Doug McMasters: To the book of Numbers in chapter 21.
Doug McMasters: And if you don't have a Bible, you can find one in the pew in front of you.
Doug McMasters: And on page 134, 134, you'll be able to find Numbers chapter 21.
Doug McMasters: In verse 4, the word of God says this.
Doug McMasters: Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea to bypass the land of Edom.
Doug McMasters: But the people became impatient because of the journey.
Doug McMasters: The people spoke against God and Moses.
Doug McMasters: There is no bread or water, and we detest this wretched food.
Doug McMasters: Then the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and they bit them so that many Israelites died.
Doug McMasters: Then the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.
Doug McMasters: Intercede with the Lord so that he will take the snakes away from us.
Doug McMasters: And Moses interceded for the people.
Doug McMasters: Then the Lord said to Moses, Make a snake image and mount it on a pole.
Doug McMasters: When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will recover.
Doug McMasters: So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole.
Doug McMasters: And whenever someone was bitten, he looked at the bronze snake and he recovered.
Doug McMasters: In April of 1970, when Apollo 13 was about halfway to the moon, the crew that was in there heard a sudden thud.
Doug McMasters: They wondered what had happened.
Doug McMasters: They thought maybe there was a meteorite or maybe there was some space debris or something that happened on the outside that had caused that loud noise in the shutter.
Doug McMasters: What they hadn't realized, and what was unnoticed beforehand, was that there was an oxygen tank that was faulty.
Doug McMasters: And when they started to see the instruments begin to reflect that, they realized that the trouble wasn't out in the expanse of space where they first thought.
Doug McMasters: And they needed to look inward to try to find a way to fix that.
Doug McMasters: Numbers 21 speaks something to that about us, that what threatens our life isn't the things that we often think they are, those things that are outside of us.
Doug McMasters: It's actually the things that are inside of us that are the most dangerous.
Doug McMasters: But we often look to our circumstances, our pressures, the disappointments, the wilderness that's out there, and think, well, that's where our problem lies.
Doug McMasters: Numbers 21 tells us a different story.
Doug McMasters: Numbers 21 and Good Friday bring us to a different understanding of what's real.
Doug McMasters: It brings us face to face with the understanding that our deepest danger is not external at all.
Doug McMasters: Our deepest danger is inside of us.
Doug McMasters: It's the rebellion within us, it's the mistrust that's within us, it's the state of our own heart.
Doug McMasters: We're here this evening on Good Friday, and Good Friday shows us that clearly, as we'll discover, because it too brings us to the place where we stop blaming the landscape around us and begin to acknowledge the condition of our own heart.
Doug McMasters: But once we do that, then we can fully understand and appreciate and embrace God's remedy.
Doug McMasters: And so I'd like for us to look at Numbers 21 as the lens through which we will see Good Friday.
Doug McMasters: As we look at this passage, it's not going to flatter us, it's not going to soften the truth about us at all.
Doug McMasters: It's going to show us plainly that the problem is inside of us.
Doug McMasters: But it'll also show us that there's a God in heaven who provided a remedy that we could never create for ourselves.
Doug McMasters: So let's step into the text.
Doug McMasters: And I have five points.
Doug McMasters: We'll move them through them very rapidly, and they'll alternate between the people and the Lord.
Doug McMasters: And we'll start with the people.
Doug McMasters: In verses four and five, we see the people's rebellion.
Doug McMasters: They set out from Mount Horeb by the way of the Red Sea to bypass the land of Edom.
Doug McMasters: But the people became impatient because of the journey.
Doug McMasters: And the people spoke against the Lord and Moses.
Doug McMasters: Why have you led us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness?
Doug McMasters: There's no bread or water, and we detest this wretched food.
Doug McMasters: So here we see the people murmuring and complaining, impatient because of the journey.
Doug McMasters: And like a lot of us, frustrated that things aren't happening the way we would like them to happen.
Doug McMasters: And so here, twice mentioned, is they speak against God and they speak against Moses.
Doug McMasters: But it's not just frustration.
Doug McMasters: There's something deeper in their heart.
Doug McMasters: There's a rejection of God's promises, the daily mercy to sustain them.
