Serpents and sin

Tuesday 15^th September

Read Jeremiah 8:13-17

“‘“I will take away their harvest,
declares the Lord.
    There will be no grapes on the vine.
There will be no figs on the tree,
    and their leaves will wither.
What I have given them
    will be taken from them.”’

¹⁴ Why are we sitting here?
    Gather together!
Let us flee to the fortified cities
    and perish there!
For the Lord our God has doomed us to perish
    and given us poisoned water to drink,
    because we have sinned against him.
¹⁵ We hoped for peace
    but no good has come,
for a time of healing
    but there is only terror.
¹⁶ The snorting of the enemy’s horses
    is heard from Dan;
at the neighing of their stallions
    the whole land trembles.
They have come to devour
    the land and everything in it,
    the city and all who live there.

¹⁷ ‘See, I will send venomous snakes among you,
    vipers that cannot be charmed,
    and they will bite you,’
declares the Lord.” (NIVUK)

There is a poison that sin, in its deceitfulness, blinds us to. It robs us of fruitfulness (v13), blinds us to the truth of our predicament (v15), and is the just judgment for all that we have done (v17).

It is not coincidence that deceitfulness and serpents are linked in Jeremiah’s message.  They are linked at creation (Genesis 3) where the serpent deceived humanity into forgoing the promised blessings from God. They are also linked in the wilderness (Numbers 21) where vipers were sent amongst the people as punishment for their ungratefulness and sin.

In the wilderness a way was provided to escape God’s punishment of sin when people looked to the bronze serpent on a pole and lived. This foreshadowed God’s final and fullest provision of a way out from punishment…

“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.’ ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:14-17) (NIVUK)