THE FIRST SETTING UP OF THE BRONZE SERPENT – Charles Spurgeon
THE FIRST SETTING UP OF THE BRONZE SERPENT
“And they journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of 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 bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loathes this light bread.’ And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against you; pray unto the Lord, that He take away the serpents from us.’ And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Make you a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live.’ And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” Numbers 21:4-9.
I have frequently expounded to you the type of the bronze serpent as our Lord interprets it in the third of John. I thought it fit tonight to take that type in its connection and look at the original circumstances which led to the setting of it up. For while the general doctrine of looking for salvation to Christ as the bronze serpent is always to be preached, and is most usefully set forth in the midst of the unconverted, yet I take it that its original institution teaches us much which ought not to be overlooked. It is very clear that this type has its first voice to the people of God, for it was among Israel—among the nominal people of God—that this bronze serpent was first needed and first set up. And while the instruction which it gives is wide as the universe, for whoever looks shall live, nevertheless it has an inner circle to which it first of all addresses itself, and these are the professed members of the church of God.
The Book of Numbers might be called, without any impropriety, “Moses’ Pilgrim’s Progress.” It contains a full account of the progress of the pilgrims through the wilderness until they came to the promised land. And like Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” it is not only a history of any one person or nation, but it is the picture of the life of all God’s people. Probably no one among us will pass through all the troubles of the Israelites, so as to become in one person an epitome of all wilderness experience, and yet even this may be, for so it was with David, and so it has been with others by whom the Lord would instruct His church. This, however, is exceptional. But, take the whole of us together as the church of God, and you will find that our lives are mirrored, pictured, and foreseen in the travels of God’s chosen people from the land of Egypt to Canaan. I am afraid that many of us can see ourselves even in the passage before us. Yes, not only those of us who are young and raw in spiritual things, but certain of us who have been for many years following in the divine track, and are hoping by-and-by to enjoy our portion in the better country. If even Moses and Aaron erred on the road, I fear there are very few of us who can read the story without crying, “I remember my faults this day.”
The passage before us occurred almost at the end of Israel’s wanderings. They had been now for 40 years in the wilderness, and they had come within sight of the promised land. They had only to cross the mountains of Edom, and to get through the passes of Seir, and they would have been at once in the land which flows with milk and honey. But the Edomites would not permit them the privilege of passing along the highway, and so, as Israel must not fight his brother Esau, they were called upon to go around his border and to come down to an arm of the Red Sea by a long and weary march, when they seemed to be on the border of their covenanted inheritance. If this happened at the end of their marches, let none of us presume upon our experience and knowledge. May the Holy Spirit help us while we learn caution from this inspired history, for these things happened to them for our instruction.
I. DISCOURAGEMENT
I call your attention, first of all, to their discouragement, “The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.” Assuredly there are times when God’s servants become discouraged. To their shame, let us say it. To our shame let us confess it. It is by faith that we live, but as discouragement is the opposite of faith, it does not help our life. It is generally the fruit of unbelief, and so by discouragement we cease to live a healthy and vigorous life, and we begin to faint. Yet even those of God’s children who have had much experience in the divine way at times give way to discouragement. The reason may be found in various things. Occasionally it springs out of disappointment. It was a serious disappointment to the Israelites to see the land over there within a day’s march, or less, and yet for Edom to say, “I will come out against you with the sword. You shall not pass through my border.” It seemed like having the cup at the lips and being denied a drink. It was a grievous trial, after all those years, to have come so close, and then to be forced to march back to the Red Sea. How tantalizing to see the land, as through a wall of crystal, and yet to be unable to put foot upon it! It was a bitter disappointment and there may be like trials in store for us.
Possibly some of my Master’s servants have entertained the notion that they have made amazing progress in the divine life, and just then an event has occurred which showed them their weakness, and they have been forced to weep in secret places and upbraid themselves, saying, “After all this, am I no better than to be cast down about a trifle? Have I suffered so much, and yet is my progress so small?”
“We ask to have our waters purified, and lo, we are stirred till all the mud which was quiet in the bottom of our soul is made visible, and pollution appears everywhere. Yet may not this be the nearest and surest way to purity, this making us see the secret depravity of our hearts? Yet what a disappointment! I thought I was something, and now I perceive that I am nothing. I had half hoped that I was perfect, and now I see my secret imperfections and lusts more clearly than ever…”
We thought that we were climbing into full assurance, and lo, we descend into the valley of humiliation. Yes, we did taste of the honey of bold confidence, and we said, “I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day.” And now we hardly know whether we are the people of God at all. We have with trembling to repeat our first step, and turn our eyes to the bleeding Savior, hoping as poor sinners to find salvation in Him. This need of progress is a dreadful thing, and yet it has happened to many, till they have dropped all idea of boasting, and have said with the apostle, “Not as though I had already attained.” They have felt like men beginning a race, although they have been running that race for many a patient year. Such disappointment often costs the child of God much discouragement because of the way.