Doug McMasters: There's an accusation that God's brought them for bad reasons to bring them out there to die.
Doug McMasters: And all of their words reveal a heart that isn't trusting God at all.
Doug McMasters: They deny his goodness and they question his intentions.
Doug McMasters: And this uncomfortable statement here reminds us that sin is not simply behavior, it's a posture of the heart.
Doug McMasters: It's leveled at the place of mistrust in God.
Doug McMasters: And here they are, like sin does in all of us, causes us to suspect God is withholding the best from us, or to resent God that what He gives us doesn't match with what we would expect to receive.
Doug McMasters: And it gives us that opportunity to reinterpret God's goodness and call it God's evil against us.
Doug McMasters: It's the impulse to look narrowly and negatively on God's character.
Doug McMasters: All of us know that.
Doug McMasters: To question God's wisdom, to resist his ways, to complain about his provisions, to imagine what life would be like, oh, so much better if only we were in charge.
Doug McMasters: And this text gives us this, not to shame us, because it moves us a direction.
Doug McMasters: But before it gets there, it asks us to be honest, to recognize the condition of our own heart, and to admit that the problem isn't out there.
Doug McMasters: The problem's in here.
Doug McMasters: And the bite is deadly.
Doug McMasters: Now, the use of this snake or serpent motif is not an accident.
Doug McMasters: It's not just some random accidental happenstance.
Doug McMasters: The snake stands as an emblem from the very first pages of scripture all the way into the last ones.
Doug McMasters: That the serpent is an emblem of sin and judgment that comes.
Doug McMasters: The earliest pages of scripture talk about the curse that has entered the world through sin.
Doug McMasters: And so this bite of these serpents is to remind them that death always comes with fangs.
Doug McMasters: And the people are immediately facing the consequences.
Doug McMasters: The venom is burning through their body, their bodies are weakening, and many of them die.
Doug McMasters: What's happening to them physically is a mirror to what happens to all of us spiritually when we sin.
Doug McMasters: Because sin corrodes trust, it distorts our desires, it damages our relationships, it dulls our consciences, and it drains our life.
Doug McMasters: In the wilderness, the serpents stand as a witness about the deadly nature of sin itself and the danger of presuming upon God.
Doug McMasters: The Apostle Paul used this very verse in 1 Corinthians 9 when he said, Let us not test Christ, as some of them did, and were destroyed by snakes.
Doug McMasters: Paul is reminding the Corinthians and all of us that this story is not just history.
Doug McMasters: It's a warning.
Doug McMasters: It's a warning for us not to test our Savior and not to presume upon God's character, and not to treat his grace as something casual.
Doug McMasters: Paul wants us to look back on this verse and to be reminded that sin is never harmless, that sin is never manageable, and that sin is never something we can tease and toy with.
Doug McMasters: We're here this evening, and Good Friday tells us the same thing.
Doug McMasters: Sin is never to be taken lightly.
Doug McMasters: We're here this evening, and it isn't just a calendar event that we come to, and it's not some sentimental celebration that we have.
Doug McMasters: We come to remember the very place where God's judgment fell against sin.
Doug McMasters: It's a sobering clarity Good Friday brings to us.
Doug McMasters: But let's continue because this passage moves.
Doug McMasters: And in verse 7, we see the people's confession.
Doug McMasters: We saw the people's rebellion in verses 4 and 5, the Lord's judgment in verse 6, and now the people's confession in verse 7.
Doug McMasters: And the people then came to Moses and said, We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.
Doug McMasters: Intercede with the Lord so that he will take the snakes away from us.
Doug McMasters: And Moses interceded for the people.
Doug McMasters: Wonderfully, we come to this moment of clarity where all the illusions of their discontent are gone, all the excuses are fallen away, and they're not blaming their circumstances, they're not blaming their hunger, they're not blaming their fear, they're not blaming God or Moses.
Doug McMasters: They're naming the truth.
Doug McMasters: We have sinned.
Doug McMasters: We have sinned by speaking against the Lord.
Doug McMasters: And wonderfully, we're told here that this is where healing begins.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't begin with despair, but it begins with recognition.
