Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1500
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, October 19, 1879
“And Moses made a serpent of brass, and putit upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” Numbers 21:9.
THIS discourse, when it shall be printed, will make 1,500 of my sermons which have been published regularly, week after week. This is certainly a remarkable fact. I do not know of any instance in modern times in which 1,500 sermons have thus followed each other from the press from one person and have continued to command a large circle of readers. I desire to utter most hearty thanksgivings to God for Divine help in thinking out and uttering these sermons, sermons which have not merely been printed, but have been read with eagerness and have also been translated into foreign tongues. These sermons are publicly being read on this very Sabbath in hundreds of places where a minister cannot be found. These sermons God has blessed to the conversion of multitudes of souls.
I may and I must joy and rejoice in this great blessing which I most heartily ascribe to the undeserved favor of the Lord! I thought the best way in which I could express my thankfulness would be to preach Jesus Christ, again, and set Him forth in a sermon in which the simple Gospel should be made as clear as a child’s alphabet. I hope that in closing the list of 1,500 discourses, the Lord will give me words which will be blessed more than any which have preceded them, to the conversion of those who hear it or read it. May those who sit in darkness because they do not understand the freeness of salvation and the easy method by which it may be obtained be brought into the light by discovering the way of peace through believing in Christ Jesus! Forgive this prelude. My thankfulness would not permit me to withhold it.
Concerning our text and the serpent of brass. If you turn to John’s Gospel you will notice that its commencement contains a sort of orderly list of types taken from Holy Scripture. It begins with the creation. God said, “Let there be light” and John begins by declaring that Jesus, the eternal Word, is “the true light, which lights every man that comes into the world.” Before he closes his first chapter, John has introduced a type supplied by Abel, for when the Baptist saw Jesus coming to him, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.” Nor is the first chapter finished before we are reminded of Jacob’s ladder, for we find our Lord declaring to Nathanael, “Hereafter you shall see Heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
By the time we have reached the third chapter we have come as far as Israel in the wilderness and we read the joyful words, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” We are going to speak of this act of Moses this morning, that we may, all of us, behold the bronze serpent and find the promise true, “everyone that is bitten, when he looks upon the bronze serpent, shall live.”
It may be that you who have looked before will derive fresh benefit from looking again, while some who have never turned their eyes in that direction may gaze upon the lifted up Savior and, this morning, be saved from the burning venom of the serpent, that deadly poison of sin which now lurks in their nature and breeds death to their souls. May the Holy Spirit make the word effectual to that gracious end!
I. I shall invite you to consider the subject, first, by noticing THE PERSON IN MORTAL PERIL for whom the bronze serpent was made and lifted up. Our text says, “It came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” Let us notice that the fiery serpents, first of all, came among the people because they had despised God’s way and God’s bread. “The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.” It was God’s way—He had chosen it for them and He had chosen it in wisdom and mercy—but they murmured at it.
As an old Divine says, “It was lonesome and loathsome,” but, still, it was God’s way and, therefore, it ought not to have been loathsome—His pillar of fire and cloud went before them and His servants, Moses and Aaron, led them like a flock—and they ought to have followed cheerfully. Every step of their previous journey had been rightly ordered and they ought to have been quite sure that this compassing of the land of Edom was rightly ordered, too. But no, they quarreled with God’s way and wanted to have their own way. This is one of the great standing follies of men—they cannot be content to wait on the Lord and keep His way—they prefer a will and way of their own.
The people, also, quarreled with God’s food. He gave them the best of the best, for “men did eat angels’ food,” but they called the manna by an opprobrious title, which in the Hebrew has a sound of ridicule about it and, even in our translation, conveys the idea of contempt. They said, “Our soul loathes this light bread,” as if they thought it unsubstantial and only fit to puff them up because it was easy of digestion and did not breed in them that heat of blood and tendency to disease which a heavier diet would have brought with it. Being discontented with their God, they quarreled with the bread which He set upon their table, though it surpassed any that mortal man has ever eaten before or since.