Passage: John 3:14-15
The Big Idea
The main “heavenly thing” Jesus reveals to Nicodemus is the cross. Just as Moses lifted up a bronze serpent in the wilderness so dying people could look and live, Jesus would be lifted up so that whoever believes in Him would have eternal life. Salvation isn’t earned by doing. It’s received by looking.
The Lifted-Up Son (John 3:14-15)
Jesus said that just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him would have eternal life.
Remember, Jesus had just told Nicodemus He was going to explain heavenly things. And the main heavenly thing is the lifted-up Son.
Spoiler: it’s all about the cross.
That serpent story was about rescue for people who were dying. God provided salvation through what He lifted up. And the context shows the real problem: unbelief.
The Story: Numbers 21
Discouraged on the way (Numbers 21:4)
Israel set out from Mount Hor, going around the land of Edom, and the people grew very impatient and discouraged along the way.
This was near the end of their forty years of wandering, as they waited for the unbelieving generation to die off. And here was the problem: they were on the threshold of the Promised Land, closer than the previous generation had ever been, and they were starting to act with the same unbelief, or worse. Something drastic had to be done.
Not all pain is bad. Sometimes it’s a gift to rescue your faith, to rescue you from trusting in your flesh. “I’m hungry. I’m not happy. I’m not in control.”
Hebrews looks back on this whole generation: those who rebelled were the very ones Moses led out of Egypt. God was grieved with them for forty years, and they died in the wilderness. They couldn’t enter His rest because of unbelief (Hebrews 3:16-19).
- They should have been free already, living in the Promised Land and enjoying everything God wanted to bless them with.
- But they refused to trust God’s Word at the beginning.
- And now the next generation was in danger of failing to walk by faith all over again.
Faith is deeply personal and important to God. People tend to think faith is just my private decision that no one else can question. But God says it’s far more than that. It grieves God when we willfully withhold our trust from Him. It’s choosing another god. Spiritual adultery. Betrayal.
“We hate this bread” (Numbers 21:5)
The people spoke against God and Moses: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There’s no food and no water, and we detest this miserable bread!”
They chose to look at their situation through unbelief.
- “No food.” A lie. God was providing manna every day. No one was starving.
- “No water.” A lie. God had always provided water, even from the rock (1 Corinthians 10:4). No one had died of thirst.
- “We hate this worthless bread.” We hate Your provision. It doesn’t taste like what the world offered us.
That was the real issue. They didn’t believe God was leading them somewhere that would truly satisfy them. “He’s just making my life hard. He’s just taking things away!” That’s 100 percent unbelief. God works all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). Sin works all things to destroy us.
- That sinful relationship you think is meeting your need is actually keeping you in bondage and destroying your soul.
- That sinful indulgence isn’t numbing the pain. It’s spreading the infection deeper into your heart.
- When God calls us to repent, it’s for our good and our health, and it lines up with our new identity in Christ.
Fiery serpents (Numbers 21:6)
So the Lord sent venomous snakes among the people. They bit the people, and many Israelites died.
“God wouldn’t do that.” Well, He did.
Unbelief is sin, and sin has to be dealt with like cancer. It must be destroyed. But even this becomes a perfect illustration of God’s love.
Snakes in Scripture often picture sin, going all the way back to the serpent in Eden. Here’s the picture: your sin has poisoned you. You’re under a death sentence. The path you’ve chosen only leads to death.
Two choices: die, or repent. Many chose to die.
“We have sinned” (Numbers 21:7)
The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away.” So Moses prayed for them.
That’s the choice of faith. It isn’t complicated, except that you have to humble yourself and let go of your pride, which is nearly impossible for us humans. But they did it. And it led to prayer. And what does God do when we pray? He answers. He saves.
The bronze serpent (Numbers 21:8-9)
The Lord told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole. Anyone who was bitten could look at it and live. So Moses did, and whenever someone who had been bitten looked at the bronze snake, they lived.
- Bronze in Scripture is often associated with judgment, like the bronze altar where sacrifices were burned.
- The serpent pictures sin.
- The wooden pole points to the cross.
When you look at the serpent being judged on a pole, you’re completely healed of the poison.
Wow!
Many people today are reminded of this story by the snake-on-a-staff symbols used in medicine. Hold on to that image, the whole story of the snake on the pole.
