The following story appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The headline read, "Terror On The Side Of A Steep Slope."

While hunting deer in the Tehema Wildlife area near Red Bluff California, Jay Rathman climbed to a ledge on the slope of a rocky gorge. As he raised his head to look over the ledge above, he sensed movement to the right of his face. A coiled rattler struck with lightening speed, just missing his right ear.

"The four-foot snakes fangs got snagged in the neck of Rathman's wool turtleneck sweater, and the force of the strike caused it to land on his left shoulder. It then coiled around his neck.

He grabbed it behind the head with his left hand and could feel the warm venom running down the skin of his neck, the rattles making a furious racket. He fell backward and slid head first down the steep slope through brush and lava rocks, his rifle and binoculars bouncing beside him.

'As luck would have it,' he said in describing the incident to a Department of Fish and Game official, 'I ended up wedged between some rocks with my feet caught uphill from my head. I could barely move.'

Rathman got his right hand on his rifle and used it to disengage the fangs from his sweater, but the snake had enough leverage to strike again.

'He made about eight attempts and managed to hit me with his nose just below my eye about four times. I kept my face turned so he couldn't get a good angle with his fangs, but it was really close. He had fangs like darning needles . . . I had to choke him to death. It was the only way out. I was afraid that with all the blood rushing to my head I might pass out.' Rathman, age 45 works for the Defense Department in San Jose. He estimates his encounter with the snake lasted about 20 minutes.

As I mused upon this story, I thought about how it symbolizes in a small way the epic struggle between God and the forces of evil.

Genesis 3 is the historic record of how sin entered into the world. Mark what the Scriptures say, "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?' ²And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; ³but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, "You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die."' ⁴Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. ⁵For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will bed, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." ⁶So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate."

The serpent is clever. He calls into question the integrity of God by saying, "God doesn't really know what's best for you. Obeying His Word won't bring you the fulfillment and happiness you're looking for."

In fact, the serpent insinuates that God gave Adam and Eve rules to live by because He wanted to foil their plans to become all they could be. So he says to Eve, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day that you eat of it your eyes will bed, and you will be like God."

Behind this discussion between Eve and the serpent are these questions: "Why should we obey God? If obedience to God doesn't bring immediate gratification, why should we yield ourselves to Him?"

In raising doubts about God's integrity and goodness, the serpent motivates Adam and Eve to rebel. He tempts them to rush ahead of God and to fulfill their longings. So, they listen to him and die.

He coils. He lunges. He strikes. And his venom poisons the human race with a restless desire to question God's goodness and to ignore the voice that says, "I know what's best for you. Don't destroy yourself by ignoring me."

In Numbers 21, the tragedy in Eden is reenacted. If Adam and Even could have witnessed what happened in the Sinai desert, I suspect they would have said, "Israel is our progeny. They belong to us. We see ourselves in them."

In Numbers 21 the nation of Israel is wandering in the wilderness in route to the promised land of Palestine. In verse 4 the Scriptures tell us, "But the people grew impatient on the way; ⁵ they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, 'Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable [manna] food!' "

Like their parents Adam and Eve, the children of Israel are lured and charmed by the serpent. They too question the integrity of God. They voice their skepticism about His goodness and begin to wonder if He'll keep His promises.

They say, "Our lives are meaningless. God is holding out on us. We're missing out on life. He promised to bring us into a land flowing with milk and honey. All we've seen is this desert. He doesn't know what's best for us! And this bread from heaven . . . we detest it. It's worthless."

Verse 6 "Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died."

It's no accident that serpents slither across the pages of Scripture when the Israelites question God's integrity. But here in Numbers 21, the serpents are a curse. It's God's way of saying, "Okay. You want to listen to the serpent? You believe He can bring you life and happiness? I'll show you the inevitable result of obeying him."

What I want you to see from this passage is that listening to the devil always leads to death and chaos. Satan connives in an effort to convince us that we must meet our own needs. He conspires to persuade us that we know what's best for us. But God alone knows what's best for us. We can't even trust ourselves. He knows what will make us both happy and holy. So He reasons with us saying, "Trust me to meet your needs, because I can be trusted."

