We'll be in the book of 2 Timothy
again, if you'd like to turn there. 2 Timothy chapter 3. Now as I debated
on what to title this message, I think I changed it, well I
know I changed it multiple times, I don't know how many times I
changed it, but the Lord gave me this title for our text in
2 Timothy 3, Peace. in perilous times, peace in perilous
times. Let's read the first nine verses
of 2 Timothy 3. This know also that in the last
days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their
own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient
to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce
breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that
are good, Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than
lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the
power thereof, from such turn away. For of this sort are they
which creep into houses and leave captive silly women laden with
sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning and never able
to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now, as Jannes and Jambres
withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth. Men of
corrupt minds reprobate concerning the faith, for they shall proceed
no further, for their folly shall be manifest unto all men as theirs
also was. Paul gives us insight to those
who oppose the truth. And as he's describing these
that oppose the truth, I believe we can understand that they are
not intentionally doing this. This is not something that they
have intentionally done as in wanting to raise their hand towards
God or wanting to put their fist up towards him. This is something
as a result of the Lord not doing something for them. He calls
them reprobates, what he calls them. And a reprobate very simply
is the same word as counterfeit. It's not standing up to the test.
Back during this time, you would have had men that would have
looked at coins, that would have looked at currency, and they
would have said, this is a legit coin. This is a bona fide, this
is a certified piece of currency of our country. And what a counterfeit
would have been is anything that was not true, anything that was
not right. If you want to know what a counterfeit
bill looks like, you don't study counterfeit bills. You study
the real thing. We study the truth. That's what
Paul told Timothy in chapter two, study to show thyself approved.
It's the same word as counterfeit. Study the real article and you'll
know the lie when you hear the lie. And that's true, isn't it? The moment we hear a little bit
of works or Yeah, yeah, salvation's all by grace, but, no, that's
a counterfeit. There is no but, it's all by
grace, isn't it? Like a counterfeit, like a counterfeit
money is useless. These were ignorantly pretending
to worship God, but it was useless. They weren't worshiping God.
They were lovers of themselves, thinking that they were worshiping
God, thinking that they had all the I's dotted, all the T's crossed,
that they were good enough for God, and it's not true. Unless
we're washed in the blood, we are not the genuine article.
Unless we're washed in the blood of Christ, we are not the genuine
article. We're a counterfeit. Who does
the washing? The Lord does. The Lord does
the washing. If we're not washed in the blood,
we'll have a form of godliness, but we'll never be able to come
to the knowledge of the truth. Unless we were ordained into
eternal life before time, then we have no faith given in time
and we're counterfeit. Those who are not ordained into
eternal life are thereby reprobate. They're thereby reprobate. Now
that's my fear. Lord, don't let me deceive myself.
Don't let me love myself all the way to hell. That's the end.
That's where it all will end if I love myself. As he's describing
the opposite of the Lord, they love themselves rather than loving
God. They love pleasure rather than
loving God. And we have this warfare in this
earthen vessel that it's like having a dead corpse strapped
to our back. I remember hearing a a punishment that was given
a long time ago when you were guilty of a certain crime, they
would literally have a device that went around your neck and
would connect to the neck of a corpse behind you, and you
had to carry that dead corpse around. That corpse can't help
you at all. Matter of fact, it weighs you
down, doesn't it? It would only be able to do a
couple of things. It can stink, and it can rot,
And it can lay there dead, and that's about all it can do. I'm
sure somebody would say, well, it can do this and it can do
that. No, it really can't do much else. That's all it can
do. Is that your confession of your flesh? Is it just stinks
and it's just rotten? And it just drags me down all
the time. And I wish that I could serve
the Lord in complete faith all the time, just looking unto Him. But the moment a little wind
comes and hits the sail of my ship, it blows me off course
so easily. We're just tossed about and blown
around with every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset
us of unbelief, aren't we? The moment a little, it doesn't
even have to be a storm. It could be a shower and it causes
ripples in our pond. We just, we become overwhelmed
so easy, don't we? Lord, I'm so false and full of
sin. I've got this corpse, save me.
