Alright brethren, John chapter
3 is where we will begin. Last hour we tried to focus on
Christ being the faithful witness as He revealed there in verse
13. Today, or this hour, I want to
focus on Christ being the substitute of His people. He said in verse
14, And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even
so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Now the Lord
took Nicodemus back to a passage of scripture that he should have
been familiar with, a scripture from the Old Testament on the
brazen serpent in the wilderness. This is a picture, it's a type,
and it's meant to glorify Christ. It's a picture and type of Christ. He said there, as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up. He must go to the cross. He must be lifted up on the cross. That was an absolute necessity. All have sinned. and come short
of the glory of God and the wages of sin is death. That means every
single person born of Adam shall die under the justice of God
because we've all sinned. We all shall. We all shall. How then can God save a sinner
who deserves to die? How can God be holy and remain
holy and just and show mercy to a sinner to whom God's own
justice says he must die? If He shows him mercy without
satisfying his justice, he'd cease to be holy. If He shows
him justice without showing him mercy, the sinner is just going
to die under condemnation. But how can God do both? How
can He be merciful to a sinner and be just in doing so. Christ
must be lifted up. The Son of Man must be lifted
up. That whosoever, Jew or Gentile,
whosoever believeth on Him, there's the focus, whoever believes on
Him, believeth on Him, should not
perish, but have eternal life freely as a gift of God. The wages of sin, the payment
for sin is death. We earn death, but the gift of
God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. This is a gift. God gave his only begotten son. He gave the one who saves his
people, and he gives eternal life. He gives the life inside
the believer, the faith to the believer, to believe on his son,
and he that hath the son hath life. Everything about our salvation
is the gift of God. It's the gift of God. And thank
God it's so, because we could not earn it. We could not merit
this. We just couldn't. Go with me
now to Numbers 21, and let's look at this. We've looked at
it several times in the past, but it's such a beautiful picture. Numbers 21, verse 4. And they,
the children of Israel, they journeyed from Mount Hor by the
way of the Red Sea to compass the land of Edom. And the soul
of the people was much discouraged because of the way. And the people
spake against God. and against Moses. Wherefore,
wherefore have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the
wilderness? They said that to God by saying
it to Moses. Wherefore have you brought us
up out of Egypt to die in this wilderness? For there is no bread. Listen to this. We contradict
ourselves. Listen to this. There's no bread,
neither any water. And our soul loatheth this light
bread. There's no bread except this
light bread. And the Lord sent fiery serpents
among the people, and they bit the people, and much people of
Israel died. Therefore the people came to
Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the
Lord and against thee. Pray unto the Lord that He take
away the serpents from us. You notice what they asked for?
Just take the serpents away from us. That's not what the Lord did
for them. The Lord is gracious to not give us what we ask for.
He didn't take the serpents away. He doesn't take you out of this
world of sin. He doesn't take you out of your
body of sin. but he does something better. Watch this. And the Lord, verse eight, the
Lord said, oh, I'm sorry, end of verse seven, and Moses prayed
for the people, and the Lord said unto Moses, make thee a
fiery serpent and set it upon a pole. And it shall come to
pass that every one that is bitten when he looketh upon it, shall
live. And Moses made a serpent of brass,
and he put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that if a serpent
had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. Now first of all, we see the
problem. We see the problem. This is our problem. This is
the world's problem. This is our personal problem.
It is our own rebellion against God. That's our problem, our
rebellion against God. We sinned against God. Verse
five, the people spake against God and against Moses. Wherefore
have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
There's no bread, there's not any water, and our soul loatheth
this light bread. They spoke against God. So that
first cause of their problem is seen right here, and this
is the first cause of our problem. We sinned against God. That's our problem. We sinned
against God. The people spake against God,
and they spoke against Moses. Moses here, he was the one through
whom God gave the law, so he's a picture of the law. And Moses
was a prophet, so he's a picture of the word of God, the whole
gospel of God. So you have here God and the
law and all his word, and they spake against it. And wasn't
that our transgression? In the garden, in Adam, whenever
Adam, as the federal head of his people, the man in whom his
people were, whom all people were, every child that would
be born of Adam, Adam broke God's law. He spoke against God and
he spoke against the law. He transgressed the law. He broke
the law. And when he did that, the result
was sin and death. Sin entered and death by sin. He said there in verse 6, we
see it pictured here, the Lord sent fiery serpents among the
people and they bit the people and the much people of Israel
died. And you just picture that scene.
