Routines can be very good things. My morning routine helps me to make sure I don’t leave home without the essentials. I get up, brush my teeth, fix coffee, take a shower, put on deodorant, brush my hair, get dressed, and then go downstairs. I am careful to not do things out of order, because if I get things out of order, something gets forgotten.
If I tuck my shirt in before I put on my belt, I walk out the door without a belt.
Routines are important.
We get into routines about all sorts of things. We have morning routines, evening routines, but we even have daily, weekly, and monthly routines.
It used to be that everyone got up, got dressed, and went to work every day. Now, of course, many of you are just barely even leaving your house. We are having to adjust our routines, and we are learning just how hard that is. When we get used to doing something a certain way, we can begin to believe that is the only way to do it.
Many of us are learning right now just how rigid our routines are (or, at least, were). Our routines have been upended. We are learning that there may need to be new ways.
The children of Israel had to learn that too.
In Numbers 21, the children of Israel are making their way from the Red Sea. They have seen God deliver them from Egypt with his strong hand. They saw the Red Sea part, and they have had their bellies filled by manna and quail that the Lord provided in abundance. God had brought water from a rock and had even blessed them with military victory. However, the people were unhappy.
Some of it is a bit like our current situation. Most people were safe, secure, and nourished, but they weren’t getting the life they wanted, so they complained.
According to Numbers 21, when they complained, the Lord “sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.” We don’t know what kind of snakes these were, it is pointless to speculate. What we do know is that they were venomous (thus the “fiery” description) and they were a plague among the people of Israel.
Sounds familiar, right?
But God is rich in mercy. Though his people had sinned against him, he was willing to forgive them. They cried out to God in repentance and faith, and God healed them.
7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze[a] serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
Numbers 21:7-9
The people cried out to the Lord and God healed them. God told Moses to make a bronze serpent, set it on a pole, and the people who looked on it would live.
Sort of the hair of the dog that bit them. They cried out to God, and his answer was repent and believe. When they looked upon the serpent, they would be reminded of their sin, but they would also know of the God who was able to save.
The children of Israel fell into a routine of looking to that bronze serpent for healing. Over time, they not only looked to the serpent, eventually they lost the meaning behind the serpent. The routine or the ritual remained, but at some point, some of the people forgot the God who had commanded that the serpent be made, and instead began worshiping the serpent.
We’ve all been there. God does something amazing, and we try to recreate that amazing thing. We have an incredible time of worship and begin to believe that it was because of a particular song. Or, people get saved and you begin to believe it was because of the particular kind of sermon. Maybe your life starts going well and you begin to believe that it is because you attended worship more regularly or because you started listening to Christian radio.
The Israelites remembered the bronze serpent, but many forgot the hand of God behind it. So, we find the situation in 2 Kings 18.
The Israelites traded the worship of the God who had worked wonders for the worship of a snake on a stick.
Hezekiah begins to reign in Judah and the Bible says that he did what was right in the Lord’s eyes.
He sought the Lord.
He removed the high places and cut down Asharah poles.
And then, he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).
Maybe God is destroying our bronze serpents today. Maybe God is reminding us that what got us here is not the way we worship or even the place we worship. What if God is tearing apart our altars and destroying our bronze serpent to get our attention? What if God has kicked us all out of our sanctuaries and our normal practices to remind us that there is more? What if God is destroying our idols so that we will look beyond our things to the God who alone can save and heal?
I don’t like snakes. I kill snakes when I see them. I prefer to shoot snakes so that I don’t have to get close enough to kill them with a hoe or shovel.
Good snakes are dead snakes. The snake on a pole served a purpose, but when Hezekiah began to reign, he realized that the snake needed to die.
What are the idols in your life that need to die so that God can reign supreme? How has 2020 helped to reveal some of your idols and taught you to rely on God instead of the man-made structures we have leaned upon for so long?
The snakes keeping you from serving the Lord may not have started off as bad things. They could have had noble beginnings, but they have become barriers in the way of your commitment to the Lord. Ask God to reveal your idols so that you can shoot those snakes and leave them to die.
