? When I surmount the storm ? ?
I'll reach the place I long for ? Who did it, Lord, that I should
go? Sin and the death of those I
love are all the things that you do. See from his hand, his hands,
his feet. Sorrow and love, all mingle now. It is our job and sorrow weep. O'er the land ? The words of God you spoke ?
? Those are the words you told me now ? ? And here lies my soul,
my life, my hope, my life, my hope ? If I were to ask those of you who will hear this
message the question, who can quote John 3.16? I believe that a good portion,
a good number of people could quote John 3.16. But that's not my question this
morning. My question is, can you quote
John 3.14? Can you quote John 3.14? You see, the gospel is in John
3.14. And I want you to turn there
in your Bibles, because verse 16 does not in any way stand alone
either in the Bible or in this context. Before he said what he did in
John 3, 16, he says in verse 14, And as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Now this is speaking of one of
those divine necessities. He says, even so, the sun must
be lifted up. He must be because God, who is
over all, who cannot lie, has purposed it and decreed it. There is no must for God to love
us. But if he loves any son of Adam,
it must be in Christ. The son of man must be lifted
up. God purposed it. And Christ pledged
himself to die the death of the cross. He must do so because that's
the only way a holy and just God could love a sinner. He must do so because this is
the only way that his holy character can be fully displayed and honored. He must die this death because it's
the only way that he can put away the separating sin. The Son of Man had to be lifted
up. And what this lifting up means
is illustrated right here in the verse. He says, and as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. There's some connection
about what was illustrated and pictured for us in Moses lifting up the serpent
in the wilderness to the Son of Man being lifted up on the
cross. So if you'll turn over to Numbers
chapter 21, we have exactly what happened
and what is made reference to here in verse 14. Numbers chapter
21 and verse 5. And the people spake against
God and against Moses. Wherefore have you 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. They were murmuring against the
very manna God had provided. 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. 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 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 there is something about
how the Lord Jesus Christ was lifted up that is pictured for
us here in this Old Testament text. It says that God, the God who
people take verse 16 and say is only love, But the God of the Bible must
punish sin. And when these people sinned,
when they murmured against God and they murmured against His
servant, the Lord sent fiery, deadly serpents in their midst,
and many people died. They died. And God sent them
because of sin. He sent them because of rebellion
and murmuring and poison. This poison, venomous creature
filled their bodies with death. You see, the serpent is the emblem
of sin. Remember what happened in the
garden? Paul writes in 2 Corinthians
and he says, but I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent
beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted
from the simplicity that is in Christ. The old serpent. The one that's spoken of in the
Revelation in that same character. And it says, and the great dragon
was cast out. That old serpent called the devil
and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. He was cast out
into the earth and his angels were cast out with him. By his deception, Paul says,
by one man, by his deception of Adam, by one man, sin entered
in and death passed upon all men. The fire of judgment, the fire
of hell, Everything that represents God's wrath for sin, it came
upon our race. And not only that, he says, everybody
that is born of woman is in the same condition. He says, David,
in sin, my mother did conceive me. Like always begets like. And poison, just like these fiery
serpents, this venom totally permeated the whole. You didn't
just get bit and your finger fall off or something like that
happened. The venom, the poison permeated
the whole body. And likewise, sin does the same
thing. And we are really and totally
depraved. There are a lot of people that
don't like that term. Total depravity. But by it, we're
not saying that men and women are as bad as they could be. Thank God that they're not. He
restrains to some degree. But we're saying that sin, just
like this venom, has permeated our whole being Our minds, our
hearts, our wills, our bodies, every part of us is full of nothing
but sin. The heart, the mind, the soul,
the body. And just like these people, they
were unable to help themselves. They knew no cure. They were
dying probably by the hundreds. And Moses himself couldn't help
them. And the law that they've been
given couldn't help them. There was nothing that could
help them in this state meet the judgment and wrath of God. And this is the state that we're
all in spiritually. There is not one aspect of our
being Not one thought, not one motive, not one deed that has
not been tainted by sin. And the scripture says, of all
of us, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the psalmist describes it
in this way. The wicked are estranged from
the womb. Now, we like to think of the
wicked as the most vile, outwardly awful people in this world, but
the wicked are simply everybody outside of Christ. The wicked
are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they
be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison
of a serpent. They are like the death adder
that stoppeth his ear. And sin, when it is finished,
sin bringeth forth death. If there is one thing that is
chiefly associated with sin in this book, it is death. The wages of sin is death. Not only corporate death like
these who rebel against God, but spiritual death and physical
death, and finally, eternal death. Because death always follows
sin. We may not confess ourselves
sinners in this life, in this world, but when we lay down and
die, that will be the absolute confession that we were sinners. But if you'll notice here, as
is the case in every situation, God set forth the cure. And it was just one remedy, one
cure. It was God that came up with
the cure. And if left to themselves, every
person would have died. And he does not, if you notice,
tell Moses to make serpents of brass, plural. He says, make
a serpent of brass and lift it up on a pole. That's a strange remedy. A picture of death for a real
death. It's not what we would have thought
