Lent Midweek

Numbers 21:4-9 - Midweek Lenten Round Robin

 February 25, March 4, 11, 18, 25; 2015       
Jesus Bears the Wrath of God

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O sinner, come thy sin to mourn,
So vast and vile that it has borne
Christ to this vale of anguish;
Son of a Virgin, sweet and mild
In poverty the Holy Child,
Thy Substitute, did languish;
Behold, with faith, God’s only Son!
Come nigh and see what Love has done
To save thee from damnation;
The Father cast on Him thy guilt,
For thee His precious blood was spilt,
To bless thee with salvation.

{A couple weeks ago}, I was reading an Arch Book to my kids (one of those paperback children’s books published by CPH that summarizes Bible stories). 
It was about the flood.  Obviously these stories are very simplified in order to make them more appealing to children.  And certain oversimplifications might be overlooked as harmless.  But one statement struck me as no good at all.  When speaking of the sin that filled the world – because of which God sent the flood to destroy the face of the earth – the book said that our sin makes God sad.  Now obviously, impenitence grieves God.  Jesus wept for Jerusalem after all, and in Gethsemane bloody sweat mingled with his tears as he prayed for the cup to be taken away.  Our sin most certainly does make God sad.  God pays the ultimate price to save us from our sin and then looks on as mankind rejects it as trivial and offensive.  This is sad.  It’s tragic. 

But before we can understand why such rejection makes God sad, we must first come to know that our sin makes God mad.  We must know what was in the cup that Jesus drank to its bitter dregs.  

Our sin makes God mad.  It incites his wrath.  Now, it’s not popular to talk about God’s wrath.  And calling God sad at our sin might make him sound like a nicer God.  But it also makes our sin sound like a problem that just frustrates him – one that he can’t solve – like a timid and lazy father who whines at his kids to stop disrespecting their mother, but then never does anything about it.  But God can.  He does.  He solves this problem of sin by revealing how angry it makes him.  He punishes it.  This we must know.  We need the God who takes our sin seriously and deals with it squarely and fully. 

Consider Adam and Eve.  God didn’t express disappointment with them.  He cursed them.  He struck his fear into them.  He made their life difficult — because he loved them.  Like a Father loves his children, God taught them clearly the error and the consequence of their sinful disobedience.  Now consider Jesus, how his Father chastened him.  God did not express sadness at Jesus when he carried out our salvation.  He executed his wrath upon his beloved Son in order to save us — because he loves us: 

“For God so loved the world – “so loved” – this means that he loved the world in this way – that he gave his only begotten Son – with whom he was well-pleased – he gave him into death and bitter pain to bear the wrath against the sins of those in whom he was not well-pleased – that whoever believes in him – that is, whoever sees in this death the punishment he needs to be spared from – will not perish, but have eternal life.” 

That’s what John 3:16 means. 

This plan was conceived from before the foundation of the world, and openly published right there in the Garden of Eden.  From the get go, God planned to lay aside his wrath by revealing just how wrathful he was.   Listen to what he thunders gainst the serpent:

“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.

Now there’s wrath!  There, God spews forth every curse against the ancient serpent.  He is the most cursed.  But here we see wrath and mercy kiss and come together in a gracious promise:  

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15)

This is the promise that Adam and Eve fled to when God rebuked and cursed them right afterwards.  The devilish serpent would indeed be crushed.  His authority would end.  But the Seed of the woman would be crushed too; and there his authority would be established forever. 

In stomping the devil’s head, the divine Seed of the woman would receive a fatal blow himself.  He would endure the crushing blow that our sin deserved.  Christ would take into himself all of the venom with which the devil infected mankind – so much so was our sin imputed and charged to him that we can say he became our sin, as Paul does in 2 Corinthians 5:

 “[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (5:21).

And so by taking God’s wrath so seriously as to bear it himself, Jesus reveals his eternal Father’s ancient mercy for sinners.  For this reason God became Man.  He would bear the curse of sin in his own body and soul even unto death.  By taking the curse of God against our sin so thoroughly upon himself, we can even say that he became the curse as Paul also writes in Galatians 3:

“Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (3:13). 

This tree is the tree of the cross.  It is prefigured in the wilderness when the cursed serpent was lifted high on a pole.  We look to the cross just as our fathers looked to the serpent.  And this is because in order to know God’s love, we must know God’s wrath.  In order to know his blessing, we must know his curse.  In order to know God’s pleasure with us, we must know where God died in sadness to free us from our guilt, as we sing:

The sinless Son of God must die in sadness;
The sinful child of man may live in gladness.

Here is where we see God sad at our sin.  It is not where he views it from heaven as a disappointed at his disobedient son.  No, it is where his obedient Son bears our sin on earth as our Substitute under the heavy hand of his Father.  In order to know God’s forgiveness for our sins, we must see our sin suspended and punished.  There is our redemption. 

The cross of Jesus serves both of these needs just as the serpent lifted in the wilderness served both these needs.  It shows us both the seriousness of our sin as well as the seriousness of God’s forgiveness.  The cross shows us both the threat of the law as well as the blessing of the gospel. 

