THE BRAZEN SERPENT AND THE SPRINGING WELL
[p. 99] THE BRAZEN SERPENT AND THE SPRINGING WELL
Numbers 21:4-11; Numbers 21:16-18
The scripture we have read tonight refers to what happened very near the end of the wilderness journey. Before that journey began the people had to learn, in type, the solemn reality of the judgment of God on sin, and they found in the blood of the lamb that which furnished them with perfect shelter. We all had to begin there. We found ourselves under God’s judgment, but we discovered that He had provided a Lamb for us. The death of Christ has fully and eternally glorified God as to sin, and its judgment is exhausted for all those who have faith in God.
Then at the Red Sea, in presence of all the power of the oppressor, God showed His salvation to His people and brought them into a position of complete triumph. But for this their eyes had to be turned entirely to God. The passage of the sea was a total impossibility to human power, but God made them walk on dry ground through the midst of the sea, and stood between them and all the power of the oppressor until they were brought through on to the other side, and then He rolled the waters of judgment over their foes. Then they could sing, “The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation”.
The salvation of God puts us in a place where the oppressor can never reach us, because it puts us in the place and acceptance of Christ risen. When you see that, every question as to divine righteousness is settled, and you enter into perfect peace with God. The oppressor may say, ‘You are this or that’, or ‘You have done such and such things’, and you can admit it. Yea, you are convinced that if the best five minutes of your life was selected, and your righteousness with God made to depend on it, the lake of fire would be your eternal abode. But the believer’s righteousness before God is measured by Christ risen; he is set in all the acceptance of the Beloved. There is not a single spot upon Him and never will be. God will not at all reckon sin to the believer, but does reckon righteousness to him. This is learned before the wilderness is entered upon.
It has often been said that the wilderness formed no part of God’s purpose. His purpose was to give His people the land of Canaan. But in the ways of God they had to go through the wilderness, and this for an important reason, which we learn from Deuteronomy 8: 2: “And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no”. God’s object in so ordering His ways that the people were forty years in the wilderness was that they might know themselves. When the question of divine righteousness is settled for the believer the exercises which follow are all, more or less, connected with holiness. It is after the believer is entirely delivered from fear of the consequences of sin that he is most deeply and truly exercised about holiness. There are people who tell us that if souls are made sure of their eternal salvation, and that they are set in everlasting righteousness before God, it will make them careless about sin. This argument is based upon ignorance of the immense reality of the fact that the believer is born again. A converted person hates sin for its own sake. An unconverted man may wish to be good for three reasons — (1) because sin brings him into trouble; (2) because it lowers him; and (3) because he is afraid of its consequences. He [p. 101] does not abhor sin because it is an unholy and defiling thing. The one born again hates sin for its own sake.
The forty years of wilderness experience was to teach the people what they were — what was in their hearts. And we have to go through this experience; there is no escaping it. I think there are three principal ways in which we learn what self is.
1. By some actual fall or sin. When you commit a sin, is it not a discovery to you of what you are? Peter is an example of this. He did not know what was in his heart. He loved the Lord, but he was self-confident, and wished to have credit for his love. The Lord had to teach him what was in his heart. But I believe the Lord in His faithful love never allows us to fall into open failure straight off. He warns us, and we go down step by step. Peter began by walking in the counsel of the ungodly. When the Lord spoke of His death Peter said, “Be it far from thee”, and the Lord had to say to him, “Thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men”. Matthew 16. Next Peter stood in the way of sinners when he made himself one of the company who warmed themselves at the fire in the high priest’s house. I wonder what sort of company it was — what sort of conversation was going on. Last of all he sat in the seat of the scornful, and denied the Lord. I think we can understand a little the anguish of his soul when the Lord turned and looked upon him, and he went out and wept bitterly. It was a sorrowful bit of wilderness experience to him, but he needed it to humble him, and to show him what was in his heart.
