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uid: title: “Nehushtan: Breaking the Serpent to See the Savior” subtitle: A Call to Look Beyond Every Type, Gift, and Messenger and Fix Our Eyes on Christ date: 2026-07-26 service_time: AM authors:

• Steven L. Shelley location: Smiths Station, Alabama, USA digitized: true transcribed: true media_format: Video media_url: "" category: Sermon series: topics:
• The Bible & Theology
• Salvation & Redemption
• Spiritual Warfare & Supernatural tags:
• Blood-of-Jesus
• Atonement-and-Redemption
• Unbelief-and-Faith
• Idolatry-and-False-Worship
• Fatherhood-of-God
• Deliverance-from-Bondage
• Divine-Healing
• Overcoming-Spiritual-Battles
• Cross-and-Resurrection
• Sin-and-Its-Consequences
• Type-and-Antitype
• Nehushtan-Brazen-Serpent
• Message-Discernment-and-Balance description: Pastor Shelley traces the bronze serpent from Numbers to Calvary, warning against idolizing God’s gifts and pointing believers back to Christ alone. summary: Detouring from his current series, Pastor Steven L. Shelley preaches from Numbers 21 on the fiery serpents and the brazen serpent Moses lifted up, tracing the type through Hezekiah’s destruction of Nehushtan to Christ lifted up at Calvary. He warns of the descent from gratitude to idolatry and calls the congregation to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus alone, sharing candid personal testimony along the way.

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Nehushtan: Breaking the Serpent to See the Savior

Service Overview

On the morning of July 26th, 2026, Pastor Steven L. Shelley led New Hope Revival Ministries in an extended time of praise before departing from his current teaching series to bring a message he described as having met him “yesterday afternoon.” The congregation, gathered both in person and through livestream reaching what Pastor Shelley noted as viewers across the nations of the world, moved through a lengthy season of worship before an extended pastoral prayer time covering a number of members facing health and family needs. Special guests were recognized, including Sister Sally Duke and her son Samuel, who led a portion of worship. Pastor Shelley then turned to Numbers 21, weaving Old Testament typology, personal testimony, and pointed teaching on discernment into a single sustained message, concluding with an altar call and corporate prayer of rededication.

Core Message Analysis

The central thrust of this message is the movement from type to antitype: the fiery serpents sent among murmuring Israel, the brazen serpent Moses lifted up on a pole, and its eventual destruction by King Hezekiah, all pointing forward to Christ lifted up at Calvary. Pastor Shelley’s core concern is what he describes as a spiritual “descent”—from gratitude, to reverence, to veneration, to substitution—by which a gift or instrument that God uses can gradually eclipse the Giver Himself. He applies this typological framework directly and personally to how his congregation regards the prophet William Branham and the “message” they hold to, insisting that reverence must never curdle into dependence or worship. The primary audience is his own congregation, particularly those he senses drifting toward an unhealthy fixation on the messenger rather than the Christ the messenger pointed to, though he also addresses believers generally who have let unbelief, fear, rejection, or besetting sin keep them from looking directly to the cross. The intended spiritual impact is a recalibration—an invitation to repent of misplaced devotion and return, in childlike simplicity, to looking upon Christ alone for salvation, healing, and identity.

Scripture References

Primary Text:

• Numbers 21:4-9 - The fiery serpents sent among murmuring Israel and the brazen serpent Moses lifted up on a pole

Supporting Passages:

• Genesis 3:14 - God’s curse upon the serpent in Eden, establishing the type later fulfilled in the wilderness judgment
• John 3:14-16 (referenced as “John 3,” quoted from the words of Jesus to Nicodemus) - “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up… For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”
• Romans 5:12 - “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”
• 1 Corinthians 15:56 - “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law”
• 2 Kings 18:1-4 - Hezekiah’s reforms, including breaking in pieces the brazen serpent Moses had made and calling it Nehushtan
• Revelation 13:8 - The Lamb slain “from the foundation of the world,” cited in support of redemption being planned before the fall

Additional References:

• Ecclesiastes 10:8 - “He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him” (applied to Adam’s guardianship of Eden)
• John 1:1, 14 - The Word made flesh, referenced briefly to connect the type (brazen serpent) to the antitype (Christ)

Note on Non-Scriptural Citation: Pastor Shelley also quotes at length from a 1961 sermon by William Branham (referred to as “Revelation chapter 5, number 1,” also known by the alternate title “Who Is William Branham?”), specifically Branham’s own account of resigning from public ministry after being called “Jesus Christ” by some followers. This is a ministry-source citation, not a scripture reference, and has been preserved as quoted in the Detailed Exposition and Unique Insights sections below rather than listed here.

