Good Friday: Numbers 21:4-9 - Look And Live

To the book of Numbers in chapter 21.

And if you don't have a Bible, you can find one in the pew in front of you.

And on page 134, 134, you'll be able to find Numbers chapter 21.

Numbers 21 · chapter mention

In verse 4, the word of God says this.

Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea to bypass the land of Edom.

But the people became impatient because of the journey.

The people spoke against God and Moses.

There is no bread or water, and we detest this wretched food.

Then the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and they bit them so that many Israelites died.

Then the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.

Intercede with the Lord so that he will take the snakes away from us.

And Moses interceded for the people.

Then the Lord said to Moses, Make a snake image and mount it on a pole.

When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will recover.

So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole.

And whenever someone was bitten, he looked at the bronze snake and he recovered.

In April of 1970, when Apollo 13 was about halfway to the moon, the crew that was in there heard a sudden thud.

They wondered what had happened.

They thought maybe there was a meteorite or maybe there was some space debris or something that happened on the outside that had caused that loud noise in the shutter.

What they hadn't realized, and what was unnoticed beforehand, was that there was an oxygen tank that was faulty.

And when they started to see the instruments begin to reflect that, they realized that the trouble wasn't out in the expanse of space where they first thought.

And they needed to look inward to try to find a way to fix that.

Numbers 21 speaks something to that about us, that what threatens our life isn't the things that we often think they are, those things that are outside of us.

It's actually the things that are inside of us that are the most dangerous.

But we often look to our circumstances, our pressures, the disappointments, the wilderness that's out there, and think, well, that's where our problem lies.

Numbers 21 tells us a different story.

Numbers 21 and Good Friday bring us to a different understanding of what's real.

It brings us face to face with the understanding that our deepest danger is not external at all.

Our deepest danger is inside of us.

It's the rebellion within us, it's the mistrust that's within us, it's the state of our own heart.

We're here this evening on Good Friday, and Good Friday shows us that clearly, as we'll discover, because it too brings us to the place where we stop blaming the landscape around us and begin to acknowledge the condition of our own heart.

But once we do that, then we can fully understand and appreciate and embrace God's remedy.

And so I'd like for us to look at Numbers 21 as the lens through which we will see Good Friday.

As we look at this passage, it's not going to flatter us, it's not going to soften the truth about us at all.

It's going to show us plainly that the problem is inside of us.

But it'll also show us that there's a God in heaven who provided a remedy that we could never create for ourselves.

So let's step into the text.

And I have five points.

We'll move them through them very rapidly, and they'll alternate between the people and the Lord.

And we'll start with the people.

In verses four and five, we see the people's rebellion.

They set out from Mount Horeb by the way of the Red Sea to bypass the land of Edom.

But the people became impatient because of the journey.

And the people spoke against the Lord and Moses.

Why have you led us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness?

There's no bread or water, and we detest this wretched food.

So here we see the people murmuring and complaining, impatient because of the journey.

And like a lot of us, frustrated that things aren't happening the way we would like them to happen.

And so here, twice mentioned, is they speak against God and they speak against Moses.

But it's not just frustration.

There's something deeper in their heart.

There's a rejection of God's promises, the daily mercy to sustain them.

There's an accusation that God's brought them for bad reasons to bring them out there to die.

And all of their words reveal a heart that isn't trusting God at all.

They deny his goodness and they question his intentions.

And this uncomfortable statement here reminds us that sin is not simply behavior, it's a posture of the heart.

It's leveled at the place of mistrust in God.

And here they are, like sin does in all of us, causes us to suspect God is withholding the best from us, or to resent God that what He gives us doesn't match with what we would expect to receive.

And it gives us that opportunity to reinterpret God's goodness and call it God's evil against us.

It's the impulse to look narrowly and negatively on God's character.

All of us know that.

To question God's wisdom, to resist his ways, to complain about his provisions, to imagine what life would be like, oh, so much better if only we were in charge.

And this text gives us this, not to shame us, because it moves us a direction.

But before it gets there, it asks us to be honest, to recognize the condition of our own heart, and to admit that the problem isn't out there.

The problem's in here.

And the bite is deadly.

Now, the use of this snake or serpent motif is not an accident.

It's not just some random accidental happenstance.

