The Brazen Serpent

John iii. 14, 15. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

The Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians, “Neither let us tempt Christ; as some of them tempted him in the wilderness, and were destroyed of serpents.” The condition of the children of Israel, at the time to which the Apostle here refers, was in many respects greatly affecting. They were now in the thirty-ninth year of their pilgrimage, and after many wanderings, were once more in the ordinary course of the caravans through the Arabian desert to the valleys of Palestine. Though greatly diversified by miracles of mercy and of judgment, it had been a tedious and monotonous journey; and “the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.” It had been circuitous and intricate; and it lay through an enemy’s land. They had taken many false steps, and had incurred the displeasure of God. There had been many defections; and the mass of those who had come to years of manhood when they left Egypt, had died in the wilderness. Miriam and Aaron were dead, and Moses, too, their great leader, was shortly to be removed from them, to go up to Mount Nebo and die.

Yet the promise was sure that they should be put in possession of the long wished-for inheritance. And they were now in high expectation of soon coming to the close of their tedious march. But in this their expectations were disappointed. Moses had just sent a request to the King of Edom to grant them an unmolested passage through his land; and to this request he had received not only an uncourteous, but a threatening refusal. So that the children of Israel were obliged to leave the mountains of Idumea, go round the territory of Edom, and pursue their journey once more by the way of the Red Sea.

This was a trial too great for them to submit to; they could not bear to see their hopes thus suddenly cut off, and again to be under the necessity of encountering the solitude, and drought, and privations of the Desert. They were depressed and disheartened; they murmured and rebelled. “They spake against God and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread — this manna which is given to us.”

A poor return was this for all their experience of God’s care and nurture! God was angry with them, and in the midst of their guilty and tumultuous complaints, sent the fiery messengers of his indignation among them to silence their ingratitude and seditious murmurings. “The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and much people of Israel died.”

Yet “in wrath did God remember mercy.” Great as their provocations had been, there was a heaven-devised remedy. And the Lord said unto Moses, “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten when he looketh upon it shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”

This, very summarily told, is the story of “Moses’ lifting up the serpent in the wilderness.” It is needless to ask what it means; for every man who reads the Bible knows. It was a prefiguration of Christ, the Great Healer, who was lifted up on the cross. Though a mere serpent of brass, it was emblematical of something more. “For, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

And now what are the great and instructive lessons which this interesting piece of history teaches us? Every man of reflection must see that it is fraught with salutary counsel. We remark from it,

I. In the first place, that the sins of men expose them to the wrath of God.

Like the children of Israel in their journey through the wilderness, men have rebelled against God in their short journey through this wilderness world. Like the sins of Israel, their sin is “written with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond.” Hatred of God and disobedience of his law; his goodness trampled on, and his mercy rejected; his patience abused, his expostulations disregarded; all indicate a state of mind that is alienated from the Holy One of Israel; a heart that is hardened in sin and desperately wicked. There may be those who are so careless, as to give no heed to such

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representations of human wickedness; and there may be those who are so impious and profane, as to deride them. But this does not alter their solemn truth. Many there are who depreciate the aggravation, and more who forget the number of their transgressions; but this neither diminishes the turpitude, nor blots out the existence of their forgotten wickedness. Not a few are the ways which the God of heaven adopts, to remind us of our sin and admonish us of its exceeding sinfulness; yet do the mass of men resist those admonitions, and pursue their sinful courses with little short of absolute infatuation, and as though “madness were in their hearts.” Ample and melancholy is the proof of human wickedness, every day presented to our eyes, and in whatever direction we look. Practical atheism and speculative infidelity, profligacy and pleasure, contempt of God’s word and ordinances, profanity and Sabbath-breaking, fraud and falsehood, intemperance and licentiousness, are sins over which both the sea and the land mourn.

It were the deepest stupidity to allow ourselves to believe that the Lord God will suffer the sins of men to go unpunished. His nature is holy, his law is holy, and his word, faithful and true, everywhere assures us that he “will by no means clear the guilty.” There are not wanting means and instruments of his vengeance, when the hour is come to punish a guilty man, or visit their iniquity upon a guilty people. Sometimes the earth opens and swallows them up; sometimes fire from heaven comes down and destroys them; sometimes the stormy wind ingulfs them in the deep waters. Sometimes war desolates them, and they become the prey of the ferocious and relentless passions of men. Sometimes they breathe a poisoned atmosphere, and die of pestilence and plague. Sometimes the seasons are withered, the earth refuses to yield her fruits, and they perish by famine. Sometimes God bears long with them, and delays to strike the blow, and lets it fall the heavier at the last, and sinks them into the pit of eternal despair.

