It's great to be back with you. I still am, I guess, on California time, but it's wonderful to be here this morning. The last time I was here, I think it was early this year or at the end of last year, and I was praying that God would bring you a pastor, and He answered that prayer richly. Contrary to popular opinion, the UK is not a village, and I didn't know Andrew before we moved out to America. We met here in the US, and I've known Andrew for some years, and I remember as I got to know him, I just thought to myself, this man is so kind. And so generous, so generous with his time and his gifting, and I rejoiced when I found out that he would be your pastor.
I think it's important for me to give a word to the wise about the dynamic that you're now in. Someone told me years ago, over time, eventually, every church becomes like its pastor. And I think that's true. So, what you have to realize is that it's only a matter of time before you Texans begin to use the adjective “wee” to describe just about anything. And I can say this from authority because I married a Northern Irish girl and she describes everything as being wee, a wee cup of tea or a wee slice of cake. And what I came to learn is that that adjective doesn't mean just small. It means just about anything you want it to mean. So, I fully anticipate that your ministries, body, life will be prefaced by that adjective. Here's the other thing you have to realize though, and this is more for Andrew, is that to some degree the shepherd becomes like the sheep. And so, I'm looking forward to the day when the man from Northern Ireland starts to address you all as y'all. And I don't know how those two realities will eventually find their way into the same sentence, but I think they will. It's great to be here, and I've given thanks for the way that the Lord has shown his grace to you in the recent months.
Numbers 21 is our text, if you would turn there with me. Numbers 21, and our verses four through nine. I'll read the text and then we'll go to the Lord in prayer. Numbers 21 beginning verse 4, “From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom and the people became impatient on the way and the people spoke against God and against Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water and we loathe this worthless food.' Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “we have sinned. For we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.” So, Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “make a fiery serpent, set it on a pole and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live.” So, Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” Let's pray.
[Prayer] Our Father, we give You thanks this morning for Your goodness to us in revealing Yourself to us through Your Word. We're thankful to come now to Your Word and ask that our worship would increase. Help us to see, to look, and to live, to rejoice in your grace, especially as it is found in the person of Jesus Christ. And we ask these things in His name. Amen. [End]
Well, the Apostle Paul, when he wrote to the Romans, explained whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, and through endurance and through encouragement of the scriptures that we might have hope. He wrote that whatever was written in former days was written so that we would have hope. I wonder if you think of Numbers like that. Written for your encouragement and written so that you would have hope. Now, there's a lot of ways that you can give encouragement. A word of encouragement can come by way of a warning. A word of encouragement can come by heeding someone else's mistake. And so, to that end, Paul also writes to the Corinthians, and he references this text. To the Corinthians, he says, “we must not put Christ to the test as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents.” Now, these things happened as an example but were written down for our instruction. And I do think that there is lots for us to learn by way of the Israelites' negative example from this text. But I wouldn't say that it is the primary point of encouragement.
What is the design of this text as it comes to us this morning? In part, it is to learn from the Israelites' failure. But I think more than that, the story of the serpents and the serpent is an example for us of God's grace, God's specific grace, which finds us according to our specific sins, and it blesses us in ways that are far greater than we could imagine. And so, my aim this morning is to give you a word of encouragement concerning the good news of God's specific grace.
I want to get into the text by asking a handful of questions. It's very, very difficult, I think, for us when we read Old Testament narrative to know how to get into the text and understand what it is there to teach us. And I just encourage people, just ask questions of the text based on what is written. So, I want to ask a series of questions that will lead us through the text in order to understand its instruction, its point of encouragement and hope. And the first one that we might ask, very simply, is what is the problem? What is the problem?
Look with me at verses four and five. “From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom and the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? Because, they said, there is no food and no water and we loathe this worthless food.”” It would be very easy to say, well the problem is sin. But that doesn't really help us. I would encourage you always to be specific about the problem of sin. Just about every problem is the problem of sin, but in order to make any meaningful observation, we have to prise that open and say, what specifically was their sin? And the text helps us because we read, the people became impatient on the way. Now, their impatience, we might understand by virtue of the specific journey they were on.
