Numbers21:4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 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.”6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 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 take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 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.” 9 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.
We find in scripture a number of times when Moses had to intercede on behalf of his people. They messed up quite often. We know the big ones like the golden calf. But here it is something as seemingly small as impatience. They wanted to stop all of this wandering in the wilderness and just get on to the show: to end up in the promised land. But how did they get on this extended road trip? Ahhh, that's right: their former act of rebellion and sin. The cure here, the brazen serpent, will in itself become another stumbling block of sin further down the road. In other words, sins like impatience - trying to tell God He is too slow or not doing it right - are often rooted in deeper sins we have tried to gloss over. Moses must intercede; we must intercede for our people, and the intrenched sins that haunt us over and over again: pride and prejudice, idolatry and immorality, rebellion against the revealed will of God. If you find yourself impatient with God, look deeper. There's more to the story, which may well become a tragedy.
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