An Agreement Between The Serpent and Jesus Christ

For the past week I have been meditating on Numbers 21, where God sent “firey serpents” into the camp of Israel while in the wilderness for their blasphemy. The snakes were biting the people, and many were dying. They then came to Moses, confessing their sin, asking Moses to intercede for them. As Moses prayed for the people the Lord said to him, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a serpent out of bronze, set it on a pole, and lifted it up. When anyone was bit by a serpent, he could look at the bronze serpent and be healed.

Later in the Gospel of John Jesus said, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15 ESV)

Is Jesus really like a “serpent?” Not exactly. But he is like the bronze serpent lifted up by Moses. John Gill wrote some fantastic words on the “agreement between the serpent and Jesus Christ.” I have formatted it below and given subtitles, but the words are all Gill’s.

There is, in many things, an agreement between this serpent, and Jesus Christ:

An Unlikely Savior.

As in the matter of it, it was a brazen serpent; it was made not of gold, nor of silver, but of brass, the meaner metal, and was a very unlikely means, of itself, to heal the Israelites; and might be despised by many: this may denote the meanness of Christ in his human nature, in his birth and parentage, and place of education and converse; and especially in his crucifixion and death; and which, to an eye of carnal sense and reason, seemed a very improbable means of saving sinners; and therefore were to some a stumbling block, and to others foolishness:  Continue at Joe Thorn