BY THE REV. DONALD N. MACLEOD, TARBERT, HARRIS.
“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.”—JOHN iii. 14, 15.
THE words which are found in these two verses of Holy Scripture follow immediately upon the Lord Jesus Christ’s most solemn, pregnant, and profound answer to Nicodemus, concerning the absolute necessity of regeneration: “Ye must be born again.” Concurrently with this emphatic affirmation regarding the sinner’s need of a change of nature in order to salvation, the words of our text declare another necessity, not of the sinner but of the Saviour, who must Himself “be lifted up.” In asserting this second necessity, a certain memorable event in the history of the children of Israel, which happened when they were journeying from Mount Hor, by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom, is seized upon and held forth as typical of the Redeemer being thus lifted up. This typical representation makes it necessary for us to refer briefly to that incident at the outset.
On the journey from Mount Hor past the boundaries of the land of Edom, the soul of the people of Israel was much discouraged or grieved “because of the way,” and the hardships they endured on the march made them easy victims of one of their most prevalent national sins—that of murmuring against God’s providence. “And the people spake against God and against Moses: Wherefore have ye brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread.” For this sin, the magnitude of which can be measured by the severity of the punishment—having in it the elements of rebellion, ingratitude, contempt, a secret hankering after what they had once willingly forsaken but now wished to re-possess, with an openly-confessed preference for the thraldom of Egypt to the great and precious privilege of being God’s freedmen, though forced for a little while to undergo the unavoidable inconveniences and discomforts of even a waste, howling wilderness—the Lord sent fiery serpents among them which bit them, with the result that many died. “When he slew them then they sought him: and they returned and inquired early after God.” So, likewise, this dire chastisement made them repent of their folly, and betaking themselves with all haste to Moses, they earnestly entreated him to pray unto the Lord on their behalf, that He would graciously take the serpents away from them. Moses, ever ready to do his best for God’s Israel, was pleased to hearken to that doleful cry of distress, and he instantly besought the Lord for them. The Lord mercifully heard his prayer, and immediately steps were taken to provide a remedy for the sick and dying. That remedy was most simple, yet most sublime. It was Godlike. It was easily got and easily applied. It was but the making, fixing, and setting up of a brazen serpent upon a pole, to which those bitten were to look, God having promised life and healing to every one that in obedience and faith would look to the fiery serpent of brass on the pole. “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten, when he looketh 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.”
This, then, is a summary of the narrative of the incident, as we have it recorded in the twenty-first chapter of the book of Numbers, and the position to which it is here raised, and the application made of it by the Lord Jesus Christ, fill it with a new and deeper fulness of meaning and interest than could ever possibly be associated with the incident itself—great though that must always necessarily remain,—or rather the vail is drawn aside and its true and hidden significance laid bare, and clothed in the full light of the Incarnation, shines in the beautiful glow of its renewed youth, like life from the dead.
In a humble endeavour to reach and uncover a little of the great wealth of mercy and grace which lies embedded in the words of our text, we shall proceed to consider it in the following order:—
I.—The Person between whom and the serpent the comparison is made—the Son of man.
In the second verse of this same chapter we read as follows:—”The same (that is, Nicodemus) came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.” Here several things are asserted concerning this Son of man, which we shall notice in their order. (1) He is called Jesus. (2) He is addressed as Rabbi. (3) He is acknowledged as a teacher whose teaching manifested that He came from God. (4) He is said to be a worker of miracles, and such miracles as could not be wrought by any human ingenuity or power, and plainly were the result of the forthputting of divine omnipotence—the finger of God—thereby revealing and proving that He was God; that God was with him.
From the third to the twenty-first verse inclusive, with the single exception of the fourth verse, that very same Jesus unto whom Nicodemus came is the speaker; and that the speaker and the Son of man, who must be lifted up, must be identified as one and the same person is so plain that proof is needless. We thus see that the Son of man is Jesus, whom the angel informed Joseph of before His birth, and would have Him thus named because He was coming into the world to save His people from their sins: that He is Rabbi, i.e., doctor or master, who has authority to teach and judge in all matters of religion, and whose teaching evidence his wisdom, power, and authority to be divine. “Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” “For He taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes”: that He is omnipotent and can perform miracles of which God alone is capable, and is therefore equal with God. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Again, at the thirteenth verse we read:—”And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.” Here it is asserted of the Son of man that He was in heaven; that He that was in heaven came down from heaven; and that He that came down from heaven is still in heaven, all which plainly and positively shows Him to be possessed of two distinct natures, human and divine, subsisting in one divine Person, and thus with absolute certainty Immanuel, God with us. This is the glorious and matchless Person prefigured by Moses’ brazen serpent in the wilderness. Here the Anti-type compares Himself to the type, and this brings us to the second part.
II.—Wherein does the comparison consist, and why must the Son of Man be lifted up?
