In the book of Numbers, the Israelites are wandering around the desert. As usual, they’ve started to look at their immediate circumstances, forgetting the incredible things God has already done for them.
They start complaining and cursing God and Moses, saying “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food [the manna].” (Numbers 21:5).
Of course, God is able to provide for them and up until this point, he consistently used Moses to do so. He’s proven it time and time again.
So, God, in his wrath sends “fiery serpents” which come in and start to bite all the Israelites, who then quickly die from the poison. The people quickly interpret God’s wrath in the disaster and come to Moses repenting for their sin. Moses responds to the people with compassion by interceding on their behalf.
God gives Moses the solution. He commands him to fashion a serpent and place it on a stand. When anyone who has been bitten looks at the fashioned serpent, he’ll survive the serpent’s bite. So, Moses does what God commands, and makes a serpent out of bronze and put in on a stand.
Of course, just like God said, it worked. Anyone who was bitten recovered after looking at the serpent.
Fast foreword about 800 years.
Hezekiah takes the reigns in Judah and becomes king. He does what’s right in the sight of the Lord and removes a whole bunch of the people’s stumbling blocks and offenses toward God. Among those stumbling blocks was an incredibly interesting idol.
“…and he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it” (2 Kings 18:4)
What? The Israelites, for eight hundred years, sporadically, had been worshipping this bronze serpent that God had commanded Moses to make. In it’s original day, God produced it, mercifully, to save his people. But it was just a thing. God used it, clearly. But still just a thing. It wasn’t God and didn’t deserve worship. But an inattentive people confused something God used for something deserving worship due to God.
The bad habit is repeated later in Acts 14.
Paul and Barnabas are in Lystra and Paul heals a guy who can’t walk. The crowd there are amazed and conclude that “The gods have become like men and have come down”. Of course, Paul and Barnabas (rightly) freak out and rush to clear up the misunderstanding. It doesn’t go especially well for them; but that’s going off topic.
I thought it was interesting. These two (of several) occasions in scripture when we see God do something good and the good thing get the praise.
This habit hasn’t gone extinct. We still fall into it. We still turn our eyes to the incredible works of God in us and through us and around us, instead of allowing those things to direct our eyes to God himself. It’s a daily battle to remember that God is the treasure, not the gifts that he gives.
The bronze serpent in the desert was a gift from God. But eight hundred years later, it was just an idol. It did nothing and provided nothing. Paul and Barnabas were just men and through them, God gave a great gift. The those men died and no their not healing anyone now.
The same is true of the gifts we now enjoy. Our money, our time, our friends, our churches, our entertainment, our comfort. All of it. While good gifts today, they will one day lose their value.
Jesus, however, will not. I’d like to remember that he’s not just the giver. He’s also the gift.
