PM Numbers 21:4-9 & John 3:1-17 The Bronze Serpent

[0:00] Book of Numbers, that's on page 154 of the Pew Bible, the Book of Numbers and chapter 21. Chapter 21 of the Book of Numbers and we'll start reading verse 4 to verse 9.

[0:30] Verse 4 of chapter 21. From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea to go round the land of Edom.

[0:41] And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?

[0:52] For there is no food and no water. And we loathe this worthless food. Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people. And they bit the people so that many people of Israel died.

[1:07] And the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he would take away the serpents from us.

[1:20] So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole. And everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.

[1:34] So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

[1:46] Amen. New Testament reading is John chapter 3. You'll find that on page 1070. Page 17070. In the Pew Bible.

[1:59] John chapter 3. We'll read from verses 1 to 17. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

[2:10] This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

[2:24] Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?

[2:39] Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

[2:53] That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.

[3:07] The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

[3:18] Nicodemus said to him, How can these things be? Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel? And yet you do not understand these things?

[3:30] Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?

[3:49] No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

[4:08] For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

[4:19] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. This is the word of the Lord.

[4:32] Amen. At both Numbers 21, but our text is found in John chapter 3, and at verse 14, where Jesus says, And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

[5:14] Just begin by asking a question about a word, a word we probably all know. Solidarity. Is it a good thing?

[5:26] Someone may say, well, tell me what you mean by solidarity, and I'll tell you. Well, if we think of solidarity as expressing identification or support of a group or the people in it.

[5:40] Expressing identification with a group or expressing support of a group and the people in it. So that's what solidarity is. And somebody may say, well, that all depends whether solidarity is a good thing or not depends on who the people are and what kind of identification that takes.

[6:04] Well, in Numbers 21, verses 4 to 9, we read of a very curious incident involving the Lord sending venomous snakes among the Israelites so that many of them died.

[6:21] You may be saying, well, why was that then? If someone has not heard this story before say, that's a terrible thing to do. Well, once we've been to look at it, it won't seem so surprising.

[6:32] One thing is very clear that the Israelites were always very complaining. Always very given to complaining. And it was not just any mild complaining either.

[6:47] It was a very sinful complaining of the Lord. But as we'll see from the story following repentance and confession of sin, the Lord commanded a way for them to be healed from the illness which the snake bites brought by the looking at a bronze effigy of a snake.

[7:08] And that's the really weird thing. Why would the Lord choose such a strange way to heal them? Could he not just simply have commanded them to eat something like he did with the poisonous waters that they encountered at Marah?

[7:26] Or could he not have just commanded and it would be so that they would all be healed and recovered? Why this putting, making a snake, it was probably, by the way, from copper.

[7:39] The word for copper and bronze in Hebrew is the same word. And it was most probably copper rather than the alloy bronze. Because copper is much more malleable and shapeable into the form that you want it to be.

[7:52] So, why would he command such a thing? It sounds positively weird to be quite honest. And yet, as we study this weird incident, we'll see it illustrates very eloquently some hard-hitting truths.

[8:07] Not just about the Israelites but about ourselves and about the human condition. But we'll also see how deeply God loves us.

[8:18] The two major points I wanted to think about which we find in this passage in Numbers 21. First of all, the solidarity which we humans have with our first father, Adam.

[8:32] And then, the second main point is the solidarity which Christ, as the second Adam, showed with us for our salvation. So, the solidarity, first of all, which we humans have with Adam, our first father.

[8:47] and then, the solidarity which Christ, as the second Adam, showed with us for our salvation. Let's look at that first point. The solidarity which we humans have with the first Adam.

[9:00] Now, as we look at this very strange incident, we should see, what we should see is that the Israelite response to the Lord and Moses did not appear out of nowhere. That this, that his response to them didn't appear out of nowhere either.

[9:14] There was a reason behind this. Think about this context here. The Israelites had travelled on their wilderness journey for nearly 40 years.

[9:26] Now, they are nearing the promised land and again, because they, they reached it 38 years before but were forbidden to enter because of unbelief. But now, they are travelling along from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea and they're going to go around the country area known as Edom.

[9:49] This was because if you read in the previous chapter, 20, you see that the Edomites had threatened to attack them if they attempted to go through their territory. So this meant taking a very long and frustrating detour.