Doug McMasters: It begins with this understanding that we have sinned, we have seriously grieved God Himself.
Doug McMasters: And by also acknowledging our need for mercy, they plead for an intercessor, Moses, to be able to bring an end to this plague of snakes.
Doug McMasters: Good Friday calls us to that same degree of honesty.
Doug McMasters: We don't come to the Lord with polished stories or managed appearances.
Doug McMasters: We come as people just like them who have been bitten, who have the poison of sin coursing through our veins, who know that we can't heal ourselves.
Doug McMasters: Good Friday strips away any illusion that any of that might be true, that we could save ourselves, that we're fine, that we're in control, that we can fix it.
Doug McMasters: Good Friday takes all of that away.
Doug McMasters: Good Friday tells us what we are, honestly.
Doug McMasters: We are weak, we're needy, and we need to be humble and confess the truth.
Doug McMasters: We have sinned.
Doug McMasters: So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole.
Doug McMasters: And whenever someone was bitten and he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered.
Doug McMasters: Now notice what this passage doesn't say.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't say that the Lord caused the serpents to simply go away, that he erases the consequences, that he just undoes their rebellion and accepts them as they are, or that he softens the reality of their situation.
Doug McMasters: Instead, he provides a remedy, a remedy that's as unexpected as it is undeserved.
Doug McMasters: Moses is instructed to make a bronze snake, the very image of the thing that was killing them, and to set it up in a pole where everyone could see it.
Doug McMasters: The serpent, the symbol of the curse, becomes the very means of healing for these people.
Doug McMasters: And the Lord takes what was to represent their judgment and turns it into the instrument of their life.
Doug McMasters: In the latter part of the 1800s, uh medical people began to realize how they might be able to help people who were dying by snake bite.
Doug McMasters: And they realized that they had to take some of the very venom that was killing people and very carefully and in very measured ways introduce it into the bodies of animals.
Doug McMasters: And those animals would produce antibodies, and then they would withdraw that antibody, and it would be the very thing that would bring life and health back to the people who had been bitten by the snakes.
Doug McMasters: And it is lifted up on a pole as the only hope for their life.
Doug McMasters: And this is where this wilderness story opens up into Good Friday.
Doug McMasters: Because Jesus Himself uses this very verse, and he tells us that it we are not just to see the snake, but we are to see him.
Doug McMasters: And he says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
Doug McMasters: The crucifixion of Christ is God's provision for cursed sinners.
Doug McMasters: His remedy was to raise Christ, his only son, up as a curse on behalf of us who are cursed.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what Paul says in Galatians 3.
Doug McMasters: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.
Doug McMasters: Jesus was raised high for sinners.
Doug McMasters: The curse was taken up by him, borne by him, and displayed by him in his body on the cross.
Doug McMasters: And Good Friday is the fulfillment of this wilderness moment.
Doug McMasters: The remedy that God provides is not a symbol, but the substance of how sinners are saved by God raising up his own son on the cross.
Doug McMasters: But one thing we need to recognize here is that simply lifting up Christ on the cross and lifting up this snake on the pole is not how people are healed.
Doug McMasters: Let's look at the last point, the people's reception in verse 9.
Doug McMasters: Whenever someone was bitten and he looked at the bronze snake, he recovered.
Doug McMasters: Once that bronze snake was lifted up, the people had to look to it in order to be healed from the deadly bite.
Doug McMasters: The curse is not released by avoiding the serpents or by outrunning the venom.
Doug McMasters: Their only hope was to look to the provision God had provided in this raised bronze snake.
Doug McMasters: Now notice that people aren't told to perform some religious ritual.
Doug McMasters: They're not told to bring an offering.
Doug McMasters: They're not asked to climb the pole or touch the bronze figure.
Doug McMasters: And they're certainly not asked to do as they did turn the bronze snake into a religious relic that was kept by the people of Israel until Hezekiah the king actually destroyed it.
Doug McMasters: They're simply told to acknowledge their need to look at the bronze serpent.
Doug McMasters: But it's more than just a glance.
Doug McMasters: It is a recognition that in that raised snake is their cure.
Doug McMasters: The only place they could be cured.
