NEHUSHTAN (THE BRONZE SERPENT).

Moses was commissioned by God to make a brazen serpent, and hang it up, so that everyone who was bitten by those deadly snakes, once they looked upon it, they may get healed.

Numbers 21:8 King James Version (KJV)

⁸And 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.

But God never commanded the children of Israel that whenever they encountered harm or trouble then they would set up a brazen serpent and look at it for the healing, he never did that, but the children of Israel watched and discovered a secret from it. They said, surely there must be a Divine healing in it, if not why did God let Moses to build that snake using bronze?. let us deifying it and worship it and through it we will get the solution of all our diseases.

That thing went on for hundreds of years, until it was built on a great altar and became very popular in Israel. People were moving from everywhere in Israel to offer their sacrifices under it, so that God would hear them and healed their diseases.

They did not realize that act was so disgusting to God that it led them to face all the problems including taken into exile. Until the reign of King Hezekiah, who understood their mistakes and immediately abolished it.

Let’s read.

2 Kings 18:1-5 (KJV)

18 Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign.

²Twenty and five years old was he when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name also was Abi, the daughter of Zachariah.

³And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did.

⁴He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

⁵He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.

Try to think quietly and see something there! The decree was God’s own but now it turns out to be a very serious obstacle to the people … We can easily blame those people by calling them all kinds of bad words, but I tell you this generation we are living in, has gone worse even more than theirs.

God told Moses to hang up that bronze serpent as a sign! of something spiritual, and that is what we come to see as people of the new covenant, that the act that God permitted to be done was revealing our Lord Jesus Christ’s cross, after crucifixion that everyone who looks upon the cross will be saved.

We affirm it by his own words..

John 3:14 (KJV)

¹⁴And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

but there was nothing of significance in that bronze, the real healing was not in that serpent but from God. as result people abandoned to look upon God the creator of heaven and earth and started to look upon dead things which can neither speak, nor hear, nor moving.

We also know it was God who commissioned Elisha to cast salt in the spring, but it wasn’t salt that healed water, it was God. But today why we engage salt in everything we do in our services if we are not commissioned by God to do it. Yet we say, as what children of Israel said. There must be a divine heal it them. We say there is divine power in salt, if not why did God let Elisha to use salt and not anything Else?. This is idolatry

Similarly, we honor the Water more the name of Jesus Christ, and say that water has the power to purify a person sins, and to sanctify them. We turn our back on God and honor the water,

Likewise with all other things, we say the SOIL carries life, so if we pour it out and apply in our businesses, it will revive them, holding on to what the Lord Jesus did when he made mad from the ground and applied to a blinded man and his eyes were opened, we say if the soil would not have some healing Jesus would not be commanded by God to do it.

We love to hang crosses in our churches, by the way hanging crosses in not sin, the sin is when we engage them with worship as if they have a role to play for our salvation. Nowadays you can see in churches crosses and statues of saints are honored above the name of God, people are bowing to them, thinking that they offer sacrifice to God. Didn’t realize what they are doing is what children of Israeli did, worshipping Satan.

If you are doing any of these things know that god is disgusted with them excessively.

Proverbs 27:4 (KJV)