Good evening. If you would open
your Bibles to the book of John. John chapter 3. Tonight I want us to look at
one of the more popular, one of the more famous, well-known
stories of the Old Testament, the brazen serpent. And there's
two parts to this message. The first is I want to look at
that story in the Old Testament, how it's such a great picture
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And the second part is
I want to look at the events that those people went through,
the step-by-step that they went through during that ordeal, and
how that is a good example of what every child of God, the
experience we have from being lost and blind to being saved.
So if you look here in John chapter 3, look at 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. For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
Him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not
condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because
he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son." Now
if you will, turn over with me to Numbers chapter 21. Numbers chapter 21. one of the older writers wrote,
there is no better type nor picture of Christ, our Redeemer, and
the way that sinners are saved to be found in the Old Testament
than this one. Our Lord Himself chose this Old
Testament picture to illustrate the gospel to Nicodemus, the
religious Pharisee, where we just read over there in John.
So look with me in verse 4 of this story, in Numbers 21, And 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 have ye brought us up out of
Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither
is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread. This is all the children of Israel
who have been taken out of Egypt. The Lord delivered them, had
Moses lead them out, and they faced many trials. They came
to the edge of the Red Sea. The Lord took them to a place
there was no hope, there was no way out, and the Egyptian
army came up behind them. And the Lord delivered them in
a miraculous way, and He continued to do this. But these people
were discouraged because of the way. It was away from Canaan
instead of toward Canaan, the place, the promised land. But
it was the way these people had chosen. In the first few verses
of this, it says in chapter 21, verse 1, And when King Arad the
Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel
came by the way of the spies, then he fought against Israel
and took some of them prisoner. And Israel vowed a vow unto the
Lord, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into
my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities. The people
of Israel were persecuted by this king. He captured many of
the people, and the people promised that if the Lord would deliver
them, they would destroy those cities. Verse 3, And the Lord
hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites,
and they utterly destroyed them and their cities. And he called
the name of that place Hormah. These people, whether it was
the day before, the month before, or wherever it was previously,
they had just entered a trial and they went to the Lord and
said, please deliver us. And he did. These people in the
chapter before, they had actually chosen the path they were going
to take. They complained about the way
they were going, yet they had chosen the way. They're the ones
who said, we want to go this way. And they complained about
it. In Hebrews 3.19, it says, we
see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Their
unbelief turned them away from God. Our wanderings in the wilderness
are of our own choosing. In our father, Adam, we chose
not to believe God. Romans 5.12 says, Wherefore,
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.
We want to be our own God. We want to take our own path.
We want to determine where we're going. And the consequences of
that is death for our whole race. These people spoke against God.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10, said, they spoke against Christ. I quote, neither let us tempt
Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed of servants.
They murmured against Moses, God's prophet and their leader.
Nothing that the Lord or Moses, his servant, had done had ever
pleased them. They spoke against the way of
God and the word of God. Think about the things that they
complained about there. At the end of verse 5, it says,
For there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul
loatheth this light bread. This is a perfect example of
the complaints we make in the world today. They said, there
is no bread, and before that same sentence, they said, we
loatheth this light bread. They complained they had no bread
and as they finished the sentence they acknowledged they did have
bread and they were lying. It's just they didn't like the
bread they had. And then it also said they said that there's no
water. These people were being followed by a rock that was pouring
water out for them. They were in a desert with no
means of food or water and they had bread falling from the sky
And they had water from a rock, and yet they murmured and complained.
