What Are You Looking At?
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Introduction:
Have you ever complained? If you have, then, “Yoo-hoo!” God wants to get your attention today!
So did the Israelites! They complained because of a lack of faith. They were living by sight, not by faith.
The people started having a big pity party. They invited everyone. And the pinata was going to be Moses, God’s representative.
Read Text: Numbers 21:4-9; “Yoo-hoo!” Get over yourself, and trust God.
God wants history and life to petitioned us by His love, His plan, and His invitation.
As we’ll see, this story is an early picture of the cross of our Savior.
Will you...
Proposition: Look to God.
Proposition: Look to God.
1. Looks Can Sway.
1. Looks Can Sway.
The Israelites were prone to changing the way they looked at things. Convenience and popular opinion prevailed.
ILL: A popular way to express this is by asking someone if they see a cup “half full” or “half empty.” One is a positive view, the other is a negative view.
When we focus on the wrong things, it causes us to do the wrong things.
By the way, it does not need to be what we look at that is wrong but how we process what we look at causes us to do good things or evil things.
What was going on in the story? The Israelites were nearing the end of their forty-year journey. God told them only Joshua and Caleb would enter the Promised Land. Everyone had died. In Chapter 20, Aaron, Moses’ older brother, the High Priest, passed his leadership to his son, Eleazar, and died on Mount Hor. The people were sad that Aaron died, but they also knew God’s plan was being fulfilled.
Then, the first part of Numbers 21 shows that Israel had to take the long way around because the King of Edom would not allow them to pass through his land.
ILL: Ever had to take a detour? Ask the Osbornes about stretching a few hour trip into twelve! I am sure they didn’t complain, but if I was driving, and my family was in the car we would be doing a little moaning.
Remember, this was the wilderness wandering! God was personally leading them with a pillar of cloud and fire! God could have led them through the Land of Edom because technically the Edom’s land is God’s land, but even God respected Edom’s borders, so He led them around instead of taking a direct route. (There are lessons here I shall refrain from stating.)
As weary as this journey was, God was making sure none of the Israelites went hungry, nobody was thirsty, and all their shoes literally did not wear out! God also provided leaders to help with the day-to-day issues of the people.
This is not how the Israelites saw things. What did they do? They spoke out against God, against God’s leaders, and against God’s sustenance. They said, “We don’t like your daily bread.”
On what did they focus? They all saw the same thing with their eyes, but their hearts complained. (This was one of at least 7 recorded times they complained!)
I think there’s a lesson here by reminding us about Jesus’ example prayer. He said to pray, “Give us day by day our daily bread” (Luke 11:3). We often look at this in light of God’s provisions, but as we see that God provides, this also means that our prayers should give us a right attitude about our provisions.
God set out to get their focus right again. How? He sent judgment to the nation of complainers with snakes with burning bites.
Can you imagine a nation of people with poisonous snakes flooding their camp?! Snakes were everywhere!
ILL: A year before we had taken our church mission trip to New Mexico, my family and I had gone to scope it out on one of our vacations. We like hiking, but we went out on a journey at a place called Church Rock. Needless to say, there was nothing spiritual happening! To this day, it is the single-most worst day when my wife has ever gotten angry at me. In NM, it is not unusual to see signs warning about rattlesnakes, and this journey was going to be something like an Indiana Jones movie. Our boys were much younger, and the hiking trail got continually dangerous, AND as we went further it was less-well marked. Anyway, what made this journey more exciting was the exit. My sons and I hiked down the dry riverbed as the sun was setting, while my wife went back the main trail to the van. My sons and I must’ve come at just the right time. As we hiked, you could here faint rattles. At first it was in mono, and then in stereo, and soon in surround sound! At one point, we turned back thinking maybe we should go back, except the way we came was now being guarded by curious rattlesnakes. To ward us off, they rattled and coiled and struck repeatedly! Needless to say, we escaped, but it reminded me I don’t like snakes!
Their look at the situation, and why God brought the fiery serpents, determined two results based on God’s Word. What are they?
2. Looks Can Kill.
2. Looks Can Kill.
ILL: I am sure you’ve heard the expression, “If looks could kill.” Some of the people probably made a look like this when Moses announced God’s remedy, the cure to the snakebites!
They people had just gotten done complaining about God and God’s servants, but it was God and God’s servants who had the cure.
It took a lot of humility for people to set aside their pride to admit they were wrong and that God and God’s servants were actually right.
If people chose not to go and look at Moses’ rod, then they would die.
ILL: You can imagine a father, a mother, a son, a daughter who had sinned against God and had been bit by a fiery serpent, and their family and friends quickly encouraged them. “Go look at the brass serpent Moses put up!”
How many people died because they were too stubborn, too proud!
3. Looks Can Heal.
3. Looks Can Heal.
Given the circumstances, the people had a choice. Without God’s Word being communicated to them by Moses, the people would not have known they had a choice.