You picture that scene. And this is just like us. We
get discouraged in the way, and we begin to murmur, and we begin
to murmur. And they were murmuring against God, and they were murmuring
against Moses, and they thought it was bad before. The Lord sent
fiery serpents among them. Fiery serpents among them. And
they began to bite the people. And the people, you know, the
snake, when he bites, and that venom enters into your bloodstream,
and it just, courses through your whole body and just in a
short order goes through your whole body and the body begins
to swell and you begin to burn and you begin to thirst and you
die. That poison. Well, that serpent
in the wilderness is the devil. And you know whenever Adam sinned,
He plunged himself and his race into total depravity, into sin
and death, and came under the curse. That serpent was the curse. He came under the curse, the
sin, the breaking of the law. That's the curse and the condemnation. And rather than much people in
Israel dying, all died. When that happened, all died.
Romans 5.12 says, As by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin. And so death passed upon all
men, for that all have sinned. In Adam, all have sinned. See, the way we became guilty
before God is in a representative head. Now listen sinner, the
only way you're going to be saved is by a representative head.
That's God's order. That's how God made it. We all
send in Adam. The only way he's gonna save
his people is by Christ Jesus, the head of his people. That's
the only way. And that's what he's showing
us here. Now God had given them bread from heaven. That's what
that light bread was. He gave them bread from heaven.
Christ is the bread from heaven. They complained of no water.
God had provided them water. And the rock that followed them
that was smitten from which the water came out, that's a picture
of Christ. Paul said that rock was Christ.
Christ said that bread is Him. He's the bread from heaven. But
they loathed the bread. They complained that they didn't
have water, they didn't have bread, and what it was is they
hated the bread God provided. How many times do sinners start
out claiming to believe on Christ, and before long, they're complaining
their soul hates the bread. All we hear is Christ crucified.
All we keep hearing preached is Christ crucified. Give us
some other bread. Give us something else. Well,
there was no cure for these fiery serpents. We can't produce a
cure for the guilt and condemnation of sin. We can't do it. We can't
put away our sin. We can't justify ourselves. We
can't bring ourselves out from under the condemnation of God.
You and I just can't do that. We've sinned. We're guilty. That's
the end of the story. If God leaves us to ourselves,
we must die under the justice of God. That means if we're going
to be saved, it's going to be by God's grace. Grace is God
giving you what you don't deserve. Nobody God saves deserves to
be saved. It's by grace, it's by God's
freely, sovereignly choosing whom He will. That's who He saves. And if I don't like that, the
reason I don't like that is I'm saying, I think I could cure
myself of these fiery serpents. You can't and I can't. We're
going to have to be saved by God's grace. God's going to get
the glory for every bit of salvation from beginning to end. He gets
the glory. That's the whole point is to
bring a people to glorify God for everything. We can't brag
on ourselves. We can't boast in ourselves.
We can't claim we saved ourselves in any shape, form, or fashion.
Again, God every now and then shows us that by giving us providence
that we can't do anything about. And that's the purpose, to show
us we're helpless to save ourselves, brethren. The important thing is beholding
we can't save ourselves spiritually. That's the important thing. And
sometimes He shows you that physically to make you see that spiritually.
That's what He was doing here. He physically sent serpents.
They couldn't save themselves. We're going to have to be saved
by God's grace. And so look at what they did.
They're dying. They see all these people dying
around. Sin, when it's finished, brings forth death. If God leaves
us to ourselves, we're going to sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, and
we're going to die. We're spiritually dead by nature,
and we're physically dying. And we're going to die physically.
