POLES AND STONES

“You are not to plant any sort of tree as a sacred pole beside the altar of Adonai your God that you will make for yourselves. Likewise, do not set up a standing-stone; Adonai your God hates such things.”
Deuteronomy 16:21-22

In looking back at Exodus 20:3-4, we read that one of the commandments given to the people of Isra’el was that no other gods were to be before Adonai. Whether carved out or not, or even representing Adonai or not, the fact remained that nothing was to be worshipped except for Adonai Himself. Here in Deuteronomy 16, we see again Adonai commanding His people that no pole or stone was to be used in any form of worship.
Right away my mind travels to Judges 6 and the account of Gideon. It is here we read about his tearing down his father’s altar to Baal and cutting down his Asherah pole (Jud 6:25). In the morning when the town awakes to see what has happened, they question the people and find that it was Gideon who caused the chaos. Livid, the people demand the father, Joash, to release his son to their punishment. However, Gideon’s father leaves the argument stating that if Baal is god, then he can defend himself (Jud 6:31).
Another account I am reminded of is found in Numbers 21:4-9, where Moses builds a bronze snake to lift up for the people to look at when bit by a snake. While this was ordered by God not as a god they were to worship, it soon became this. As we see in II Kings 18:4, King Hezekiah removed the high places, smashed the scared 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).” For approximately 750 years after it was first raised as a way of bringing healing to the people, the people had been worshipping this bronze idol.
But what happened in both these cases? What was it that turned the people over time from agreeing to this command of no idols and gods, to what we read in Judges and II Kings? I come up with two suggestions, and in all honesty I pray they never become our reasons. First, the people were swayed. We see this in the account of Solomon also. Just as Solomon allowed the women in his life to sway him from Adonai, so also Adonai’s chosen people swayed from their first love. As such, they began to serve sticks, poles, and rocks. The second suggestion, they did not see Adonai as all He proclaimed to be. Because of the trial in the desert, because of the battles that had to be fought, because life was not served to them on a silver platter, and because they continued to live in the healing of the past, the people began to question who Adonai was. Instead of remembering Him as the one who had parted the Red Sea, or the one who provided manna and quail in the wilderness, or the one who delivered them from all their enemies, they began to see Him as the one who brought them there to die with a lack of water in a land of giants.
Here is the challenge, though. We must be careful that in the times when things do not come handed to us, we do not turn our backs on Adonai. We must be careful not to get stuck also serving the god of the past as opposed to the God of the now. We are to worship the Creator, not the creation. We are to be allegiant to the Healer, not the method of healing. Serving the rocks, the poles, and the sticks will only put us back in Egypt instead of the Promise Land that awaits us.