worship and obedience

Good morning sisters and brothers,
This morning God reviews the beginning of the covenant between God and the nation of Israel. God called Abraham to be the father of a great nation, Israel, who would be God's special people. That covenant took many twists and turns but didn't really take the shape of a covenant with a nation until God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt. When God brought them out he made a covenant with them at Mt. Sinai. As God says in this passage, that wasn't a covenant about sacrifices and particular kinds of worship; it was a covenant to follow and obey God, to be God's people and only to worship the one God.

That exclusive obedience was hard for Israel from the beginning. We remember that even while Moses was getting the tablets of the Ten Commandments the people got scared that God had left them and asked Aaron to make them a golden god they could see and touch. It's so much easier to follow a smaller, more tangible god than to obey God, who we don't always see or feel. In our lives it's easy to make work or success or family the only highest good in our lives and to forget that our whole life holds together in God. Worship is important, but the most important part of our faith is following God in our lives, seeking God's will when we make decisions, and looking for God's calling in everything we do. God wants to be our God today and always so seek God's true path today.

God bless,
Sam

Jeremiah 7:21-28
21Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. 22For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.”

24Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward. 25From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; 26yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.

27So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. 28You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.