Jesus Flips the Script
Nicodemus would have read this story through a law-based mindset: “If I do bad things, God wants to hurt me.”
Jesus flips that around and reveals God’s true heart: “If I turn to Jesus in humility and faith, God will save me!” Sin alone brings the snakes. It isn’t God’s desire to abandon me, but to save me.
Nicodemus had to see this: the thing hanging on the pole was a snake. So Jesus would have to become, in a sense, the snake. He who knew no sin would be made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) and hang on a tree to save us from our sin.
And what do we have to do? Believe in Him, and not perish, but have eternal life.
How do I do that? Look at Him.
In Numbers 21, the people weren’t saved by doing anything. They were saved by simply looking at the bronze serpent. They had to trust that something as foolish-seeming as looking would be enough to save them. And surely some perished because they thought it was too foolish to bother.
What Is Believing?
Believing in Jesus is simpler than it sounds. It’s trusting Him, who He is and what He did, rather than trying to build a religious résumé.
Believing sounds like: “Jesus, You are my Savior. I trust Your death and resurrection for my forgiveness and new life.”
And just as important: believing isn’t one more rung on a ladder you climb to earn acceptance. Believing is responding to a gift that’s already been given.
- When people asked Jesus what works God required, He said the work of God is this: to believe in the One He sent (John 6:29). Our response of believing is our “work.” There’s no deed we can do. Yet believing affects everything we do.
- Paul says that to the one who doesn’t work but believes in the God who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness (Romans 4:5).
What’s the only requirement to be saved? Be ungodly! If you think you’re okay, you’ll never be saved. That’s the door. Humility and faith work together as the perfect way of grace.
Believing is our response to God’s provision, not a ladder to earn it.
God calls out: look to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other (Isaiah 45:22).
We might be willing to do all kinds of things to get saved: good works, heroic deeds. But they’ve all been tainted. God says this is the only way. Look.
Look, Young Man! Look Now!
On a bitterly cold Sunday in January of 1850, a teenage boy, not yet sixteen, was walking through a town in England in a heavy snowstorm. He was deeply aware of his need for God and of the sin and failure in his life, even at that young age. The church he meant to visit was too far in the snow, so he turned down a side street and slipped into a small Primitive Methodist chapel. He sat near the back. It was as cold inside as out, and only a handful of people were there.
The regular preacher never showed up; the snow had delayed him. So a layman, a plain, uneducated man, stood up to preach. His text was Isaiah 45:22: Look to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth.
He didn’t have much to say, so he kept repeating his text. That was all the young man needed. The preacher said something like this: “It’s Christ who speaks. ‘I’m in the garden in agony. I’m on the cross dying for sinners. Look to Me!’ That’s all you have to do. A child can look. Anyone, however weak or poor, can look. And if you look, the promise is that you will live.”
Then he stopped, pointed toward the back where the boy was sitting, and said, “That young man there looks very miserable.” (He was.) “There’s no hope for you, young man, no chance of getting rid of your sin, except by looking to Jesus.” And he shouted, “Look! Look, young man! Look now!”
And he looked.
That young man was Charles Spurgeon. He later said that walking home through the falling snow, the words of David kept ringing in his heart: wash me, and I will be whiter than snow (Psalm 51:7). His burden lifted that day, never to return. He walked home with a new spring in his step, a new joy on his face and a new peace in his heart. He had looked, and he lived.
Look to Him Alone
For I am God, and there is no other. That’s why we look to the Lord, and to the Lord alone.
- Institutions aren’t God.
- The church isn’t God.
- Pastors aren’t God.
- Our brothers and sisters in Christ aren’t God.
We don’t look to them. We look to the Lord, because He alone is God.
Spurgeon later reflected that the verse says look, not see. If we look at something in the dark, we may not see it, but we’ve still done what we were told. So if a sinner only looks to Jesus, Jesus will save him, because Jesus in the dark is just as good as Jesus in the light, and Jesus when you can’t see Him is just as good as Jesus when you can. Someone says, “I’ve been trying to see Jesus, but I haven’t seen Him.” The verse doesn’t say see Him. It says look to Him.
Grace Takeaway
You’ve been bitten, and the poison is real. But you don’t have to earn a cure. God has lifted up His Son on the cross. Look to Him. Just look, and live.
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