Knowing, therefore, the terror
of the Lord, we persuade men. As I live, saith the Lord God,
I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from
his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil
ways, for why will you die? Did you hear that? The Lord God Himself declares
that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And He asks
you, why will you die? Why will you die? With life so near, why will you
die? With mercy at hand, why will
you die? When God declares he has no pleasure
in the death of the wicked, why do you choose death rather than
life? It is true. God will punish sin. He must punish sin because He
is God. That means He's good. The good
and righteous God must punish iniquity. But He can never find
pleasure. He can never find satisfaction
in punishing sin in the sinner. He can never find pleasure. He
can never find satisfaction in punishing you for your sin. Justice can't be satisfied by
your suffering. Even should you suffer all the
horror of God's wrath in hell forever, you can never satisfy
God's justice. Sin is against the infinite God. It demands infinite satisfaction. and that cannot be rendered by
all of Adam's race should we all suffer the wrath of God forever
in hell. God says he has no pleasure in
the death of the wicked. But God does have pleasure in somebody's death. God does have pleasure in punishing
someone. God does have pleasure in pouring
out his wrath upon one. And that one is the sinner's
substitute, Jesus Christ the Lord. He says, it pleased the
Lord to bruise him. God takes the sword of His justice,
the glittering sword of His justice, and lights the fires of hell,
one sinner after another, forever, and burns against them with no
mercy, and never finds pleasure. And God lights the sword of justice,
the glittering sword of justice, and shoves it into the heart
of His Son, And his son consumes the hell of God's fury. And God says that's satisfaction. He's pleased. He's satisfied
with the sacrifice of his son. And because he is well pleased
with the sacrifice of his son, God's law and justice being fully
satisfied, there is no possibility that any soul for whom Christ
died at Calvary could perish under the wrath of God. No possibility. That being said, will you hear
this? It is the Lord God's pleasure
for Christ's sake to be merciful to perishing sinners. It is his
pleasure that you turn from your way and live. It is His pleasure that you turn
from your way and live. His pleasure that sinners be
forgiven by Him. He gives eternal life to perishing
sinners and forgives all our sins for Christ's sake. So I ask you, why will you die? Turn now and trust the Son of
God. Only in Christ does God have
pleasure. And only in Christ does God reveal
His pleasure. And only in Christ can God ever
be pleased with you. Lay hold then on the Son of God
and God Himself declares that He takes pleasure in forgiving
your sin. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall never die. I've come here once more In the
name of God, I trust by the Spirit of God to persuade you, eternity
bound sinners, to persuade you, you who live but a breath from
hell, to persuade you, to persuade you who are children of wrath,
living under the wrath of God, justly condemned to persuade
you to be reconciled to God, to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. To that end, I want to show you
one of the most beautiful pictures of our Redeemer and the redemption
by Him to be found in all the Word of God. Turn to John chapter
3, verse 14. I've titled this message, The
Mysteries of the Brazen Serpent. John 3 verse 14, the Son of God
speaks and says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And here's the reason,
that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish but have eternal
life. Turn back to the incident to
which our Lord refers, Numbers chapter 21. Numbers chapter 21. It's a very brief record given
here in Numbers 21, beginning at verse 4, of Israel's sin in
the wilderness and of God sending judgment upon them and of God
healing them. after he sent judgment upon them.
Numbers 21 verse 4, And they journeyed from Mount Hor by the
way of the Red Sea to encompass 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
Jesus Christ, God's darling Son. God sent water out of a rock
gushing as if he had dug a deep well, large enough to constantly
flow with water fresh for the children of Israel for 40 years. And that rock that followed them
was Christ, and the water that flowed to them was Christ. And
God poured bread from heaven, and that bread was Christ the
Redeemer. And they said, we prefer Egypt
to this. Our soul loatheth this light
bread. Verse six. And the Lord sent fiery serpents
among the people, and they bit the people. And much people of
Israel died. Therefore the Lord came to Moses
and said, or the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned.
For we have spoken against the Lord and against thee, praying
to 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. Let me show you three things,
and I'll be as brief as possible. Number one, we are told by this
picture, and we are given a vision of this fact, we are all infected
with the deadly poison of sin by nature under the judgment
of God Almighty. The wrath of God abides upon
every fallen man outside Jesus Christ. Not the wrath of God is going
to come. No, no, no. Every breath Go ahead
and take one in. Take it in, if you dare. And
suck in the wrath of God. Every breath. The wrath of God
abideth upon those who believe not His Son. This is a fact we
prefer not to think about. We prefer not to acknowledge
it. But it is a fact nonetheless. The sooner we learn it, the better.
