Exodus 20: 22-26: “And the LORD said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold. An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.”
It is hard to underestimate the importance of the fact that there is only one God. When people worship more than one God they run into a desperate kind of cosmic confusion. Who do you go to for help in time of trouble? Which God is going to help and, most importantly, where are you going to end up when your life is over? If you can’t answer these questions with absolute confidence then you will always be troubled. If there is only one God, and there is, then it is proper that you worship God in His way rather than in your own way. If you try to tell God what is right and what is wrong you become like Eve and actually worship another God, that is yourself. The Lord didn’t want people to spend hours making altars for worship because the emphasis would be on the altar rather than on the Lord, who was being worshipped. The emphasis on nakedness was because Adam and Eve knew that they were naked as soon as they had sinned for the first time. (Gen 3: 7, “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”) Even today there is a dislike of nakedness because we still have that original, but often misunderstood, memory of our sin.
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
No comments:
Post a Comment