Amen. You’ll turn with me in your Bibles, please, to John chapter 3, beginning at the 11th verse. Jesus says, “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 heavenly things? 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.”
From the Gospel of John, we turn back to Numbers 21, beginning at the first verse. “When the Canaanite, the king of Arad, who lived in the Negev, heard that Israel was coming by the way of Aram, he fought against Israel and took some of them captive. And Israel vowed a vow to the Lord and said, ‘If you will indeed give this people into my hand, then I will devote their cities to destruction.’ And the Lord heeded the voice of Israel and gave over the Canaanites, and they devoted them and their cities to destruction. So the name of the place was called Hormah. From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom, 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? 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 of the people of Israel died. 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 take away the serpents from us.’ 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.’ 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.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
O Father, we thank you for your word, for the continuity of Scripture, of how it is all connected as one great and wonderful story of redemption—Your love story to us. We ask that you open our hearts to hear you speak, our minds to receive your will, and our hands and feet to live it out. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now, Nicodemus came to visit Jesus at night. Presumably, they were alone; no one seems to have been around, and even the disciples are notably absent from this story. Yet, this is the moment when Jesus will declare one of the most profound gospel truths.
After speaking concerning earthly things and telling Nicodemus that we must be born again, born of the water and by the Holy Spirit, and after claiming to possess the divine authority as Daniel’s Son of Man, Jesus now begins to reveal and explain a mystery of the divine counsel: the reason for the Incarnation of God the Son and the means by which our redemption from sin and Satan’s power will be achieved and received.
Jesus proclaims to Nicodemus precisely how a person is to be saved, just how a person may have eternal life, how they may be healed, restored, and reconciled to the Lord. So, how? By faith—by faith alone—and the object of that faith is the Son of Man, Jesus the Christ.
See, first, Jesus had told him, “No one has ascended to heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man,” thereby claiming all glory, power, dominion, and authority given by the Ancient of Days for himself as the Son of Man. Then he 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.”
With this single sentence, Jesus draws upon their past to inform their present and explain the Lord’s purpose and the eternal counsel of His will for our redemption. He draws upon a short event from Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness, an easily missed obscure incident nestled between the death of Aaron and Israel’s arrival at the edge of the Promised Land.
We must look back to this earlier moment in redemptive history in order to truly understand what is meant by the most famous, most quoted, and most relied upon out-of-context proof text verse, which will soon follow: John 3:16. But there is some background necessary to the story.
First, Israel’s time under God’s wrath, wandering in the wilderness, was soon to end after 40 years. The sons of Israel were making their way to Canaan to finally take possession of the land and execute the Lord’s judgment upon the nations for their wickedness and sin. When they approached the Promised Land from the West, their Edomite cousins, the descendants of Esau, refused to allow them peaceful passage, which forced them to turn south and go around Edom.
Meanwhile, Aaron, the first high priest and Moses’s older brother, died and was buried upon Mount Hor, an event followed by 30 days of corporate mourning. Then, before continuing on their way, the Canaanite king of Arad attacked Israel in a preemptive strike and captured some of them. So, just as they would throughout the conquest of Canaan, Israel swore to devote them and their cities to destruction in the Lord’s name, and so the Lord gave them victory.
So far, they were acting rather faithfully. The next while, Israel continued to travel south in order to go around Edom. The people became impatient on the way. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun, because even after 40 years and the expiration of the generation which came up out of Egypt with Moses, the Israelites still had not learned the lesson.
The people spoke against God and against Moses, saying, “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 worthless food,” referring to the manna. Recall that after they left Egypt 40 years prior, the people complained about the hardship of their new life.
So the Lord sent fire to burn and consume them, but Moses prayed to the Lord, interceding for them, and God relented of his wrath. Then they complained about the manna, which the Lord gave them from heaven every morning. They began reminiscing about the different varieties of food that they enjoyed back in Egypt because they were bored of the manna.
When Moses brought their complaint before the Lord, God decided to send them flocks of quail. He gave them meat to eat just as they had asked. However, God told Moses to explain why to the people, saying, “Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall not eat just one day or two days or five days, or ten days or twenty days, but a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and you have wept before him saying, ‘Why did we come out of Egypt?’”
Next, when they arrived at the borders of Canaan for the first time, they sent 12 spies into the land. But 10 returned quaking with fear, convincing the people of the impossibility of taking possession of the land. The people cried out, rebelling against the Lord’s command to go: “Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?”
After Moses interceded for the people again, the Lord said, “As I live, declares the Lord, what you’ve said in my hearing I will do to you. Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and all your number, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. You shall bear your iniquity 40 years, and you shall know my displeasure.”
Now a reasonable person would expect that after seeing all the wonders which the Lord performed, after being redeemed from bondage in Egypt, and after repeatedly receiving God’s mercy and gracious pardon, the people would have learned something. A reasonable person would expect that the older generation instructed the younger generation to trust the Lord in His word, to have faith in Him, and to obey Him. Yet here they went again, grumbling against the Lord and against His servant Moses, just like their parents and grandparents did before them.
