This week we find ourselves in the Old Testament, Exodus 23. We’ve spent the past year studying the life of Jesus through the eyes of the poetic apostle John. Or as John refers to himself, the one whom Jesus loved.
Well, John, you weren’t the first guy Jesus loved. The Father, Son, and Spirit have loved and longed for fellowship with humanity since day one in Eden.
When Abraham came along in Genesis 12, God promised a covenantal relationship to Abraham and all of his descendants….the people group who would eventually come to be known as the nation of Israel.
Jumping to Exodus…more than 400 years past the covenantal promise made to Father Abraham. God, through his servant Moses, rescues his people, about 1.5 million descendants, from Egyptian bondage. This army people group, who only knew oppression, miraculously crossed the Red Sea in utter amazement. This story would be chronicled, retold from grandfather to father to son….generation after generation. It was an exclamation point of a message to the Israelites that they were loved and cared for by God, the almighty one. He was faithful, he was powerful, and he was worthy of worship.
In Exodus 20:3-5 God says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God …”
Three chapters later in Exodus 23, the Lord reminded them again they were going into the lands of foreign people who did not worship him. Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices, instead, worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness and none will miscarry or be barren in your land, I will give you a full life span.
Those are serious promises, if they would do but . . .one…..thing . . .worship. Ultimately that one word sums up the purpose of your life and mine—worshiping the one who is holy and worthy of worship.
In Romans 12:1, Paul urges you and me, given God’s mercy, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—he says this giving 100% of me, my whole being—this is my spiritual act of worship.
He is still worthy. How will you worship today?
Donielle Winter
EFCC Member