, your bodies will fall in the wilderness.

Your children will be shepherds here for 40 years, suffering for

your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the

wilderness for 40 years, one year for each of the 40 days you

explored the land. You will suffer for your sins

and know what it's like to have me against you.

I the Lord have spoken, and I will surely do these things to

this whole wicked community which is banded together against

me. They will meet their end in the

wilderness. Here they will die.

And in Deuteronomy 214 and 1538 years past, from the time we

left Kadesh Barnea until we cross the Zerred Valley.

By then that entire generation of fighting men had perished

from the camp as the Lord had sworn to them.

The Lord's hand was against them until He had completely

eliminated them from the camp. Wow, that's pretty strong.

Finally, that generation was dead and buried.

The Israelites traveled back to the place of their

unfaithfulness and their disobedience.

Kadesh, Barnea and the children were ready to take the land, but

there were still some things that God wanted to wrap up.

There were some things that God wanted to do before they did

that. And so a new generation of

Israelites, you'll never guess what they did.

They began to grow impatient, and the complaining that they

inherited from their parents reared its ugly head again.

Wouldn't you think that these parents would have instructed

their kids, Look, there's a lot of things that you can be

unhappy about, but don't do this thing to the Lord.

The reason that we're staying in this wilderness.

The reason, and even though He's providing for us and giving us

water to drink and he's, he's given us mana to eat and he's

given us quail to eat and all this other stuff that he's doing

for us and He's here with us and He's protecting us still, it was

because of our unfaithfulness to him, because we wanted to be

God. We thought we were smarter than

God. Don't ever do that.

Be very careful not to do that. I don't think that lesson ever

made it through Numbers 21, four and five.

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea

to go around to Edom. But the people grew impatient on

the way. And they spoke against God and

against Moses and said, Why have you brought us up out of Egypt

to die in the wilderness? There's no bread, there's no

water, and we detest this miserable food.

Wait a minute, there's no bread and we detest this miserable

food. There's no water and we detest

this miserable food. There was plenty of food.

It just wasn't the food that they wanted.

They wanted the milk and honey of the promised land.

Now they wanted to go take the promised land.

They didn't want to wait on the Lord anymore.

They wanted to go get their inheritance right.

And you would think that 38 years of wandering would have

taught that lesson of not complaining and instead trusting

God. But no, here we are again with a

new generation, but the same old problems.

And isn't it easy right now for you and I to just lean into the

story and and just shake our heads and say those foolish

Israelites and I just hypocritically sang a song with

you. I've tasted and I've seen the

goodness of the Lord. So have you.

You testified to that fact. You raised your hand with me.

I've tasted and I've seen. Good God, you'll, you'll never

not be a good God. And I am just like these people.

And so are you talking in the green room a little while ago.

And I'm like, you know what? I'll complain about something

and I'll murmur about something and then God will do something

amazing and he'll take that away from me.

And you know what I do right after that?

I just go find something else to murmur and complain about.

It's like I want to be a perpetual victim.

What is wrong with me and what is wrong with you?

We were having a communion meditation early this morning

when we were in rehearsals and a scripture was shared.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free.

Does that sound redundant to you?

It was for freedom that Christ set us free.

Actually, it's not redundant. Just because you are set free

doesn't mean you live in freedom.

That right? If we've learned anything from

the people of Israel, they had been set free, but they weren't

living in that freedom, right? They were still living in

victimization. I wonder how many of us want to

continue to live in victimization.

And what we do is we want to complain about the things that

we don't like in our lives because we consider ourselves,

you know, underneath it, you know, there was a, there's a

common thing that we'll say to people when we're trying to

describe our lives. And, and, and a personal says

how you doing? And, and, and sometimes we just

lie and we say fine. And other times we'll say this.

We'll say these 3 words to clarify what comes next.

Ready. How are you doing?

Well, under the circumstances? Didn't you say that?

Which means, where are you living under the circumstances?

Do you think that God set you free to live under the

circumstances, or did he set you free to live over them?

The circumstances are the circumstances.

We all have to deal with the idea of the lower story, but we

don't have to live under them. We can live over them in the

upper story, but we can't do that when we're murmuring and

complaining. So I just can't have the luxury

of reading this and going, well, I'm so glad I'm not like that

now. Now what happens next is the OK,

you're here, you're here with me.

We all made it on the complaining journey because what

happens next is really going to be astounding.

It's an obscure story in the Old Testament, but it's critical to

everything. You and I believe it's in

Numbers 21 verses 6:00 to 9:00. I'm going to read it to you.

Then the Lord remember they're complaining.

We detest this miserable food. Then the Lord sent venomous

snakes among them, and they bit the people, and many Israelites

died. How many of you would be living

in your worst nightmare? And the people came to Moses and

said, we sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against

you. Pray that the Lord will take the

snakes away from us. I'm going to stop right there.

