Our Lord said, “The son of man must be lifted up.” So, what did He mean by that?
- He meant that true life could only come out of death.
- He meant that for a new creation to begin, the old creation must be destroyed.
- The principle again is that the cross must come before the crown.
- The people of the time wanted the Messiah to be elevated to the throne of David. But before this, He must be lifted up upon the cross and put to shame.
In Numbers 21, Israel was murmuring against the Lord – and against Moses, the man of God – and the Lord sent fiery serpents.
These fiery serpents bit the people so that some of the people died and many others were wounded from the poisonous bites of the literal serpents; the poison of the fiery serpents’ bites affected the entire physical systems of its victims.
The Jews who were bitten by the fiery serpents were told to look at the brazen serpent “in faith” and they would be healed. In that great crowd of bitten Israelites, there were some with young eyes and some with old eyes that looked upon the serpent. This all was a foreshadowing of our Lord.
In Genesis 3:15, the serpent’s seed is said to be unregenerate sinners, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Deuteronomy 21:23).
Why didn’t Moses use one of the actual serpents and spike a fiery serpent upon the pole?
Doing so would have pictured God’s judgment on the sinner himself. And worse still, it would have misrepresented our sinless substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 7:26, “For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens.”
This correlates with Romans 8:3, “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and (as an offering) for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.”
- The brazen serpent foreshadows Christ only, as He was lifted up on the cross.
- The serpent was a reminder and emblem of the curse.
- It was through the agency of that old serpent, the devil, that our first parents were seduced and brought under the curse of a holy God.
- And on the cross, the holy one of God was made a curse for us.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Galatians 3:13).
In the Scriptures, brass symbolizes divine judgment. The brazen altar illustrates this truth, for on it the sacrificial animals were slain.
- In Revelation 1, where Christ is seen as judge inspecting the seven churches, we are told that His feet were like fine brass and His feet were like burnished bronze.
- In John 3:14 the serpent spoke of the curse, which sin produced, and the brass told of God’s judgment falling on the One made sin for us.
- Brass is harder than iron, or silver, or gold, and therefore it told of our Lord’s mighty strength. He was able to endure the awful judgments which fell upon Him. A mere creature (as sacrifice), though sinless, would have been utterly consumed.
From what has been said so far, it is evident that when God told Moses to make a serpent of brass, and to place it on a pole and told the Jews to look upon it and they should live, that He was preaching to them the Gospel of His grace.
- They were not told to manufacture some ointment as the means of healing their wounds.
- They were not told to minister to others who were wounded nor help each other out.
- They were not told to fight the serpents because fighting against the serpents, or fighting against sin or the devil, will not solve anything.
- They were not told to make an offering to the serpent on the pole because grace ceases to be grace if any price is paid by unregenerate man.
- They were told not to look at Moses, the man of God.
- They had been looking to Moses but God commanded them to look at the brazen serpent because Moses was the lawgiver, and many today look to him as representing the Law for salvation and spirituality.
- They were not told to look at their wounds because to be occupied with self is to be occupied with that which God has condemned.
- Moses was commanded by God to make a serpent of brass because it was something the Lord provided.
- Moses was commanded to place this brazen serpent upon a pole. Therefore, the divine remedy was publicly exhibited so that all Israel might look and be healed.
- The Lord’s promise in Numbers 21:8 was that “It shall come to pass that everyone that is bitten, when he looks upon it shall live” because man was to look away from himself to the divinely appointed object of faith.
- The brazen serpent was lifted up so that those who were too weak to crawl up to the pole itself simply could look and be healed.
- No matter how many times one may have been bitten, no matter how far the poison had advanced, if one looked, one could be healed. Anyone could look and anyone could he healed.
Genesis 3:6 says, “When the woman saw (looked upon) that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Today, the sinner is saved by another look. Isaiah 45:22, “Look unto me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other.”
Hebrews 12:2, “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (the cross before the crown).
Philippians 3:20, “For our citizenship is in Heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”