That's what we do. We murmur and complain despite
all the things that we have and all the things the Lord provides
for us. Look at verse 6. And the Lord sent fiery serpents
among the people, and they bit the people, and much people of
Israel died. Because of their sin, because
of their murmuring and their rebellion, God judged the people. He sent deadly poisonous snakes
among them, and the people were bitten by the serpents, and those
that were bitten died. Our sin has separated us from
our God. The serpent of sin has left its
poison in every son of Adam, and death for the wages of sin
is upon us. Romans 5 says, For if by one
man's offense death reign by one, much more they which receive
abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign
in life by one Jesus Christ. In Adam, all die. Look at verse
7. 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. And Moses prayed for the people. There was no human cure for the
fiery serpent's bite, as there is no human cure for the guilt
and condemnation of sin. Spiritual death is in us. It's
who we are. Physical death is upon us, and
eternal death awaits us. Sin, when it is finished, bringeth
forth death. And the people did entreat Moses
to intercede for them with God, and only the great mercy of God
could possibly deliver them. Grace is God giving us what we
do not deserve, and mercy is God not giving us what we do
deserve. Look at verse 8. 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 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." God provided a remedy. This is such a great picture
of our Redeemer. The serpent was made in the likeness
of the fiery serpents. So as Christ, our Lord was made
in the likeness of flesh. It says in the scriptures, for
what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the
flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,
and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. He was made of a woman,
bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Therefore will I divide
him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil
with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death,
and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the
sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." He was
numbered with us. He became a man and was numbered
with us. The serpent of brass had no venom,
just as our Lord Jesus Christ had no sin. He was tempted as
we are, yet without sin. The serpent of brass was lifted
upon a pole, so was our Lord was lifted upon the cross. Turn
over to John chapter 3, where we were just a few minutes ago. In John 3, verse 14, Nicodemus,
this Pharisee, a very intelligent, smart man, had come to the Lord
in the night and had asked Him a bunch of questions, and he
was searching for answers. The problem was Nicodemus was
asking the wrong questions. But in verse 14, it says here,
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. Bearing our sins, he was
nailed to the cross. It says in Isaiah, Surely he
hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem
him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded
for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The
chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray,
we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid
on him the iniquity of us all." The Lord bore all our sin, all
the payment, all the punishment, everything that we deserve, He
bore it for us. And as for these people, there
was but one remedy. That serpent on the pole was
the only remedy. I promise, they were trying everything
they could. I'm sure there were people that
were doctors or healers or whatever they were doing. They were doing
everything. But nothing would work. There was one remedy. There
is but one Savior, one Redeemer, and one Deliverer, the Lord Jesus
Christ, our Substitute. We face the same trial, the same
problem. Our sin cannot be paid for by
any man, by anything we do, by any action. There's only one
who can do it, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus saith unto him,
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto
the Father, but by me. In Acts it says, Neither is there
salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven
given among men, whereby we must be saved. All that the people
were required to do was look. God provided the remedy fully
and completely and commanded them to look. Our command is
the same, look and live. It says in Romans, therefore
we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of
the law. The remedy was sufficient. The remedy was effectual for
dying sinners. No matter how severe the case
we have, no matter how bad it looks or how bad we are, the
command is the same, look and live. The common notion is that
salvation is for good people. It's for church workers or those
who are examples of great morality or act the right way. But how
different is the Word of God and how different is this example?
God's grace is simply for the guilty. Christ, the Savior, is
for sinners. It says in Romans, For when we
were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the
ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous
man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even
dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, and that
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. I love that in that
scripture it says that someone might die for these kind of people,
the decent ones, maybe the good ones, but it says, no, God commended
His love towards us. We're not either one of those
things. God's mercy is for the miserable, those who cannot help
themselves. We have no gospel for sham or
pretend sinners, nor pretend professors, people who act like
they care. Our gospel is for the lost, as
Moses' serpent was for the hopelessly bitten Israelites. It had no
benefit to those who had not been bitten yet. And our generation is just no
different. Instead of recognizing that our
condition and our troubles in the Spirit and the flesh are
of our own making, and that justifying God and His judgments, we murmur
against the Lord. We murmur against His way, His
Word, His servants, and everything He does. The lust for our own
way, how we want to be in control. Isaiah 53 says, all we like sheep
have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 55 says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are my ways your ways, saith the Lord. We got ourselves in
this mess and we can't get out of it. Yet we still reject God's
way and we desire our own. The people here found fault with
the bread from heaven and the water from the rock. They said,
our soul loatheth this light bread. What a horrible, condemning
statement that is. Especially in the light that
the manna was a picture of Christ, and that the rock was Christ.
God's gift of life. How many in the world, or religion
today, are content with Christ, the bread of life, and the water
of life? Turn with me to John chapter
5. John 5, verse 40. How many of us are content with
the bread and the water of life from our Lord? Look at verse
40 in John 5. And ye will not come to me that
ye might have life. Life is there and we will not
come. Turn to John 6, verse 51. He says, I am the living bread,
which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread,
he shall live forever. And the bread that I will give
is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The
Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give
us his flesh to eat? And then look at verse 55 there.
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and
I in him. As the living Father hath sent
me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he
shall live by me. This is that bread which came
down from heaven, not as your fathers did eat manna and are
dead. He that eateth of this bread shall live forever. These
things said he in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. And
many, therefore, of his disciples, when they had heard this, said,
This is a hard saying. Who can hear it?" These events
and this trial that these people went through is a great trial.
