Numbers 21:9-35

The Symbolical Serpent

Num 21:9

Has not the serpent bitten every man? We come, thus, by our questioning, into larger meanings and ultimate truths. These alphabetic incidents did not terminate in themselves. An alphabet was never created for its own use as a mere set of unrelated and incoherent symbols. He who makes an alphabet makes, in purpose, a library in the language which that alphabet represents. The early people in the Bible lived the alphabet life, the symbolic and significant life; and in after-ages we come to consolidation and consequence, to profound and eternal meanings. The serpent of brass was but a poor invention if it began and ended in itself. By the very necessity of the case it means more than the mere letter expresses. So we return to the opening question, Is not every man bitten by the serpent? If this were a question to be determined by argument, into what high and fruitless words and controversies we might enter, coming out of them with nothing but sense of tumult and weariness! Every man knows that he has been bitten through and through. The appeal is not to merely grammatical expression and critical definition of letters and words: the solemn appeal is to consciousness not the consciousness of any one particular moment it may be, as when the life fritters itself away in some vain frivolity, or is engaged in admiration of some vain symbol or object, or when it is excited by transient controversy, or momentary challenge and appeal of any kind, relating to earthly experience, which can be terminated by temporal adjustments and compensations; consciousness is not set up within that small excitement. Take the consciousness right through the whole life, and, though we may avoid theological expressions, religious terms, and turn our back upon Biblical symbolism and allusion, yet right away at the core is a throb, a spasm, an accusation, a sense of restlessness which, perhaps, the theologian with the Bible in his hand can better turn into words than can any other man. Your life is not a plain surface, without wound or bruise or mark of cruel tooth; it is a torn thing, crumpled up by great forces, punctured by sharp bodkins, made sore by many a keen stroke. Things will turn themselves upside down. Prayer does not go up like untroubled incense to the sun. Things do get out of place; words will come wrongly both as to time and as to setting; temper will rise; bad blood is fast made in the moral system. What is this? Having heard what men say about it in explanation, we have come to the conclusion that no terms so correctly express our consciousness, so thoroughly satisfy our own sense of reality, so completely fill our capacity of imagination, as the old words which are found in Holy Scripture. We change them or modify them, or perform upon them some magical rearrangement; but they are best let alone. Their very setting seems to be of God; they are not loose jewels to be set haphazard as any man's fancy may dictate: each is set in its right place by the finger of God. We know this serpent; we have been associated with its history. If we cannot see it, we can see the tooth-mark it has left. We know that we are wounded men. As the poet, then, has well said, "To know one's self diseased is half the cure."

There are, as a matter of fact, incurable physical diseases. The doctor looks, and says, They are beyond my reach. He looks at all his resources, and, shaking his head significantly, he says, I have no weapon with which I can fight successfully this assailant; there is no hope; but a few days may come and go, and then the last deep sleep. Why, then, may there not be incurable spiritual diseases that is to say, incurable by any remedy known to men? We have no hesitation in confessing that some physical diseases are incurable, why should we falter over the case of spiritual disease and trouble? Why hesitate to say We are lost men; there is no health in us; we are dead men before God; the law we cannot answer; conscience we cannot appease; our own small imagination has no poem or dream by which it can cover up this sense of guilt and absolute unworthiness? Why not put our hand upon our mouth and our mouth in the dust, and say, Unclean; unprofitable; unworthy; undone! That word must be spoken if any better language is ever to be set in the soul as fit speech of a new liberty and a recovered and assured sonship. What word can better express the sense of loss and helplessness than the Bible word "unclean," or "unpardonable," or "unworthy," or "undone"? The soul says That is the right word; that sacred term is no human invention; it touches with exquisite precision the very meaning I have been toiling to express. So long as we imagine that we can cure ourselves, we shall not look in the right direction for healing. We are not ashamed to go to others for bodily healing, why this reluctance or hesitation to go out of ourselves and beyond ourselves for spiritual healing? No sick man apologises for going to the physician. Do we not sometimes lament the obstinacy of men saying, They will not take advice; they will persist in their own course; they become the victims of their own ignorance; if they would only call in adequate advice they might be well presently? What is the full meaning of such expressions? We speak that we do not know in all the fulness of its possible meaning and force. That is the complaint of the motherly universe over her child that will try to cure himself: she says, Poor sufferer! why turn in upon thyself, and waste thy supposed cleverness in attempting to do impossibilities? the secret of restoration is not in thee: in thee alone is the writing and condemnation of death; life is otherwhere; look for it; I do not say, Go for it, for that might imply impossible effort; but thou canst at least move an eye-lid in the direction of the remedy, thou canst at least turn a languid eye in the direction to which I point; the meaning of that turned eye will be that thou hast given up all thought of saving thyself or finding health where there is none; look! look! look up and be saved! It is a gentle force; it falls into the harmony of our daily experience and action in relation to other things; it has upon its side what controversial force there may be in the fact of harmony, rhythm, sound rational analogy. The reason is not suspended: it is elevated, it is touched with a higher glory, it is summoned to a nobler attestation of its supreme and divine function. "Come now, and let us reason together," saith the Lord. Who is not pleased to say that he has in time of illness taken the very highest advice which the latest science can supply? Is he not somewhat proud of so explaining his position? He has not called in some inferior doctor; or availed himself of cheap advice; he has not turned in the direction of inexperienced wisdom; but has gone with plentiful gold in his hand and knocked at the highest medical prophet's door, and the prophet has condescended to come down to him and treat him with marked distinction. He decorates his dreary tale by such small and vain allusions as these. Even here we may find some point of suggestion, rather than of analogy. Who calls us? Anyhow, the call is from God, even in the poetry and idealism of the case. This is no infant deity that asks to play with the soul's malady, and by spiritual vivisection learn something of which he is now ignorant Even in the poetry, in the dream, it is the Eternal God that calls for the wounded men. We are not handed over to inexperience, to mere sympathy or pity on the part of fellow-sufferers; it is the Physician of the universe that asks us to be healed.