We are radically depraved, diseased at heart, corrupted from within. And this is the natural condition
of every man, woman, and child of Adam's fallen race. Until
a man is made to know that from the sole of his foot to the crown
of his head, there's no soundness in him but wounds and bruises
and putrefying swords. until a person learns that he
is nothing else but sin. He will never seek mercy by the
merits of Christ. This is clearly represented in
the condition of these children of Israel. The fiery serpents
among the people were sent by the Lord, and they bit the people,
and much people died. Can you imagine the horror the
confusion of the camp of Israel. They're out here gathering manna,
eating a little manna, drinking water out of the rock that the
Lord provided, and they're cussing God. And they're murmuring and
they're complaining, loathing the bread they're eating, despising
the water they're drinking. And suddenly, they look up and
the clouds are dark. But the clouds are strange because
the clouds they see are clouds of flying serpents, flying to
bite them. And when they bit them, suddenly
their bodies were filled with fire, filled with fever, convulsing
with pain, and they died. That's the destructive
nature of sin. Sin, like a venomous disease,
infects our vital blood. The only balm is sovereign grace
and the physician God. Our beauty and our strength are
fled and we draw near to death, but Christ the Lord recalls the
dead with his almighty breath. Madness by nature reigns within. The passions burn in rage till
God's own Son with skill divine The inward fire assuage. The picture before us is black
indeed. The Israelites were bitten. They
burned with a fever and they died. That's the way it is with
men. We're bitten with the old serpent
and poisoned with sin in the garden. in the sin and fall of
our father Adam. Sin, contrary to popular opinion,
contrary to popular opinion in this congregation, sin is not a social disease. I know all of you folks have
got it right doctrinally in your head, but all of us prefer to
think and try to convince ourselves. If we would just separate ourselves
from folks who are beneath us, then we wouldn't have much problem
with sin. Sin is not a social disease. It's not something you
catch by coming in contact with others. It's something that's
in you from birth. It's the corruption of your heart.
It's the nature of your being. It's what you are. It's what
I am. Sin. Sin. You take a child and lock it
up from its infancy, put it in a closet, and don't let that
child ever see any pornography. Don't let that child ever watch
any television. Don't let that child ever hear
anybody cussing on the streets. Don't let that child ever be
exposed to evolutionary nonsense. Don't let that child ever be
exposed to atheism. Don't let that child ever be
exposed to any of those things. And leave him there for 20 years.
Do nothing but read the Bible to him for 20 years. Do nothing
but say prayers with him for 20 years. All he hears, all he
thinks about is religious stuff, as far as you can tell. Open
the door and turn him loose. and you've got a wild beast on
your hands. How come? Because the thing that's
wrong with your sons and daughters, and the things that are wrong
with you, and the things that are wrong with my children, and
the things that are wrong with me, is what we are inside. It's called sin. It's corruption. Filth. All men and women are like David,
shapen in iniquity. and conceived in sin. Because
as by one man's sin entered into the world, and death by sin,
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have at one
time sinned. For by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners. Therefore the wicked, the wicked. That's talking about Rex Bartley
and his wife. That's talking about Don Fortner
and his wife. The wicked are estranged from
the womb. They go forth from the womb,
speaking lies. We are all, by nature, in bondage
to iniquity. All men and women are taken captive
by Satan at his will, by nature. I don't understand how men could
do this, that. You don't. Taken captive by Satan at his
will. The works of the flesh manifest. These are things that are natural
to men. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness,
lasciviousness. You don't learn those through
sex education. That's the reason they invented sex education because
that's what's natural to you. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness,
lasciviousness. idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variance, emulation, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies, envyings,
murders, drunkenness, revelings, and everything like it. That's what's in us, man. Those
are things that just ooze out our hearts all the time. By nature, man's such an evil
creature, so corrupted by evil that everything he does is corrupt. The sacrifices of the wicked
are an abomination to God. The very righteousnesses of men
are filthy rags in the eyes of God. You look over the catalog
of sin, has set forth in the law of God, and I'm here to tell
you that the commandment of God you break from your youth up
every day. Not one, not two, not three,
every commandment of God. You take God's name in vain all
the time. You might bite your tongue, you
might cut your tongue out so that you can never speak and
you still take his name in vain. You set up an idol before God