The snake stands as an emblem from the very first pages of scripture all the way into the last ones.

That the serpent is an emblem of sin and judgment that comes.

The earliest pages of scripture talk about the curse that has entered the world through sin.

And so this bite of these serpents is to remind them that death always comes with fangs.

And the people are immediately facing the consequences.

The venom is burning through their body, their bodies are weakening, and many of them die.

What's happening to them physically is a mirror to what happens to all of us spiritually when we sin.

Because sin corrodes trust, it distorts our desires, it damages our relationships, it dulls our consciences, and it drains our life.

In the wilderness, the serpents stand as a witness about the deadly nature of sin itself and the danger of presuming upon God.

The Apostle Paul used this very verse in 1 Corinthians 9 when he said, Let us not test Christ, as some of them did, and were destroyed by snakes.

Paul is reminding the Corinthians and all of us that this story is not just history.

It's a warning.

It's a warning for us not to test our Savior and not to presume upon God's character, and not to treat his grace as something casual.

Paul wants us to look back on this verse and to be reminded that sin is never harmless, that sin is never manageable, and that sin is never something we can tease and toy with.

We're here this evening, and Good Friday tells us the same thing.

Sin is never to be taken lightly.

We're here this evening, and it isn't just a calendar event that we come to, and it's not some sentimental celebration that we have.

We come to remember the very place where God's judgment fell against sin.

It's a sobering clarity Good Friday brings to us.

But let's continue because this passage moves.

And in verse 7, we see the people's confession.

We saw the people's rebellion in verses 4 and 5, the Lord's judgment in verse 6, and now the people's confession in verse 7.

And the people then came to Moses and said, We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.

Intercede with the Lord so that he will take the snakes away from us.

And Moses interceded for the people.

Wonderfully, we come to this moment of clarity where all the illusions of their discontent are gone, all the excuses are fallen away, and they're not blaming their circumstances, they're not blaming their hunger, they're not blaming their fear, they're not blaming God or Moses.

They're naming the truth.

We have sinned.

We have sinned by speaking against the Lord.

And wonderfully, we're told here that this is where healing begins.

It doesn't begin with despair, but it begins with recognition.

It begins with this understanding that we have sinned, we have seriously grieved God Himself.

And by also acknowledging our need for mercy, they plead for an intercessor, Moses, to be able to bring an end to this plague of snakes.

Good Friday calls us to that same degree of honesty.

We don't come to the Lord with polished stories or managed appearances.

We come as people just like them who have been bitten, who have the poison of sin coursing through our veins, who know that we can't heal ourselves.

Good Friday strips away any illusion that any of that might be true, that we could save ourselves, that we're fine, that we're in control, that we can fix it.

Good Friday takes all of that away.

Good Friday tells us what we are, honestly.

We are weak, we're needy, and we need to be humble and confess the truth.

We have sinned.

So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole.

And whenever someone was bitten and he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered.

Now notice what this passage doesn't say.

It doesn't say that the Lord caused the serpents to simply go away, that he erases the consequences, that he just undoes their rebellion and accepts them as they are, or that he softens the reality of their situation.

Instead, he provides a remedy, a remedy that's as unexpected as it is undeserved.

Moses is instructed to make a bronze snake, the very image of the thing that was killing them, and to set it up in a pole where everyone could see it.

The serpent, the symbol of the curse, becomes the very means of healing for these people.

And the Lord takes what was to represent their judgment and turns it into the instrument of their life.

In the latter part of the 1800s, uh medical people began to realize how they might be able to help people who were dying by snake bite.

And they realized that they had to take some of the very venom that was killing people and very carefully and in very measured ways introduce it into the bodies of animals.

And those animals would produce antibodies, and then they would withdraw that antibody, and it would be the very thing that would bring life and health back to the people who had been bitten by the snakes.

And it is lifted up on a pole as the only hope for their life.

And this is where this wilderness story opens up into Good Friday.

Because Jesus Himself uses this very verse, and he tells us that it we are not just to see the snake, but we are to see him.

And he says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

The crucifixion of Christ is God's provision for cursed sinners.

His remedy was to raise Christ, his only son, up as a curse on behalf of us who are cursed.

Listen to what Paul says in Galatians 3.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

Jesus was raised high for sinners.

