The last post identified my disappointment that the heavens did not have an elaborate Sky Ballet for Jesus’ death, but they rather were quite muted in comparison to that first Christmas show. What had happened to me was that my focus was subtly changing. The heavens were meant to be a signpost that pointed to Jehovah, so that they simply, but elegantly drew attention to His Glory. But I unconsciously drifted into wanting them to have a greater role in the happenings of the universe.
In a sense I was falling into the same trap that happened in regard to the bronze serpent from Numbers 21: it went being a signpost that pointed to God’s Glory and promise, to gradually becoming a god itself to which incense was burned [II Kings 18]. Just because something – or someone – was used wonderfully by the Lord, it did not therefore mean that they now graduated to a demi-god or greater status.
Jesus declared [John 3:14-15] that the incident of Moses raising the serpent on the pole was a sign pointing to Jehovah’s future solution of salvation: when Jesus was placed on the cross, all one needed to do was look upon Him to be saved from certain eternal death. Yet even this special significance did not authorize the sign to become anything more than that which simply directs our attention to God’s promises. The sign has no other power than to point us to the Jehovah of Covenant.
I had been enthralled by the intricacy of how the Christmas Sky Ballet coordinated with the festivals of the Old Testament, and I unconsciously wanted more, that the Dance be even greater. After all, it was such a beautiful connection between the heavens and the earth, which painted such a wonderful picture of Jesus’ birth and what He would be about as our Savior. Why wouldn’t God keep doing the same thing, like for when Jesus began His ministry? And how about “Good Friday”? And then there is the destruction of Herod’s Temple and then the fall of the Masada fortress and … Well, the list of expectations could grow to quite a huge list.
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And when they say to you, “Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living?
“Ought not a people seek their God?” Something in us makes us desire other sources of information because obviously the Lord just does not tell us very much about certain things. So our curiosity encourages us to check out major and then minor events in history and try to correlate them with planet positions in the heavens. We may even try to “decode” the Bible to glean more tidbits. But is that really with what God wants us to be preoccupied? Oh, we can couch it all in an aura of being godly, of having a “holy” desire to know more “about the Lord,” but in actuality He gets shoved to the side in the scramble to figure out what next the heavens, or the Bible code, or Nostradamus, or whatever it might be, “are saying to us.”
Just like with what happened to the bronze serpent, we can get so busy with what we think is the product of Jehovah’s gifts that we have missed their real purpose and that is to bring us face-to-face with Him – not to where He is our servant, but to where we are His servants to be going about His business, which is to bring people under the discipleship of Jesus. Yet how offended we can become when someone suggests that we have become too preoccupied with the shell rather than the meat. Despite the “signpost”’s noble beginnings, like the bronze serpent, the end product is that we can place ourselves under a slavery that can be just as controlling as the “corrupted” astrology being practiced today can – just consider what damage some recent “end-of-the-world” predictions have done.
God gave us a wonderful gift in the display of the stars when connected to his promises. But just as with the bronze serpent, we also must realize that there are limits (which our human natures don’t like), to which we are to humbly submit. It is not whether we can “spin doctor” the idea into sounding righteous, it is to stop making the signpost become a god of our lives and destinies – earthly and heavenly.
I am Jehovah, that is My Name; and My Glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to [false gods]. [Isaiah 42:8]