“He removed the high places…and broke in pieces the bronze serpent” 
(2 Kings 18:4)

Grumbling and complaining about your life? No biggie, we all do it.

Well, if you are not careful, small moans of discontent can quickly lead to loud cries of vitriolic frustration and bitterness.  This was the case in the Old Testament desert wanderings: “Where is the bread God? How about some water? Enough of this manna, we loathe this worthless food!” God became a villain to these grumblers, and their discontent led the Israelites to believe he really wanted them to die.

But when they called his honey-bread sent from heaven “worthless, miserable food”, they went too far. The very thing God sent to keep them alive, they spit upon with the poisonous words of an ungrateful rabble. 

So God matched their poison with a bit of his own poison.

Venomous snakes were sent to bite the grumblers, and they started dropping dead like flies. Desperate, the people ran to Moses and begged him to pray to God for relief, “We have sinned, please take away these snakes!” Snakes, I hate snakes.

God came to the rescue, as he always does, and devised a strange but wonderful plan. He told Moses to craft a serpent out of bronze, weld it onto a pole, and place it high for all to see. If a person was bitten and they looked up and saw the “Nehushtan” (bronze serpent on a pole) – – they would survive. All they had to do was look, and the poison was rendered useless.

This was miraculous, spectacular, something to rejoice about and love God for. God often uses the unusual and miraculous to reveal his abundant mercy. But the saving power of the bronze serpent was meant to be for a limited time. After a while, the snakes all disappeared, the people were healed and God’s anger subsided. 

So what happened to the Nehushtan? Was it stored away in a Jewish museum? Did Uncle Tevye have it up in his attic? No, it was worse than that…for the next 400 years, many of the Israelites continued to revere it as an object of worship. In 2 Kings 18:4 King Hezekiah finally decided to have it destroyed because people were bowing before it and bringing offerings to it.

What was once a great gift given by God for His people to place their trust in Him, turned into an idol that they used in replacement of God. That is what an idol is, a trade: exchanging God for any lesser thing that will give you what you want. The problem with this is that the power isn’t in the thing, it is in the promise that is founded in the character of a loving God who gave the thing.

But people like the thing. The thing is malleable, visible and appeals to my senses. It is easy to see a bronze snake on a pole, but God is invisible. God is also Holy and having a relationship with him often means I need to be willing to let him change me. In comparison, a snake on a pole is silent, it has no opinions, all I want from it is power. Power feels good. That is the essence of idolatry, getting what I want, when I want it, with minimal cost.

God still is in the business of giving us great things. God still can do miracles. But we have to be careful not to just want these miracles in replacement of exercising faith in his character. Often theologians debate if signs, wonders, tongues, healings and phenomenal workings by God are over? Have they ceased? And any honest evaluation of scripture never says God and his miracles have ceased. (http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/signs-and-wonders-then-and-now) But signs are purposeful: to point to that which is important. The thing is meant to point to the character of God. That is what a sign does, it points.

However, if all you come to church for is to see cool things, experience the “wow” of the miracle, or love the feelings you get from powerful praise and worship, you are replacing God with the thing. In Matthew 12:38-39 Jesus calls people who are searching for miracles “a wicked generation”. They weren’t wicked for wanting to see miracles, they were wicked because the one whom the miracles were pointing to was standing right before them and they weren’t impressed. They liked the thing better than the man.

How can we be impressed by the miracle and not be impressed by the Christ who created the miracle? Many people are because they like feeling over faith. (John 6:26)

God sent the bronze serpent, the Nehushtan, so people would trust his word. God also sent the bronze serpent, the Nehushtan, so people would place their faith in the Word, the Christ. John 3:14-16 says, “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. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Be careful, great things can quickly become idols. Ask yourself, do you find yourself talking more about the music, the healings, the miraculous events, or the mercy of the risen Christ? Never replace a diamond ring for the love of a spouse. One is real, the other is just a thing.