Exodus 20:22-26 – How should w e worship God

The people who witnessed what happened from the foot of Mount Sinai could never forget that awesome event. They not only heard God’s voice, but they also saw the awesome happenings. None present could deny that it was God who gave them the law. So terrified were they that they asked Moses to be their mediator. From this point on, Moses would be the person to represent them to talk to God and God would speak to them through Moses. As the mediator, Moses would be their spokesman and explain how the law should be applied in the different situations of life. The first thing Moses was instructed to do was to reiterate to the people that the law was given by God. It was God who had given the law. He instructed the people saying, ‘You yourselves have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven.” It is undeniable that God still speaks to us. He speaks through the Old and the New Testaments. The wonderful thing is that God affirms them to us through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is the infallible and inerrant Word of God, attested to by the Holy Spirit. The Ten Commandments are thus God’s instructions on how to live life in such a way that we will not only honour Him but also our fellowmen.   

The key to all the instructions God had given tells us that right worship primarily belongs to God. So, in verse 23 God said, “You shall not make other gods besides Me; gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.” This emphasizes the first commandment that was given. Notice that God warned against fashioning idols of silver or gold. He is concerned not only in how we make our idols but how attractive they could become to us. The emphasis is not on what the fashioned idol would be like, but the attractiveness they could become when we begin to venerate them. No matter how lovely the idols that were made could be, we should never indulge in worshipping them. From the onset, God knew the propensity that we, the fallen human race, would engage in the sin of idolatry. We have the tendency to be so preoccupied with other seeming attractive things in life that they virtually become idols that we venerate. It is wise to call time to take stock of life to ensure that our spouses, our children, our careers, our hobbies, and etc do not so preoccupy our life till God becomes secondary to us. When that happens, they become the idols we worship instead of God.

God wanted to make their worship different from what they had seen in Egypt. So in verses 24-26, He gave instructions on how the altar should be made and how they should approach God. He said to them, “You shall make an altar of earth for Me, and you shall 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 an altar of stone for Me, you shall not build it of cut stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you will profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to My altar so that your nakedness will not be exposed on it.”  The truth in these instructions is that God would not allow them to worship like the pagans. The worship the pagans engaged in was on altars made out of cut stones with steps leading to them. And because of the way they were structured, ascending up the altar would expose the nakedness of the priest. God’s instruction was to ensure that they worshiped rightly and not to blindly copy the pagans. He would not allow any indecency when it comes to worshipping Him.  

Worshipping God is an act of simplicity. There is no necessity for fanciful antiques. God cherishes our sincerity more than our grand performance. Another significant thing in this instruction is that worship was not confined only to Mount Sinai. God said in verse 24 that “…in every place where I cause My name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.” In other words, at whichever place we may be in, so long as we make God central, He would come and bless us. Isn’t this what Jesus told the Samaritan woman? True worship is not confined to Mount Sinai or Mount Gerizim. For where two or three of us are gathered in His name, He will be in the midst of our gathering. Worship is centrally about God and how we should approach Him. We must, therefore, be sure we come to Him appropriately and worship Him alone, regardless of the place. Let’s worship Him in spirit and in truth!