See You at the Pole
Numbers 21:4-9
By Dr. Franklin L. Kirksey
INTRODUCTION
Students all across America gathered around the flagpole for prayer at the annual “See You at the Pole” event on Wednesday, September 26, 2007. This student-led event that began 17 years ago in Burleson, Texas, was actually not the first time people gathered around a pole to express their faith as we discover in the account of Numbers 21:4-9.
I. The Sojourn by Israel (Numbers 21:4a)
“Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. . .” (Numbers 21:4a).
The children of Israel were on a journey to the Promised Land and at this point they were heading southward away from Canaan, their desired destination. The Israelites went around and around and around in circles. They sojourned 40 years in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan.
II. The Souls of Israel (Numbers 21:4b-5)
“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’” (Numbers 21:4b-5).
Notice the word translated “soul” in verse 4 where we read the “soul of the people” and in verse 5 “our soul”.
They were discouraged and discontented. They called the “manna”, a.k.a. “angel food”, “worthless bread”. This is base ingratitude. This line from William Shakespeare’s King Lear (1605) comes to mind, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child!”
The Israelites longed for “the fleshpots of Egypt” in “the good old days.” Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960) is credited with saying, “Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”
III. The Sovereign over Israel (Numbers 21:6)
“So the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died” (Numbers 21:6).
Charles Haddon Spurgeon shares, “What an awful thing it is to be bitten by a serpent! I dare say some of you recollect the case of Gurling, one of the keepers of the reptiles in the Zoological Gardens. It happened in October 1852. This unhappy man was about to part with a friend who was going to Austalia, and according to the wont of many many he must needs drink with him. He drank considerable quantities of gin, and though he would probably have been in a great passion if any one had called him drunk, yet reason and common-sense had evidently become overpowered. He went back to his post at the gardens in an excited state. He had some months before seen an exhibition of snake-charming, and this was on his poor muddled brain. He must emulate the Egyptians, and play with serpents. First he took out of its cage a Morocco
venom-snake, put it round his neck, twisted it about, and whirled it round about him. Happily for him it did not arouse itself as to bite. The assistant-keeper cried out, ‘For God’s sake put back the snake!’ but the foolish man replied, ‘I am inspired.’ Putting back the venom-snake, he exclaimed, ‘Now for the cobra.’ This deadly serpent was somewhat torpid with the cold of the previous night, and therefore the rash man placed it in his bosom till it revived, and glided downward till its head appeared below the back of his waistcoat. He took it by the body, about a foot from the head, and then seized it lower down by the other hand, intending to hold it by the tail and swing it round his head. He held it for an instant opposite to his face, and like a flash of lightning the serpent struck him between the eyes. The blood streamed down his face, and he called for help, but his companion fled in horror; and as he told the jury, he did not know how long he was gone, for he was ‘in a maze.’ When assistance arrived Gurling was sitting on a chair, having restored the cobra to its place. He said, ‘I am a dead man.’ They put him in a cab, and took him to the hospital. First his speech went, he could only point to his poor throat and moan: then his vision failed him, and lastly his hearing. His pulse gradually sank, and in one hour from the time at which he had been struck he was a corpse. There was only a little mark upon the bridge of his nose, but the poison spread over the body, and he was a dead man. I tell you that story that you may use it as a parable and learn never to play with sin, and also in order to bring vividly before you what it is to be bitten by a serpent. Suppose Gurling could have been cured by looking at a piece of brass, would it not have been good news for him? There was no remedy for that poor infatuated creature, but there is a remedy for you. For men who have been bitten by the fiery serpents of sin Jesus Christ is lifted up: not for you only who are as yet playing with the serpent, nor for you only who have warmed it in your bosom, and felt it creeping over your flesh, but for you who are actually bitten, and are mortally wounded.”
Spurgeon’s story also serves to illustrate Solomon’s proverb recorded in Proverbs 23:32, which warns of beverage alcohol: “at the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like a viper.”
IV. The Sorrow from Israel (Numbers 21:7)
“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” (Numbers 21:7).
“God knoweth all,” said Ambrose, “but yet He looketh for confession.”
2 Corinthians 7:10 reveals two kinds of sorrow: “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.”
The contrast between being “sorry in a godly manner” and “the sorrow of the world” is illustrated in the very different responses by Simon Peter and Judas
Iscariot after their sin. Simon Peter went out and wept bitterly, repented and was restored, although Judas Iscariot regretted his actions he went out and committed suicide.
V. The Solution for Israel (Numbers 21:8-9)
“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” (Numbers 21:8-9).
William A. Ogden penned the words and set them to music in 1887:
I’ve a message from the Lord, hallelujah!
The message unto you I’ll give,
’Tis recorded in His word, hallelujah!
It is only that you "look and live."
Refrain
Look and live, my brother, live!
Look to Jesus now, and live;
’Tis recorded in His word, hallelujah!
It is only that you "look and live."
I’ve a message full of love, hallelujah!
A message, O my friend, for you,
’Tis a message from above, hallelujah!
Jesus said it, and I know ’tis true.
Refrain
Look and live, my brother, live!
Look to Jesus now, and live;
’Tis recorded in His word, hallelujah!
It is only that you "look and live."
Life is offered unto you, hallelujah!
Eternal life thy soul shall have,
If you’ll only look to Him, hallelujah!
Look to Jesus who alone can save.
Refrain
Look and live, my brother, live!
Look to Jesus now, and live;
’Tis recorded in His word, hallelujah!
It is only that you "look and live."
I will tell you how I came, hallelujah!
To Jesus when He made me whole:
’Twas believing on His name, hallelujah!
I trusted and He saved my soul.
Refrain
Look and live, my brother, live!
Look to Jesus now, and live;
’Tis recorded in His word, hallelujah!
It is only that you "look and live."