Biblical Themes Developed:

• The serpent as a recurring type: judged in Eden, employed again in the wilderness, and ultimately fulfilled in Christ lifted up
• The mercy of God in providing a remedy rather than simply removing the plague
• The danger of a holy instrument becoming an idol once its purpose has been fulfilled (Nehushtan)
• Unbelief as the root of murmuring, complaint, and spiritual decline
• The necessity of maintaining scriptural balance between honoring God’s messengers and worshiping only Christ

Introduction

What does a bronze snake on a stick have to do with your relationship with the people God has used to shape your faith? Pastor Steven L. Shelley opened his Sunday morning message by setting aside the series already in progress, explaining that “the Lord met me yesterday afternoon with something that I want to share with you today.” What followed was a message that moved from ancient wilderness judgment to a searching, deeply personal examination of how devotion to God’s instruments—a prophet, a movement, a message—can quietly shift into something Scripture calls an abomination. Shelley, who has pastored for over fifty years and describes preaching as “a fire shut up in my bones,” brought both pastoral tenderness and unflinching directness to a congregation he clearly loves and just as clearly refuses to let drift. He interwove his own childhood story—rejection from his father, a tormenting struggle with lust at age ten, and a hard-won intimacy with God he calls simply “Daddy”—with a sweeping typological argument running from Genesis to the cross. The urgency in his voice was unmistakable: this was not merely a history lesson about Numbers 21, but a direct address to specific attitudes he sees forming in his own house of worship, delivered with the conviction that if he didn’t say it, someone else would have to.

Message Overview

Pastor Shelley’s central thesis is that God’s provided remedies—types, symbols, prophets, messengers—are meant to point beyond themselves to Christ, and that the moment reverence for the instrument outlasts its purpose, it curdles into idolatry. He builds this argument from Numbers 21:4-9, where Israel’s unbelief and murmuring brought fiery serpents among them, and God’s remedy was not to remove the serpents but to have Moses fashion a brazen serpent on a pole so that anyone bitten who looked upon it would live. Shelley traces this symbol backward to Genesis 3, where the serpent had already been cursed, and forward to 2 Kings 18, where King Hezekiah—reigning some seven hundred years later—broke the brazen serpent in pieces and renamed it Nehushtan, “a piece of brass,” because the people had begun burning incense to it. From there Shelley draws a direct and pointed connection to his own faith community’s regard for the prophet William Branham, quoting Branham’s own 1961 resignation statement in which the prophet objected to being called “Jesus Christ” and insisted, “I am your brother.” The message’s emotional register shifts markedly throughout: exuberant worship and lighthearted banter early on give way to sober self-examination, personal vulnerability about past wounds, and finally a tender, almost pleading altar call. Shelley does not sanitize his own history or his concerns for the congregation; he names specific dynamics—criticism on one side, fanaticism on the other—and insists that “the middle of the road is the scripture; it’s the absolute.” The message matters, in his framing, because an entire generation risks inheriting a faith fixed on the wrong object, mistaking gratitude for a gift as worship owed to the gift itself.

Message Structure

The message opens with an acknowledged detour: Pastor Shelley sets aside his ongoing series, explaining that the Lord had met him the previous afternoon with fresh material. He begins in Numbers 21, reading the account of the fiery serpents and the brazen serpent, then pivots into an extended teaching on the soul (mind, will, and emotions) and the necessity of guarding one’s spiritual “hedge,” illustrated by Adam’s commission in Eden and the entrance of the serpent through a breach in that guard. From there he develops the typology of the brazen serpent as judgment-already-borne, connects it to Christ lifted up in John 3, and then makes his sharpest turn: applying the pattern of Nehushtan to the temptation to venerate William Branham. He supports this with an extended, direct quotation from Branham’s own 1961 resignation sermon. Interwoven throughout are two extended personal testimonies—one about childhood rejection and a struggle with lust, another about a friend’s caution against sourcing sermons from quotations rather than Scripture—both used to ground the abstract typology in lived experience. The message closes with a description of the “descent” from gratitude to substitution, a reading of John 3:14-16, and a corporate altar call and prayer of rededication, ending in extended worship.

