Pastor Dan Eddy

Exodus 7: 8-13

Finding Christ in unlikely places – Part 1 - The Serpent

3-13-11

Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The text for this morning’s sermon is our Old Testament from Exodus 7: 8-13.

In Christ Jesus, dear friends.

I. Introduction –

Things do not always appear as they should.

In the movie True Grit little 14 year-old Mattie Ross was seeking to find the killer of her father. Her bravery seemed noble at first, but underlying her determination was a very vengeful person seeking justice for her father’s murder.

She hired Rooster Cogburn to hunt down Tom Chaney, and she did eventually get to pull the trigger killing Chaney in the act of defending another man who was also hunting down Chaney. But it came at a price. When she shot her gun, the force against her little body propelled her down a shaft land near a snake. The price of seeking justice came as she almost died at the hands of the snake’s venomous bite.

Things do not always appear as they should.

II. Tie to text

Take this morning’s Old Testament reading. Moses had been called by the Lord God to free the Israelites from 400 years of Egyptian slavery. He expected Pharaoh to abandon his false gods and bow at the Hand of God. Moses is thinking he could merely prove to Pharaoh that the Lord is really the only God than all would be well, and it would be the ultimate credibility of his role as God’s prophet and vindication for the way the Israelites had been treated as second class citizens.

So in an “in-your-face move” …Moses takes the staff and literally throws it in the face of Pharaoh where it miraculously changed to a serpent.

Serpents are nothing new to Scripture. Eve conversed with a crafty serpent disguised as Satan. He convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit telling half truths of increased wisdom and knowledge and the lie of having power on par with God’s. She convinced Adam and as a result the Lord cursed creation and sentenced the Serpent to travel only on its belly.

Serpents of one form or another are meant to inspire fear because they threatened people with death…temporary or eternal.

For Pharaoh, the staff-to-snake act was to bring about repentance. At least that’s what Moses and Aaron thought. But the Lord knew better. He knew that Pharaoh’s heart was already heartened…dead set against ever turning toward the real God. Yet Moses and Aaron thought they knew otherwise.

So in an act of one upsmanship…Pharaoh brings out his magicians to produce snakes…plural. Probably to intimate Moses’ and Aaron’s snake. But God had the last laugh against this evil ploy and His snake cobble up the other ones. The Lord was proving the Egyptian religion to be a fraud to Pharaoh, the Egyptians, Moses and the Israelites, who had lost in the 400 years the worship of the one true God.

Yet Pharaoh was not frightened and refused to change. Moses and Aaron irrefutable prove was rebuffed. And it would be rejected nine more times as the 10 plagues play out after this text. Each time the ante was upped, but Pharaoh’s heart was still hard. Even after his own son died…and when Pharaoh released the Israelites…things do not appear as they seem. In an act of revenge on his child’s life…Pharaoh sought justice against God by trying to defeat the departing Israelites, but his army is only drowned and defeated in the Red Sea.

III. Lessons for us

I think there’s a lesson to be learned here for believers in Christ Jesus today. I think we wish we had those Moses moments of taking staffs and throw them into the face of world powers, unbelieving neighbors or even un-churched family members…turning our staffs into snake so we can dazzle our friends into convincing them that our Lord is the only true God.

Except many times we aren’t even looking for a supernatural occurrence…we’d just be happy with a convincing argument, a great testimony, or maybe even an outstanding sermon. Don’t you wish you could prove God is God to someone else who doesn’t believe?

However, the lesson here is you can prove the Lord God exists, but you can offer a lot of proof but that doesn’t mean that people will be convinced that God is God and that He is all powerful or that He is here to love them. Remember, Pharaoh had 10 more opportunities to repent and believe and he didn’t.

No matter what we say or how we say it, the hearts of some unbelievers will still cold hearted to Christ. That doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying.

Last week we had a Bible study that talked about missions. We looked at the Jesus’ parable of sowing seeds. The seeds being the Word of God. We got into a little bit of a debate. We had one person who said you have to be careful where you plant the seeds. And another that said “no, no be liberal with the seed.”

“Wait a minute what if it falls on hard ground where it won’t germinate?” It doesn’t matter. God does not ask you to come up with the results. As a pastor, I hope you don’t expect me to convert hearts of people, because it is God who converts the hearts, not us. It is God who gives us the seeds, the words to spread. It is God who gives us the power to do that, and we leave the results up to Him.

Four things in this I want you to remember from this text: (1) God is in charge and all powerful. (2) The Lord is the one who converts the hearts (3) God knows who will receive His grace (4) We are His loving tools, His ambassadors, His Moses, if you will.

Hey, if Jesus was quoting Bible passage after Bible passage to Satan while Christ was being tempted in the desert b by the Devil and his heart didn’t change…then what makes us think we can do the same unless God wants it to happen, and knows when it won’t. All we do is do what He asks us to do…realize that He works through us, and does the rest.

IV. Tying Moses’ and Aaron’s Serpent to Christ

But I want you to take this text and go one step deeper. There’s actually a fifth idea. You see it could be argued that the Serpent in this text was a figure pointing ahead to Christ. You’re thinking “What? Christ as a serpent or snake? Pastor, isn’t that a bit of a stretch?”

It could be…if the image of the power of the snake to destroy the others ended here. But it doesn’t. This text is a lynch pin text between the crafty Serpent in the Garden of Eden and the Bronze Snake on a pole that the Israelites would experience a little while after this text when they are released from slavery and wandering in the desert. The account is in Numbers 21.

You remember that true story. God let snakes come upon the Children of Israel who were whining and complaining and showing a lack of faith. The snakes were biting the people and they were dying except the ones who looked to a Bronze Snake Moses erected on a pole. For those who were sorry for what they had done…when they saw that snake they were healed and forgiven. Ironically, the creature of poison was the antidote to the other snakes’ poisonous bit.

In John 3:14-15 Jesus described Himself as the Bronze Serpent to be lifted up so that He could take on the poison of our sins and die the everlasting death we deserved. Then He took his poisonous being and used it to bit, consume and destroy Satan’s poisonous effects on you and me. Things have come full circle. Things do not appear as they should. The serpent is something no longer to fear, but is the very symbol of Christ saving you and me.

So this morning you are going to get a snake, a serpent as you leave here today to remind you of the one who took on evil to destroy it and is the Serpent we look to in faith and are saved.

Christ is not here to destroy you but to destroy the one who wants to destroy you. And for those who don’t reject His love…His antidote of grace is here for them just like it is for you, too.

V. Conclusion

Years later…the anger Mattie Ross had regarding her father’s murder was still poisoning her soul, and heartening her heart as the events of True Grit influenced her to lead a lonely life of no spouse or children. Let not our hearts ever be hardened like that or like Pharaoh’s.

I don’t think that is going to happen if you are in the community of the Church.

God’s blessings as you rediscover Christ’s love in the image as the all-powerful Serpent, who destroyed the crafty Serpent, took on the poison of your sins and become the antidote to death, giving you life everlasting. Amen.