Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 960
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, November 13, 1870
“He removed the high places, and broke the images, and cut down the groves, and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it. And he called it Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.” 2 Kings 18:4,5.
THE First Commandment instructs us that there is but one God, who alone is to be worshipped. And the Second Commandment teaches that no attempt is to be made to represent the Lord, neither are we to bow down before any form of sacred similitude. “You shall not make unto you any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them.” The two commandments thus make a full sweep of idolatry. We are not to worship any other god. We are not to worship the true God by the use of representative symbols. He is a Spirit and is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not by the use of visible imagery.
It seems clear that the human mind, since the Fall, finds it hard to keep to this. All over the world men set up images and idols—not at first with the view of worshipping the wood or stone—but with the intention of being helped to worship the Deity by having some outward symbol of his presence. After awhile the evil heart falls into something even more debasing, and the image itself is adored. Even the people of God, the children of Israel, who so peculiarly enjoyed the Lord’s Presence in their midst, and who were taught to worship Him by Lawgivers and Prophets inspired of the Most High could not keep to pure and spiritual worship.
Though their weakness was somewhat helped to the understanding of the Truth of God by a system of types, they were not content with these because they contained no similitude of God. The religion of pious Jews was mainly spiritual, for only at the one appointed spot at Jerusalem was sacrifice allowed, and there the sacred vessels of ceremonial worship were in secret places and seldom, if ever, seen by the people. A worship so little outward was too spiritual for unregener-ate Israel. The people wanted an outward ritual for other places beside Jerusalem. And wherever there was a rock or lofty hill, there they put up an altar to God, and it was called one of the “high places” of the land.
Wherever a grove of ancient trees could be discovered, they set that apart, also. To the true God, mark you—but still without Divine sanction, and contrary to His Law, seeing that He had not appointed that there should be any groves or places sacred to Himself except the one chosen spot at Mount Zion. Then they came to the use of teraphim, symbolical forms, statues, “images,” as our English translation puts it. Not that they actually worshipped these as God, but used them, as they said, to help them to worship God.
This was all contrary to the Divine Law, and led to a forgetfulness of God Himself, robbing Him of His worship and giving it to dumb idols. As soon as good Hezekiah had come to the throne and taken possession of its power, he set to work to cut down all the groves, to break the images, and as far as he could, as governor of the land, to bring back Israel to her allegiance to the great invisible Jehovah—and to the spiritual worship in which He delights—restraining the outward worship with sacrifice and offering to the one temple at Jerusalem.
Among the various objects of Israel’s degenerate worship was one which it would have seemed natural even for a reformer to spare. It was the famous serpent of brass which had been made by Moses in the wilderness, and had been lifted up upon a pole. By looking to it thousands had been cured of the poisonous bites of fiery serpents. This had been carefully preserved, but seeing that it had become an object of superstitious reverence, Hezekiah destroyed it. According to
some, he ground it to powder, and he called it by an opprobrious epithet, Nehushtan. The margin has the translation, “a piece of brass.”
It might be read, “filth,” or “verdigris,” or “a piece of copper.” The king gave it a name which would show that he protested against the idolatrous reverence shown to it. Although it was an interesting memorial, it must be utterly destroyed because it presented a temptation to idolatry. Here, if ever in this world was a relic of high antiquity, of undoubted authenticity—a relic which had seen its hundreds of years about which there was no question as to its being indisputably the very serpent which Moses made. And it was moreover a relic which had formerly possessed miraculous power—for in the wilderness the looking at it had saved the dying.