Look to God’s Salvation and Live!

Numbers 21:1-9 

    1 The king of Arad, the Canaanite, who dwelt in the South, heard that Israel was coming on the road to Atharim. Then he fought against Israel and took some of them prisoners. 2 So Israel made a vow to the LORD, and said, “If You will indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities.” 3 And the LORD listened to the voice of Israel and delivered up the Canaanites, and they utterly destroyed them and their cities. So the name of that place was called Hormah.
    4 Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. 5 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 our soul loathes this worthless bread.” 6 So the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.
    7 Therefore 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.
    8 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.

Israel had victory after vowing to do what they were told to do, to wipe out the idolatrous nations living in the land promised by God to His people.  But just a bit further on they again were discouraged and complained as the blamed God and His deliverer.  The LORD then sent poisonous snakes to kill many of them because of their lack of trust (faith) and obedience without complaining.  When again they came seeking forgiveness in order to be saved from certain death, God provided a simple solution which showed the root of their problem; He told Moses to make a fake snake, put it on a pole in the air, and told the people to merely look at it and be saved from death.  It was no magic or powerful talisman, but the act of trusting obedience was the answer.  By believing the simplicity of the way of their deliverance and responding by receiving that word from God as true and absolutely reliable, they would not die.  This example is given in John 3:14-15 of trusting the gospel of Christ’s work on a cursed tree (Galatians 3:13) which was a Roman cross, and looking at Him for deliverance from a certain spiritual death for eternity.  He was lifted up to die in the place of all He calls to Himself in order to pay the price, and by God-given trust (faith - Ephesians 2:1, 6, 8) we are saved from the serpent’s bite of rebellious sin at Eden which courses through the veins of every child of Adam and Eve who is born as we look to Him on that cross as promised.  Jesus is no serpent, but He defeated the serpent and took the place of the curse of disobedience to die the death we should suffer, promising a resurrection from death to life in both a new spiritual birth and a future glorification in body out of the grave as He demonstrated for us first (1 Corinthians 15:20-23, James:18)!  We therefore only need to look to God’s salvation and live.  As the serpent was raised so that His people would trust God, so we look to Christ on the cross for His work of salvation.  Trust and obey - there is no other way (Acts4:12).