"4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient 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 we loathe this worthless food.” 6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And 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 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live."
Numbers 21:4-9
The circumstances surrounding this well-known story are such as have become familiar to us as a pattern in the account of Israel's wanderings and the lessons to be gathered from it repeat those we have already gathered from the stubborn spirit of murmuring and backsliding so often evidenced by the people. The particular and special value it has for us, however, lies in the fact that our Lord Himself chose it to illustrate His greatest utterance about the gospel, in John 3:1416, where the correspondence is made in unmistakable terms: 'As Moses...even so... the Son of Man...'. Here, then, is the best possible of illustrations to bring out the mean- ing of salvation. When we remember that the Old Testament is 'God's picture book', com- piled to teach us the truths of grace, we realise that in His providence and mercy some of these old records throw wonderful illumination upon the doctrinal truths of God's salvation, helping us who are so slow to understand the Scriptures, to grasp them more fully and truly. One recalls our Lord's postresurrection words to the disciples: 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken...and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.' Was this story included? One can hardly think it would have been missed out, when He had already used it, to such effect, with Nicodemus. We shall spend some time with it, then, to see the lessons it is designed to teach us.