So, Moses tells us they came from Mount Hor. This is the place where Aaron, the high priest, died. If you look up to chapter 20, verses 22 through to the end, recounts the death of their high priest, the man who was responsible to bring them to God. And you can see in verse 29, “when all the congregation saw that Aaron had perished, All the house of Israel wept for Aaron 30 days.” So, there are discouraged people because they lost their high priest here. Secondly, we read that they went by way of the Red Sea. They've been here before. In Exodus 13, this is where they were, which is to say in 40 years, they have made very little progress. And then finally, we're told that they go by the land of Edom. That's a reminder that they failed to pass through Edom when they tried, and so now their journey is going to be a very, very long one. Each descriptor is significant because it hints at the source of their impatience. I think one interpretation of this text is right when it reads, “the people became impatient because of the way.” The people became impatient because of the way that God had put them on, which is to say they were resisting God's perfect providence for them.
The people were resisting the specific nature of God's wisdom that had been manifest to them. They thought that they knew better than God. Now notice with me how this sin of resisting God's providence works itself out on their journey. We read that they spoke against God, they spoke against Moses, and they say, “why have you brought us out of Egypt?” They complain against the lack of food and water and they say, “we loathe, or more literally, our soul loathes this worthless food.”
Sin always distorts our perception of reality. If you pursue sin, it will start to distort the way in which you see reality. The specific way in which sin distorts your perception of reality is in accordance with the sin. What do I mean by that? They are rebelling against God's providence in the present. Why are we on this journey? And it starts to affect their perception of God's providence in the past. Why have you brought us out of Egypt? I'll tell you this, if we go back to Exodus 15, if we were to look at the song that Moses and all of Israel sang when God drew them out of Egypt, no one on that day was complaining. On that day when they sang, the Lord is our Savior, everyone was rejoicing that he had taken them out of Egypt. But now, because they're resisting God's providence in the present, it's affecting how they see His providence in the past.
And then they say, “there is no food and water, we loathe this worthless food.” It would be comical if it were not tragic. They contradict themselves in the same verse. There is no food, we loathe the food that we have. They say there's no water, which is ridiculous because this text is sandwiched between two narratives displaying God's provision of water. At the beginning of chapter 20, we have a miraculous narrative where God provides water from a rock and immediately after this narrative in 21, the song of the well. They can't see clearly because their sin has distorted their perception of reality.
C.S. Lewis has a wonderful line in his book, The Great Divorce, where he speaks about sin being preserved. “A little sin preserved,” he says, “works its way back and infects the whole.” “A little sin preserved works its way back and affects the whole.” They reject God's providence in the present and it starts to affect the way that they see everything. We mustn't be naive about the danger of grumbling. We must not be naive about the danger of rejecting God's perfect wisdom in our lives today. If you fail to thank God for your marriage today, you will very soon start to believe that you've never enjoyed a day of marriage. If you fail to thank God and trust Him for your singleness today, you will very soon start to believe that He's never been kind to you. If you don't find a way to trust God in the specific afflictions that He has ordained for you today, you'll start to resist Him in everything.
Learn to praise God and to thank Him amidst the specific providence of your life so that a spirit of bitterness and rebellion would not creep in and affect the whole. What is the problem with the Israelites is that they fail to submit to God's providence in the present. So, they can no longer see his goodness anywhere.
And that leads us to our second question, how then does he punish them? How does he punish them? Look with me at verse six. “Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died.” God punishes them by sending poisonous, venomous snakes and they bite the people and many die, which seems like a very strange punishment, except that it really isn't. In fact, it's a specific punishment for a specific sin. The verb here, to send, the Lord sent, more accurately carries the idea of unleashing or unloosing. The Lord unleashed fiery serpents, which is to suggest that as they had been wandering through the wilderness for 40 years, the serpents had always been there. The poisonous snakes had always been around them, but God had been protecting them according to His grace. And in response to their grumbling, He removes the restraining grace on the serpents so that now they come to the Israelites.
One commentator says this, “it was not therefore the attack of the serpents but rather their absence during the whole wilderness wanderings until now that constituted the miracle.” But still, why the snakes? Why unleash serpents and not punish them in some other kind of way? And I think in part, the answer is that God was causing them to realize just how good they had had it. By removing his grace and allowing the serpents to come to them, He was showing them that really they had nothing to complain about. He wants them to acknowledge just how faithful a shepherd He has been to them, so much so that they didn't even know about the snake's existence until now.
I think there's another layer to this. God punishes their specific sin with a specific punishment. God is never arbitrary in His discipline. The word fiery is most likely a reference to their venomous bite, but it's important to know that the fiery serpent was an emblem in ancient Egypt. So, we can look at lots of texts outside of the Bible, written around about this time, Egyptian texts, that appeal to the notion of the fiery serpent, almost like a national mascot. One text speaks about the dread of Pharaoh being like the dread of the fiery serpent before his enemies. Or another that describes Ramesses III in battle, likening him to the fiery serpent. You see by unleashing these snakes, God is answering their complaints. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt? to which God responds, have a taste of Egypt.