2. Another way in which we learn self is by the effect of the trying circumstances of the way. “The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way”. Numbers 21: 4. God in His faithful love will not allow us to be deceived as to what we are, and He brings us [p. 102] into circumstances that make manifest the true character of the flesh. The flesh cannot bear to be cast upon God, and in the wilderness this is a necessity; there is no resource there but God. And, remember, the children of Israel were there in consequence of their sin and unbelief. Circumstances that we have brought upon ourselves by our own sin and folly are more trying than anything else. The flesh fumes and frets and chafes under them. They “spake against God and against Moses”. Think of their history for a moment! They had been under the blood, and had been brought through the Red Sea; the hand and heart of God had cared for them at every step of the wilderness; His cloud had overshadowed them, and their raiment had not waxed old for forty years; yet after all this they “spake against God”. I will say more about this directly, but for a moment I will speak of the third way in which we learn what the flesh is.
3. Psalm 42: 1 - 6. This is a bit of wilderness experience. We have here a soul finding out that all the springs of joy have failed, and that it is in a thirsty condition. It is a solemn moment when one who has been going on for years with a flourishing profession wakes up to the fact that his heart is entirely unsatisfied. I am supposing one who knows redemption. The man in Psalm 42 could look back and remember wonderful times. “I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy-day”. I believe we have very little idea how natural feelings may be mixed up with what we think is our spiritual joy. Many go on happily because their surroundings are happy, and they have no opposition to speak of — perhaps in a Christian family, or in happy Christian society. They are carried along by the current of things around them.
But everything that outwardly contributes to your joy will sooner or later fail you. You may think this is a [p. 103] discouraging statement, but my object in making it is to turn your heart to what can never fail. God loves us too well to allow us to rest in anything short of Himself — not even Christian fellowship, or what people call ‘the means of grace’. He wants to be so known by us that He becomes the deep eternal spring of satisfaction for our hearts. “Therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar”. Psalm 42: 6. This man is in the wilderness. Jordan, the place of death; Hermon, the rugged place; Mizar, the little hill, where you are brought down to nothingness, and made to realize the emptiness of everything here.
To return to Numbers 21. We and the people at the end of the wilderness speaking against God. This is the true character of the flesh — the carnal mind is enmity against God. In Romans 8 we may read it in black and white, but to find it true in ourselves is a terribly bitter experience. “There is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread”. God was sending them angels’ food, and they loathed it. I know by experience that the very thought of the perfection of heavenly grace in which Christ went through the wilderness may vex and irritate one because it condemns one so thoroughly. The more you think of it, the more you are irritated by the contrast between Him and yourself. Then comes out positive enmity against God, and this is the root of what the flesh is. The questions rise in the heart, ‘Why does not God make it easier for me to live to Him? Why does He not give me more grace? Why does He not put me in different circumstances?’ This is really casting the blame on God; it is speaking against God. That is what the flesh is; it would cast the blame of all its own wickedness and vileness upon God. That is the outcome and evidence of enmity against God; it is the poison of the serpent. It is a sad thing to think of, but man in the flesh has become [p. 104] akin to Satan. When positive enmity came out the Lord said, “Ye are of your father the devil”. Have you found out that as in the flesh you are of that order? What can be done with the flesh if that is its nature? and after forty years’ experience of grace and mercy too? Death must come in on man in the flesh. The Lord sent serpents among the people, and much people died. Death comes in as the judgment of God on the murmurer, but at the same time grace provides a way of life and deliverance.
Moses was commanded to make a fiery serpent and set it upon a pole, and if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass he lived. The Son of man has been lifted up — God has sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin — that in His death sin-in-the-flesh might receive its just condemnation. As a child of Adam I passed out of God’s sight when Christ died. God has righteously done with man in the flesh; the history of that man has been judicially terminated in the cross. And the fact that he is gone out of God’s sight is our title to be free from him, and to be so in the power of life in Christ that we are practically free from what constitutes the life of our “old man”. The condemnation by God of sin-in-the-flesh is not everything. It is not enough for God to remove what is bad; He must also bring in what is good; and life and incorruptibility are now brought to light in a risen Christ, and He is the life of the believer.