Doug McMasters: It's a look of recognition and it's a look of trust.
Doug McMasters: It's a look that admits I can't save myself and nothing else can save me.
Doug McMasters: Only that can save me.
Doug McMasters: And unless God heals me, I will die.
Doug McMasters: It is the look that embraces God's remedy as the only remedy for them.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus draws that parallel out in John 3, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.
Doug McMasters: And just as the people of Israel looked up and lived by looking with recognition and trust at that raised bronze serpent.
Doug McMasters: So anyone acknowledging that their only hope that unless God saves them, they will die, and looks at Christ who is lifted up on the cross and says, That and He alone can save me.
Doug McMasters: That is the only hope for my deliverance from my guilt and my punishment.
Doug McMasters: To look to Christ is to believe.
Doug McMasters: And to believe is to entrust yourself entirely to what Christ has done on the cross.
Doug McMasters: The saving power is not in the strength of your look or in the worthiness of your person.
Doug McMasters: It is not in any of those things, but it is in the saving work of God in Christ crucified alone.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus presses this point home for our encouragement.
Doug McMasters: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Doug McMasters: Now let me read this text to you the way the Greek says it.
Doug McMasters: The discussion isn't about how many are packed into the whoever word.
Doug McMasters: The explanation is this if you recognize your need of salvation and if you believe on Jesus Christ, the one who believes shall never perish.
Doug McMasters: How wonderful that is.
Doug McMasters: Numbers 21 is telling us you can't draw the venom out on your own.
Doug McMasters: You can't reverse the consequences on your own.
Doug McMasters: Your only hope is to look to the remedy that God has given.
Doug McMasters: To look to him.
Doug McMasters: And so Good Friday is telling us this something simple and yet so wonderful and so profound.
Doug McMasters: Look to Christ who is lifted up.
Doug McMasters: Look to Christ who took the curse.
Doug McMasters: Look to Christ who bore the judgment.
Doug McMasters: Look to Christ who brings the dead to life.
Doug McMasters: Because there is in him your only remedy, and there is in him your only cure, and there is in him your only hope.
Doug McMasters: Look to Christ.
Doug McMasters: And that promise today is as clear as it was in that day.
Doug McMasters: The one who looks will live.
Doug McMasters: And it's not just a strange Old Testament episode.
Doug McMasters: Bunch of people traveling through a wilderness and snakes biting at them.
Doug McMasters: And all of a sudden they they they make this emblem on a pole, and somehow it delivers them if they look at it.
Doug McMasters: It's not just a strange Old Testament episode at all.
Doug McMasters: It's the gospel in seed form.
Doug McMasters: It is a living demonstration of the things that are realities in our world today.
Doug McMasters: That sin is a poison, that there is a reality to the justice and the condemnation of God for our sin.
Doug McMasters: That there is a need for us to be honest about who we are in confession of who we have sinned against, but also this wonderful truth that there is a wonderful mercy in God who has provided a remedy that we could never produce ourselves.
Doug McMasters: The bronze serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness is never meant to be the final answer.
Doug McMasters: It was a sign, an advanced picture, if you will, of a day when God would lift up his one and only Son, and that the one who believes on him would live.
Doug McMasters: Good Friday brings all of this into view.
Doug McMasters: The judgment that should have fallen on us, it fell on Christ.
Doug McMasters: The curse that clung so closely to us, he took.
Doug McMasters: We look to him who is lifted up.
Doug McMasters: We look to him who is cursed.
Doug McMasters: We look to him who bore the judgment.
Doug McMasters: And we look to him who takes away our death and gives us eternal life.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray together.
Doug McMasters: Father, we're grateful for a Savior who's come that we might live.
Doug McMasters: We're grateful that He has brought us the very means of our life.
Doug McMasters: We thank you for this day to remember especially that Christ crucified is the removal of our curse if we believe on him.
Doug McMasters: Father, we want to pray for any who might have come among us or who will hear these words in some day on YouTube.
Doug McMasters: That Father, they might look to Christ and find that in him is their only hope, their only means of being in a reconciled place with you, the way that they might be turned from death to life.
Doug McMasters: And Father, we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior.
Doug McMasters: Amen.