For the Israelites to be saved from their snakebites, the only thing required was that they believe God’s word about the bronze snake and look to it as he commanded them. So also are we to look to Christ for salvation.

We are to do what Charles Haddon Spurgeon, that great Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, did the day he was saved. He was only a boy at the time, but he had gone to a service in a Primitive Methodist chapel where a layman, not the regular minister, was preaching. The man had little learning and little to say. But the result was beneficial, for he stuck closely to his text, which was: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isa. 45:22 KJV). As Spurgeon remembered it, the man did not even pronounce the words properly, but that did not matter. The layman launched into his text, and his message went like this: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It just says, ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a great deal of pain. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just, ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand pounds a year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look. But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Ay! Many of you are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’”

At this point he noticed Spurgeon and—fixing his eyes on him as if he knew the struggle going on in the boy’s heart—continued, “Young man, you look miserable and you always will be miserable—miserable in life, and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text.” Then lifting up his hands as only a good Primitive Methodist could do, he shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothin’ to do but to look and live.” And Spurgeon did.

Have you looked to Jesus? If you have not, is your pride keeping you from it? Those things of which you are proud may be all right before others, but they are nothing before God. Can you see that? If so, then you can also see that if they are nothing with him, they are worse than nothing for you because they are keeping you from the way that leads to life and are dragging you to eternal death. Forget them. Look to Jesus. Find Jesus and know that in finding him, you will be justified before God and he will be pleased.