Stalking boldly across the courtyard, King Hezekiah shouted orders for the men to open all the doors to the Temple of Jehovah. Then he ordered the repair of those doors and the cleaning out of all the trash in the inner parts of God’s sanctuary. He was on a mission, a mission to re-sanctify the priesthood and the Temple, and to re-establish worship according to God’s instructions. His father, Ahaz, had rejected the Law and the Temple. Hezekiah knew that the nation could not be blessed until this work was done. You can read all that took place during this extraordinary revival and restoration in 2 Chronicles, chapter 29 and 2 Kngs 18.
High on the king’s agenda was the breaking down of the places where sacrifices were made to various idols. At one such place he found an unusual idol: a bronze serpent. This serpent had been made by Moses hundreds of years before. At the time the people were under a plague and God told Moses to make this serpent and place it high on a pole. Those who looked on it were miraculously healed. We now understand that the serpent and pole pre-figured Christ on His cross. However, hundreds of years after Moses did this, the people were worshiping the bronze serpent along with their other idols. They called it Nehushtan.
Today we see many Nehustan worshipers in the Church, i.e they worship something from the past: a type of music, a style of worship, a doctrine, a concept of how “church” should be conducted or organized. For the Israelites, they had transferred their worship from Jehovah to a symbol or representation of past blessing. They no longer worshiped Jehovah or kept His Law.
The Church is transitioning into a new paradigm. We must stop worshiping at the altar of the past paradigms. Someone has said that the “Seven Last Words of the Church” are “We never did it that way before.” God is not static. While His Word or His Person never change, His seasons do. Let’s prepare by giving up our Nehushtans!
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