“And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “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.” Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.

          And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he takes away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. (Numbers 21:4-9 ESV)

          Oh the depravity of man! Consider the ungratefulness, the callousness and the wickedness of humanity as exemplified in this text. What more could God have done in showing His steadfast love, His mighty hand and His divine wisdom than what He had done for His people. Had He not redeemed them out of slavery? Had He not rescued them from the army of the Egyptians? Had He not provided food, water and all that the people needed? Yet, the people persist in shameful unbelief. “Why have you brought us to die?” “We loathe this food.” Sadly we find in ourselves the same ungratefulness and unbelief whenever we hear our own voices complaining about our food, our situation, our lot in life. For this lack of faith and appalling ungratefulness there is only one just sentence – the sentence of death.

                Through the snakes God carries out this sentence of death. Many died. Upon recognizing their sin, the people’s immediate solution to the crisis is that God removes the snakes. Instead God does something better – he provided a means of grace, a way for those bitten sinners to live. God would preserve the people’s lives through the means of a bronze snake on a pole. Those bitten could look upon it and live. God’s solution did not drive away the snakes; instead it drove the bitten to gaze upon a bronze serpent and beyond it to the words of Him who said, “Those bitten who look upon the serpent shall live.”

          God’s final solution to the ingratitude and unbelief of our hearts has been revealed through His Son Jesus Christ. As scripture says, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (John 3:14-15 ESV).” In Christ the sentence of death was carried out to finality. Those who have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. In Him and through Him you now have eternal life. Because of Him, your sins are forgiven.

There is, in the Old Testament, a Hebrew word which has a nearly indefinable beauty to it.  That word is hesed. Sometimes English translations render it as “kindness.”  Other times it is “loyalty.”  Sometimes using “love” seems like the appropriate translation and at other times “faithfulness” is a better representation.  In reality, hesed means all these things.  Hesed is a full on faithfully committed act of love.

One book which offers a fantastic display of what hesed looks like is Ruth.  The word appears three times in Ruth; 1:8, 2:20, 3:10.  (It would be helpful at this point if you read Ruth before continuing.)

In Ruth 3:10, Boaz says to Ruth, “May you be blessed by the LORD my daughter; this last instance of your hesed is better than the first…”   Boaz is impressed.  He’s witnessed Ruth’s commitment to a distant relative of his, Naomi.  He’s heard that Ruth had forsaken her family and gods to follow Naomi to a foreign land all because Ruth believed Naomi would die without her.

In Ruth 3, Ruth went to Boaz for only one reason; to earn provision for Naomi and herself.  Everything she did was selfless.  She was bent on doing all she could to ensure Naomi’s survival.  The loyalty or hesed she did in 3:10 was done for Naomi, not Boaz.  Ruth’s love for Naomi caused her to enact an unconventional proposal and desperate plan on the threshing floor.  She was committed to Naomi and so she faithfully and blindly acted on Naomi’s behalf, just as she did earlier for Naomi and Naomi’s dead husband and sons in chapter one.

It was Ruth’s responsibility as a fellow human being to do the hesed she did for Naomi, but no one would have blamed her for going her own way.  Ruth’s hesed was heroic because it is sadly out of character for one human to do such loving acts to another human, (though we oddly refer to her acts as humane.)

Ruth’s hesed in chapters one and three run parallel to God’s act of hesed illustrated in chapter two.  Her story is metaphoric of God’s hesed. In 2:20, Naomi extols upon God’s hesed saying, “[The LORD’s] hesed has not forsaken the living or the dead!”  Ruth’s hesed exemplifies God’s, but the difference between God’s hesed and Ruth’s is that God’s is done despite Naomi’s bitterness against God.

There is nothing that warrants God’s hesed. When God showed and continues to show his hesed he did and does it out of his abundant mercy and grace.  Of course, the ultimate expression of God’s hesed is the cross of Christ.

May you live with the knowledge that God is utterly and fully committed to you as exemplified through the Cross and allegorically through Ruth.   And may you, like Ruth, be filled with the Holy Spirit as God seeks to show his hesed to a desperate and lost world through you.

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son…” Romans 1:1-3a ESV

“The gospel of God” Paul says, “promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures.” The gospel, that is the good news of what God has done for us especially through the life, death and resurrection of his Son Jesus, is something “promised beforehand.” It is something promised through God’s prophets. It is something promised through holy Scripture. It is something foretold long before Jesus entered into our world through his mother’s birth canal. Indeed when we read from the Old Testament we are not just reading the history of the Hebrew people, although we are in fact doing that, but we are also reading the history of how God worked in our world to redeem us from sin and death.

From beginning to end, God’s promise of a savior is the central theme of all of scripture. Jesus is the “seed of the woman” who God promised will bruise the “head of the serpent” in Genesis 3. He is the one in whom “all the nations would be blessed” through Abraham. A descendent of Judah, Jesus is the whom from whom the “scepter would not depart” as prophesied by Jacob. He is foreshadowed by the serpent in the wilderness in the book of Numbers, by the sacrificial lambs, and by the passover lamb as well. He is the promised prophet God would raise up (Deuteronomy 18). Jesus is the “suffering servant” of Isaiah. He is the “righteous branch.” He is the “priest-king.” He is the one through whom God will “remove the sins of the people in a single day.”

Now it may appear on the surface that portions of scripture are unrelated to the person of Jesus. However, in depth study of any portion always reveals some aspect of God’s saving work through His Son Jesus. All of scripture points to Jesus, our need for Jesus, God’s work throughout history to bring Jesus “at the right time,” the life, death, resurrection, ascension and 2nd coming of Jesus or the spread of the Gospel. All this is summarized so eloquently by the apostle Paul in one little line.

With this in mind, let us approach scripture faithfully, reverently and humbly as we come to Christ through the Holy Scripture.

Did you know that it is NOT Christmas… at least not yet?  You wouldn’t know it from all the décor and Christmas music (or should that be muzak?) that is being piped through shopping malls and broadcast all over the airwaves.  But it isn’t the Christmas season until December 25.  Not liturgically anyway.

No, the Church is currently in the season of Advent, a season with an odd sort of tension to it.  For the most part we have taken it to be a time of preparation, a time in which we build up towards the celebration of the incarnation of Jesus the Son, Second Person of the Trinity, on Christmas day.  But Advent is also (and some would say primarily) the season in which we look forward to the return of the crucified and resurrected Christ, when the final redemption will take place and all wickedness will be brought to judgment.

Advent is therefore a season of anticipation.  It is anticipation for both the beginning and the end of the story; the beginning and the end of the Christ Event.  We anticipate the glorious celebration for both an historical event and for a future event.

This anticipation is best visualized in the ritual of lighting the candles of the Advent wreath.

Here we are in the dead of winter.  The days are short and the nights are long.  Often the skies are overcast and there is a definitive gloom and chilling darkness across the land.  But on the first Sunday of Advent we light a candle.  On the second Sunday we light two and so forth.  As each new flame strengthens the light given off by the previous candle we are reminded of the coming of Christ, the light of the world, as though his light was the headlamp of a steaming locomotive charging ever closer through a darkened tunnel until it is at last upon us.

As the last candle is lit, our winter shifts and the days start to become longer while the nights shorten.  Christ hasn’t yet returned, but the wonder of Christmas reminds us of a God who is and has always been active in human history, a God who we can trust to see his work through to completion.  A God we can trust to return and be again Emmanuel, God with us.