They were enduring excruciating, painful deaths, but God said there was a cure.
The cure was simple: Look and live.
Doesn’t that sound so foolish to heal the death sentence they had been given? We do not know how long it took for them to die after they were bitten, but everyone received word about how they could be healed.
It was a prepared look.
They needed to look at something specific, and they had not prepared the object of their focus. The people could not make their own snake and place it on a pole. There was only one.
It was a personal look. Nobody else could look for them.
It was a prioritized look. If they decided to look later, it may have been too late!
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
As I conclude, I want to tell you why God had the people look at a snake on a pole, and then I want to tell you a final testimony of a life changed by simply looking to God.
First, it was not a snake on a pole that saved—it was their faith to trust that a look would heal them.
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
I want you to know the power of God. In order to do that, you’re going to have to surrender your pride and look at things God’s way instead of your own. It’s our thinking as we’ve seen that will kill us—and it’s not just for this life but for eternity.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, But the end thereof are the ways of death.
Have you ever wondered what happened later after the story in Numbers happened? It’s like what Paul Harvey would say, “And that’s the rest of the story.”
We don’t know exactly what was done with this brass serpent on a pole, but someone kept it. It appears 700 years later when Hezekiah sought to bring revival to the people of Judah.
He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.
The people had taken the brass snake, the image, and they were worshipping it.
Folks, no image or representation of God or His works is able to save us. Wearing a cross or praying to a statue of Jesus on a cross is not going to save you. That is idolatry and is forbidden by the first of the 10 Commandments.
So we know the image could not save—it was the act of faith that saved. Here’s where we learn what the image means.
We’re familiar with John 3:16, “For God so loved the world...” What was going on in John 3:16? Nicodemus was a Pharisee seeking to know Who Jesus. In His explanation, note...
And 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 serpent Moses lifted up was merely a prophetic symbol of Another Who would be lifted up on a wooden pole to provide spiritual healing.
You say, “Jesus is no snake.” You’re right. Jesus took our place. The serpent in the Garden of Eden was Satan, who tempted Adam and Eve to sin. Jesus was sinless but became sin for us, bearing the punishment of our sin on the cross.
For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
The timing of this miracle of salvation was at the end of the wilderness wanderings. Nearly 40 years prior, God had Moses cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and God’s snake consumed the snakes of Pharaoh’s priests. That miracle reminded the Israelites and Pharaoh that God is the only God.
Like the Israelites, we have several of the same conditions warranting us to take the right look.
We have Situations we’re facing in life. We can choose to look at them positively or negatively—and we can even try to ignore them.
We have God’s Word. God made promises to the Israelites like He does to us.
In God’s grace, we have additional circumstances that God brings about to get our attention, so we will snap out of our daze and wake up to reality—the way He intends for us to see things.
We have the opportunity to choose, and those choices have destructive or positive results.
By the way, Christian, it is important to see that we have been entrusted with the Truth. We must eagerly be sharing the soul-healing power of the Gospel with others before the bite of sin is theirs in a fiery Hell.
God is speaking. Are you listening? Will you look to Him?
ILL: Testimony of Charles Spurgeon. He was a lad who had known about God but had not looked to God for salvation. Then, one day, it snowed on Sunday morning, and due to the weather he turned into a little primitive Methodist church. He was wrestling with how he might know God, so he overlooked the peoples’ loud singing that would make one’s head hurt! Spurgeon’s burdened heart also overlooked the man who filled the pulpit. A man Spurgeon described as uninstructed and stupid. The preacher that day was a thin man, perhaps a shoemaker or tailor, filling the pulpit for the pastor who had not showed up for the service. With all that was going wrong in the service, the preacher stayed close to his text because he had nothing else to say. That text was from Isaiah 45:22--”Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Spurgeon found hope in the broken speech of the preacher that day. | “The preacher began thus: “This is a very simple text indeed. It says ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It aint liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to College to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look. | “But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Ay!” he said in broad Essex, “many on ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some say look to God the Father. No, look to Him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some on ye say ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ ” | Then the good man followed up his text in this way: “Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me, I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! look unto Me!” | When he had . . . . managed to spin out about ten minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. | Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, “And you will always be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.” Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!” | I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought . . . . I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, “Look!” what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. THERE AND THEN THE CLOUD WAS GONE, THE DARKNESS HAD ROLLED AWAY, AND THAT MOMENT I SAW THE SUN; AND I COULD HAVE RISEN IN THAT INSTANT, AND SUNG WITH THE MOST ENTHUSIASTIC OF THEM of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me this before, “Trust Christ, and you shall be saved.” . . . . Between half-past ten o’clock, when I entered that chapel, and half-past twelve o’clock, when I was back again at home, what a change had taken place in me! Simply by looking to Jesus I had been delivered from despair...” (Taken from Iain Murray, ed., The Early Years (London: Banner of Truth, 1962), p. 87-90)