Why Is God So Violent in the Old Testament? | Numbers 21

Good morning, Watermark. How are we doing today? Hey, good to see you. I hope you've had a great weekend. If this is your first time ever with us visiting, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I hope this place feels like home very quickly for you. I want to make sure you know, if you are visiting, we are in a yearlong series we're calling Year of the Word, because we, as a church family, are reading through the entire Bible cover to cover together.

I've been so encouraged to hear from many of you who are tracking along with the journey. There are literally thousands of people who are all reading the same thing every single day. If you're not on the journey with us, tomorrow is a great day to jump in. We're starting a new book. We've made it through Leviticus. We've made it through Numbers. We are starting Deuteronomy tomorrow, which is a great entry point for you.

Let me say this. If you're struggling to stay caught up because of the amount of reading, one of the things I've heard is helpful for people and has been helpful for me is to combine reading it with listening to it. That counts too, people. Let's not be so rigid that it's like, "If I don't read it, it doesn't count." It's the Bible. If you want to listen to some of it when you're driving in the car, that's okay. Enjoy it.

I want to make sure you know we have a podcast, the Join the Journey podcast, where every single day there are people online you can listen to who are just processing through the text of the day, and it's awesome. Many of you have been on it, and it has been so good. So check that out. Also, I want to make sure you know we're in the midst of 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. It concludes this Friday.

We're going to be gathering in this room Friday evening for a Night of Prayer and Worship to celebrate all God has done in our midst. I want to make sure you know there is a Community Group prayer guide online. So, if your group wants to experience some intimacy with God together, you should totally check it out. It's awesome. Let's jump into the Word of God today.

I want to invite you to take a second and pray for yourself. Just say, "God, would you speak clearly to me today?" Pray that really quickly. Then, pray for the people around you and say, "God, would you speak clearly to them as well?" Then, pray for me and ask God to speak clearly through me to you.

Lord, we give this time to you. I pray that every person in this room would hear from you now. May we meet with you, God. We believe you're here. God, I pray that we would see you clearly today. I pray that we would hear from you. I pray that our hearts would be open and receptive to everything you want to say to us. We give this time to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Who here knows what this is? If you're over 40 years old, you know exactly what it is. If you're under 40, you're like, "Nope. Still don't know." This is called a CD wallet. This is something that holds compact discs. This was how an entire generation used to enjoy music. This is my CD wallet. Now, here's what you need to know if you're one of the young people in the room. If you wanted to take a trip, you had to pack this thing. This is what you needed in order to listen to music. So, if I was going on a trip, I needed this and my CD player just to make it happen.

It was fun to go back and look through some of this. No, you cannot come up afterward and see what Timothy Ateek listened to throughout the decades, but if you were to look through here, you'd see Dave Matthews CDs. You'd see some U2 CDs. You would see Garth Brooks CDs…Ropin' the Wind, if you have that album. Then there's some stuff you haven't thought about in a long time. When was the last time you heard the name Sister Hazel? Yeah, that's what I thought.

There is some good stuff in here. The Lion King soundtrack is in here. I don't know what was happening in my life that I was like, "That's what I need." Here's what I want you to think about. For so many years, that's how you listened to music. If you heard a song on the radio that you wanted, you had to go to the store and buy the entire album for that one song.

If CDs were on sale, you paid about $12. If they weren't on sale, you went to Sound Warehouse (there's a blast from the past) and paid about $17 for the entire album. Then in 2001, the iPod was created. It was a big deal, because the first iPod held 1,000 songs. Then in 2003, iTunes was created. It enabled you to buy specific songs, and you could curate a playlist of just the songs you wanted to listen to.

The reason I share that with you is when it comes to the Bible, you're either going to view it like a CD or like a playlist. The reality is the Bible is more like a CD than it is like a playlist. You can skip the parts, the songs in here that you don't like, but the reality is you have to take the whole thing. When you're carrying the Bible around, you're carrying around the entire album.

A lot of people want to treat the Bible like a playlist. You just want to read the parts you like, and you only want to believe the parts you like, but it doesn't change the fact that when you have the Bible, you have the whole album. So, just as I would carry this whole thing around when I traveled, you are carrying around the entire Word of God.