II. COMPLAINT
In the case of the Israelites, this discouragement came to a great head, for it led to complaint, and that is our second point. “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 bread, nor any water; and our soul loathes this light bread.’” This was a bitter and wicked complaint. We are in a sad case, dear brethren, when our discouragements at last reach such a point that we begin to complain of our God. For the complaints that come at these times are such as God is not likely to bear with. When God’s people are in real trouble, He is long-suffering and tender towards His afflicted, but with the forward He shows Himself forward.
When the people complained of thirst, the Lord sweetened the waters of Marah for them. When they were hungry, He gave them bread from heaven. But when, having nothing justly to complain of, they merely grumbled because they were discouraged, He dealt with them severely, and sent the fiery serpents among them which bit many of them, so that many people of Israel died.
Beware of a murmuring spirit. God will pity our needs, but He will punish our whims. Some of us need to be cautioned against letting the spirit of discouragement hurry us on to quarrelling with God and questioning His love. It is ill for a saint to strive with His Savior. When these people made their first complaint, it was an amazing one. It was a complaint about having been brought out of Egypt. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?”
“Well, but first of all, they ought not to complain of being brought up out of Egypt, for that was a land of bondage where their male children had to perish in the river and where they themselves longed to die, for life had become intolerable. And yet, you see, they are complaining that they were brought up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness, as they said. Is it not possible that our rebellious hearts may even complain of God’s mercy? For lack of something to murmur about, discouraged ones will pick holes in the goodness of God. What a pity that it should be so!”
III. PUNISHMENT
The Lord before long sends upon murmurers punishment. This is our third head. We read that as soon as the people found fault with Moses, and with God, and with the manna, “the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and much people of Israel died.” Fiery serpents were ready at the divine call; the Lord never lacks means of chastisement. There was no interval between the sin and the suffering, for the fault was wanton and inexcusable.
Will God send fiery serpents among His own people? These were the tribes that ate of the manna, and the people that “drank of the rock that followed them, which rock was Christ.” These were the Lord’s visible church in the wilderness, and though not all spiritually His children, yet they were types of His chosen, representatives of the whole believing family. Well, brethren, the Lord, in fatherly anger may send fiery serpents among a doubting and quarrelsome people, and so those who bite with fault-finding may find themselves bitten.
These fiery serpents come in different forms. Sometimes they may be new trials. The Israelites, as far as I know, had never seen these seraphs, or burning ones, before. They seemed to fly up out of the sand and bite them before they were aware, and then the venom entered into their blood, and made it scald them till they seemed to be a mass of fire from head to foot, burning with fierce pain, and ready to die. It was dreadful to be marching through the midst of fiery flying serpents. The Lord deliver us from that. But He may send to us, if we grow peevish, a fresh and novel affliction, a crooked trial which will twist and wriggle about us—a sudden grief which will poison the fountain of our life. And this may hastily fly at us, as a chastisement for not having believed in God under much happier circumstances.
In some Christians these fiery serpents may be the uprisings of their own corruptions. I have known the corruptions of a child of God to be quiet and still for a long period. They have been there, but they have been forced to hide away like thieves that dare not come out in daylight, and the child of God has therefore, enjoyed rest. But the good man has been discouraged, and has fallen to complaining, and then these inward corruptions have broken forth upon him and compassed him about like bees, innumerable, and quick to sting. Some of us know what this means. We have been put to a dead stand with our lively inbred sins which we thought were dead, suddenly they have revived within us, and we had to fight against them for dear life.
Or, it may be that God will let Satan loose upon us if we disbelieve. Truly we cannot want any worse fiery serpents than the suggestions and insinuations of the devil. Oh, brothers and sisters, if you have ever met Satan and fought him foot to foot, you know by your scars what a terrible adversary he is. Why, he will insinuate thoughts into our breasts which never came from our own minds and never would have come—blasphemous thoughts of an infernal kind, and these he would have us accept as our own.