And if God hasn't done something for us by His grace, after that
is the second death, where He condemns us forever. So we're
dependent on God's grace. The natural mind says, why preach
that to a sinner to tell him he can't do anything? That won't
make him do anything. You see, that's what we're trying
to get sinners to do is to stop trying to do something. A sinner
will do anything you give him to do except nothing but believe
on Christ to do the saving. And God said, you tell these
dry bones, these dry dead bones that can't do anything, you tell
them to live and come to Christ and believe on Christ. And he
said, and as you preach that message, I will give my spirit
and I'll give them life and I'll bring them to Christ. I'll give
them life. That's why we preach it. This
is the message, the message that glorifies God alone. That's the
message he's gonna give. So He, these people are brought
to see they can't do anything for themselves. That's where
we gotta be brought. And when they were brought there, they
went to Moses. They went to the one they were
just speaking against. They went to Moses. And here's
how a sinner's gonna be saved. He's gonna bring you to come
to Christ, who is God in human flesh, God at God's right hand,
the one we've been speaking against. The one we were rejecting, the
one we were denying, we're gonna have to be brought to Him. And
they came to him and they asked him for mercy. They asked him
to intercede for them. We're going to have to be brought
to the God we rejected, the God we spoke against, is the God
we're going to have to be brought to and ask Him to intercede on
our behalf. Now the Lord told Moses to make
a serpent. and lift it up on a pole. Verse
8, the Lord said to Moses, make thee a fiery serpent and set
it upon a pole. And so in verse 9, Moses made
a serpent of brass and he put it upon a pole. Now, who provided
the cure? Who provided the remedy? The
Lord did. They didn't know what to do.
There was nothing they could do. Who provided the cure? The
Lord did. He told Moses, make a serpent
of brass. The very thing that was causing
the death was a serpent. He said, you make a serpent of
brass and raise it up on a pole, lift it up on a pole. Now in
eternity, before God made anything, you don't think God made the
world and put sinners in it and let sinners sin and become rebels
against God and then left it up to sinners, do you? Of course
he didn't. Before He ever made anything,
it says the works were finished from the beginning. God chose
His Son. He provided the one who would
do the saving. He provided the cure. He provided
the remedy. He chose His Son and chose His
people and His Son, and His Son agreed to come forth and lay
down His life for His people. That's why Christ told Nicodemus,
no man's ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven.
Even the Son of Man, which is right now in heaven. He was telling
Nicodemus, my work's eternal, Nicodemus. I've already ascended,
I've descended, and I'm right now in heaven. Don't you know
Nicodemus couldn't understand the new birth? He couldn't understand
the wind blowing where it will when he told him earthly things.
Don't you know when the Lord told him that, Nicodemus' head was
spinning? What was he saying? He was saying whom God did foreknow,
he also did predestinate, conformed to the image of his son, that
he might be the firstborn among many brethren, and whom he did
foreknow, then he also called, and whom he called, then he also
justified. He's telling him all of that's
in the past tense. The work's been finished since
he chose me to do the saving. Before they ever looked to the
serpent, before the serpents ever lifted up on a pole, before
they even know there's a cure yet, God told Moses, I've provided
the cure. And that's so with God. How's he gonna be, how's he gonna
be just and be merciful? How's he gonna pour out justice
and execute you and me who are sinners and yet be merciful to
us and give us eternal life? He told Moses, make a serpent
of brass. That very thing that was causing
the death, lift it up on a pole. So this serpent was made of brass
in the likeness of these fiery serpents. Now the only way to
save his people was for the Lord Jesus Christ to be made like
unto his brethren. That's the only way. He said
in Hebrews 2.17, In all things it behooved him to be made like
unto his brethren. Why? That he might be a merciful
and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God. That he might
represent us to God. If he's going to save men and
women who are flesh and blood, he's got to be made flesh and
blood. Sinless flesh and blood. The
first Adam was made without sin, upright, in a garden with no
sin. The last Adam came into a world and he was holy, without
sin, in a world full of sin. But he had to be made like his
brethren so that he could be the God-man, representing God
and representing his people and bringing us together in one.
that he might be a faithful and merciful high priest in things
pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of his people. Romans
8.3, what the law could not do in that it was weak through the
flesh. They couldn't go to God's law and cure themselves of these
serpents. And God didn't tell them now,
you've got the Ten Commandments, cure yourself of these serpents.
They couldn't. That's the picture. We've broken
the law. That's why we're under the curse.
We can't cure ourselves. And so what the law could not
do because of our weakness, because of our sin and our weakness,
God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and
for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. God says, you're getting
bit by fiery serpents. Now you make a brass serpent
and lift it up on a pole. Make the likeness of that which
is killing them and lift it up on a pole. The serpent of brass
had no venom. Christ Jesus knew no sin. He
came forth holy without sin and he never was corrupted. He never
became a rebel against God in himself. He never did. He is
holy. But God had them make a serpent
like what was biting them and lift it up on a pole. And Christ
said he must be lifted up, just like that brazen serpent. That's
why he came. He, God, hath made him, the Lord
Jesus, sin for us, for his people. This one who knew no sin, he
made him sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. That's what we're seeing pictured
in this brazen serpent. In the garden, the serpent was
cursed of God. And here you have Christ, a picture
of Christ made a curse for his people. When he was made sin
for his people, God looked at him as the only one representing
all his people. Just like when Adam sinned, God
looked at Adam as the only one representing all his people.