That was the the prayer they wanted Moses to pray that that

God would take the snakes away. And you know what God said to

that prayer? No.

So Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said to Moses, make

a snake and put it up on a pole. Anyone who is bitten can look at

it and live. So Moses made a bronze snake and

put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a

snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

Now can I get a witness? Isn't that the weirdest story

you ever heard? That is one weird story and it

just doesn't seem to fit. It doesn't seem to fit in the

Bible. Right, so we just talked about

the first 3 commandments. One of those commandments was

what you shall not make to yourselves any graven image.

And what would a bronze snake on a pole be?

A graven image. So God is telling Moses to break

the commandment and put a bronze snake on a you know, and it's

not just any image, It's a snake that takes you all the way back

to the book of Genesis, right? Because there was a serpent in

the Garden of Eden. Now, the serpent is not a snake,

by the way. The serpent, we don't know what

kind of a creature that was, but it was a creature that that

didn't repel Eve. It actually, you know, pulled

her in. That serpent was cursed to

become a snake, to slither around on its belly and eat

dust, right? The kind of snakes that we don't

like. That's not how it began.

So of all graven images, to make, the worst graven image you

could make would be something that was symbolic of evil and

symbolic of Satan himself, right?

Because snakes are associated with evil because of Satan in

the Garden of Eden. And only by looking at this

bronze snake on a pole will you be saved from the venom of

snakes biting you. Did you see that this doesn't

stop the snakes from biting you? The snakes don't go away.

They're still there and they still bite you.

They just can't have their poison kill you.

But only if you look at the bronze snake.

That was over 3400 years ago, but the children of God still

haven't learned their lesson. But I'm here to tell you that

God has an answer for that, and we see it right here.

So before you say that's just the weirdest story ever heard, I

don't understand. It doesn't make sense to me.

It really doesn't fit. Sounds like a contradiction in

the Bible. Hold your horses.

See, the Bible is a collection of stories, but it is really

only a compilation of a single story.

And that story is the story of Jesus because Jesus is God's

solution for our sin. It's a story about God

procreating because we are his children.

And it's a story about how his children, because of their free

will, stepped away from fellowship with the Father and

they did that in sin. And then it's a story of how

God, and only God could redeem that relationship.

And the way he could do it was find us guilty of our sin,

pronounce judgement for penalty, and that penalty is death, and

then pay the price himself because that was his love.

And that's who Jesus is, God in human form, who came to earth to

pay our debt on the cross. And so by doing that set us

free. When God tells that story in the

Old Testament, he doesn't just say it in a narrative.

He also says it through prophecies.

He says it through illustrations of other people's lives.

And let me give you some examples of that.

It's the story of Melchizedek, priest of God, most high on

Mount Moriah, same mountaintop where Jesus was crucified later,

who brought out bread and wine to Abraham, the same symbols of

communion so many hundreds of years later, and blessed

Abraham. It's the story of Abraham's

third visitor, who when the other two visitors went down to

Sodom and pronounced judgement on Sodom, he stayed back and

said you're going to have a son and you're going to name him

Isaac. It was inside the story of

Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his own son because

God knew Abraham as a friend. I'm here to save your son, but a

day's going to come on the same mountain, Mount Moriah, where my

son is going to carry wood up this hill.

And instead of someone having a substitute for my son, he's

going to die alone for you and for Isaac and for all the people

of the earth. And I'm going to let it happen.

It's in the story of Joseph saving his family from a famine

even though he had been rejected by his own brothers.

It's in the story of Moses being the deliverer.

It's in the story of the blood that was applied to the

doorposts in the lentils of the Hebrew houses on Passover.

It's told over and over and over again.

And even in this obscure passage, it is told through a

bronze snake lifted up on a pole to counteract a deadly poison.

I'm going to ask you, can you see it?

Why venomous snakes? Because it's symbolic of sin

itself. It's symbolic of Satan himself,

and that's what sin is like. It's around us all the time.

Like snakes at our feet, biting at our feet.

And we wish that that temptation, and we wish that

those desires that we've had, would we be able to control

them, would be able to stop them.

But the snakes keep biting at us.

And if the bite is sin, the venom is death.

And we live in a world of sin and we're surrounded by it and

we're overcome by it. And it seems so hopeless.

But most of us have heard John 316 when John is teaching

Nicodemus right, and he says these words For God so love the

world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes

in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

But let me ask you this question.

How many of you have studied the two verses before John 316?

Because this is what they say. This is what Jesus says.

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the

Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes may

have eternal life in him. Jesus was the symbol of sin that

was set up on a pole. He who had no sin in himself.

Bible says God made him who knew no sin to become sin on our

behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God, right?

Do we know what happened? That God placed all the sins of

the world, past, present, and future, on the shoulders of His

Son while He was nailed to that cross.

Those nails that suspended him from the wood of that cross

separated Him from earth and heaven.

He had been rejected by mankind just because He loved them.

