2 Kings 18:4 He (Hezekiah) removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones, and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.)

My pastor preached on this text this morning, and although I don’t think it was the pastor’s intention, God used his sermon to confirm to me that our family should leave the Southern Baptist denomination. His basic thesis was that good snakes (things, rituals, traditions, programs that focus and anchor our faith in God) sometimes become bad snakes (things that lead us into idolatry and cause us to be blind to the new thing that God is doing). As I said in an earlier post, I have been Southern Baptist all my life. I love Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, Sunday School at 9:45, The Old Rugged Cross and Victory in Jesus, the Cooperative program, Glorieta, and Sunday School literature published by the Sundday School Board. I received my undergraduate degree from a Southern Baptist university, Hardin-Simmons in Abilene. I have been a member of six different Southern Baptist churches over the past 45 years. I believe what Southern Baptists believe.
However, I am seeing that God may want to do a new thing in my life and that of my family. In Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby says that we are supposed to see where God is at work and join him there. Well, I see God working in my children to cause them to grow in character and Christian maturity at the Evangelical Free church that we are visiting. I don’t see them growing or learning at our Southern Baptist church. Our SBC church seems to me to be stuck in the past in a bunch of church growth methodology and feel-good pop psychology religion. That is a harsh assessment, and I can’t guarantee that the church we go to (if we go) will be completely different. But it seems to me today that God is telling me that I’ve been holding on to an old dead snake, even burning incense to it. I need to let go and move on to the new thing.
(By the way, I realize that it’s an oversimplification and a distortion of God’s Word to say that The Story of the Snakes means that we should always give up the old ways in favor of whatever is new. Change is not always good. The Holy Spirit and Scripture must finally rule in all things.)

I found this excellent sermon on Nehushtan by Spurgeon.