Monthly Archives: April 2012

Last time I published an excerpt from The Better Covenant, by Ron Bailey.  A few of my own thoughts now.

The famous John 3:16 quote must be read in context, as Ron Bailey emphasizes.  Christ has just drawn attention to Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, adding that “even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:14,15).

That is the context of John 3:16.  “For God so loved the world…”  That is, it is thus, in this manner (referring back to the previous two verses), that God loved the world.  Just as He gave the people in the wilderness the serpent on the pole, “He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The people in the wilderness bitten by the fiery serpents were dying, and they knew it.  Looking upon the brazen serpent on the pole was a matter of life and death.  It wasn’t optional; there was no other remedy.

How desperately we need the kind of Gospel that in its going forth causes men to know the sting of death is at work in them.  They have been bitten by a Serpent; the sting of his venom—sin—is coursing through their system.  Eve, deceived by the Serpent, bit into the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; Adam subsequently bit into it as well—an act of deliberate disobedience—and ever since, all born in Adam have been “bitten” by the Serpent; they are infected with his own nature; the poison of sin and disobedience courses through our systems.  We are dying; others we love are dying.

But there is a remedy.

The same Gospel that reveals the desperate state of all men also reveals there is a remedy—and no other remedy—looking upon, believing on, the Crucified One.  To look upon the serpent on the pole is the antidote for the poisonous sting.  We may not comprehend why this works any more than the people back there in the wilderness understood why looking at the brazen serpent on the pole suddenly caused the poison in their systems to stop its deadly working.  But it is God’s directive; to believe is enough.  In due course He will give the understanding—that when the Lord Jesus Christ was lifted up on the cross of Calvary He judged, condemned, the Serpent, and bore in Himself the judgment of the man bitten by that Serpent, and thus became his salvation.  Those bitten ought to have died; He died instead.

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of man be lifted up…”  It’s hard for us to comprehend, and we don’t try to press beyond the boundaries of reverence and holiness.  Christ likens Himself lifted up, crucified, to the serpent of brass on the pole. We find that likeness revolting; it doesn’t seem right; it’s horrible imagery—our beautiful Lord Jesus Christ being likened to a serpent.  But it just shows you how far the love of God was prepared to go to save the creature He had ordained for His own image and likeness—and who had become contaminated with the serpent’s nature.  If it’s imagery that we find repugnant, should we feel any less revulsion for sin?

In fact Paul tells us the Lord Jesus Christ became sin for us, He who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).

Rotherham in his Emphasized Bible points out that in Hebrew the words for sin offering (he prefers sin bearer) and sin are the same (chattath); the words for guilt offering and guilt are also the same (asham)—“the victim being called by the name of the offence which it bears and for which it dies.”  Here is the scenario.  Someone brings his sin offering to the priest and puts his hands on the head of that offering, thus identifying himself with the sin offering, and transferring his sin to the sin bearer.  The priest then leads it away to be slaughtered and sacrificed to God.  “The ancient usage was intensely dramatic,” says Rotherham. “It led the offerer, as he viewed his substitute, to exclaim, ‘There goes—there dies—my sin.’”

Just as the Hebrew text uses chattah for both sin and sin offering, the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) uses hamartias for both.  The apostle Paul was very familiar with the Septuagint as well as the Hebrew text, so it is not surprising to see the same usage in his writings, which were originally in Greek.  For, we read in Romans that God sent His Son “in the likeness of sinful (hamartias) flesh, and for sin (hamartias, that is, for a sin offering), condemned sin (hamartias) in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3).  Jesus Christ fulfilled that old-covenant type, becoming the sin offering who became our sin… and died.  We too may well say—that is, we who look on Him—“There goes—there dies—my sin.  Good-bye forever.”

This is the significance of believing in Him—on looking upon the serpent on the pole.  This is what believing implies.  Believing is not just mental assent to certain points of doctrine; it is looking upon Him and seeing Him, once for all, as the one and only remedy for a Serpent’s bite that means we are dying, are perishing.

Now, think of that ancient scenario in the wilderness as Ron Bailey described the Harold Copping print in his old Bible.  The poisonous snakes are making their way through the camp of Israel biting everyone in their path.  Some are dying; some are already dead.  Everybody is in panic mode; all they can think about is the deadly snakes.  They are not just listening to a nice sermon about accepting Jesus; they know they are dead if they don’t get help.  How we need this kind of evangelism, this kind of preaching—the sharp sword of the Spirit that pierces all defence and confronts people with their true state!  They have been bitten by a Serpent and they are dying!

But there must come a moment when we are no longer crying out because of the serpents that have bitten us.  There is no profit in continually pointing to this person or that—my father’s temperament or my great-grandfather’s addiction, or something my co-worker said the other day or the sin that dwelleth in me… or whatever.  That gets me nowhere.  And further, there is no use continually dwelling on the poison that’s at work in my system as a result of the bite.  Forever labouring under sin and guilt is futile.  We must look away from all that!  God has provided a remedy!  And it works!

We must look to the Serpent upon the pole.

And we must lead others to look to the Serpent upon the pole.  We must take them to Calvary where their sin (offering) died.

There’s often an emphasis on our need to see Jesus.  It’s important; it’s true—we need so deeply to see Him.  But what about our need to see Him as that Serpent lifted up on the pole?  The gospel the Galatian churches received was so graphic that they saw Christ crucified before their very eyes (Gal. 3:1).  Only the Holy Spirit can present this kind of gospel.  Only ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit can reveal before the eyes of sinners the Saviour lifted up on the pole.

Only ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit can open blind eyes to see that He who died for their sins also rose from the dead that we might live.

