Three Scenes of Worship from Exodus
by Rusty MillerOne of the best ways to understand worship is to view those in the scriptures as they worship. For instance, we can learn much about God from David’s words in the Psalms, and those are words of worship. In the book of Exodus, we see a new nation learning to trust God, and we can gain much insight by viewing their worship of God in response to His dealings with them. Below are three scenes of worship taken from Exodus. Follow along and then apply these lessons in our worship together. (Note: This article was adapted from my blog, which can be found at www.pleonast.com/user/rmiller.)
Scene 1: God rescues Israel
Moses and the children of Israel are leaving Egypt after the captivity, and God is going to use this to prove to the surrounding nations, but more importantly, to His own people that He is a great God. Knowing that Pharaoh will change his mind and come after Israel, God has them wait, camping at the edge of the Red Sea. And Pharaoh does indeed come after them (Read Ex. 14:9-16). We are generally pretty hard on the Israelites, and rightly so, but put yourself for a moment in their place here. You are essentially runaway slaves, and you’re being pursued by the greatest army in the world at that time. We’d like to say we would have had enough faith to trust in God, but this is a pretty scary time. Fortunately, it served God’s purpose to accomplish this without Israel’s faith (Read vv. 21-31).
How do you respond to that? One minute, the greatest army in the world is right on your heels, and the next, not only have you crossed the sea on dry land, but that great army is now gone, drowned at the hand of your great God. What does that make you want to do? It made Israel want to worship God. It made Israel want to praise God (Read Ex. 15:1-21). That’s great worship! It’s substantive, because it focuses on what God has done for them (four times, it mentions Pharaoh’s army being covered in the sea). It recognizes God’s greatness and His character (v. 3—warrior, v. 11—majesty and holiness, v. 13—lovingkindness). It involves at least some repentance (v. 2—“This is my God … This is my father’s God,” i.e. I’m coming home to the real God). And it involves trust that God will continue to act on their behalf (vv. 16-18).
One great thing about this scene is that there’s no waiting around. They don’t say, “Okay, let’s get on down the road in case Pharaoh starts putting together another army.” Or, “Wow, we’ve got a long way to go, so we’d better get moving.” No, they stop right there, and they praise God. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that I want all of our worship to be spontaneous, because some of that would violate 1 Cor. 14:40, in that it wouldn’t be orderly. But for instance, what about when someone’s baptized? When God rescues another soul from hell, I think it’s absolutely appropriate to sing a song of praise to our great God.
So, what we need to take into our own worship is that sometimes our own worship needs to be focused on what God has already done for us. Too often, we tend to ask God for more, and I’m not saying we can’t ask God for help (the Bible says we can). But somewhere in there, we need to spend more time thanking God and praising God for what He’s already done.
Scene 2: Meeting God at the Mountain
It is now three months since God rescued the people from Pharaoh’s army, and Israel has arrived at Sinai. God tells Moses to remind the people what He has done for them, and to put before them the idea that they will be a covenant people if they are willing to obey Him. They answer, in verse 8: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.”
And so, beginning in verse 9, God says, “I’m coming down on the mountain” (Read Exodus 19:9-15). God tells Moses to have the children of Israel get ready. What do we learn here about “getting ready” to worship God? It seems that most of the time, we want to focus on the end of verse 10, “… let them wash their garments.” And we want to make a point about people needing to wear their best clothes when they come to worship God. Notice however, that’s not what this verse says. First of all, it says for them to wash their clothes, so the best thing you can get out of it is “Don’t come dirty.” But when we focus on the clothes, we miss the bigger point. Look at the beginning of verse 10: “Go to the people and consecrate them …” That’s the important point: they were supposed to get their hearts ready.
In fact, that is carried through when the Law is written down (read Lev. 11:44-45). Now, we begin to understand. This wasn’t about nice clothes. It was about consecrated hearts and holy living. When we come to worship God, we need to “get ready” by living everyday lives that honor Him with holiness. We need to live righteously if we want to come into His presence. Now, before you say, “Oh, that’s just the Old Testament,” look at 1 Peter 1 (read vv. 13-16). What we need to do, when we are “getting ready” to come before God, is we need to look at our lives and consecrate our hearts.
But this scene continues in verse 16 (Read vv. 16-25). And so we have this fantastic vision of thunder and lightning and the mountain quaking and fire and smoke and trumpets. Imagine seeing and hearing all of that. We all say that we’d like to see God, but I wonder if we’d seen this, if we wouldn’t have been terrified. And this is not even getting to actually “see” Him, but just His presence on the mountain. What they got to see was all the stuff associated with God coming down, and that alone was terrifying. So, since it is reiterated at the end of the chapter that they couldn’t actually see God, what was all this about?
Look at what happens next: (read 20:1-5a). What follows the appearance of God’s presence on the mountain is that He issues the 10 Commandments. This is important! They needed to understand the majesty and power of God so that they would have the kind of mindset that says, “I’m going to obey Him.”
So, based on this scene at the foot of Mt. Sinai, what are we going to carry into our own worship? First, that when we’re “getting ready” to come to God, we need to focus more on consecrating our hearts than on looking stylish. And second, when we understand God from what we get out of worship, it better equips us to be willing to serve Him.
Scene 3: Bad Worship
Time passes. Moses recounts to the people all that God has told him, and the people answer, “All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do.” Moses goes back up on the mountain, and God begins to explain to him how to build the tabernacle. Finally, Moses is ready to go back down to the people. But he’s been gone a long, long time, and look what happens while he’s gone (read Ex. 32:1-6).
How did this happen? How did they go from a people who understood what God had done for them, who understood the majesty and power of God, and who were committed to obedience to Him - how did they go from that to this?
More importantly, could this happen to us? Absolutely it could! Because this is what happens when we lose our focus on God. And if you want to see some bad worship, then you let a majority of people lose their focus on God, and pretty soon, their focus will be on themselves, and they’ll be doing things that please them. And you’ll hear them say, “How could God not be pleased? We’re worshipping Him. We’re just using the talents he gave us.”
But God has never just accepted any worship. The very first example of worship that we have is the worship of Cain and Abel, and God did not accept them both. God wants worship to be what He wants, not what we want. And bad worship—that is, worship that’s unacceptable to God—is what happens when we lose our focus.
But when we examine what happened here in Exodus 32, there’s one more important point to be seen. Go back to Exodus 24 (read vv. 9-11). Did you get that? These leaders had seen God. They had dinner with God!
And then we get to chapter 32, and the people are worshiping a golden calf? One more way you get bad worship is this: when you have bad leaders (read Ex. 32:25). What was Aaron thinking? He’d seen God! And not just Aaron. Where were Nadab and Abihu? Where were the seventy elders? As far as we know, the only one who went with Moses was Joshua. Where are the leaders of Israel?
The fact is that the leaders of Israel had lost their focus as well. They had taken their eyes off of God and had led the children of Israel into great sin. And it is a sobering lesson for leaders of God’s people today. Verse 25 tells us that the people could have been controlled. Certainly, they wanted to do this, and they are not excused for their sin, but suppose one of their leaders had stood up and said, “We’re not doing this. In fact, not only are we not doing this, we’re going to repent that we even had this thought. We’ve seen God. He’s not a cow! Our words can’t even do justice to what God is! We are not doing this!” I’m convinced from v. 25 that if a leader had done that, this wretched story wouldn’t be in our Bibles, because it wouldn’t have happened. We need leaders—and yes, that includes me—who are willing to say, “We’re not doing that!” What we need are leaders who are focused on God, so that our worship stays focused on God.