What’s a proper response to this curious word? Gesundheit? No—but a puzzled look might be expected. The word is connected to the famous bronze serpent that Moses lifted on a pole when the people he led out of Egyptian slavery were bitten by poisonous snakes in the wilderness.
The LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived. (Numbers 21:6-9, NIV)
If you see a resemblance between this saving spectacle raised in the desert and a similar one in the New Testament, you’re right! Centuries later, Jesus said:
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. (John 3:14-15, NIV)
Bible commentators have noted that bronze (or brass) is often associated with judgment—God’s condemnation of something evil. The bronze serpent speaks of God’s judgment on the devil, (called the “serpent” and “wicked one”), the sin to which he provokes people, and the pain and death all humanity suffers for it.
As the bronze snake was raised before those sufferers’ eyes, Jesus was raised on a Roman cross before the eyes of a rebellious and suffering world—so that anyone who believes in him will be rescued from their own rebellion and suffering.
Just as the snake was placed on a pole, Jesus was hung on a wooden cross made from a tree. In the Torah (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), God declares that anyone hanged on a tree is cursed. Paul takes up that theme in one of his letters:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole [tree in other versions].” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (Galatians 3:13-14, NIV)
God’s unblemished Son humbled himself to be treated as accursed for our sakes, bearing our sins—as if he were like that loathsome snake Moses raised on a pole. And, like the Israelites in the desert who were dying from the venom of the snakes that bit them, we look up to him in faith and live, saved from the venom of our sins!
But there’s still more in the history of the bronze snake—and here, we come to the verse where our strange, one-word title is found. One more time, we encounter that snake, which had been preserved for centuries after Moses made it:
[King Hezekiah] removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent which Moses had made; for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it. And he called it Nehushtan. (2 Kings 18:4, NKJV)
In the kingdom of Judah, King Hezekiah was a vigorous reformer who rose to rid the land of its many idols. “He trusted in the LORD God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him. For he held fast to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses.” (2 Kings 18:5-6, NKJV)
Why did he dare to destroy that sacred object—that ancient, saving thing that God had commanded his holy prophet Moses to make and which resulted in the miraculous rescue of so many lives?
Because, even for all that, it was nothing but a “brass thing!” That’s what Nehushtan means: “a brass thing.” As people everywhere are fond of doing, they attributed special powers to the bronze serpent and venerated it (worshipped it), burning incense to it. The brass thing itself had no actual power whatever, no sacred quality; it was nothing but brass. Its continued presence had become not a blessing (in any sense) but a snare, attracting worship and twisted thinking through the religious perversity of those who venerated it.
God had instructed Moses to make the snake as a vivid prop to use once in the crisis of its hour—and as graphic testimony of Messiah’s future sacrifice, a picture of Christ that still speaks to the world. The object itself was nothing, had served its purpose, and should have been disposed of long before Hezekiah delivered its coup de grace.
Even today, the religious world is filled to the brim with Nehushtan! A multitude of objects—relics, statues and icons, purported splinters of the “true cross,” bones and organs of saints, bejeweled chalices, consecrated structures and substances of all kinds, are venerated as if they possessed saving or healing power from God. Not one of them does—any more than the brass serpent Hezekiah destroyed. Salvation is found solely in the Son of God, whose human name, Jesus, means the LORD is salvation.
All this is true even of the bread and wine served in churches at the Lord’s supper or Eucharist. Everything Jesus said about himself as the Bread that came down from heaven and about his blood remains altogether true. As it was then, it also remains difficult for many to hear:
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” (John 6:53-56, NIV)
To those who trust that the Son of God spoke the truth, Jesus offers a telling and important explanation, lest we make idols of objects and substances like bread and wine, flesh and blood, and think that taking them saves us:
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” (John 6:61-64a, NIV)
“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” What saves a person, converts a soul, and connects us with Jesus is living faith in God’s word and his Son, who speaks and embodies salvation. His words are true; those who partake of Jesus by faith eat his body and drink his blood. This is a spiritual reality, not a physical one. No one ever ate the physical flesh of Christ or drank his physical blood. The bread and wine we take always was and always demonstrably remains common bread and wine. Objects and substances count for nothing, profit us nothing.
No object, no substance, regardless of its origin and regardless of what anyone purports to do to it, possesses any supernatural power to save or bless our souls and spirits—though, of course, many substances and objects (such as medicines and medical devices) are used by men, with God’s blessing, to our great benefit.
Personal faith in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, saves us and gives us eternal life, through the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, who makes us alive in our spirit. (John 3:5-6) As “there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,” (1 Timothy 2:5, NIV), we are freed through him from bondage to notions of “holy” objects and to authorities who purport to offer access through them to God. “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10, NIV)
We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols. (1 John 5:19-21, NIV)
