Lent 4—Laetare
One of the great beauties and blessings of Lutheranism is that it recognizes and holds in tension the two great doctrines of Holy Scripture—the Law and the Gospel. The Law shows us our sin and God’s wrath over our sin; it teaches us that we are sinners who earn and deserve only God’s wrath now and eternally. The Gospel teaches us of God’s grace to us in Christ; it teaches us of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life we have in Him. Whenever one or the other is taught or emphasized at the expense of the other, then the Christian faith is skewed and no longer the Christian faith—it either becomes a religion of impossible demands, works righteousness and despair or self-righteousness; or it becomes a religion where good works and the keeping of God’s holy Law are rare and of an anything goes mentality—“hey, God will forgive that one too”—and “I’m too good to be damned.” But Christianity is a religion of both God’s holy Law and His sweet comforting Gospel.
When either Law or Gospel is emphasized to the exclusion/ detriment of the other, it’s not the fault of God’s holy word which teaches both; it’s the fault of our sin-corrupted reasoning that the devil uses to muddy God’s pure and life giving word. The thing is, both Law and Gospel are necessary and vital for us; God uses both in our lives as Christians.
That’s why our holy season of Lent is so vital. It is a call for us to examine once again our hearts and lives to recognize our sin and sinfulness and our need for a Savior. As we recognize our sin—that’s why we go to church: to hear and receive the forgiveness of sin in the absolution and Gospel; and to receive that forgiveness in our mouths as we eat Jesus’ body and drink His blood and as He comes and unites with us. We do not come to church—like some do—to hear some sort of affirmation of how good they are; instead, we come to church to confess our sins and receive forgiveness in the absolution, word and Sacrament.
All our readings today have this Law/ Gospel dynamic. In the epistle we hear that we were dead in [our] trespasses and sins and that we were by nature objects of God’s wrath. But in the same reading, we then hear that God is rich in mercy and that He made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses and that we are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. In the Gospel we have both the comfort of John 3.16 but also everyone who practices wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, the Light of and who is Christ.
Today we will spend a few moments reflecting on the account of the bronze serpent. As we do so, we will see that Law/ Gospel dynamic again at work as we see that this account is both a warning to us—God punishes sin—and a beautiful preaching of God’s grace alone.
In the verses right before our reading, we see that the Israelites had fought a military battle and with the Lord’s working won. Here they were fresh from a military victory. Even though it was the Lord who granted them the victory in response to an oath that they made, the Israelites were confident in themselves. They were full of pride and puffed up because they took credit for what the Lord had done for them. Their focus was on themselves—“we can do this.” So now, at the Lord’s command, They set out from Mount Hor along the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. So here they were at the boundaries of the Promised Land but they no sooner reached the border and then turned back, and went away from it. So what did they do? And the people became very impatient along the way.
They experienced the Lord’s mighty rescue out of slavery in Egypt; they experienced His gracious protection and provision along the way with the quail, manna and water; the Lord had just given them a military victory. Everything was seemingly going their way. All these things were blessings that the Lord intended to use to keep them looking to and trusting in Him to lead and guide them the right way. But what did the Israelites do in the corruptness of their sinful heart? They let these things go to their head and somehow thought they were the cause of these blessings. Instead of looking to the Lord and thanking Him, they became confident in themselves and thought they knew better than God the way to the Promised Land.
What was God’s intent with all these graces upon graces? St. Paul tells us [Rm 2.4]: Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? With all these blessings, God wants us to recognize our sin and His grace and mercy to us—who gives us all these things in spite of our sin and unworthiness. But what so often happens with us? –The same thing that happened to the Israelites: instead of looking to and thanking God and being humbled when we receive His blessings/ when something good happens to us, we get high on ourselves. May we remember what happened with the Israelites here and how God punished them for their sin; and may we then examine our own heart and mind and life to see how we are responding to God’s blessing. Where we see that we claim credit and are becoming proud and high on ourselves, may we repent and humble ourselves recognizing God’s grace and mercy to us poor, miserable, sinners. May our gaze turn from self to the Lord.
