The Fiery Serpent and The Messiah
The depth, complexity, and nuances within the biblical canon always amazes me. In fact, the layers that exist is perhaps one of the strongest reasons for my faith, which is ever growing. The impossibly simple words of Scripture layered with the complexity of their history speaks to Scriptures authority.
It saddens me when professed Christians today spend less than ten minutes a week, on average, reading their Bibles. (I will never understand the reasons for this). Yes, my nerdiness draws me to the depths of theology, languages, and research, but only ten minutes a week?
In watching the new film about Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Angel Studios, I have my personal opinions regarding it, but something stood out, a scene I’ve reflected on over the last few days.
Dietrich is in Harlem at the Abbysinian Baptist Church, dining with men and women his age and older, along with the pastor. The pastor stands and gives a profound discourse. In it the pastor states to Bonhoeffer, “many theologians and pastors can stand and preach on the goodness of God, but can they show the goodness of God? Many pastors preach on the goodness of God and yet have not experienced God’s goodness.”
I am definitely going to slaughter why this was such a profound scene. Maybe it was because for a long time, and even now, I was that pastor. Today when driving home from my morning routine at the coffee shop, I let God know exactly where I am at with Him. Frustrated, hurt, tired, exhausted, worn out, saddened by many things that I see in the church today and yet He does nothing about. Saddened by the apparent cycle that we are told that we will never be good enough to be saved, yet He seems to not do anything until we are good enough, and so the cycle seems to go.
Then the word hit me, a Hebrew word, Saraf and its plural Saraphim.
Saraf is translated as a fiery serpent. It is only used 7 times. Which is significant in Scripture. Seven is the perfect number and points to messianic work and God.
The first time that we see the word Saraf is in the book of Numbers, chapter twenty one.
“The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. 8 Then the Lord said to Moses, “[j]Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” 9 And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived (Numbers 21:6-9, NASB).”
God sends Saraphim into the people to bite them for their disobedience, doubt, and as a reminder of God’s goodness. God instructs Moses to create a Saraf, place it on a cross, and hang it in the center of the camp, for all of Israel to be saved.
This is the first time the gospel is preached to Israel, and the reality of just who and what the Messiah was going to do for Israel.
In Genesis we see that a serpent deceives Eve and Adam, causing the world to fall into sin. Sin permeates everything. The serpent is cursed and is told that enmity will be between it and the woman. Another messianic prophecy. The word serpent here in Genesis is not Saraf.
In the wilderness, Israel, having been rescued sins, complains, rebels, and forgets God’s goodness. Adam and Eve lived in God’s goodness and yet chose the same path in that moment by the words of the serpent.
Yet a serpent saves.
Not just any serpent, a fiery serpent.
God demonstrates the gospel that through a serpent’s actions, the world was given a death sentence. Humanity was doomed for it’s choices. Hopeless, there was nothing it could do. Yet, by faith, if people chose, all they had to do was look on a different fiery serpent, one hung on a cross, symbolic of something much greater, the Messiah, who would come from humanity that had been bitten, and save Israel and the world from sin’s venomous sting and consequences.
This is the goodness of God. Through faith, the children of Israel were saved. All they had to do was to choose to look, that is all.
The intentionality of God here is amazing.
We then come to Isaiah. Now during the time of Isaiah, Hezekiah reigned. During his reign, we are told in 2 Kings 18:4, that Hezekiah removed and melted down that very fiery serpent used in the wilderness, it was called Nehushta. Isn’t it ironic and sad how humanity will worship the thing and not the God that things represent?
How do we know that the fiery serpent, the word saraf is messianic? For one, how it is used. Only seven times, and used by God in his instructions to Moses directly. God would not instruct Moses to construct an image of Satan (as the serpent) in order to save Israel. God would instruct Moses to construct an image representing the Messiah who would overcome Satan through the very means that Satan caused sin to enter the world. The power of God, to take what was ruined, and claim it, and make it His own, to redeem it!
The next time we see the word used in a Messianic sense is in Isaiah 14:29.
“Do not rejoice, O Philistia, all of you, because the rod that struck you is broken; for from the serpent’s root a viper will come out, and its fruit will be a flying serpent.” From the outset, one could read and draw that only evil or a bad thing will come from the meaning of this verse. Again, the simplicity and yet complex of Scripture marvelously comes into play here.
Isaiah 14 is the chapter in which God gives Isaiah the words to describe Lucifer’s fall. So the original serpent is outlined for us in the beginnings of Isaiah 14. Secondly, notice that the fiery serpent is NOT the offspring of the viper or serpent mentioned in the verse. The Saraf, the fiery serpent is the fruit, the product of the viper’s actions. That viper is the root of the original serpent’s work, Satan. This prophecy is pointing you back to Numbers 21 and forwards to Christ’s words in the gospels, calling the Pharisees and Sadducees vipers and serpents (Matthew 3:7, 12:34, 23:33; Luke 3:7, NASB). Isaiah 14:29 demonstrates itself as a prophecy pointing to how Christ would die. The Pharisees and Sadducees fruit of their actions hung Christ on a cross in the act of crucifixion. Jesus in John 3:14-16 states, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Pointing to the fiery serpent in Numbers 21, and the prophecy in Isaiah 14. Jesus directly claims to be that Saraf, the fiery serpent.
Some may still have their doubts on Isaiah 14 being a Messianic prophecy. We need go no further than to look at the results of the saraf, the flying fiery serpent in Isaiah 14.
“Those who are most helpless will eat,
And the needy will lie down in security;
I will destroy your root with famine,
And it will kill off your survivors.
31 “Wail, O gate; cry, O city;
Melt away, O Philistia, all of you;
For smoke comes from the north,
And there is no straggler in his ranks.
32 “How then will one answer the messengers of the nation?
That the Lord has founded Zion,
And the afflicted of His people will seek refuge in it (Isaiah 14:30-32, NASB).”
Redemption, liberation, and provision occurs, “those who are helpless and needy.” Also the promised destruction of the Philistines who have oppressed God’s people. This points to a local fulfillment by Nebuchadnezzar and his conquest and destruction of the philistines as well as the prophetic fulfillment of the Messiah.
Yet we aren’t done.
In John we see the only place that Christ refers back to the Saraf and to his role as the Messiah, the redeemer, and savior through death on the cross as the fiery serpent. In John’s Apocalypse or better known as Revelation, Satan is then described as the serpent of old. John thus continuing this pattern we see in Scripture of authors showing Satan as the counterfeit of Christ. “And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world (Revelation 12:9, NASB).”
In the Apocalypse or Revelation, Satan is described as a dragon and serpent. We in the west, graeco-roman cultures, compare dragons to fiery serpents. This is exactly the intent of John. To transition us from the Hebrew mindset to the Graeco-Roman in understanding the Messiah, Jesus. For Christ was simple Saraf, hung on a cross so all who looked on him in faith could be saved for all time. Satan, a slithering serpent and massive dragon, has no real power, although he continuously attempts, as describe in Revelation, to subdue, persecute, destroy, and tempt God’s people.
The beauty, complexity, depth, and impossible interconnection of Scripture is beautiful and I continue to swim in new depths of understanding of God.
Jesus knew what He was doing, who He was, and Jesus demonstrated the goodness of God, by coming as a Galilean carpenter and fisherman, and dying a horrific death, as a criminal and slave, on a hill outside a second rate city, for all the world to be saved.
Even in the Old Testament we see that it is not by any work of our own that we are saved, we are saved through simply having faith and choosing to look and follow Christ. Our decisions will continue to get us bit, to succumb to the venom of sin. We can not only see and preach on the goodness of God, we can experience God’s goodness.