of in any way, but it is God's way because as one said, the
death of death is in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he was to make an image or
likeness of one of these serpents, he was to make it out of brass,
and it was not in itself a true serpent. Turn over to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. Speaking of Christ, he says in
verse 3, he said, for what the law could not do, in that it
was weak through the flesh. We were weak. All of man was
weak. Could not perform the law, meet
the demands of law, satisfy the demands of the law. God sending
his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. This serpent of brass was not
an actual serpent, but he was the image of that serpent. And
so it says that God, sending His own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh, not having sinful flesh, but in the likeness of
sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. How did He do that? How did Christ
condemn sin in the flesh, in His own flesh? He condemned sin
by dying, by dying for sin. And so the scripture says that
he was made of a woman, and that he was also made sin for us,
and that we come under the judgment of God in the Lord Jesus Christ,
and that's the only way we can be spared. He said, make a serpent of brass. Almost everywhere you look in
the Bible, brass seems to speak of the judgment of God. When
He cuts off the water and the rain and stuff like that, it
says that He makes the heavens as brass. The altar upon which
the sacrifices were slain was a brazen altar. And so here it is. By death,
by a serpent, you might as well say, came death, but by a serpent
came life. Paul said, for since by one man
came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even
so in Christ shall all be made alive. And then he says this. He says in Romans 5, by one man's
disobedience, many were made sinners. But by one man's obedience, many were made righteous. What obedience was that? That was His being, as Paul said,
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. In other
words, if Christ had come, and He did, live a perfectly sinless,
obedient to the Father life for in every way imaginable. But if he had just done that
and ascended back into heaven, every soul would have perished. Because he had to die. The obedience
that's required of God on the behalf of his people is this
obedience unto death. The raising serpent was to be
lifted up. The word pole in this particular
instance is also translated in Isaiah as an ensign. He had to be lifted up. And in
that day there shall be a root of Jesse which shall stand for
an ensign to the people. Moses had to put it on a pole
and lift it up, set it in the midst of the camp. Why? Because that's what God
said. You know, we speculate on various
things, how God saves sinners, what's righteousness, and all
these other things. We speculate on all those things,
but they never amount to anything. The only thing that matters is
what God says. And he told Moses not only to
make a serpent of brass, but to lift him up on a pole. Now turn over to John chapter
12. John chapter 12, and look over
in verse 32. John 12, 32. This is Christ. He said, And I, if I be lifted
up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. Now, I want you to notice, first
of all, the word men in that verse. Because the word men is italicized,
which means that there is not that word in the original. What he's saying is, and I, if
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto me. All my people, all my sheep,
all my children. And look at verse 33, this he
said signifying what death he should die. It's going to be something of
a lifting up in his death, a hanging on a cross just like the serpent
of brass on that pole pictured. There's going to be a lifting
up. This, he said, signifying what death he should die. The
people answered him, we have heard out of the law that Christ
abideth forever. You're talking about dying. We've
read out of the law that Messiah liveth forever. And how sayest
thou the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man? They never did, as a whole, understand
about all those prophecies wherein it says, ought not the Christ
to have suffered and entered into His glory. The cross of
the Lord Jesus Christ, His cross death, the death of the Messiah
for sin, never entered into their natural reasoning. And neither does it ours. Our natural reasoning sets forth
salvation from sin by something that we do, by something that
we will, or decide upon, or strive after, or cease from, when only the substitutionary
death and work of Christ will avail. And that's what the picture
was all along. Abel's lamb, the Passover lamb,
the smitten rock, Abraham and Isaac. Turn over to Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53. I sometimes think
we ought to read this chapter about every day, because it's
as if Isaiah was standing at the foot of the cross. He was
seeing in the eye of faith this spiritual lifting up. And he
writes in verse 4, 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. Can we put our name in that place? All we like sheep have gone astray,
we have turned everyone to his own way, but the Lord hath laid
on him the iniquity of us all. The serpent of brass represented the crucified Christ. Of whom David said, Christ hath
redeemed us from the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is
everyone that hangeth on a tree. Peter said, who his own self
bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead
to sins, should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye were healed. And I think it's interesting
to note that Moses, who was a type of the law, The law that could
not satisfy God, the law that we could not keep, the law whose
penalty we could not bear, Moses lifted up the serpent alone as the remedy for sin. That's what the law requires. That's what the judgment and
wrath of God requires as to our sin, it is the death of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Him being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked
hands have crucified and slain. Because the cross death of Christ
is God's wisdom in saving his people the way that he makes
them righteous. For he hath made him who knew no sin
to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of
God. He had to be lifted up. And not only lifted up on that
cross, but he had to be lifted up in the sense of resurrection. If God received and was satisfied
with his sacrifice, he had to be lifted up in resurrection,
and he was. And if he died for people, if
he died for some sinners, if he paved their dead and put away
their sin and bore it in his own body, then he has to be lifted
up in the gospel. They've got to hear about it.
