New Beginnings with Moses

Martyn Payne

Introduction:

Again and again the people of God became rebellious as they followed Moses through the desert after escaping through the water to freedom. The Promised Land was a long time coming and life back in Egypt seemed more and more attractive - even the life of slavery. Again and again God provided for the people, but they soon forgot, and the disaster in this story isn't the first to happen to them. There were a whole series of plagues, rebellions and murmurings, as they lost faith and turned away from God. But God used defeat in battle, hunger, natural disasters and illness to bring them back to faith again.

On this occasion God provided an antidote to the poison of the plague of fiery snakes, which later becomes a sign that Jesus himself will use (see John 3:14-16). However, this snake on a pole very soon became a snare, and hundreds of years later King Hezekiah had to have it destroyed because the people had turned this sign of life into an idol to be worshipped (see 2 Kings 18:4).

What follows is a selection of ideas that can be used to explore this story with children in an assembly and then in the classroom.

Preparation:

Use the retelling of the story of the snake on a pole from The Barnabas Schools' Bible pages 67 to 68, story 68.

As props you will need: some balls of string or wool, a bamboo pole and some plasticene.

Development:

1. To introduce this story in an assembly, you will need some balls of string or wool to give out to some invited children.

The journeys of the people of God through the desert were full of twists and turns.

Invite each child in turn to plot a path from an object on one side of the hall at the front to an object on the other. As they do so, they should let out the string or wool to show the path they have taken. The idea is to have as many twists and turns as possible as they cross to the other side, but without crossing over their own path at any point. When each of the children has done this, the front of the hall should be a maze of twists and turns!

How long can a simple journey be? How frustrating such a journey must have been in real life! But this is how it felt for the people of God in today's story. The journey to the Promised Land was taking forever and they were fed up. They were angry with God, with Moses and with the sheer repetition of day after day in the desert with the same food and the same company!

But it was then that these twists and turns became a plague of snakes! Ask the children to imagine all these twists and turns now turning into a plague of poisonous snakes!

Tell part of the story from The Barnabas Schools' Bible, story 68.

There is a version told by someone there at the time in A-cross the World (page 145) also from Barnabas.

2. Life in the desert was never easy. There were many dangers including desert snakes. These snakes were poisonous and their bite was deadly. People were killed and many were suffering without the hope of a cure.

Ask the children to imagine what it must have been like in the camp when this happened. What would they be feeling? What would they be saying?

The people soon forgot their complaining because they were too busy trying to avoid the snakes and bringing help to those who had been bitten.

Play a game in which you invite some more children to come and try to step across the snaky surface at the front of the hall to the other side without stepping on any of the snakes (that is, lines of wool or string). Can they tiptoe across, only stepping on the spaces in between?

3. The people began to realize that this plague was God's way of bringing them to their senses. God had always helped them at every twist and turn in the past, so why would God let them down? When faced by the disaster, the people began to pray.

I wonder what sort of prayers they would have said to God. Ask the children for some suggestions. (Maybe they would have included prayers of saying sorry, cries for help, requests for healing and asking for a cure.)

The people also spoke to Moses and asked him to pray to God for them. God had spoken through Moses so many times on their journeys (for example when faced by the Red/Reed Sea; at Mount Sinai; when there are hungry and thirsty; when faced by enemy forces).

I wonder what Moses said to God? What would have been his prayer? This time ask the children for suggestions for Moses' prayer.

4. God's instructions to Moses turned out to be very strange. The answer to the prayer was unexpected. He was to forge a model snake out of bronze and attach this to a pole.

To demonstrate this, gather together all the ends of the string or wool from one side of the hall while the children then pick up the ends of their pieces at the other. They should then proceed to plaid the pieces together into one great big, thick, long 'snake'. This snake should be taped together at the bottom and top and then wrapped around a long bamboo pole. Place this in the centre, as you tell the children what happened next. Moses told them to look at the bronze snake and live.

By lifting the snake up on the pole, the people would have understood that this was putting the snake to death. It was a way of saying, 'Look, it can't harm us anymore because it's dead.' As they believed this to be true - that God had killed off the threat of death among them - they would be safe and well. They could make a new start. By looking at the pole, the people of God were saying: 'I believe that God has taken the killing away'.

5. In the classroom make a snake mobile from a paper plate as a simple craft activity to prompt more discussion,

Draw on the plate an unbroken line from the outside rim in a spiral that winds its way to the centre. Cut along this line and you should have a curly snake, which the children can colour in. Because the snake will naturally curve around, it will be easy to wrap this around a bamboo pole or garden stick to complete the visual aid.

6. The incident with these poisonous snakes brought the people back to faith in God. Sometimes it is only when bad times hit people or they wilfully get into a mess that they realize just how much they have forgotten to trust in God and need a new start.

To show this visually with a class, hand out some pieces of plasticene and help them to spell the word s-n-a-k-e in plasticene letters on a piece of card. Now put next to this word their visual aid of the snake on the pole and ask the group to reshape each letter to become the five letters of the word s-t-a-r-t instead.

Christians believe that, just as the bronze snake on the pole represented the killing off of the danger from the snakes, so Jesus compared his death on the cross to the way that all the poison that kills the good in people can be put to death. By looking to Jesus, they can experience forgiveness and a new start, whenever they feel the power of bad things dragging them down.

7. The retelling of this story in A-cross the World (page 145) has some more wondering questions and another simple craft idea.

8. For a time of reflection on the story, have the children sit in a circle and then give each child a piece of wool long enough to reach from where they are sitting to a central focus. Now ask each child to twist and turn the wool around the fingers of one hand. As they do so, connect this to the way in which we all often twist and turn away from what we know is right and get ourselves into a mess.

Now, one at a time around the circle, each child should untwist the wool and (giving help where needed) attach it by one end to the central focus, while holding on to the other. Each time this has been completed, the group could say together words such as:

'Dear God, help us to start again, as we look to you for help.'