SALVATION, life, and forgiveness of sins, the free gifts of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, to everyone that looketh, cornea to, hears, and believes in Him. This is God’s way. Man’s way is to try, strive, work, feel, pray, experience, and hope. “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. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”
Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“Every one,” “any man,” and “whosoever;” “looketh,” “believeth,” “liveth.” Simple words, but the words of the living God who cannot lie, to everyone who has felt the bite of “the old serpent,” the plague of his own heart. To you is this word of salvation sent. The lifted-up Son of man, He who knew no sin, was made sin on the cross. God made His soul an offering for sin, and there on that cross He bore the sins of every one that believeth; and there too God condemned sin in the flesh. This is God’s remedy for today; and now if the eye of faith rests on Him, the ear listens to His word, the heart believes what He says, and confesses with the mouth the Lord Jesus, that one has everlasting life, shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life.
Mark, dear reader, God’s order — “heareth,” “believeth,” “hath,” “shall not,” “is.” This blessed chain of five precious links reaches to the sinner in the lowest depths of his degradation and woe, and lifts him into a region of peace and light and eternal bliss.
The children of Israel asked Moses to pray for them; God commanded them to look and live.
Two men stand side by side on the deck of a steamer, outward bound, the one a believer, the other unsaved but anxious. “What is God’s way to be saved?” said one. “Pray to God, and believe on the Lord Jesus,” was the reply. “Reverse it, and you have it,” said the believer. “Thank God for that, then; I’m saver said the bitten one; “I felt that word go down deep into my soul.’
W. R. H.