| “The people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned … 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 came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived” (Numbers 21:7-9). |
| Eventually the people realized that they had sinned in complaining about their good food, and in speaking against the Lord, and against Moses. They asked Moses to pray to the Lord, so that He would take away those awful serpents. Perhaps some of us are praying that way too, and asking the Lord to take away this Covid virus. But we see that Moses did not pray this way; it simply says that he “prayed for the people.” Moses realized that there was a deeper problem, and so he prayed for the people. |
| When Moses prayed, the Lord did not take away the serpents. They were still there, and still biting people. They needed to be reminded of the seriousness of what they had done in speaking against the Lord, and against Moses. But the Lord did something else, and you probably know the story well. The Lord told Moses to make a serpent of brass, and put it on a pole. Whenever someone had been bitten by a serpent, he had only to look at the serpent on the pole, and he would live. |
| You and I might have thought that having to look at a brass serpent was the last thing that people would want to do, if they had been bitten by a serpent. They would hate the sight of it! Yet that was the only way to be healed. All this has two good lessons for us. |
| First of all, the serpent of brass is a picture of the Lord Jesus, and we see this in John’s gospel. See if you can find the verse in John that mentions this serpent of brass. It is a picture of the Lord Jesus bearing our sins, so that we do not have to bear the punishment for them. The Lord wanted the children of Israel to realize that He could not forgive their sins, unless someone bore the punishment for them. |
| But there is another lesson for us here too. The Lord wanted the children of Israel to think about all that God had done for them, and all His power. If you remember, it was their own fault that they had to wander in the wilderness for forty years, for they had rebelled against the Lord, and refused to go into the land of Canaan. Also, they had learned lessons in the wilderness that they could not learn any other way. Now once again they were having to learn a lesson, and to see how the Lord could deliver them from the bite of the serpents. |
| It is the same for us in this Covid problem. The Lord has allowed it so that we all learn something. Also, He is going to bring us through it! |