Detailed Exposition

The Fiery Serpents and the Sin of Unbelief

Pastor Shelley begins in Numbers 21:4-9, describing Israel’s detour around Edom as a moment when “their soul was much discouraged because of the way.” He identifies the soul as mind, will, and emotions, and traces how discouragement in the mind became murmuring against God and Moses. Citing Brother Branham’s teaching that “sin is unbelief,” Shelley explains that the countless individual sins he was taught to fear growing up in a holiness church—short sleeves, coffee, uncovered hair—all trace back to a single root: unbelief. The Lord’s response to that unbelief was to send fiery serpents (Hebrew seraph, “the burning one”) whose venom, Shelley explains, worked like fire in the bloodstream, consuming the people from the inside out. Yet even in judgment, mercy was present: when the people repented and asked Moses to intercede, God did not remove the serpents from the camp. Instead, He instructed Moses to make a serpent of brass and set it on a pole, so that anyone who looked upon it would live.

Type Building on Type

Shelley insists this remedy was not arbitrary. Because the serpent had already been cursed in Genesis 3:14, God chose the very image of that curse—cast in brass, “the symbol of divine judgment”—to become the vehicle of healing. “It has the exact form of the thing that’s killing the people,” he explains, “not one drop of venom in it because it’s not real; it’s made of brass.” Quoting Brother Branham’s account from Evansville, Indiana, Shelley details how the pole represented the execution stake (not, he clarifies, a cross with a beam already attached—that beam was added afterward by Roman practice) and how the serpent itself, once judged, could now represent the judgment already borne on man’s behalf. Only those who looked—the Hebrew word nabat, meaning to gaze and fix the eyes attentively—received healing. Shelley draws the direct line forward: “If the type done the healing… wonder what the antitype could do.” The antitype is Christ, who told Nicodemus, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14).

Nehushtan: When the Gift Becomes an Idol

The sermon’s turning point comes in 2 Kings 18, where Hezekiah, reigning some seven hundred years after Moses, “brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: and he called it Nehushtan.” Shelley marvels at the courage required: this was not a pagan idol but a genuine relic of a genuine miracle, commanded by God Himself. Yet the people had begun burning incense to it, and “a true thing worshiped falsely is still an idol.” Hezekiah’s renaming—Nehushtan, “a piece of brass”—strips the object of its accumulated mystique without denying its original holiness. Shelley narrates a four-stage descent he sees recurring across church history and in his own congregation: gratitude for an instrument God uses, reverence toward that instrument, veneration that gives the instrument what belongs only to God, and finally substitution, “the gift eclipses the giver.” He applies this explicitly to reverence for William Branham, quoting Branham’s own 1961 statement, delivered after being called “Jesus Christ” by some followers: “I’ve been called Jesus Christ, and that would brand me as an antichrist… I am your brother.” Shelley insists that honoring Branham as “a man sent from God” is right and necessary, but insists just as forcefully that calling him inerrant or infallible pushes past scriptural balance into the very ditch Branham himself warned against.

