Reading the Bible Together

The Passage for the Day

3 Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 4‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”

7 So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the LORD had commanded him to speak. 8 The people all responded together, “We will do everything the LORD has said.” So Moses brought their answer back to the LORD

Points of interest:

•  ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt’—a few things have happened and a few hundred years have passed since yesterday’s passage.  Here’s a quick recap: Abram, renamed Abraham, does indeed have a son, named Isaac; Isaac, in turn, has a son named Jacob (also called Israel); Jacob’s family moves to Egypt to avoid a famine; they become a numerous people, as God had promised; the Israelites become slaves of the Egyptians; and God sends this man named Moses to rescue them from slavery.
• ‘This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob‘—after Moses rescues the Israelites from Egypt, he leads them to a mountain in the Sinai desert, where they meet God to get further instructions.  What we have in this passage is God’s plan for the Israelites.  Although they had some since of group identity before now, you could say that it is during this passage that the Israelites really become a nation.  God’s promise to make a great nation of Abram’s descendants is coming true.
•  ‘and keep my covenant’—a covenant is like a contract or an agreement.  God is inviting the Israelites into a partnership here.  In what follows, God will have his part to play, and the Israelites will have theirs.
•  ‘out of all nations you will be my treasured possession’—God basically repeats his promise to Abraham.  The Israelites, Abraham’s descendants, will have a special place in God’s plan. 
•  ‘a kingdom of priests’—here’s what God has in mind for them.  Usually, priests are a very small proportion of the population; they’re especially close to God, and they serve as intermediaries between God and everyone else.  But in Israel, everyone is meant to be a priest, everyone is close to God.  If everyone is a priest, for whom exactly are they mediating?  I think the answer is the rest of the world.  Just like every individual nation has a priesthood, the world as a whole has one priestly nation.    This idea of the priestly nation reminds me of God’s promise that Abram’s descendants would be blessed, not to the detriment of other nations, but to the benefit of other nations.  I think the Israelites are meant to be a blessing to other nations in two ways.  As a model nation:  Kind of like a model home, they’re God’s demonstration of what he can offer to a nation that decides to enter into a covenant with him.  As spokespeople: they’re meant to spread the word about just how good a god God is.  God plans to start the blessing with the Israelites, and have them pass it on.
• ‘We will do everything’—this is like the Israelites’ signature.  They agree to the covenant God proposes.

Taking it home:

•  For you: Consider the idea that God would like your life, or the life of your family, to be a model of what God can do when given a chance.  What features of your life would you recommend to others?  What would you like to be able to recommend?  Ask God to give you more of the life you really want, and would really want others to have.  Also, ask God to give you the chance to boldly and humbly pass along the things that have worked well for you.
• For your six: Before God asks Israel to enter into a covenant with him, he gives them a free sample, as it were.  He rescues them from Egypt, in order to demonstrate both his willingness and ability to bring some tangible benefit to their lives.  Pray that God would do the same for your six.
• For America: It seems like the trick of being a good priest is not to lose contact with either God or a nation’s people.  If our nation’s people are becoming more secular in culture (as I proposed in the introduction), perhaps that means that being priests to our nation requires adopting some of the features of that secular culture.  Pray that we as a church would be good priests: that we would strongly identify with our nation’s secular culture, without by any means losing touch with God.

¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

A Sabbath-Rest for the People of God

¹ Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. ² For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. ³ Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,
“So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”
And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. ⁴ For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” ⁵ And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.”

⁶ Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, ⁷ God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”

⁸ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. ⁹ There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; ¹⁰ for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their own work, just as God did from his.

Tablets Like the First Ones

¹ At that time the LORD said to me, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones and come up to me on the mountain. Also make a wooden ark. ² I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Then you are to put them in the ark.”

³ So I made the ark out of acacia wood and chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. ⁴ The LORD wrote on these tablets what he had written before, the Ten Commandments he had proclaimed to you on the mountain, out of the fire, on the day of the assembly. And the LORD gave them to me. ⁵ Then I came back down the mountain and put the tablets in the ark I had made, as the LORD commanded me, and they are there now.

⁶ (The Israelites traveled from the wells of Bene Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died and was buried, and Eleazar his son succeeded him as priest. ⁷ From there they traveled to Gudgodah and on to Jotbathah, a land with streams of water. ⁸ At that time the LORD set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to minister and to pronounce blessings in his name, as they still do today. ⁹ That is why the Levites have no share or inheritance among their fellow Israelites; the LORD is their inheritance, as the LORD your God told them.)

¹⁰ Now I had stayed on the mountain forty days and nights, as I did the first time, and the LORD listened to me at this time also. It was not his will to destroy you. ¹¹ “Go,” the LORD said to me, “and lead the people on their way, so that they may enter and possess the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them.”

For the director of music. According to mahalath. A maskil of David.

¹ Fools say in their hearts,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and their ways are vile;
there is no one who does good.

² God looks down from heaven
on the human race
to see if there are any who understand,
any who seek God.

³ Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.

⁴ Do all these evildoers know nothing?
They devour my people as though eating bread;
they never call on God.

⁵ But there they are, overwhelmed with dread,
where there was nothing to dread.
God scattered the bones of those who attacked you;
you put them to shame, for God despised them.

⁶ Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When God restores his people,
let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!