Over the years, I have no idea how many times, in homes and various churches, I’ve taught Ralph Braun’s The Old and New Testament Walk-Through. It is a 13-week condensed study of the Bible. To me at least, it makes a complicated subject seem manageable. It helped me to know where to “hang” Biblical events and subjects, and characters on the clothesline of time.
We all know of course, how God’s chosen people were miraculously delivered out of Egypt. We also know that on the way to the promised land, they found themselves spending forty years wandering in the wilderness.
God meets a need
As we studied the travels of the newly freed Hebrews, the subject of the Bronze Serpent that Moses lifted up in Numbers 21 would be discussed. The Bronze Serpent was God’s “quick response” acting through Moses. God did this to provide for the needs of his chosen, but still sinful people.
I don’t know about you but I’m more into being a part of miraculous deliveries than I am in trekking through life’s many wildernesses. But, no one ever said it was going to be easy.
I’ve included the following verses from Numbers 21:6-8 for you. Notice that the sole purpose mentioned for the Bronze Serpent is so the people “shall live.”
“And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And 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.
I’m sure we can all agree me that the Bronze Serpent and its purpose of “shall live, ” is a good thing.
Be careful of your idols…
I’d forgotten about the Bronze Serpent being lifted up, until the other morning when my friend Matthew Henry and I were reading through Second Kings. I didn’t know the life-saving Bronze Serpent had become an idol. King Hezekiah, bringing his people back from all the pagan idols they have been worshipping, acquires the Bronze Serpent and destroys it as well.
It seems, if the Bronze Serpent can become an idol, this says a lot about what in our own lives might be idols. It also points to the need to be really careful what we “looketh upon.” Also, it points out that idols may not always be pagan appearing things.
Here are my friend Matthew’s comments from 2 Kings 18.
“The brazen serpent was originally of divine institution, and yet, because it had been abused to idolatry, he broke it to pieces. The children of Israel had brought that with them to Canaan; where they set it up we are not told, but, it seems, it had been carefully preserved, as a memorial of God’s goodness to their fathers in the wilderness and a traditional evidence of the truth of that story, for the encouragement of the sick to apply to God for a cure and of penitent sinners to apply to him for mercy.
But in process of time, when they began to worship the creature more than the Creator, those that would not worship images borrowed from the heathen, as some of their neighbors did, were drawn in by the tempter to burn incense to the brazen serpent, because that was made by order from God himself and had been an instrument of good to them. But Hezekiah, in his pious zeal for God’s honour, not only forbade the people to worship it, but, that it might never be so abused any more, he showed the people that it was Nehushtan, nothing else but a piece of brass, and that therefore it was an idle wicked thing to burn incense to it; he then broke it to pieces, that is, as bishop Patrick expounds it, ground it to powder, which he scattered in the air, that no fragment of it might remain. If any think that the just honour of the brazen serpent was hereby diminished they will find it abundantly made up again, John iii. 14, where our Saviour makes it a type of himself. Good things, when idolized, are better parted with than kept.”
And just to finish it off, here’s Matthew’s reference to the verses in John.
“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. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” – John 3:14-16.
My friend Matthew is a very perceptive guy. I don’t know how he manages to keep his references straight in 17th century England. There was no cloud computing or backup hard drives in his day.
That’s your sermon for the day.
Go forth and have a great day!