Unique Insights & Revelations

Perhaps the most distinctive element of this message is Shelley’s willingness to apply an Old Testament typological pattern directly to a live, internal tension within his own faith community’s regard for its founding prophet. Rather than leaving the Nehushtan narrative as ancient history, he uses Hezekiah’s hammer as a template for present-day discernment, naming the specific behaviors he considers dangerous: treating William Branham’s sermons as equally authoritative to Scripture, insisting on his inerrancy, defending him reflexively against all criticism, and displaying images or relics associated with him in ways that edge toward veneration. His four-stage taxonomy of spiritual decline—gratitude, reverence, veneration, substitution—offers a memorable diagnostic framework that could be applied well beyond this specific context, to any relationship between believers and a beloved teacher, ministry, or movement. Notably, Shelley does not present this as an attack from outside; he explicitly affirms his own belief that Branham was “the messenger of the seventh angel” and that God spoke through his voice, while insisting this conviction does not require, and in fact forbids, treating Branham as more than “a man sent from God.” His personal account of instructing his own drummer not to engage debates about Branham’s more esoteric teachings (“the seals”) until “the Lord will open it up for you” reflects a pastoral instinct to protect younger or newer believers from being overwhelmed by secondary matters before their foundation in Christ is secure. Shelley also offers a striking reframing of personal woundedness: his teaching that unresolved rejection becomes “emotional DNA” that makes a person “a rejection magnet” provides a practical, non-clinical vocabulary for a pattern many believers recognize in themselves, paired with his own decades-long testimony of finding resolution not through counseling alone but through a developed intimacy with God as Father.

Another notable contribution is Shelley’s insistence that the brazen serpent’s holiness and its eventual status as an idol are not contradictory but sequential—a thing can be genuinely of God in one season and genuinely dangerous in a later one, once its assigned purpose has been fulfilled and the people’s posture toward it has changed. This nuance guards against two easy but wrong conclusions: that the original gift was never holy, or that its later misuse means it should never be mentioned or honored at all. Shelley’s own account of viewing the windshield glass bearing Brother Branham’s blood from the vehicle accident that took his life illustrates this balance in practice—he describes genuine appreciation for the opportunity to see it, paired with an equally genuine lack of any felt need to return to it, modeling exactly the kind of grateful-but-undependent posture he is calling the congregation toward. His closing distinction between “two ditches”—criticism on one side, fanaticism on the other—reframes a debate often treated as two irreconcilable camps into a single shared error: both the critic who “bashes” and the defender who insists on inerrancy have, in Shelley’s framing, stepped out of “the middle of the road,” which he identifies simply as Scripture itself.

Key Illustrations & Analogies

Shelley’s most sustained illustration is autobiographical: as a seven-year-old boy who felt he did not belong, he recalls his father telling his grandmother, “Mother, Steve is a strange boy,” and her response, “He may be the one that stands between you and eternity.” He describes years later confronting a tormenting “spirit of lust” at age ten, spending nights praying on his face at the foot of his bed, insisting “I’m going to love you and I’m going to serve you if you never clean me… I’m going to give you my life anyway,” until deliverance eventually came. This testimony grounds his larger argument that direct, personal encounter with God—not secondhand instruction, however good—is what actually changes a life: “I couldn’t have got that from a tape… My mind was too tormented.”

A second illustration draws on modern military technology: comparing Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system, which he witnessed firsthand near the Gaza border, to the believer’s need to intercept negative thoughts with scriptural truth. “You’ve got to be the iron dome of your own mind,” he says, describing how “when the enemy shoots off his missile,” a countering verse of Scripture can be “sent” to intercept the lie before it lands.

A third, briefer illustration compares the serpent’s threat to garden pests kept out by a hedge, referencing the children’s story of Peter Rabbit and Farmer McGregor to picture Adam’s God-given commission to guard Eden, and the consequence when that hedge was breached.

Inspirational Quotes

“You’ve got to be the iron dome of your own mind… when the enemy shoots off his missile, you shoot off a truth.”

“A true thing worshiped falsely is still an idol.”

“When a gift becomes an icon, when a gift becomes an idol, somebody ought to find their balance again.”

“I’m going to love you and I’m going to serve you if you never clean me, if you never deliver me from this spirit that torments my mind, I’m going to love you.”

“The middle of the road is the scripture; it’s the absolute.”

“Don’t give the finger more attention than you give the Christ. Look to Christ and live.”

