Untitled Sermon (21)
Introduction
Jesus Had to be Lifted
As the lifting up of the snake in the desert was God’s provision for salvation from physical death for rebellious Israelites, so too the lifting up of the Son of Man (his crucifixion) will be God’s provision for salvation from eternal death for people from all nations, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. The Israelites bitten by venomous snakes had to believe in God’s provision and look to the snake to live. Now God has provided salvation from the consequences of sin for all peoples by the death of his Son, and those who put their faith in Jesus will have eternal life.
Jesus Has to Be Looked Upon
A. Christ had to die (vv. 14–17).
Christ again refers Nicodemus to the OT, this time Num. 21, the account of the brazen serpent. The serpents were biting the Jews and killing them, and the strange solution to the problem was found when Moses made a serpent of brass! Looking to the serpent in faith brought healing. In like manner, Christ was made sin for us, for it was sin that was killing us. As we look to Christ by faith, we are saved. Brass symbolizes judgment, and Christ experienced our judgment when He was lifted up on the cross. Christ had to die before men could be born again; His death brings life. What a paradox!
B. Sinners have to believe (vv. 18–21).
Faith in Christ is the only means of salvation. God’s command to Moses in Num. 21 was not that he kill the snakes, make a salve for the wounds, or try to protect the Jews from being bitten. It was that he lift up the brazen serpent and tell men to look by faith. Not to look meant condemnation; faith meant salvation. John here goes back to 1:4–13, the symbolism of light and life, darkness and death. Sinners not only live in darkness, but they love the darkness, and refuse to come to the light where their sins will be exposed and can be forgiven.
A. Christ had to die (vv. 14–17).
Christ again refers Nicodemus to the OT, this time Num. 21, the account of the brazen serpent. The serpents were biting the Jews and killing them, and the strange solution to the problem was found when Moses made a serpent of brass! Looking to the serpent in faith brought healing. In like manner, Christ was made sin for us, for it was sin that was killing us. As we look to Christ by faith, we are saved. Brass symbolizes judgment, and Christ experienced our judgment when He was lifted up on the cross. Christ had to die before men could be born again; His death brings life. What a paradox!
B. Sinners have to believe (vv. 18–21).
Faith in Christ is the only means of salvation. God’s command to Moses in Num. 21 was not that he kill the snakes, make a salve for the wounds, or try to protect the Jews from being bitten. It was that he lift up the brazen serpent and tell men to look by faith. Not to look meant condemnation; faith meant salvation. John here goes back to 1:4–13, the symbolism of light and life, darkness and death. Sinners not only live in darkness, but they love the darkness, and refuse to come to the light where their sins will be exposed and can be forgiven.
Moses’ serpent of bronze, if looked upon with trust in God, preserved the Israelites from death (cf. Num. 21:9). The exalted Jesus, looked on believingly, gives the life of the final eon (“eternal life”) to those who believe
The venom of the fiery serpents, shooting through the veins of the rebellious Israelites, was spreading death through the camp—lively emblem of the perishing condition of men by reason of sin. In both cases the remedy was divinely provided. In both the way of cure strikingly resembled that of the disease. Stung by serpents, by a serpent they are healed. By “fiery serpents” bitten—serpents, probably, with skin spotted fiery red [KURTZ]—the instrument of cure is a serpent of brass or copper, having at a distance the same appearance. So in redemption, as by man came death, by Man also comes life—Man, too, “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Ro 8:3), differing in nothing outward and apparent from those who, pervaded by the poison of the serpent, were ready to perish. But as the uplifted serpent had none of the venom of which the serpent-bitten people were dying, so while the whole human family were perishing of the deadly wound inflicted on it by the old serpent, “the Second Man,” who arose over humanity with healing in His wings, was without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. In both cases the remedy is conspicuously displayed; in the one case on a pole, in the other on the cross, to
Closing
In both cases it is by directing the eye to the uplifted Remedy that the cure is effected; in the one case the bodily eye, in the other the gaze of the soul by “believing in Him,” as in that glorious ancient proclamation—“Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth,” &c. (Is 45:22). Both methods are stumbling to human reason. What, to any thinking Israelite, could seem more unlikely than that a deadly poison should be dried up in his body by simply looking on a reptile of brass? Such a stumbling-block to the Jews and to the Greeks foolishness was faith in the crucified Nazarene as a way of deliverance from eternal perdition. Yet was the warrant in both cases to expect a cure equally rational and well grounded. As the serpent was God’s ordinance for the cure of every bitten Israelite, so is Christ for the salvation of every perishing sinner—the one however a purely arbitrary ordinance, the other divinely adapted to man’s complicated maladies. In both cases the efficacy is the same. As one simple look at the serpent, however distant and however weak, brought an instantaneous cure, even so, real faith in the Lord Jesus, however tremulous, however distant—be it but real faith—brings certain and instant healing to the perishing soul. In a word, the consequences of disobedience are the same in both. Doubtless many bitten Israelites, galling as their case was, would reason rather than obey, would speculate on the absurdity of expecting the bite of a living serpent to be cured by looking at a piece of dead metal in the shape of one—speculate thus till they died.