Warfare & The Bronze Serpent (Numbers 21)

All right, go ahead and open up to the book of Numbers chapter 21.

Numbers chapter 21. On the video, we're just gonna listen to the first nine verses, but let's pray and then we will get into our study.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your goodness. You are so good, creator and sustainer of all things.

You know all of our needs, all of our requests, even before we ask them.

As your word tells us, the very hairs of our head are numbered. Lord, you know what each one needs tonight, whether it's encouragement, strengthening, whatever it is, you know, and I pray that from your word and from your spirit, you would give to each one.

So Lord, we pray that in all things Christ would be glorified. We pray it in his name. Amen. Numbers chapter 21, verses 1 through 9.

The king of Arad, the Canaanite, who dwelt in the south, heard that Israel was coming on the road to Athorim.

Then he fought against Israel and took some of them prisoners. So Israel made a vow to the

Lord and said, if you will indeed deliver this people into my hand, then

I will utterly destroy their cities. And the Lord listened to the voice of Israel and delivered up the

Canaanites, and they utterly destroyed them and their cities. So the name of that place was called

Hormath. Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by way of the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom.

And the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way, and the people spoke against God and against Moses.

Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread.

So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and many of the people of Israel died.

Therefore the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned, for we have spoken against the

Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.

So Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and it shall be that everyone who is bitten when he looks at it shall live.

So Moses made a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, and so it was.

If a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.

In this chapter, the most significant thing is definitely the story about the bronze serpent, and we'll see towards the end, we'll come back to it, but the bronze serpent is a clear

Old Testament foreshadowing of the gospel. The serpent represents

Christ, and I think we will see that. So the message is look and live.

You got, you sinned, you got bit, you're going to die, but look to the serpent and live.

So as we've been going through the books of Moses, we keep emphasizing the point how all of these stories speak of who?

Yeah, they all speak of Christ. It's just a matter of figuring it out how.

So we've seen that Moses is a type of Christ. Aaron is a type of Christ.

Joshua, when we read about him, Joshua is a type of Christ. We saw last week that the rock that gave water, even the rock pictured

Christ. And guess what? The serpent, as hard as that might be to figure out if you don't know the

New Testament text on the matter, yes, even the serpent represents

Christ and the gospel. But again, we're going to come back to that. We're going to spend the majority of our time talking about the subject of warfare in the

Old Testament. Okay. Warfare. How should Christians view warfare in light of these

Old Testament verses and stories? Look at verses one through three.

It says the king of Arad, the Canaanite who dwell in the south, heard that Israel was coming on the road to Atheron.

And he fought against Israel and took some of them prisoners. So Israel made a vow to the

Lord and said, if you will indeed deliver this people into my hand, then

I will utterly destroy their cities. And the Lord listened to the voice of Israel and delivered up the

Canaanites and they utterly destroyed them and their cities.

So the place or the name of that place was called Horma. So we see that Israel is now well aware of their own weakness and their own dependence upon God, which is a good thing.

So what do they do? They make this vow that if the Lord would give them a victory, they would just utterly destroy these cities.

The implication being they would not take the spoils of war. Therefore, there's no ulterior motive.

They want to, it seems, fulfill the Lord's command to take the promised land that was promised to Abraham.

But what did they have to do first? They had to totally annihilate all of the people living in these cities.

And then when they take the land of Canaan, they had to totally annihilate all the people living in that territory.

So maybe this describes some of you, or maybe at some point. But New Testament Christians, some

New Testament Christians anyways, kind of struggle with this whole idea of Old Testament warfare and how the

Canaanites were to be wiped off the face of the map. So in the 21st century, this kind of talk, doing this in the name of God, this is politically incorrect.

Okay, would we agree with that? Yeah, it is. But this is really where we need to make a decision and draw the line.

Either you are looking at the Bible as just a book written by men, and that's all it is, just the words of men.

Or it is the Word of God. You have to make that decision up front.