We so often hear some of these Old Testament stories and we
don't really think about how difficult these trials were.
We look at these people, and at least I'm very judgmental
with them, I think, how in the world could these people have
seen the things that the Lord did and not believe? How could
they have been standing before an army that was ready to kill
them and they turned and the Lord parted the sea and they
walked across on dry land only to watch that army be wiped away?
How could they do that and then bicker later? How could they
be hungry and the Lord says, I'll provide and man, a bread
drops from heaven and they have food. Can you imagine what that
would have been like? They're in the desert, and they
think to themselves, we're going to die here. We have no water.
I mean, there's no source of water anywhere. And he tells
Moses to hit a rock, and water is going to flow out of a rock
enough to feed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. But
yet, we have all of those same examples and we have so many
more. We have all this book past that
first couple chapters to add on to that. We have seen the
Lord Jesus Christ and His work, yet we find fault and we do the
same things that these people do. So I want to look at the
exact thing these people went through, the pattern they go
through here, and how great it is for us to see that this is
the same thing that every child of God goes through. What the
Lord puts them through to show them who they are and the path
they get to see that they're saved. The first thing that we
see that these people went through is that there are snakes. The
first thing a child of God sees is sin. We get to see who we
are and what we are. And why do we have this sin?
It's because of our disobedience. These people complained and bickered
in the same way we do. Our sin is of our own doing.
And we realize that we have sin, that we are sin, that's who we
are. The second thing they noticed is they noticed that they were
going to be bitten. There were so many snakes that they realized,
probably after a pretty short period of time, that these snakes
were going to get them. These snakes were going to bite
them. There was nothing they could do to avoid it. And when
I thought about this, this is a really scary thing to go through.
I have four small children. this enormous group of people
and there's estimates from a few hundred thousand to millions
of people so it's an enormous group of people and they would
have been in tents or little some of them might have just
been sleeping on the sand but if I think of myself in a tent
with four small children and my wife It's emotional to think
of what this would have been like with snakes crawling everywhere. And every single thing that you
see happen is they're just biting everybody. And the next step
that you see from that and that we see is that we're going to
die from this snake bite. We see that sin is going to kill
us. And when that comes to us, we
have to face what our true outcome will be. in a tent with snakes
everywhere, and every single person that's been bitten is
either sick or dead. Not a single person has become
better from these snake bites. And you think about that trial,
sitting in a tent like that, trying to protect your family,
trying to avoid that, knowing there's just nothing you can
do about it. The Lord will show us our sin, how we're at fault
in so many things, and then we find out it's going to kill us.
We are going to die from our sin. The next thing, the Lord
makes us to realize that we need a remedy. Now it seems very obvious
that that would happen. It seems that anybody in that
circumstance, with all those snakes biting people and people
dying, that the next logical step would have been, well, we
need a remedy. But I promise there were people who were trying
to fix it themselves. They were doing everything they could to
try themselves. And so what happens next? We realize that we don't
have the remedy. We realize that we must ask for
the remedy. I'm sure there were people there
who never asked. I'm sure there were people there
who thought, that snake barely got me. I don't think it got
enough poison in me. Or, you know, I can get away
from these snakes. I'm fast. I can avoid it. Or maybe no one
saw the snake bite me. Or so many other things they
could say. Or I've been bitten by a snake before. It didn't
kill me. All these things. And this is what we do with our
sin. We think we can fix it. We think that somehow no one
will notice. We think that we can figure it
out on our own. But it's such a blessing when
the Lord makes us to ask for a remedy. These people entreated
Moses for a remedy. They went to him and asked him.
Now I promise you there were people who didn't go to Moses.
I promise there were people that were in their tents and they
didn't go that step. They went straight to the Lord.
When it says we need to ask for remedy, we need to go straight
to the source of the remedy. We need to approach our Lord,
and we must ask Him. But it's also a great example
that we must have a mediator. We must have someone that we
approach, that we go, because we're sinful creatures. We're
dying from this snake bite. We need someone to help us, and
we don't feel worthy to even ask for it. And the next step,
after we ask for a remedy, It seems like it would be the linchpin
of this story that we must look to the remedy. The remedy was
provided. The Lord provided the remedy.
That brass serpent was put on a pole and every single person
who looked would be saved and would be healed. But that's not
the next step. I heard a man preach one time
a long time ago and he was doing this story and he said this.
