Numbers 21

• What were your reflections from the bible study and sermon on Numbers 20?

Read Numbers 21:4-9

The Hebrew word for 'impatient' here (qatsar) is a stronger feeling than the word impatience might imply. It literally translates as 'shortness-of-spirit'. In other contexts the word can be used for other 'short' feelings, like troubled, grieved or anguished. Raymond Brown says, "the people were irritable and fractious, depressed... physically exhausted and emotionally stressed... frustrated and weary..." All of those strong feelings are caught up in the word qatsar.

• Why do you think the people felt so 'impatient' with their life in the desert?

  • Do you ever feel this way as you live in the 'in-between', where Jesus is enthroned as King but at the same time his kingdom is yet to fully come?

    • Are you impatient for His second coming?

    • Are you impatient for the world to be made right?

    • Are you impatient for your own sanctification?

• In light of their refusal to enter the promised land in chapter 13, how do their complaints against God and Moses sound to you?

  • Do you think you ever complain about things that are at least partially your own fault? How would you identify that?

• What do you think of the people's response to the snakes? How did their suffering wake them up?

  • Have you ever experienced this sort of waking up, where you've turned back to God in a time of need?

• God's 'antidote' to the snakes is a bronze snake on a pole. What do you think it would have been like to receive this instruction (answer first for Moses and then for the people)?

  • It has been said that this is a picture of 'salvation by faith in God'. In what sense is this true?

  • Do you have any stories of times where you realised you needed to stop what you were doing and simply look to God?

[Optional Part]

Read 2 Kings 18:1-4

N.B. This was about 700 years after Numbers

• Why do you think the people kept the bronze snake originally?

• Why do you think they began burning incense to it and worshiping it?

• Is there a warning here for us? In what ways might we worship the things of God instead of God Himself?

Read John 3:14-15

This was about 1400 years after Numbers

• In what ways did Jesus fulfill the story of the bronze snake?

• If Nicodemus the Pharisee (the person Jesus was talking to in John 3) properly understood what Jesus was saying here, how would it have changed his understanding of faith and salvation?

• What will you take away from the story of the bronze snake in Numbers 21, as a recipient of Jesus's offer of 'eternal life'?