All right, let's look at Numbers
21. This is the message entitled
Christ in the Brazen Serpent. Now, I preached on this recently,
and to be honest with you, I couldn't remember if I preached on it
here. I know I preached on it when I was out in Oregon, entitled
Christ Lifted Up, and I noticed on our website, Brother Mark,
you brought a message a while back on Christ Lifted Up, too,
from John 3, I think. And I thought about, well, I've
preached on it recently and I know Mark's preached on it. So I thought
about, well, I'll just skip over that. But I got to thinking about
this. I said, you know, if you're going to do a series on Christ
in the Old Testament, you have to include this part because
it is so prominent in the typology. of the salvation that God has
freely and fully provided for us in Christ. And then the apostle
John was led by the Holy Spirit to cite this event, this historical
event in Israel's history, to show us the work of Christ in
his glorious person and his finished work. And so I want us to just
look at a few verses here, beginning at verse four of Numbers 21 on
Christ and the brazen serpent. Look at verse four, Numbers 21.
It says, 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. Now how many times are we
gonna see this played over and over again? as Moses is leading
the people from Mount Sinai through the desert towards the promised
land. And of course, you know what happened when they finally
got there on the border. and they sent spies over and
only two men, Joshua and Caleb came back with a positive, good
report showing how we're to depend on God. We're to look unto the
Lord for our whole salvation and wellbeing. And of course
they were punished by God to wander in the wilderness for
40 years. But how, you know, it's over and over again. It
shows us that that unless the Spirit of God does a sovereign,
invincible, powerful work of grace in the minds and the hearts,
the affections of God's people, that we will not believe God. You must be born again or you
cannot see or enter the kingdom of heaven. Miracles won't do
it. And of course, if we think about
miracles in that way, the greatest miracle as far as when Christ,
for example, when he was on earth in his earthly walk, the greatest
miracle you would say he performed was raising the dead. He raised
Lazarus from the dead. And you remember the parable
of the rich man and Lazarus, another Lazarus, where The rich
man, he fared sumptuously throughout this life. And Lazarus was a
poor beggar. And Lazarus, he died and he was
a child of God. He was one of God's chosen people,
redeemed by the Lord, a believer. And he went to Abraham's bosom,
which is a way of describing the eternal fellowship with Christ. And the rich man died, and he
went to hell. And the rich man looked up, and he asked the Lord,
he said, send Lazarus back to tell my brothers about this,
because if one's risen from the dead, they'll believe. And Christ
said, though one be risen from the dead, they won't believe.
He said, they have Moses and the prophets. They have a greater,
and think about what he's saying there. We can bank on, or the
greater validity, you might say, or proof of what we believe is
true is not the miracles, such as one being raised from the
dead, it's the word of God. We have God's word. for what
we believe. Why are we so staunch on what
we believe? As I say, we can't deny it, we
can't ignore it, we cannot leave. Why? Because God said it. And
we have his word. So these people here, they'd
seen so many physical miracles. God had cared for them all this
way. And when they get into what they
see from their viewpoint as being a problem, they were discouraged
because of the way. The way that God was leading,
the way God told Moses, take them, this way, this is God's
way. But they were discouraged because
of the way. And isn't that a real illustration
of the natural man? He wants his own way of salvation. He doesn't want God's way. The
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
neither can he know them, they're spiritually discerned. God's
way is the way of grace. pure sovereign grace. We say sovereign grace, we say
free grace. You know what, that's redundant.
Because there's no other kind of grace but sovereign. There's
no other kind of grace but free, but we have to specify because
people today who claim to be saved by grace are really deceived
under a cleverly disguised system of works. But God's way is the
way of Christ. It's the way of the blood, it's
the way of the cross. And that's the way of God. But these people, they were discouraged
by God's way. And in verse five it says, and
the people spoke against God, all right? And they spoke against
Moses, God's prophet. Why or wherefore have you brought
us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there's no
bread here, neither is there any water. And notice an additional
complaint here. And our soul loatheth, hateth,
despiseth this light bread. You know what that light bread
was, don't you? That was the manna that God sent in from heaven
to nourish their bodies when they were hungry. Could you imagine,
I know we all like to eat, And we like to eat different foods.
