THE BRONZE SERPENT
Numbers 21; John 3:14-15

Scripture places two liftings side by side and interprets one by the other. In the wilderness, Moses lifted up a serpent of bronze on a pole, and everyone bitten who looked lived (Num 21:8-9). Jesus told Nicodemus that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone believing in Him may have eternal life (John 3:14-15). Christ Himself is the interpreter of Scripture, for He opened the Scriptures to show the things concerning Himself in Moses and all the Prophets (Luke 24:27), and He opened minds to understand that all things written concerning Him must be fulfilled (Luke 24:44-45). The Scriptures testify of Him (John 5:39), the Son declares the Father (John 1:18), God has spoken by the Son (Heb 1:1-2), and the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10). The bronze serpent is not a moral example. It is a figure of Christ lifted up in judgment, and the arrangement of the texts is the argument.

THE POISON WAS JUDGMENT FOR REBELLION AGAINST GOD

The context of Numbers 21 is rebellion, not accident. Israel journeyed from Mount Hor to go around Edom, and the soul of the people became impatient on the way (Num 21:4). The people spoke against God and against Moses, complaining that they had been brought up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness, that there was no bread and no water, and that the soul loathed the light bread (Num 21:5). Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and many of the people of Israel died (Num 21:6).

The poison worked inwardly and spread beyond resistance. A bite is a small wound, but the venom moves through the whole body and kills. Scripture uses that movement to describe sin. Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (Rom 5:12). All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). The serpent is a fitting instrument of that judgment, because the serpent is the form in which the curse first entered. Through the serpent came the temptation that led to transgression (Gen 3:1-6). The LORD God said to the serpent that it was cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field (Gen 3:14). The LORD also declared enmity between the serpent and the woman, and between its seed and her seed, and that her seed would bruise the serpent's head while the serpent would bruise His heel (Gen 3:15).

THE CURE WAS APPOINTED BY GOD ALONE

After judgment fell, the people confessed that they had sinned in speaking against the LORD and against Moses, and they asked Moses to pray to the LORD that He would take away the serpents (Num 21:7). Moses prayed for the people (Num 21:7). The answer did not remove the serpents from the camp. The LORD said to Moses to make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and that everyone bitten who looked upon it would live (Num 21:8). Moses made a serpent of bronze and set it on a pole, and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked upon the serpent of bronze, he lived (Num 21:9). The cure was not devised by Israel. The cure was appointed by the word of the LORD, and Moses obeyed the word exactly.

No other remedy is mentioned. There is no medicine for the venom, no sacrifice offered at that moment, no work of the hands. The one act named is looking. The promise is attached to the looking: everyone bitten who looked would live (Num 21:8). The fulfillment is stated in the same terms: when he looked, he lived (Num 21:9). The looking did not earn life by its own power, for the eye has no power to draw venom from the veins. The looking received life because God had joined life to that looking by promise. The cure was outside the bitten man, lifted up above the camp, visible to all.

BRONZE DECLARES JUDGMENT BORNE IN THE LIKENESS OF THE CURSE

Moses did not make a serpent of gold or of wood. He made a serpent of bronze (Num 21:9). The metal matters, because bronze in Scripture is associated with judgment and with enduring fire. The altar of burnt offering was overlaid with bronze, with bronze utensils for the burning of sacrifice (Exod 27:1-3). The feet of the risen Christ in vision are described as like burnished bronze refined in a furnace (Rev 1:15). Bronze endures the fire and bears the heat. A serpent of bronze is therefore a serpent of judgment: the likeness of the curse formed in the metal of judgment.

The form matters as much as the metal. God commanded an image of the very thing that was killing Israel. The curse was not hidden or replaced by a pleasant symbol. The curse was displayed, lifted up, set on a pole in the sight of the camp. In the same way, Scripture teaches that God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh (Rom 8:3). Christ redeemed from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse, for it is written that cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (Gal 3:13; Deut 21:22-23). The bronze serpent anticipated that exchange: the form of the curse lifted up, judgment borne in the likeness of the curse, that those under judgment might live by looking. Scripture later joins lifting to the cross. Jesus said that when He is lifted up from the earth, He will draw all men to Himself, and He said this to signify by what death He would die (John 12:32-33).

LOOKING WAS LIVING, AND LIVING WAS PRESENT POSSESSION

In Numbers 21, looking and living are joined without interval. When he looked upon the serpent of bronze, he lived (Num 21:9). The text does not describe gradual recovery or a life that would begin later if the looking were sustained. The looking was the receiving, and the living followed at once by promise. The same structure governs John 3:14-15. As Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone believing in Him may have eternal life (John 3:14-15). Believing corresponds to looking. Eternal life corresponds to living. The tense of possession is present, not merely future. He who believes has eternal life (John 6:47). He who hears the word of Christ and believes Him who sent Him has eternal life and has passed from death to life (John 5:24). The life is the present possession of the believer, because the life is in the Son, and God has given eternal life, and this life is in His Son (1 John 5:11). He who has the Son has life (1 John 5:12).