IV. REMEDY
But now, fourthly, here comes the remedy. What is to be done when Israel is bitten with fiery serpents? Well, the first thing is confession. They went to Moses and cried, “We have sinned.” Oh, that is a sweet art—that art of confession. It empties the bosom of most perilous stuff! Nothing seems to me to be more hideous than to confess your sins to a man like yourselves. I should think that to sit down at a priest’s ear, and to pour into it all the filth of your soul, and answer every question that he may care to propound to you, must be one of the most fearful ordeals through which a human mind can pass. I know that Satan is very ingenious as to the means by which to deprave men, and rob them of the last particle of modesty, so as to make them capable of every crime. But I should think that the papist confession is his last and darkest invention for depraving the soul beyond all common defilement. It must be the most fearful process of saturating with evil through which the mind can pass. But to confess sin into the ear of Christ is quite another thing. To get alone with Him, and to tell Him all our transgressions and temptations—this is as great a blessing as the other is a curse. There is no fear that we can pollute Him, and every blessing comes of emptying out ourselves before Him who is able to take away all sin by reason of His precious blood.
Our first business is to hasten away to our great High Priest, and tell Him that we have sinned. The second help was that Moses prayed for the people. So our great cure against fiery serpents, horrible thoughts, and temptations, is intercession. “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” If we have grown downhearted and discouraged, and have sinned by unbelieving utterances, let us go with our poor, little, trembling faith, and ask the blessed go-between, the Divine Interposer, to stand before God on our behalf, and pray for us that our transgressions may be blotted out. Oh, what a sweet thing it is to have this Advocate! Come, you that are the Lord’s people and yet are transgressors, come and rejoice in this—that He makes intercession for transgressors, and that He is, therefore, able to save unto the uttermost.
But now comes the great remedy. After their confession and the prayer of their mediator, the Lord bade Moses make a bronze serpent, and lift it up, that they might look upon it and live. Beloved, when I first came to Christ as a poor sinner, and looked to Him, I thought Him the most precious object my eyes had ever lit upon. But this night I have been looking to Him while I have been preaching to you, in remembrance of my own discouragements, and my own complaining, and I find my Lord Jesus dearer than ever.
I have been seriously ill, and sadly depressed, I fear I have rebelled, and therefore I look anew to Him, and I tell you that He is fairer in my eyes tonight than He was at first. It is a delightful thing that there should be a fountain open for sinners to wash in, but I will tell you something that is more charming, still—there is a fountain for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness. That fountain is not for outcasts only, but for the saints, for the citizens of Jerusalem, for the house of David. “If we walk in the light as God is in the light, and have fellowship one with another,” do we still sin? Yes, that we do, even then, but “the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” In our lowest condition this is our cleansing. In our highest condition this is still our cleansing.
The first time a poor sinner comes up out of the ditch, with his own clothes abhorring him, he is made white through Christ’s blood the moment he believes in Jesus. And mark this, when he enters heaven and stands before the blaze of the supernal glory, it shall still be said of him and of his fellows, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The bronze serpent healed me when I first saw the Lord, and the bronze serpent heals me tonight, and shall do so till I die. “Look and live” is for saints as well as for sinners. For you, you ungodly ones— “There is life for a look at the Crucified One.” But equally true is this for you who belong to Jesus, but have grieved His Holy Spirit. You that have gone aside from your faith, and have begun disputing with your God, and complaining of providence, there is life for you, too, in the Savior lifted up.
There are not two ways of salvation—one for sinners and another for saints. There are not two grounds on which we stand—the ground of the sinner saved and the ground of the saint saved. No, the same basis is under each foot. We each sing—
“Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!”
This is the language of the man who has served his God for half a century, and preached the gospel like a Luther or a Calvin, just as certainly as it must be the language of the trembling sinner, guilty and condemned before the living God.
Do you not see where the bronze serpent fitly comes in according to Scripture? At the end of the pilgrimage, just before they are going to cross the Jordan, then Israel sees the serpent of brass. Then the people sin, and then is there revealed to them in all its splendor that blessed type of Christ—“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” “Should not perish!” As if even a believer had about him that which would make him perish if he did not still look to the appointed cure. Jesus is lifted up that saints might not perish, but might persevere in grace unto everlasting life. How is our spiritual life, rendered everlasting, but by the continuance of that look? We are to still be looking to Jesus as long as we live. “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Always looking, always looking. God keep us looking if we have looked, and bring us to look to Jesus if we have never looked, and to His name be praise forever and ever, Amen.