THAT SUBTLE SHIFT Part One

“Look out! There’s another one!”
In the desperate scuffle, bodies fall over one another in an attempt to escape but it is too late.
Mesmerized the boy stares at the two red dots on his ankle. A scream forms in his throat. He opens his mouth but no sound comes. A curse splits the air. Someone stabs viciously at the snake, misses it, and curses again.
Unobtrusively, the snake slides silently on to its next victim, a toddler playing in the sand. Her tiny body twitches violently and then suddenly slumps forward.
As the venomous reptiles slither in and out of the tents, the wailing of the bereaved mingles with the shrieking of the victims.
Verse 6 of Numbers chapter 21 states bluntly: they bit the people and many Israelites died.
“Look at it! Look at it and live!”
The hysterical weeping ceases as the bitten believe. They look and they live.
This is what God said to Moses: “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.”
So what brought life to the dying? Simple belief in God’s provision. Implicit belief in what he said. Profound belief in God Himself.
Did some think it too simple? Or too ridiculous? We aren’t told. We read: when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.
I sense a tremendous sigh between those words in verse 9 and the next phrase in verse 10: The Israelites moved on.
A sigh because the terror of snake bite was behind them; because relief had come; because an angry Yahweh had in his great mercy provided a way to life. They sighed for the dead they’d left buried in the sand. And they moved on.
I stop here and ask some questions.
Before they moved on, who took the pole down? Who decided whether they would take the bronze snake with them or leave it behind? Did they take it with them? Why would they want to take it with them?
Perhaps my questions are not important. But move on with the Israelites several hundred years down the track and we face another question. This one is important.
At what point in time did they begin to worship the bronze snake?
2 Kings 18 relates Hezekiah’s encounter with this bronze snake. Verse 4 reads: He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it.
Blatant idolatry.
The previous chapter gives us a clue to this horrendous situation: Even while these people were worshiping the LORD, they were serving their idols.
It happens ever so subtly when what, or how, or even when become more important than WHOM. It happens when the eyes of the heart shift their gaze to the visible.
Could our emphasis of a particular doctrine take our eyes off the Lord Himself?
Could “anointed teaching” replace a personal relationship with the Anointed One?
Could truths deceive us into believing that they are more important than the Truth?
Is it possible to worship “worship”?
Could the way we do things override the why or what for?
Could a “man of God” shift our eyes off God? Switch our focus from the invisible to the visible?

To be continued...