By B. Michael Bigg
When Israel was in the wilderness, after leaving Egypt, they grumbled.
God is patient, God is caring … but God’s patience is not without end (cf. Gen 6:3). Apart from the golden calf (Exodus 32) God did not directly judge Israel as a nation such that they died; rather God listened to the intercessions of Moses – acts of grace that God certainly did NOT have to perform.
After Israel’s rebellion and murmuring against God, following the bad report that there were giants in the land in Numbers 14, God condemned all the Israelites who grumbled (over the age of 20) to die in the wilderness. They would never set foot into God’s Promised Land. Their continuous, ongoing rebellion and sin cost them entry into the land they left Egypt for.
"Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. - Numbers 14:22-23 (NAU)
But being condemned to live and die in the wilderness was not enough to curb Israel’s grumblings and murmurings. In spite of judgement they continued to speak against God. For a final time Israel complained of the lack of food and water in Numbers 21.
Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. The people spoke against God and 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 miserable food." - Numbers 21:4-5
At the Mountain of the Lord, in Exodus 20, Israel feared God and retreated at the sight of the mountain’s rumbling and the lightning and thunder from God’s presence. But like little children on a long trip they started to complain, “It’s too hot! There’s nothing to eat! I’m thirsty! Are we there yet?” Graciously and mercifully God accommodated their cries, giving them what they desired. But it seems that God’s grace and forbearance was interpreted as a licence to talk back to God. The reverence and fear for God they had at the beginning was replaced with familiarity and contempt. Once too many times they complained and God finally said, “Enough”.
The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us." - Numbers 21:6-7a
Finally, at the prospect of imminent judgment and death Israel got the message and repented. Only when confronted with the consequence of their sin – did they change their minds: maybe murmuring against God was not such a great tactic? Maybe God truly is a God to be feared: a Holy God, a Sovereign LORD!
And Moses interceded for the people. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live." And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived. - Numbers 21:7b-9
Moses’ intercession for the people resulted in God providing a banner or symbol which the people could look to in order to be saved, rather than an elimination of the snakes (as had been requested). God did NOT remove the source of the people’s death; God did NOT remove the consequence for continued ongoing sin, murmuring and rebellion against Him – but He did graciously provide a means of salvation.
The symbol of their salvation was bronze which is reminiscent of the bronze altar in the tabernacle upon which sin offerings were made. But unlike the bronze altar this bronze symbol required no active participation by the people, they did not have to perform any act or sacrifice – but a person did have to deliberately look to it as the source of God’s only salvation from a sure and certain death.
The symbol was specifically made into the shape of a serpent because it was serpents that were killing the people. The consequence of the people’s sin (their murmuring against God) was the judgement of God – that is death via the serpent’s bite. They had to deliberately look to the bronze serpent – God’s atoning symbol of salvation from the serpents – and trust God’s promise of salvation in order to live. They had a choice to die as a consequence of the serpent’s bite, or look to God’s salvation from the serpent’s bite to live. The choice was theirs.
It must be stressed that God did not get rid of the serpents and did not get rid of the bronze serpent. The judgement of the serpents remained should Israel (any Israelite) choose to again murmur against God, nevertheless God provided a means of salvation out of his own grace and mercy.
God So Loved…
John 3:16 is one of the most remembered and quoted of all Bible verses. But do people truly understand what this verse says? Here it is in the Greek then in English:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. - John 3:16.
If we take a close look at this verse we see that God “loved” (past tense) the world – not “loves” (present continuous tense). Many people probably read “For God so loves…” when it really says, “For God so loved...”. The word “loved” in the Greek is an aorist – which means past tense. And indeed this is how we should read it in this verse, especially in light of the word “so”. This does not mean that God does not continue to love.
The “so” in “For God so loved the world” in the Greek text of John 3:16 is the word “ou[twj” (hōutos). This is not a word meaning quantity, as if this verse is talking about the amount or degree of God’s love; this word means “in this way”, “in this manner”. Though we can vividly see the magnitude, degree and depth of God’s love in John 3:16 the point of John 3:16 is WHAT GOD DID – HOW HE EXPRESSED AND SHOWED HIS LOVE.
For God – in this way – loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
This verse proves how consistent God is and how unchanging His character is (in both Old and New Covenants). God is patient, God is gracious – but God is Sovereign, Righteous, Holy and He WILL judge sin.
Jesus Christ is God’s atoning sacrifice upon whom ALL must look in order to live. Jesus Christ is the gracious gift of God. Salvation is obtained only by deliberately looking to Jesus Christ – the only mediator between God and man – by whom man can choose not to die.
For Israel physical death came from the bite of serpents – and it was the bronze serpent (the symbol of that means of death), to which Israel had to look. Israel had to trust in God’s atoning salvation for it to be effective against the serpent’s bite. Interestingly, John, quoting Jesus, leads into 3:16 by referencing the incident in Numbers.
"No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. .... As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." - John 3:14-21
Everyone faces physical death – perhaps not by the bite of a snake, but we all know that death awaits us, sooner or later. Whether that physical death proves to be terminal (i.e. spiritual death in judgement) or it leads to eternal life (by the grace of God) is predicated on whether or not we deliberately look to God’s gracious atoning sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Not that dissimilar to the serpent in the wilderness (of Numbers 21), man will die because of his ongoing, prideful, rebellious sinful nature. But rather than looking to God’s gracious gift of a bronze serpent (which only brought an immediate reprieve from physical death), we must look to God’s gracious atoning sacrifice for SIN and eternal death – i.e. we look to Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. - 2 Corinthians 5:21
The cause of man’s spiritual death is sin – it is sin’s bite from which we all die – both physically and spiritually. But God has graciously provided, not a type – which Israel’s bronze serpent was a mere representation of – but the antitype, God’s real and true atoning sacrifice through which we can live – despite dying physically. But in order to do so we must deliberately look to THE Cross of Christ (which does not mean a picture or pendant representation of it). And just as the penalty of judgement remained for Israel in the wilderness, so the penalty of death for sin remains. But how great is the grace and mercy of God that He has provided (just like He did for Israel) a means by which we can be saved. There is nothing we can do, or need to do to obtain salvation apart from looking to the only mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ who indeed was “lifted up” (John 3:14; c.f. 1 Tim 2:5-6) in His Sacrifice, His Death, His Burial and His Resurrection.
We have a choice. We can refuse to look to God’s provision and staunchly go to our eternal deaths, or we can repent, turn to God, believe God, trust God and ... look and live?
When Satan tempts me to despairAnd tells me of the guilt within,Upward I look and see Him thereWho made an end of all my sin.Because the sinless Saviour diedMy sinful soul is counted free.For God the just is satisfiedTo look on Him and pardon me
from the hymn,Before the Throne of God AboveCharitie L. Bancroft (1841-1892)
B. MICHAEL BIGG, and his wife, Kathryn, came out of the Word-Faith movement. Michael has a concern for the preaching of the truth (or lack of it) in many of today's churches. He has a desire to assist in the education of the elect and reaching the lost.
