Sunday, June 30: “Unlikely Prescription”

Numbers 21: 8, 9: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard, and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, will live.’ And Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.”

What is Moses doing, directly violating the second Commandment, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness … you shall not worship them or serve them” (Exodus 20: 3, 4)? He was following the directions of the Lord, Who not only used the likeness of the serpent as a point of faith for the people (the faith of those who looked was in God’s command, not in the serpent), He also used the lifting up of the serpent on the standard (pole) for their healing as a type of the lifting up of Christ on the cross for our salvation (John 3: 14, 8: 28, 12: 32). God being God, He can use anything He chooses to accomplish His purposes, even his “ancient foe”, cursed since the Garden of Eden. Just to be sure to worship God, and not the object He used  (2 Kings 18: 4)–that’s the point of the second Commandment.