Holy to the LORD

Before we get started with going over what we read this past week, I want to share with you another project I am working on.

On day 16 in “Faithful Promises of God”, I made the statement, “if you look closely, you will see that our forefathers fashioned the laws of our land directly from the Bible.”

Probably over a year ago, my daughter suggested to me to start taking the laws and regulations of the Bible and show how they were “fashioned” by our forefathers. That’s a big project but I finally saw a starting point on day 16. Not until I got started did I realize what a big task I might be taking on. Probably what I will do is add an insight to how a law applies today (according to our Constitution). Please help me to hold to this! If I start skipping it a week or two, send me an email and remind me to get back on task.

OK, here we go. This is to encourage you to keep reading each day, whether you are using “Faithful Promises of God” or not.

Exodus 24:3b reads, “We will do everything the Lord has commanded.” (NLV) MacArthur writes “Civil, social, and religious laws were received by Moses on Mt. Sinai, orally presented (v3), then written down (v4), and read to the people.”

My observations as I read this section this time around is that there was a lot of emotional motivated behavior at this time. The people were motivated to respond, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do.” (NKJV) But, just like today, people find themselves all hyped up from a song service, or a motivational speaker and are willing to promise anything. At that moment, they really did mean it. And the people telling Moses that they would do whatever the Lord commanded was probably this same emotional high that we see in so many churches/camps/conferences today.

At the end of the day, when things have quieted down, and regular life kicks in, our promise isn’t so much in our thoughts and we sort of forget about what we promised. The Israelites moved on. Although their words were sincere at the time, they were not so obedient. Why does God include this information? Because we are the same today. We promised we will obey, then we do what we think is best even though God is directing us in another direction.

Even though their response was sincere, they didn’t obey God’s direction. We will see this over and over throughout the Old Testament. This doesn’t give us an excuse because we are doing the same thing but it does remind us that this happens and we should be ready to humble ourselves and ask God’s forgiveness and that He would help us to keep our eyes on Him.

We only have to read a few chapters more before we see that the Israelites took their eyes off of God. Instead, they were looking to Moses as their “savior” and demanded that Aaron make them a “god”.

The Lord said to Moses, “They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them” (Exodus 32:8) I wrote in my journal, “Fae, be careful to always follow His ways.”

And with that, I will let you ponder this encouragement to keep your eyes on Him and follow His ways. One of the best ways to do just that is to daily read your Bible, to pray continually and to obey His Word. It’s another week, you can do this! He is faithful!