I tell you that because when you read the Bible, there are going to be some songs you like, and there are going to be some songs you want to skip, but one of the reasons we're doing Year of the Word is to play the whole album all the way through. I don't know if you've ever had that experience where you buy something you think is a one-hit wonder, and then someday you decide you're just going to let it play through, and when you do, you're like, "I didn't even know that song was on here. I kind of like it. There are actually more good songs on this than I knew."

Some of you, even as we read through Leviticus, were like, "I've never seen Leviticus like that before." That's you discovering a song you didn't even know you'd like. Today, I want to push "play" on one of the songs we like to skip over. Here's the song. It's the violence of God in the Old Testament. I just want us to play that through, because that's a song we don't like to listen to, but we need to listen to it, and we need to understand why God even composed it.

The reason we need to understand that is the violence in the Old Testament is, for many people, the main reason they don't get on board with Christianity. It's one of the most important sticking points for people. I think about what Richard Dawkins, famous atheist, says about God. He says, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." That's who God is.

I hope there are some people here this morning who are like, "I don't think he's far off, because when you read the Old Testament and see some of the things God does… I can't get on board with a God like that." Others of you love Jesus, but this is the first time you're reading through the Old Testament in a while. You've been camping in the New Testament. It's been great, but now that you're digging back into the B-sides, if you will, you're like, "Man, I forgot this was in here, and this is just tough. I don't even know what to do with that."

If you're not careful, it can disrupt your faith. It can cause questions in you toward God. So it is good for us to play the track and answer the question…Why is God so violent in the Old Testament? So, that's what I want to do this morning. If you have a Bible, I want to invite you to turn with me to Numbers, chapter 21.

The reason we're talking about this now is we've already seen some violence so far, but it's about to ramp up as we go into Deuteronomy and especially Joshua, so it's good for us to get out ahead of it so that when you are reading these books, you have a framework for it. When you hit a passage that's full of violence, you can know exactly why it's there.

I want to read you Numbers 21. There are actually two stories in Numbers 21 that have a similar theme but regard two different groups of people. One is actions of God toward those outside of Israel, and the other story is about God's violent actions toward those in Israel. Here's what it says, starting in Numbers 21:1:

"When the Canaanite, the king of Arad, who lived in the Negeb, heard that Israel was coming by the way of Atharim, he fought against Israel, and took some of them captive. And Israel vowed a vow to the Lord and said, 'If you will indeed give this people into my hand, then I will devote their cities to destruction.' And the Lord heeded the voice of Israel and gave over the Canaanites, and they devoted them and their cities to destruction. So the name of the place was called Hormah."

So, understand what's happening here. This passage is actually really important. It's kind of a hinge in the book, because what we're seeing is the tail end of one generation and the beginning of a new generation. Remember that the first generation was an unbelieving generation. How did they demonstrate their unbelief? They didn't believe they could go into the land of Canaan and conquer the Canaanites.

Now what we're seeing is a believing generation is rising up, because they're coming to God, and they are believing that God can give them the strength to conquer the Canaanites. That's why it's important. We're seeing the new generation rise up. The other reason it's important is this is kind of a primer for what's coming. We are going to see God give the Canaanites over to the Israelites. If you just look at what you're going to read this coming week, Deuteronomy 20, it says:

"But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded…"

Do you hear what that's saying? This is why some people look in the Old Testament and are like, "God condones ethnic cleansing." It's because of passages like this. Do you see? It's what God commanded. This is God's will. This is what he tells his people to do. These are God's actions toward those outside of Israel, but let's continue in the story in Numbers 21, which is actually a new story, and now we see God's actions toward the Israelites.

"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. 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.' Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.

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. 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.' 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."

Okay. That feels a little messed up. People speak against God, and God just releases a bunch of serpents into their midst, and they begin to bite them. They're referred to as fiery serpents, most likely because they're describing how the bite felt. It felt fiery. So, we see two different stories combined together. One is God's actions toward outsiders, and one is his actions toward insiders. What's the common theme? It seems pretty violent.