So, if in the terms of Scripture we are humbled, crushed, set back with such contempt as holiness may feel for iniquity, yet, on the other side, it is God who calls us to be healed, it is the Eternal who stoops to us, it is the Mother of the universe that cries for the child-earth. If we cannot rise to theological awe, we are bound to respond to poetic harmony and completeness. We go out of ourselves for consolation why hesitate to go out of ourselves for the greater blessing salvation? We are thankful when some friend who knows the secret of the low tone and the gentle speech, quiet as dew, sweet as honey, calls upon us in the dark time, when the heavy load is crushing the whole strength; we say we will never forget the call; we treasure the words that were spoken; memory says, I will never forget the sweet prayer, the noble supplication; the holy pleading; it was a visit as of an angel, full-robed, charged with special messages. If we can speak so about consolation in the time of sorrow, bereavement, pain, loss, if we say we owe the solace to another why this pitiful reluctance to say salvation is of God? It is no human devising: it is the thought of the Eternal. There is no salvation in the self-destroyed man: his help cometh from the hills of heaven and from the throne of eternity. Are we not dignified yea, even glorified by the fact that our salvation is of God and not of man? If we would see what human nature really is, as to its dignity and grandeur and possible destiny, we must go to the very Book which humbles it with the severest reproaches. God did not send his Son to recover other than his own image: when the Son came, he spoke the native language of the race he came to redeem: he is not ashamed to be called our Brother. The very fact, therefore, that we are not saved by man but by God reveals the value of the nature which God stooped to redeem.

The great thought of all is, that the cure, as well as the disease, in the case of ancient Israel, came from God. The God who punished was the God who saved. Find an instance in the whole Scripture in which healing or preservation is connected with the name of the enemy of man, Satan that old serpent, the devil. This is a marvellous thing. If all the Bible writers had lived in the same age and held common consultation as to the structure and form of their book, they might have made a mechanical arrangement which would have secured an artificial symmetry and unity; but they were separated by centuries; they were sundered, in some instances, by thousands of years; in many instances they did not know what would be written or what was written in its completeness; yet, when all the fragments are brought together, in no case do I find that the devil is ever credited with having attempted really to do man substantial good, to heal him, to help him. The help which the Bible dwells upon, whatever it may be, is uniformly and consistently connected with the divine name. It is God who is mighty to save. He that cometh up from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah, arrayed in his apparel, is red with his own precious blood.

Suppose we treat all this in the meantime symbolically, poetically, is there not still a grand moral suggestion arising out of this perfect harmony and absolute unity? and do not the lines so interlace and co-work in all their outgoing as to suggest a noble argument? God only can wound. Injury of a certain kind is said to be inflicted by the devil; but even that is not the permissible tone. In the profoundest sense of the term all punishment for wrong-doing is from God; all trials of our spiritual quality are from God. Can there be evil in the city and the Lord not have done it? In the letter, that is a mystery; in its innermost meanings and most comprehensive bearings and issues it is a fact attested by religious consciousness. The enemy himself is but a permitted disgrace in the universe. Do not let us magnify the devil into co-partnery as to the division of the universe. He the starry leader of the seven is but allowed to live the ages will tell us why. The Lord reigneth: wherefore comfort one another with these words.

