"BE CAREFUL TO DO EVERYTHING I HAVE SAID TO YOU" – GOD

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

"Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips." Exodus 23:13

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Today’s verse from Exodus 23 has two important parts to it, one firmly anchored and connected to the other.

The first part is grounded in these words, not only spoken by God to the Israelites but to us as we read them today:

"Be careful to do everything I have said to you."

As we have seen, God has already said much to His people in the form of commandments intended to dictate the way they lived and He will have much more to say after.

In order for the people of God, past and present, to be obedient to His order to behave as He expects, we had better know what He has said for us to do and this underscores the critical importance of daily Bible study. For how can anyone know what the Lord has said if they don’t read what He said?

When we read what God commands in verse 13, we need to notice that He didn’t say, “I recommend that you try and do as much I have told you to do”. Rather, He insists that His believers do everything that He has told them to do. There’s no wiggle room given here, no space for compromise or negotiation.

If God said to do it, we’re to do it. Period.

Why did He give such a strong charge to us?

Because He expects His people to act as He created them, in His own image (Genesis 1:27). This, living in obedience to all He has said, is what leads them to be holy as He is holy and for a Christian believer, walking in the ways of Christ (aka being Christ-like) is the first best step in the right direction.

And yet, too often believers fail to do all that God has said? How does that happen?

Well, it simply comes down to the truth that we’re all sinners who fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), prone to want to fulfill our own desires before fulfilling the Lord’s. Christians are immersed in a world that is Satan’s domain, often referred to as the devil’s playground because of all the enticing things that seek to lead God’s children astray.

Unfortunately, we too often fall prey to these temptations. We seek self fulfillment, joy, and pleasure in all the wrong places and, in doing so, end up distancing ourselves from the One who alone can bring us the greatest sense of satisfaction and happiness, the One who alone can offer us hope through eternal life, both now and forever, by way of belief in His only Son, Jesus.

All this brings is to the second part of verse 13 where we find the Lord once again warning against the worship of false gods. To recap what He has already said, you may remember these first two of the infamous Ten Commandments found in Exodus, chapter 20:

"You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in Heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." Exodus 20:3-5

When God repeats a command, we had better give extra attention to it because He is underscoring its importance. In verse 23, He says this:

“Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips."

God is making Himself crystal clear here. No one is to call on the name of any false god. We’re not to allow Him to hear anything about them from our lips.

Today, we have any number of "gods" we can prescribe to. They can include money, sex, celebrity, alcohol or drugs, food, television, video games, work, and/or success to name a few.

The question is, “Do we worship any of these things? For if we do, we have committed nothing short of idolatry.

How can we identify if anything but God has established a foothold in our lives?

I think a couple of self reflective questions can be a good start, such as:

What do I invest most of my time in?

What most occupies and governs my every action, spoken word, and/or thought?

If the answer to these questions is anything outside of God, then you may need to reassess your life priorities because He not only expects but demands that we place Him above all things in our life. He has given us His all, to include sacrificing His only Son to save us. The least we can do in return is to give Him our all and that includes our total mind’s attention and heart’s affection.

Going back to the Old Testament times and the people of Israel, it wasn’t uncommon for polytheistic societies to call on their gods at any time while they were doing anything (i.e. harvesting, praying, worshiping, sacrificing, etc). They certainly had witnessed this plenty during all their years of Egyptian captivity. Indeed, the pagan Egyptians had a god for almost everything.

In regard to these multi-god cultures, here’s an excerpt from Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary and the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament:

"The pagan civilizations of Bible times worshiped many gods. They had male and female deities, high and low gods, assemblies of gods, priests and priestesses, and temples and sacrifices. All the forces of nature that could not be controlled or understood were considered supernatural powers to be worshiped and feared. Most of the people of the ancient world worshiped more than one god. These gods were worshiped in the form of representative idols. This practice is called idolatry.”

“The pagan nations made statues or images to represent the powers which they worshiped. Most of these idols were in the form of animals or men. Each civilization and culture had its own mythological structure, but these structures were often quite similar. The names of the gods may have been different, but their functions and actions were often the same. The most prominent myth to cross cultural lines was that of the fertility cycle. Many pagan cultures believed that the god of fertility died each year during the winter but was reborn each year in the spring."

"The ancient Babylonian and Assyrian goddess Ishtar symbolized Mother Earth in the natural cycles of fertility on earth. Many myths grew up around this female deity. She was the goddess of love, so the practice of ritual prostitution became widespread in the fertility cult dedicated to her name. Temples to Ishtar had many priests and priestesses, or sacred prostitutes, who symbolically acted out the fertility rites of the cycle of nature. Ishtar has been identified with the Phoenician Astarte, the Semitic Ashtoreth, the Egyptian Isis, the Greek Aphrodite, and the Roman Venus. Ishtar's male fertility counterpart was Tamuz who was closely associated with the Canaanite fertility god, Baal."

"Adremelech was a god worshiped by child sacrifice. Egyptians gods were figures of men with heads of animal or birds. The Canaanite god most often referred to is Baal who was thought to provide productive forces of nature. Baal was worshiped with much sensuality. As with the male shrine prostitutes. Baal and related deities are also portrayed as a mating bull, symbolizing fertility."

Truly, there were competing factions against God more than 2,000 years ago and there still are today. And so it’s of no surprise that the Lord wanted His people, then and now, to fully understand His expectations in the midst of temptations to worship false gods and idols.

No matter the era, calling on things that are not of God and investing time in them takes our time away from the One we should be dedicated to. He and He alone is the worthy of all worship, all of the time. The scriptures are clear in that He has no rival as we see in these excerpts from His Word:

"The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods." Psalm 16:4

These are words from David that remind us that God will bring judgment on anyone who worships any gods outside of Himself.

What were the penalties for this?

We find answers through two Old Testament prophets: Hosea and Zechariah:

"I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked." Hosea 2:17

"On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more," declares the Lord Almighty. "I will remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land." Zechariah 13:1-2

Truly, we see that one of the things that angers God most is when He is disrespected and disregarded by people who chose to worship anyone or anything outside of Him.

The bottom line here is that God expects and demands our full devotion.

We would be well served to do this and everything else He has said we should do.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.