The Bible Nerd

Reality check: what would our worship look like without revelation from God? We would be cutting ourselves and using our blood to satisfy and connect with gods. Sex would be a common form of worship, and most women who worked in religion would be glorified prostitutes. We would have to “dress” our god every day, and feed him with our offerings.  Our service would basically turn into a drunken orgy with “prophets” yelling and dancing around, channeling the spirit of the gods. If we were truly devout, we might even offer our first born child as a holocaust to the gods, burning them alive.

We are kidding ourselves if we think that we would have progressed on our own to a more “civilized” concept of God and worship. There is a reason that God said in Leviticus 18:3-4, “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God.” I wasn’t going for shock value when I was describing horrific means of worship above. That is ACTUALLY the way the Canaanites and surrounding nations worshiped their gods when the Israelites were moving into the Promised Land. That is ACTUALLY the way that Abram and his forefathers worshiped before God rescued him. Joshua 24:2, ““This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped (Hebrew=abad, or served) other gods.”

God rescued Abraham from idol worship just as He rescued the Israelites from such ugly worship in His divine revelation. If we don’t understand this, we will have two problems. First, we won’t understand why God follows the simplicity of Abraham’s worship with the codified,  ceremonial laws about worship in the old covenant. It would seem confusing why God adds so many rules and stipulations to worship, if you don’t understand Egyptian and Canaanite worship. Second, we modern day Christians won’t have a true appreciation of what God has done for us, to save us from sacrificing our own children in service to a false god. We haven’t even gotten to how appreciative we should be for Jesus rescuing us from old covenant worship!

Have you ever wondered about odd laws in Leviticus such as 17:10, ““‘I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people. ” or 18:19, ““‘Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.”, or 19:27, ““‘Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.” or 17:7, “They must no longer offer any of their sacrifices to the goat idols to whom they prostitute themselves. This is to be a lasting ordinance for them and for the generations to come.’” All of these laws were safeguards to keep the Israelites from worshiping God like the surrounding, pagan nations worshiped their own gods. It is appropriate at this time to say “Ewwwww…. yuck!” or “Thank you God!”

We need to be so aware of the fact that unless God had made this known to us, we would all still be worshiping God (or gods) this way. Any of you who are reading this from an idolatrous nations know the truth of what I am saying, or if you have visited a nation where there is a majority worshiping false gods, you may have gained a whole new appreciation of your church’s worship times. Often, as we fight about worship styles, musical tastes, hymns or modern songs, we lose sight of the bigger picture of what God has rescued us from, organ or no organ. Reading through Exodus to Deuteronomy should refresh our memories. Stories like the golden calf highlight how man thinks worship should be.

Before we get too proud, we should remember that even after God made these things known to Israel, they STILL kept worshiping in this way. Judges 2:10-12, “After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped (Hebrew = shachah) various gods of the peoples around them.” I don’t want to forget or ignore what God has done for us. I am glad that I can worship together with my first born son, rather than be offering him as my worship.