Lord, save me. Don't let me be reprobate. Cause me to be found in Christ.
That's our prayer. Now all reprobates have one thing
in common. They love themselves. They love
themselves. The result of self-love is evident
here after he says, verse two, for men shall be lovers of their
own selves. Everything that proceeds after this is a result of loving
themselves. They're covetous because they
love themselves. They're boasters because they
love themselves. They're proud because they love
themselves. Everything that proceeds is them
loving themselves. The Lord's people don't love
themselves. The flesh loves itself but the Lord's people have been
given a new man, a new nature that loves the Lord and loathes
this flesh, loathes this flesh. These that are reprobate love
their choice. They're looking to self and not
the Lord Jesus Christ. They're looking to their fabricated
God. They're looking to their religious
piety as their self-righteousness before God. They're looking at
what they do and what they don't do and therefore they have pride
in what they do and it's every religion. We don't, I may mention
one religion or two every once in a while, but typically we
don't pick on one distinct religion. All false religion is just as
bad as the other one. There's only one true religion
and that's what I hope we have here. That's what I believe and
trust that we have here is the finished work of Christ alone,
all by grace. Either we love that or we love
ourself. Either we love God's truth, or
we love ourself. There is no in between. There
is no, I love myself and God. It's either we love the Lord
with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, or we love ourself. Well, how do we love the Lord
with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength? Look to Christ. He's
the only one that can do that. Look to Christ. That new man
does that. That new man does that. Either we have his spirit by
his doing, or we have the spirit of antichrist, and that's all
by our doing. That's the flesh. The flesh is
antichrist. The flesh is antichrist. Don't
misunderstand the spirit of antichrist. The spirit of antichrist is not
the satanic church of the brotherhood that's sacrificing whatever.
That's not the spirit of antichrist. The Spirit of Antichrist said,
Christ's salvation is all of grace, but you have to do your
part. That's the Spirit of Antichrist.
It's saying that Christ was not sufficient in putting away the
sin of his people. The Spirit of Antichrist looks to self in
some way, shape, or form. The Spirit of Antichrist looks
to surroundings, perhaps as evidence of something. But the Spirit
of the Lord drives us to Christ alone, not to self. The spirit of Antichrist that's
most demonic is the Free Will Works Religion Church that declares
God wants to have a personal relationship with you. God wants
to save you. that you have to let him. God
doesn't want for anything. I said that the first hour too,
but it's so important that you hear men begging other men to
let God have his way. They're not proclaiming God.
God is going to have his way. God has had his way and God will
always have his way. His will is absolute. His will
is sovereign. Everything he purposed will come
to pass. He wills all things, purposes
all things, and everything just happens the way that he purposed
it. One of the most demonic statements
that's said is Jesus loves everybody, that he died for everybody, that
he wants to save everybody. These men say that God is all-powerful,
that he is all-sovereign. Ask them, is salvation of grace? Yes, it's all of grace. But they
either subconsciously or ignorantly add one thing to it and it taints
the whole thing. It nullifies the grace portion
of it. And if salvation is not of grace,
we have no hope, do we? We have no hope. They'll say
he's all powerful, all knowing and everything in purpose come
to pass, except whenever When a man or woman decides not to
comply with him, his power is completely nullified. He can't
do anything. This is what's being preached.
This is what these, and I'm spending time on this for a reason, this
is what these men were saying and doing. How close can you
be to the truth? Judas kissed his face and went
to hell. This is the thing that scares us as the Lord's people.
So what do we do? Stop looking to self. Look to
Christ. That's what we do. That's what we must do. Look
to him. Look to him alone. Believe him alone. This is our
peace. No matter what's happening in
the in the days around us in perilous times, as Paul's talking
about his perilous times, we have one peace and that is the
Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is warning of these individuals
that say words like Jesus and grace and almighty God, but in
verse five, look what he says, having a form of godliness, but
denying the power thereof from such turn away. They have a form. but they deny the power thereof.
How do they deny the power? Well, they say God is sovereign.
God is all powerful, but my will can prevent him from doing something.