We have already seen that Moses was commanded to make a fiery serpent of brass, corresponding to the deadly fiery serpents by which they were bitten, and which similarity seems to me to signify, Jesus Christ made in the likeness of sinful flesh; His untold sufferings as the sinbearer, and His power to endure, overcome, and outlive such fiery trials; and also to teach that an atonement and salvation for sinful men were possible only by substitution, that is, by a divine person, God’s Son, becoming incarnate and suffering death in the very nature that sinned. The brazen serpent was an insensate, lifeless figure, a fitting emblem of death, and it is the Son of man’s vicarious death that heals. “And with His stripes we are healed.” But Moses was next to put it on a pole, or in the words of our text, “to lift it up.” That was necessary in order that those bitten throughout the many thousands of Israel could see it, when obeying the divine command, they looked to it and were healed. For though we cannot now see Jesus Christ with our bodily eyes, and even although we were able to see Him after that manner, it would not mean salvation for us, for many saw and knew Him well in the days of His flesh and perished, yet we must see Him with the eyes of the soul, that is, by a Spirit-begotten faith and an enlightened understanding, if we are not to perish also.
The chief resemblance of the Son of man to the brazen serpent is His being thus lifted up for health and salvation to a wounded and dying people, bitten to death by the Old Serpent, Satan, and incurable by any other means other than beholding the Son of man “lifted up”—the Son of man crucified. “They shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him.”
It may also be applied to Christ’s resurrection, ascension, glorification, and second advent. “Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” Again, it is to be understood of the promulgation of the gospel to which the words are indeed applicable. It seems to be the very thing which is here specially referred to. The gospel message to a perishing world ought always to have for its sum and substance, “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” It should be the heart and soul, head and body of every address on spiritual and eternal things to sinners of mankind, its alpha and omega, with its relative truths of the Fall and eternal damnation. In the preaching of the gospel, Jesus Christ, in all that He is, as Godman, Prophet, Priest, and King, and one Mediator between God and men, ought to be raised aloft and held forth before sinners in such manner as, with the Spirit’s help, to convince and confirm them in the truth that “besides him there is no Saviour,” that “neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved;” that He is able to save to the uttermost, and that for us there will be found no way of escape if we neglect so great salvation, and despise and reject so great a Saviour. This is the divine message for all ages of the herald of the Cross, and of the Church militant, to a lost and ruined world. Every preacher, of whatever nation or clime, should preach the Christ of the Scriptures, or leave preaching severely alone. “He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” And in the last place, His whole life on earth may be said to have been one continual lifting up, as He, ever advancing and ever ascending, for thirty-three and a half years trod the lonely, weary, and sorrowful path between Bethlehem’s manger and Calvary’s Cross, and thence to God’s right hand. A lifting up such as spectators never saw, that stands for ever unique in the annals of mankind, and in the records of heaven itself. And if in His humiliation He was poorer than the foxes and the birds of the air, and had not whereon to lay His head, if He knew weariness, hunger, thirst, grief, tears, was blasphemed, falsely accused, sought to be slain, mocked, scourged, spat upon, wore the purple robe and the crown of thorns, they were but the stepping stones by which He crossed the brook of sufferings that lay in His way.
But so far we have only treated of His being lifted up: we must now say something on the second point. Why “must” the Son of man be lifted up? This “must” was owing to following reasons:—
1. God’s eternal decree. To that decree concerning redemption does the only begotten Son refer in the second Psalms as that which he purposed to execute by performing all His covenant engagements as the surety of His people in the great everlasting covenant of grace. “The sure decree I will declare.” That declaration was made (1) by His obedience, death, and resurrection, and (2) by Himself on the Cross when He cried aloud, “It is finished,” and (3) by His ambassadors in the world in preaching the Gospel to every creature. In confirmation of this we have the Apostle Peter reminding the Jews of it when accusing them of having put to death Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among them by miracles and wonders, and signs: “Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” So says the Spirit, and so Peter humbly believes.
2. Its being written in the volume of the book. The Old Testament Scriptures, from Genesis to Malachi, speak of the coming of a mighty deliverer, who was to save sinners of all nations from sin and its wages, which is death, and whose kingdom was to be world-wide, in whom the priesthood of Melchizedek was to be combined with the royalty of David, and yet whose triumph was to be won through sufferings and death. “The Scriptures cannot be broken,” therefore, “All things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me.” “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?”
3. The absolute demands of the law and justice of God. The law demanded perfect obedience: justice demanded perfect satisfaction for man’s transgression of the law, which would forever vindicate the honour of God as the law-giver. Inasmuch as the claims of law and justice could not be met by guilty man, and that they must needs be satisfied on his behalf if he was to escape everlasting damnation, it behoved Christ, the federal representative of His people, to take the sinner’s place and die—the just for the unjust, the holy for the unholy, the righteous for the wicked. “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
4. Christ being made sin and a curse in having His people’s sins and guilt laid upon Him, and so enduring the wrath of God. It should be here remembered that, as the sinner’s substitute, Christ was dealt with by God the Father, as if He were really and truly the actual transgressor. And lastly, it was all in complete harmony with His own wishes. This was His heart’s desire, which He had long looked forward to with infinite delight; He would not now change. He would not have it otherwise. He loved His church and gave Himself for it, and must we not say that His own love nailed Him to the accursed tree?
