Obey God, Worship God, Rest in His Promises

Exodus 23

Obey God, Worship God, Rest in His Promises

Obey God

v. 1-3 Judgment for a crime is based on guilt, not external factors

v. 4-5 Love your neighbor is the command, liking them is not

v. 6-7 Don’t risk convicting an innocent man, because true justice is the Lord’s

v. 8-9

We obey the Ten Commandments and Jesus when He says to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves because we are in Covenant with God. To be in Covenant with God is to enter into an agreement with God, where we receive blessing when we keep the deal, and consequently are cursed if we fail to keep up the deal. The deal for Adam was to live a life of perfect personal obedience and the reward was to live forever in perfect communion with God. The curse, well we’re all pretty familiar with that part of the story. Our relationship with God is fractured because of Adam’s sin, and our own. We as New Covenant believers find ourselves cursed by our sin with the rest of the world on our own, but when we repent of our sin and put our faith in Jesus, we are freed from that curse, and approach God clothed in the righteousness of the Second Adam. Jesus did perfectly obey God, and earned for Himself, along with all of those whom He has redeemed, eternal life in perfect union with God.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 ““Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.””

Worship God

v. 10-13 Sabbath

Sabbath is an invitation, not a lawful command

The rhythm of 6 and 1 is engrained into the world

Sabbath is about resting and remembering God

We don’t earn our Sabbath by working, we work from our rest

Chick-fil-A

Our Sabbath rhythm

“Because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to. That bodes well for those apprentices of Jesus who give the bulk of their attention to him and to all that is good, beautiful, and true in his world. But not for those who give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip, titillation, and cultural drivel. (As if we “give” it in the first place; much of it is stolen by a clever algorithm out to monetize our precious attention.) But again: we become what we give our attention to, for better or worse.” ― John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

Biblical feasts and festivals are Holy Holidays

Most of us don’t observe the feasts, though there are many who do

Independence Day- Spend time together enjoying freedom and independence, then fireworks

July 4th, 1776- Independence Day, First Continental Congress submitted the final draft of the Declaration of Independence

v.14-19

Feast of Unleavened Bread- Day after Passover, 7 days in memory of the Exodus

Feast of Harvest- Feast of Weeks(7 weeks), Pentecost(50 days after Unleavened Bread

Feast of Ingathering- Feast of Tabernacles or Feast of Booths

Here, the passage specifically says all of the men because they were required to be there, but these were always family celebrations.

The firstfruits of the harvest are those that you have been waiting on, those that bloomed and produced first, the choice fruit

Rest In His Promises

The angel that will go with them

Joshua 5:13–15 “When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.”

Trust in God’s Provision

God’s provision comes with conditions, obey Him, do not worship their gods, and destroy their idols.

In other words, obey God, worship Him, and rest in His provision

We get this beautiful imagery at the end of ch. 23 about what God’s provision looks like in a spectacular and specific way. Everything we have read in the last 4 chapters has been an explanation of what it looks like to be in covenant with God. Obey Him, Worship Him, Rest In His Miraculous Provision.

Colossians 3:12 “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,”

Genesis 12:2–3 “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.””

Jeremiah 31:33 “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

2 Corinthians 1:20 “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.”

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”