Daily Thoughts from Exodus: True Worship (20:22-26)

And the LORD said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.’ (Exodus 20:22-26, ESV)

Moses has just given the ten commands from God, the bare bones requirements, if you will, to remain in covenant with Yahweh.  But immediately questions are going to come up. How much work is too much work on the Sabbath?  What if I kill someone accidentally, is that still murder?  And other questions are going to concern the way the community is to respond when someone breaks one of the commands.  Should the person be killed, fined, required to make sacrifice, shunned, etc.?  So what follows are examples of how these commands are to be implemented.

An application of the 1st and 2nd commandments is made here in this passage. Yahweh is to be worshiped without images and He is the only one to be worshiped, and so the altar is to be made of earth or stone and the stone must not be carved. Pagan altars were often carved stone and on the stone were images of their gods. Israel is to be different from pagan nations insomuch as she knows the true God. She must not profane the worship of God and the use of carved stones like the other nations use is deemed a step toward false worship.

An additional application is that the altar must not be one which is so tall that steps are required to reach its top and do sacrifice. It is hard to understand how the long robes that might be worn would allow for one’s nakedness to be exposed while ascending the steps but it too may be a pagan practice Yahweh is forbidding that involved some form of nakedness. Sexual activity was often a part of pagan worship. The sensual can often replace the worshipful as we seek feel-good experiences rather than God Himself.  We might need to ask ourselves during worship whether we are most excited for God or for the form of the worship we are engaged in or how others are seeing us as we worship.

Our worship must be about honoring God in the way He describes rather than our own concoctions of worship.  It is the temptation of all humans to decide for ourselves how to worship God, that is, what we think makes sense.  But God wants us to see that our rebellious hearts are very prone to distorting true worship.  In Jesus’ words, “beware the leaven of the Pharisees.”

While I was serving in Paraguay, a Maka Indian named Rafael came to sit on my porch. I was eating and went out to see what he wanted. He responded, “Ham, henek met.” Again I asked what I could do for him, but the answer was the same. I understood what he was saying but not its significance: “I don’t want anything; I have just come near.”  I later shared the incident with a local veteran missionary. He explained that it was Rafael’s way of honoring me. He really didn’t want anything; he just wanted to sit on my porch. He found satisfaction and pleasure just being near me.  “What brings you here, my child?” the Lord asks.  “Ham, henek met.”  Doesn’t that reveal the heart of true worship?  (Stuart Sacks, Villanova, Pennsylvania)