We're 'Dead Already': What the Bronze Serpent Teaches the Israelites—and Us
Anton Van Dyck, The Brazen Serpent, 1618-1620
C.S. Lewis said in his Letters to Malcolm: “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”
I couldn’t agree more. The problem for me is, I don’t like relying on anyone. My mom has reminded me of a refrain repeated by my two-year-old self, “I do it!” Although, according to my mom, it was more imperative than declarative (aka, “Let me do it!” or “I don’t care what you say, I’m going to do it myself anyway”).
Innocent as it may be (and to my mom’s credit, she let my independence streak flourish, which has served me well at times), there’s a painful truth to this line of thinking and behaving. I’m independent by nature, but a big part of that is not about Mattanah’s nature. It’s about human nature. We like to be in charge. We don’t like to ask for help. And we don’t like to be at the mercy of anyone or anything. We want it how we want it, and we don’t want anyone to tell us differently.
All of this changed for me when I understood something vitally important about the Bronze Serpent story in the Book of Numbers.
In Numbers 21, the Israelites are in their wilderness days, headed for the Promised Land. As they journey from Mount Hor to Edom, by the path along the Red Sea, the people grow impatient and begin to complain against the LORD (YHWH) and against Moses, the leader he has appointed. They cite the many grievances they have with their present wilderness circumstances.
In response to this, the LORD sends serpents among the people. Many succumb to the serpent bites. At this, the Israelites recognize their sin, confess it to God and to Moses, and ask Moses to pray that the LORD will deliver them of the serpents.
Moses does just that. When he prays for the people, the LORD tells him to make a serpent and put it on a pole. Moses obeys and forges a serpent out of bronze. God promises that those who look at the bronze serpent will live; and this proves true for those who do.
We may ask, Why didn’t God just take the serpents away? That’s the right question.
A while back, I watched an episode of the Netflix show, Medal of Honor, which tells the stories of soldiers who received the United States’ most prestigious military award, given to those who have demonstrated “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life and beyond the call of duty.”
In one episode, featuring a Medal of Honor recipient and World War II veteran Vito Bertoldo, I heard a statement that shook me.
Sean Flynn, Lieutenant Colonel U.S. Army, was interviewed in this particular episode to give context to Vito’s story and the significance of what he did in Hatten, France, when he—completely alone—lay in the middle of an open road to defend a command post against wave after wave of German attacks.
“At some point any soldier in frontline combat makes a decision—or he comes to a realization—that he’s probably going to die,” LTC Flynn said. “Once you have made that decision, you can fight very courageously.”
The story of the bronze serpent takes this reality to a deeper level. One of the biggest themes and takeaways I’ve gathered from this chapter is how the Lord uses the serpents to create in the Israelites’ hearts and minds what happens in soldiers when they know they’re dead already.
Throughout the book of Numbers, God is teaching the people to depend on him for everything. He is training them in the wilderness to be the kind of people who will still trust him, obey him, and depend on him even when they inherit their land and live under the illusion of self-sustainability.
In the story of the bronze serpent, the LORD doesn’t take the serpents away as the people ask. Rather, he allows the serpents to remain and gives the people a way to live, only through his provision and mercy. He allows them to live with the reality that they are dead already, that death is the only starting point they can create for themselves, and that the Lord is the source of life and everything else.
Something happens in the human spirit when death is inevitable.
When someone believes, in a sense, that they’re dead already, they’re able to face impossible odds. Their perspective on what the problem actually is and their response to that problem changes drastically. Their primary concerns become so much bigger than self-preservation. They are emboldened with unexplainable courage to face and to do what seems unnatural or illogical to the rest of the watching world.
In Israel’s case, that looks like trusting a fire and a cloud to guide them to a land promised by an invisible deity.
It’s the impossible military odds of defeating giants and highly trained and seasoned warriors on a battlefield that all but guarantees defeat.
It’s having nothing to feed their children the next day except the hope that a mysterious kind of bread will rain down on the wilderness sand.
Surrender to and recognition of the starting condition of death is the gateway to living in true union with God, not accessible any other way. It’s the mentality of having nothing to lose, or put another way, nothing you value more than the life that the Lord provides.
Without the Lord, without the life he provides, I am dead already. So are you. Like the Israelites, we need him for everything. For water and for food. For protection. For guidance through unknown territories and circumstances. For forgiveness and mercy. For the very breath in our lungs.
The bronze serpent brought about a deep, formative realization of “dead already” for the Israelites. It provided for them a tangible reminder and a newly established practice and habit of looking outside of themselves to live, of depending on the LORD alone as the source of life. The “dead already” realization creates the kind of reorientation of values and priorities and heart posture before God that the Israelites needed more than they needed the serpents to be taken away.
I see this powerful truth reflected in the words of the Apostle Paul, both in his second letter to the Corinthians and in his letter to the Galatians:
“…in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. —2 Corinthians 12:7-9
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. —Galatians 2:20
Paul knew something that the Israelites knew after experiencing God’s provision in the form of a bronze serpent: that only in the LORD, and in Jesus Christ whom he would later send to earth, is there life. The only real way forward is to “lose our life” (Matthew 16:25), to be dead already, to be buried and risen with Christ. We are in fact dead anyway, until we look at him, the one who was raised on a pole outside Jerusalem for all to see, for some to scoff at, and for those he called to believe.
May we remember this: we need him. Whatever we think of our ability to sustain our own lives, whatever prominent messages we hear from the broader culture about convenience and independence and “claiming our power,” may we continually be humbled by the cross. His and ours. May we remember that our starting point is needing him, always. And may the years of our lives only take us deeper into this truth.