Our scripture reading this morning, we have a
couple of passages.
The first is found in Numbers, chapter 21,
and we'll read from verse 4.
And they, that is the children of Israel,
journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of
the Red Sea to compass the land of
Edom.
And the soul of the people was much
discouraged because of the way.
And the people spoke against God and against
Moses.
Wherefore have you brought us up out of
Egypt to die in the wilderness?
For there is no bread, neither is there
any water, and our soul loatheth this light
bread.
And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the
people, and they bit the people, and many
people of Israel died.
Therefore the people came to Moses and said,
We have sinned, for we have spoken against
the Lord and against thee.
Pray unto the Lord that he take away
the serpents from us.
And Moses prayed for the people.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee
a fiery serpent, set it upon a pole,
and it shall come to pass that every
one that is bitten, when he looketh upon
it, shall live.
Moses made a serpent of bronze and put
it upon a pole, and it came to
pass that if a serpent had bitten any
man, when he beheld the serpent of bronze,
he lived.
Now John chapter 3, just a couple of
verses.
Verses 14 and 15 perhaps.
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 eternal life.
For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.
For God sent not his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the
world through him might be saved.
I thought this morning, for a while together,
we might think about the subject of faith.
And this reference, of course, to faith in
the Word of God, believing on Jesus Christ,
is closely associated with the salvation that we
enjoy this morning.
And if you look through the scriptures, you
look through the Word of God, you will
discover that high on the list of things
which the Bible teaches, that is, the doctrinal
things that are mentioned in the scriptures, faith
is all important.
It's important in the life of the soul.
Now, there are passages like Hebrews 11, 6,
that remind us, without faith it is impossible
to please God.
For he that comes to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Without faith, therefore, there can be no approach
to God.
We must believe.
And the Word of God is just filled
with thoughts that remind us that believing, looking,
putting our faith in God is absolutely essential.
If we are to enjoy a relationship with
God, everything that we do in a spiritual
way is bound up in that word faith.
Without faith, no approach to God, there can
be no forgiveness.
Without faith, no deliverance, and certainly no salvation.
If there is no deliverance, there is no
salvation.
There can be no communion and fellowship with
God apart from faith.
The whole spiritual concept of being a believer
in Jesus Christ, a worshiper of God, is
bound up in that little word faith, or
belief, or trust, which is found so many
times in the Word of God.
I suppose every time we approach this subject,
we say, What is faith?
We are looking for a definition.
Of course, lying right close at hand with
this question is, Do I have faith?
Sometimes someone will ask the question, Are you
among the faithful?
And there are other ways of expressing this
wonderful divine truth of being identified with God
through faith.
Do I have faith?
When we preach about faith, we generally call
upon certain passages that are found in the
Word of God.
I've already made reference to one found there
in Hebrews 11, verse 6.
Of course, Hebrews 12 is another passage.
I'm thinking about a scripture like Romans 10,
verse 17.
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the
Word of God.
What would you know about God apart from
his Word?
If you didn't have the Word of God
to enlighten your mind, your heart, and your
soul concerning the person of God and the
Son, what would you know?
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the
Word of God.
I have just a paraphrase of that passage,
and it's from J.
B.
Phillips.
He says, Faith, you see, can only come
from hearing the message.
That's God's message.
Faith can only come from hearing what God
has to say.
He is the soul, he is the object,
he is all in all when it comes
to this matter of faith.
And the message is the Word of Christ.
In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God.
Jesus Christ is the living Word of God.
This is the written Word of God, and
they can become synonymous.
When we read the Word of God and
we believe the Word of God, and it
tells us about the person of Jesus Christ,
and the fact that he is wonderful, and
he is our Savior, our souls reach out
in faith, and we take hold of this,
and we say, I believe this, I accept
this.
And we have acted in a way, in
a manner that is pleasing to God, because
we have trusted God.
We have acted in faith toward God.
There is only one reference in the scriptures,
I believe, to define as such this word
faith, and the whole concept of faith.
There are just 14 words that are found
there in Hebrews 11.1, and it doesn't
tell us, in a sense, what it is
in essence, but it does tell us what
it is as to its operation, what it
does.
And that is significant, I think, because we
need to just leave it right there.
There is something rather mysterious about all of
the benefits that are derived from one by
an act of faith or believing God and
trusting God, all of the benefits that flow
our way, because of an action that is
taken in the mind, in the heart, and
in the soul of an individual.
I have to hasten to remind you, it
has to go beyond the mind.
It is not just by intellectual comprehension of
what is written in this book, and the
things that are found here that constitute an
act of faith.
It is something that takes place in the
heart of a man.
I think found in Numbers 21, we see
faith in action.
It is not called faith as such.
It is all found in that word look.
