God's provision of salvation from sin and judgemement
Text Numbers 21:4-9 Time 28/10/12 Place Childs Hill Baptist Church
I
want us to look this evening at the incident of the Bronze snake
recorded in Numbers 21:4-9. Now many of you will have heard me preach
on this subject only three weeks ago as we came to it in our studies
on Sunday mornings in John 3. In John 3:14, 15 Jesus says
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of
Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal
life in him.
It
is a clear allusion to this passage in Numbers and we made that clear
when we looked at those verses. Our main points then spoke of the sin
and the judgement spoken of here and that point to our sin and future
judgement and of the relief provided and received here and that point
to what Jesus was going to do to save sinners who trust in him.
Now
we want to make similar points again, though our approach will be
quite different because we are coming at this from another direction.
You know how a place can look quite different when you approach it
from a different direction. One of the difficulties I have finding my
way about is that a journey looks very different in reverse. Some of
you have been to Atlanta in Georgia, perhaps. One of the guidebooks
says “Atlanta's grand skyline
is best seen when
approaching from the
south along I-75”. No doubt you get a decent view from the north
too but in this writer's opinion Atlanta is best approached from the
south. What is not in dispute is that there is a difference. And so
it is when we approach the grand subject of Jesus Christ either from
the New Testament or, as we do here, from the Old, looking forward to
what he was going to do in the future.
So
this is not the same sermon as many of you heard the other week but
there will be certain things that are repeated and re-emphasised.
Verse
4 tells that at this point in their journey the Israelites travelled from Mount Hor where Aaron had died along
the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom which had refused to
allow them to pass through. It was while they were at this place that
the incident reported in verses 4-9 occurred. There are five main
things to notice.
1.
Consider the sin of the Israelites and your sins too
What
happens is that we read
But the people grew impatient on
the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, Why have
you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no
bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!
This
is a feature we have seen before in the people as they wander through
the desert. First, they get impatient with what was undoubtedly not
an easy existence as they travelled from place to place still not in
the Promised Land. That impatience leads them to speak against
God and against Moses. They then
moan and complain and grumble.
As we
have said before, we tend to think of grumbling and complaining as
little sins but in fact they are sins that are detestable to God and
we must be careful not to fall into such sins. It is very easy if we
are not prepared to fall into such a sin when things go wrong, as
they so often do.
I have been reading this week a short life of Matthew Henry, the
Bible commentator. He faced troubles from time to time, including the
deaths of at least two little children. Despite his troubles Matthew
Henry does not complain. Rather what he appears to have done in each
case is first to say “Your will be done” and then to pray for
grace to really mean it. Then eventually he would sit down and write
out reasons he had to be thankful. At the end of the year when he
lost his second child he wrote “I have received many mercies the
year that is past. I have been brought low, and helped. My dear wife
is spared. I am yet in the land of the living, though many have been
taken away. But how little have I done for God!”
Of course, grumbling is far from being the only sin. If we keep from
grumbling but fall into other sins then we are still guilty. We have
many reasons to say we are sinners who deserve the judgement of God.
Let's not deny it.
1 John 1:8 If we claim to be without
sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
2.
Note the punishment of the Israelites and the fact your sins deserve
punishment too
Punishment for sin is not always
something that comes immediately but sometimes it does and here in
the desert, God sends an immediate judgement. We read in verse 6
Then
the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the
people and many Israelites died.
One
writer says that “since the incident was a natural event actuated
by supernatural considerations, the
most poisonous desert reptile
would be eminently suitable for inflicting divine punishment upon the
rebellious Israelites.” What kind of snakes were they? Of the
roughly 3,000 known species
of snake found
worldwide, only 15% are actually poisonous. Most cases of
poisoning are caused by what are known as the big four – the
spectacled cobra, the common krait and two vipers - Russell's and
(smallest of the four) the saw-scaled or carpet viper. In the area
where the Israelites were the most common snakes are cobras and
vipers and so there have been a few different suggestions as to what
was involved. It seems most likely to have been a carpet viper echis
carinatus.
This species
produces on average about 18 mg of dry venom by weight, with a
recorded maximum of 72 mg. It may inject as much as 12 mg, the lethal
dose for an adult being only about 5 mg. If you are bitten by one of
these there will be swelling and pain within minutes. In very bad
cases the swelling may extend up the entire affected limb within
12-24 hours and blisters form on the skin. The mortality rate from
their bites is about 20%. Today the availability of anti-venom, means
deaths are rare. If untreated, however, there can be hemorrhaging
and striking coagulating effects. Victims often vomit or cough up
blood, suffer from nose bleeds and go into shock. Dehydration is
common and in some cases, there is kidney failure and internal
bleeding. Antivenin therapy and intravenous hydration within hours of
the bite are vital for survival. Of course, in those days there was
no antivenin and so you can imagine what a slow and painful death
many had to suffer.
Sometimes today
God does send an immediate judgement on person. Obvious examples
would be where a person takes an illegal drug and dies or steals a
car and dies at the wheel. I read once about a rugby player drunkenly
hitting out at his wife and breaking a window. The glass lacerated a
main artery and he died. This life is often more complicated, however
and we need to be slow about assigning blame.
