How To Honor God
Throughout the early chapters of Exodus, we see how God used Moses to set free his captive people. As plague after plague afflicted Egypt as witness against a hard-hearted Pharaoh who thought God of less authority than himself, Moses repeatedly demands that Israel be released to worship their God.
After finally obtaining their freedom, Israel still requires one more thing in order to honor their savior. They must be told how to do so!
In a world filled with many nations, each with their own concept of the supernatural, methods of worship were many. Man had proliferated and their ideas of divine realities with it. They had invented all sorts of ways to try to relate with the many gods they had also come up with.
However, the true God didn’t leave his people to puzzle out how they ought to relate with him. In Exodus 20, we find him laying out the pattern for his people to honor him. First, he gives them the 10 commandments to describe a life that honors him. Then he gives them some guidelines on the worship itself.
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
Don’t Alter the Altar
In the midst of that text about how they should and should not worship God, there is a statement that is a bit strange. “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.” Many religions considered it respectful to labor at creating intricately worked, beautiful implements of worship. Yet God tells his people that for them to endeavor to carve the stones they were to use to build an altar would profane that altar!
God wasn’t saying that any human labor was wrong in worship to him. After all, it still takes work to build an altar even of uncut stone. He also wasn’t insisting that all worship of him be extremely basic, as he later commands the creation of the tabernacle, which includes high levels of craftsmanship. He even blessed people with special skill to make it happen.
Instead, the concern seems to be that man would make the worship about the beauty of the altar worked by their own hands rather than worshiping the God of all creation according to his ways.
Man’s Ideas
When I read through this section of scripture, I didn’t give it a lot of thought. However, it came back to me when reading 12 chapters later.
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.”
Exodus 32:1-5
Moses had delivered the commands to them (chapter 24) and yet when God had called Moses back up and given him the commandments recorded in stone, the delay led to the people assuming Moses wasn’t coming back.
They immediately set about creating idols with the exact materials God restricted and the part that struck me was that Aaron used a graving tool to shape it. God commanded they never worship gods of gold and that they not set about carving even the stones of their altar to honor him, and they carve an idol out of gold shortly after!
No wonder he was writing his commands in stone. Memory was not this people’s strong suit! However, do we not do these same things today?
Today’s Fake God
It is very common, even in Christian circles today, to claim that God’s commands aren’t enough for godliness. Like uncut stone could be seen as not sufficient to properly honor God, many today believe that we can be more righteous than those who simply follow God’s commands. There’s an appearance of godliness, but denial of power!
God commands impartial justice but many believe society must actually be partial in favor of a person who may be seen as disadvantaged in order to be “more fair” than impartiality! We are commanded to be charitable with what we have but many believe we should create systems that ensure “charity” rather than trust in generosity to care for those in need. Our society is shocked by the punishments God outlines to Israel for wrongdoing, considering them barbaric. Instead, we imagine ourselves superior in justice because we seek to restore rather than punish!
We even imagine ourselves superior to God in forgiveness. What he calls sins, we call love! He may be “backward” but we’re going to be on the “right side of history”!
We got impatient waiting and have set about with our tools creating a means of honoring God that is in direct contradiction to what he has commanded. While we may imagine ourselves wise enough to find a better way, the evidence is against us. The God who knew the ends from the beginning knows better than us no matter how smart we imagine ourselves to be.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
Isaiah 55:8-9
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
There is no better way than to trust God’s ways. Even when we must wait, we wait and trust or we do incredibly stupid things imagining we are doing what is best.
