Numbers 21:7 –
Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people.
This chapter covers a lot of ground and much of the chapter is about occupying lands. This one caught my interest because it was different from the other stories. This snippet starts with the Israelites complaining once again and wishing they had not left Egypt. My first response was how many times will this go on? Moses blows his stack in the last chapter because the people are complaining once again and here they go again. This time God sends poisonous snakes.
The people immediately ask Moses to pray and stop the snakes. He is told to make a bronze snake which will heal those who are bitten. Now a couple of things I find interesting in this story. The people first ask Moses to pray. Do they do this because access to God is limited to Moses, Aaron and the high priests? Or is it because they know Moses has the “hot line” to God? Either way the first thing they do is humble themselves before God and confess their sins.
Take note here since this is key to our praying and coming before God. We must first confess our sins to open those lines of communications. My first pastor at West Side Bible in Phoenix use to describe sin as scar tissue and the only way to clean it away and heal it was through confession. The problem with scar tissue is when you let it go for too long it becomes more and more difficult to clean up. Scar tissue is just like sin, the longer we let it God, the more difficult the cleanup and heal. I have found that when I confess and deal with things up front the mess is easier to deal with.
One thing that bothered me about this story was the brass snake. Granted this snake was used to help heal people, but in some ways it was kind of an idol or at least could have easily become one. Why did God instruct them to do this? It seemed to me that one gets healed by looking at this snake; they could have easily started to worship it. Not a big deal, but one of those curious moments in my reading.