He sinned, he was guilty, and so all his children were. And
the Lord looked at Christ, and here's one who's bearing the
sin of all his people. a particular people, he's bearing
their sin. And why is that important? Because
he's not just dying for sin ambiguously, he's dying for his people. His
name's Jesus, Savior, for he shall save his people from their
sins. And that's what he was doing.
The Lord didn't provide this serpent in the wilderness for
everybody in the world. He provided it for the children of Israel.
They're the only ones that saw their need. He'd given them a
need, and He provided them a Savior. And the Lord provided Christ
to lay down His life for His people. And Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for
us, for it's written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a
tree. Cursed is everyone that's lifted
up on a cross. Christ said, I must be lifted
up on that cross. Brethren, that's what Christ
meant when He said, I must be lifted up. That's what He was
talking about. There's no other way for God to be just. God poured out wrath on Him,
justice on Him, and He died. And Paul said in first person,
I am crucified with Christ. Can you say that? If you believe
on Him, you can. If you truly believe in Him by
the Spirit of His grace, you can, because this is so for all
His people, for everybody Christ represented. When God poured
out justice on His Son, I was crucified that day. Judgment,
everybody's afraid of the judgment. Natural men are just terrified
of the coming judgment, and should be. Gonna stand before God, and
gonna be judged of God. For the believer, our judgment
took place on Calvary's cross. We were judged, and we died. He suffered what would have been
an eternal hell for us in three hours of darkness, separated
from God, and he ended it. He ended it. Paul said in Romans
6, you reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive
unto God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when He
died, we really died in Him. And when He arose, we arose in
Him. If we could get this, brethren,
I'm telling you, if we could get this, we're, as real, God
said you were in Christ over 2,000 years ago on that cross.
That's what He says to His people. And it's so. We were. We were,
and as real as we were in Him, we're now seated at God's right
hand in glory. That's what He's conveying to
you and me when He said, if the Spirit of Christ is in you, you're
not in the flesh. You know, all we can see is our
sin. We keep seeing, looking at the serpents, and we keep
seeing the venomous bite in us because we're sinners. But brethren,
here's the thing. Your old man is dead before God. Until I get that, I won't treat
you mercifully. Until I get that, I just won't
do it. You got to see this. You got to understand this. God
is continuously, every second of every day, being merciful
to you for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ because every second
of every day, all you are in yourself is sin. Me too. Why
can He be merciful to me? How can it be just to be merciful
to me? I've already died. Christ already
paid for that sin. It's already put away. And God
says, I'm righteous in Him. You too, who know Him and believe
Him. That's when you don't know a
man after the flesh, but after the Spirit. When you know that's
so about Him. That'll make you just hate yourself. When you don't act like you ought
to act, when you don't treat somebody like you ought to treat
them, it will. People say, oh, you can't preach that, you tell
them their sin's already paid for, they'll just go out and
sin. Not when God's working in his people. You're gonna sin,
that's gonna happen. But this is the message that
turns you from that. Constantly beholding Christ lifted
up and you there lifted up in him. There's no other way. God set him forth to be propitiation,
satisfaction through faith in his blood. To declare his righteousness. To declare his righteousness.
that he's just and he is the justifier of his people. That's
why he said in Romans 8, who shall lay anything to the charge
of God's elect is God to justify it up. It's Christ that redeemed
them. It's Christ who's interceding
for them at God's right hand. That'll affect our entire way
of dealing with our brethren. It does. It does. The law's satisfied. Now, Seeing
His works finished, seeing He justified His people, what's
then left for His people to do? What do His people do? How are
they going to be saved? How are they going to enjoy this
and be saved from this venomous bite of this serpent? God told
them, now get this, to just look at that serpent. That's it. Look at the serpent. Behold Him. The picture is, believe Him. He said there in verse 8 in the
second part, it shall come to pass that everyone that's bitten,
now that's the only people that's going to look. Only when you know you've been
bitten and you're dead and dying, that's the only time you're going
to look. But everybody that's bitten, when he looketh upon
it, shall live. Verse 9, second part, it came
to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld
the serpent of brass, he lived. Now, Arthur Pink has some good
points on this. What were they not told to do?