This is not merely a look of curiosity but a look of genuine faith!
At age nine, Vance Havner, drew a picture of the events recorded in the first nine verses of Numbers 21 with the following commentary: “Numbers 21:1-9 THE BRAZEN SERPENT / THE Lord sent fiery serpents into Israel for they had sinned and the serpents bit the people and many of the people died, but the Lord told Moses to put a serpent of brass on a pole he did so and many looked on it and lived as God had said.”
No wonder he became a preacher at age twelve! After serving as pastor of several churches, the last being the First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1940 he felt compelled to become a full-time Southern Baptist Evangelist / Revivalist, a calling that he passionately pursued into his eighties.
CONCLUSION
First, we see the superstition of the serpent on the pole. Here we read about “Nehushtan” which literally means “bronze thing”.
“[King Hezekiah] removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan” (2 Kings 18:4).
In Hezekiah’s day we see man’s perversion of God’s provision.
Second, we find the symbolism of the serpent on the pole. The serpent on a pole is a symbol of the American Medical Association and the serpent symbolizes the healing arts. It is used on the Blue “Star of Life” of the Emergency Medical Services. The use of a single serpent on a pole recorded in Numbers 21:9 predates the pagan use of two serpents on a pole referenced in Greek mythology by about 700 years. Donald G. McNeil, Jr., explains, “That portion of the Bible was about events circa 1400 B.C., long before the Greek cult of Asclepius arose circa 700 B.C.”
Third, we discover the significance of the serpent on the pole. Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night to learn more about His teaching (John 3:1-2). The Lord Jesus Christ cites the account of Numbers 21 to signify Himself as the Savior. “And 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” (John 3:14-15).
Frankly, if you look carefully, you can see “us” in Nicodemus. It is encouraging to trace his life from “the darkness of confusion” to “the dawn of
conviction” and still further to “the daylight of confession” as Dr. John Phillips explains.
Charles tells, “one snowy day-- it snowed so much, I could not go to the place I had determined to go to, and I was obliged to stop on the road, and it was a blessed stop to me-- I found rather an obscure street, and turned down a court, and there was a little chapel. I wanted to go someplace. It was the Primitive Methodists’ chapel. I had heard of these people from many, and how they sang so loudly that they made people’s heads ache; but that did not matter. I wanted to know how I might be saved, and if they made my head ache ever so much I did not care. So, sitting down, the service went on, but no minister came. At last a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit and opened his Bible and read these words: ’Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’ Just setting his eyes upon me, as if he knew me all by heart, he said: ’Young man, you are in trouble.’ Well, I was, sure enough. Says he, ’You will never get out of it unless you look to Christ.’
And then, lifting up his hands, he cried out, as only, I think, a Primitive Methodist could do, ’Look, look, look! It is only look !’ said he. I saw at once the way of salvation. Oh, how I did leap for joy at that moment! I know not what else he said: I did not take much notice of it-- I was so possessed with that one
thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, they only looked and were healed. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard this word ’Look!’ what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh, I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away! and in heaven I will look on still in my joy unutterable.”
The young man was saved that snowy day, January 6, 1850. He was 15 years old at the time of his conversion. He was accepted as a candidate for church membership of a church in Newmarket on April 4, 1850. He was baptized on May 3 in the river Lark at Isleham and moved to Cambridge later that year. He preached his first sermon in 1851 and was ordained as pastor of the small Baptist church at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, where he published his first literary work: a Gospel tract in 1853, his name?--Charles Haddon Spurgeon, still known to many as the “Prince of Preachers.”
C.H. Spurgeon tells in a sermon on our text: “I think I told you once of a picture which I saw of the brazen serpent. I want the Sunday-school teachers to listen to this. The artist representing all sorts of people clustering round the pole, and as they looked the horrible snakes dropped off their arms and they lived. There was such a crowd around the pole that a mother could not get near it. She carried a little babe, which a serpent had bitten. You could see the blue marks of the venom. As she could get no nearer, the mother held her child aloft, and turned its little head that it might gaze with its infant eye upon the bronze serpent and live. Do this with young little children, you Sunday-school teachers. Even while they are yet little, pray that they may look to Jesus Christ and live; for there is no bound set to their age. Old men snake-bitten came hobbling on their crutches. ‘Eighty years old am I,’ saith one, ‘but I have looked to the brazen serpent, and I am healed.’ Little boys were brought out by their mothers, though
as yet they could hardly speak plainly, and they cried in child language, ‘I look at the great snake and it bless me.’ All ranks, all sexes, and characters, and dispositions looked and lived. Who will look to Jesus at this good hour?”
NOTES:
The Biblical Illustrator, ed. Joseph S. Exell, Numbers (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, n.d.),pp. 222-223.
Available from: http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/sounds/Hymns/look_and_live.htm Accessed: 09/24/07
Vance Havner Journey from Jugtown: A Biography by Douglas M. White (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1977), p.13.
Donald G. McNeil, Jr., “Slithery Medical Symbolism: Worm or Snake? One or Two?” (New York: New York Times, March 8, 2005) Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/health/08cadu.html Accessed: 09/25/07
Available from: http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/Life.and.Works.of.Spurgeon/Life.and.Works.2.html Accessed: 09/25/07
The Biblical Illustrator, ed. Joseph S. Exell, Numbers (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, n.d.),pp. 224-225.
By Dr. Franklin L. Kirksey, pastor
First Baptist Church of Spanish Fort 30775 Jay Drive Spanish Fort, Alabama 36527
Author of Sound Biblical Preaching: Giving the Bible a Voice http://www.webspawner.com/users/franklinlkirksey
Available on Amazon.com and WORDsearchbible.com
fkirksey@bellsouth.net (251) 626-6210 / ©September 30, 2007 All Rights Reserved