So, what do we do with that? How do we process this in a way that doesn't disrupt our faith? And if this is the thing that's keeping you from a relationship with God, is it possible for us to tear down that wall, that barrier, today? I want to help you know how to process that. Four truths.

1. Always start with the holiness of God. When you encounter a passage like this, always start with the holiness of God. Our tendency when we read a passage like this is to start with what we think is right or wrong. We put ourselves on the judgment seat, and we begin to issue verdicts on God's activity. We put ourselves in the place of judge, and we begin to decide what seems fair or unfair, what seems right or wrong.

If we're not careful, we're going to look like an out-of-shape guy who can't even throw a spiral, critiquing and commenting on Patrick Mahomes' performance in the Super Bowl. It's like, "You don't know what you're talking about. Who are you to be talking?" So, here's what you need to understand. One of the main reasons we don't understand God's actions is we don't understand God. You have to start with his holiness.

If there's any song that has been on repeat so far in the Bible, it's that God is holy. I've tried to hit it all along the way. My hope is you'd realize one of the main themes of the Bible is the holiness of God. What does it mean that God is holy? It means he is set apart. He is distinct. He is different than all of humanity and any deities coming out of Egypt. He's set apart. There is no one like the God of heaven.

Because of that, because God is holy, that must be the starting point when you're trying to understand, "Why is the God of the Old Testament so violent?" All along the way, I've tried to provide you with illustrations that might help you better understand the holiness of God. I'll give you a new one today.

When my oldest son Noah was born, he unexpectedly spent about nine days in the NICU. Some of you guys have extensive experience being in the NICU. Some of you have never been into the NICU. When Noah went into the NICU, that was our first time to ever go into that place. If you've never been, access is very restricted, at least it was when Noah was born. Two people could come visit the entire time. Not only that. To get in, you had to scrub in.

You would set a three-minute timer, and you would have to sit there and wash up to your elbows for three minutes straight, scrubbing yourself with a brush. I've never been more clean in my life. Then, when you go into the NICU, it is a very sobering place. When you walk in, you sense how fragile of an environment it is. That is a place where life hangs on the line, and you are so aware of cleanliness in that moment. As a parent in there, I expected everything to be clean, because life is fragile in that place. You're very aware of it.

Now, I want you to think about this. Imagine being in that NICU, that sobering reality, that deep awareness of how important cleanliness is in that moment. Now imagine a 4-year-old who has the flu that everyone is passing around right now. You know, you people who send your kids to school like, "It's just allergies…" Yeah, I get a high fever when I have allergies too. Seriously. Read a thermometer.

He has that flu that everyone is passing around. His cough is wet. Imagine him running past the entrance, past the scrub-in station. He runs into the NICU, coughing that loud, wet cough, sneezing as he goes. He has snot running down his face, and he begins to run around all of the different patients. He's checking in on the preemies over here. He's running around, touching everything, coughing on everything.

Now, if you're the parent of that child, and you've never been in the NICU, and you're just coming to visit someone, you might come in with the mentality of, "It's not a big deal. If you don't get it from him, you're going to get it from someone, because everyone is getting it these days." But the doctors, the nurses, and the parents of children in the NICU are going to have a very different perspective.

They're going to hear that cough, and something is going to trigger. They're going to see the snot running down, and something in them is going to take action quickly. They're going to remove the child. They're going to say, "He cannot be in here," because they understand just how dangerous, how toxic, and how unwelcome that kid's flu is in a place like the NICU.

Now, the reason I tell you that is just like for those of you in the room… If you've never been in the NICU, you don't understand it. It's hard to grasp the weight of how sobering that place is. It's the same with the throne room of God. Because we've never physically stepped into the throne room of God and looked at a holy God dead on, it's easy for us to be like, "You know what? It's not that big of a deal. It's just kind of going around. Nobody is perfect. It's 2025. We've kind of progressed. We've evolved. This is just what you do in 2025. This is just life."

God sees things from a very different perspective. He sees things from the perspective of a God who is holy, holy, holy. He understands to the core just how toxic, how deadly, and how unwelcome sin is in his presence. Even the smallest hint of infection cannot live or exist in his presence. That's what it means for God to be holy.

