natural areas even as spiritual dis obedience causes spiritual death. So, brilliant, red serpents were sent among the people. The wages of sin is death. There was no need to argue the displeasure of God in Israel. It was manifested by people dying on every hand. Judgment was swift, sure, and unerring. Sin is always costly in the extreme. Only the blind can fail to see the ravages of sin in the human family. How wonderful that this isn’t the end to the story. There’s also the blessed remedy. The Lord told Moses to make a fiery serpent of bronze and set it upon a pole. Thereby anyone who was bitten, when he looked at the pole, would live. While the pre scription may have seemed strange and even tantalizing, using an image of the very creature causing the mis ery. yet it worked. This was God’s cure. The only remedy for our sin is Christ! He became sin for us. He took our place. This is what is meant in Galatians 3:13-14. No reforma tion, ritual, or works of righteous ness on our part can avail in the face of the ravages of sin. The ser pent upon the pole was without poi son, and Christ was without sin. Note the words, “It shall come to pass that any man.” This should re mind us of how availing God’s reme dy is. “Whosoever will may come!” This is the universality of God’s pro vision for sin. Anyone can look who will. Christ is the true and only cure for the world’s worst disease. A little child was in the garden with his mother, when a bee stung his mother painfully on the palm of her hand. The boy clung close to her, crying out in fear that the bee would sting him, too. She calmed him by explaining, “The sting is here in my flesh. It cannot sting you, now.” Christ took the Sting of death, so it cannot sting us. He took the ser pent’s bite, so it cannot bite us unto death. There is still another important 28
element in the story. The cure was only effective under one condition. Without it, death ensued. It required the look. “Look and live, my broth er, live. Look to Jesus now and live.” Isaiah 45:22 reminds us of this. It’s not the look of casual disinterest or even vague curiosity. There must be earnest looking with longing and ex pectation. Everybody within the sight of the statue of the serpent could have been healed. But only those who looked for real were de livered. Many perished no doubt be cause the plan didn’t tally with the speculation. Did just looking at the serpent assure healing? Moses didn’t command them to understand the necessity of it. Perhaps he didn’t even understand it himself. But he accepted and realized it as God’s plan by faith. He didn’t put the pole on a mountain peak, commanding the people to strive to reach it. The weak would have died long before they got there. The invitation was as broad as the blight of the serpent.. “Far as the curse is found,” as the hymn has it. Everyone had to look for himself. He couldn’t delegate the responsi bility to his wife or child. It was a personal matter. Each of us must trust Christ personally for himself. It’s dangerous and even fatal to trust anything else. Sam Jones said: “The man who’s waiting for feeling re minds me of the woodman on a frosty morning, who stands with an axe resting against his knee. You might ask him what he’s going to do. He replies, ‘I’m going to cut down this tree, but I’m waiting until I be gin to sweat.’ ” God’s Word says “believe!” Sinner, the invitation to you is, “Look and live.” There’s life in a look at the crucified One but you must look, and that without delay!
He who runs from God in the morn ing will scarcely find him the rest of the day.
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