Well, they were not told to produce their own cure to heal their
wounds. That's what churches are being
taught around the world today, is instead of looking to Christ
only, that there's, well you can look, but now there's some
things you're gonna have to do to cure your wounds. Some works
you're gonna have to do. He didn't tell them that. They
weren't told that they'd be healed by ministering and serving others.
That's huge, you know. You minister and serve others.
God's people will minister and serve others. But here's what
our ministering and serving's about. Is to try to help Our brethren who are overtaken
in sin, or those that are overtaken in the cares of this world, or
whatever it is that's turning them to look at the serpent,
and at the sin, and at themselves, and at the trouble, is to help
serve them, to turn them from them to Christ. To Christ. If I'm turning you from Christ
and saying, now look from Christ and look to you and there's something
you must do, or there's something about you that's gonna cure this,
that's not the gospel. The gospel is look to Christ.
That's what our serving's about, is to help our brethren look
to Christ. Look to Christ, only to Him. We're not told to fight the serpents. You can fight your sin, you can
mortify your body, you can become a monk and go off into some wilderness
somewhere and live in a house where nobody's around and there's
no television and no radio and none of the things that people
associate with sin. But the problem is you're going
to be there and you're the sin. You can't fight these snakes.
We're not told to make an offering to the serpent on the pole. There's
nothing for you to do to make yourself ready to come to Christ.
You can't prepare yourself to come to Christ. That's what a
lot of people think. Well, I'm going to clean up my
act a little bit and I'm going to believe on the Lord. I'm going
to join the church. No. No. The Lord said, I didn't come
to call the righteous to repentance. I came to call sinners. All you
need is for the Lord to have made you see you've been bitten,
and you're dead, and you can't cure yourself. You're a sinner.
You're a foul, God-hating, Godless sinner. When you see that, come to Christ. He'll receive
you. He'll receive you. That's totally
foreign to our thinking, but that's God. He said, come to
me. I'll receive you. They weren't
told to come to Moses and say a prayer, that's a big thing. People come to the preacher and
they say a prayer and they take them in the back and they got
people trained up to help them pray and then they tell you,
now you've been born again, now you believe the Lord. They were
told themselves, you look to the serpent. You look to Christ
on the cross. You look to him. They weren't
told to look to the law and also they weren't told to look to
their wounds. There's something about this where sinners start
thinking that the more they constantly mourn and constantly talk about
their sin and how bad they are, that doesn't do anything. That
doesn't save you. What saves us? Look to Christ. Go to Him. He said, look to the
serpent on the pole and those that did live and there's nothing
else except looking to Christ and there's where He gives you
life. He said back in John 3.14, back there with me, John 3.14.
He said, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even
so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whosoever believeth in
Him. There's the look. believe in
Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God so, after
this manner, this is how God loved His people all over the
world right here. He gave His only begotten Son,
He provided the cure and it's His Son. That whosoever believeth
in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. He didn't send
his son to condemn us. He didn't lift that serpent up
on a pole to condemn anybody. They were already bitten and
dying. He gave that serpent on a pole so that they would live.
And Christ came not to condemn his people. He came to save his
people. We were condemned already. He
came to save us. And he says, you believe on him
and you shall be saved. Listen to this from Isaiah 45,
21. He said, there's no God else beside me. This is it, brethren. This is
the way. You've heard the way, the truth
and the life. There's no way to come to God
but this right here. He said, there's no God else
beside me, a just God and a Savior. This is the just way to save.
Just God and a Savior. There's none beside me. And here
he says, look unto me and be ye saved. That's so passive. Look to me and be ye saved. Look to me, believe me, and trust
me to do all the saving. He has, he is, he shall, and
all the ends of the earth, wherever you are, he said, this is how
I'm saving. I'm God, and there is none else. And I pray God today make you
see, first of all, make us see we've been bitten. We've been
bitten. The venom is in us. And if we
try to cure it or do anything to cure our neighbor or ourselves,
whatever, we're gonna both die. There's one cure, that's Christ. Look to Christ, believe on Christ,
and you'll be saved. And I pray God give us grace
to do that. All right, Brother Greg.