Michael Morales says, “the serpent episode marks the second generation's experience of Egypt, both its bitter oppression and the Lord's sovereign deliverance.” Now, I want to stress, in our lives, as we look at the providence of God, rarely will we be able to draw a line that is as straight and as clear between what has happened in the past and what is happening today. It's not the case that as you look at what the Lord has ordained for you; we ought to be able to understand the specific lines of connection.
I had an experience not dissimilar to the Israelites' experience in this text earlier this summer. It was a very strange morning in that I was the only person in our home. So, we're married, Laura and I with six kids, and it's a very busy house. And this morning, everyone was out of the home, which doesn't often happen. It was our church's VBS. So, Laura and the kids were up at the church. I was to go up later. It was a very quiet home. I let our dogs out into the backyard. I don't care for our dogs. I was pleased to have them outside. Now the house truly was empty. And they started to bark, which I didn't appreciate. And I thought, I'll ignore them, and they'll stop barking. And I made some coffee. And if I'm honest, it was bad coffee that morning. I didn’t like the beans I was using. I was bothered by the dogs barking. I didn't appreciate my coffee. Maybe you could say that I was grumbling with the Lord's providence.
The dogs did not stop barking. So eventually I stepped outside to see what the fuss was about and there was a, immediately I heard a buzzing on the far side of our backyard. And what I thought was that there was one of those drones that people fly around had crashed in our backyard and they were barking at this buzzing drone. So, I walked across there with my bad coffee, and about 10 yards away, I saw it was not a drone, it was a thick, fat rattlesnake. It was so fat, I think it had a freshly digested rat inside it. And as I got closer, I was thankful for some wire fencing that had fallen down, was on the ground, and the snake was entangled in it. So, it was just sat there and its tail was going and it was so ready to bite. And I looked at this and I said, Lord, why did you take me out of England? And I was trying to understand why is this happening to me? I said, is it my grumbling? I take it back. I like bad coffee. I take it back. I'm not going to tell you how the story ends except to say that Genesis 3 was embodied that day.
The point is God's providence is far more multi-layered than we could ever understand, when God ordains for you any set of circumstances, we would be foolish to try to draw lines between what we're experiencing now and the cause. In fact, at any one time, through any set of circumstances, God is accomplishing 10,000 things according to His plan. We don't know the cause, but here's what Scripture teaches us every single time we can know the purpose. The purpose is always to draw us closer to God, to acknowledge His goodness. So, there are valleys that God will ordain for you to walk through. And there may be many of you here this morning who are walking through valleys. And it's not for you to try to understand the cause.
We don't know why God is doing specifically what he's doing, but we always, always, always know the purpose. It is always to draw us closer to God, trusting in Him and acknowledging His goodness. How does God punish the Israelites? He punishes them in accordance with their sin to make them see His goodness.
So then let's ask a third question, why this solution? Why this solution? Look at me with verses seven through nine. “The people came to Moses and they said, ‘we have sinned for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people and the Lord said to Moses, ‘make a fiery serpent, set it on a pole and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live.’ So, Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole and if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” Now there is a degree of spiritual growth that is brought about by the punishment. It does appear that the punishment of unleashing the serpents to bite them brought about a degree of maturity in the people. And I say that simply because here, this is the first time in the book of Numbers that they are openly confessing and acknowledging their sin. They finally acknowledge their sin before the Lord.
And now, rather than speaking against Moses and against God, they're coming to Moses. They're asking Moses to act as their mediator, which is reminiscent of the Egypt narratives. And Moses goes to the Lord and he prays on their behalf. Now look again at the specific request. They say, we have sinned. Pray to the Lord that He take away the serpents. That's their request. What's interesting is that the Lord does not answer in accordance with their prayer. They say, take away the snakes, and the Lord does not take away the serpents. In fact, the snakes, the venomous serpents, are now an ongoing reality for the Israelites in the wilderness. Towards the end of verse 9, we see that, “if a serpent bit anyone,” meaning they were not taken away. When we jump to Deuteronomy and Moses rehearses their experience of these years, he says, “the Lord your God led you through the great terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents.”
So, this episode marks a turning point in their wilderness experience. They will always now have the serpents as a reality. God doesn't answer the prayer in the way that they ask, but what He does do is He gives to them a healing remedy. He instructs Moses to make a fiery serpent, to put it on a pole, to hold it up high, and the instruction is very simple. If anyone is bitten, look at the serpent. Look and live. And the question, why this solution to the problem? I think it's the most important question we can ask of the text.
