A Serpant On a Pole

By Harold Smith

My story today is from the book of Numbers. God had brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, where they had been slaves. He brought them into a wilderness and across a river called Jordan into the holy land where there was prosperity and plenty. During that forty-year journey through the wilderness, the people often complained and murmured and they longed to be back in Egypt. This displeased God, He wasn't happy with it at all, because murmuring and complaining is sin. God was blessing them much in the wilderness, and if they had believed and obeyed Him, He wouldn't have kept them there long, He would've taken them into the Promised Land. However, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people. He sent fiery serpents among the people in Numbers, chapter 21 and these fiery serpents bit the people and many, many of the people died. Then Moses cried to the Lord to save the people. "And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live" - Numbers 21:8. So he made a brazen serpent, a serpent made out of brass, and he put it up on this pole. Then he said to the people, "Now, you look at that serpent on the pole and you will live, you will not die". So the people looked and they lived, the Bible says. Now, the Lord Jesus used this in John chapter 3, verse 14: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up". So, the Lord Jesus, lifted up on a cross, on a pole, on a tree - is how boys and girls can be saved. We've all been bitten by a fiery serpent, the Devil - he's called the Old Serpent. We've all got the poison of sin in us and it's only when poor sinners look away to the cross of Calvary, where Jesus suffered and bled and died for our sins, that the fiery serpent's bites will not hurt us, but we will be saved. I trust that you'll look to the Lord and that you'll be saved today, tomorrow it could be too late. The Bible says "Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth". Proverbs 27:1. Won't you trust in the Lord Jesus? Do it today and be saved!