So how did the Lord discipline Israel this time? What form did His judgment take? The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people so that many of the people of Israel died. Fiery serpents! God sent fiery serpents among the people. That certainly does evoke a dramatic mental image of divine wrath, doesn’t it?
But before we allow our imaginations to get carried away, these were not divine snakes made of fire; they were not fire salamanders, and nor were they dragons. When we compare the text here with other areas in Scripture, like Deuteronomy 8:15, it becomes clear that they were far less exciting but no less dangerous.
So, while the King James and the ESV translate the Hebrew literally here, the NIV translates it by following the simple Septuagint Greek translation as being venomous snakes. See, these were serpents whose bite was fiery because their poison would burn within a person’s blood, causing severe inflammation and a fever, so that their victims would feel like they were burning up.
God does not resort to supernatural means when the natural means that He created will suffice. The point is, on account of their grumbling, God plagued Israel with these serpents in judgment, and many people died. Yet still, even in this extreme act, the Lord exercised restraint within His discipline. He exercised mercy and grace because it could have been much, much worse for them.
So because of God’s loving discipline, the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we’ve spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he take away these serpents from us.” So Moses interceded for the people before God once more.
But this time, Moses received a different kind of answer to his prayers. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it up on a pole, and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live.” Previously, his intercessions resulted in a kind of universal pardon for everyone included within corporate Israel, the visible covenant community—a mixed body which contains both regenerate and unregenerate.
This time, God’s blessing of restoration and healing was much more limited. It was limited only to those subject to the Lord’s curse and who responded with the obedience of faith, so naturally to the regenerate only. 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.
Now there are some things which must be made clear concerning this object. This was not magic; this was not a case of someone just looking at it and then, ‘Abracadabra,’ they’re healed. This was also not an idol; it was not something to be prayed to or sacrificed to. This was also not a universal cure-all; it was limited to this specific problem of venomous snake bites only.
But regardless, things do get a little sticky here as regards the second commandment and the use of images in worship, because this object—a bronze snake stuck on a pole—was not what people were supposed to look to in faith. It was something they were intended to look through in faith. They were not going to just look at the snake and be healed; instead, they were supposed to look at the snake on the pole, be reminded of their sin as well as the Lord and His promise of healing, then they would repent and ask His forgiveness in faith. If they did so, then they would be healed. The snake would not heal them; God would heal them.
So, that was the moment in redemptive history which Jesus drew upon in his conversation with Nicodemus. It may have been an obscure story for the average person, but for this scripturally literate and Torah-educated Pharisee, he was surely familiar with it. The story would have also been familiar for any faithful Jew whose trust and confidence for divine pardon—whose pistis—was in the Lord God instead of their own personal righteousness.
For anyone who lived as holy by keeping the commandments out of a sincere love for God and for others, instead of those who did so for earthly glory and honor, or in a vain hope of receiving divine blessings in return for their good works.
But how did Jesus use this past to inform their present? “As Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Now for us living on this side of the crucifixion and the resurrection, it’s easy and obvious for us to see this as a prophetic moment foreshadowing the manner of Jesus’s death on a Roman cross.
It was, in part, a statement for Nicodemus to remember later in confirmation of the right of his faith after that moment had come. But Jesus was saying so much more than that; he was using a classic method of Jewish rhetoric—arguing for something greater from the lesser, speaking of types and antitypes.
He used “as Moses lifted up” as a lesser type to point ahead towards the greater antitype of the Son of Man being lifted up, using the Jewish understanding of the lesson to explain that greater reality.
So what ought Nicodemus to have thought upon hearing this? He should have been asking himself: What was the serpent which Moses lifted? What was it really? Was it an object of faith, or was it a visual reminder to turn to the Lord in faith? Was this a salvific ritual, or was it the shadow of something more spiritual moving behind the scenes of reality?
See, the bronze serpent was nothing in itself; it could do nothing in itself. It had no authority or ability to pardon those who grumbled against the Lord; it possessed no healing power within itself. The only thing it could do was point beyond itself to something else, to someone who could both pardon and heal—the Lord, the Ancient of Days, and the Son of Man, to whom He gave that same power and authority.
See, the story about the fiery serpents was representative of our spiritual condition, laying out the Lord’s whole plan for our redemption. Consider this: the people became impatient; therefore, they failed to trust God, just as Adam and Eve became impatient and failed to trust God. The ancient Israelites sinned, so they fell under God’s judgment and curse just like Adam.
The fiery serpents bit people, and those who were bitten died, just as the curse of death was imposed upon Adam and even their posterity. Although their lives were now being consumed with both toil and fear, they and we are not utterly and immediately destroyed because the Lord withheld the fullness of his wrath in mercy and offered the Israelites His grace.
He gave them time and opportunity to repent of their sin, to recognize the depth of their depravity and their need for forgiveness and rescue in order to turn to Him and be saved.
Suffering under the Lord’s judgment, the people went to Moses, confessing their sin. They asked him to intercede with God on their behalf. They were repentant of their sin, and they were looking to the Lord for deliverance. So must we all repent when we are confronted with the depth of our own sin and wickedness.