That's denying the power thereof. See, we must understand that
he is absolute in everything that he does. So his power is
absolute. It can't be contested. It can't
be stopped. It can't be prevented. It can't
be altered. It can't be changed. Whatever
other words you wanna put after that, it can't be. It's absolute. He is absolute. And those that
are not enlightened to this truth are ever learning and never able
to come because they're not enabled by his power. Lord, enable me. If I've never been enabled, enable
me right now to come to Christ. Because in coming to Christ,
there is hope, there is peace, there is salvation. The Lord by Paul is warning us
here, but in another place he says that these men that are
saying this, if it were possible, they would deceive the very elect.
I like the words, if it were possible. That means it's not
possible. He didn't say it's possible that
the elect could be deceived. No, he said if it were, but it's
not. It's not. Why? You've been bought with
a price. The same power that resurrected
Christ from the dead, resurrected you when you were dead in trespasses
and in sin, said live unto you and he will keep you as well
all the way. We're sealed, as we heard the
first hour, by his doing. The Lord opened our eyes of our
understanding, didn't he? We don't hope in our We don't hope in our love towards
him and what we do for him. We hope in his love towards us
and what he's done for us. We know his purpose stand assure
having this seal. We know that the Lord said, I
know them that are mine. We heard that the first hour.
We know that if he didn't accomplish our salvation, we would be damned.
But every single person that he died for every single person
that he loves were redeemed. They were redeemed. It's not
something that's going to happen. They were redeemed. We believe
that, don't we? Now we love him because he first
loved us. Paul deals with the matter of
love here. And he tells us men shall be lovers of their own
self. And that's where it all starts. When a man loves themselves,
they don't love God. And by God's grace, you and I have learned
not to love ourself. And every time that we may start
loving ourself a little bit, isn't it like the Lord just jerks
the rug out from underneath our feet and we fall back on our
face again? I didn't mean to do that. I started looking at
myself again. I shouldn't have done that. It's
like a Our children are a great example. You tell them not to
do something. I told, next time you're in a room with a child,
look at that child and say, you can touch anything in this room
you want to, but that, whatever it is, don't touch that. What
are they going to go touch? Is that not us by nature? Not
just as a kid, but as an adult. Why is that? Because our flesh
is contrary. Our flesh loves itself. I'm going
to do it my way. I want to do what I want to do.
What does the Lord show us? He shows us the end thereof is
the ways of death. What does that drive us to? I've
got to have a substitute. Lord, I know I don't want to
touch it anymore. If I touch it, I'll mess it up.
I don't want to. Lord, you're going to have to do it all. I
see that I'm the problem here. You give me a choice. I'm going
to touch the holy thing and die. Don't give me a choice. Save
me. That's what the Lord's people
do. That's the difference here between these reprobates and the ones
the Lord reveals Christ to his people, his elect is that they
need Christ alone in his work, not ours. Can't trust in anything
in myself. When we hear this truth, we do
not withstand it. We love his truth. Christ Jesus
is the truth that sets his people free. He is our peace in perilous
times. I may be guilty of entering those
words as the text because somebody might click on it thinking I'm
going to talk about the end times and the sign of the times. Well,
I preached a message on that, I told you the first hour, Christ
is the sign. He's all that we look to. No matter the times,
it's his time. Look to Christ, that's our message.
It doesn't change, no matter what happens. If open war breaks
out all over this planet, the message will not change next
Sunday morning. It will be Christ is all, look
to him. He's ordained all of this. He
is seated on his throne. This did not catch him off guard.