Even when I'm sharing that or describing it, it might not hit you. You might hear that and be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it." But this is where our faith has to trust. We have to walk by faith because we can't walk by sight right now. We have to take the Word seriously when we get an account like Isaiah 6, where Isaiah sees the throne room of God. He sees angelic beings singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!"

When Isaiah sees God, his automatic response is, "Woe is me! I'm lost. I am a man of unclean lips." Do you see that? God's holiness immediately exposed his sinfulness. God is holy. He cannot tolerate sin. My fear is that, as Christians, we can get so used to the grace and forgiveness we have because of Jesus we forget that the wages of sin is death, and in order for us to be with a holy God… This is how serious our sin is, even the smallest sin.

The eternal and holy Son of God had to enter into humanity, not just to endure physical torture of crucifixion, but he had to endure the wrath of God for you and me. So, let's be clear. In order for us to be with God, the holy Son of God had to leave heaven, take on flesh, live a holy life, die a perfect, holy death, and rise and conquer the grave as the holy, victorious King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That is the only way unholy people, like you and me, are able to be right with a holy God.

Jesus Christ makes us holy. That's what it takes. That's where we have to start. That's why sometimes when I start my quiet time, what I will do when I begin to pray is I will remind myself. I will pray and say, "God, this is only possible right now because Jesus Christ has made a way for me to be with you. It's the only way."

2. Understand the depravity of humanity. You have to understand it. Skeptics of Christianity will sometimes make the argument that the Old Testament condones ethnic cleansing, but it's really important for you to understand that this is not about God loving Israel and hating everyone else, so he just wipes out people of a certain ethnicity because they don't belong to Israel. That's not what's happening here. This is ultimately about depravity. We know that because the Bible actually tells us that.

Deuteronomy 20:18 tells us exactly why God wanted the Canaanites to be devoted to destruction. It says, "…that they may not teach you [Israel] to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God." God wants Israel to devote them to destruction so the Canaanites don't turn the Israelites away from the true God toward false gods.

Psalm 106 gives us more insight into what that worship of false gods looks like. He's condemning the Israelites, saying, "They did not destroy the peoples, as the Lord commanded them, but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did." So, what did the nations do? Here it is.

"They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood."

Think about what we just established. We start with the holiness of God. Now we have to understand the depravity of humanity. We're talking about a people in the land who would perform child sacrifices toward the deity known as Molech. Molech was this idol they made that had a bull head with a human body.

In the stomach of Molech, people could start a fire, and then they would… Molech's arms were stretched out like this, and people would take their children up to the age of 4 and place the child on the arms of Molech. They would offer their children as sacrifices up to this demon god, because they believed it would secure the god's favor for fertility, prosperity, and victory in battle. Some people believe that literally thousands of children were sacrificed to Molech.

Now, I want you to think about this. Imagine child sacrifice in the eyes of a holy God. Just think about that. The God who put life into that child, the God who created the child to reflect him and glorify him, yet that child was being burned up in worship to a different god. When you think about it that way, the best thing to do when you're answering the question, "Why is the God in the Old Testament so violent?" is to think of things in terms of presence and penalty. When I say presence, Numbers 35 sheds very important light. Listen to what it says. This is God's instruction to Israel regarding murder.

"You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel."

The reason I tell you to think presence is because here's what God is saying. He's saying, "Look. I'm bringing you into the land, and I am going to live in the land with you." The land is equated with God's presence. The land is the place where God lives. When we look at the God of the Old Testament and cast judgment and call that unfair or unjust, here's what we're wanting God to be.

We're wanting God to be like the parents of a student whose lake house a group of us went to for a party the night of prom. We went to this lake house, and I didn't know this was happening, but we showed up, and the student who was hosting had a bunch of alcohol out there. His parents were right there. They saw the alcohol, they saw all of the students, and they just said, "Good night." Then they went into their room, shut the door, and went to sleep with the understanding, "Look. They're just high school students. It's prom. This is just what they're going to do."

