Break into pieces your idols...and the Lord will be with you.
- Elizabeth Lunyou
- Feb 20, 2017
- 2 min read
In 2 Kings 18 we see Hezekiah began to reign in Israel. He was a man who did what was right. One thing he did was destroy the idolatry in Israel, and one of those idols was named Nehushtan. This was the bronze serpent Moses made by God’s command to heal the Israelite's who had been bitten by snakes. If the people would look at the bronze serpent, believing in God’s promise to heal them, they would be healed. This story found in Numbers 21:5-9, is a lesson on faith. The bronze serpent was not a healing power, God was the healer and wanted them to show their faith in Him by looking at the serpent. However, the people turned their faith from God to the object He had used to teach them. This 2 Kings passage tells us the people had until those days made offerings to the image, making it an idol called Nehushtan.
This should make us question our own lives. What has God used in our own lives to teach us about Him, about faith, trust, provision etc that we have turned into an idol? Maybe even a metal cross, used to remind us about Jesus’ blood sacrifice for our sins, has become the object of faith (or an object of protection) rather than having faith in the God who used the cross as an altar for our sins. Or maybe, the home or job or family God has given as a means of teaching and providing for us has become the sole focus of our attention, so that we no longer trust God to provide or help, but actually think the source of that provision is that job or the source of that happiness is the people in our lives rather than the God who uses those things to draw us to Himself.
We, like the Israelites
of old, can easily transfer our faith from the God of our lives, to the things in our lives. Test your faith today, is it truly in God, or have you been making offerings to your own Nehushtan?
Ask God to reveal any idols in your life so that you can truly love God with ALL your heart and each other the way God has called us to and as we see in the life of Hezekiah, the Lord will be with you.
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