Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
He meant that the true spiritual life could only come out of spiritual death.
He meant that in order for a new creation to begin the old creation must be destroyed.
In verse 6, the word for serpent is the same word used for the serpent in the Garden of Eden in Gen 3, nachash (naw-chash – a snake which hisses, or literally an image of a serpent, (mythologically speaking).
In verse 8, The word for serpent is the Hebrew word saraph which not a literal serpent but a symbolical serpent, not the actual serpent.
This simply means that TLJC does need to use sin a nachash, a type of sin to fulfill His plan and policy.
It is important because there are teachings like BUDDHISM that teach that we need evil to reveal good.
They quote verses and passages like ISA 45:7 to justify their opinion, which says “I am the One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing well‑being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.
These fiery serpents bit the people so that some of the people died and many others were wounded from the poisonous bites of the literal serpents.
Moses cried unto God and the Lord told him to make a serpent out of brass and place it on a pole.
The Jews who were bitten by the fiery serpents were told to look at the brazen serpent “in faith” and they should be healed.
The serpent was an appropriate figure of the deadly and destructive power of sin.
GEN 3:15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He [the serpent’s seed] shall bruise you on the head, And you [the seed of the woman, TLJC] shall bruise him on the heel.”
The remedy which God provided was a “public exhibition” of the destroyer, the brazen serpent on a pole.
GAL 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us‑‑ for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree [pole].”
The question arises, Why didn’t Moses use one of the actual serpents and spike a fiery serpent on the pole?
It would have pictured God’s judgment on the sinner himself and worse still, it would have misrepresented our sinless substitute, TLJC.
HEB 7:26, For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens.
ROM 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God {did:} sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and {as an offering} for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
PHI 2:7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond‑servant, {and} being made in the likeness of men.
How could a serpent fitly symbolize the Lord Jesus Christ, the holy One from God?
The brazen serpent foreshadows Christ only as He was lifted up on the cross.
It was through the agency of that old serpent, the devil, that our first parents were seduced and brought under the curse of a holy God.
In the scriptures brass symbolizes divine judgment! For example, the brazen altar illustrates this truth for on it the sacrificial animals were slain.
REV 1:15 and His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been caused to glow in a furnace,
JOH 3:14 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;
The brazen serpent was lifted up so that those who were too weak to crawl up to the pole itself simply could look and be healed.
NUM 21:8 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live.”
Who can look upon it? Anyone could be look and anyone could be healed.
Who can have faith? Anyone can faith, and anyone or whosoever can be healed.
GEN 3:6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
ISA 45:22 “Turn to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other.
HEB 12:2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
PHI 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;
Faith is simply the eye of the soul looking toward the Lord Jesus Christ, even if it’s only a little faith.
LUK 17:6 “If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and be planted in the sea’; and it would obey you.”
“God” refers here to the first person of the Trinity, God the Father.
Everything we will ever need in time, every sin that we would ever commit has a divine provision from a perfect God.
Every sin in the human race that would ever be committed has a divine solution “in Christ.”
There will never be a trial, or a testing or a suffering too great for the plan of God to handle
Einstein – The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.
Love requires thought not emotion and billions of years ago, God thought about you.
The mental attitude preceded the action. The mental attitude was love, the action was the cross. God the Father loved you before you ever loved Him.
1JO 4:19 We love, because He first loved us.
God’s love for both the believer and unbeliever is centered around the cross.
It is true that God is love and because God is love the cross exists, When a member of the human race by passes the cross or rejects Christ as his or her personal Savior, he then becomes the object of divine wrath.
First of all, Matthew 25:41 tells us hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. The reason is because God has more than one characteristic.
God is love and He is also righteous and just and holy, Habakkuk 1:13, Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, And Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor.
The Bible is very dogmatic about a literal hell, over one hundred-sixty-two texts in the New Testament alone are given, Over seventy were uttered by the Lord.
Hell is said to be banishment from the presence of God, 2TH 1:4.
Hell is a place of torment and punishment, LUK 16:23.
Hell had to be enlarged by God to make room for man, ISA 5:14.
Hell is a place of eternal fire, MAT 13:42,50; REV 20:15 and outer darkness, MAT 8:12.
Hell is a place of worms which discomfort their victims, where the conscience does not die, MAR 9:44;46;48.
Hell is a place where others can be recognized, LUK 16:23.
Hell is a place where people will pray but will not be heard, LUK 16:27.
Hell is a place where desire remains unfulfilled, LUK 16:24-27; REV 22:11.
Hell is said to be a bottomless pit, REV 9:1.
Hell is said to last forever and ever, REV 14:11.
A place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, MAT 13:22.
Hell is a place where the victims are eternally dying yet they are not in a state of death but a process of constantly dying,REV 2:11;20:14.
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him.” World is the kosmos = the organized world of human beings, those with OSN and spiritually dead.
Spiritual death means more than being separated from God, it means we do not even have the ability to love God.
When JOH 3:16 says For God so love the world that (the word that introduces a result clause) When a person has a M.A. the M.A. always produces a result, an action.
HEB 12:15 See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;
Bitterness can come from the intensity of suffering of mind and body or from something that is difficult to bear, something that causes animosity and reaction.
Ridicule and judging is a manifestation of bitterness, LAM 3:14. The people ridiculed Jeremiah because of their bitterness toward him.
JAM 3:14 “But if you have bitter jealousy and strife in your right lobe, do not be arrogant and do not lie against the truth.”
When you are bitter, you actually tell yourself lies that are totally against the reality of doctrine and that’s what it means when it says–lying against the truth.
Bitterness causes stress and complaining which is why Job said in 7:11 “Therefore, I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the stress of my mind, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.”
1JO 3:14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.
1JO 3:15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
1JO 5:16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death; I do not say that he should make request for this.
KJ – 1JO 5:16 If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.
Bitterness also motivates gossip and the creation of the public lie, PSA 64:3 “They have sharpened their tongue like a sword. They aimed their bitter speech like an arrow.”
The bitter soul is contagious and pollutes others in HEB 12:15 “See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God and that no root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by it many are polluted.”
For God so loved the world (with the result) that He gave.
His only begotten son, monogenes = only born son, uniquely born son…J.C. was the only member of the human race born without an OSN.
Only one was ever born already a Son of God, everyone else must become a son, they are not born a son.
The first Adam was created minus a sin nature but achieved one. For God so loved the world (with the result) that He gave His only born Son that … now we have a purpose clause = that whosever
ROM 5:6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
2CO 5:14…one died for all, 2CO 5:19 God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,
1TI 2:6 He gave Himself as a ransom for all, 1TI 4:10…He is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.
TIT 2:11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,
HEB 2:9 by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. 2PE 2:1 the Master bought them,
1JO 2:2 and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. 1TI 2:4 who desires all men to be saved
2PE 3:9 He is not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. ACT 17:30 God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent,
Since sins have been judged at the cross, under the law of double jeopardy, they cannot be mentioned at the last judgment.