Yet, I can hear some people quietly say, "My life has taught me that God can't be trusted. He doesn't know what's best for me."

In his book, Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People, Rabbi Kushner writes the following: "Our son Aaron had just passed his third birthday when our daughter Ariel was born. Aaron was a bright and happy child, who before the age of two could identify a dozen different dinosaurs and could patiently explain to an adult that dinosaurs were extinct. My wife and I had been concerned about his health from the time he stopped gaining weight at the age of eight months, and from the time his hair started falling out after he turned one year old. Prominent doctors had seen him, had attached complicated names to his condition, and had assured us that he would grow to be very short but normal in all other ways.

Just before our daughter's birth, we moved from New York to a suburb of Boston, where I became the rabbi of a local congregation. We discovered that the local pediatrician was doing research in problems of children's growth, and we introduced him to Aaron. Two months later - the day our daughter was born, he visited my wife in the hospital, and told us that our son's condition was called progeria, "rapid aging." He went on to say that Aaron would never grow much beyond three feet in height, would have no hair on his head or body, would look like a little old man while he was still a child, and would die in his early teens.

How does one handle news like that? I was a young inexperienced rabbi, not as familiar with the process of grief as I would later come to be, and what I mostly felt that day was a deep, aching sense of unfairness. It didn't make sense. I had been a good person. I had tried to do what was right in the sight of God. More than that, I was living a more religiously committed life than most people I knew, people who had large, healthy families. I believed that I was following God's ways and doing His work. How could this be happening to my family? If God existed, if He was minimally fair, let alone loving and forgiving, how could He do this to me?" pp1-2

I suppose most of us have asked this question once or twice in our lives - "How could God do this to me? He's not being fair. Why?" It's the same question, Adam and Eve asked. It's the same question the Children of Israel asked. And our questions are a sure sign the cunning serpent has persuaded us that God can't be trusted.

But instead of, "How could God do this to me?" perhaps we should ask, "How could God do this to Himself? How could God love people who trust Him so little? How could God love people who question Him so often? How could God love people who believe He exists for the sole purpose of satisfying their every desire?"

This is what sin and the serpent do to us. They orient us inward, instead of outward. Sin causes us to focus our thoughts upon ourselves instead of others. The serpent persuades us that true happiness is obtained by meeting our own needs in our own way. After all, God has been holding out on us. He can't be trusted. We must take matters into our own hands.

But even our hubris can't deter the stubborn love of God. In Numbers 21:9, Moses makes a brass serpent and mounts it to a pole. Anyone bitten by the snakes could look up at the brass serpent and be saved from death. In the midst of chaos and judgment, He provides redemption. And this is why Jesus says in John 3:14-15, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

God is not satisfied to stand by idly, while we destroy ourselves. "We are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand." Psalm 100:3 "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8 He promises, " "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, For My anger has turned away from him. ⁵I will be like the dew to Israel;
He shall grow like the lily, And lengthen his roots like Lebanon." Hosea 14:4-5

One of my favorite prayers in the Prayer Book is found in Evening Family Prayer. I think it summarizes the gratitude of someone who understands God's love for people who have been deceived by the serpent.

TO our prayers, O Lord, we join our unfeigned thanks for all thy mercies; for our being, our reason, and all other endowments and faculties of soul and body; for our health, friends, food, and raiment, and all the other comforts and conveniences of life. Above all, we adore thy mercy in sending thy only Son into the world, to redeem us from sin and eternal death, and in giving us the knowledge and sense of our duty towards thee. We bless thee for thy patience with us, notwithstanding our many and great provocations; for all the directions, assistances, and comforts of thy Holy Spirit; for thy continual care and watchful providence over us through the whole course of our lives; and particularly for the mercies and benefits of the past day; beseeching thee to continue these thy blessings to us, and to give us grace to show our thankfulness in a sincere obedience to his laws, through whose merits and inter-cession we received them all, thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.