See, that's what we want God to be. We want God to be a parent who just says, "Look. It's 2025. Of course they're going to do this. This is just a part of the way it is in the world we live in." We want God to just be like, "Good night. I'll see you in the morning," shut the door, close his eyes, and turn a blind eye. That's what we want God to be, but God is saying, "No. I refuse to be a dad who just goes into the bedroom and closes the door. I live here. You're living with me, and I care about what happens in my home." God will not tolerate sin.

It wasn't just child sacrifice. If you look at Leviticus 18, you see that the Canaanites were engaging in all kinds of incest. They were sexually abusing their grandchildren. They were engaging in bestiality, adultery, and homosexuality. God says, "The wages of sin is death." I told you to focus on presence but also penalty. God established all the way back in the garden that the wages of sin is death. That is the consequence for man's depravity. When human depravity collides with a holy God, the result is death.

We see that in the second story in Numbers 21 with the Israelites themselves. Remember what 21:5 says. "And the people spoke against God…" Can you hear the arrogance packed into those few words? The people spoke against God and against Moses, the leader God had appointed. What did they say? "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."

Imagine what they're saying. Every single morning, they have woken up to miraculous provision. They haven't had to cook. There has been no baking. They have literally just woken up, and one day at a time, God has miraculously provided manna. Now they are looking at God's miraculous provision, and they're like, "This is worthless! Why did you take us out of Egypt?" So, not only are they saying, "No thank you for your salvation," but secondly, "No thank you for your provision."

What's the consequence? Serpents that deliver a deadly bite. Think about how that is actually, in some ways, fitting. Think about it this way. When the Israelites are speaking against God, complaining to God, they're believing the same lie Adam and Eve believed coming out of the mouth of the Serpent in Genesis 3. What was the lie? "God is really not that good."

When serpents go through the camp and begin to bite the people, it shows that if you believe the lie of the Serpent, that lie has a bite to it, and that bite produces death. That's exactly what God told you would happen all the way back in Genesis 2 when he said, "Don't eat of this fruit, because in the day that you eat of it you will surely die." The Serpent that delivered the lie is also the Serpent that delivers the bite that leads to death.

So, if you want to think about how to fight and war against sin in your life, if you just want to take ground, to take some steps toward freedom from the stuff that's tripping you up, I'd encourage you to think about presence and penalty. God was saying, "Hey, sin can't be in the land because I live in the land," but now God lives inside of us by the presence of his Spirit.

It's important to think about your sin that way. It's good to think, "Is this what God wants to be looking at right now? He lives in me, so for me to be sitting here looking at this, I am asking God to sit here and look at this. Is this how God wants to be communicating to my spouse right now? Is this how God wants me to be communicating to my roommates right now? Is this how God wants me to be working right now, which is not working, cutting corners? Is this what God wants to be doing right now? Because he lives in me, he is right here in the midst of my sin."

But also to think about penalty. When I say penalty, you might be thinking I'm talking about thinking about the natural consequences to your sin. You can do that, and I think it's helpful to play things out and see where your brokenness will land you, but what I'm really talking about is seeing Jesus on the cross. I'm talking about seeing the consequences he didn't deserve but he endured on your behalf.

When you look at that thing, when you engage in that, when you do that, Christ had to go to the cross for that, and without Christ's sacrifice in your place for your penalty, there would be no way for you to be right with God. So, see the sacrifice he made. See, we must continually work to more fully understand the depth of our depravity and the height of God's holiness. We don't typically spend any time on either.

We live in a culture that spends no time exploring the depth of our depravity, because we live in a culture that's all about self-esteem. We want to be people who just look in the mirror… It's like, "Hey, just look at yourself in the mirror. Tell yourself you're good enough." No, you're not. I get what that's coming from, but the reality of the gospel is you're not enough and Christ has come and made you enough.

You're not good enough because of what you're able to do or what you're able to accomplish; you are enough because Christ has made sinful people enough for God. But first, if you're going to understand the depth of God's love, you have to understand the depth of your depravity. When you understand the depth of your depravity, and then you understand that God's grace and love actually go even deeper, that's when you understand true love.