every moment of the day and worship that idol and cling to that idol
and you do it till you go to hell if God didn't break your
hands and tear the idol out of your heart. It's not a crime against God. and not a crime against man that
you and I don't commit constantly. Constantly. It's what we are. Even those of us who've been
washed in the Savior's blood and regenerated by His grace,
Dorothy, this is what we are. Oh my God. How bitter that pill is to swallow. After the Israelites were bitten
by the serpents, they began to burn within. Sin doesn't instantly produce
pain and misery, but give it just a little while. It's a painful poison in your
soul. It'll produce miseries more extreme than fiery serpents
caused Israel. At the last, it biteth like a
serpent and stingeth like an adder. You young men, how I wish you'd pay attention
to your pastor, to your dads, to these older men, but you won't. You won't. I know you won't. Unless God
forces you to, you won't. You cast your restraints to the
wind and live riotously. Cavalier attitude, got the world
by the tail on a downhill pull, and you'll soon find that everything
you thought was delightful is a mocker to your soul. A young
woman follows the course of the profligate. It's amazing. It's amazing. It
used to be you walked the streets and expect to hear young men Speak
like they do. Just kind of keep your daughter
away from them. These days, you take your grandsons
out. You folks who've just got children,
you're not old enough to understand this. You take your grandsons
out and you try your best to keep them from the influence
of any women around there. Scared to death what they might hear
from them. How come? Because God just lays the reins
on your back and lets you go. It looks like he just lays the
reins on the backs and says, go to hell if you want to. Young
women seek pleasure and popularity with promiscuity and vileness
and think nothing of it and expect people to treat them with respect.
I hear this on television all the time, on the news media.
I'm not talking about the filth on the shows. I don't watch those.
On the news media. You can't disrespect that. Like hell I can't. And I meant
to say it just that way. No, no, no respect. Respect is
something you earn. And soon you'll find the way
of the transgressor is hard. Others, you're restrained by
society. restrained by faithful parents,
restrained by a sense of religious morality, restrained by a sense
of self-esteem and self-worth. And so you say, well, I'm not
going to, no, I'm not going to smoke that. No, you all go ahead. No, I'm not going to drink that.
No, I'm not going to go over there. No, I'm not going to that
kind of party. No, I'm not going to behave like
that. And you smugly presume that you're better. But within
your heart burns the same vile lust. That boy sitting right
there and that girl sitting right there. Same lust. No difference. Sin is the poison
that our daddy Adam put in us. bitten by the serpent. And, Merle, we can't get away
from it. It's what's in us. And the picture gets darker.
Sin, when it's finished, brings forth death. Oh, what a death
these folks died. Preparing this message, I tried
to picture hordes of people bitten Soon as they're bitten, they
cry, and they converse, and they burn, and they die one after
another after another. Soon, you must die. The poison of the serpent is
in you. Soon, unless God intervenes,
You must go to hell soon. These fiery serpents were the
judgment of God upon Israel. It seems to me that the bite
of the serpent is a fit representation of God's law when it's applied
to the heart and the center by the power of God, the Holy Spirit.
I say that because this is what Paul said. I was alive without
the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. I was getting long thighs. I had the Ten Commandments sewed
in my hem of my garment. I had the Ten Commandments written
on the bumper of my car. I kept Ten Commandments posted
over my walled house, and I'd recite them every morning and
recite them every evening. And then all of a sudden, God Almighty
called me to hear in my soul, thou shalt not covet. And I saw
that God required something from inside me called holiness and
purity and righteousness. And all my comeliness withered
as my knees collapsed, and I fell on the ground before God Almighty,
terrified of His holy law. The soul that sinneth, it shall
die. The wages of sin is death. God
will by no means clear the guilty. I will shut up, shut up altogether
to someone else, shut up altogether to a mediator, shut up totally
to somebody to intervene in my stead, Jesus Christ the Redeemer. When the law of God's applied
to the hearts, sin becomes bitterness in his soul, fire in his conscience,
hell in his heart. All the fitness he requireth
is to feel your need of him. That's it. That's it. But until you do, you'll never
seek him. It was a serpent that stung the
Israelites. And it's a serpent, the old serpent,
the devil, that poisoned our nature. the Israelites who were bitten, what could they do? What could they do? How could
this malady be healed? Well, you know, my granddaddy,
he had this remedy. We've had it all these years
down in Egypt, and they tell me that it takes a snakebite
strike. He dies. My mother, she always
told me this, take care of it, try it. And they die. It defied medicine. It defied
science. It defied every attempt of man.