We must repent and change our ways. We must turn away from ourselves and our selfishness and turn to the Lord, who is the only hope and reason for our confidence.
And so, Moses, the servant of the Lord and God’s earthly representative, prayed for the people just as Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, God’s Son and our heavenly representative, will pray for his people—his adopted brothers and sisters—in the priestly prayer of John 17.
Just as the resurrected Jesus presently prays for us and makes constant intercession for us in heaven, thus we are confident that our prayers of confession are heard and are answered whenever we pray to the Lord in Jesus’ name.
The Lord told Moses that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live, meaning that now everyone, who has been bitten with the venomous poison of sin, if they turn to the lifted-up Son of Man and look upon Him with faith, with trust and devotion, then they shall receive eternal life.
Thus, we look to the cross. We must look through the cross and look to Jesus Christ as our only hope in life and in death.
Now, the story of the bronze serpent also gives us a picture of the church through the history and example of ancient Israel. All of humanity—all of us—are afflicted by sin’s curse and are equally liable. We’re all equally liable to God’s judgment.
So all Israel was equally at risk of suffering the bite of these fiery serpents. It was only those who were bitten that became ill, and apart from divine intervention, died. But we must remember and confess that we have all been bitten by that serpent called sin—original sin—through our shared guilt in Adam’s first transgression. We are all doomed to die because of his and our sins unless the Lord comes first.
And it was only those who looked upon the serpent with faith in the Lord’s promises who were healed. It was not everyone who merely saw the image that lived. We must look to the cross in faith.
Those who believed and saw lived. Those who did not believe, yet saw, still died. This shows and reminds us that not everyone in ancient Israel believed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.
Not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named. This means it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring.
Those who believe live; those who earnestly believed had been regenerated; they had circumcised hearts. Therefore, they loved the Lord their God with all their hearts and their soul.
But those who did not believe remained reprobate, and so they died, condemned to the same eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
It continues to remain the same for us today. Not everyone in church belongs to the church. Just because a person is a church member, or attends almost every week, or acts decently, it does not mean that they belong to Jesus Christ.
Only those who believe and trust Christ are saved, while those who do not trust Him are damned and will be condemned by Christ on the day of judgment. This is true for all those out in the world, and it’s also true for those within the visible church.
Because the earthly covenant community of God has always consisted of both believers and non-believers, so once again I ask you to consider for yourselves: have you been born again?
Lastly, Jesus leads us from the past through the present to describe His purpose—to God’s purpose. Jesus speaks to the purpose of His incarnation, saying, “Whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
Moses, as God’s representative, fashioned the bronze serpent in the image of a fiery serpent. It represented God before men. It reminded men of the pain that is suffered on account of God’s wrath against Israel’s sinfulness and directed them to turn to the Lord in repentance and faith.
Jesus, the Son of Man, was born in the image of sinful men. He was born to represent the Lord before men as God and to represent men before the Lord as man—as the second and last Adam.
Thus, when we look up to the cross in faith, we look through it to see Jesus, the only Lord who mercifully pardons sin, who gives true life and justifies us before God with His imputed righteousness.
Whereas when the Lord looks down upon the cross, He sees Jesus, the only man who suffered the fullness of God’s wrath against our sin imputed to Him as our righteous substitute, fully satisfying divine justice.
So, you see, that is when the religious paradigm must have begun shifting within Nicodemus. And this is where the paradigm must shift within us because suddenly, Torah, the law, good works, and all the many rules and stipulations of Jewish religion would now be understood simply as the obligation of our obedience to the Lord to set the standard for our holy living as God’s chosen people.
Because the Lord is holy, instead of being a means for perfecting or earning God’s favor and the blessing of eternal life, see, now Nicodemus would have begun understanding that the means of gaining eternal life rested entirely on God’s gracious gift alone—a gift received by faith, by trust in the Son of Man, in Jesus Christ alone.
A fact that was being testified to by the Hebrew Scriptures which he loved. Nicodemus’ works of righteousness, which were once probably the most important thing to him, were suddenly nothing—just the consequence of the most important thing: his faith in the Lord, his faith in Christ Jesus.
So, because of our faith in Christ, we are declared righteous in the sight of God. We are justified in Christ. Because we’re justified, we begin to live righteously before God and are made holy.
We are being sanctified presently by God’s Holy Spirit. Because we live righteously and because we are being sanctified, we begin to obey God’s law out of our love for Jesus. We begin to serve others out of our love for Jesus—all of this because God first chose us, regenerated us, and gave us the necessary saving faith in Christ.
So, we must be born again. Therefore, we must look to Christ in faith, knowing that the venom of sin runs through our veins, knowing that we deserve death, knowing that we are powerless to save ourselves—believing that He alone has the power and desire to show us mercy, to forgive us, to heal us, and deliver us from our sinfulness and the dominion of death and Satan.
We’re all sinners; therefore, we must repent and confess our sins in faith to Jesus Christ, who, interceding with our Heavenly Father, will pardon and give us life everlasting.
The Son of Man has been lifted up. If you have been born again, then look to Him, believe, and He will give you eternal life and welcome you into His eternal kingdom. Amen.