[10:04] Some people might show a bit of sympathy with the Israelites for the frustrations they may have felt from that. But they grew very impatient and began to grumble yet again against the Lord and Moses.

[10:17] This was something they'd done persistently throughout their journey. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Such things as you'll see there in verse 5 that they, they read that they said to the Lord or to Moses for the Lord's hearing, why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?

[10:39] There's no bread, there's no water. Are we going to die especially to thirst and starve to death? They were thinking of the Lord's a mean old God who deprived his people of their basic needs.

[10:53] But no, he hadn't done such a thing because the Lord had provided them in that desert with water. The streams bursting out of the ground that we read about in chapter 20 for example.

[11:06] And he had consistently provided them with bread. The manna which had miraculously formed on the ground otherwise they would have starved as well as the flocks of quail that we read about in chapter 11 of Numbers.

[11:21] So he hadn't brought them up out of Egypt to die. He had provided for them. But the way they grumble about the food he provided them with he says, they said, we loathe this worthless food.

[11:34] The word there is a word which shows extreme contempt for what God had provided for them. This light bread, this worthless bread.

[11:47] In the eyes of the Israelites it wasn't good enough. God hadn't done things the way that they wanted. That was the point. If only he'd consulted them first then they would have told them how they would like things to be done.

[11:59] Maybe some artisan cornstarch gluten free bread or San Pellegrino sparkling water in 500 milliliter bottles. That would be the kind of thing that they would have chosen, no doubt.

[12:12] In short, what they were saying to the Lord was three things. We don't like what you provided for us so far. We want other things. We don't trust you to take care of us.

[12:26] These were the three things that were coming through what they were saying. Isn't it interesting that the way people react and respond to us can sometimes speak volumes? Many people don't even need to say what they think about us.

[12:41] They can just do it with a look, a gesture. These were the things they were saying. Now, pause for a moment. I want us to think, where have we heard that before, that kind of talk?

[12:54] We don't like what you provided for us so far. We want other things. We don't trust you to care for us. It sounds very familiar. We only need to go back to Genesis chapter 2, where the Lord commanded our first parents, when he said, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for the day you eat from it, you will surely die.

[13:19] So, fair warning. And there's no need for spoiler alerts on what happened in this one. We know what happened. They decided to eat from the forbidden tree and fell into sin.

[13:29] What they were saying to God that day was, we don't like what you provided for us so far. Being able to eat from every other tree isn't enough. We want other things.

[13:40] We want that forbidden tree that you've been keeping from us. And we don't trust you to care for us. This is what I like to call snake talk. This is the language of the serpent, which was put into the mouths and the minds of Eve and Adam.

[13:59] These have been the sentiments of Lucifer himself when he turned against God from heaven, desiring the very throne of God for himself. When he says, I don't like what you provided for me, this position of covering cherub or chief angel, I don't like that at all.

[14:17] I want more. Why is it that you get to be God and I don't? It's not fair. That's snake talk. And Adam and Eve learned this language from the serpent.

[14:32] It's basic human nature when faced with how we respond to the Lord. Now in Numbers 21 we see their descendants talking to God in the same way.

[14:46] Snake talk creates distrust and distrust leads to rebellion. This was the mother of all sins. To want to be their own God with full autonomy to judge what was good for them and what wasn't good for them.

[15:01] The Israelites were showing that not much had changed since our ancestors first turned away from the Lord in Eden. Prophet Isaiah mourned in these terms in chapter 59 of his prophecy our sins which are many testify against us.

[15:19] Our offences are ever with us and we acknowledge our iniquities. Rebellion and treachery against the Lord turning our backs on our God. Through this kind of snake talk the Israelites were showing their solidarity with their first ancestors in their trust of the serpent over God.

[15:39] And this was the reason the Lord decided to make the point to them in a very eloquent way. He sent among them not scorpions, not wild beasts, but venomous snakes.

[15:52] This was a symbolic choice that the Lord made. Very deliberate choice. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died. The venom coursing through their veins in a fiery inflammation because they disbelieved that's what the fieriness symbolized, the feeling of fire as it went through their veins, was intended to awaken them to the nature of what sin really is.

[16:17] Total rebellion against God and to show them how the serpent had deceived them into a course that undermined their trust in God and which fueled a rebellious, sinful nature and led to death.