We have to be people who understand the depth of our depravity and the height of God's holiness, because when we understand the depth of our depravity and the height of God's holiness, it breeds greater satisfaction in Jesus, who went to the cross to deal with the depth of our depravity, and through his resurrection from the dead, he produces our resurrection to a new life, which makes us holy in the eyes of a holy God, which is crazy.

3. Understand that God has always been full of grace. So many people think the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament, but they're the same God. He has always been gracious. I'm going to say something right now that I want to be really careful with, because I'm going to talk about abortion for a moment.

If you're here and have had an abortion, I'm not saying this in any way to produce shame in your life. If anything, what I want you to hear me say is I'm so glad you're here, and I hope you experience the wholeness and healing that come from Jesus. We have a ministry called Worth More that I would strongly encourage you to check out.

There's an interesting double standard happening in our world today where people believe the height of flourishing and freedom is for you to be able to do whatever you want with what belongs to you. "It's my body; therefore, it's my choice, even if that means taking a life." People view that as the height of freedom and flourishing. Those same people will look at God and call him a moral monster, yet Psalm 24:1 says, "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it." Everyone and everything belongs to God.

So, people look and say, "The height of freedom is for me to do whatever I want with what is mine, even if it means taking a life," yet when God, who owns everything, takes a life, we look and say, "What a moral monster." That's a double standard. Here's the reality. The God who owns everything has chosen to display grace to his greatest enemies. That has been true since the beginning of the Bible. Let me draw some connections you might not have drawn before.

Genesis 15:13 says, "Then the Lord said to Abram, 'Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.'" Just have that number in mind: 400 years. Then he goes on in verse 16 and says, "And they [the Israelites] shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." The Amorites were people who lived in the land of Canaan.

Do you know what this is telling us? It is telling us that God allowed the sin of the Canaanites to persist for over 400 years. That's grace. The Canaanites had over 400 years to turn to God, to look up into the sky, to look at the sun, to look at the stars at night, and to not give those and ascribe those to other deities but to search and to seek and to find the one true God who's revealing himself through all of creation. That's Romans 1. For God to let their sin persist for over 400 years is grace.

But not just that. Exodus 12:38. I don't know if you noticed this when you were reading the account of God bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. It says, "A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds." Do you know what that mixed multitude means? It means there were people who weren't Israelites whom God rescued as well. There were people living in Egypt at the time who were not Israelites whom God also rescued. Do you know what that is? That's grace toward the nations.

When the nation of Israel goes into Canaan, God is going to save a prostitute named Rahab. Why? Because of her faith. A Canaanite woman, a prostitute, is saved. That's grace. What's the entire book of Jonah about? It's about God calling a man to go to a foreign, pagan nation and call them to repent, and God saves them. That's grace.

Then you look in Numbers 21 right here, these serpents biting the Israelites. It says in verse 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.' 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." That's grace.

Who was the bronze serpent for? It was for those who had already been bitten. That means they were in sin and that death was imminent, yet God in his grace and kindness said, "If you look, you'll live." That's grace. Then Jesus, in John 3, picks up Numbers 21 and applies it to himself. Listen to what he says. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

That's grace toward us. Jesus is saying, "The reason I even came was to be lifted up like that bronze serpent." The pole was actually a cross. When Christ was crucified, he endured the wrath of God for your sin and mine. So what's the call? "Look and live." Look to Jesus. Look to him to be your rescuer, to be your Savior, to be your King, and you will live. That's grace. God has always been a God of grace.

I want to believe God brought some of you here this morning just so you could hear what I'm saying right now. There is not one person in this room who has out-sinned the grace of God. Period. Something in you might be like, "Yeah, but…" Nope. No "Yeah, buts." No one in this room has out-sinned the grace of God.

I don't care how deep your depravity is. God's love is deeper. His grace goes deeper. He can pick you up and lift you out of the pit you've found yourself in. He can heal the deepest brokenness in our lives. The reason I know that is because that's my story, and this church is full of thousands of people who are here solely because the grace of God reached into brokenness and healed, brought people from death to life. Amen?