I recall George Warnock telling a story of a woman blind in one eye who suddenly one day saw the Lord on the cross, and He was blind in one eye.  Instantly she was healed.  How we need to see Him… as our sin—your sin, my sin—judged and sentenced and condemned… and dead.  What, do you suppose, would be the fruit of such seeing?

Spurgeon as a young man saw this lifted-up One.  He was on his way to church when suddenly a rainstorm came up.  He rushed into a little church nearby for shelter.  The service was in progress, and Spurgeon sat down at the back to listen.  The minister was preaching from Isaiah, “Look unto Me and be saved all ye ends of the earth, for I am God and none else” (Isa. 45:22).  Suddenly the preacher looked steadfastly at the young man who had just come in and said to him (and it was a living word), “Young man, look… and live.” Spurgeon would tell the story often, and say, “I looked, and I lived.”

How deeply we need this kind of Gospel—the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.  Not the wishy-washy Gospel so common in our day, a gospel in word only, and often contaminated with gimmicks with no power to save.  But the Gospel that, because it is infused with the power of the grace of Christ… men see Him lifted up on their behalf!

The following is an excerpt from The Better Covenant, by Ron Bailey (available on Amazon).  I found this very moving and wanted to share it with A Mending Feast readers.

Here’s the passage (which will take up this complete blog entry):

For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (Jn. 3.16 NKJV).

This is probably the best loved text in the Bible but even the best texts can become dangerous if detached from their context.  For example, this single verse speaks of “believing,” but the kind of believing that it has in mind can only be discovered by reading the preceding verses. “Believing” here does not mean agreeing with facts as is usually the case in contemporary counselling patterns.  The kind of believing that John has in mind is the kind experienced by people in a unique situation.

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 everlasting life (Jn. 3.14,15 NKJV).

In other words, the kind of believing John has in mind is the kind found in Numbers 21.

The nation of Israel had sinned and the consequence of their sin was a plague of fiery venomous snakes.   The context is so important that I will give the whole section here.

And Jehovah sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.   And the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, because we have spoken against Jehovah, and against thee; pray unto Jehovah that he take away the serpents from us.  And Moses prayed for the people.  And Jehovah said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a standard: and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten, when he seeth it, shall live.  And Moses made a serpent of brass, and set in upon the standard.  And it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked unto the serpent of brass, he lived (Num. 21.6-9 ASV).

These people are not just sick or inconvenienced, they are dying and they know it.  They also know why they are dying.  “We have sinned.”  Conviction of sin is a work of God’s Spirit.  They had not been persuaded of the facts of the case by an evangelist; they knew it.  In fact, they took the initiative, they came to Moses.  This is much more like New Testament evangelism where the appeal comes from the congregation rather than the preacher.   They are desperate in their plea; this sounds much more like those old “after meetings” too.

They are also narrowed down to a single solution.  “Pray unto Jehovah that he take away the serpents from us.”  They know that there are not various options but only one possible solution: God must intervene.  This is also much more like those old “after meetings.”  They are seeking a salvation that only God can provide.  If God does not move on  their behalf they are dead men.  Currently their focus is on the snakes: “Take away the serpents from us.”  That must change.

Moses does as they ask and God commands him to make a fiery snake of brass and to erect it on a standard/pole.  There is to be only one brass snake and it must be “lifted up” on a standard so that it was in sight of everyone who had been bitten.  What a vivid picture this represents.  I have a beautiful colour print by Harold Copping in an old Bible.  I can’t look at it without weeping but let me see if I can describe it to you.

The tents of Israel spread out into the hazy distance.  The scene is chaotic, people rushing out of their tents, some running, some standing.  As in any panic it is difficult to make out quite what is happening.  Or it would be if it were not for a tent in the foreground that is much closer and has its own tragedy unfolding.  In the doorway of the tent there is a young man face down in the sand; a snake is wriggling over his arm and on its way to the next victim.  There is an old man in the doorway with white hair and beard, his attention is not on any of the chaos around him but is fixed on the horizon where a man holds a wooden stake with a single crosspiece; it has a brass snake coiled around it.

There are others in the doorway of the tent; a man and his wife are frantically trying to rouse a young man who looks to be the brother of the snake’s earlier victim.  The mother is cradling her teenage son in her arms, his eyes are closed; her face is pale with grief.  The father is fear crazed; his eyes show white as he tries desperately to rouse his young son from his coma.  His face strains to see any signs of life in his son, and his left hand points backwards to the horizon where the brass snake coils around the stake.  There are no words, but I know what he is saying:  “Look and live… look and live.”

Young’s Literal Translation does well to catch the sense of the verbs.  “And Moses maketh a serpent of brass, and setteth it on the ensign, and it hath been, if the serpent hath bitten any man, and he hath looked expectingly unto the serpent of brass—he hath lived” (Num. 21.9 YLT).  A paraphrase might say, “Any man looking away from everything else and putting his whole trust in the snake on the pole lived.”  This is not just a wonderful story, this is a definition of believing as used by John in John 3.16.  God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that any man, looking away from everything else and putting his trust in a Man upon a cross should not perish but have everlasting life.  This is John’s desperate cry to all who have been bitten, and that is the whole race: “Look and live… look and live.”

It is delivered to men and women who know that we have sinned and that there is no other remedy unless God takes away the snakes.  I said earlier that men’s focus must not remain upon their own condition or even its cause: not the bite and not the poison eating its way through their lives, but upon the one “lifted up.”

That’s the passage from The Better Covenant by Ron Bailey.  Isn’t that rich?  I’ll just leave it there.  Next time, hopefully, I’ll give a few of my own thoughts on it.