The Son of man was lifted up “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”, John 3: 16. He died in order to have a righteous title to give us eternal life. He died that He might introduce us to the joys of a life that is in Himself — the Son. Wonderful things were on His heart for His own, things of which He could not even speak to them, as He said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now”. John 16: 12. What He could not say to them He [p. 105] could say to the Father, in the marvellous words of John 17, where we read, “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee; as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”. He takes His place here as the last Adam — the Head of the new race — and He asks to be glorified that He may glorify the Father. How will He do it? By giving eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him. The cross is His title to take us over into that life, and it is our title to pass over.
A picture of our introduction into that new life can be found in John 20: “He breathed into them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit”. Here we see the Head of the new creation — alive out of death — associating His own with Himself in life. What a blessed thing to be able to look at Him beyond judgment, law, sin, and death, in unbroken and undistracted joy with the Father — in the cloudless peace of resurrection — and to know that He is our life!
On our side we get into it by eating His flesh and drinking His blood according to John 6: 53. I need hardly say that is not eating the Lord’s supper; it is our souls feeding upon Christ as the One who has laid down His life to entitle us to be free from our old life as children of Adam. He could only free us by death; and we are only free experimentally as we appropriate to ourselves the death that frees us.
In this way the soul begins a new day in its history. “They pitched ... toward the sunrising”. Numbers 21: 11. It was the dawn of a new day to them. Up to this point they were travelling, I believe, with their backs upon Canaan — due south, or nearly so. To pitch toward the sunrising was to turn eastwards. That is, they were just [p. 106] on the turn towards Canaan — the land of promise and purpose. Have you come to the turn? That new day of the soul’s history never has a sunset. Its dawn is known now in grace and by the Spirit, and it brightens into the perfect day of glory. Have you had a taste of what it is to participate in the life of the last Adam? — to pass over into the sunshine of favour in which Christ associates His own with Himself before His Father and His God?
Then, immediately afterwards, we find the springing well. “The Lord spake unto Moses, Gather the people together, and I will give them water. Then Israel sang this song, Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it”. Numbers 21: 16, 17.
The third chapter of John gives us the antitype of the brazen serpent, and the fourth chapter the antitype of the springing well. The Lord said to the woman at Sychar’s well, “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. John 4: 14. The new life is a life in the power of the Spirit, and that makes it an abundant life — a life of liberty and power. I am not speaking of power for activity in service or the like, but of an inward spring and power of divine affections that flow in fullness and freedom Godward and heaven-ward. I get the fullness of what the springing well is from these words in John 20: “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”. The springing well gives the consciousness, in living power, of this marvellous relationship in which we are set as associated in life with Christ as ascended to the Father.
If your heart and mine were maintained in the conscious joy and power of this wondrous life, and of the relationships and associations which are natural to it, we should be indeed in what has been well called ‘a region of satisfied desire’.
[p. 107] You get the same thing in Romans 8, only there it is more the negative side — the down line. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. If the up line is kept clear the down line will be all right. That is, if our affections are in proper play according to John 4 we shall be practically free from the law of sin and death, as in Romans 8: 2.
Then, observe, the three things go on together — the digging, the singing, and the springing. The princes and the nobles digged the well. If you want to be a prince or a noble in the Lord’s host you must be a well-digger. They were diligently removing with purpose of heart that which would have hindered the well from springing up. These are the true nobility today — the saints who are so set in the purpose of their hearts for the things of the Spirit that they will not allow the things of the earth to obstruct the flow of the living water. They are set for wisdom, and have entered into the spirit of such words as “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God”. Proverbs 2: 2 - 5 and Proverbs 4: 5 - 9.
Then we need to be singing to the well, and, as the margin reads, answering to it. If the affections and joys of our hearts are in the current of the Spirit of God, we shall, so to speak, encourage Him in His blessed service by the response of our hearts. Where this is lacking the Spirit is grieved, though there may be no sin on the conscience. May God bless His own word to us all!