Look and live

“And the LORD said unto Moses, 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.” - Numbers 21v8

The people of Israel never got over their complaining, even after almost forty years. Once again they complained about the lack of water. Their minds were so corrupted that they said it would have been better to have died in the Korahite rebellion. The dissatisfaction angered God and He sent fiery serpents to bite the people with a fatal bite.

However, God’s judgement is always mixed with His grace. He told Moses to make a brass serpent and that all who looked up to the serpent would be healed from the serpent bite. “Every one who is bitten and looks up to the serpent will live.”

The people did not know it yet, but the brass serpent is an example of Bible type. God uses typology when he uses an incident in the Bible to illustrate another truth, In John 3v14-15 we read, “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.”

The people of Israel had been bitten by the scorpion of sin. They had no hope on their own, Their only hope was God’s solution to the problem as they believed and looked up to the raised serpent. Jesus was lifted up on the cross of Calvary. Today all men have been bitten by sin. Man’s only hope today is look up to Jesus, seeing Him lifted up on the cross, confessing their sin as Israel did, and realising that eternal life only comes God’s way.