Sermon Notes: Exodus 23:10-19
When we taught through worship in 2024, I reminded us that as we worked our way through Exodus, we would study some more about worship because Exodus would bring it up. Worship really is all encompassing.
It’s so pervasive and important that Leviticus 17:1-9 gives instructions Israelites killing a goat or lamb as a sacrifice away from the Tabernacle. Verses 8-9 give us the understanding that their killing of the goat or lamb is for sacrifice. They are to be careful to bring it to the tabernacle for Yahweh, so their worship won’t bend toward their tendency to worship “goat demons”.
Worship is so pervasive that if they don’t take care and are very intentional with their worship, their habits formed in Egypt and fueled by the culture of Canaan, will seep into their heart and actions of worship and they will end up sacrificing to the Serpent rather than Yahweh. There is a lot to glean from Leviticus 17 and 18 but suffice it to say that if we are worshiping, and if we are not careful with our worship, we will begin to offer our sacrifices to other unseen entities whether we mean to or not.
So, God speaks to and about worship a lot!
Today we are going to hear from God through Moses about worship because it is all pervasive.
Let’s read it. Exodus 23:10-19.
What do we need to understand?
Sabbath is the framework for Israel’s worship. 23:10-12
Remember, Sabbath is not “nothing”. When we go to sleep at night, our bodies aren’t doing nothing. Our bodies are doing a whole set of different activities the Wise Creator Jesus designed them to do. Just because we are laying still and unconscious does not mean our bodies stop “working”. If they stop working we die. When we sleep, our bodies shift to a recovery work that prepares our whole being for other work.
Sabbath is stopping one labor to enter another labor. (NOTE: Don’t hear the word “labor” as negative. Labor is a good and pleasant and holy word rooted in God’s nature.)
Sabbath is an orderly rhythm of transitioning from one act of worship to another act of worship. Leviticus 23 unpacks that orderly and yearly rhythm in the feasts.
Surprise, there are seven! They are: 1. Passover, 2. Unleavened Bread, 3. Harvests or Firstfruits, 4. Weeks or Pentecost, 5. Trumpets, 6. Day of Atonement, and 7. Booths or Tabernacles.
Entering the feasts with Sabbath was required by the Lord, and it meant stopping one labor and entering the labor of preparing themselves and their offerings for presentation to the Lord as worship.
Therefore, it would do us good to recalibrate our understanding of Sabbath from this search on how to do “nothing” to living in the rhythm of “enough” of that labor to enter into a different labor.
No other god was to have any remembrance in Israel’s worship. 23:13
Israel’s history is in the ancient near east where the “gods” of other nations ruled with an iron fist over the degradation of humanity and culture through the worship of the Serpent through his co-minions who rebelled against the Lord.
Be sure, these dark agents of the Serpent are real and tangible and unseen at the same time. The habit of Israel giving the “gods” their mind’s attention and heart’s affection was deeply ingrained in them and reinforced all around them culturally.
Israel will struggle with their worship. They will fail by either worshiping God in ways that demons are worshiped, which God told them not to do, or they will worship the Serpent and his forces of evil and call it the worship of Yahweh.
God tells them in Exodus 23:13 “…do not remember the names of other Elohim…” (translation mine). Note that in my translation, I translate the word “zakar” that the ESV translate as “mention”, as “remember”.
“Remember” is a better translation than “mention”. The CSB translates “zakar” as “invoke”. That’s better. What is God saying to them?
God precedes this command to not remember the names of other Elohim with the qualifier “Pay attention to all that I have said to you…”. What God is telling them here is they are to no longer remember the names and methods of worshiping these other Elohim. Rather they are to pay attention to what Yahweh, THE Elohim says. God is to be their remembrance and no other.
God is telling Israel to no longer remember these created and fallen creatures. They are not to be remembered or followed in anything.
God is telling Israel that their worship must be free of all things that have been inspired by the Serpent and his created Elohim for his worship, and they are to only do what Yahweh has told them to do. Yet Israel will do for themselves what serves their felt wants and desires to their destruction over and over again, and the Lord will discipline them for it.
The war among Christians to shop for and consume preferences in worship is at the heart of the worship of the Serpent. It’s no different than Exodus 32 when they are worshiping the calves they had Aaron make and calling it the worship of Yahweh. The Serpent enticed Eve to pursue her desire related to God NOT what God said. That epigenetic tendency is not dead in us yet.
God is not interested in our satisfaction in a worship experience. Worship is not about us or for us. Worship is about Father-Son-Spirit. Worship is for Father-Son-Spirit.