Look is the word that is used.
It doesn't say, have faith in the fiery
serpent.
It says, look at the fiery serpent.
They were asked to do something.
We are asked to do something when we
read the word of God.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, that's the reason I
read these verses in John 3, he uses
that incident in Numbers 21 to explain to
his hearers how they may be saved.
He uses the word believe.
The word believe and faith are synonymous.
They mean the same thing.
The word look and faith and believe, they
all mean the same thing.
So we begin to see and discover as
we look at the word of God that
God has made it pretty simple, and the
way is very simple.
It doesn't mean that a person has to
be simple minded to be saved, but in
a sense we have to humble ourselves and
we have to open our hearts and minds
and be receptive to the word of God
and believe what it says for the blessing
that is bound up in our God and
in the person of his Son to flow
into our souls.
So important that we recognize that sometimes theologically
we may complicate these things, we may create
difficulties for ourselves, we may use some theological
jargon in seeking to convey thoughts about things
that are ever so simple, yet ever so
profound.
But the Bible used words that are simple
and understandable.
Believe, trust, look, have faith in.
I know there's not one of us in
this room this morning that could say, I
don't understand those terms.
We do understand those terms.
There are terms and expressions that we use
in life every day, and the Lord Jesus
knew that.
And he uses this experience, this incident in
the lives of the children of Israel to
remind its heroes of just how simple it
is to trust God, to have faith in
God, and for God to provide salvation for
the one that believes.
This is an important discovery.
Someone might read in the book of Numbers
this incident that happened in the lives of
the children of Israel, and not even remotely
connect it with the matter of God's salvation.
But the Lord Jesus uses it because it
does point out in a very marked way
just how simple it is for a person
to be saved.
You know, we read in those verses in
Numbers that the people spoke against God.
They spoke against Moses.
And you know, God didn't take that lightly.
He never does.
Sometimes people wonder why God doesn't come in
judgment in the moment of time and rectify
all of the things that are wrong in
the world today.
Remember, God is long-suffering.
God is patient.
I'm reminded of a story of a farmer
that he was a defiant individual, and he
tried to present an air of bravado, boasting
about the fact that he didn't trust God,
he didn't believe in God, he didn't believe
in anything.
So he knew a local newspaper publisher, and
he went to him and he told him
that he had a plan.
He was going to prove to people that
God just didn't exist.
And this is the way he purposed to
prove this.
He said that on the Lord's Day, when
other people, the faithful, were going to their
places of worship, and they were honoring God
with their presence and their prayers and their
worship and praise, that he was going to
plow a field.
And on the Lord's Day, he would plow
this field, he would sow this field, and
he would reap the harvest of this field.
All of these things, in defiance of God,
he would do it on the Lord's Day.
He was speaking against God.
Well, you know, he went through this process.
He did just exactly what he said he'd
do.
He cultivated it on the Lord's Day, planted
it on the Lord's Day, and in October,
I believe it was, the story goes, he
harvested his crop on the Lord's Day, went
into the town, told the publisher of the
newspaper, I did all of this on the
Lord's Day in defiance of God.
There is no God.
It didn't do anything to me.
You know, the newspaper publisher, he put this
in the paper, and he had his own
little byline right at the bottom, and he
said, God doesn't settle up his accounts in
October.
You know, there are some people that are
so foolish.
I have defied God all of my life.
I'm a sinner, and you call me a
sinner.
Well, I'm a horrible sinner.
God hasn't done anything to me.
I have to hasten to remind you that
in the coming day, God will speak to
you.
God will speak to every person that speaks
against him, that defies him.
In the book of Revelation, I've seen that
indeed just grips the heart.
It says all of those without Christ at
the great white throne judgment, they will stand
before God.
It says the books will be opened.
Every man will be judged out of the
books.
Men may search those books for their names
and hope that there has been some mistake
made.
But God will have the final word.
In this case, when we read in Numbers
about his dealings with the children of Israel,
he chose to act immediately.
When they disobeyed, God acted, and he sent
there in the camp these serpents, writhing serpents
all over the place who had a bite.
It burned, it was like fire, and it
caused great hurt among the people of God.
Many of them died, but our God is
so gracious and so loving and so kind,
he could have let them all die.
He could have willed it that every one
of them would have been bitten by one
of those serpents.
They could have died in their carcasses, rotted
there in the wilderness.
That's not God's way.
Our God is so loving and kind and
gracious in dealing with us.
Everyone that names the name of Christ should
be long-suffering.
The fruit of the Spirit of God bespeaks
of what we should be as Christians.
Sometimes because we live in a world that
is so harsh, so hard, it has its
impact upon us.
We soon find out that we're being harsh,
we're being hard, we're being unforgiving.
We're not long-suffering, we're not tender, we're
not kind, we're not forgiving.
