Exodus 34:18-28 – Worship God and offer Him only our best

Exodus 34 appears to be a repetition of what God had said earlier. It seems as if God is randomly repeating the instructions that He had already given in Exodus 12, 13 and 23.  Here also He seems to take some parts from the Ten Commandments, the moral laws and some from the ceremonial laws. He seemed to have only extracted excerpts from the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 34:14, He told them not to worship other gods, in verse 17 not to have any graven image and in verse 21 to keep the Sabbath. Here God mentioned the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, the Feast of the Passover and the Feast of the Tabernacle. What was God doing exactly? To understand why God did what He did we need to bear in mind what had just taken place. They had just broken the first commandment by committing a great sin of making a golden calf and worshipping it. God had been merciful and He was giving them another opportunity to start all over again. So, in verse 28, He re-issued the Ten Commandments. Here He was helping them to observe the covenant in the way they had broken it.  All these instructions would help them especially when they entered the promised land.

Earlier in Exodus 34:11-17, He told them not to have any treaty with the Canaanites and to destroy all their religious artefacts so that they would not be enticed into worshipping other deities or make for themselves images of gods. Then in Exodus 34:18-28, God was showing them three things they needed to do. Firstly, in talking about the feasts, God was giving them a pattern of worship. Secondly, in His reference to Sabbath, he was instructing them to enter into His holy rest. And thirdly, in referring to the offering of the giving of the first offspring of their livestock, God was demanding that they give their best to Him. He wanted them to offer their best. They must not appear before God empty-handed.  

The feasts helped them to look back to the way they were redeemed and how they were provided for and sustained in their journey. Wonderfully, God not only saves us but He has also constantly made provision to sustain us in our journey with Him. The instruction on the Sabbath was to have them set aside a day in a week to worship God. It’s the day that they were told to enter God’s rest. There is a need for us to re-orientate our notion of the Sabbath. It should not be a day where we are free to do everything, but a day set apart to stay focused on God and honour Him. The offering of the firstborn and the first fruit of one’s harvest is referring to giving to God only our very best. God deserves our very best. Remember all that we are and have and can potentially become, and can own, are from God. And the appropriate thing to do is to offer Him the very best that He has blessed us with. We are His by design and also by redemption, so we must only offer to Him our very best!