It is our responsibility to please God out of a transformed heart of joy and to not make it in any way about us.
We are to have nothing that smacks of the remembrance of anything but Jesus and for Jesus or we are remembering the names of other gods who are cleverly disguised as angels of light, as Paul told the Corinthians.
Part of Israel’s worship was traveling for three main feasts in a yearly Sabbath rhythm that dovetailed with other feasts of worship. 23:14-19
We will deal with the “travel” part of this observation in the application, so hang with me.
First, the Lord commands the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Unleavened Bread is connected to Passover. They go together. You will remember this from our Passover celebration last year.
Passover is the feast the Lord instituted to remember the Lord killing the firstborn of Egypt and his passing over Israel as they followed his instructions about the lamb, the blood, and the unleavened bread. Passover and Unleavened Bread give us clear gospel!
On the night of their rescue from Egypt the Lord saved them in such a hurry they didn’t have time for their bread to rise, so they were to bake bread with no leaven (12:11).
The Feast of Unleavened Bread was instituted as a remembrance and celebration of their being saved from Egypt. They were to look back and remember their salvation in the Exodus. This feast happened at the beginning of barely harvest in the agricultural cycle, thus the Lord builds this feast into their work a reminder of the Passover.
Leaven would be used to symbolize sin (and sometimes it would be used appropriately to display rejoicing in the Lord like during the Feast of Weeks). God was reminding Israel in the Passover and Unleavened Bread at barley harvest, with the bread supplied by his grace, that they were to leave the sins of the god of Egypt behind and worship him with a new standard that was to grow and keep growing from their salvation and increasing understanding of who he is.
Next, the Lord commands them to keep the Feast of Harvest also known as First Fruits.
The Feast of Harvest is celebrated then followed by the Feast of Weeks. Weeks completes the Feast of Harvest. It is really one long remembrance.
Seven weeks after the Feast of Harvest, 49 days, leading into the 50th day, was as the continuation and conclusion of the Feast of Harvest with the Feast of Weeks.
The Feast of Harvest was set by the Lord at just the right time when they gathered their first fruits from the harvest. According to Leviticus 23:9-11, they would gather what would be the first of their food (imagine the temptation to store that for later), and wave it before the Lord offering it to him and trusting that the Lord would cause more to grow and be harvested.
They would follow the Harvest Feast with the Feast of Weeks where they would bring regular leavened bread to offer the Lord. This offering of leavened bread celebrated the full harvest, the rich and glorious goodness of ingathering that the Lord brought because they gave him the first fruits in the Feast of Harvest. In this instance, leaven was used as a celebration of God’s ability to multiply his abundance to them. Thus, Jesus will talk about the Kingdom being like leaven in the gospels.
It’s worth your time to go read Leviticus 23:17-21 and Numbers 28:26-31 about these feasts.
In the New Testament, we know the concluding Feast of Weeks as Pentecost.
Fifty days after the Lord’s resurrection, dispersed Jewish folks came to Jerusalem from all the nations where they had been scattered to worship the Lord as the conclusion to the Feast of Harvest.
Notice what the Lord does in Acts 2 in taking the Sabbath agricultural feasts and working them out in people:
Through the preaching of the good news, the Lord brought a harvest of 3,000 people who received the Holy Spirit who would then be sown back to their homes among the nations to preach the gospel and make disciples, and that would result in the apostles finding the firt fruits of the kingdom in disciples in places like Ephesus as they went out in the Great Commission work of the missionary journeys, and from these first fruits, the Lord would multiply his kingdom to the known world in short order.
Finally, the Lord mentions the Feast of Ingathering also known as Booths or Tabernacles.
Ingathering was a huge celebration that happened in the fall, and it was after they had completed harvest and the processing of their harvest. The grain was ground up and flour was made. The grapes were juiced and made into “grape juice” (we all know it was wine). The olives were pressed, and the oil was stored. All the “canning” was done.
This feast lasted a week and during that time they lived in “booths” that were constructed of branches and leaves. You may have also read in the Bible where they also called this feast the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles.
Leviticus 23:41-43 tells us the Lord’s reasoning for this feast. He told them they are to live in booths for the week of this celebration as a reminder the Lord saved them from Egypt and they lived in tents while he sustained them in the desert.
By instituting this feast, the Lord provided a sensory experience that would give subsequent generations an object lesson as a reminder of the saving work of the Passover. It would remind them of God’s grace and goodness to save them and see them through the desert to the Promised Land, and when in the promised land, it would remind them of the Lord’s gospel work that was to lead them to Jesus.