Because if it's a book written by men, maybe what they did was right, maybe what they did was wrong, maybe

God didn't tell them this at all. That's what people conclude who don't believe the

Bible, or they only believe parts of the Bible. If you believe it's the Word of God, God told them to do all these things.

And again, that's where a lot of people struggle. Can you understand at least the struggle?

Okay, so either God told them to do this, and it was right, or he didn't, and it was wrong.

The third possibility that God told them to do it and God was wrong, I mean, obviously, that's not a possibility.

Okay, so what's the conflict? People look at the New Testament teachings of Jesus with the

New Testament Church, and they see a discrepancy. Have any of you ever thought about some of these things?

What are some of the thoughts that have come to mind, if you want to share? Sure. We are to love our enemies.

That's what Jesus said, right? Okay, Mark. Yeah, I don't know who came up with that.

That's technically not in the Bible, but we've all heard that. So just talking about this whole thing of the conquest of the land of Canaan, yeah, a lot of New Testament churches, and I would argue that these are not even really churches, that they just want to ignore this.

Some of them, some churches will just deny, you know, God, we don't accept this. God couldn't have told them that, or they want to ignore it, and they just want to focus.

This is what's common today, just focus on Jesus and his great love.

Never mind the book of Numbers, and yet here we are going through the book of Numbers. Why? Because it's in the

Bible. So we do want to focus on Jesus, amen? That's what we've been doing all these

Old Testament stories, do picture Jesus. And Jesus does have great love and mercy and compassion, that's true, but we have to figure this out.

So here's the thing, you can't get around that the Jesus of the New Testament, Jesus affirmed

Moses, right? Jesus not only affirmed Moses, Jesus affirmed and believed the entirety of the

Old Testament scriptures. So everything we're reading about, Jesus affirmed it, right?

And Jesus said about the God of the Old Testament that he was his father.

In John chapter 10, verse 30, Jesus said, I and my father are one.

So it's impossible for God the Father in the Old Testament to have one will, and then

Jesus to have a contrary will. They're one, they're one in purpose. So that's the position of this church, that's the position of any evangelical

Bible -believing church. This is what the Bible teaches, it's all true.

And yeah, there are some rough things in the Old Testament, aren't there? Anyone, and by the way, if you've never read through the entire

Bible, let me encourage you to do that, it's a life -changing thing. It's challenging, yes, but there's some things in the

Bible you thought, I never knew this was in there. Yeah, Jim. Well, if you haven't read the

Old Testament, God, from the very beginning, wanted to eradicate sin.

And when he promised Abraham this new land, it was in Canaan, and those

Canaanites were idol -worshippers. Baal, Molech, let's see,

Asherah. So that's sin, and they sacrificed children and human sacrifices and everything, and God had in his plan, he wanted to eradicate that.

Although his plan didn't just cover the Old Testament, okay? His plan covers all into the millennial,

I mean, up until the millennial kingdom, and sin is going to be dealt with in enormity at the end.

Yeah, of course, they're going in and eradicating, of course, they didn't actually do it. They spared many of these tribes, but they went in to wipe out the tribes and their practices.

What did Israel do? They ended up adopting their practices, and this is exactly what you see in the modern church today.

Churches are adopting the ways of the world. So yeah, there are some rough things in the

Old Testament, and you say, well, that's back then when God was more harsh.

No, because this does not compare to what you read about in the book of Revelation when

Jesus comes and fights the battle of Armageddon. This makes this look like child's play.

So all of that to say this, the point is we don't apologize for the Word of God.

Whatever you do, maybe you don't understand some things, but don't ever apologize for what's written in the

Bible. So here, on the one hand, Israel makes this vow to God.

If, God, you deliver these people into our hands, we will destroy, utterly destroy, their cities.

Now, it's true sometimes people, or even nations in the Bible, say and do things that are wrong.

Just because you read about someone in the Bible saying or doing something doesn't automatically make it right.