They've got to hear this good news of the Lord Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. But I want you to also note that
God also prescribed the application of the remedy. Look back at Numbers chapter
21 again. At the latter part of verse 8, it
says, When he looketh upon it, shall live. Verse 9, when he beheld the serpent
of brass, he lived. I believe there is a song, a
hymn, that speaks about life in the
look to the crucified one. You know, it is not, if you just
think about it, it is not that they were to look to Moses, who's
clearly a type of the law. They weren't to look to the law,
and they weren't to look to themselves, just like we are not. We are
to look to what that serpent of brass represented. The remedy was not make an ointment. It wasn't help other victims
so you can help yourself, or it wasn't wait to see if you're
better. It wasn't to look at the wound. It wasn't to fight the serpents.
It wasn't make an offering. It was to stop doing something
and look. Oh, me. That's too simple, isn't
it? You know you can look without
moving a muscle in your body. Just like that thief, when he
was nailed to the cross, that did not stop him from doing what
this looking is all about, which is a looking by faith. He said, look. Simeon said, mine eyes have seen
thy salvation. I can imagine some Israelite
laying there bitten, But it says, everyone, when he
looks, shall live. Years ago, I read something that
an old writer had written. And he had this to say. He said, it is however overlooked
that the design of the serpent in the wilderness was not to
impart life to the dead, but restoration to the dying. Those who benefited by it, looked
in the last energy of their almost expiring life. And the serpent-bitten
Israelite does not, therefore, represent an unregenerate person,
dead in trespasses and sins, and spiritually unconscious,
but a sinner, poor and wretched and weak and wounded and sick
and In other words, the text applies to those who have received
life or have been born again, but who are guilty and miserable
and ready to perish. They didn't look to get life. because God gave them life. And when they looked, they lived. There's a big difference. We
don't look by faith in order to be born again, to have life. If we are conscious of our sin,
if we are burdened with our sin, if we see a need for a Savior,
that's the evidence that God has given us life. And that life
is manifested by looking to Christ and Him crucified. And everybody that looks lives. They live. So Isaiah records the words of
God, which always say the same thing. Look unto me, And be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else." And then along comes John the
Baptist, the one who was the prophesied
forerunner of the Messiah. Along comes John the Baptist.
What does he say? Behold the Lamb of God which
takes away sin. We are to look to Christ as He
is revealed in the gospel as the only Savior, as all of salvation,
as the only righteousness, as the only way sin is put away. We're to look to Him and we're
to keep on looking. looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. Well, I guess with Christ crucified,
we all ought to just make us a cross or get us a cross or
something. and hang it around our neck and
set it up in our auditorium and do all sorts of things like that. No. That would be like taking the
serpent of brass and imagining there was some mystical power
in that relic, in that image, and superstitiously trusting
in it. Let me read you something. When God set up a king in Israel, this king says he removed the
high places And he break the images and he cut down the groves
and he broke in pieces. He broke in pieces the brazen
serpent that Moses had made. What? Yep. The people were superstitiously
looking, hoping, relying on that serpent of brass as if it had
some saving, healing quality to it still. And it says, and he called it
Nahushtan, which means piece of brass. That's all it was. Just a piece of brass. None of those lambs took away
sin. None of those things that pictured
Christ took away sin. This serpent of brass, though
it typified Christ crucified, lifted up, did not take away
sin. And all it was, was a piece of
brass. Christ alone is salvation. And if you're looking
to Christ, you're alive. And you'll live. You're alive. Because God enabled
you to look, see in the gospel. You can count on it. You're going
to live, have everlasting life. Our Father, we thank you this
morning that in our weakness, you're made strong. In our ignorance you have made
wisdom. And we know that you have given
these things, written these things for our admonition, upon whom
upon the end of the age shall come. And that we are to do as Christ
commanded. Look in all the scriptures. for
the things concerning Him, even in the serpent of brass. We pray that You would make Your
Son real to us, enable us with eyes of faith to behold Him,
to trust Him, to rely on Him. For we ask it in His name, Hey
Mia. Mia.