Because the answer unlocks the theological significance of the whole narrative. Why is this the remedy in God's wisdom? First, we might say, because the threat of snakes was an ongoing reality. They have to now depend on God in order to live. The ongoing reality of the serpents, the ongoing need to be looking at the serpent would be a reminder of their past sins. It would constantly humble them so that they would never be tempted to grumble again. But why a snake? Why not something else that is more representative of healing? It is unexpected, it's extraordinary, and it is absolutely counterintuitive. The last thing that you want to do when you've been bitten by a snake is to look at a snake.
The healing that would come by the snake was not just physical, but spiritual. The extraordinary counterintuitive means that God designs was to cause them to recognize our trust has to be in God alone. You see, if God has said to them, you come up with the remedy, you tell me how you are to be healed. They would have written down a thousand different ways. None of them would be to look at a snake. God comes up with a means that would force them to recognize our life is only through God. There is no other explanation for me being alive today but by God alone. So, just imagine the stories that this generation would have told to their children and their grandchildren in the years to come. “Grandfather, tell us again the story about the snakes.” “Well, we were in the wilderness and we were grumbling against God's perfect providence for our lives and it was making us sick. And so, what God did in his loving kindness was to punish us. He let snakes come to us and bite us and many in our camp died.
But we cried out to the Lord and he answered our prayer and He answered it in a way that no one expected. He told Moses to build a snake lifted up high that we would look at the snake and live.” “He told you to look at a snake?” “Yes!” “Why?” “Because it's the last thing that we would ever think to do. Because by looking at the snake, we understood we are not alive by our own strength. The only reason that we are still here is because God has been gracious to us. And from that day forward, we sang of God's perfect providence.” Now I say that because this is the last complaint narrative recorded of their time in the wilderness. There is no mention moving forward of the Israelites ever grumbling in the wilderness again. And so, I believe that they were trusting in God's purposes and rejoicing that God alone gives life. And the reward is exactly that. God says, “look and live.”
It's that simple. Look at the serpent and enjoy anew the bountiful goodness of God in every aspect of life. Just as C.S. Lewis talks about the sin working its way back and infecting the whole, an enjoyment of God's goodness in the present starts to affect your perception of everything. A trust in the perfect providence of God today affects the way in which you see everything. The person who looks will live, and the person who lives will delight in God's manifold goodness. Their song, that the Lord is our salvation, this is what they sang in Exodus 15, and that His providence is always, always best.
So then, our final question, what is to be our remedy? What is to be our remedy? The meaning of this text counts for very little if we cannot draw lines of application for us today. What are we supposed to do with the story of the serpents in the wilderness? Well, we're greatly helped in this case by John chapter 3. Turn with me to your New Testaments and specifically John's Gospel chapter 3. It's a familiar text, Nicodemus, the teacher of the law, comes to Jesus and he starts to ask Him questions. And what we realize is that Nicodemus missed the class on spiritual regeneration. He asked these questions of Jesus and Jesus replies, “how can you not know these things?” How did you miss this? Don't miss Sunday school hour. You never know what's gonna happen. All kinds of things will happen and you don't want Jesus to show up and say, how did you not know that? He's saying to Nicodemus, why are you asking me these questions? How do you not know?
And then He starts to explain, verse 10, “are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things. Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” And then look at verse 14, He says, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
Jesus is making a comparison between Himself and the serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness as the source of life. In fact, here, there is an allusion specifically to Jesus' crucifixion. So, when Jesus says lifted up, that's the same language that he will use elsewhere in this gospel to speak of His crucifixion. The Son of Man must be crucified so that whoever believes in Him will live, specifically have eternal life. And so, what we must wrestle with as of first importance in this verse is the meaning of that small word, “as.” That's the most important word here to understand what is the point of comparison that Jesus is making between himself and what happened in Numbers 21. And just to emphasize the importance of understanding that comparison. This is where our breaks in our Bibles are not that helpful.
John 3:16, maybe the most well-known and celebrated verse in all of Scripture, is the very next verse. Picture Jesus speaking to Nicodemus, there are no breaks. He says, “I want you to compare me to Numbers 21, for verse 16, for, He's making the connection now. God loved the world in this way, by giving His only Son. So, you see the relationship, the connection with Numbers 21 opens up for us the meaning of John 3.16.
