He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And 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). 2 Kings 18:4 (ESV)
Hezekiah was one of Judah’s greatest kings; in fact, he is recorded in Scripture as being in the same league as David in spiritual devotion to God (2 Kings 18:3). From the beginning of his reign he showed both courage and zeal in his love for God and the purity of worship. Unlike previous administrations, he did not give half-hearted lip service to the Lord, but went so far as to remove every idol and pagan altar in the land. In a bold venture of smashing religious icons and relics, like Cromwell’s army in 17th Century England, Hezekiah was not content just to eradicate pagan influence, he honed in on home territory. The old bronze serpent, Moses fashioned had also become an obsession and favored idol. It, in a sense, was more troublesome than the fertility poles of Asherah. Those distasteful monuments were bold in-your-face pagan. Make no mistake about the pagan quality of so much of the idolatry in the open air of Judah. What was less obvious, and in many ways, a silent offense, was the work of art created by Moses at the very command of God (Num. 21:8). Yet centuries later, that sacred object became a spiritual stumbling block to true faith. Instead of worshiping and praising God who delivered his people both from Egypt and from poisonous snakes, they were attributing power and glory to a manmade object. It never takes that long, however, to move from Creator to creation in a sad descent into idolatry. We are capable of doing such a thing in minutes. That is why Hezekiah’s iconoclasm, which included the radical measure of smashing the bronze snake of Moses, is an important lesson for us to heed. Idols lie all around us, crop up almost daily and have the ability to illicit silent approval in our lives. I am not adept enough to name the ones in your life, but God is able by his Word and Spirit to probe your heart. There is a word of caution, as we look at Hezekiah’s spiritual reform. While, there is no mention of an immediate backlash against Hezekiah (being a monarch and all), you can bet your piggy bank on the wager that some folks were not happy at the destruction of such a time-honored family relic. They must have felt that Moses himself was dishonored. Of course, the whole matter was one in which God was not honored, by the false use of something once used by God for good.
Secondly, we learn that we can take good things and use them or abuse them into idols. The serpent on the pole was a picture of the Gospel, where even in John 3, Jesus said was a pointer to the great rendering of God’s mercy for us sinners and God’s hot wrath on his Son in the Cross of Christ. Don’t think that the veneration of the object was no small thing, for it missed the forest through focusing on the trees. Like, the ones who opposed Jesus in his day, there might have been a gathering of “concerned men” who were worried about the direction Hezekiah was heading. But, the spiritual renewal, however short-lived, was evidence that he was on the right path. When the Holy Spirit moves and the Gospel is being made known, the idols of our lives will have to be demolished and made history. It is an unending job, until, one day the glory of Christ himself will be known and the whole earth filled with its brilliance.
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