Exodus
24:1 ¶ And he said unto Moses, Come up
unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
Israel; and worship ye afar off. 2 And
Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither
shall the people go up with him. 3 And
Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the
judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words
which the LORD hath said will we do. 4
And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the
morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to
the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 And he
sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and
sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD. 6 And Moses took half of the blood, and put it
in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 7 And he took the book of the covenant, and
read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said
will we do, and be obedient. 8 And Moses
took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of
the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.
This
passage brings to mind a key difference between the Hebrew religion based on
the commandments given to Moses by God for the children of Israel and the
religion of the Christian after Christ’s Resurrection.
There
are no rituals laid out in the New Testament teachings for the Christian. When
something like Baptism is mentioned we aren’t given strict instructions on how
it is to be carried out or of a ceremony to be performed. It is simple,
straightforward, and direct. There isn’t even an outline of a wedding ceremony.
This was the nature of the Hebrew character, the need for a physical event as a
vital part of their religious expression, a ritual, a ceremony, etc.
1Corinthians
1:22 For the Jews require a sign, and
the Greeks [Gentiles,
non-Jews] seek after wisdom…
There
are no sacred spaces in Biblical Christianity outside of the human heart where the
Spirit of God dwells. There are no God-ordained rituals or ceremonies, or even
formula prayers where we conjure God up. Bible-believing Christians don’t ask
for God to come down and “walk among the pews” as He is already here, in each
of us, if you truly belong to Him.
Luke
17:20 ¶ And when he was demanded of the
Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The
kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 21
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom
of God is within you.
John
14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him,
If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we
will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Romans
8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in
the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Galatians
3:3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in
the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
We
seek to be filled with His Spirit, much like a little water in a glass when
heated up fills the glass with water vapor.
Ephesians
5:18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein
is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; 19
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing
and making melody in your heart to the Lord; 20
Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ…
God
created the Hebrew people for Himself with signs and wonders and required
memorials and rituals for them to remember what had been done for them and
their place in His scheme of things. These were tokens for proof of His
providence and His actions in the world. The Christian has the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit as his or her deposit, a type of earnest money, on eternal
life. We should experience God through His words in His Bible and see His hand
in all reality. If we believe the Bible we see God working in our lives and in
the lives of others every day. We don’t need a ritual and we don’t need a
ceremony to remember what we experience each day of our lives.
Ephesians
1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that
ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after
that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until
the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
As David said, in
Psalm 19;
The
heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
The
evidence of a Hebrew’s position was his obedience to commandments and ritual
observances. They justified him legally, in a sense, before God. The evidence
of a Christian’s position is what the Holy Spirit produces in him or her that
comes out, not faked, forced, or strained.
Galatians
5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is
no law.
Just
as the Hebrew could comply with the commandments and have no love of God in his
heart, though, the Christian can miss the boat, as well. If your love for
others consists only of telling them
how wicked they are and how they are going to Hell then you are a sorry
Christian indeed. If your peace with God consists of only a smug
self-righteousness as you dislocate your arm trying to pat yourself on the back
you are missing the point entirely. If your longsuffering consists only of an
“I suffer fools gladly” expression on your face then you need to repent and
turn to God. The Hebrew’s disobedience, if there was not heart commitment to
obey, was inevitable and the Christian can very easily descend into a parody, a
satire of a Christian if his or her heart is not right as well.
We
have the first mention of a book in Genesis 5 and then in Exodus 17. Here,
Moses wrote all the words of the Lord and
Moses reads the book of the covenant with God as he performs this ritual and
the people promise to obey. Traditionally, conservative Christians believed
that during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness Moses wrote almost
all of the first five books of the Bible under the inspiration of God with
Joshua perhaps finishing up after Moses died.
A
covenant is a pledge, an alliance of
friendship and obedience to principles agreed upon, between God and man in this
case. Notice that the Hebrews repeatedly affirm that they will obey God.
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