4. Remember it points to a greater judgment. It reminds us that a greater judgment is coming. What's interesting is philosopher Paul Copan makes the case in his book Is God a Moral Monster? that God's words in these Old Testament passages can be understood in the context of ancient Near Eastern military terminology.

What he's advocating for is that the wording that's being used here is actually hyperbolic. It's not literal in the sense that "I want you to literally kill every person who breathes." It's more like a coach saying to his team, "I want you to go out there and destroy them. I want you to annihilate them on the field." What's the point? "I want you to be victorious. Go out there and win."

So it's possible that's what's happening in the text. I can give you an example. If you look at Joshua 10:40, it says, "So Joshua struck the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings. He left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed…" But then in Joshua 23, God says, "For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you…"

So, either the Bible is contradicting itself or it fits in the midst of ancient Near Eastern literature, where there is this hyperbolic language, that it's more talking about victory than anything. I don't know. Here's what I do know. I want to read you another passage which is not hyperbole. Revelation 20 points to a greater judgment. It says this in verses 11-15:

"Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.

And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."

This is another one of those songs we just want to skip. It's like, "We don't like that one, so let's just skip over it." But how unloving would it be for us to talk about judgment and not point to the final judgment? The judgment we see in the Old Testament, which we label as violent, just points to an even greater judgment, that Christ is coming back and he will judge the living and the dead. I'll explain it this way. I'll share a story I've shared before, but it seems fitting for this moment.

Probably about 20 years ago, I was in Israel at the Dead Sea. Many of you have been to the Dead Sea. I was at a part in the Dead Sea which was not a tourist spot. So, I was sitting up on a hill, and I was watching these people who were playing around in the Dead Sea. If you know, people love to reach down on the bottom and pick up the dirt, the clay, and smear it all over their faces and bodies because it's therapeutic or something like that. I don't know.

I was watching these people in the water who were caking themselves in mud. I mean, they caked every bit of their face, every square inch of their arms. All of their chest was caked in mud. They were high-fiving each other, laughing at each other. Then I watched them make the walk up the hill coming up to the showers because they were finally ready to get cleaned off.

They walk up to one of the showers. The showers have this little string you pull to turn the shower on. One of them pulls the string, and nothing comes out. They move on to the next shower, pull the string, and nothing comes out. They go from shower to shower, pulling string after string, to find that the water was completely shut off. I began to see panic in these people's faces, because unfortunately, the thing that made them dirty couldn't also make them clean. What was really enjoyable had begun to become unbearable.

I tell you that because we are people who love to splash around in the sin of this world. We love to cake ourselves in the sin of this world because we think it's enjoyable and satisfying, but here's what you need to understand: the place that makes you dirty can't also be the place that makes you clean. Do not wait until the final day of judgment when Jesus comes back, because on that day, you're going to find out that the shower of God's grace has already been shut off. A day is coming where Jesus will judge the living and the dead. Don't take it lightly. Today is the day of salvation.

Today, the showers of God's grace flow freely with the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from all sin and makes us right in the eyes of a holy God. That is available to you today. You can pull the string of faith. You can turn to Jesus, and the blood of Christ washes you clean. A greater judgment is coming, so how do you find your name written in the Book of Life? Look and live. Jesus Christ was lifted up just as the serpent on the pole was lifted up. Why? So that all those who look to Jesus in faith will live. Would you do that today? Let's pray.

If you're here today, and you want to say yes to Jesus…you want to begin a relationship with him…I encourage you to do that right now, to look to Jesus and say, "Would you come into my life today? Would you come into my life? Would you forgive me of my sin? Jesus, I believe you died for me. Jesus, I believe you rose from the dead for me. I want you to be my Savior. I want you to be my King." Would you pray that?

Then, may we be a people that when we think about, "Why is God so violent in the Old Testament?" we would realize that God is just as holy today as he was back then, humanity is just as depraved today as it was back then, yet God is just as gracious today as he was then. Jesus has come so we would be saved from judgment and we could experience eternity with him.

Lord, may we know that. May we live that, I pray. In Jesus' name, amen.