Don’t Let The Golden Days Become A Golden Calf

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

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. But those who begin to worship the past are doomed for destruction. This certainly became the case for the nation of Israel.

In 2 Kings 18 we drop in on the reign of Hezekiah, the great reformer of Judah. He is remembered for doing what pleased the Lord (unlike many of Israel's kings). Among his reforms, he removed and destroyed Israel's idols. But what he found among the idols may be surprising to us.

The text tells us that Hezekiah found and destroyed the bronze serpent that was made by Moses. This serpent goes back to the events of Numbers 21 where God commanded Moses to provide healing to those bitten by serpents that had been sent among the people. The great irony is that the people had to look at a bronze serpent to save them from the attack of real serpents. We are later told that this bronze serpent pointed toward Jesus Christ (John 3:14).

Yet this relic of Israel's history brought the people to ruin. The people began to offer sacrifices to the bronze serpent. I doubt this transition happened overnight, but was rather the culmination of a series of small compromises. What began as a gift from God ultimately began to take God's place. The result was that they missed the point in God's saving work. This is almost always how sin works.

If we are honest, we are much more like Israel than we care to admit. The human heart remains, in the words of John Calvin, a "factory of idols." The temptation remains to deify the past and the "used to be." We are all tempted to begin to replace the One True and Living God for a dead, idealized bronze serpent. We are tempted to transform our golden days into golden calves and bronze serpents.

But Jesus has saved us for more! God's church has been saved to proclaim God's Word. In fact, the apostle Paul wrote that through coming of Jesus, believers are rescued from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thess. 1:9). Because of the gospel, God's people are no longer defined by our past, nor do we have reason to fear the future, because Jesus saves from the guilt of the former and gives hope for the latter. Believers now "wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come" (1 Thess. 1:10).

1 Thessalonians is teaching that we live and worship in between the two coming of Christ. As we live, we are pulled between two competing desires. The flesh is tempted to turn even good gifts into idols, and to make the past our god. The Spirit draws our faith back to the cross while keeping our expectation fixed on the Day of the Lord. The Spirit enables us to offer worship in light of the gospel and in the shadow of promised new creation.

We need God's help to be like Hezekiah and to tear down the "bronze serpents" that leave us in the wilderness and embrace the One whom the serpent pointed toward. It takes boldness and power that only the Spirit of God can give. The answer to idolatry is not simple life reformation, but redirected, rightly placed worship. May the Spirit redirect our worship away from vain idols to the One True and Living God.