Very often “wicked men do not live out half their days.” God curses them as he did the inhabitants of Canaan, and exterminates them from the earth. In the brief narrative which is given of the rebellious Israelites, and to which there is a reference in the text, God teaches us a lesson we ought never to forget. It was a fearful hour to this wicked people, when he commissioned that army of deadly serpents noiselessly to shoot along the earth, everywhere instilling their burning venom into these blasphemers against the God of Israel. It was a scene of universal confusion and misery. Here were the exclamations of terror, and there the more mournful cries of grief and despair. Some were in the agonies of a dreadful death; while others had already fallen victims to their scorching anguish, and were dead.

What a lesson is this for us! It is but the picture of that more scorching indignation which we all deserve for our sins, and like the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, “set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” Review your own life, and ask yourselves if there is nothing in your melancholy history which resembles the history of these Israelites, and whether you do not deserve the final destruction which was inflicted on them? The Lord God, long-suffering and gracious, may not now pour out

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upon you the fury of his anger; but there is a storm of wrath thicker than ever lowered over, the affrighted ocean. There is no folly like that which affects to despise the divine threatenings. God does not trifle with us, and he will not permit us to trifle with him. He would fain reclaim men from their guilty indifference, because he is loth to make them the monuments of his wrath. He is in earnest when he threatens, and he is in earnest when he tries the arguments of mercy. And these form,

II. The second topic of instruction suggested by the text, and imhodied in that significant emblem of the crucified Saviour, which Moses lifted up in the wilderness.

The Israelites perished in great numbers for their foolish and wicked revolt. Stung by the fiery serpents, they had all been inevitably lost, but for the brazen serpent which Moses lifted up on the top of one of the standards of Israel in the midst of the camp. All human remedies were powerless. In all the circles of friendship, in all the skill of man, in all the kingdom of nature, there were no efforts, no means, no counsels that could save them. There was but this one remedy — the serpent which Moses lifted up.

So there is but this one remedy for men, stung by the fiery darts of the Old Serpent, and destroyed by that spirit “which worketh in the children of disobedience.” All are inevitably lost, without Christ. “There is no other name given under heaven among men, whereby they must be saved.” To the eye of human reason, there was nothing in the serpent of brass that could encourage the hopes of the dying Israelites. Who would have thought that it possessed such healing virtue? Many a proud Israelite probably reasoned thus with himself, and said, “How can this senseless piece of metal effect such a wonderful cure?” And just so do men reason about the cross of Christ. It is “a stumbling block to the Jew, and to the Greek foolishness.” It does not commend itself to the reasoning pride, and to the depraved and self-sufficient heart of man. The despised Son of Mary, nailed to the tree on Golgotha, how is he to justify, and regenerate, and save sinners to the remotest bounds of earth and sea, and to the remotest ages of time? “He hath neither form, nor comeliness, that we should desire him; we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not.”

Yet is this God’s method of mercy, as truly as was the serpent in the wilderness the appointed remedy for the otherwised ruined Israelites. Men may scoff at it, and say it has no saving virtue; but the God of heaven has imparted to it such efficacy, that through this crucified Saviour his own mercy, his rich and abounding mercy, his mercy to pardon and save the chief of sinners, may, consistently both with the divine attributes and the divine government, be, and is freely communicated to all who will stoop to receive it.

The efficacy of the death of Christ depends upon a few intelligible principles distinctly revealed in the Scriptures. He who was lifted up on the cross of Calvary was no sinner; yet was he lifted up as a sinner, under the resemhlance of a sinner, and in the place, the room and stead of sinners. He who “knew no sin was made sin /or ?^5;” and though not himself a transgressor, he “was numbered with the transgressors, and bare the sin of many.” His death was appointed by God as a satisfaction to his justice, instead of the sinner’s death; and is accepted as such a satisfaction. It was the death of no mere creature, but of God’s incarnate Son, his second self, his own Son, the “Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.” He was the Great High Priest who offered up himself to God for us; who gave up himself to do and to suffer all that the law and justice of God required for the expiation of human sin; thus bringing pardon to all who believed in him; giving them peace, healing the guilt-stung conscience, and “purging it from dead works to serve the living God.”

There is one fact of importance in relation to the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, which illustrates the all-sufficiency and fulness of Christ’s redemption. It was lifted up; it was raised aloft, so that all Israel could look at it; and so high and so brilliant was it, that the most distant in that vast company of more than two millions of people, might easily see it from the remotest limits of the camp. Children could see it, and nursings infants writhing in agony in their mothers’ arms, might be held up to look upon it and live. So is it with him who was lifted up on the cross: it was that ‘^ whosoever hcliQ,Y(di in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The language of that mighty sufferer is, “Look unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.” There is no poor sinner who has not a divine warrant to look to Christ for salvation. He is a “propitiation for the sins of the world.” He is offered to all; “whosoever will may come;” nor is there a sinner on the broad earth, or broader sea, who hears this testimony, but may believe it and embrace it for his own soul, and have all the relief, the peace, the joy of this great salvation. One and all of you, my hearers, may have this salvation; and it is because you do not choose to take it, if it do not indeed belong to you.