The law teaches us to find our sin where it hides.  Our sin hides in our thoughts and desires.  It hides in all the decisions we make, the conversations we have, all the complaining we express, all the things we buy and spend our time on.  We don’t recognize by our own powers what our sin is, let alone what our sin deserves.  God has to show us.  The strength of sin is the law.  So God’s law reveals the strength of sin by revealing our guilt.  He picks apart our lives and teaches us plainly where we have fallen short of his holy will.  And he does so not so that we can fix ourselves, but so that we can see the punishment we deserve. 

The cross teaches us what our sin deserves.  As the hymn puts it:

How God at our transgression
To anger gives expression,
How loud His thunder rolls,
How fearfully He smiteth,
How sorely He requiteth—
All this Thy sufferings teach my soul.

The law teaches us to find our sin where it hides.  But the gospel teaches us to find our sin where God un-hides it – where he raises it up for the world to see.  There God in his mercy bids us to see our sin publicly punished in full — there God tells us to see what the law has disclosed.  It is not punished in us, but punished in his own Son as he hangs suffering and dying on the cross.  The law reveals our debt in order that the gospel can show us where our debt was paid.  If all sin is placed on Jesus, then all God’s wrath is satisfied in his death. 

In the Old Testament prophecy that we consider this evening, God was dealing with sinners whom he loved.  Because he loved them, he did not merely express disappointment at their sin.  He expressed wrath.  They needed to know what made God mad, because they needed to know what they needed to be rescued from. 

This is what makes the serpent on the pole such a wonderful prophecy of Christ.  God did not just lash out in wild anger.  He didn’t simply drown them in a flood or burn them like Sodom and Gomorrah.  He showed wrath in a very clever way.  He sent venomous serpents in order to remind them of the reason why God was so angry.  It was the serpent’s deception that brought sin into the world.  God’s children did not simply need to know that God was very angry at them.  They needed to know why! 

Just as Adam and Eve were put under the curse of God because they heeded the serpent’s venomous lie, so the Israelites were enduring the harsh punishment of God for the same reason.  They tested God.  They grumbled.  They ignored his word.  What better way to show them the true nature of their sin than by reenacting, in a matter of speaking, the fall of Adam and Eve.  He sent snakes to remind them of their sinful nature.  The wages of sin is death. 

But then when they cried out for mercy, and Moses interceded for them, what did God do with their sin?  He didn’t just forget about it.  No, he taught them the true solution to their sin.  And so he taught them the true solution to their death.  He told Moses to put an image of his wrath up on a pole and whoever looked at it would live. 

This not only points us to Christ, as Jesus himself makes clear in our Gospel lesson; it also teaches us how to look at Christ.  We see him not simply as one who suffers for sin.  We see him as the one who becomes sin.  He becomes the curse.  What plagued the Israelites?  Serpents, right?  Just like the serpent who got them into this mess of sin in the first place.  The ancient serpent inflicted spiritual death.  These serpents inflicted physical death.  So what did they have to look at in order to be saved?  A serpent! 

So we look to Jesus in the same way.  What plagues us?  Sin, right?  — the sin that is ours by nature since we are children of Adam, the sin that we have committed and that burdens us with guilt.  And yet we have an advocate with the Father.  Not Moses who intercedes for us and then crafts an image for us to look at.  No, our Advocate is the very Son of the Father.  He is the very image of God from eternity.  He intercedes for us.  He intercedes by bearing God’s wrath in our place.  And so it is where he bears our wrath that we find our true Mediator.  We find in him who is lifted up not an image of God’s wrath against us, but an image of God’s wrath satisfied – the eternal image of God’s love. 

Do you see sin in yourself?  Then look to Jesus.  See your sin in him.  Do you feel the curse of God as you suffer in this world of pain?  Look to Jesus.  See there the curse.  Does the devil tempt you?  Does he incite you to revenge or bitterness toward someone who has hurt you?  Does he tempt you with lust or greed or envy?  See in the cross what has become of the ancient serpent.  His head is crushed where Jesus hangs suspended for the world to see.  His power is undone.  Find there your health and strength to resist the devil by finding there the righteousness you need. 

For Jesus’ sake God does not have any wrath toward you.  He cannot.  Jesus has borne it.  Though he may try you, and he will.  Though he may chasten you as a father chastens his son, and as God chastened his children in the desert, God does so in order to direct your hearts to him who has born all punishment for you.  He wants you to fear his wrath so that you might look up and see where all wrath has been borne. 

In our affliction, we look to him who was afflicted for us.  In our temptation, we look to him who resisted the devil and who invites us to trample him under our feet as well.  In pain and sorrow, we look to him who was condemned in our place so that we might always know that God does not condemn us.  That’s not why he came.  He came to save.  So dear Christian, look to Jesus.  Look to him who authors your faith as you run this race that is set before you.  Look to him who even now as your soul is discouraged on the way perfects your faith through the fatherly chastening he gives you.  Even as you despise the shame of it all, trust in him who gave his Son for you – endure it for the joy that is set before you. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.