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SIN AS A SERPENT "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden." (Gen. 3:1-8) That passage of eight verses is the very reason that Jesus shows up 4,000 years later and says, "Ye must be born again." (John 3) The devil appeared in the form of a deceptive serpent, and when he was done, the first two children of God to ever live had become sinners standing in shame and in need of redemption. Later in the chapter a curse is placed on the serpent, so that to this day, some 6,000 years later, people and most animals are generally scared of snakes. It seems that all of creation knows instinctively that there's something wrong with snakes. Satan himself is identified as a serpent throughout the Bible, including in Revelation 12:9 where he is called "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan." Because of this, I believe snakes serve as a great type of sin, which I'll illustrate in a few simple, instructive points. I. SNAKES INSTILL FEAR Sin entered the human race when a woman was not afraid of a serpent. A serpent appeared and questioned the authority of God's word, and she stood there and conversed with that thing. Next thing you know, she's a sinner against God and her husband is a sinner against God. Although there was no negative stigma associated with the serpent at that time, one should have quickly become associated with him when he denied the word of God and called God a liar! If his very appearance didn't scare her away, his words should have, because people should be scared of sin and how it breaks one’s fellowship with God. What if people were as scared of sin as they are of snakes? Since that time, people have been instinctively scared of snakes, probably because of the sin association and what it did to man, but what if we were all as scared of sin as we are of snakes? Our lives would be transformed. I remember when I was about ten years old and I nearly stepped on a snake in the front yard. It was probably just an old chicken snake, but my heart skipped a few beats and I jumped like a rabbit in the opposite direction trying to get away from that thing. A couple years ago I came upon a baby snake at work, so I figured I needed to get him out of the building. He was only about the size of a pencil, so I grabbed a box and something to scoop him up with, but when I got close to him, he coiled up to strike and began shaking his tail like a rattlesnake. That got me to wondering about mamma snake and where she might be. I went ahead and took him outside, but that whole episode was just a little bit spooky. In fact, one of the office ladies went nuts and started crying about it, without ever even seeing the little fellow. Just the idea of snakes in the building had that woman terrified. Wouldn't it be something if sin had us that terrified, if the very possibility of its presence sent chills up our spines and threw us into high level defense mode? But we don't do it. Instead, we play around with it like Eve, thinking we can manage it and that maybe "a little bit won't hurt." Paul said to FLEE youthful lust, and Genesis tells us that Joseph FLED and got away from the evil woman that tried to lead him into sin. When it comes to sin, a good pair of legs can serve you well. Use them! Get moving away from that sin just as you would move away from a coiled-up copperhead! "The greatest security against sin is to be shocked at its presence." That's great advice. If I'm not scared of sin, I'm already in trouble. II. SNAKES ARE AFRAID OF YOU Thank God for that, else we would all have probably been bitten numerous times. I can't speak for everyone, but speaking from my own life experiences, I have never been chased by a snake. Every snake encounter that I've had was a situation where I scared him as much as he scared me, and we were both engaged in a distancing process. My uncle was carrying me around a pond on his shoulders when I was about four or five years old, and a blue racer just happened to be on one of the tree limbs that was eye level with me. As we moved the branch, we saw the snake, and we all got moving. He didn't chase us like some claim they will do. He was afraid of us, just as Satan was afraid of Adam. That's why he chose Eve, the weaker vessel and the secondary creation. James 4:7 says, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." Why would he flee? Because, if you're saved, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. He knows his power is limited. Just draw nigh unto God, claim some good Bible promises, and get victory over the devil. "The devil made me do it" is a lie from hell! The devil has never MADE anyone do anything, not even Adam and Eve! People CHOOSE to sin or they CHOOSE to obey God, and when you choose to obey God, it sends the devil running just as it did when Jesus resisted Satan's three temptations in Matthew 4. Satan “struck out” with Jesus, and he will