When the Children of Israel spoke against God and His servant Moses, complaining bitterly about the manna He graciously provided each morning during their journey to the Promised Land, God allowed the venomous snakes that had been kept from their camp to slither in among them. These snakes bit the people, injecting venom that produced a wound so painful it felt as if they were on fire, and many died. While it may not have seemed like it at the time, this was actually an act of mercy—not only because it brought the people to repentance, but also because it served as a vivid reminder of a greater suffering caused by just one serpent. Satan, having possessed the body of a snake, injected our first parents with a venom far more powerful: sin. This venom causes not just physical pain but fiery spiritual death in hell, and it has been passed down to all people through the sinful seed of their father.

No wonder, then, that Adam and Eve, after being infected with sin, ran and hid among the trees when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden. No wonder Isaiah, who inherited this same sin, cried out in terror before God's throne, “Woe is me, for I am undone! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!” And no wonder sinful mankind has long tried to deal with its fear of God either by creating false gods or by denying God's existence altogether. But despite all human efforts, the decree of the holy God stands firm: whoever has been infected with the venom of sin, unless cured, will suffer eternal death in the fires of hell.

Yet, “Oh, the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.” These words remind us that it is not only God's Triune nature that confounds human reason, but also His gracious ways of working for our salvation. We see a foreshadowing of this in His dealings with the ungrateful Israelites. After using the venomous snakes to remind them of their need for His saving grace, He also provided a vivid picture of that salvation. God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and raise it on a pole. He attached to it a promise: anyone who was bitten and looked upon it in faith would live.

Jesus Himself explained the significance of this event to Nicodemus, saying, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Just as the venomous snakes represented Satan, so the bronze snake on the pole prefigured Christ on the cross. But why a snake—the image of Satan—as a symbol of Christ? Because the sinless Son of God became sin for us. He bore in His own body the deadly venom injected into Adam so that, by His bloody death on the cross, He might deliver us from the fiery death that sin brings.

This, then, is the incomprehensible way of our incomprehensible God. To reclaim His wayward children, the Father sent His Son into the world to suffer the hell we deserved. The Son offered up His life as a sin-offering to obtain the antidote for sin: God's forgiveness. The Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, gives us faith to look to the crucified Christ and receive this antidote so that we may not die, but live.

But where are we to look for Him in faith? Christ is no longer on the cross, nor is He in the grave, but He has risen and ascended to the right hand of the Father. And since none of us can ascend into heaven, where then are we to find Him to receive the forgiveness that brings salvation and life? Just as God attached His promise of healing to the bronze serpent, and just as He purified Isaiah’s lips with a live coal from the altar, so too has He attached His promise of salvation to certain created things.

To Nicodemus, Jesus said, “...unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” This is a clear reference to Holy Baptism, through which God washes away all our sins. In Baptism, we who were born of sinful flesh are reborn from above as children of God and heirs of eternal life. But water is not the only created thing to which God has attached His saving promise. There is also the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, in which Christ unites His body and blood. By eating and drinking this Holy Feast, we are nourished with the forgiveness that renders sin’s deadly venom powerless.

To neglect Baptism and the Lord’s Supper is to reject Christ in unbelief. And he who rejects Christ will succumb to Satan’s venom and suffer the fiery death of hell. But the one born of the Spirit has faith to receive Christ in these means of grace and, therefore, will not perish but live in eternal communion with God—whose ways and essence are as glorious as they are incomprehensible.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.