We've lost touch with our God.
We've lost touch with that divine work of
the Spirit of God in producing spiritual fruit
in our lives.
Don't let that happen to you, my dear
beloved brother and sister in Christ.
Only God can act justly and righteously in
meting out the kind of judgment that we
read about here.
God, in kindness and mercy, told his servant
Moses, fashion you a serpent out of brass,
out of metal, make it a bronze, a
brazen serpent.
Put it on a pole right in the
center of the camp and announce to one
and all, anyone that has been bitten by
one of those serpents, just look.
Now, there's nothing hard about looking.
That's all he asks them to do.
You just look.
And when you look, everything that is associated
with that harmful bite, it will be taken
away in a moment of time.
You will not die.
But just look.
And you know, it happened exactly as God
had said it would.
Those that were bitten, those that perhaps were
the fear of God in their souls, aware
of what they had done, and knowing full
well that they deserved what they were getting,
all they had to do was just get
so they could get just a peek.
And look, that was an act of faith.
They put into action that which they had
been instructed to do.
And it wasn't hard to do.
It was so simple.
Just look.
And when you look, that's all it takes.
That's all it takes.
And you speak to men and women in
the world today and you say, the only
thing you have to do is believe.
Just believe.
You see, you get the picture.
Looking and believing are synonymous terms.
They mean exactly the same thing.
The Lord Jesus says, that one that believes
on me, he shall not perish.
The judgment and the wrath of God that
is to fall upon the godless and the
Christless, it will not fall on you, but
you will have eternal life.
You will be a possessor of eternal life.
I can never for the life of me
understand how people can ever swallow that lie
of being saved and being lost again.
I can't understand that.
It's so plain and simple in the word
of God that once we're saved, we're saved
eternally.
And Jesus Christ said, it is finished.
I am denying the value of the finished
work of Jesus Christ if I say, the
one that has saved me, I by an
act of sin can remove myself from that
wonderful, wonderful, treasured position of being in Christ.
I don't understand that.
It has to be an act of Satan
himself that would deceive someone and make someone
feel like, by an act of sin, that
he could be lost again.
Of course, you don't understand the difference between
the positional salvation that is ours, that place
of security of being in Christ, and what
it means to have fellowship with God.
Fellowship, indeed, with God hangs upon a fragile
thread, and it can be broken in a
moment of time by allowing sin to come
into our lives.
But we are still in the family of
God.
That Israelite that died, he was no less
than Israelite, and that believer that sins, he
is no less a believer.
He is a believer that is out of
fellowship with God because he has permitted sin
to have a place in his life.
Oh, our God makes a wonderful, wonderful provision
for that condition.
In 1 John 1, 9 it says, If
we confess our sins, he is faithful and
just to forgive us of our sin and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Don't ever be confused about that issue.
If you have looked, if you have believed
in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have become
a possessor of God's eternal salvation.
So looking in the Old Testament at the
serpent that was upon the pole is identical
with believing on the New Testament person of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Son of Man must be lifted up.
The Lord Jesus was lifted up upon a
pole, upon a cross, and he died upon
that cross.
And you see, just as that serpent upon
the pole spoke of death, the Lord Jesus
hanging upon that cross, the cross of the
Lord Jesus Christ met death.
When we are asked to be followers of
Jesus Christ, it says this, to deny self
and to take up our cross daily and
follow him.
You know what that means?
That means die to self daily.
And that's all the cross ever meant.
It meant death.
And when we are asked to believe in
the value of the death of Jesus Christ
for us, he that knew no sin, he
was made sin for us.
The transfer of all of my guilt and
all of my sin and its penalty upon
the person of Christ, he died for our
sin, according to the scriptures.
And all we have to do is believe.
We have to accept this.
Looking and believing are, as I mentioned before,
the same thing.
So while Israel looked with the natural eye,
the physical eye, upon that pole and that
serpent upon it, and lived, each one of
us today, by believing in our hearts that
Jesus Christ, as God's Son, has died as
our substitute upon the cross, we become recipients
of God's salvation.
Romans 10 and 9 is a favorite verse
of mine.
You know why?
It's a chorus.
I don't know what your salvation verse is,
but that's mine.
That's the passage of scripture that God used
to rip away the scales from these blinded
eyes of mine.
For thou shalt confess with thine mouth Jesus
Christ is Lord.
Believe in thine heart, not in your head.
You can know every word in this book
and still be lost and go to hell.
You've got to believe in your heart.
You've got to look with a purpose.
He is the Son of God.
He is dying upon that cross for me.
I believe that in my soul, in my
heart.
I accept it.
And I'm saved.
God fills up Romans 10 and 9 with
the heart man believeth unto salvation.