There will be a
judgement day, however. Every one of us will one day be called to
account. If you have grumbled or complained, if you have been lustful
or hateful or greedy and grasping, if you have left God out of the
reckoning or chosen to follow false philosophies and false gods then
you will be judged for those sins unless there is repentance before
then.
Are you aware
of the judgement and of hell. A poisonous snake bite is a horrible
thing but hell is so much worse.
So what did the Israelites do in
this terrible judgement? They did the only thing they could do (7)
The people came to Moses and said, We sinned when we spoke
against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord
will take the snakes away from us.
There
was no other way out and there is no other way out for us either. We
must go to God and confess our sins. I just quoted you 1 John 1:8
If
we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not
in us.
The very next verse says
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will
forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Have
you ever confessed your sins? You do not need some sort of priest.
You do not need a confessional box. Indeed you don't need any other
person to be present. It is better that you are alone for some things
and this is one of them. Simply, humble yourself before God and tell
him your sins. Start with general terms, go on to list the one s that
stand out to you. Then think a bit and confess some more and go on
until you can hardly think of any more in specific terms. It is not
an easy way to go but it is the road we must all tread. It is the way
that we must all go.
Have you confessed your
sins to God? We must.
4.
Observe the intercession for the Israelites of Moses and see that you
need an intercessor too
We
read next that Moses prayed for the people. They
deserved no help from Moses who they were always turning against.
However, Moses loved the people and so he prayed for them. That's
what we really need – someone to pray for us, someone to intercede.
Without that, what hope is there for us? But who will pray? Moses is
long gone.
One
of the things that the Bible reveals to us is the fact that (1
Timothy 2:5) there is one God and one mediator between God
and men, the man Christ Jesus. He
is the only one who can go to God on your behalf and be perfectly
sure of being heard. This is because he is man and so full of human
sympathy and yet he is also God and so cannot be denied.
It is
good for us to think in these terms – that there was time before
creation, before the world began, when God the Son came to God the
Father, as it were, and made intercession for those who would be his
in due time. He prayed that they might go to heaven and that they
might be his and that is what God the Father did through him.
How
thankful we should be that it is so.
5. See God's provision for the Israelites, the provision and its
appropriation and learn a lesson about Christ and what he has done
So we
read Moses prayed for the people and
God gave a wonderful answer. First,
a remedy was provided. The LORD tells Moses to Make a snake
from bronze and put it
up on a pole. He is then told
that anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.
So that is what Moses does – he made a bronze snake and
put it up on a pole and holds it
up. We are told, lastly, that when anyone was bitten by a
snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.
So first there is the setting up of
a way that the people may be healed from the snake bites and then
there is their looking to the snake and being healed. First,
Moses makes a model of one of the very snakes that were doing all the
damage. The snake was then attached to a pole and lifted up high
where everybody could see it. Of course, that act in and of itself
could not heal anyone but if the person who was sick and dying looked
to where the snake was being held up then that person would live.
Now in the New Testament Jesus
says (John 3:14, 15) just as the snake was lifted up so he must be
lifted up also, which is a reference to his being crucified. It was a
prophecy when he said it but that is exactly what happened. Jesus,
who comes looking just like a sinful man, was going to be hoisted
onto a pole and lifted up and there he would die.
Jesus
goes on to make the point that his death is in order that
everyone who believes may have eternal life. Just
as people looked to the bronze snake in the desert and everyone that
did so was healed so today everyone must look to Jesus Christ the
crucified one, in the sense of putting their trust in him. You can
imagine someone dying from a snake bite in the desert but then words
come that Moses is holding up a bronze snake in the distance and you
are told that if you will simply look at that snake then you will be
healed. Even if you had doubts you would at least look. You would at
least try and get a glimpse of it so that you had some hope of being
healed. And we can be sure that every person who caught even only a
glimpse was healed that very moment. You did not need to go up to the
snake or touch it. You only had to see it.
Now it is the same today. By nature we are all perishing. There is
a poison in our system that will kill us if we do not repent from our
rebellion and look to Christ. He has died on the cross and he is
being proclaimed to you today as the one hope for you. I am preaching
to you, as Paul did, Jesus Christ and him crucified. He is being
placarded before you, as it were. This is where to look I am saying.
Don't look at me. Don't look to yourself. Look at him! What you need
to do is to fix your eyes upon him. Yes, you may have your doubts.
You may tell yourself that you are not too sick and that the poison
cannot harm you or you may wonder how trusting in Jesus can help you
but be assured of this – if you truly look to him and to what he
has done, if you put your faith in Christ and his death on the cross,
then you will without doubt know the gift of eternal life. Look to
him today I plead with you. If you've never looked before, look
today. Don't turn your eyes away from him but look and gaze on him.
If you've looked before, look again. Keep looking to him. Look ever
to Jesus, he will carry you through whatever obstacles may lie in the
way. Amen.