He is our peace, regardless of the times. even if they appear
to be perilous. And when the men hear this truth,
there's only two responses. There's only two responses ever
to the truth, only two. There's not many different ones,
and they're found in verse eight. The first one is, now as Janice
and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth. Men of corrupt minds reprobate
concerning the faith. One response is not to believe
it, to resist. And that word that he gives there,
the withstood and resist, that's the same exact word in Greek
that he uses here. And the translators did that
in order for us to have a better understanding of what it means
resist and withstood. They wouldn't accept it. They
didn't have the faith to believe. That's what it means, very simply
put. That's one way men will respond to this truth. They respond
in unbelief. Now it can manifest itself in
many different ways, but it's still the same response. It's
withstanding and it's resisting. But by grace, there's another
response. There's another response. We believe. We believe. By his grace, by his faith, we
believe him. That's the other response. Paul,
by inspiration, gives us Janus and Jambres as an example of
not believing. Now this is the only place you'll
find in scripture where their name is meant, but Janus and
Jambres was the two chief magicians that were in the court of Pharaoh.
And you can imagine the court of Pharaoh, the Egyptians would
have been the powerhouse at the time. And they would have been,
had the strongest army that had the, the Jews were building the,
all the things that you see today, the pyramids and whatever else
during this, kind of around this same time. And we see, they would
have been the mega society, if you could put it that way. They
would have been the, most up-to-date or whatever, however you want
to say that. So can you imagine the pressure that would have
been on this magician, these two magicians, whenever they,
I'll use the term you've probably heard before, when they said
Alakazam, it better pop. You know what I mean? It better
have it right. If you're going to be the magician to Pharaoh
in this time and day and age, you better have it right. It
would be like the chief advisor to the president. You better
know what you're talking about if you're going to talk to the
men in position of authority. And so when Moses comes in after
the Lord says, go tell Pharaoh to let my people go. Moses walks
in and he's told, instructed of God before he even gets there,
the Lord tells him, take the rod of Aaron or have Aaron put
the rod down and it'll become a serpent. The Lord had already
done this for Moses at the burning bush. He'd already showed him
what he was going to do in that. But When he did, when he walked into
the courtroom and he says, the Lord says, let my people go.
They ask the same question that all men ask today. Show us a
sign. We'll believe you if you show
us a sign. Well, he did. He set the snake down. And what
does the snake represent? Judgment. Represents judgment. You'll see that all throughout
scripture. And we're going to hear of another account where this
is Uh, which is factual. Also first judgment that ever
came was on a serpent said, you're going to crawl on your belly
the rest of the days of your life. Is that not true? We see that he entered
into the room. He sets the rod down. It becomes
a snake. Well, that's the miracle they
were looking for to prove it. They didn't believe they said, well,
we can do that. Your God's no different than
our God. And they brought two snakes and sat them down. What
is that a picture of? It's a picture of man by his
nature in his own works, religion, saying our God's the same as
your God. We can see the same thing that you can see. We can
do the same things you can do. But it's not by works of righteousness,
which we have done, it's according to his mercy. It's not about
what we do or don't do. Our judgment is not good enough.
We can't look at ourself and determine in ourself and make
a righteous judgment because by nature we are unrighteous.
What happened? Well, the snake devoured those
two other serpents. That was the evidence that the
Lord said, no judgments came upon you and you are weighed
in the balance and you are found wanting. You were found wanting. That's what he told, uh, Belshazzar,
didn't he? At the, at the feast, when the
writing came on the wall, That was the problem with Belshazzar.
He said, OK, go get the golden cups from the temple. I can sit
from the same cups. My God's no different than their
God. These Hebrews, Babylon had taken the children of Israel
into captivity. And you see the They went and got the golden
cups that came from the temple that they were used for worship.