[16:32] And as they lay there on the ground dying because of the venom, yet they had time to reflect on the consequences of their rebellion.

[16:44] Isn't that interesting that even though sinners may have this condition coursing through our veins, the venom of sin, yet God gives us time to reflect.

[16:59] And just like at the beginning, before the flood, the Lord said, yet man's days shall be 120 years. God said that was 120 years from that point till the flood to give them a chance to reflect and repent.

[17:16] Well, you may say, well, all this is very interesting, Colin, but it's not very much to do with my life. All this talk about venomous snakes is irrelevant to me. How does this relate to my life?

[17:28] Well, let me tell you about Susie. I hope there's nobody in here called Susie in case they feel I'm talking to her. It's just a random name. Susie was frustrated. She'd been looking forward to reaching a point in her life where she could relax a bit financially.

[17:45] She and Tom had spent the last 20 years struggling to fulfil all their financial commitments. Tom had just got a raise in salary and with her own income Susie felt that at last they were beginning to see daylight and to a more comfortable existence.

[18:02] And then came COVID and lockdown. Tom's company froze his salary. Susie was told that she could be among those affected by redundancies as her bosses streamlined, as they called it, the company's operation.

[18:19] Susie was more than frustrated. Susie was angry. It seemed futile to be angry at a virus, so she was then angry at the world which had let the virus spread to Scotland.

[18:34] But eventually her anger and frustrations were vented at one person, God. Why had he allowed this to happen? This wasn't fair. She had tried to live like a Christian since she was 18 and this is what she got for it.

[18:50] But here's the thing. Susie's negative attitude towards God hadn't just sprouted overnight. In the wake of a virus, down through the years, she had been progressively feeding her negative feelings towards God.

[19:06] It was okay to sing brightly in church when all was well, but whenever her hopes and plans were thwarted, she felt frustrated and impatient with God. And now she'd reached the tipping point.

[19:20] Susie was in a danger zone with regard to her faith. The essence of saving faith is trust. In the Bible, in the New Testament, the word for faith and the word for trust are the same word.

[19:33] If you don't have trust, you don't have faith. So she was now saying to God, I don't like what you provided for us so far.

[19:44] things haven't gone the way I hoped they would. I want other things. I don't trust you any longer to care for us. She didn't realise it, but Susie was now beginning to talk snake talk.

[19:58] She was impatient and resentful of God, and her new nature in Christ was being increasingly dominated by her earthly sinful nature. And I'll explain the thing about those two natures shortly.

[20:10] Sometimes we call this process backsliding. She was showing more and more solidarity with the Israelites and Adam and Eve at the point of their fall. But what about us?

[20:22] Do we ever become impatient and resentful with the Lord? I don't mean for a brief period because we can all get attacked by the evil one.

[20:33] There can be moments when a thought may come through our mind to challenge our faith and trust in the Lord. doubt. But this can happen when there's times we don't understand and we need to process some negative situation.

[20:49] That happens to all of us. But I'm referring to a long period of resentment and negativity which can build up. That can happen even though outwardly we may not show it.

[21:00] Our Christian friends may not spot it. As our trust in the Lord is diminished and replaced by resentment even though week by week we may say a cheery hi to those people we see at church.

[21:15] Sometimes people try to rationalize such a situation and some may even say well I'm just being me. It's part of being me. I'm being authentic when I say that.

[21:26] I'm not going to be a hypocrite. This is me being authentic. That's become popular with so many in our day to be authentic. I'm just being honest and expressing how I feel.

[21:38] Yes I'm angry and resentful with God but this is who I am. I'm being authentic. This is the real me. But let's be clear. The authentic me is the sinful me.

[21:50] There's no virtue in this kind of authenticity. All it does is to demonstrate that our sinful nature is our earthly nature is sinful and fallen. And shows that we too have solidarity with those Israelites.

[22:05] As Paul writes to the Romans in chapter 3 verse 10 he says there is no one righteous not even one. No one understands. No one seeks God. This is by their own accord.

[22:16] This is of their own nature. All have turned away. That's written over the nature of the human race as a whole. And to the Corinthians he wrote as in Adam all will die.

[22:30] The Westminster Shorter Catechism expresses this kind of solidarity in question 16. It says all mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression.

