Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

It is parliamentary that we saturate our lives with God’s word. Moses here commands the people of Israel to keep God’s word on their heart, teaching them to our children, talking about them constantly, written on our hands and mounted in our homes.

Now, whether that means we ought to literally saturate our environment with spiritual reminders or not is a different question.

But the point, perhaps at its most basic, is that we must be immersed in the Truth of the Gospel. All of our facets of thought must run through the conduit of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

Easier said than done.

I always forget. And I cannot afford to. Tonight, Moses reminds me in the midst of his plea to Israel before entering the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 8:11-17:

Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’

I’m apt to praise myself for my accomplishments. And indeed there is a place to be proud of our accomplishments and satisfied with what we’ve accomplished. But, only in its proper place. And that is in a place of remembering the Lord. Who is is and what he does.

It’s the Lord who is patient with us and disciplines us for our good.

Notice what Moses points out when reminding Israel to remember the Lord. The ‘good’ houses they would build and live in, the flocks and the gold and the silver that would ‘multiply’. Their  hearts that would be encouraged and ‘lifted up’ with their good fortune. And he beckons them to remember the tribulations that he brought them through. Not without pain and not without suffering. But by God’s patient and disciplining hand. They were prepared to remember God who is their good.

Who honestly remembers these always? I do not. But I wish to. And my prayers, I hope, will reflect that honest desire.

In the book of Numbers, the Israelites are wandering around the desert. As usual, they’ve started to look at their immediate circumstances, forgetting the incredible things God has already done for them.

They start complaining and cursing God and Moses, saying “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food [the manna].” (Numbers 21:5).

Of course, God is able to provide for them and up until this point, he consistently used Moses to do so. He’s proven it time and time again.

So, God, in his wrath sends “fiery serpents” which come in and start to bite all the Israelites, who then quickly die from the poison. The people quickly interpret God’s wrath in the disaster and come to Moses repenting for their sin. Moses responds to the people with compassion by interceding on their behalf.

God gives Moses the solution. He commands him to fashion a serpent and place it on a stand. When anyone who has been bitten looks at the fashioned serpent, he’ll survive the serpent’s bite. So, Moses does what God commands, and makes a serpent out of bronze and put in on a stand.

Of course, just like God said, it worked. Anyone who was bitten recovered after looking at the serpent.

Fast foreword about 800 years.

Hezekiah takes the reigns in Judah and becomes king. He does what’s right in the sight of the Lord and removes a whole bunch of the people’s stumbling blocks and offenses toward God. Among those stumbling blocks was an incredibly interesting idol.

“…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” (2 Kings 18:4)

What? The Israelites, for eight hundred years, sporadically, had been worshipping this bronze serpent that God had commanded Moses to make. In it’s original day, God produced it, mercifully, to save his people. But it was just a thing. God used it, clearly. But still just a thing. It wasn’t God and didn’t deserve worship. But an inattentive people confused something God used for something deserving worship due to God.

The bad habit is repeated later in Acts 14.

Paul and Barnabas are in Lystra and Paul heals a guy who can’t walk. The crowd there are amazed and conclude that “The gods have become like men and have come down”. Of course, Paul and Barnabas (rightly) freak out and rush to clear up the misunderstanding. It doesn’t go especially well for them; but that’s going off topic.

I thought it was interesting. These two (of several) occasions in scripture when we see God do something good and the good thing get the praise.

This habit hasn’t gone extinct. We still fall into it. We still turn our eyes to the incredible works of God in us and through us and around us, instead of allowing those things to direct our eyes to God himself. It’s a daily battle to remember that God is the treasure, not the gifts that he gives.

The bronze serpent in the desert was a gift from God. But eight hundred years later, it was just an idol. It did nothing and provided nothing. Paul and Barnabas were just men and through them, God gave a great gift. The those men died and no their not healing anyone now.

The same is true of the gifts we now enjoy. Our money, our time, our friends, our churches, our entertainment, our comfort. All of it. While good gifts today, they will one day lose their value.

Jesus, however, will not. I’d like to remember that he’s not just the giver. He’s also the gift.