A Lesson on Worship in Exodus 13
In God’s design of the world, one of the most fundamental relationships is parents and children. The first building block relationally is husband and wife, but then from there we have children and all the ways that parents relate to their children. And within the category of parents and children, to get more specific, there are the conversations that fathers have with their sons.
Now I realize that not everyone in is a father or a son, but we can all at least imagine what it looks like for fathers and sons to talk. Even if we’ve not experienced it ourselves, I’m sure we’ve all seen it before — for example, just think about The Lion King. A major part of that storyline is the conversation between Mufasa and Simba — a father and a son. Remember the scene when they’re walking beside one another, and Mufasa is dropping truth bombs on Simba, foreshadowing his future reign as king?
It’s beautiful and believable — because conversations between fathers and sons are part of reality in God’s world, and it’s also a central part of this passage this upcoming Sunday.
We’re going to be in Exodus 13, where there are three circles of conversation:
YHWH speaks to Moses (verses 1–2), and then
Moses speaks to the Israel (verses 3–16) — and
within Moses speaking to Israel we read what fathers should speak to their sons (verse 8 and 14) .
In both cases, the father is explaining to his son the rituals Yahweh prescribed — the Feast of Unleavened Bread (verse 8) and the consecration of the firstborn (verse 14). The explanation is essentially the same: the two rituals point back to Yahweh’s saving action in the exodus.
The rituals are a reminder, by nature, and they follow the action.
The ordering of things is important here.
The rituals are not original, but responsive. They are a response to what God has done — and this gives us very important lesson about worship in general.
Worship Is a Response
The worship of God is not something that we create from ourselves, but it’s always our response to what God has done. No human was sitting around one day and decided,
Well, I think I need to acknowledge that Yahweh is the one, true God and he is worthy of worship.
That’s not how it goes.
We’re all in the dark until Yahweh himself brings us into the light and reveals himself to us. Yahweh reveals himself to us, and our response to that revelation is worship. Worship is how we speak back to God because of what he has spoken to us. It’s how we act back toward God because of how he has acted toward us. It’s always a response.
Called to Worship
That’s the reason every Sunday we start our worship service with a Call to Worship.
We don’t gather as those who’ve decided to do a good thing and worship God, but we gather here as those brought together by God, and we worship God because he invites us to worship him. Standing over every worship service is God saying to us: This is who I am and this is what I’ve done.
And we say back:
Amen! You alone deserve the glory!
I can’t wait to worship God together this Sunday.