How wonderful it is to live and realize
that our God has made such a wonderful
provision for us in the person of his
Son.
You shall be saved.
I have to hasten to say this.
Faith in itself is not salvation.
Someone might take their faith and believe that
it's their faith, or I have a strong
faith.
Well, what about the person that has just
a wee bit of faith, just a little
faith?
No, my dear beloved friend, it is not
our faith and the enormity of our faith.
It is faith in a person.
It is what that faith is directed toward
and in that really matters.
One may have a great faith in something
that is indeed worthless.
What about some individual today that is devoted
to idolatrous worship?
And he is bowing in all sincerity.
He is doing all sorts of things that
he hopes and he prays zealously, sincerely will
result in salvation for him.
But it's not coming to him.
His faith is misdirected.
His look is not at the brazen serpent.
His faith is not in the uplifted person
of Jesus Christ our Lord.
A misdirected faith.
No, it is not the enormity of our
faith that really counts.
You could make salvation out of your faith.
I'm very faithful.
Faithful in what?
What is the object of my faith?
What am I truly trusting in for the
salvation of my soul?
And the word of God would hasten to
tell us it is in the person of
God's Son and in him and him alone
is salvation to be found.
I think there are a number of things
that when you read in the scriptures, there
are several conclusions that you reach.
When you think about faith and how it
comes to an individual that he believes the
word of God, does it matter where he
is?
Does he have to be between four walls
that has a nice steeple on the roof
and there are stained glass windows?
Does it matter where he is as far
as the location is concerned?
You know better than that.
What of all of the paraphernalia that is
associated with trusting God?
Someone may be fingering some beads.
Someone may have a crucifix in his hand.
Someone may have one foot in the baptismal
tank and have his other hand on the
communion table and still be lost.
And without Christ, one must be absolutely sure
that that faith in his soul is directed
toward the person of Jesus Christ, regardless of
where he is.
I dare to say, and I don't have
to ask you to lift your hand, that
probably over half the people in this room
this morning were not saved in a church
building.
You can listen to testimonies of people that
were saved driving down the road in their
car, saved at home in the kitchen, washing
the dishes, saved in so many different places.
I think about the Philippian jailer, a man
that was saved in the jailhouse at midnight.
He asked the question, what must I do
to be saved?
Paul didn't say, well, wait a daybreak, we'll
go over and see if the local synagogue
is open, and we'll be sure that everything
is in its rightful place, and we'll open
up the law, and we'll read all of
these things, and we'll lay hold of God,
and we'll pray through, and you'll get saved.
That's just foolishness.
That's just nonsense.
He made it so plain and so simple
that anybody just has to deliberately go contrary
to the Word of God to substitute anything
for simple believing on the person of Jesus
Christ.
He says, man, believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and you'll be saved.
When?
Tonight!
Right now!
No waiting, no prolonged period of time, no
praying through, no proving yourself by faith except
Christ.
That Israelite that looked at that brazen serpent
upon the pole, when he looked, he was
healed.
All the fever went out of his body.
That swollen whim, it shrunk back to its
normal size.
He'd been delivered!
And that's what God does for us when
we receive Christ as our Savior, the One
that hung there upon that cross, bleeding, dying,
forsaken of God, hated to be despised by
men.
The Son of God provided salvation for us,
and the only thing we're asked to do
is believe it!
Believe it!
I am persuaded with all of my soul,
that's the reason why on a coming day,
having read in the Word of God, there
is no excuse!
What excuse could a man raise for not
simply looking and believing in what God has
provided for the salvation of his soul?
None.
Absolutely none.
There is no excuse.
No alibis will be given, and every heart
will know.
Every heart that has ever lived disobedient and
rebellious against the authority and the will of
God in the matter of salvation will know
in a moment of time, I made a
horrible mistake.
It may be someone confused the issue for
you in times past, but this morning, I'll
tell you what, my only thought was to
clear up in the mind of any person
that thinks it's so complicated as far as
God's salvation is concerned, is to forever set
your mind at rest.
It is simply by believing upon the person
of Jesus Christ that we receive God's salvation,
and we become children of God.
We are born again into the family of
God, and we become new creatures in Christ
Jesus.
Shall we pray?
Our Father in Heaven, we do bow in
thy presence, and we are so thankful that
you have made for us this wonderful plan
of salvation found in the person of your
Son.
You did it in kindness and love and
grace, and O our God, we thank thee
for every person in this room who has
looked away to Calvary, every one that in
their heart has accepted Christ as their personal
Savior.
And O Lord, if there just is one
person, if there is someone here that has
had a doubt, that has been deeply concerned
about this matter and hasn't yet made that
decision, help them, we pray thee today, to
receive Christ.
For this we ask in his precious and
worthy name.
Amen.