Unchanging Yet New Every Morning

“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). 

“So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that if a snake had bitten someone, when he looked at the bronze snake he lived” (Num. 21:9, NET).

What a fascinating prophetic picture of Jesus this was! The bronze snake was a symbol of the curse that had come upon the Israelites because of their sin. They had complained bitterly against the Lord, and their sin had given birth to death. Venomous snakes were literally taking their lives as a direct result of their rebellion.

In His mercy, God provided an answer to Moses’ prayer on their behalf. They had only to look up at the bronze snake, and they would recover. This imagery prophesied what Jesus would do for us on the cross. Scripture teaches us that He actually became a curse for us and became sin for us (Gal. 3:13, 2 Cor. 5:21). A snake hanging on a pole was a vivid portrayal of this, foreshadowing His sacrifice.

What is our role? Simply to look to Him. To look to Him is to posture ourselves in expectancy of receiving what He purchased for us as He hung there. To look to Him is to become heirs of salvation. All our life long, we are to continually look to Him, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Heb. 12:2, NIV). As we do so, we will live in a permanent posture of receiving the vitality He acquired for us by dying.

There is also a warning for us encapsulated in the story of the bronze snake. We find it later on in the Israelites’ history: “[Hezekiah] demolished the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been offering incense to it; it was called Nehushtan” (2 Kings 18:4, NET). We discover that the very thing God provided for their redemption, became their idol. The reformer Hezekiah recognized that he had to get rid of it, to lead his nation into right living.

We see this same kind of thing happening today. There are times that we, the people of God, begin to idolatrize the ways we have seen Him move in the past. When God had Moses make the bronze snake, it was to point His people back to Him. It was an illustrated sermon, created to take their faith deeper. At the time, it worked the way He intended.

However, with succeeding generations, those born forgot about the One that illustrated sermon was all about. Instead of looking to Him, they idolatrized the form He had used on that past occasion. They began to worship it instead of Him. They got caught up in ritualistic externals and missed the One it was all about.

Have we ever done this? Have we pulled out stories and traditions of how God has moved in years gone by, and made them the focal point of our veneration? There is a danger here that we will do well to avoid. God will not be put in a box. He may have come through for us in a certain way in the past. This does not mean that He is going to replicate His past provision in exactly the same shape.

Yes, He will come through for us, again and again and again! However, He will rarely do it exactly the same way. “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Is. 43:19, NIV). Why does He operate this way? Because He doesn’t want us worshipping form. Instead, He wants us in a continual posture of absolute dependency, looking to Him every second of our lives.

Holy Spirit warns us against “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:5, NIV). That’s exactly what the bronze snake became to the Israelites. A form without power. May we learn from their example.

May our lives remain unceasingly connected to the True Vine. May we perpetually receive from Him the flow of life more abundantly that only comes directly from Him. May we live with our eyes fixed on Him, such that we do perceive the new things that He is doing each day. His mercies are fresh every morning; may we ever look to Him and what He is doing right now!

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Obviously, God has given us some elements foundational to our lives in Him that will never change. Bible study, prayer, worship, belonging to a local church body, etc. will be unchangeables for the rest of our lives. How do we navigate holding onto these non-negotiables, while still making space for Holy Spirit to continually do a new thing? Also, if God Himself does not change, how is it possible for Him to ever be doing something new?