A sermon for Rogate, based on Numbers 21:4-9 and John 16:23-33. It was filmed for and will air on Main Street Living’s Sioux Falls, SD market today, May 17, 2020. Main Street Living is weekly television program broadcast in the North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota. It is funded by donation from its viewers and the local congregations of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Dear friends, in this morning’s text, we find Israel roughly forty years after the Exodus. The generation that disbelieved and refused to enter the land of Canaan has died, just as the Lord had said they would. This next generation will take this land, but we see that their faithfulness isn’t any better than their parents and grandparents. They can’t go the direct route, so they start going around the land of Edom. And as it is easy to do on long journeys, the people got impatient. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I find this humorous. The people say, “Moses, we are out here with no food and no water. And the food that we do have, food that comes from the Lord himself, is worthless.” After 40 years of wandering the wilderness because of your parents, you turn around and act just like they did. They are more mindful of delighting their taste buds than being thankful to their God for sustaining them with a miraculous food.
This defiance and rejection of God’s good gifts, his daily bread to his people, has a consequence. Just like all sin does. This time, the consequences are fiery serpents coming into the camp. People are bitten. Those people die.
Looking around and seeing what is going on, the people of Israel realize that they have sinned. They see death around every corner and know any wrong step may spell their end. And so, they go to Moses, go to their mediator, and ask him to pray for them. “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.”
Moses takes their petition to the Lord. And because your God is a loving God, full of steadfast love, he hears their prayer. And he answers their prayer. But the answer isn’t the answer they expect. He does not take the snakes away. Instead, he gives his people a sign. A promise. Moses is to make a fiery serpent and put it on a pole. I wonder if it resembled a cross. And everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.
And so, it was. The fiery serpent was made, it was lifted onto a pole, and all who were bitten would look at this bronze serpent, remember the promise God made to them when he answered their prayer, and they would live.
It is easy to see the parallel of the serpent on the pole and Jesus on the cross. I think many of us would make the connection without Jesus giving it to us in John 3. Yet it is Christ on the cross that brings us back to the Gospel text. Jesus speaks of his hour coming and even having come when the disciples would be scattered. And yet even with this scattering and the fear and hiding and, in the case of Peter, denying that would occur, Jesus says these things to them so that they would have peace. So, despite the tribulation that would come after his Ascension, they would take heart for he has overcome the world.
The church celebrates the Feast of the Ascension on Thursday. As Jesus returns to his Father, he does so not only as our brother and risen Lord, but also as our mediator. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Like Israel, we look at the gifts we have from our Father and treat them with disdain. And perhaps I’m just speaking for myself here, but the gift of prayer is one of the easier ones to overlook, take for granted, sometimes perhaps unconsciously ignore. But what a great gift we have in prayer! We are invited to come to the Father and unload our feelings, our desires, our fears. To confess our sin and beg for mercy and forgiveness. And know that, on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is given to us.
Jesus is indeed our mediator. He is the one who cut a new covenant between us and God. He is the one who was lifted up and died in our place. His blood atones for our sin. Because of this new covenant, we may boldly approach our Father and ask anything of him because the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and believed that I came from God.
This morning, Jesus invites us to “Ask.” Ask, and you will receive it. Ask, and your joy will be made full. For your Father loves to hear what his dear children have to say. He loves to answer your prayer. What a great and generous promise we have. God listens to and answers our prayer.
So let us pray: O God, the giver of all that is good, by Your holy inspiration grant that we may think those things that are right and by Your merciful guiding accomplish them; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Rev. Brent Keller
Peace Lutheran Church
Alcester, SD
©2020 Brent Keller. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com.
