A child’s play takes the mundane and makes it magical.  Cooking, going to work, driving to the store, mowing the lawn and even vacuuming.   Adults long to finish all these.  To move on to better, more important, things.  But these are the very works children treasure in their play.   They spend hours enjoying what their parents spend hours lamenting, avoiding, and despising.

Play is often where children learn to cultivate the important rhythms of ‘real life.’  Rhythms that are drudgery to us.  But rhythms that represent the bulk of our living.  We try to escape them, complete them quickly, delegate them so that we can focus on more quality time with our families.  Not realizing that the normal routines of life are the quality time.  

Our children learn to do important things in life by watching and imitating us in our routines.   Imitation is more than a sincere form of flattery.  It is the way we learn to be and do what we are made to be and do.  Especially in our spiritual lives.  The Bible reminds us in Ephesians 5:1 that the key to discipleship is to “imitate God as dearly loved children.”

In God’s Word, he does not merely command or commend a way of life to us.  Rather, he provides a pattern based on infinite, eternal, and unchanging realities.  He gives us the law to teach us to imitate his holiness, goodness, wisdom, and truth.   And he gives us worship as a pattern for how we are to know and draw near to him.  God reveals himself to us in covenants -promises He makes and guarantees by his word.  And we are to approach him by receiving and renewing his covenants.  

Over and over in the scriptures, God’s people worship him through the renewal of covenant vows.   Week in and week out, day in and day out, covenant renewal is the pattern, the rhythm of God’s grace and his people’s gratitude.   Tabernacle and Temple worship followed this pattern.  And this pattern still directs the trajectory of Christian worship. A trajectory of worship and life that glorifies and enjoys God.  

We see this pattern first unfolded to the people, through Moses, at the foot of Sinai.  First in the giving of the law in Exodus 20-23.  Then in the people’s formal commitment to the Covenant in Exodus 24.  And finally in the description, building, and dedication of the Tabernacle and the priesthood, described in Exodus 25-40 and then in Leviticus. Often these parts of Exodus and Leviticus seem little more than tedious and uninteresting footnotes to the narrative of deliverance.  Yet the pattern for worshipping and for living is the climax not the appendix to the Exodus.  

Exodus 24 is a powerful moment.   The Law in all its terror and depth has been given.  How will the people respond?   Before they heard it, they cried out, “all that the Lord requires we will obey.”  But what about now?  Will they continue in covenant with the Lord, or turn back and return to Egypt?  In this moment we see their commitment and God’s acceptance.  They commit to obey all He requires.  And he provides a gracious pattern for approach that accommodates their inevitable failures but marks them as men and women, boys and girls accepted by him as his own.  

All our worship follows this same pattern.  Acknowledging God’s call and its requirement, confessing our failure, letting God’s means of grace consecrate us, finding acceptance with God through communion, and then receiving his commission to “go and make disciples of the nations.”   This pattern shows us how we are to approach the inapproachable God.  How we may truly love him and be loved by him.   And provides a weekly reminder that our calling, confession, consecration, communion, and commission are the pattern of life in union communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Join us this week as we examine Exodus 24 and consider the pattern God has given us for worship and for life.   We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.