What is the New Testament use of the incident recorded in the Book of Numbers? Jesus Christ took up this text, and from it preached himself. "Beginning at Moses" he could not begin earlier as to the letter he preached himself. Hear his words: "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." Jesus Christ having quoted the passage, we need not hesitate to receive it. If Jesus Christ had passed it by, we might also have turned away from the sacred symbol or have classed it with some obsolete mythologies. Where Jesus Christ rested, we too may sit down. Jesus sat upon the well would God we could have sat around his feet and looked up into his heaven-shining eyes! Where he lingers, I would gladly stay. He lingers here: he saw in that serpent a worse foe of the human race than ever bit the flesh of man; he saw in that pole, or standard, a cross; he saw in that uplifted serpent of brass the symbol of himself; and said he, "I, if I be lifted up,... will draw all men unto me." We believe in Christ; we are not ashamed to utter his name; we do not adopt all that has been said about it by ignorance, inexperience, and perverted ingenuity; but putting aside all these things, we go straight to him and say each for himself, "My Lord, and my God!" We come to the uplifted Man, we come to the crucified Christ, not to talk, but to look, to pray without words, to begin to speak and to be choked by our own speech. Look unto him and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. Lord, to whom can we look, but unto thee? We have gone to many, and have only received riddles for replies, enigmas in exchange for mysteries, and contradiction where we begged for peace. Wilt thou take us in? We have come to thee last: we have knocked at every door like cringing beggars, and only because we could not find satisfaction we have come to thee. If we could have eaten bread elsewhere, we would have stayed; but when we asked for bread, they gave us a stone. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us! If last of all God sent his Son, last of all the sinner accepts the Son, coming without price in his hand, without defence in his heart, and casts himself in living, loving, hopeful faith upon the Son of God. It may be delusion it maybe some horrid nightmare; but in the meantime nothing gives such rest, such peace, such sense of union with God. In this faith we live, and in death will test the mystery,

Prayer

Almighty God we cannot live without thee. Thy smile is heaven. To know that thou art looking upon us is a judgment. We can answer it with a good heart, if so be thy Christ be in us, our Saviour and our Priest. We can bear the light when he is with us yea, a light above the brightness of the sun. He himself is light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if he is in us, and we are in him, behold, in thy light we see light, and we love the light because of its revealing power. Give us more light. We die if we have not light enough. Thou hast made us to live in light and not in darkness. We wither away, as if struck with ice and chilled through and through, if thy light be not in us, a brightness and a warmth, a continual blessing, an eternal hope. Once we loved darkness rather than light, but now thou hast brought us out of darkness into a marvellous light. All light is marvellous, but thy light most marvellous of all. It shows the reality of things; it finds its way into the soul; it reveals and discloses what is excluded from every other ministry. We, therefore, ask for light, more light, and more still, until the night be driven away and life become one eternal morning. Thou dost comfort us with light; yea, a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. We seem to be akin to that sun of thine: we claim one another; the heart answers the gospel of light, and we would go. forth and see all the wizardry which thy sun works in the grandness of the field and the beauty of the garden. But thou dost work still more wondrously within us. Thou dost make all things new; old age is driven away; death is taken up, as by a giant's hand, and abolished by infinite strength: death is swallowed up in victory, and life has become immortality. These are wonderful things to say to a man. Thou hast said them: they are all written in thy book. We do not understand them nor would we: for what we understand we come at last to contemn. We would live in wonder in the continual appeal to our noblest imagination; we would live in the certainty that we do not know all things, and never can know them, and that to know God is to be God. Therefore do we stand afar off, without shoe upon our foot or staff in our hand, with bowed head, listening if in the warm wind we may hear at least some one tone that will tell us of wider places, infinite liberties, glorious heavens, days without night. Thou art visiting us constantly with visitations that are meant to be instructive. Thou dost take away the old traveller, so that in the morning we miss the pilgrim who has companied with us these many days only the staff is left behind, the traveller is gone forward. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. Comfort those who arc feeling the chill of death, the encroachment of the graveyard upon their household hearth; speak comfortingly to them, and show them that light is above, that home is on high, that here we have no continuing city, that permanence is beyond the clouds. The Lord make up for losses of this kind in so far as they can be made up, for great vacancies in the heart the eyes looking with expectancy and beholding nothing, the ear listening for accustomed appeals, and no more appeal addressed to the hearer. We need the Lord's comfort: some warm word, some gracious speech, yea, some great trumpet sound, that shall swallow up the mean noises of earth, and rule into harmony and order and sacred and ennobling thought all tumult and fear, all apprehension and pain. Save us from folly! We are prone to it; we like it: we roll it under our tongue as a sweet morsel. We sometimes feel as if we were the children of fools, and were born to be fools greater still. We think the earth is all: the blue sky is an exclusion not an inclusion; to our mean thought, the lights that glitter in it are but points of amber not flaming gates falling back upon radiant heavens; we gather up things with both hands, and hide them and cover them up so that nobody else may see them, and this we call prosperity; yea, we put our money into bags with holes in them; we sow plentiful seed, and others reap the harvest; we build our tower that is to reach unto heaven, and whilst we are putting on the topstone, builder and building are thrown to the ground. The little child dies, and the old man, business withers, health gives way, the house totters without our being able to find out why; we live in uncertainty; we are walking upon the edge of a precipice; we know not what will happen to-morrow so near a time as that. God pity us! for God made us and send us the messages we need. Revive our hope; establish our confidence; bind us to the infinite meaning of the Cross; there we see with the heart that thy Cross is greater than our sin, that thy grace is infinitely more than our guilt. The Cross is the place of vision. Amen.