And this thought leads us,

III. To the third and last lesson which the text inculcates, which is, that we become partakers of this great remedy for human sin and woe, by personally receiving it.

Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, that every one who looked upon it might live. Bring before your minds the camp of Israel, when Moses announced to them the answer of God to his prayer that he would heal the people. Set the scene before you, as he lifted up on the staff of one of the highest standards, the token of deliverance which God had ordained, and caused to be proclaimed throughout all these tribes. Whoso look-ETH ON IT SHALL LIVE! There the signal stands lifted up in the air above all their tents; while everywhere there goes forth from it a noiseless but reviving power. No matter what the varieties of the disease, or the intensity of the poison, or the stage of its progress; whosoever looked recovered. Woe to the unhappy Israelite who neglected the remedy! But happy, — happy the man, who, ever so covered with wounds, and ever so deeply scarred, turned his eyes toward the divinely-appointed signal!

Such is the meaning of the language, the Son of Man was “lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The remedy is yours in offer even while it is rejected; but it is not yours in possession until you have accepted it. How can it be? How can it be if it is treated as a worth-THE BRAZEN SERPENT. jy

less thing, and trampled under your feet?” The serpent in the wilderness was but a conditional provision for the whole camp of Israel; the condition was that they should look upon it; and the death of Christ is a conditional provision for this whole world of sinners; and the condition is, that they believe in it.

The look of the perishing Israelite was but the look of the eye. Yet was it one to which he was impelled by a sense of his sufferings, and which he had no desire to withhold. He believed in the testimony of God, that looking he should live. It would seem that this whole people came running to Moses, crying, “We have sinned; for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee. Pray unto the Lord that he may take away the serpents from us!” God gives the sinner relief when he feels the burden of his sins, and thus looks to Jesus. Men never truly sue for mercy, without an ingenuous confession of guilt. No unhumbled mind ever truly looks to Christ, or has a part in the great remedy he has provided. We shall find healing and relief from the venomous disease, the burning poison of sin, only as we thus feel its effects, pray to be delivered from its power, and lay hold of that deliverance by faith. With the same mingled emotions of lamentation and hope with which the supplicating Israelite looked to the brazen serpent, and with more than their relentings, ought we to look to him who was lifted up on the cross. Delightful is that look of faith, delightful is that relief! What a memorable hour is that when the soul looks to Jesus, and feels the plague of sin stayed, the sources of death drying up withing him! It is not able to repress its joy, but gives glory to God.

O fellow-sinners, look and live! Do not despise so great salvation. As the eyes of thousands turned to that one banner in Israel, that had upon it the brazen serpent, so let your eyes be turned toward Christ. God your Saviour is almighty, and he invites you to look and live. Despair of help except from him. Nothing is impossible with God. There is yet time for you to look and live, and to give glory to him. From the tents of Judah to the outermost ranks of Asher and Naphtali, the voice is still heard, Look and live. There stands the cross; come to it with all your sins and your sorrows, and it shall never be that you perish.

I would not leave you to-day, without leading you to that Saviour. Will you not look up to that mighty Deliverer, and accept that signal deliverance which is ordained in heaven? Will you not “count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ?” O ye who still neglect him! ye have not comprehended the height and depth of his love. You have not appreciated the glad tidings of his great salvation. Aged, weather-beaten sailor, look to that cross. Youthful sailor, look to that cross. You may not now believe that you are bitten by the poisonous tooth of sin. But if you go not to that cross, and cast not yourselves upon that Saviour, and find healing in his atoning blood, the poison will rage and the flame will burn that never can be quenched.

I sum up the thoughts presented in this discourse in the language of a man, who was once a sailor, like yourselves, and who afterwards lived and died one of the most eminent ministers of Christ the world has known.

“As the serpent raised by Moses,

Heal’d the burning serpent’s bite;
Jesus thus himself discloses
To the wounded sinner’s sight.

“Hear his gracious invitation:
* I have life and peace to give;
I have wrought out full salvation,
Sinner, look to me and live.

“* You had been forever wretched,
Had not I espoused your part;
Now behold my arms outstretched

To receive you to my heart.

“‘Well may shame, and joy, and wonder,
All your inward passions move;
I could crush you with my thunder,
But I speak to you in love.’

“Dearest Saviour! we adore thee
For thy precious life and death;
Melt each stubborn heart before thee,
Give us all the eye of faith.”

“Glory to God in the highest; peace on earth, and good will to men!” Amen!