He'd been rejected by God because of the sin that He

carried. God turns His face from His own

Son because of the sin that he carries.

And then you hear the prophetic words coming from Jesus's mouth

that were also uttered in Psalm 22 a thousand years before.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And the old hymn that says he could have called 10,000 angels

to destroy the world and set him free.

He could have called 10,000 angels, but he died.

How alone for you and me. He bore all of our sin.

And when we look at him, although the snakes keep biting

in our lives, their venom has been rendered powerless because

the blood of an overcomer has been applied.

Sin is the disease, death is the seeming inevitable result.

But the blood of Jesus Christ is the cure.

You and I, we live in this world, overcome by sin, and we

are all a part of it. A world where we blame others

and then complain about it. A world where we blame God and

then we complain about it. A world where our pride gets the

best of us, where we exchange the one true God for golden

calves, Where we concentrate on hunger and thirst instead of

trust and obedience, and where we lose our faith all together

and give into our fears. But it was into that world that

Jesus came. This is where he looked beyond

their faults. This is where he looked beyond

my fault and saw my need, and then met my need by being lifted

up. But then he rose from the dead,

and he proved once and for all that he has the power to raise

you and me from the dead. Yeah, I struggle with

complaining and I struggle with murmuring, but someday God is

going to finish his work. He's going to finish his work in

me. He's going to finish his work in

you if you trusted in Jesus, if you trusted the one who was on

that pole, who died alone for you and for me.

We're moving to a time of decision.

So I know that there's people here today that you put on a

good face for everybody else, but when it comes to whether or

not your faith in him is intimate and personal, you would

have a hard time saying yes. Maybe you do the religion thing,

maybe you kind of do the family thing, but when has it become

yours? When does it become yours?

When do you own it? When do you say I have an

intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ?

I'm not trying to get it by my relationships.

I'm not trying to receive it by osmosis.

I I need to have that relationship, and you can't have

it until you surrender. Just because Moses set up a

snake on a pole didn't mean that the people were instantly

healed. They had to look at it.

They had to lift up their eyes, lower stories all around them,

snakes all around them, But God's saying their salvation and

looking up, not in looking down. And if you want hope, it is for

freedom that Christ set you free.

And the way you do it is you look up.

And the way he's taught us to do that is instead of trying to

turn over new leaves, instead of running away from our sin which

surrounds us, we need to look at him, just him, Jesus, fix our

eyes on Jesus. I like the older translation

where it says the author, the one where the story began.

Right, The author and the finisher of our faith, and he

will do what only he can do in your life.

There's going to be somebody right over there by the

baptistry that would love nothing more than to talk to you

about that relationship with Jesus Christ.

And you don't have to go another day.

You don't have to go another hour without entering in that

relationship. And there's nothing standing in

the way except you. And then there's a lot of us

here today that have made that decision.

But even though we've made that decision, it doesn't mean that

our lives are reflecting it, that we live lives of hypocrisy

and inconsistency. And I'm just like you.

I'm just like you. Been hearing a lot of stories

this week, haven't we? From North Carolina, you know,

in Boone, NC is in that was in that hurricane zone.

And that's where the Billy Graham Library is.

And a number of years ago, wasn't that long ago, a few

years ago, I was able to visit that library was really kind of

an amazing thing. And there's an area just a

little ways from the barn where the library is, where there are

Graves. And Ruth Bell Graham was buried

there, and George Beverly Shea and his wife and Cliff Barrows

and his wife, all the people that had worked with Billy

Graham and his crusades. And Billy Graham had not yet

passed away when I was there. He's about a year from passing

away. But you can see where he was

going to lie beside his wife, Ruth.

Bill Graham was known for saying something that we've often

repeated, and I'm sure you've heard it.

Please be patient, God hasn't finished with me yet and on her

tombstone it says God has finished with me.

Thank you for your patience. What a way to look into your

future, to look in the future, not just with a A wish or a

hope, but a calm assurance that he who began a good work in you

will be faithful to complete it. Not you, not me, him.

I wondered if some of you might be feeling that lower story

defeatedness right now, like you're just getting beaten or

it's too easy for you to give in.

You're feeling your weakness. What if He came up here and you

got down on your knees and you let God remind you that He loves

you, that He chose you, that He knows you, that He hasn't

rejected you, that He loves you, and that He's here for you right

now? And I think when you come up off

those knees, you're going to stand taller, you're going to

walk lighter, you're going to smile brighter because you know

the truth and the truth sets you free.

Would you stand with me In Jesus name, Heavenly Father, we come

before you and I ask that we just see us as we are.

I know you do. Bunch of little kids, often

times very spoiled, very selfish, But your kids and I

pray Father, with all of our inadequacy and all of our

immaturity that we would just look to you and your open arms

and with confidence, like little sons and daughters, that we

would run into the very safe arms of our Heavenly Father and

to feel the assurance of those arms around us.

In Jesus name, Amen.