"Numbers 21
The moment recorded in our narrative was no time for anything but a look, and that too, a look at the uplifted serpent. It would not have done for a bitten Israelite to occupy himself with any other object. Death was before him, if he did not look there. And it would have been the gracious service of any brother Israelite to have recalled him to that object, if he saw that his eye, or feared that his thoughts, were disposed to take up with any other.
It is such a part as this, which the Lord Himself acts with Nicodemus in John 3. Nicodemus had come to Him as to a Teacher. The Lord at once turns him into another direction, and lets him know that he must come to Him as a Savior or Life-giver. Nicodemus was seeking instruction. The Lord tells him that he needed life. And then, He so orders His speech with him as to withdraw him from every thought and every object but the serpent of brass lifted on the pole in the wilderness. He lets him know that he and all men, like bitten Israelites, were on their way to death, but that the brazen Serpent, the Healer or Life-giver, God's salvation, was in the camp again, and that the look must again be given, must interpose again as between the bite and death, or the kingdom would be lost, and the sinner would perish.
Indeed it is according to this, or in the spirit of One who was withdrawing the eye of every one who comes to Him from every object but the uplifted Serpent, that the Lord Jesus conducts His ministry all through that Gospel by St. John. For He refuses to act in any character but that of a Savior. Men may come to Him in other relationships and for other ends, but He will not receive them. One may appeal to Him as a Doer of wonders, another may flatter Him as a King, another may be seating Him on a throne of judgment, another, like Nicodemus, may come to Him as a Revealer of the deep, mysterious lessons of heaven; but He has no welcome for such; He does not entertain approaches and appeals like these. He does not commit Himself to any or either of these. But when a convicted sinner comes to Him or stands before Him, when, in that way, a bitten Israelite looks to Him as the uplifted Serpent, the God-appointed Healer or Quickener of man, then He answers at once, and life and salvation are imparted.
What consolation! What grace in Him, what deliverance and blessing for us! What joy to meet God in such a character, and to see Him thus, as the Jesus of John's Gospel, so jealously holding Himself before us in that character, refusing to be received in any other. His loved Nicodemus was under long and patient training, ere he gave Him the look of a bitten Israelite. But he did at the end, and then did it blessedly and vigorously. (See John 19.)
Precious truth indeed, and precious Savior who has provided us sinners with it! The look that was preached so long ago, in the midst of the camp of Israel in the wilderness, in the day of this twenty-first of Numbers, the Lord Jesus, the Jehovah of Israel and the true Serpent of Brass, preaches it still and again, and with all fervency and earnestness, in the Gospel by John.
But again, the Lord lets us further know in that same Gospel, how He welcomes that look when it is given Him, and how immediately He answers it with the healing and salvation of God. Mark this in the case of Andrew and his companion, and of Nathanael in the first chapter. See this welcome finely and heartily expressed in His most gracious dealings with the Samaritan in the fourth chapter; and again read it in His words to the woman in the eighth chapter; and listen to it in His words to Peter, in the sixth, when He turns to him, upon the multitude refusing to give Him that look. And we have another witness of the same in chapter 12, when He speaks of Himself again as the uplifted Brazen Serpent, and exults in the thought of gathering all men to Himself in that character. (See verse 32).
Now these are characteristics in the true ordinance which we could not have gotten in the typical ordinance of Numbers 21. We do not there find an Israelite, in the sweet affection of the Jesus of John, earnestly and carefully guiding the eye of his bitten brother to the uplifted Serpent. That was an affectionate exercise of heart that was reserved for the Savior Himself to practice and exhibit. Nor do we (for we could not) find the uplifted Serpent there welcoming and encouraging the eye that turned to it. But this also was reserved for the true, the living, the divine Healer of sinners ruined by the old fiery serpent of death. In Him we get these things. And thus, in a great sense, the half is not told us by the type—the original exceeds the fame that we had heard of it. Happy those poor sinners, who stand before the Brazen Serpent who is now lifted up before their eyes in John's Gospel. They get the healing of God there, and a hearty welcome likewise.
We have, however, something more. We have this same earnestness and affection in the Holy Ghost as we have seen to be in the Son. We find it in the Epistle to the Galatians. How zealously is St. Paul there, in the Spirit, occupied in either keeping the eye of the Galatians on Christ crucified, or turning them back to that object! He would alarm them by the fear of some witchery. He would challenge and rebuke them, and that sharply. He would yearn over them, and fain consent to travail in birth with them again. He would, in deepest affection, remind them of past days of blessedness, and solemnly contrast them with the present. He reasons with them also. And he tells them his own story, and the purpose of his heart touching this great object, the crucified Christ of God, the true uplifted Serpent of Brass, how he had looked at it, and meant still to gaze, to live by the faith of it, and glory only in it.
All this is surely excellent. The Spirit in the Apostle is in company with the Son of the Evangelist—and the shadow is outdone by the substance. Affections are exercised in the divine originals, which could never have been expressed in the typical ordinances.
Do we still discover a further secret, I may yet ask, when we compare this chapter in Numbers with John? Yes—the light that shines there, though the same light, is still brighter here. We discover this again in chapter 3.
There the Lord connects this look at the uplifted Serpent with the new birth. This had not been done in Numbers 21—though it might have been derived from it. The new, eternal life might have been discovered in the Israelite who had looked at that Serpent, because he was then breathing resurrection-life, which is eternal life. He was enjoying a life which had been provided for him by One who had met, in his behalf, the wounding of the old serpent, the serpent who had the power of death. When he looked, he lived; and that life was a life won from death, a victorious life. In principle it was eternal life, such as the healing power of God, the salvation of God, the risen, victorious Son breathes into the elect. I say not, that every Israelite who looked was introduced to this eternal life. It is not necessary to say that; but it is the expression of it—and this, in its substance and reality we get in John 3, and are instructed by the Lord Himself to know that faith's look at the true Brazen Serpent carries eternal life with it. "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."
And this truth is taught distinctly in 1 Peter 1: "Being born again," says the inspired Apostle, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever." And then he further teaches us where this word is to be found, where this seed of eternal life is to be picked up—"and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you"—the gospel being, as we know, the publication of the virtue of the true Serpent of Brass, the Lamb of God, the Healer of sinners destroyed by the lie of the old serpent of death.
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