By Pamela Rose Williams
Exodus 23:25 And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.
The book of Exodus mainly concentrates on the deliverance of the Israelites out of the bondage in Egypt. It is in this book that the Ten Commandments are first mentioned (chapter 20). And then in chapters 21-24 Moses writes done many other laws that God gave.
During the “Exodus” times in the Bible, the Hebrew people trusted Moses to lead them into the Promised Land. They learned of the one true God from Moses and trusted Him to provide for their every need — even amidst the 40 days and 40 nights that they spent wandering in the wilderness after escaping Egypt. In God’s Law He reminded the people that He was the Only God that they should serve and as they served Him, He would continue to bless them with good food and water. He even went so far as to protect them from sickness. As you read further on into the Old Testament, such as in the Book of Joshua and Judges you see that when the people served only Almighty God and Father, He was faithful to deliver on His promises. And when they left Him to serve other gods, they suffered great hardship, sickness and even death.
Things are not so different today. As Solomon wrote “…there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). We still have only One True God and there are those who choose to follow Him and those who choose to follow after other gods. Today, all of those hundreds of laws in the Old Testament have been contained in these two: (1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind and (2) Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:34-40).
Think about it, when we go against either of these two “Great Commandments” we lose out on blessings. The first, “Love the Lord your God” — We love God by: remembering that He is the Only God, remembering that He is most important above all other idols, remembering that His name is holy and should never be taken in vain, and by remembering that we all need a day of rest, just as He did after He created the world. And the second, “Love your neighbor” — We love our neighbor by: showing honor to our parents, not killing each other, not committing adultery, working with our own hands so we do not have to steal from one another, speaking the truth in love rather than lying, and by being content with what we have rather than coveting the things of others.
Truth be told, not everyone loves God or his neighbor. Sometimes we even see that these Godless haters appear to be blessed with many earthly things. But that is exactly it — they are “earthly” and temporary. We are blessed to love and serve for a higher calling — that unspeakable eternal gift found only in Jesus Christ.