And he says, well, we can take these cups and drink out of them
just as good as they can. Those were consecrated unto the
Lord. So what was he saying? I'm my own God. This is what
the men of, this is Janice and Jambres. They're saying we are
our own God and we can do the same thing you can do. Nothing's
different. And they set their snakes down,
but the Lord said, no, he devoured the snake. And for Belshazzar,
he wrote the writing on the wall. You've been reweight in the balance
and been found wanting. These men performed a parlor
trick, by definition. They did a magic show. They had
a form of godliness, but they denied the power thereof. They
were saying, your God's no different than our God. They resisted the
truth. What does it mean to resist the truth? That means God has
not given faith to believe it. That's what that means. Unless
the Lord gives faith, we won't believe it. Think that we have a spiritual
snake that's good enough. The judgment of ourself that
we've been weighed and we're good enough. That's what men
do when they stand before the Lord. I've done all these wonderful
things. My judgment was good. No, it's not. No, the Lord has
the righteous judgment and the only hope that we have is to
be found in Christ. This Janice and Jambres represents
men that love themselves. Just as you and I would love
ourself and not the Lord had it not been for something he
did. These, like all men, base everything
they do off of what they can see. Off of what they can see. If we can see it, it's not of
faith, is it? If we can see it, it's not of faith. We want to
see evidence in those that we love. We want to see evidence
in ourself. That's not faith. Look to Christ. Look to Christ. Natural evidence is not faith. Our Lord's judgment consumes
every false notion of self-righteousness. Every false notion of self-righteousness
is consumed by the Lord's judgment. And you are left in the moment
of judgment, as seeing yourself as naked, as blind, as miserable,
as polluted in your own blood, and you must have a substitute. This is what repentance gives.
Faith points you directly to Christ in that moment. This is
what we must have. This is what Janice and Jambres
were not given. These men loved themselves so
much. They're in hell today. They're in hell. The Lord didn't
say they ever gave them repentance, never gave them repentance. They
believed they were good enough. Even after seeing, think about
all the miracles that the children of Israel saw and all that the
Egyptians saw at the same time, they were seeing it together.
And yet how often do the children of Israel murmur? And how many
Egyptians believed? How many Egyptians left with
the children of Israel? The scripture, to my knowledge, has no account
of them saying, well, so many Egyptians left with them to follow
after their God because they believed in all the miracles
they saw. That's not what it says. That's not what it says. They
couldn't believe because it was by sight. It wasn't by faith,
was it? If you want to see how God Judges
sin. Look at the cross. Scripture
says he that spared not his own son, but delivered him up freely
for us all. How shall he not with him give
us all things? He delivered his son unto death of the cross. He is not a respecter of person.
If he was going to have respect for anyone, would it not been
his darling son? If he was going to say, no, I'm
going to pass by this sin and not deal with it. It would have
been for his son, would you not agree with that? But he can't,
he can't be a just God and the justifier of his people unless
Christ Jesus died. That is what we look to. We don't
look to signs. We look to what Christ has done.
We look to his resurrection as our justification before God,
as evidence of our justification before God alone. His scale of justice reveals
that no flesh shall glory in his presence. John chapter 6,
the Lord said these words, it is the spirit that quickeneth,
the flesh profiteth nothing. Now, what does that mean to you
and I when he says the flesh profiteth nothing? Does the flesh
profit a little bit? Does the flesh profit some things? The Lord said nothing. That was
the word he used. Nothing means nothing. I've looked
at my children before. They asked for something and
I said, how much they, my daughter's dollar smarter than I am. Sometimes
they come up to you, they bring three pieces of candy and say,
can I have these three pieces of candy? And you say, no, you
can have one. That's smart because if they
brought one, I would say no to begin with. What's my point?
Well, sometimes I say, no, you can't have any, you can have
nothing. But what do I mean by that? Does that mean they can
have one? No, Christ said the flesh profited nothing. That's
zero, isn't it? That's what we're talking about
here. Doesn't profit anything. Doesn't profit, doesn't amount
to anything. The words that Christ speak though,
he said, they are spirit and they are life. See that prophet
is something, the word of the Lord, what he said, what he purposed,
what he did, what he speaks. By nature, all human beings are
using an unjust scale. Our flesh refuses to see the
ugly that it is. Our flesh, and you know this
to be true in your experience with religion, you would look
around and you would think, well, I'm not, there was always that
one person at least, and most of the time it was more than
one, but you would look and say, I'm not as bad as that guy, not as bad as
that woman. At least I don't do this, at
least I don't, and that's justifying the flesh. But no, the Lord doesn't
look at what we do He looks at what we are. He looks at the
heart. We have a heart problem. We've got to be, we've got to
be born again. He has to birth us into his family. We can't see the ugly that we
are because we're dead. Just like Genesis and Jambres,
they were dead. They couldn't see God in the form of that and
what Moses was doing, because it was a physical thing. It wasn't
spiritual. They were spiritually dead. I said this the first hour, but
I might start saying it about every time I stand because it's
so simple and it's so true. We don't know that we are dead
until he makes us alive. Is that your experience? You
didn't know you were dead. You heard of the Lord. You had heard the name Jesus.