Just a few examples of this. King Solomon, what does it say about King Solomon? He had 700, was it 700 wives and 300 concubines.

That doesn't mean it was the right thing to do, but it's just recording that. So there's a lot of examples in the

Scripture of children of Israel doing the wrong thing. If you take notes, write this down.

We have to be able to make a distinction between what is descriptive and what is prescriptive.

So these are the two words, descriptive and prescriptive. If something is descriptive,

I mean you can hear it in the term, it's just describing what happened, it's just telling you the facts.

But when a passage is prescriptive, it's telling you what's right or what's wrong or what you should do.

Like the Ten Commandments, Solomon and his wives and concubines, that's descriptive. The Ten Commandments, that's prescriptive, that you're supposed to do it.

And in the Bible, when the narrator of the Scripture, or a prophet, or an apostle, or God himself is clearly giving instructions, then we know, okay, this is right.

So number one, yes, Israel makes this vow. Does that automatically make it right?

No. But in verse 3, or in verse 2, verse 3,

God listens to this vow and he grants their request. So God is putting his stamp of approval on it.

And then, God will direct them to conquer the land of Canaan.

All right, let's turn to Deuteronomy chapter 20. Deuteronomy 20.

And of course, reading through the book of Joshua, you see all of these battles and much bloodshed.

The fact that they are following God's will in fighting many of these battles is very clear, and it's unavoidable.

I've run across a few people over the years, people who identify as evangelical or born -again

Christians, and at the same time, they will say that the conquest of Canaan or these battles were wrong, that the children of Israel were doing evil.

Maybe that's just part of ministering in Massachusetts. I don't know. Maybe other places don't have this problem, but I've run across a few people who have thought that.

Nobody in this church currently, just letting you know that. I understand maybe they were never properly taught.

I don't know where people get their ideas from, but I always try to explain this. If God is telling them to do this, and they do it, and you say that's evil, you're not just saying what they're doing is evil, you're saying

God is evil because God told them to do it, right? You can't avoid that.

It's just like we've read about with the children of Israel when they grumble and complain against Moses and the decisions and the things that Moses says.

Who are they really grumbling against? God. So I don't think that's people's intention, but really that's what it comes down to.

Look at Deuteronomy 20 verses 16 through 18. We'll just tackle this head -on.

Moses here is speaking God's words, all right? Moses says, but of the cities of these people which the

Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them, the

Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the

Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you.

Why is he to do that? Because otherwise they're gonna teach you to do according to all of their abominations which they have done for their gods, who are actually demons, and you sin against the

Lord your God. Now again, if somebody thinks the Bible is just a book written by men, then you can just dismiss this and say, you know,

Moses never said, God never said this, but if you believe it's the Word of God, God said it.

You have to you have to deal with it. Any, yes, Larry? Matthew 6, 29,

God says, or Jesus says, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, cast it from you.

Yeah. So this is very similar speech. We are commanded, and that's how we're supposed to deal with sin.

Get rid of it. In our life, whatever it takes, get it out of our lives, kill it, destroy it utterly, just what he's saying here in Deuteronomy.

Yeah, yeah, and even that passage, pluck out your eye, like, okay, he doesn't literally mean pluck, so you have to understand this correctly, right?

This doesn't give people today warrant to go over to the land of Israel and start wiping out cities, right?

So I don't think anyone's advocating for that, but you have to take the Bible in context and rightly handle the

Word of God. So because we believe this is God's Word, and that God is speaking through Moses, if somebody denies that, we have a word for it.

What is it? If you don't believe this is actually God speaking through Moses, it's not a trick question.

If you don't believe it, it's called unbelief, right? Pretty simple.

So here's the thing. As Christians, because we follow Christ, I would want to know, what does

Christ say about this? And again, Jesus affirms Moses. Jesus affirms the

Old Testament scriptures. In Matthew chapter four, verse four, Jesus said about the Old Testament scriptures that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

The apostle Paul said about the Old Testament scriptures that every word is what? Inspired or God -breathed.