What is Jesus’ teaching to Nicodemus? Just as God required the people in the wilderness to trust only in His plan of salvation and in nothing else, so Jesus says the only way to receive eternal life is through Me. You realize that as much as we celebrate John 3:16, it comes in the context of what is one of the most offensive doctrines of the gospel. We talk about the exclusivity of Christ. Christianity teaches there is no way to get to heaven except through Him. Whatever you believe, unless it's this, it's not true. That's what the gospel teaches. There's no way to eternal life but through Christ.
And Jesus is stressing to Nicodemus. He says, you don't know about heavenly things. And in truth, the reason that you don't know about heavenly things is because you haven't been there. The knowledge that Jesus is saying Nicodemus lacks truly is a relational knowledge. And He's saying, but God has extended grace. You haven't been to heaven, but someone has come down from there. The Son of man language is so important. He says, the Son of God became a Son of Man. He took on human flesh so that He could make a payment for your sin and there is no other way to be saved.
What I want to stress to you this morning is that the exclusive claims of the gospel are nothing to be embarrassed about. As Christians, we should not be ashamed that Jesus is the only way. The exclusivity of the gospel is part of the good news. We don't want another way to heaven. Truly, we don't want another salvation. Any other salvation that you could find would not be as good as the one that Jesus gives. I truly believe that if the Muslim, if the atheist, if the agnostic, if the unbeliever could see the riches of what it is that Christ is offering, they would no longer be offended that He says, “I am the only way.” If we could see the riches of what Christ gives to us, we would not be embarrassed that Jesus is the only way to salvation. If you are here this morning and you are not in a saving, redeeming, renewing relationship with Jesus Christ, I prayed this morning that you would know that.
That God in his grace would cause you to know that you are outside of this relationship. You have to realize how sick you are because of sin. The Israelites had snake bites if that were only the extent of our problem. Sin is so much worse than that, and there's no remedy except the one that Jesus gives. And if you're outside of that relationship with Jesus Christ, I pray that you would trust in the salvation that He alone gives, which is a very simple trust. Look and live. Look and live. Look on Jesus and believe that He is the Son of God who died to save sinners. Bring your confession of sin and say, I need salvation and Jesus Christ is the only way, the truth, and the life.
And understand that the remedy, the healing remedy that Jesus offers through his death on the cross is so much richer than we know. There is no other Savior who declares to sinners that your sins can be forgiven. You are looking for a Savior. You are looking for a Savior. And you may find something in this life that gives you some measure of comfort. There is no savior who like Jesus will say your sins are forgiven. There is no savior who can give to you eternal life.
Eternal life begins the second you trust in Christ. It isn't something that one day you inherit. Christian, you have eternal life right now. Eternal life is the life that has existed for eternity. That's what eternal life is. The life that has existed for eternity. What life is that? It's the life that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been enjoying for eternity. And so, what Jesus is offering here is the forgiveness of sins and being brought up into the life of the Godhead. Abundant, eternal, never-ending life. That is what Jesus gives.
And so I pray that you would recognize your need of a Savior and you would run towards Jesus and receive all that He gives. If you're a Christian, it all works together. The numbers narrative, Jesus has referenced it to it here. How is it that you can live a life where you're delighting in God's goodness, not grumbling against His specific providence towards you? The answer is you have to delight yourself in Jesus. Delight yourself in your Savior daily. And allow His glory, His sufficiency to flood your perspective of everything else. If you delight yourself in the Lord, everything else will fall into its proper place, and you will be someone who rejoices in God's perfect providence for your life, who delights themselves in all that He has granted to you. longing for the day when you will see Jesus face to face and we will spend eternity with Him. So may that be God's way with us today.
Would you pray with me now to close?
[Prayer] Father, we do praise You for Your perfect providence. You are wise, You are sovereign, and You are good to us. We praise You for the instruction that You give to us through the history of Your people Israel in the wilderness, all that it has to teach us. Father, we praise You that you sent Your Son in the same manner, in the same way to provide a very specific means of salvation. Help us to look and to live. I pray for any here who do not know Christ as their Savior. Father, give to them an awareness of their sin, an awareness of their desperate need for salvation. Cause them to look upon Christ and to live. Father, help us, the people of God, to keep rejoicing in our Savior above all things. May He be the centerpiece of our affections. And as we rejoice in the salvation that Christ alone gives, I pray that we would also rejoice in Your good, perfect providence in every area of our lives, trusting You because You have sent Your Son until that great and glorious day when He appears. We pray this in Jesus' precious name. Amen. [End]