You had heard of his blood. You had heard of his sacrifice.
You had heard of grace. But until he came and said, live,
you had no idea. I had no idea I was dead in trespasses
and in sin. Well, the moment he says live,
Whereas I was blind, but now I see. Whereas I was dead, now
I'm alive. And he gets all the glory for
it, doesn't he? We can't know that we're in darkness
until he shines forth his light. Unless he does. Unless he opens
our understanding to the truth and says, believe. We'll never
come to the knowledge of the truth. We'll learn a whole lot
of things. but will never know the King of Kings and the Lord
of Lords, Jesus Christ. He must, say, live. He must, say, breathe. He must
give life. Otherwise, we will withstand
this truth. We will lie to ourself, convincing ourself that we are
our own God, convincing ourself that we are good enough, that
we have weighed ourself in the balance and we are good enough.
Well, Lord's people don't do that, do we? No, we don't even
approach the scale. We know better. We know better. Lord, you're going to have to
do the work. You're going to have to do it all. It has to
be your work, because the scale, we don't even budge the scale,
do we? If we were to step on a scale of righteousness, we
wouldn't even budge it. We would exalt the righteousness.
We would never balance the scale. The Lord Jesus Christ did. the
Lord Jesus Christ did, and he made his people the righteousness
of God in him. And unless we are in him, washed
in his blood, God doesn't love us. But those that he does love,
they are in the Lord Jesus Christ, washed in his blood. He put away
their sin. Now either we bow to this truth
or we bow up to it. And I think it was Greg, I don't
like saying things and then pretending like I came up with it, I'm not
that smart. The word bow and the word bow is spelt the exact
same, B-O-W. Greg Elmquist came up with that,
the Lord gave that to him. He may have heard it from somebody
else, I don't know. But it's true, isn't it? The Lord's the
one that changes the vowel sound. If he doesn't, if he doesn't,
we're gonna bow up to him. But if he gives grace and he
gives faith, we're gonna bow to him. Lord calls me to bow.
Don't let us be like this Janice and Jambres, these men that love
themselves more than you. Calls us to bow to Christ. Calls
us to believe. Either we believe or we oppose
him. Either we're made needy and come to him, or we oppose
him, we resist. I'm not talking about accepting
and rejecting like it's an offer. I'm saying he has to give faith.
Beg for it. Don't be presumptuous. Only when
he gives faith will we believe. And that's our hope is faith.
So ask him, Lord, give me faith. Beg him for himself. Lord, give
me Christ. Don't be presumptuous. It's not
presumptuous to beg. It's unbelief not to. It's unbelief
not to. Beg for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Either he gives us this faith and we believe on him as all
our hope or we have no hope. Either he gives us this faith
and we have peace. In perilous times are we have no hope at
all and we're most miserable. Now there's a picture of this
and it's actually involving a snake as well, which I knew was the
direction the Lord would have me go when I started writing
this. Whenever I saw Janice in Jamboree,
I saw the snake in Egypt and I remember the serpent, the brazen
serpent on the pole. Now the account starts out in
Numbers 21 and it begins like every religion. where men are
trying to obligate God to do something for them. The children
of Israel said, Lord, if you give us the Canaanites, if you deliver
the Canaanites into our hands, we'll slay them. And I read that
and I thought, well, no, duh. If the Lord delivers it to them,
I mean, the battle's over. I mean, that's, you understand
what I'm saying. And men have it backwards. Lord, you're going
to have to fight the battle in order for us to conquer the inhabitants
of the land. And this is the inhabitants.