And then Jesus in John 10, 35 said the scriptures cannot be broken.

So we need to have the same view of scripture that Jesus had. If we don't have the same beliefs or listen to the teachings of Jesus and follow

Jesus, we can't claim to be his disciples if we have a completely different view of the scriptures than he did.

Right? Right. So I think all of this so far is very, very logical. It gets a little more complicated when we get into the application to say, okay, now what?

What does this mean for us today? But just from a human perspective, when we talk about warfare,

I think most people would acknowledge that it was necessary for nations to fight against Nazi Germany.

I'm sure there's people out there who would say contrary, but I think most people recognize that was necessary, right?

Because if that ideology and that nation was permitted to spread across Europe and to take over Europe, uh,

I don't, I don't want to know how the world would be today. Here's the thing when evil is being done and someone has the ability to stop it and they choose not to, and they just allow it to happen that in and of itself can be evil.

So war is a terrible thing. Sometimes it's necessary.

At least God thought it was necessary. You can argue with me all you want, but we're reading it.

God thought it was necessary. So the fact is the Israelites were far from perfect, but the

Canaanite tribes were utterly depraved. And what are some of the things the

Canaanite tribes did? Well, human sacrifice for one, right? And I was probably the most detestable things.

They would take their, they would take their babies and throw them into right.

There would be a burning fire and they would put living children, right?

And they'd burn a lot. And of course, Molech was a demonic God. So they're worshiping demons, practicing children, child sacrifice.

And then later on, uh, I think at least the Assyrians, if not the Canaanites would torture people and skin them alive.

Okay. So, uh, it's point is it's just to go in and to eliminate these people like it or not, politically incorrect or not.

It's just, uh, I'd stand on the fact that God's God said so. All right, let's go back to numbers chapter 21.

Right now, now with all of that said, right? Uh, we need to be careful reading these old

Testament stories because you can't take it out of context and make them into commands for today.

Uh, I know we have a hymn in our hymnal titled onward

Christian soldiers. I mean, if you know that song here, here are the lyrics, the first line onward,

Christian soldiers marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before he's talking about spiritual warfare, right?

He's not talking about literal flesh and blood warfare.

Uh, so the fact is God told the, who, who did God say do this? Do you say this to you?

No. Did he say this to the new Testament church? Who did he say it to? He said it to the children of Israel, what 3 ,500 years ago.

So this is not applicable today. Remember what Jesus told

Peter? He told them to put away a sword because those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

So this is not the calling for us as new Testament Christians.

Uh, historically though, uh, the Roman Catholic church and certain reformed groups who say that the church is

Israel, uh, throughout history, uh, they have appealed to old

Testament passages to justify literal physical warfare in Jesus name.

Uh, the Catholic church, uh, you've heard of the inquisition. They would torture people in the name of God, in the name of Jesus.

And there's no new Testament text to support that. What do they do? They went back to some of these passages, uh, in the old

Testament. Everyone has heard of the crusades, uh, fighting. Now there was blame on the side of Islam too.

That's a complicated matter, but the crusades and the inquisition, uh, many people were killed in the name of Jesus.

Uh, we would reject their whole philosophy. Uh, I would consider myself a dispensationalist.

We need to rightly divide the word of God. This is for them. It is not for us. And you can't just go back to the old

Testament and quote things to justify whatever you want. You know, this is true. If somebody wants to take the word of God out of context, you can justify anything, right?

Of course you really can't, but people try, uh, in Romans chapter 13, uh, by the way,

Paul said, what we wrestle not against flesh and blood. So I, the, the war that we fight is a spiritual war on Romans 13.

Paul said that it is the governing authorities who bear the sword to execute wrath. That is not the job of the church in any time in history where the church and the state have gotten blended together.

Uh, it's never gone well, uh, but there's, there's new movements getting popular right now where they want to go back to that and blend church and state together.

