By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
THE title of this article has behind it a revelation of how corrupt man will abuse God’s greatest gifts and prostitute them to the service of the devil. In the day when the children of Israel were bitten by the fiery serpents, God conferred a great blessing on them when He said to Moses, “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live” (Numbers xxi, 8). We have here sin and its punishment, and God’s remedy. “The people spake against God, and against Moses . . . And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died . . . And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole; and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” This incident, which took place, literally, in the journeyings of the children of Israel in the wilderness, is symbolical of a greater deliverance, for the Saviour Himself tells us that “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John iii, 14, 15). In both cases the remedy was a wonderful revelation of God’s great mercy to perishing sinners, and in each case man shows what a sinful creature he is. In the case of the deliverance wrought by sending a Saviour into this world, men despise Him and refuse to look to Him, vainly hoping that as God has shown so much mercy in sending Him that He will not let them perish. In the case of this type of the Saviour, while we do not read that any refused to look to the brazen serpent, yet men sinned grievously in connection with it.
In connection with the reformation which Hezekiah wrought, we read that “He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan” (II Kings xviii, 4). They had failed to see in it a type of the Saviour of sinners and made a god of it. The generation in which Moses lived had seen the mighty work of the Lord in healing those who were bitten by the fiery serpents and were bound to declare this to the generations that came after them, but these generations, being blinded by sin, did not see that the brazen serpent was only a means ordained by God to meet with special circumstances at a particular time, and began to pay it a superstitious reverence, instead of giving all the glory to God. “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things” (Rom. i, 21-23).
There are various ways in which men put to a wrong use the blessings which God gives. It was a great blessing for the Jews to be Abraham’s seed, for thus they were the children of the covenant which God made with him, but when they said, “We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?” they showed that they were not able to see beyond Abraham and God’s covenant
with him, to Him of whom the eternal Father says, “I have made a covenant with my chosen.” This is the way with many who had godly parents in the world. They imagine that they are different from others and seem to expect that God will deal with them differently from others because of their godly ancestors. They have no personal religion and their only talk is about the religion of their parents. This degenerates into something worse than the ancestor worship of the heathen Chinese, for the heathen do it in ignorance, while those who do it in our Christian land do it against the plain declarations of Scripture.
Again we find Nehushtan raising its head in connection with the witness of particular branches of the Christian Church. In Scotland it was at one time very necessary to sign the Covenants and possible to carry out these Covenant obligations, and also there were good grounds for political dissent, but neither the fulfilling of Covenant obligations are possible, nor political dissent necessary, in our day, yet these are made terms of communion by branches of the Christian Church in our beloved land, though for practical purposes they have ceased to be anything but “a piece of brass.” Further, there was a witness made in Scotland on behalf of the Headship of Christ in His own Church against Erastianism, and round that banner the cream of the godly gathered, so that the Church which raised that witness became “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.” The fine gold, however, became dim and that body broke up into fragments. One fragment, whose separation from the rest was not in order to conserve the truth, but in order to conserve money and property, seized upon the name by which the whole body was formerly known, and because of a successful appeal in the court of Caesar, maintain that they alone are the representatives of those who raised the witness originally. So much value did they place on this name that it became a stumbling block to union with other Christian Churches, when they themselves held that such a union was absolutely essential in order to preserve the last spark of evangelical religion in Scotland. Such a name, under such circumstances, becomes Nehushtan.
Further, Nehushtan may creep in to mar a real witness for the truth. In our own Church a priceless heritage has been handed down to us. Those who have no love for us agree that we have the distinction of being the only Church in Scotland who separated because we objected to unsound doctrine. Others proclaimed loudly that if the Declaratory Act was passed anyone who liked could pronounce the funeral oration of the once glorious Free Church of Scotland, for the issues involved were, “Bible or no Bible, Confession of Faith or no Confession of Faith.” As a Church, we acted on that and raised a witness on behalf of the Bible and against error. That witness has still been preserved among us, for we are on the very foundation on which the Church stood when men, weak in themselves but strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, raised aloft the standard which became the rallying point of such as loved the truth more than money or property. Let us, however, beware, if we do not act according to that witness in faithfully cleaving to it, asserting, maintaining and defending the doctrines for which our fathers took up a separate position, and exercising the discipline of the Church on all who would, directly or indirectly, undermine that witness, and content ourselves with priding ourselves on our stand, Nehushtan may be written on our separate position.
When the Lord Jesus ascended up on high, we read that He “received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” Of these gifts we read that “He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” The Apostle Paul sternly rebukes the Corinthians for their abuse of these gifts, for he found that some of them said, “I am of Paul”; others, “I am of Apollos,” and others again, “I am of Cephas”; while a fourth division, evidently professing superior sanctity, said, “I am of Christ.” These parties each could give their own reasons for taking up a separate position and following those ambassadors who are named, but it is very evident that their positions were not taken up in defence of the truth, for the Holy Spirit, through the Apostle, says to them, “For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?” (I Cor. iii, 3, 4). He shows that Paul and Apollos are “but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man,” and that Paul is only to be followed even as he is also a follower of Christ. With these factions it was otherwise. If Paul or Apollos said a thing it would be the end of all controversy with their self-styled followers. Peter, at Antioch, may have acted in such a way that it was necessary for Paul to withstand him “to the face,” and give him a terrible rebuke when the Church of Christ was in grave danger of suffering loss, but Peter’s conduct, in the estimation of those who were saying, “I am of Cephas,” would be the very essence of an upright Christian conduct. This shows that it was the man they were following and not Christ, and if there were any of the Lord’s people among them, as it was possible that some of them were carried away with such divisions, they would have a day when they would see their idol broken in pieces and called Nehushtan. In view of these matters there is need of the exhortation of the Holy Spirit, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen” (I John v, 21).