Senior leader of zeochurch.com
We don’t like the food, God!” they exclaim, “Have you brought us out to die?”
Numbers 21
Now God is very patient, but he allows the nation to experience the consequences of their divine rejection and removes his protective hand. The camp becomes infested with poisonous snakes and unsurprisingly, they quickly turn back to God and beg for his intervention. God’s intervention is surprising.
He asks Moses to form a bronze snake and lift it high above the camp. All who look to the snake are healed, and eventually the serpents snake away (see what I did there!). This intriguing story is a prophetic picture of what Christ will do as he is lifted high carrying our sins on the cross (John 3:14).
But something happened on that day in Numbers 21.
Something that’s not recorded in the story, but it definitely happened.
Someone nabbed the bronze snake.
You can imagine them bringing it into their tent and telling the crazy tale of the days of events to their family.
“We might need this one day if the snakes ever return”, they tell their clan, and the snake (and the story) pass from generation to generation. From century to century. Until we find ourselves back in the story in 2 Kings 18, literally hundreds of years later.
King Hezekiah has just become the new King of Judah. Thankfully, unlike his father, he is a good and godly King, committed to return the nation to God and rid the land of idolatry. To our shock, in 2 Kings 18:4 we read that one of the first things Hezekiah does is… wait for it… break the bronze snake. The bronze snake from Numbers 21. Which now has a name, Nehushtan!
The Israelites are now worshipping the tools of salvation and not the God of the tools!
How easy it is to slip into such thinking?
Future salvation possibilities can be trapped in the tools, methods and strategies of the past.
We celebrate the past. We’re thankful for it.
We honour it. We learn from it.
But we don’t live it, otherwise we run the risk that we have a Nehushtan on our hands that God wants to break.
The French Critic Charles Du Bos once said: “The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we would become.”
I think God put it even better:
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:18-19
Matt Summerfield provides leadership training and retreats for leaders (stretchyourlife.info/reboot), he’s also the Senior leader of zeochurch.com, was the former Chief Executive of Urban Saints and is currently the Chair of Youthscape.