strike out with us, if only we will RESIST temptation and submit ourselves to God. Snakes are afraid of us, and so is sin and the devil, if only we will submit to God and stand in His might. III. SNAKES AVOID COLD CLIMATE I've seen many snakes in my life, and I've had several personal encounters with them, but never in the winter and definitely never under freezing temperatures. Snakes avoid cold climates. There's a great lesson in that: If you want victory over sin, then STOP WARMING UP TO IT! Give it the cold shoulder and make it feel unwelcome in your life. Paul said to put on Jesus and not make provision for the flesh (Rom. 13:14). In other words, make sin feel unwelcome. Make it hard to sin by rearranging your life and your habits. Create an environment that is cold to sin. Be "cool" with the Lord, instead of with the world, and the devil won't feel so welcome. I haven't had anyone phone me up in over thirty-five years and ask me to get together for a few beers. David Spurgeon was a biker back about forty years ago. I bet none of those guys ever phone him up today and invite him for a ride to Vegas. Why? He’s "cool" with the Lord now, and Satan prefers a warmer climate because he's headed to a much warmer place. Do you want victory over sin? Stop warming up to it. Set your spiritual thermostat on about forty five degrees, clothe yourself in righteousness, and you'll see a whole lot of sin breaking the speed limit to get away from you! You can still be friendly and smile a lot, but keep the temperature (the sin tolerance) down and the snakes will leave. IV. SNAKE BITES ARE TREATABLE If you are bitten by a snake, there is hope. They’ll inject you with antivenom containing antibodies, which is blood plasma extracted from animals previously injected with snake venom, and the animal (don’t miss this!) is often a SHEEP! Did you get that? Victory over snake bites comes in the form of SHEEP BLOOD! Hebrews 9:22 says, "WITHOUT SHEDDING OF BLOOD IS NO REMISSION” and John 1:29 says that Jesus is the LAMB of God to take away the sin of the world! Glory to God! I was curious about that, about BLOOD being required for helping with snake bites, so I inquired as to whether or not some OTHER treatment for snake bites might also be used. This is what I read:"it seems unlikely that synthetic, non-blood product related antivenoms will be commercially produced in the near future."Amen! Without shedding of blood is NO REMISSION! Likewise, without the blood of Christ the Lamb of God applied, a sinner gets no real help at all. I’ll try not to go too deep with this, but surely you remember the case of Moses, the children of Israel, and the brazen serpent. The people had sinned against God, so God sent a plague of fiery serpents among them (Num. 21). People were sick and dying everywhere, and then God told Moses to put a brazen serpent on a pole and have people simply look at it for healing. Nothing else, just look and live by faith only. Well, that’s a great picture of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross. In fact, just before giving us John 3:16, Jesus said, “And 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 eternal life.” (John 3:14-15) That’s some heavy stuff right there. He said that the serpent lifted up by Moses was a TYPE of Christ! How is that? It was a BRAZEN serpent, picturing sin judged. Here comes the verse, so don’t miss it. II Corinthians 5:21: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Like a CURSED serpent on a pole, Christ became sin for us! Here’s another one: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” (Gal. 3:13) You get to escape the old curse from Genesis 3 because of the curse that Christ became for us on Calvary. We get healing from sin by LOOKING TO CHRIST ON THE CROSS and believing by faith that his blood can atone for all our sins, that Jesus alone is the Great Physician who has the “antivenom” blood that can heal from sin! That’s why he’s the GREAT physician; no one else can heal from sin, because no one else can be the Lamb of God with the “antivenom.” A sinner can get baptized, but he'll just be a wet sinner. He can join a church, but he'll just be a religious sinner. He can do a bunch of good deeds, but he'll just be a “good” sinner, and he'll die in his sins and split hell wide open. A man who has been bit by a cottonmouth can die as soon as within three minutes, if no one helps him. His diaphragm is paralyzed and he stops breathing. That's what sin did to humanity. Sin entered Adam and Eve, God's Spirit left, and they stopped breathing spiritually. They DIED spiritually that day, just as God had warned. Then Jesus came with the blood cure and the hope of a new life, via a new birth, where sinners can become saints and start breathing for God again by being born of the Spirit, born again, born of God. That’s what being born again is all about, and, if you haven’t been born again, there’s no better time that RIGHT NOW.