You understand what I'm saying there. Lord did hearken to them and
they did just that. And they begin to journey from
there. And the scripture says they became discouraged. They
became discouraged. Now this is, we're talking from
verse one to verse four, they destroy the Canaanites, the inhabitants
there, they were delivered under their hand. And shortly thereafter,
they become discouraged and they begin to murmur. I preached a
message in Iowa, and it was titled, Why Are We Discouraged? And the
answer is unbelief, not looking to Christ. It's that simple.
I gave four points on it, and I won't give those to you, but
it's unbelief, isn't it? That's why we're discouraged.
They were discouraged because they weren't looking to Christ. The evidence
of that is they begin to murmur, we loathe this light bread. We
want sustenance. We want different food. They
didn't see the picture of the manna. All the way into John
chapter six, when the Lord tells them, I am that manna that fell
from heaven. I am that manna. My body is meat, indeed. My blood
is drink, indeed. Except you eat my body and drink
my blood, you have no life. You have no life. They couldn't
see the picture because it was physical. There's a pattern there,
isn't there? Janice and Jambres couldn't see
the picture because it was physical. Lord, don't let us just see something
physical. Give us spiritual life. That's our plea, isn't it? So
they begin to murmur. And the scripture says they spoke
against God and Moses. It's the same thing we heard
the first hour with Adam. It was the woman that you gave
me. That's the problem. They looked at Moses and said,
you're the problem, Moses. And then they begin to blame
God. Lord, you're the problem. You should be giving us this
and giving that. Think about how much they loved themselves to
do that. But don't think for a second we're not exactly the
same. We're exactly the same as they are. Only by grace does
the Lord cause us to seek Him and not seek our own. Only by
grace does the Lord cause us to seek His face and not look
to ourself. Israel said, we loathe this lot,
bread. Well, because of the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ, which
is ultimately what that was a picture of, the Lord sent them fiery
serpents. Fiery. And I look this up, and
I don't know how much you can trust biblical scholars and Google
and things. I can't trust Google very much.
I understand all that. It was talking about it being a poisonous
serpent. And as I was researching this,
what they were saying was, is when they were bitten, some of
them said, well, it would give them a fever. So they would just
be, it would be fiery. Like they were fever. One said
it was so painful. It was from the top of their
head to the bottom of their feet. And I said, no, I think that's the one that
was it. When they were bitten, they were in pain from the top
of their head to the bottom of the feet. They were on fire. They were
on fire from the serpents. And I find it amazing that it
didn't take very long at all for them to say, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry, Moses, we're sorry, the bread's fine, we'll eat the bread,
we're good, just take these snakes away. See, when God changes,
when God shows us what we deserve, then we flee to Christ by faith. The thing that we all have in
common is so often we think too highly of ourself over and over
and over. But he's given us the manna from
heaven. He's given us the blood of Christ.
What need we? You being able know how to give
good gifts unto your children. How much more shall your heavenly
father given to you than ask him? And we ask, Lord, give me
Christ lest I die. Well, Moses has to intercede,
and he does. And the Lord says, I want you
to put a serpent on a pole, a brazen serpent on the pole. And anybody
that looks to that serpent will live. Anybody that looks. Now, who's going to be looking
to that serpent? Anybody that was bitten. Do you agree? If
you're bitten and you're on fire from the top of your head to
the bottom of your feet, you see that you're going to die. You're going
to look. Is that not true? Everyone that
was bitten would have looked. Can you imagine somebody saying,
no, I'm going to take care of this myself. I've got this. I'm going to get
me some of this salve from the Canaanites and try to nurse this
back to health. I don't think that was the case.
No, this was a painful experience. They knew they were dying. It
would have been a very severe reaction and they would have
looked. They would have had to look.
The Lord revealed judgment to them that they deserve to die.
They deserve to burn. They deserved the wrath of God.