[22:48] How does that sit with you? How does it sit with you to know that when Adam sinned you sinned I sinned that we were implicated in that first sin and that we fell with him when he fell?

[23:03] Because that's biblical teaching. We cannot dissociate ourselves from our first parents. They were responsible for their sin but the sinfulness which we have we are responsible for not them.

[23:19] Having considered what it means to have solidarity with our first parents and through them with the serpent whom they believed let's go to our second point. The solidarity which the second Adam Christ showed with us not for our condemnation but for our salvation.

[23:37] The venomous snakes brought home to the Israelites that they had sinned against the Lord by their rebellious complaining and they were given the grace of repentance and sorrow for sin.

[23:48] They asked Moses to pray that the Lord would take away the snakes from among them but the Lord had other plans as they said he allowed the snakes to remain but he made provision for the effects of the snake bites to be counter acted.

[24:03] He commanded Moses to make the image of a snake from metal. Then he had it put on a pole which could be held high so every Israelite including those who were now prostrate by the effects of the venomous illness could see this effigy of the snake being raised high in the centre of the camp.

[24:24] anyone who was bitten to be saved from the effects of the snake bite. All that they had to do was to obey what Moses told them.

[24:37] Look at the snake and you will be healed. Look at the snake. A strange procedure indeed which as little aside here some biblical scholars have sought to link with the cultures of Middle Eastern nations at that time some of which worshipped snakes such as the asp in the ceremonial headdress of the Egyptian pharaoh for example.

[25:00] But to think this is wrong it's unlikely for three reasons. One is that it was God himself commanded the image to be made not Moses or any other man. There was no inspiration from idolatrous cultures.

[25:13] Secondly the image could not have been for obedience to God so that would have been a breach of the second commandment not to make any graven image for worship such as Israel had already done with the golden calf.

[25:27] And they'd seen the death of 3,000 people as a result of people worshipping a golden calf or using it in that way. So thirdly the Israelites were not commanded to worship it or to look at it.

[25:40] Look towards it with the expectation of being healed. Now this as I say again it was a really bizarre procedure and we'd be left guessing what that was all about.

[25:53] If it hadn't been for the Lord Jesus in his conversation with Nicodemus who gave the key the understanding of why this had happened and what this meant.

[26:06] Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert so the son of man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

[26:17] Not to look with expectation and trust and faith and a snake but to look with expectation and trust and faith at Jesus Christ on the cross. That is what is being talked about and taught here.

[26:30] Notice that there's so much gospel in the Old Testament. If we just have the key, if we just have a proper way of understanding and interpreting that and it's wonderful just now, but just now, and I won't digress but I'll just mention just now up to Charlotte Chapel in the end but our pastor is taking us through a series on the tabernacle and how the tabernacle speaks of Christ.

[26:58] So, from Jesus' words in John 3.14 he's provided us with this key. From this we see several things. Let's look at those things together. What do we see from Jesus' words combined with the numbers story?

[27:13] we see this. First of all, the lifting up of the bronze serpent foreshadowed the lifting up of Jesus on the cross.

[27:24] In John chapter 12 verse 32, Jesus spoke again of his being lifted up from the earth. The gospel writer tells us, it says, he said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

[27:38] So, this expression of his being lifted up from the earth, clearly, signifying the cross. Secondly, the bronze image in the form of the serpent symbolized sinful humanity and our solidarity with Adam and Satan, as we've already said.

[28:00] Thirdly, Christ identifying himself with the bronze serpent declares that on the cross he was going to identify with us as our sin bearer.

[28:11] we were identifying with Satan through the snake in that desert incident. But Christ said, well, just as that happened, something else is going to happen which will fulfill it, something which involves me, something which I'm going to do for you.

[28:30] I'm going to bear your sins. Our sins had to be punished. And the juggernaut of God's justice was bearing down on the sinful race, but because of the great love that he has for us.

[28:44] And sometimes we never, I'll make a statement here and I will say this, although we have often as Christians tasted of the love of God and experienced the love of God, this is nothing compared to what we will yet experience in glory when we meet our Saviour.

[29:04] When we meet him there, we will experience love at a level that presently is incomprehensible. We do not understand. Then we will understand.

