And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made… – 2 Kings 18:4

Hezekiah was a brave and wise king. The bronze serpent had been made by Moses at God’s command. Moses was the leader who led Israel out of Egypt, who brought them the 10 commandments. The serpent reminded them of God’s mercy in a time of judgement.

This serpent was their spiritual heritage – something too sacred to dispose of. But, it had become a snare to the people; it had become a substitute for God, and as such it caused harm.

Hezekiah saw this and broke the serpent in pieces – the people needed to have their spiritual heritage broken in order for it not to become a snare and a stumbling block.

There are many stumbling blocks in our own spiritual traditions: things that somehow become more important than God, or His people: the way that we dress, our church government, views on communion.

Anything that takes our focus away from the proper worship of God and fellowship with His people, no matter how sacred it appears to be needs to be broken up and removed from our lives and our churches.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Devotional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.