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"Going To Church"
“Nehushtan” is the word Hezekiah employed to refer to the brazen serpent when he was tearing down the idols Judah had made (2 Kings 18:1-8). It literally means “a piece of brass” and the significance of the word is that Hezekiah recognized the brazen serpent as nothing more than that – just a piece of brass that had no power within itself. It existed for a purpose for a very brief period of time when the Israelites had murmured against God and he sent the fiery serpents among them. It was God’s way of providing a cure for the snakebites.
The snakes eventually disappeared and the brazen serpent erected in the midst of the camp no longer had a purpose. But Israel had preserved it until the days of Hezekiah and had begun to worship it, along with other idols. They had, as is common to man, come to believe that there was some kind of power in the graven object instead of God.
There are those who think “going to church” (a phase used in an accommodative way, while not being the best expression of the action) is a weekly “getting your ticket punched” to enter heaven and they are God’s people because they “never miss church.” What they have done is make the assembling an end instead of a means to an end. They seem to believe that the act of assembling has some efficacy within itself – “Because we go to church all the time, God is pleased with us.”
Christians in the first century certainly assembled (Acts 20:7). And, they assembled because God commanded it (Hebrews 10:25). But the act of assembly and the body count at the assembly times is not an end within itself – it is a means to an end. God didn’t command assembling because he is impressed with how many bodies may be together in one place. He commands assembling together, because he wants his people to worship by singing, praying, laying by in store, teaching and remembering Jesus’ death by the Lord’s Supper. He also understands that we need to be together. We need to share in worship. We need the encouragement, edifying and strength that come from what we do together.
We can ridicule Israel all we want, because of the absurdity of making a brazen snake into an object of worship, but if we change that which God ordained as a means to an end into an end in itself, we are just as foolish. – Jim R. Everett
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