But in some sense, it'd be nice if you just had one simple food
provided for you that could take care of all your health problems,
all your hunger problems, all your nourishment, you see. People
all the time looking for that pill. Man, I get bombarded on
the internet, you know, if you tell them you got diabetes or
heart disease or something. I mean, there's thousands of
people who have the pill You just get this, just sign up and
get it monthly, and it'll take care of your problems, and it
won't. You know, it's just a sales tactic, and you have people who
swear by it, you know. Well, they hated that light bread. They hated the manna that God
provided. And that's another thing about natural man. We hate,
by nature, we hate what God provides. This is the condemnation. Light
has come into the world and men love darkness and hate the light
because their deeds are evil. And that's what the scripture
says. The preaching of the cross, God's way, God's manna in Christ. Christ is the bread of life.
The preaching of the cross, the preaching of Christ crucified
is foolishness to them who are perishing. That's the natural
man. So our soul despises this light
bread. For man, by nature, in a lost
state, he in his mind, or she in her mind, cannot understand
that Christ is God's way, all that he provides, and that Christ
is all we need. Christ is all we need, his blood
for the forgiveness of sins. All we need to be justified before
a holy God is the righteousness of Christ freely imputed. That's
all we need. That's more than enough. But
to the natural man, that's not enough. He's got to add his own
righteousness, his own works, his own will. It's gotta be Christ
plus something. To some of them, it's Christ
plus baptism. Others, it's Christ plus your
works. Whatever it is. The manna of
God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who's the bread of life, he's not enough
for the natural man. And that's a sad situation. But
I want you to understand one other thing about this. You know,
every time that they did this, when they went through the wilderness
and they became, where there was no water, where there was
no bread, and they complained against God, and they complained
against His, you know what they were doing? They were breaking
the covenant that they promised to keep. Remember when Moses read the
law to them? And he said, this is it now,
will you do it? And they said, oh, we'll keep
all of God's commandments. They didn't keep one of them.
And that's us by nature too, isn't it? We fell in Adam, ruined
by the fall. We're born dead and trespasses
us in. We come forth from the womb speaking lies. And that's
fallen human nature. We're lawbreakers. We've broken
the covenant. We broke any works covenant. We were never under that covenant,
but any works covenant. And that's why salvation, if
it's to be sure and certain to the glory of God in Christ, it
must be under the terms of a covenant that is not in any way to any
degree at any stage conditioned on us. The surety of the covenant, let
me put it this way, the assurance of the covenant of salvation
must be put upon one who can surely keep the conditions of
the covenant. And so that's why Christ is called
our surety. In the covenant of grace, all
of the conditions of salvation were placed upon Christ. and
he came in time and fulfilled those conditions. Well, look
at verse six. It says, and the Lord sent fiery serpents, that's
poisonous serpents, among the people, and they bit the people,
and much people of Israel died. Now, that's the judgment of God,
and that reminds us of the truth of God's judgment that's been
established from the beginning and that never changes, and that's
this. This is a picture. The wages
of sin is death. That's right. Sin, when it's
finished, brings death. And just as this deadly poison
ran through the physical bodies of the people, sin is a deadly
poison that we received in our fallen Adam. We all fell in Adam,
all sinned and come short of the glory of God. And unless
a remedy's found, what's gonna happen? It'll kill us. Just like God told Cain, he said,
look, you've rejected the only way, the only cure for sin. And now sin's lying at the door
waiting to pounce upon you like a hungry lion and you have it
to deal with. In other words, it's your problem
now. And the problem with that is
you can't conquer it. We can't do it. By deeds of law
shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. You remember when
God told Adam in the day that he ate the forbidden tree, he
ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree, that he'd die. He says, in that day that you
eat thereof, you shall die. Literally, die and thou shalt
die. And Adam did die spiritually immediately. And even the process
of physical death began. And as a result, we're born spiritually
dead. Well, look at verse seven. Therefore
the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned. For we
have spoken against the Lord and against thee, against Moses,
praying to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. And
Moses prayed for the people. Now there's a, people realize
they've sinned, they knew that. And their sin was against God
and against Moses. And this is an illustration I
put in your lesson of what happens when God the Holy Spirit brings
a sinner to the reality to see that we're sinful, we're sinners,
and we deserve nothing but God's condemnation. We deserve nothing