In our text, we see the Israelites’ impatience: The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? Look, there is no food! There is no water! And we are disgusted by this worthless food!” Their impatience led them to blaspheme. They were not openly rebelling with violence but by murmuring against God’s guidance. And by this murmuring and by rejecting the manna, they were rejecting God’s grace and His gifts to them. To be sure, would we really be much different if we were the Israelites? They were only seeing a hopeless existence for themselves; turning back from the boundaries of the Promised Land they were only seeing an endless desert journey—and one that ended with a miserable death. They did not see God’s guidance and what good He had intended for them. In a sense, we can easily sympathize and often find ourselves doing the same thing—grumbling against the way the Lord is leading us—especially when things are going, we think, horribly wrong! That’s what our sinful nature, egged on by the devil does—it leads us to forget God’s grace to us, and even to despise it; it leads to forget that we are in His gracious and loving hand and He is guiding and leading us in the way He knows best for us.
It’s at times like that that we ask where God is; it’s at times like that we think that God has even become our enemy—when seemingly one calamity follows another and there is no end. It can even be when there is nothing really going “wrong” but, like the Israelites, it just seems hopeless, like a dead end. As we honestly search and examine heart and conscience, won’t we find much murmuring and grumbling against the Lord and the way He is leading us. The quiet of Lent allows us to reflect and to see this sin in our lives. Instead of so easily condemning the Israelites here, let us see ourselves in them and confess our sin.
What’s happening when we murmur against God and the way He is leading us? We are turned in on ourselves. And that’s what sin is—we are turned inward on ourselves and we make ourselves the focus and attention; everything must revolve around us. And that’s when we are most disgruntled and impatient. But when we love, love is directed outward. We love God and our neighbor; our thoughts and actions are directed toward them, not on self. Where there is this love—directed outward—there can be no turning in and discontentment about our lot.
The account of the bronze serpent teaches us very clearly that God punishes sin, just as He says/ threatens. The Lord sent venomous snakes among the people, and the snakes bit the people. As a result many people from Israel died. But even this punishment for sin must bring about some spiritual good. Without this punishment from the Lord, the people would have stayed in their sin. Here with the punishment, the Lord brought them knowledge of their sin and brought them to repentance. Even this punishment/ working in us knowledge of our sin is God’s work to lead us to Him that He might show us His grace once again. And that’s what He really wants to do—bring us to His grace and mercy. He uses His Law/ crushes us with it so that He might give us the Gospel to comfort us and to create and strengthen faith. This preaching of the Gospel is a preaching of God’s pure grace to us sinners.
The people went to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord to take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed on behalf of the people. The people recognized and confessed their sin. And in their sorrow over their sin—what happens? Faith is rekindled for they go to the Lord trusting in His mercy and grace to forgive them. In the certainty of faith in God’s grace that they were brought back to in the midst of their sufferings/ punishments, they knew and were reminded that God’s grace and mercy stand ready to them. God’s grace is always first and faith holds to that. Remember our epistle: But God, because He is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses. Sorrow over sin that God’s Law works is not the end. The sufferings we endure, the pangs of conscience, the conscience tormented by sin are all meant to drive us back to the Lord and His mercy and forgiveness; they are meant to drive us into the arms of Christ. The trouble lasts for a little while as a warning to us, a reminder of the Law’s command and a call to repentance; the Lord’s deliverance, here in our text, and His forgiveness and mercy He shows us, show that He delivers us from every evil—here from the poisonous snake and ultimately our greatest evils: sin, death, devil and hell.
But notice the way God works. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a venomous snake and put it on a pole. If anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will live.” Where does God put the power for the healing? In something that seems completely unable to do anything—a bronze snake on a pole. That’s supposed to heal those that were bitten? Absolutely! How? Because why? –God’s promise was connected with it. God’s promise made the healing possible, but it was connected with something that didn’t make any sense. Again, that’s the way God works. He combines His promise with something that, to us, doesn’t make any sense. Look what He did at our Baptism—His word combined with water brings us new life, creates faith, washes away sin, etc. Look at what He does in Holy Communion—He joins His body and blood to bread and wine and comes to us giving us the forgiveness of sins and every blessing He won for us on the cross. Look at what He does in the word and Absolution—He gives us the forgiveness of sin as it is spoken over us. This is the way of God—He combines His word of promise to unlikely things to give us extraordinary blessings. That bronze snake was raised on a pole for all to see and be healed by, so was Jesus raised on the cross for all to see and believe that in Him is the forgiveness of sin and that man is reconciled with God and heaven stands open. This is the grace of God to us! INJ Amen