This feast was a huge celebration of the Lord’s provision of food and salvation, and I’m convinced these two are not to be separated. God’s sustenance with food is to point us to the “Bread of Life”, Jesus, and we are to celebrate him in worship.
They were to rejoice!
In their rejoicing in the Feast of Ingathering, they were to bring their tithes and do so according to the Lord’s blessing (Deuteronomy 16:17), and none were to come empty handed (23:15b).
Take time to read Deuteronomy 16:14-15.
Here are a few good news observations from these feasts.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of the gospel work of the Passover and the call to rid ourselves of the leaven of sin. Listen to Paul’s exposition of this feast to the Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 (ESV) 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
The Feast of Harvest or First Fruits leads us to see in the agricultural cycle the glorious work of the resurrection. Listen again to Paul’s words to the Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 15:20 (ESV) 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Jesus is the firstfruits of the restoration of the kingdom of God in his resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection is tangible evidence that the restoration Isaiah promised (Isaiah 65:17-25) has begun. Because Jesus has been raised, we have the confidence the Lord will bring a future harvest of ingathering of those who have trusted in Jesus. Listen to Paul again: 1 Corinthians 15:21-23 (ESV) 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
The Feast of Harvest prepares us for the resurrection of Jesus and the hope of our resurrection when we trust in Christ.
The Feast of Ingathering reached its peak on day 8 when water from the Pool of Siloam would be poured out in the temple. (See Tremper Longman for a further and deeper dive into this feast in “Immanuel in Our Place”.)
It is this ceremony that is the setting of Jesus’ words in John’s gospel: John 7:37-39 (ESV) 37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
God wove these feasts together and the components of them to give his people a physical reference point to what he was going to do in the fullness of time when their Creator, Jesus, would come and fulfill the purpose of those feasts, and in the fullness of time fully restore all things. Listen to John: Revelation 22:1-3 “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.”
So, when Jesus came and did what he did and said what he said, we are to see the purpose in what God was doing in history with these feasts.
Thus, Jesus said in Luke 24:44 (ESV) 44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
Application
We practice Sabbath as a declaration of “enough” for one part of our worship and enter another part of our worship. 23:10-12
Worship and Sabbath go hand in hand because we are ceasing one labor of worship and entering another labor or worship. And don’t hear that in relation to Sunday gathering in the gym.
Romans 12:1 (ESV) 1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
The totality of our lives is to be worship. Worship is not merely songs we sing or the service we attend in the gym on Sunday. Worship is the very act of our living to and for the glory of God in Jesus Christ.
So, we practice Sabbath as worship not just by taking a day off work, but by making transitions between one part of our worship to another part of our worship. We practice the Sabbath of worship when it’s our turn for hospitality on Sunday. We practice the Sabbath of worship when we get to worship with the littles in Radical Kids by teaching them God’s word in age-appropriate ways, praying for their salvation while we rock them, showing them the comfort of the Spirit when they are upset, and showing the kindness and love of the family of God to each other as we serve each other. We practice the Sabbath of worship when we stop Sunday gathering worship and get up on Monday and do Psalm 5:3 in prayer, lay down what we can’t affect, and watch for the Lord with anticipation and faith to do what we can’t.
Complete devotion to Jesus is integral to our worship. 23:13
Romans 12:1-2 is rooted in Exodus 23:13.
To offer ourselves as living sacrifices that is our worship, requires our ongoing transformation of our mind to make sure we remember the Lord’s ways and put behind us the Serpent’s ways.
There can be no competing allegiances for there to be the true worship of Jesus.
Anything that steals glory from God is rooted in the names of other Elohim, and that must be continually rooted out.
We worship by physically leaving our homes to travel to another location set apart as holy as part of the rhythm of worship. 23:14
“Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me.” 23:14
It seems that the Lord designated three of his seven feasts as celebrations they were to physically travel to another place to observe.
Physical travel to a place for worship is one of God’s Sabbath rhythms.
“Times” in verse 14 is translated from the Hebrew word for “feet”. Literally Exodus 23:14 says, “Three feet in the year you shall keep a feast to me.”
These feasts were to be traveled to. God’s people were to leave their homes and go to Jerusalem to worship by these fests. They had to travel if they didn’t live in Jerusalem.
The implication is that three times a year they were to get on their feet and travel to Jerusalem for worship.
Worship is never to be isolated to a house or a single family. Worship that lines up with Sabbath life giving rhythm requires us to travel to a common place and meet with common people who are not our immediate families and worship the Lord together.
