Num. 21:4-9, John 3:14, 15 “God’s Anti-Venom”
One of the things you don’t do currently in Brisbane or South-East Queensland is leave a door that opens to the outside open, especially a garage door. My sister was telling me this week that in South-East Queensland, there are many snakes about. Some people have been bitten and the snake catchers have been working overtime, going to people’s homes, catching the snakes and releasing them far away in the bush. The reason for the activity of the snakes is that just as we have had a very dry, warm summer, South East Queensland has had a very wet summer. As a result, the snakes are looking to take refuge on dry land. That’s where the people live!
It was a similar situation that led Albert Calmette, a protégé of the father of vaccinations, Louis Pasteur, to develop the world's first snake anti-venom. It was 1896, and Calmette was working in Vietnam. He'd learnedof a rash of cobra attacks in a village near Saigon because of extremely wet weather and the cobras were looking for dry ground. So, he set about finding a way to combat the venom's effects.
He succeeded by milking poison out of a cobra's fangs, injecting it into a horse, and waiting a couple months for the horse's immune system to develop antibodies against the venom's toxins. Then he pulled the horse's blood, spun out the serum, and injected it into snake bite victims—many of whom survived.
The method may seem crude, but basically, it'sthe same way we stillcreate anti-venom today. The process has evolved. Today's serumrefinement process is better, resulting in fewer people who survive thebite only to die from bad reactions to horse-serum proteins. But by and large, we still milk snakes and use horse immune systems to supply the toxin-neutralizing proteins.
Calmette's process has survivedbecause it works. If you receivethe correct anti-venom in a reasonable amount of time, yourodds of survival are close to 100 percent. So it should come as asurprisethat of the roughly five million people bitten each year, there are still100,000 to 200,000 people whodie, according to the World Health Organization.
The problem is one of production and distribution. For the most part, each bite requires its own unique anti-venom, produced from the venom of that particular breed of snake. And for small hospitals in rural parts of the world, it's often too expensive to keep a range of anti-venoms in stock. Even if they had the budget, they might not be able to secure the product: Some of the companies producing anti-venoms have reducedor endedproduction in recent years,with no clear replacements.
Making anti-venom the traditional way has all the ingredients to make it expensive. But, there is a large network of researchers around the globe who have started exploring new ways to treat snakebites. The goal is to make an anti-venom that's easier to produce, easier to distribute, and better at treating attacks from different types of snakes.
It would be good if anti-venom could be made as easily as a bronze snake on a pole, but God’s anti-venom is quite different from the anti-venom made by scientists.
Our Old Testament reading for today is from the book of Numbers. There aren’t too many lectionary readings from Numbers, so what is this book about?The book is called “Numbers” because it features two censuses. Numbers begins with the people of Israel camped around the foot of Mount Sinai. God had rescued them out of captive slavery in Egypt and made covenant with them by giving Moses, the Ten Commandments. It was now time to move on to the Promised Land of Canaan and take possession of it. As they marched to the Promised Land of Canaan, they complained about the food, about Moses authority and about God.
At the edge of their new land, spies were sent in to scout it out. Of the 12 who went in, only two, Joshua and Caleb, encouraged the people to go up and take the land. The other ten were afraid of the battle. They made up stories about their being giants in the land. They did not trust God to win the battle for them. So, the peoplerevolted and rebelled and turn around. God punished them. He would not allow a faithless people to enter a land built on faith. They were judged to live another 39 years in exile wandering around the desert. God would not abandon them though. He would remain faithful to them. Eventually, a new generation of Israelites would enter the Promised Land.
Our text for today contains the story of the last time Israelcomplained against Moses and God in the wilderness. In Numbers Ch. 11, they complained about having no food,so God sent them manna every day except the Sabbath. Then, they complained about having no water and God gave them fresh water from the rock at Meribah after Moses struck the rock with his staff. Now, they are at it again.
The people were heading south. Like children in the back seat of the car, they would say to Moses, “Are we there yet?” He would say, “ In another 39 years.” So, the long journey made them miserable and they began to complain to Moses and in complaining to Moses, they were complaining to God. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness? There is nothing here to eat and nothing to drink and we hate this horrible manna.” Now, I don’t know about you, but there is a part of me that would agree with them. I think I could get tired of having no drink other than water and no food, other than manna.
But, in saying that they hated the horrible manna, they were insulting the food that God had sent them, that He had given them from the palm of His hand. “So, the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died.” This was probably not a higher than normal population of snakes around owing to changed weather conditions, this was probably poisonous snakes in plague proportions as what did God send upon Egypt? Plagues.