He said, everyone was being bitten by those snakes, and every single
person that was bitten died, except when that serpent was
put up, and anyone who looked at it, 100% of them were healed
immediately. But he said, there were people
who didn't look. And when I heard that, I thought,
you are crazy. You're crazy. You can't tell
me that a poisonous snake bit me, and you just said, look somewhere,
and you're going to be fine from it, and people didn't look. Well,
is that not the world today? We've been snakebitten. We're
sinners. Death is at our doorstep. We're
right there. And it simply says, look and
live. And how many people look? The step before we must look
to the remedy is we must believe in the remedy. The reason that
those people wouldn't have looked is they didn't believe the remedy
would help them, or they didn't want the remedy to help them.
They thought they could do it on their own. The child of God,
and such an amazing thing the Lord does for us, the Spirit
makes the child of God to believe in the remedy. It makes us to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. If you believe, looking is nothing,
but you must believe. How few people believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now we can't boast in that because
how many of us at one point didn't believe? We have to give all
the glory to our Lord that we believe because He made us to
believe. He opened our eyes and made us
to see. And once He makes us to believe, then we must look
to the remedy. And I want to take a second to
look at a few details of this part of it. It says we must look
to the remedy. That word look doesn't have any
qualifiers around it. There's nothing on there that
says how long you need to look, when you need to look, how intently
you need to look. There's nothing in there that
would make us to think we couldn't do it. There's nothing in there
that makes us to think we have to have a part of it. It just
says look. It tells us to do something that
we do all day long. Another thing about that word
is it says look on the brazen serpent and you'll be healed.
It doesn't say see the brazen serpent. There would have been,
in this large of a group of people, you think about how big of an
area it would have taken for hundreds of thousands of people,
if not millions, to be gathered together. You guys have a lot
of people in this area, and if everybody got as close as they
could, you still probably couldn't find a place in the middle of
that that everybody could see. You also would have had people,
maybe they didn't have very good eyesight. Maybe they couldn't
see that far. They didn't have to see it. Maybe
there were people in this that were old and they couldn't get
up. They couldn't walk. They were lame. They couldn't
get to a place where they could see it. You know there had to
have been a lot of blind people there. It says look to the brazen
serpent. You didn't have to see it. The
key to looking to the Lord Jesus Christ is believing on Him. It's not actually seeing Him.
We don't have that. I said this morning, we look
through a glass dimly. We can't see anything. We're
so plain and simple with that type of thing. But we just have
to look. And it's His mercy that He does
not put a burden on us on our looking. It's simply to look.
And how simple are the words of our Lord that say things like,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. They
say look and live. And the final thing that comes
from this, we first, we realize our sin. We realize that we've
been bitten by our sin and it's all through us. We realize that
we're going to die from it. It's going to be our death. We
realize that we need a remedy. We can't do it ourselves. We've
got no hope in ourselves. We're made to ask for the remedy. We approach our Lord. We approach
the Lord Jesus Christ to be our mediator, to be our intermediary,
that we can be in Him. We don't want to stand before
a holy God. We need someone to do it for
us. We need to be in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then He makes
us to believe on Him. He makes us to realize that not
only will He and is He able to save us, that He has saved us. And then He makes us to look
to Him. He makes us for the rest of our lives spend our days looking
to Him. Now, we don't look well. We don't look often. We look
at so many other things. We get distracted so easily.
We don't even see Him all the time. We read this scripture
and it's so clear and plain, and yet we still can't see it.
We have to have someone explain it to us. We have to have someone
teach us. We can't do it. But thankfully, we spend all
of our days, He makes us and gives us a desire to look to
Him. And if we look, He so mercifully
shows us Him. Every so often, our Lord gives
us a glimpse of His holiness, and oh, how much that just moment,
we can chew on that for so long. And to think that the final thing
that comes from that is so simple. All of those things for the child
of God lead to one thing. We will be saved. We will be
made whole. Looking on that serpent, was
such a simple thing, but oh, how valuable it was. For someone
who'd been bitten and was about to die, there's nothing greater. There would be no thing that
could be provided. All the people in those moments
Nobody was worried about who else had been bitten. Nobody
was worried about the next door neighbor. Nobody was worried
about where their next meal was coming from, where they were
going next, what their journey had in front of them. When a
person sees they've been bitten and they're going to die, nothing
else matters. And then once He shows us that,
we see it, He makes us to believe, we look, and we have the promise
of God that when we do those things by His grace, by Him making
us do that, it's so simple, we will be saved. It's such a glorious thought.
Four words that just make my heart, oh, it's so wonderful
thinking about how could that possibly be? But he says, look
and live. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Okay.