That's what these serpents represented. The only way that they could
live is to look to the one who was made a curse for them. The
only way that they could live was to look to the one that bore
their sin in his own body, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one that
endured that wrath. See, he's the serpent on the
pole there. It's the Lord. It's him becoming us is what
it is. It's him enduring our wrath that we deserved. Now,
I find it interesting because you know that there would have
been blind men at this time. They would have been, what was
it, estimated three million people left Egypt shortly before this. This isn't very long after they
had left Egypt. And so they would have been a multitude. Well, how is everybody gonna
look to that serpent? Well, somebody might have said, do you know
where the serpent is? And they said yes, and they'd have pointed
them in the right direction. See, it wasn't their looking It wasn't
their looking because that, I want to say this right, their looking
was a result of their need. Do you understand what I'm saying
there? Their looking was a result of their need. If they didn't
have a need, they would have not looked. And it wasn't that they
looked and they said, okay, now I've looked, I'm obligating God.
They had a need to be healed and therefore they looked. You
and I must look to the serpent on the pole. You and I have been
bitten by the sting of sin and we know that we deserve the wrath
of God and we must look. And the only way we can is if
he shows us that we're bitten and shows us that Christ endured
all the wrath that was due us and he put away our sin. Can
imagine some of them being a long ways away. I don't know where
to look and somebody would have pointed them in the right direction.
I think that's the job of the preacher. I hope that's what
we do every time we assemble together is point one another
to the serpent on the pole. Point one another to the Lord
Jesus Christ and say, look and live. That's all you have to
do is look and live. And if you find yourself looking,
it's because he enabled you to. If you find yourself looking,
it's because he's enabled you to look. Look to Christ. If you see, and that's what I
was gonna say while I go, is there would have been some blind
men, and they would have said, you're gonna have to point me
in the right direction. I don't know where to look. But it was
the point of them looking through the eyes of faith, through the
eyes of faith, believing, believing that that, believing God's word. God said, if you look, you'll
live. Do you believe that? Yes, then look and live. Look and live. The Lord must
create this need by repentance and he must give faith to look.
Now in closing, I have a question. Have you ever been bitten? Have
you ever been bitten? Janice and Jambres were not bitten.
These men that loved themselves in 2 Timothy 3, they were never
bitten. But have you been bitten? Have
I been bitten? Well, how do you know if you're
bitten? You have a need. A need that you can't fix. A need that
you can't help. No matter what you try to do,
it's like the woman with the issue of blood going to all the
physicians and everything that was done made it worse. That's
us, isn't it? I just make it worse. I've been
bitten. I can't fix it. Look to Christ
and live. Look to Christ and live. Either
God reveals his righteous judgment or we will have no need. Either
we have been bitten. Do you see? You see the the blackness
in yourself, the darkness that's in you all the time where I do
and I loathe myself for this reason. Every time we try to
do something good, we're like Paul. We can't do it every time
that we wouldn't do something we find herself doing it. That's
the blackness that's inside of us. Lord, I need your light to
get rid of this darkness. I need your blood to wash me
whiter than snow or I won't be washed. Do you burn? Do you burn with
the agony of sin? Has the Lord revealed to you
that you're the sinner? There's a burning there, isn't there?
There's a need, a desire to have Christ. If he's given you that
desire, look to Christ. Come unto me, all you that are
labored and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. That's what
he told, that's what he tells us. If you've been made to know that
your heart is deceitful above all things, When you desire peace
with God, look to Christ. Look to Christ. Don't look to
self, look to Christ. The Lord gives this bite of the
serpent, the revelation of his wrath that we deserve. It's called
repentance. He hangs us over hell and says, this is what you
deserve. And then he points us to Christ and said, this is what
you don't deserve, but this is what I'm giving you. And we love
our Lord for that reason, don't we? And we flee to Him. Do not deceive yourself like
Janice and Jambres did. Bow to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Don't look to your obedience, look to His. Don't look to your
works, look to His. Rest in Him alone. His blood,
His perfect sacrifice, His love, His obedience. It's His salvation. Run to Christ, look to Christ,
believe on Christ. Those are all the same words,
aren't they? I want to. Lord, cause me to, enable me
to. Beg him for it. If you've been bitten, look and
live. He is the only peace that we will have ever. Ever. And you can call these
times perilous times. You can call them whatever. It's
his time. It's his time, isn't it? He is all our peace for all
time. in all eternity, look to Christ.
Let's pray.