The curse was taken up by him, borne by him, and displayed by him in his body on the cross.

And Good Friday is the fulfillment of this wilderness moment.

The remedy that God provides is not a symbol, but the substance of how sinners are saved by God raising up his own son on the cross.

But one thing we need to recognize here is that simply lifting up Christ on the cross and lifting up this snake on the pole is not how people are healed.

Let's look at the last point, the people's reception in verse 9.

Whenever someone was bitten and he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered.

Once that bronze snake was lifted up, the people had to look to it in order to be healed from the deadly bite.

The curse is not released by avoiding the serpents or by outrunning the venom.

Their only hope was to look to the provision God had provided in this raised bronze snake.

Now notice that people aren't told to perform some religious ritual.

They're not told to bring an offering.

They're not asked to climb the pole or touch the bronze figure.

And they're certainly not asked to do as they did turn the bronze snake into a religious relic that was kept by the people of Israel until Hezekiah the king actually destroyed it.

They're simply told to acknowledge their need to look at the bronze serpent.

But it's more than just a glance.

It is a recognition that in that raised snake is their cure.

The only place they could be cured.

It's a look of recognition and it's a look of trust.

It's a look that admits I can't save myself and nothing else can save me.

Only that can save me.

And unless God heals me, I will die.

It is the look that embraces God's remedy as the only remedy for them.

And Jesus draws that parallel out in John 3, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.

And just as the people of Israel looked up and lived by looking with recognition and trust at that raised bronze serpent.

So anyone acknowledging that their only hope that unless God saves them, they will die, and looks at Christ who is lifted up on the cross and says, That and He alone can save me.

That is the only hope for my deliverance from my guilt and my punishment.

To look to Christ is to believe.

And to believe is to entrust yourself entirely to what Christ has done on the cross.

The saving power is not in the strength of your look or in the worthiness of your person.

It is not in any of those things, but it is in the saving work of God in Christ crucified alone.

And Jesus presses this point home for our encouragement.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Now let me read this text to you the way the Greek says it.

The discussion isn't about how many are packed into the whoever word.

The explanation is this if you recognize your need of salvation and if you believe on Jesus Christ, the one who believes shall never perish.

How wonderful that is.

Numbers 21 is telling us you can't draw the venom out on your own.

You can't reverse the consequences on your own.

Your only hope is to look to the remedy that God has given.

To look to him.

And so Good Friday is telling us this something simple and yet so wonderful and so profound.

Look to Christ who is lifted up.

Look to Christ who took the curse.

Look to Christ who bore the judgment.

Look to Christ who brings the dead to life.

Because there is in him your only remedy, and there is in him your only cure, and there is in him your only hope.

Look to Christ.

And that promise today is as clear as it was in that day.

The one who looks will live.

And it's not just a strange Old Testament episode.

Bunch of people traveling through a wilderness and snakes biting at them.

And all of a sudden they they they make this emblem on a pole, and somehow it delivers them if they look at it.

It's not just a strange Old Testament episode at all.

It's the gospel in seed form.

It is a living demonstration of the things that are realities in our world today.

That sin is a poison, that there is a reality to the justice and the condemnation of God for our sin.

That there is a need for us to be honest about who we are in confession of who we have sinned against, but also this wonderful truth that there is a wonderful mercy in God who has provided a remedy that we could never produce ourselves.

The bronze serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness is never meant to be the final answer.

It was a sign, an advanced picture, if you will, of a day when God would lift up his one and only Son, and that the one who believes on him would live.

Good Friday brings all of this into view.

The judgment that should have fallen on us, it fell on Christ.

The curse that clung so closely to us, he took.

We look to him who is lifted up.

We look to him who is cursed.

We look to him who bore the judgment.

And we look to him who takes away our death and gives us eternal life.

Let's pray together.

Father, we're grateful for a Savior who's come that we might live.

We're grateful that He has brought us the very means of our life.

We thank you for this day to remember especially that Christ crucified is the removal of our curse if we believe on him.

Father, we want to pray for any who might have come among us or who will hear these words in some day on YouTube.

That Father, they might look to Christ and find that in him is their only hope, their only means of being in a reconciled place with you, the way that they might be turned from death to life.

And Father, we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior.

Amen.