[29:17] Now we're looking as through a glass darkly, then we will see face to face the Jesus who died for us. And we will understand the love that drove him to die for us.

[29:30] So, he chose, he came, God chose to come in the person of Jesus, to show solidarity with us by submitting to a sinner's baptism, living a perfect life as the second Adam in a sinful world, overcoming Satan's temptations which the first Adam and his wife had failed to do.

[29:52] He then took the sinner's place right in the path of that juggernaut of justice. He didn't have to do it in an absolute sense, but because of his great love, he chose to do it.

[30:07] There's no law you can ever find which says that Christ had to die for us. That's never been a law. The only law which God has revealed to us about that is he had to die for us because he loves us so much.

[30:22] But legally, there was no compulsion, no need for him to do that. He could have left us to rot in hell for all eternity, but he didn't. So he, as our sin bearer, Jesus, it says, as Paul says to God, Jesus had no sin, but God made him to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[30:48] Basically, through the cross, Jesus was saying to his people, he was saying to us, the sinfulness of your rebellious snake nature requires nothing less than the anger and condemnation of God.

[31:00] However, I was punished for that nature. I absorbed this evil into myself. I received the punishment which you deserve until that punishment was totally spent.

[31:15] As Peter says, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. On the cross, God poured out his sternest punishments ever for sin on the soul of his son, whose soul at that moment was characterized by the evil of sinful rebellion, of human rebellion.

[31:36] Though he himself was without sin, yet he bore it as the bearer of that condemnation. That was not a moment when God the Father could say of Jesus, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, as he did at other times.

[31:51] that moment, as you might recall, the moment when the moment of his death approached, at the height of his suffering, the skies became dark all over, signifying the turning away of the Father's face.

[32:12] We've probably sung before many times how deep the Father's love for us. The Father turns his face away. When that happened and the cry came out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

[32:24] The son was experiencing nothing less than dereliction and abandonment from the Father. That was his experience. Because at that moment, beholding that cross, the Father was looking at a creature which more resembled the rebellious serpent than his beloved son.

[32:43] What practical application can we make of these things? Well, today, if you're a Christian, be aware that you've not got one nature, but you have two.

[33:00] I was explaining this just to somebody last week, a week ago tonight, this point about the two natures the Christian has. We have the earthly sinful nature, or as I've called it, the snake nature.

[33:12] it's still with us, we were born with it, it constantly tugs at our sleeve, prompting us to think or say or do things which are in direct rebellion against the Lord.

[33:24] But, having put your trust in Christ for salvation, having been born again through the Holy Spirit, you have the Christ nature within you as well. And these two natures are in conflict with each other, as Paul says in the Galatian letter, the sinful nature desires what's contrary to the spirit, the spirit desires what's contrary to the sinful nature, they're in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.

[33:51] Thankfully, we truly want to please him. We truly want to worship him and follow and serve him and know him and love him for all eternity. But this other nature with which we're born is still there, trying to get in the way of everything that the Lord would do in our lives, in terms of sanctification.

[34:12] But thanks be to God, this is the will of God, our sanctification is God's will. He shows us how to progress from that position. The challenge for the Christian life is to live by the Spirit so that we will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

[34:31] And to produce in our lives by the Spirit's help, the fruits of the Spirit, the love, the joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

[34:44] There's no law against these. These things are of the Spirit. But if, like Susie, if we're not trusting the Lord for all of our circumstances, then the fallen, earthly, sinful nature will assert itself, will begin to take control.

[35:04] The Bible is very clear on how to deal with the fake nature within us. Colossians 3, 5, where he'd put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature.

[35:18] And he gives us a list. Things like sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and lying.

[35:29] We don't often think of things like gossiping and sniping away at others behind the back. We don't often think of those as belonging to the earthly sinful nature and under the condemnation of God.

[35:41] But they are just as much as things like murder and adultery and all those other ones which we might regard as more serious. But anything, anything which produces that effect on the sinful nature for it to assert itself in any kind of rebellious way against the Lord needs to be condemned and as Paul says, it needs to be killed.

[36:07] How do we do that? We do that by the Spirit's power. The strength of the Lord is there available for us by seeking him, by seeking his help.

[36:19] As I said again this morning, the same thing applies. We can do everything necessary here through Christ who is strengthening us. That he wants us to look to him to gain the victory which is already ours in name.