And I think that's, that's very dangerous. Here's the thing in the end, it does more harm to the cause of Christ than good.

All right. You're in numbers 21. Any questions on that?

Okay. Numbers 21 verses 10 through 20, uh,

Israel is on the move. And as I said, uh, last time they are now preparing the wilderness wanderings are more or less come to an end.

And now they're preparing to enter into the land that God promised them in verse 14.

It mentions what the book of the wars of the Lord. Um, what is that?

Uh, pastor John MacArthur writes this. He says this was apparently a book of victory songs that was current at the time of Moses, possibly written by Moses or a contemporary.

Uh, I find it interesting though, that this book is mentioned, but it's not, has not been preserved.

So whatever this book was, it's not part of the scripture, but do we have in scripture, uh, military songs of victory?

Okay. Can you name a few? Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Saul has killed his thousands and David has 10 thousands. Okay. I hadn't thought of that.

Do you remember back when we were in, uh, Exodus 15, uh, after Egypt was defeated at the red sea, there was the song of Moses.

Remember that? So there's a victory song, song of Moses. And then there is the song of Miriam and the

Lord is called in Exodus 15. Remember what he was called? The Lord is a man, a man of war.

Uh, when God fought for the Israelites, they couldn't lose when they got in the flesh and started trying to do things on their own.

That's when they did lose. That's when things went wrong. We can go to the book of Joshua. They, uh, destroyed

Jericho. God destroyed Jericho. They had a certain procedure they had to follow, but they didn't consider

God when they went to AI. Yeah. And it fell apart and several thousand were killed.

Yeah. And then in the new Testament book of revelation, uh, revelation talks about the song of Moses again.

And revelation talks about chapter 15 of revelation talks about the song of the lamb, who's the lamb.

Okay. So there's a song of battle of warfare and victory. That's the song of Jesus, basically the song of the lamb.

So God is once again, not in this age, uh, but in the end times going, he is going to fight for Israel against the armies of antichrist.

That will be a physical battle. But until then, uh, if people or nations fight physical war today in the name of Jesus per personally,

I'm not comfortable with that. And I don't think that is in line with new Testament doctrine, uh, at all.

Uh, but one day when Jesus comes at the second advent, There will be a battle and Jesus will put all his enemies under his feet.

I'm not saying that all war is bad or all war is good. I'm just saying the church of Jesus Christ should not be in that area.

That is not our job. I think we should pray, pray for peace. And, uh, if anyone has a contrary view of that,

I mean, feel free to feel free to raise your hand. But I think anytime, again, anytime the church gets involved with, um, governments and there's a blending of church and state and battles are fought in the name of God, this is not where we want to go.

Okay. So moving on from this subject, we're going to, we're talking about two subjects tonight.

So we're moving on from this. Uh, look at verse four. This is the most important part of the chapter.

I think what we just talked about, we kind of have to deal with it because, uh, if you talk to unbelievers, uh, they're, they're going to have a lot of problems with that.

And I think we should have a response, but look at verse four said, then children of Israel, they journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the red sea to go around the land of Edom.

And the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way.

Uh, this would have been a theologian, but you compare scripture with scripture. You get the idea that this was probably the hottest time of the year.

They have to walk through this wilderness. And I don't know about you, but when I'm making a long journey and I have to, let's say

I take a wrong turn and I have to drive an extra hour because of that, nothing gets me more than that.

Yeah. There's something about that. That just, yeah, it's frustrating, but this is what they're doing.

They could have made a straight shot through the land of Edom, but the Edomites wouldn't allow them to go through.

So then they had to go all the way around. And again, that has to be really, really hard.

Look at verse five. Here's their reaction. What do they do? Same old thing they always seem to do.

They, they grumble and they complain against two. Yeah. I mean,

I don't blame them for being a little upset, but you don't grumble again. Why don't you learn? Why don't you learn?

