(Look and Live)

For five years, I lived a block away from a little chapel tucked away on a side street in Colchester, England, that has its special claim to fame. On a snowy day in 1850, a young teen named Charles Spurgeon walked up Hythe Hill alone and came out of the wintry cold and sat in a back pew. The worship service was late getting started. Because of the adverse weather conditions, the scheduled itinerant Methodist preacher did not arrive. A layman stood up to preach. He read from Isaiah 45, verse 22 "Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God."

That morning Charles gave his life to the Lord. "I looked until I could have looked my eyes away," he said. Charles Spurgeon went on to become the prince of preachers, bringing thousands to faith in Christ. In his lifetime, he published more than two thousand sermons and forty-nine volumes of commentaries and devotions. It has been said in England that the two wonders of the nineteenth century were Spurgeon in his youth and Gladstone in his old age.

It all began with a look to the Savior. "Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God." When the Israelites were afflicted with poisonous snake bites in their wilderness journey (Numbers 21), there was no medical means for healing available. The people prayed that the Lord would take the snakes away from them, but that was not the remedy God had in mind.

"The LORD said to Moses, 'Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.' So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived." (Numbers 21:8-9 NIV).

That is God's remedy: Look to the bronze representation of the serpent that represents the root of the whole problem of sin, lifted up on the pole. Bronze (or brass) speaks of judgment in the Bible: the bronze of the tabernacle was made from the melted down mirrors brought from Egypt - that which reflects the report of our true condition. The altar for the sacrifices was overlaid with bronze. God sent His own Son "in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man." Jesus became our altar of sacrifice, the sin offering, "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." (John 1:29). Jesus said "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." (John 3:15).

The venomous serpent bite reminds us of the infection of sin that has affected the entire human family. There is no cure. The doctors who would suck out the blood are themselves stricken with the fatal disease. God's solution was to send someone outside of the Adamic race; someone not afflicted with sin, His holy Son, Jesus. The look to Him represents the look of faith. We cannot look to ourselves for the cure, because we are afflicted with the disease of sin. We cannot look to others for they also are afflicted. But we can look to God's perfect solution on the Cross.

It is interesting that the serpent raised upon the pole is a symbol of the medical profession today. However no medical science can clear the conscience of its true guilt before a holy God. It is only the shedding of the righteous blood of Jesus that atones for our sin and makes possible our reconciliation.

"For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God." (1Peter 3:18 NIV). "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2Corinthians 5:21 NIV).

A Christianity that focuses on our own ability to perform leaves us tottering towards guilt or self-righteousness. True Christianity looks to Jesus and His performance on our behalf. His substitutionary death for us on the Cross where He takes the death penalty that our rebellion and wrongdoing deserves, saves us from the wrath of God and eternal separation that is to come. The power of His resurrection, imparted to us by the Holy Spirit, enables us to live the Christian life and bring forth the fruit of righteousness in due time.

The good news of the gospel is about God's grace - God doing for us what we could not do for ourselves, securing our forgiveness and eternal life and then offering it to us as a free gift. We need to preach this gospel to ourselves daily. Have you admitted that you cannot hurdle the sin barrier and put yourself in a right relationship with God by your own efforts? Are you looking to your own ability to perform? Salvation results from looking to Jesus alone; not Jesus plus our own abilities to live for Him. We transfer the full weight of our trust to Him: His dying for us, and His ability to live in us. Have you claimed all that is in the storehouse for you: all things that pertain to life and godliness?

Look unto Him and you will never need to look elsewhere.