Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
No matter where you live in the world, whether in a large city or small town. No matter the type of government or political leadership of your part of the world, I wonder if you’d agree we human beings need some world wide, cross cultural morals that guide human life? That’s what God was doing as He proclaimed what we know as the “10 Commandments” to the people at Mount Sinai. God’s desire is that those 10 statements apply to all people, in any generation, living anyplace in our world. Of course not everyone agrees with that. But can you imagine how different our world would be IF everyone DID agree with God and revere, obey these “10 Commandments”?
For these 1 million Hebrew slaves who were about 100 days out of their slavery and about 200 miles away from the land of Goshen where they had lived in Egypt, God had a lot of work to do, teaching them how to live very differently from generations of slavery in Egypt! While the people had experienced God’s great miracles in delivering them from bondage and supplying them with food and water in the desert, and guiding them as they traveled with a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, the people had NO idea how to live as a free people out from under the slave master’s whip. While they didn’t know it yet, God’s plan was for them to spend several months at Mount Sinai learning… Learning to depend on God for their daily supply of food. Learning to hear and apply God’s instructions on how 1 million people could live together in peace and mutual respect without any slave masters. Learning how to shed their Egyptian slave identity and develop a new society, a people who honored God in their personal lives, their families, their relationships with each another, their business dealings and even their worship.
The people had backed away from God’s invitation and sent Moses up the mountain as their representative, urging Moses to meet with God and then return to them and tell them whatever God had told him! So we left Moses up on the mountain with God yesterday, and God was talking, giving Moses his first long list of instructions. Moses wrote down for us what God said, and we have it recorded in Exodus 21-23. Since they were slaves, having come from generations of slavery, God began by describing a new culture of servanthood by which every Hebrew servant would be set free after six years, and those who desired to remain could declare themselves to be ‘bond servants’. (Exodus 21:2-6) Freedom was a radical concept! The remainder of Exodus 21, all of chapter 22 and most of chapter 23 are guidelines, from God, on a wide range of personal behavior issues when living in community.
God was not establishing a police system with courts and prisons, but rather a code of ethics and morals which would guide them in living safely, with mutual respect, peacefully, and honorably in community, with more than 1 million other people, and NO slave masters or Pharaoh’s! Central to this code is this statement from God: “You are to be MY holy people…” (Ex. 22:31) The people would be faced with a daily choice… learn and live, or reject this fundamental principle: “You are to be God’s holy people…” If that statement could permeate how these people think, guard their emotions, guide their decisions and choices, and frame their attitudes, then these 1 million people could live in God honoring community, unlike any other people in the world!
When God finished instructing Moses on the practical issues of living in community, God then focused on two final priorities in Chapter 23. First is the matter of Sabbath. Once again God called Moses to prioritize this matter of one day in seven being a day of rest, soul refreshment and spiritual realignment with God in worship! But then God added another aspect to Sabbath which may seem crazy at first: “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed… Do the same with your olive groves and vineyards.” (Ex. 23:10,11) What? But what about the loss of a harvest that year? What about the lost revenue and food? Could crop producing fields also benefit from a Sabbath? Yes, by God’s design! And if you drive through farm country where you live, perhaps you notice wise farmers let their ground lie ‘fallow’ every few years, even if they’ve never heard of this “Sabbath” instruction from God for the land. God created our planet earth and HE know what will care for it most effectively.
Finally, after all these guidelines for right living, God told Moses He wanted His people to gather together regularly for great festivals, celebrations which would celebrate their uniqueness as God’s people and their reliance upon HIM for His provision, His protection, and His guidance. God said “Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to Me: The Feast of Unleavened Bread, [Passover]… the Feast of Harvest with the first fruits of the crops you sow in your field, and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year when you gather in your crops…” (Exodus 23:14-17) Now I wonder friends if you can see the significance of these great festivals?
The Feast of Unleavened Bread, or Passover, of course celebrated God’s great deliverance of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery and bringing them out of Egypt to live in freedom reliance upon HIM! No other people in the world could claim this remarkable God accomplishment for their freedom! Of course that Passover date has great significance for all people around the world, for it was Passover weekend when Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead earning deliverance from sin slavery for any and all people who will trust Him!
The Feast of Harvest or Shavuot was 50 days after Passover and it celebrated the miracle of new life as the first shoots of grain poked through the spring soil. This festival celebrated the miracle of dead seeds going into the ground and producing life and an eventual crop! Can you see the link with the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus? Those young green shoots awakened great anticipation that God would miraculously provide all that was necessary for the nurture of the new crop. For Christians around the world, Shavuot or Pentecost, as it was also known, took on great significance as it was at this time the Holy Spirit first came, as Jesus had promised, to birth the global church, and then nurture and empower the followers of Jesus. Remember that in Acts 2?
Finally the festival of Ingathering was, as the name suggests, a great celebration of God’s provision of a crop harvest and all the food needed by His people. In many countries of the world our modern day version of this is THANKSGIVING. This festival was celebrated at the end of the harvest season, when all the fields had been picked clean of their bountiful yield. But with the Hebrews this festival took on another very important significance as it was also called the festival of Shelters or Sukkot. This festival, like the others, lasted a full seven days, but for this festival the people built temporary shelters of palm leaves or tree branches and they slept out under the stars in those shelters. The purpose was to remember… remember how God had led them in the desert, living in temporary shelters, with food and water provided by God every day, in miraculous ways!!
Now can you imagine Moses trying to fully understand all this sufficiently to be able to explain it to the 1 million former slaves camped at the base of Mount Sinai? But more than hearing it, and more than understanding it, God wanted these people to own and LIVE these instructions, all of them, all of the time… God was defining a whole new culture, a new society, a people of God who would live God honoring lives every day! These three annual festivals not only celebrated their uniqueness as a people of God, but God had invited them to come TOGETHER for these great celebrations! Moses recorded that God had said: “Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD.” (Ex. 23:17)
Many years later, as the descendants of these Hebrew slaves lived in the promised land, these three great festivals united all the people all across the land of Israel. Today, these festivals unite Jews all around the world! Do you see how Christians do the same as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas, and the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter? Do you see how these festivals unite us with Christians all around the world?
So let’s pause here and sit with Moses on that hillside. Look with Moses at the slaves at the base of the mountain who are about to hear God’s proclamations of how they can start living like God’s people. Can you imagine how this new way of life will sound to them? At the same time we have the advantage of looking at this from our vantage point in the year 2021, and all that has transpired in our world, since that day on Sinai. So, may I urge you to spend some time thanking Jesus for all HE has accomplished for you and how you and I can live each day as one of God’s people, empowered by His Holy Spirit? Here’s a song to help us worship and thank God…
Today’s Scripture is Exodus 22, 23.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Exodus 23
Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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