but death. One old preacher said, we take
sides with God against ourselves. Lord, if thou should mark iniquity,
who would stand? David prayed, against thee and
thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight that thou
mightest be just when you judge. God would be just to send all
of us to condemnation. But thank God for his mercy. And his mercy is just. And so
what happens here, they're brought to a to a place where they realize,
oh, the seriousness of what they've done. The seriousness of sin. You know, most people really,
especially religious people, or what we would say ethical
or moral people, they will say they're sinners, but they don't
think they've done anything that's bad enough to deserve hell. And what's the problem? They
don't see the seriousness. of their sin. They don't see
that their way of salvation, by their works or their will,
is an affront to God. It smacks at every attribute
of God's nature. It's a denial of the Lord Jesus
Christ. If righteousness come by the
law, then Christ died in vain. Do you know that every person
standing behind a pulpit this morning, preaching salvation
conditioned on sinners, Without them knowing it, they're saying
that Christ's death was totally unnecessary. That's how serious
this is. And so what they realize here
is what the Holy Spirit brings God's spiritual people to realize,
that we're sinners and that if we're going to be saved from
sin, we need somebody to stand in our place. We need a mediator. We need a savior, and that's
why they said Moses prayed for the people. And they asked him,
said, pray unto the Lord that he take it away. Take away this
poison, these serpents. And Moses prayed for the people.
Well, Moses is a picture of Christ there, our mediator. There's
one way to God. There's one cure for sin. There's
one way of righteousness, and that's Christ. Moses was the
mediator here. Now think about that. In order
to be a proper mediator, it had to be one who is appointed by
God, one who is able to do what God requires, and one who is
willing to do it. Well, according to the terms
of the Old Covenant, Moses was that man in a physical, temporal,
ceremonial way. He was God's appointed mediator.
He was able to do what God commanded him to do in this sense because
God enabled him to do it and he was willing. It says that
he went to God for the people. Moses willingly prayed for the
people, he interceded. Well, in eternal salvation, there's
only one who fits all three qualifications and that's Christ. He was appointed
by God before the foundation of the world The people of God,
of God's choice were given to Christ. He was made our surety,
our representative. And so he's the one appointed
of God. Secondly, he's able because of who he is. He's God manifest
in the flesh. Therefore he's able to save to
the uttermost them that come under the father. He's able to
put away our sins by the sacrifice of himself. He's able to work
out a perfect righteousness, the righteousness of God, by
which we're justified before God. And he's able to give life
to spiritually dead sinners. And then thirdly, he's willing
to do it. I love that passage in John six
where he talks about, I lay down my life, no man takes it from
me, I lay it down of my own. He willingly. came to this earth
to suffer and bleed and die for our sins and That's that's what
it is. You see so Moses interceded now
look at verse 8 it says and The Lord said unto Moses make thee
a fiery serpent and set it up on a pole. This is the serpent
of brass and It shall come to pass that everyone that has been
when he looketh upon it shall live look and live Verse nine,
Moses made a serpent of brass, 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, as you know, over in John
chapter three, the apostle John uses this in speaking of Christ
and his death. So this is definitely without
any debate Back here in Numbers chapter 21, it's definitely a
type of Christ, a picture of Christ. In John chapter three
and verse 14, John writes, by inspiration of the Spirit, and
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of Man be lifted up. Christ lifted up. That whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And there
it is. Well, This is God's way. This is God's way and he did
it for a particular purpose. He did it this way to typify
the Messiah to come. The serpent was made of brass.
You know, brass in the Old Testament is a picture of God's judgment. You remember the altar, the brazen
altar in the tabernacle? That was made of brass, brazen
altar. The fire of God's judgment came
down on the sacrifice laid upon that brazen altar. And that was
God's judgment. And the fiery serpent made of
brass is a type of Christ going under the fiery wrath of God
for his people. You see, this is why the people
of God have never been under God's wrath. We were vessels
of mercy fitted for, or made up for that mercy before the
world began. The wrath of God abided on Christ
until That propitiation was finalized, that removing of his wrath. Our
sins were imputed to Christ. Our sins were laid to his charge,
and he went under the wrath of God. That's why he cried out,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That was a legal
separation between the father and the son that is awesome.
We can't really explain that, but we know why it happened.
It was because of our sins imputed, charged, accounted to Christ.