Scripture describes that looking as looking to Christ Himself. God declares through Isaiah that all the ends of the earth are to look to Him and be saved, for He is God and there is no other (Isa 45:22). The author of Hebrews describes the race as run by looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith (Heb 12:1-2). The looking in Numbers was obedience to the word of God concerning the bronze. The looking in John is believing in the Son lifted up. Faith is not a work that purchases life, for by grace are men saved through faith, and that not of themselves, it is the gift of God, not of works (Eph 2:8-9). The poison worked inwardly, spreading death through the whole man. The cure worked from outside inward, from the lifted serpent to the eye to the whole man. Scripture teaches that the carnal mind is enmity against God and cannot be subject to the Law of God (Rom 8:7). Men are slaves either to sin unto death or to obedience unto righteousness, and there is no third lordship and no neutral ground (Rom 6:16). The cure lies outside the man, in Christ lifted up, and it is received by looking to Him.

THE SON OF MAN MUST BE LIFTED UP AS THE SERPENT WAS

John 3 records the conversation that gives the interpretation. Nicodemus, a man of the Pharisees and a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night and acknowledged that Jesus was a teacher come from God (John 3:1-2). Jesus answered that unless a man is born again, or born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). Jesus answered that unless a man is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:5-6). Nicodemus answered that he did not know how these things could be (John 3:9). Then came the word of necessity: as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up (John 3:14). The word must is divine necessity. The lifting was appointed. The Son of Man must be lifted up because the judgment of sin must fall, the curse must be borne, and the promise to the Seed must be fulfilled. The serpent in Genesis 3 was told that the Seed of the woman would bruise its head (Gen 3:15). The heel is bruised in the suffering of the Son, and the head is crushed in the judgment of the serpent. The ruler of this world is cast out by the lifting (John 12:31).

THE CROSS IS THE JUDGMENT OF SIN IN THE FLESH OF CHRIST

The New Testament unfolds the lifting as judgment. Christ bore sins in His own body on the tree, that those dead to sins should live to righteousness, and by His stripes healing came (1 Pet 2:24). Christ was wounded for transgressions, bruised for iniquities, the chastisement of peace was upon Him, and the LORD laid on Him the iniquity of all (Isa 53:5-6). The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). God made Him who knew no sin to be sin, that in Him righteousness might be given (2 Cor 5:21). The cross is the judgment of God upon sin, executed upon the Son in the place of those given to Him.

The bronze serpent therefore teaches the substitution at the heart of the gospel. The serpent on the pole bore the form of the bite, the likeness of the curse, in the metal of judgment, that the bitten might live by looking. Christ on the cross bore the curse itself, not merely its likeness, in His own body, that those under the curse might live by believing. Christ on the cross took sin away by His own blood, for the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin (1 John 1:7). Without shedding of blood there is no remission (Heb 9:22). The serpent was a shadow. Christ is the substance. The shadow gave temporal life to bodies that would still die in the wilderness. The substance gives eternal life to those who believe, because the Son who was lifted up was also raised up (John 3:14-15; John 20:9). The Law was given by Moses, and grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17). The Law exposes sin, for by the Law is the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20). The bitten man did not first become well and then look. He looked while bitten, while poisoned, while dying, and he lived. The sinner believes while dead in trespasses and sins, and is made alive together with Christ (Eph 2:1-5).

THE SERPENT OF BRASS BECAME AN IDOL WHEN SEPARATED FROM CHRIST

The history of the bronze serpent does not end in Numbers 21. Centuries later, Hezekiah, king of Judah, broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and it was called Nehushtan, a piece of brass (2 Kings 18:4). The object appointed as a sign became an idol when it was worshipped apart from the word that had appointed it and apart from the Christ to whom it pointed. The warning of Nehushtan runs through all Scripture. Men worship the creature rather than the Creator, and exchange the truth of God for a lie (Rom 1:25). Men search the Scriptures and refuse to come to Christ, though the Scriptures testify of Him (John 5:39-40). The serpent was never the Savior. The LORD who spoke the word was the Savior. The looking was never the power. The promise attached to the looking was the power. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).

CHRIST IS THE END TOWARD WHICH ALL SCRIPTURE MOVES

The bronze serpent belongs to a single thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation. The serpent of Genesis 3 is cursed, and the Seed is promised (Gen 3:14-15). The serpent of Numbers 21 is lifted up in bronze, and the bitten live by looking (Num 21:8-9). The Son of Man is lifted up on the cross, and everyone believing has eternal life (John 3:14-15). The Lamb stands as slain in the midst of the throne, for He was slain and redeemed by His blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation (Rev 5:6-9). The serpent, the curse, the cross, and the throne are one story, and the story is Christ. From Him and through Him and to Him are all things, and to Him be glory forever (Rom 11:36). The Scriptures are the revelation of Christ, and Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Him (John 14:6).

Scripture ends that thread with a wedding. The mystery of marriage is great, and it speaks concerning Christ and the church (Eph 5:31-32). Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish (Eph 5:25-27). The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready, arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints (Rev 19:7-8). The holy city, New Jerusalem, is seen coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev 21:2). The bronze serpent pointed to the cross, the cross accomplished the redemption, and the redemption ends in the presentation of a spotless bride to the Son. The poison is judged, the cure is lifted up, the curse is borne, and the bride is presented.