He removed the high places, broke the images, cut down the Asherim, and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until then the Israelites had burned incense to it; but he called it Nehushtan [a bronze trifle]. – 2 Kings 18:4, Amplified Bible (AMP)

In 2 Kings 18, King Hezekiah instituted a sweeping return to the worship of Jehovah God. His dedication to The Lord was so complete that 2 Kings 18:5 (AMP) states, “Hezekiah trusted in, leaned on, and was confident in the Lord, the God of Israel; so that neither after him nor before him was any one of all the kings of Judah like him.” In verse 4 we learn that one of the idolatrous items that Hezekiah destroyed was the brazen serpent God commanded Moses to create in Numbers 21:4-9. This symbol of God’s deliverance – and one of the many types of Christ found in the Old Testament – had become a source of idol worship in the land. In order to take his people’s attention off of a work of God so that they might return their attention to God Himself, Hezekiah destroyed the serpent from the land. Rather than punishing Hezekiah for destroying something He had ordained, God prospered him, rewarding the king for taking away that which had become a source of error for Israel.

Any time that we worship anything other than God Himself, we are guilty of breaking the first two of The Ten Commandments. The “anything” we must beware of worshipping includes things that God Himself has ordained. God selects the leaders of our churches, but if we put more faith in our human leaders than in our Divine Leader, we have erred. God commands us to live unto good works after He saves us, but if we dedicate ourselves to our work more than we dedicate ourselves to Him, we have erred. God has given us symbols of His deliverance – in particular the Cross – but if we worship representations of His deliverance instead of the Deliverer, we have erred. This last offense is exactly what the Israelites were guilty of when they worshiped the brazen serpent, and if they could fall into such error, so can we.

Praying to, assigning divine power to, or dedicating ourselves to anyone or to anything other than the Creator amounts to idol worship. Make sure to focus your worship on God alone, and if/when you recognize that you’ve strayed from the true Object of worship, repent and correct your course immediately. If you correct your course yourself, God won’t need to correct it for you.