Practical Applications & Key Takeaways

Pastor Shelley’s message calls for several concrete responses. First, believers must examine whether reverence for any person, teaching, ministry, or movement—however legitimately used by God—has quietly slid toward veneration or dependence. Shelley’s counsel is direct: go to the Bible first, let God speak to the heart from the Word itself, and only then bring in supporting quotations or teaching, rather than reversing that order. Second, the message calls for honest engagement with personal woundedness rather than suppression of it. Shelley’s own testimony of childhood rejection and a besetting struggle with lust models bringing the most difficult, shame-laden struggles directly to God rather than managing them alone or waiting until they feel presentable enough to confess. Third, believers are urged to actively resist unbelief and discouragement in their own minds by “shooting” a countering verse of Scripture at every negative or accusing thought, following the pattern of Christ’s own wilderness temptation, where He answered every lie with “it is written.” Fourth, Shelley calls for maintained relational accountability—having a “prayer warrior,” someone with “a track record,” rather than sympathetic voices who merely affirm feelings without pointing back to truth. Finally, and most directly, the message closes with an invitation to examine whether one’s eyes have drifted from Christ toward some lesser object of devotion, however holy that object’s origin, and to return—through a simple, childlike prayer of rededication—to looking at the cross alone. Shelley frames this not as abandoning gratitude for what God has used in one’s life, but as refusing to let gratitude calcify into an idol that stands between the believer and the Giver.

A further, more corporate application concerns how the congregation talks about its own spiritual heritage. Shelley specifically models the language he believes is safe—calling Branham “a man sent from God,” a “servant,” a “brother”—while flagging language he considers dangerous: treating any teacher’s words as automatically “thus saith the Lord,” displaying reverence toward physical objects or images in ways that edge toward veneration, or building a defensive posture that spends more energy answering critics than exalting Christ. He calls the congregation to notice the specific behavioral markers of the descent he describes—collecting mementos, adopting slogans or symbols as markers of identity, feeling the need to defend rather than simply testify—and to test each one honestly rather than assuming good intentions guarantee a right practice. Shelley is careful to frame this not as scrupulosity but as freedom: believers are invited to approach God directly, without an intermediary, exactly as a child calls out to a parent. His own repeated childhood habit of praying simply, “Daddy, if you don’t help me,” without theological precision, becomes a model he commends to the whole congregation—that access to God does not depend on correct vocabulary, denominational pedigree, or advanced doctrinal understanding, but on a willingness to look toward Him and keep looking.

Conclusion

Pastor Shelley’s message stands as both a piece of biblical typology and a pointed pastoral intervention, using the ancient image of the brazen serpent to press a present-day question: has something God once used for good quietly become something we now serve instead of the God who gave it? His unflinching willingness to name this dynamic within his own congregation’s regard for William Branham, while still affirming his own conviction about Branham’s prophetic office, models a difficult but necessary balance between honor and idolatry. The message’s power lies in refusing easy resolution—Shelley does not ask his hearers to discard reverence altogether, only to ensure that reverence never eclipses the One being revered. His closing appeal, rooted in John 3:14-16, brings the entire sweep of typology to its intended destination: not a serpent on a pole, not a prophet’s voice, not a relic or a quote, but Christ lifted up, “the deliverer, the heart regulator, the glory and the lifter of our heads.” For a congregation shaped by a specific prophetic heritage, the message offers both comfort and challenge—comfort that gratitude for what God has done through His messengers is right and good, and challenge that no messenger, however genuinely used of God, may ever be permitted to stand in the place reserved for Christ alone.

Service Comments

The service opened with an extended worship set featuring songs including “He Set Me Free,” “Goodness of God,” “Something Comes Out of the Grave,” “Rising Up,” “Keep Me Near the Cross,” and “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” alongside a season of congregational prayer for members facing various health and family needs. Special guests Sister Sally Duke and her son Samuel were welcomed, with Samuel leading portions of worship; Pastor Shelley noted Samuel’s growing gift and jokingly promised him a future preaching opportunity. Several birthdays and an anniversary were recognized, and an upcoming fellowship meeting on August 8th and 9th was announced. Pastor Shelley described feeling unusually relaxed heading into the message after what he called an intense season, and noted that many congregants were watching by livestream from multiple nations. The service concluded with an altar call, corporate prayer of rededication, and extended closing worship including “A Thousand Generations” and “How Great Is Our God,” led by Pastor Shelley’s son Benjamin.