It simply left these men, shut up to God's mercy. And that's
where sin has left you and left me. Then comes the cure. The only means by which man can
be redeemed from the malady of sin. The only means by which
man can be delivered from the burning wrath of God's law is
the sacrifice of God's own dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is precisely what our Lord
was telling Nicodemus and telling us in this text. The only way
A man can be justified with God is this, as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up. Now this brazen serpent, oh there's
so many things here I can just touch on them. Let me give you
some highlights and you go study the thing out for yourself. It was God himself who in his
sovereign grace and free love provided the remedy. And so it
is with our Savior. The brazen serpent was provided
for the Israelites because of God's love and his pity. 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. This serpent was made of
brass. Brass is a common metal. It properly represents the humiliation
of our Lord Jesus, who took on himself the form of man. Brass is a bright, shining metal
Properly representing Christ who is the brightness of the
Father's glory, the express image of his person. But I learned
something a week before last when Brother Clay Curtis was
in the hospital. One of the men in his congregation,
Brother Jaime Santa Maria, is a brilliant, he'll shoot me for
telling you this if he hears this tape, but he's a brilliant,
world-renowned eye surgeon. I never knew this before. Did
you know that a bright beam of light flashing in the eyes of someone
who has a malady in their brain, an aneurysm, a blockage, a disorder
of some kind, can suddenly cause that person to go into fits,
seizures, convulsions, as one who is utterly mad. Can you imagine how bright that
brass serpent must have been in that desert sun? The most unlikely of all cures
for someone who's been bitten of serpents causing the disorder
of mind and the nervous system that the serpent's bite does.
The most unlikely of all cures is to look to a shining brass
serpent in the desert sun. And so it is that Jesus Christ,
God's Son, taking on himself human flesh, God becoming a man,
and suffering under the wrath of God in the room instead of
men, is that which in the eyes of men is utter nonsense and
foolishness. The serpent made of brass had
the form of a serpent, but there was no poison in it. And our
Lord Jesus, made in the likeness of sinful flesh, found in fashion
as a man, is yet holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from
sinners. There was just one serpent of
brass. And there's just one mediator,
one name by which you must be saved. One savior for sinners,
Christ Jesus the Lord. That serpent of brass had to
be lifted up on a pole. Speaking clearly of our Lord's
crucifixion, he had to die as one hanging on a tree because
it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. He comes
here represented by one who is a serpent. And the serpent is
the only animal on God's planet specifically cursed by God because
Christ must be made a curse for us. The serpent had to be lifted
up on a pole and that's what God's servants must do with Jesus
Christ the Lord. We have one function in life
and that's to hold up Christ crucified and call sinners to
look to him. As the serpent was lifted up,
so Christ must be lifted up. The lifting up of Christ also
speaks of His exaltation. He must be raised from the dead. seated at the right hand of the
majesty on high, given power over all flesh, for it is only
the exalted, uplifted Christ, that one who is given all power
and all authority, who is able to save to the uttermost all
who come to God by him. Now here's a third thing I want
you to see. Oh God, help you to see this. This serpent must be lifted up
for this purpose that whosoever believeth on him should not perish
but have eternal life. Every perishing sinner who believes
on the Son of God when he looks shall live. When he looks, shall live. Look unto me, and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and beside me there
is none else. Well, Brother Don, how do you
reconcile that with God's sovereignty? Go ahead and argue about that
till you go to hell if you want to. How do you reconcile this
declaration of man's responsibility? Must look with God's eternal
decree. You go ahead and argue about
it till you go to hell if you want to. But if there is the fire of hell
burning in your soul, if the poison of the serpent has begun to make you mad with
sin. If the wrath of God on you is
crushing you down, if you recognize that there's but a breath between
you and hell, and you're interested in God's salvation, this is what
God says to you, look unto me. And you know what I'm convinced
of? I'm convinced, Mark, if you need to, you'll look. And if you don't look, it's because
you haven't been bitten. And there's no fire in your soul.
There's no curse in your heart. There's no condemnation on your
head. And you're getting long just fine without God. And unless
God does something for you, you'll go to hell loathing his son. Look, look, look. God help you. Look to Christ
and life eternal is yours right now. Amen.