[36:34] All of these things that are mentioned rebel against the work of God. But the answer, if you are struggling, if you are struggling against the kinds of things we've just been listing, then know this, that the way of restoration and spiritual victory is exactly the same as it was at the first.

[36:55] The way of the cross, to come before the cross of Jesus, to see, as I mentioned to you that day I saw myself in my own bedroom up there in Maxwell town, to see Jesus on the cross dying, crucified for me, crucified for you.

[37:17] That is the answer, to see him in that way, taking your place so that you might be freed from the guilt and power of sin. So that is the way of victory for us.

[37:28] And the way for the spiritual nature, the Christ nature, to assert itself and grow and develop to the glory of God.

[37:40] But today, if you're not a Christian, then know this, you're in great spiritual danger because the venom of sin is in your veins. You have only one nature, the one who is earthly and sinful, and which you share in solidarity with the rest of the fallen human race.

[37:57] And one day, when you stand before God, that nature will be judged, found guilty, and separated from God forever in eternal death, as the Bible teaches.

[38:08] He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. But condemnation lies upon them. However, the Lord has provided the cure through the suffering and death of Jesus.

[38:22] But before you gain any benefit from his atoning sacrifice, you must do certain things. And the Israelites show us the way in this. You must come before God personally to acknowledge your sins with a sincere heart, with a commitment to turn away from them.

[38:40] This is what we call repentance. And the second thing to do is to look at Jesus as the only Savior. Because there's no other name under heaven given among men by which you may be saved.

[38:52] But what does the Bible mean when it says look to Jesus? I mean, we can't see Jesus, can we? That's true. When our Bible passage tells us that the Israelites who wanted to be healed had to look at the bronze snake, that was a physical looking at a physical object to cure a physical problem.

[39:13] When Jesus compared himself and his cross to the snake on the pole, he clearly didn't have a physical looking in mind. Very few people actually saw Jesus dying on the cross.

[39:25] Even most of his disciples didn't. But he helps us to understand that it's a spiritual looking. And in this sense, spiritual looking equates to believing.

[39:38] That everyone who believes in him may be cured of sin, cured of the venom of sin, and have eternal life. So the question is, have you believed in Christ? Have you trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins?

[39:51] Have you looked by faith at the cross? Have you seen your own sins being punished there in Jesus? If not, then look to him today and you will find such a relief when you realize that because he died, we do not need to.

[40:10] This looking to Jesus, as we say, can be translated as placing your trust in him. something that Adam and Eve were unwilling to do ultimately, as also the Israelites in the desert were unwilling to do.

[40:23] And something which Susie, in her time of testing, was becoming increasingly unwilling to do. What she needed to learn was that if she could trust the Lord for something so momentous as eternal salvation, she could also trust him for all her earthly needs, during and after the COVID pandemic.

[40:47] So, as we close, let's remember that the God who once showed solidarity with us in dealing with our sins in Christ to bring us back to himself, now enables us to enjoy solidarity with him if we are Christians.

[41:05] For as Paul says to the Colossians, he says, he, that's the God, has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

[41:19] So you see those two kingdoms. There is the kingdom in which he thinks, Satan thinks he is the ruler, the dominion of darkness. There is the kingdom of Jesus, King Jesus, the kingdom of light.

[41:35] God has transferred his people from one to the other. And that means that whichever one we are in, we have solidarity with the others who are in that kingdom. So let's ensure by faith that where we are in terms of the human race, knowing now that there are two human races, there's a human race in Adam which is going to die, there's a human race in Christ in which all will be made alive.

[42:03] Let's ensure that we are in that kingdom by faith in Jesus, now and for all eternity. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for the, for your word and we pray that we will apply this lesson to ourselves, that to know that as Moses lifted up a bronze serpent in the wilderness, that Jesus was lifted up on the cross and that by looking to him by faith, we will be saved.

[42:37] Help us to look. It's just, looking does not require much, but it does require focus and concentration and specific reliance and commitment.

[42:50] So help us if we, if we do not already have that, help us to know that in our own lives. And may others also in this town of Dumfries be brought to the same Savior to, for their salvation also.

[43:05] In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Let's, um, now, if I can find my, oh yes.

[43:17] You will see me.