We now come to our third and last part.
III.—For whom and for what end must it be?
In answer to the question, for whom the Son of man must be lifted up, we say that it was for the election of grace—that is, all the sinners from among mankind fallen, of all nations, kindreds, and tongues, given by the Father, of His sovereign will and pleasure, to the Son, on covenant terms, before the world was. “Thine they were and thou gavest them me.” “I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine.” “And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them.” “Holy father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me.” “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”
But inasmuch as all these, without a single exception, were by the first man’s disobedience made sinners, fallen, lost, and ruined, and are known to none but God, and because they can in no way be distinguished from the whole mass of corrupt mankind, or can be known by the visible Church until such time as they are effectually called by the Holy Spirit, profess their faith in Jesus Christ, and bear evidence of a change of nature in works meet for repentance; infinite wisdom has so devised, and Jesus Christ has so ordered it, that a free and full offer of salvation be given to every human being in His name and authority unto whom the good news of His gospel comes. The preaching of the gospel is the special means appointed by Jesus Christ, and honoured in the use by the Holy Spirit, for gathering in the lost sheep to Christ’s fold. It, therefore, fills us with sadness and dismay to see it have so little effect on the sinners of our day, so that, even where it has escaped corruption, it is loathed. It is also the great means by which the Spirit sanctifies and makes meet for glory those who are effectually called, justified, and adopted.
What is usually termed the universal call of the gospel occurs in our text in the form—“That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life,” and every rational creature, or as it is expressed here, “whosoever,” that receives an offer of eternal life in the name and for the sake of the Son of man should remember and seriously consider:—
1. That he or she has Scripture warrant, be they young or old, moral and well behaved, or the chief of sinners steeped in scarlet and crimson sins, to gladly embrace that offer as made personally to himself or herself. “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me: and him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.” “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners: of whom I am chief.”
2. The Saviour freely offered, being the Son of man who is the Son of God, is a person so glorious, rich, and lovely as makes Him worthy of being received by every person that breathes and of being rejected by none.
3. He has made an atonement for sin which fully satisfied the Father, and will abundantly satisfy the sinner too when he comes to know its merits. It provides him with a new and living way to reconciliation with God, peace and happiness in himself, life, glory, and immortality. It supplies him with a laver in the blood shed to effectually cleanse him from sin in its guilt and defilement. “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”
4. The offer of salvation is only for a limited time called in Scripture “to-day,” and therefore it becomes us to be up and doing. The crowning sin is to reject salvation; the greatest of all losses to miss it. “The night cometh when no man can work.”
Faith in Jesus Christ, or believing in Him, corresponds to the looking up to the brazen serpent, and it is expressly stated in our text that only such as believe in Him are eternally saved—”That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Faith and obedience are therefore absolutely necessary to salvation.
In regard to this faith which is saving, two things are to be observed, and to be enforced upon gospel hearers with all the emphasis of which one is capable, which their great importance demands.
1. That as we are by nature dead in trespasses and sins we are utterly unable of ourselves to exercise faith upon the Son of God, apart from that faith being begotten in us by the Holy Ghost through the instrumentality of the Word of God. “For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”
2. That this inability to believe, being the immediate result and fruit of the Fall, does not in the least excuse us, or lessen our guilt as rejecters of salvation and eternal life, but rather increases our guilt. Having been originally created with a free will and power to keep it all for good, we abused it, and wilfully brought ourselves into these fearful straits. And, moreover, this inability does not remove our responsibility to our Creator, who, though we became miserably bankrupt, has not lost His just right to claim His own to the uttermost farthing. However, neither this inability nor predestination ought to discourage us in our seeking after God, if haply we may find Him, because, when we cannot make one hair white or black, nothing is impossible with Him; and remembering His omnipotence, willingness, mercy, love, grace, promise, and faithfulness, they ought rather to stimulate us in our quest after reconciliation and forgiveness.
And now, in conclusion, we may briefly summarise the great ends for which “the Son of man must be lifted up.”
1. The glory of God. “Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
2. The manifestation of God’s purpose, as already noticed—the showing forth of the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable love of the Father in giving His Son, of the Son in giving Himself, and of the Holy Spirit in preparing a body for Him and upholding Him in His work.
3. The complete redemption of His people from sin and misery, wrath and condemnation, and their ultimate entrance into endless fellowship, happiness, and glory in the mansions of heaven, where is treasured up for them what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, and has not entered into the heart of man. “Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.” “The Lord will give grace and glory.”