You don't grumble against God and his man Moses, but that's what they do. Look at what they say in verse five.

Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? How many times have we read this?

For there is no food and no water and our soul loathes this worthless bread.

You know what the bread represents? Yeah. The manna in the new

Testament, Jesus is the bread from heaven. This is symbolic for their contempt for Christ.

And of course, when Jesus came 1500 years later, what did they do? They, they crucified him.

So this is a very serious matter. They are showing contempt for God. And because of this verse six, the

Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people.

And many of the people of Israel died. Okay. Fiery serpents.

Does anyone have anything different in your, in a different translation? Are they all fiery poisonous?

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I was looking at commentators and what they say, what does it mean a fiery serpent?

Two views on this one is either the bites caused great heat and inflammation.

Most commentators seem to think that the bites that's what it's talking about. It felt like fire after getting bit.

That may be true. Um, I tend to think it's actually a reference to their color because God says make a fiery serpent.

And what is Moses do? He takes bronze and he makes a serpent out of bronze.

So I personally think it's a reference to their color, but that that's neither here nor there. I suppose.

Unfortunately though, the people, they don't recognize their sin until they're punished.

This is the same pattern over and over again. They should have known better, but they don't admit or confess their sin until God sends this judgment.

But because God is merciful, what does he do? He always leaves a way out.

God always provides a way. Larry. But how often do

I, or we, uh, repent because we got caught as opposed to truly feeling sorry.

Yeah. And you say, well, if you're really sorry, you won't do it again. But if, if you only respond after something's happened or you get caught, then you're going to end up like the

Israelites in that same cycle. And you're just going to get beat up and beat up and beat up again.

There's always consequences to sin or of the sin.

And sometimes we have to live with the consequences. Right. Even after we did it.

But you can be forgiven. You can be saved. And this is what this is a picture of.

So this is one of, if not the, but it's certainly one of the most powerful pictures of the gospel and the cross of Christ anywhere in the old

Testament. So here you have this sinful people and undeserving people crying out to God for mercy and God provides for them in the most unexpected of ways with this serpent on a pole in the new

Testament. What is the gospel called to that? We, we talk about this a lot to the

Jews. It's a stumbling block to the Greeks. It's foolishness looking up at a bronze serpent, a metal serpent on a pole for healing.

Um, this, this doesn't make any sense, does it? And by the way, the medical symbol, the symbol for medicine and healing is what

I was on my way here, following an ambulance in the back window. The medical symbol is a pole with a snake wrapped around it.

Now they say it's not based on this story, but I disagree. Absolutely.

Yeah. And this story without the new Testament explanation, it's bizarre, you know, and for Jews who don't accept

Jesus as the Messiah and they don't accept the new Testament stories like this are just weird. It doesn't make sense.

It's like when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, like the old Testament, honestly, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense without the new

Testament. And we're going to see that in a moment, but how can, okay.

Said, this is a picture of the gospel. The serpent represents Jesus. Well, that's contrary to what you would think, because you would think the serpent,

I mean, who's called the serpent, that serpent of old is who Satan or the devil.

So this is a picture of Satan. How can it be a picture of, of Jesus?

So this would have been a stumbling block, I think to the Jews, but for the here's the thing for the

Israelites who had faith, they heard God's word. Just look at the serpent and you'll live.

They had faith. And because they had faith, they were safe. Look at verses eight and nine. And the

Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole.

And it shall be that everyone who has bitten when he looks at it shall live.

So Moses made a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. And so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.

So how can the serpent be a picture of Jesus? Because when Jesus was on the cross, he became a curse.

He became sin on the cross. Second Corinthians 521 says that he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

So that's, that's the message look and live. And all who looked at the bronze serpent were saved, not based on their works, but based on their faith in what

God had said. And so it is today that all who believe in Christ and look to Christ, placing their faith in him, they shall live.

As Jesus said in John 3, 14 and 15, 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 eternal life.