The bronze snakes

Day 137

OT Reading: 2 Kings 18-19

NT Reading: John 6:22-44

It's funny how often we misuse things. God provides perfectly a perfectly good, wholesome gift and we skew it to serve our own purposes.

This idea jumped out at me because of what I read in 2 Kings 18:4. You may remember reading back in Numbers 21 (and referenced again in John 3) that God sent a plague of snakes among the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. When the snakes showed up, the people repented and begged God for forgiveness. God told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a staff. Then, whenever someone was bit, all they had to do was look to the snake and they would be healed. Well it seems, centuries later, that the people of Judah were apparently offering incense to this snake...treating it as a god.

Pretty ridiculous huh?

But before we too quickly cast judgement...think about some of the ways we do this today.

Food is one example. Now, I like food. I like food A LOT. I enjoy cooking, I really enjoy eating. I personally see eating good food as one of those simple, pure pleasures of life. Yet when we run to food as an element of security, when we over-indulge in food, when our stomachs become our gods that we must endlessly "offer sacrifices" to...then this good, pure gift is misused in a way God never intended. Food essentially becomes our god.

And really the same thing could be said about work, money, sex, relationships, religious activities, authority...the list could go on and on. An innumerable amount of ways exist that we take what God has given us and misuse them.

So while it may be easy to snicker at those foolish Israelites who once again ran after created things...realize that not a lot has changed in 2500 plus years of history. Look around you and you will see that you, and I have bronze snakes in our lives even today.