So now what happens here, in verse seven, Moses was a type
of Christ as our mediator. But in verse eight, the type
of Christ changes from Moses to the brazen serpent. The fiery serpent. This serpent
of brass was a type of Christ who as our surety, substitute,
and redeemer went under the wrath of God for his people. In order
to make this fiery serpent, this serpent of brass, there had to
be fire. There had to be the hottest fire. And that's what Christ went under.
And the serpent of brass made of that, that's the judgment
of God. But here's one point that in preaching on this, studying
on this, that we need to understand. Why would God use a serpent? Because when you think of a serpent,
what do you think of? You think of Satan, don't you? The serpent
in the Garden of Eden. You think of something evil.
That's what Christ called the Pharisees, snakes, venomous snakes. So we think of something evil.
So why would he use a serpent to typify Christ? And the reason
God chose a serpent here is because of this. We all, even God's elect,
we're aligned with Satan in our natural state. Isn't that right?
We're born into this world, it says we are no different than
the children of wrath. We're aligned with Satan in our
natural state as we're born in sin. Well, Christ had to be identified
with us in our sins. And he did identify with us in
our sins, not by becoming a sinner. He didn't become a sinner. Not
by being made a sinner. He was never made a sinner. Not
by being corrupted or contaminated with our sin. But he had to identify
with sinful people As he was, as Isaiah put it in Isaiah 53,
12, he was numbered with the transgressors. That's what he
was doing. He was bearing the sin of many. He was making intercession for
transgressors. And this shows that Christ took
our place under God's wrath for our sins imputed him. And my
friend, that was real. He was never contaminated with
our sin. He's the impeccable God-man,
but he was made guilty by the imputation of our sins to his
person, and he went under the wrath of God. He identified,
was numbered with transgressors like us without being contaminated
or corrupted with our sin. But now think about this, and
I've got this in your lesson. You know those serpents that
bit the people, they were full of poison and they transferred
that poison to the people. But this serpent of brass had
the form of a servant, but there wasn't any poison in it. And
I thought about that with Christ. He identified and was numbered
with transgressors, but he didn't have any sin in him. There was
no poison of sin in him, he was without sin. He's holy, harmless,
undefiled, separate from sinners. He was made sin, he was made
a curse for us, but again, only by the imputation of our sins
to his account that we might be made the righteousness of
God. His righteousness imputed to us. Notice also there's but one brazen
serpent. Moses didn't make a bunch of
brazen serpents and put them around, there was one. Christ
is the one mediator between God and me. He's the only Savior.
There's none other name given among men whereby we must be
saved. And so there's none, Christ is pictured here as being lifted
up. And that's what he said in John
3. He also made this statement in
John chapter 12. He said, and I, if I be lifted
up, will draw all men, all unto me, his people. In other words,
the basis and power of God drawing his people to himself by the
new birth, the ground of that is the work of Christ on the
cross. Because that's the ground of salvation, right there. There's
the establishment of righteousness in time. The very righteousness
that God used to justify Noah and Abel and all those Old Testament
saints was performed and established in time on that cross when Christ
was lifted up. I think in the outline that I
preached on this, I talked about Christ being lifted up in several
ways. He had to be lifted up in the
covenant of grace. He was made the surety of the
covenant before the foundation of the world. God chose a people
in Christ. God adopted a people in Christ. So he was lifted up and given
the preeminence before the foundation of the world. He had to be lifted
up on the cross in our redemption. That's what he's referring to
in John 3 and in John 12. Christ said, I, if I be lifted
up, will draw all unto me. Speaking of his death, he had
to be lifted up on that cross. He had to die because sin demands
death. He had to die because righteousness
had to be established. He had to die. He had to be lifted
up, and he was. But also, he has to be lifted
up in the preaching of the gospel. Paul said, I strive not to know
anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. We
preach Christ, he said. We lift him up. That's what we're
here to do when we study the Bible. We're lifting up Christ
in our preaching and our teaching through the word of God. And
then he has to be lifted up in the hearts of his people in the
new birth. That's what happens when God brings us to a saving
knowledge of Christ. When he gives us life and knowledge
and faith, he lifts up Christ to the point where we see that
he's the only way of salvation and he's all we need for salvation. Serpent lifted up on the pole,
okay.