While it is not recorded that God sent the poisonous snakes because of Israel’s rebellion, the people knew why the snakes had come among them. They recognized these snakes were in plague proportions as flies, gnats, locusts and frogs had been in Egypt. So, they went to Moses and begged, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So, Moses mediates yet again for the Israelites and God gives him this instruction,
“ 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 the bronze snake and attached it to a pole and all who looked at it when bitten were healed. Did you notice that God never took the snakes away? The people would still get bitten. But, instead of dying from snakebite, they could look at the bronzesnake on the pole and be healed. No, anti-venom to be injected into their veins, just a look and they were healed.
The snake on a pole has long been a symbol of some medical professions. It has its origins here and also in Greek mythology where the healing god, Asclepius, carried a pole with a snake wrapped around it. In many cultures, the snake has been seen as positive, as a symbol of fertility; because the snake has the ability to regenerate parts of its body. In many cultures, the snake is also seen as negative, very negative, for its slithers along the ground and often gives a fatal bite. In Jewish and Christiantradition, it symbolizes what is evil in the world and in all of us.
We first meet the snake, satan, in the Garden of Eden in Gen. Ch. 3 when he fatally bites the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. Since then, the poison of sin has flowed through the veins of humanity.Because of that first snake bite, all human beings created in God’s image, are bound to die.
Why does this happen? It is because of what is in our nature. It was first shown in Adam and Eve, continued on through the Israelites in our text and still extends down to us today. It is that rebellion against God. It is that complaining against what God has given us. It is about always wanting more or something better or different. It is that feeling that God doesn’tcare, that he is really against us and not for us. “He has brought us out into the wilderness to die.” If we continue on with that attitude, with that hardness of heart, with that rebellion and rejection, with that unthankfulness, with that complaining, with that sin flowingthroughourveins, we will “surely die,” as God said to Adam in the Gardenof Eden concerningeating from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.
In order to counteract that venom of sin flowing through our veins, God sent One to be anti-venom for us. His name is Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ, the Jewish Messiah. Like that bronze snake that Moses fashioned by hand and “lifted up on a pole in the wilderness:” as Jesus said in today’s Gospel reading, so He, the Son of Man must be “lifted up” on a cross outside of Jerusalem, “so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.”
Humankindas a whole is smitten with a deadly disease, sin, that came about through satan’s bite. The only cure is to look at the Son of Man dying on the cross and find life throughbelieving in Him, find God’s anti-venom for the sin flowing through our veins.
Now, this is very deep and mysterious, but we must ask: how can the crucifixion of Jesus be like putting a snake onpole? Wasn’t the snake the problem, not the solution? Surely, John isn’t suggesting that Jesus was like poisonous snakes that had been attacking the people? No, he isn’t. But, what he is saying and will continue to say in different ways right up to his crucifixion, is that the evil which was and is in the world and is deep-rooted within us all, was somehow allowed to take its full force on Jesus. That which was poisoning the people in the wilderness was displayed as defeated foe upon the pole. That evil which produces sin that has poisoned all people is judged, defeated and condemned upon the cross. In Jesus death, it is defeated. It is a defeated foe.
So when we look at Jesus hanging on the cross, what we are looking at is the result of the evil in which we are all stuck, from which we have all been poisoned and doomed to die eternally. In Jesus’ dying on the cross, we see what God has done about it. In taking it all upon himself on the cross, Jesus is lifted up. He is glorified for he has overcome the power of sin, death and satan.
The great Roman Catholic scholar of John's gospel, Raymond Brown wrote, “The first step in Jesus’ascent is when he is lifted up on the cross; the second step is when he is raised up from death; the final step is when he is lifted up to heaven.” It is by this totalunderstanding of Jesus being raised up, that we who are doomed to die, may look and believe and receive eternal life. While that sin still flows through our veins, the blood of Jesus works like an anti-venom and neutralizes it. We will still die from the effects of the snake bite, but we will not be dead forever. Because Jesus died and conquered sin and lives today, we too will be raised upin the power of his victory and live forever.
And so to conclude. “God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” The cross is not a messy accident that happened to some poor unfortunate. The cross was the deepest act of God’s love ever. In that event, he revealed to us who he is, both, as Father and Son. The Son is revealed, “ lifted up” when he dies under the weight of the world’s evil. God takes the punishment for our sin upon himself. The cross is the ultimate ladder set up between heaven and earth.
But, evil isn’t totally healed, as it were, automatically. Precisely, because evil lurks deep within us, for healing to begin, we must take part in the process. This doesn’t mean that we try a lot harder to be good. You might as well try to teach a snake to whistle Dixie. All we can do, just as it was for the Israelites, is to look and trust: to look and trust Jesus, to see in Him the full display of God’s saving love and to trust him that indeed he is God’s anti-venom to the bite of the snake, satan, and the venom of sin. Through Him, we live forever. Amen.