This is one of the reasons you’ll see all over the Bible people traveling to meet together in places designated for worship with others who worship God.
The fact that getting to worship is hard should clue us in to the fact there is more going on than meets the eye. The fact that we find ourselves opposed so often when it comes to worship proves that we wrestle not against flesh and blood.
God calls us to travel to meet in all the rhythms of worship as living sacrifices.
When you make Sunday worship a Saturday night decision, and you prepare yourself and your family for the pilgrimage to worship, you are entering a Sabbath rhythm that will be opposed, and you do yourself great benefit and you disciple deeply when you fight like life depends on it to get here.
Sometimes Sabbath rhythm requires us making war on the forces that are opposing us entering the rest of Jesus. Don’t sleep on the effort to get up and travel to worship.
Statistically, “committed” church members average 2 Sundays a month attendance in the evangelical churches of North America.
That sounds like some Elohim other than Jesus are getting remembrance.
We worship in feasting and celebration. 23:15-16
These are feasts and celebrations.
Our worship includes feasting and celebrating.
Listen to God’s desire for us as we gather from our travel for worship: Deuteronomy 14:24-26 (ESV) 24 And if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, when the LORD your God blesses you, because the place is too far from you, which the LORD your God chooses, to set his name there, 25 then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place that the LORD your God chooses 26 and spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household.
Feasting and celebration does not mean glib, flighty, airy, meaningless, or light weight.
We don’t have much of a frame of reference for feasting and celebrating that is weighty and meaningful. The closest I have come to this are the meals and celebrations and words spoken over our sons at milestone birthdays and the times we have celebrated the Passover Seder together as a church.
For us, age 13 was the entrance into manhood and learning what that means. We held an event where we ate, celebrated the year, gave the boys their sword, and asked some men in the church to speak prophetic words over the one we were celebrating. It was joyful. It was celebrative. It was weighty. There was food.
That’s what worship is to be like. Feasting and celebrating with the glory of God overshadowing it.
Don’t hear “we need to bring food on Sunday morning”. That’s missing the mark. In Sunday gathering, we feast in worship with the Supper, and we celebrate in the rhythm of a liturgy that is focused on Father-Son-Holy Spirit.
Our lives at home, Radical Life group, meals together during the week, coffee at Lumina, all are worship and Sabbath rhythms that can and should be worship in feasting and celebration as living sacrifices.
Imagine living like that and it leading to our corporate gathering.
We worship by giving generously. 23:15b
“None shall appear before me empty-handed.” 23:15b
We don’t do biblical justice to all the Bible says about giving. I’m not sure why, but we don’t. We must do better.
Despite that, the Spirit has moved in the hearts of most of TRC to be generous and cheerful givers.
Giving is not about the bank accounts of the church for doing the business of mission. Giving funds mission but giving is not primarily about what a church does.
Giving is a discipleship issue for the person and family. Giving is obedience from the heart that recognizes where all resources come from.
Giving must be in accordance with the Lord’s blessing. As he has given, give proportionately. The tithe, the tenth, is the starting point biblically. It’s a tithe of everything. Not just a net tithe.
Giving must be generous.
Giving must be regular.
Giving must be joyous.
Giving funds the mission, but it does a host of other things. The Levites were to be supplied richly from the tithes as their lives were dedicated to serving the people. Worship was maintained from the giving. The list can and should go on.
But don’t lose sight of the fact that giving is discipleship and to be ongoing regardless of how much is in reserve or needed. Reserve and need are irrelevant. Our hearts and generosity are what’s in play.
If you are not giving, it’s your loss, and you are in danger of God taking it away.
If you have misallocated God’s resources to the place you have no generosity for him, you have been on the Serpent’s plan, and Father will not let that stand.
Giving is not “time and talents”. “Time and talents” are assumed. It takes time and learned skill to generate what God is telling you to offer him. “Time and talents” are cop out words for “I’ve been a poor steward of the currency God requires of me”.
If you have not given or are not giving, especially if you are a member, you need to repent.
We worship continually not just when we gather. 23:17
Verse 17 again tells us they were to gather “three times”, and this “time”, “time” is a different word that designates the number of main feasts. So, the emphasis is a continual commitment to worship the Lord in the prescribed rhythm of worship.
Moses tells us that it is to be “men”. Deuteronomy 16:11 makes clear that women and the children were to be part of the travel, feasting, and celebration also.
Why would Moses here emphasize the men? The primary reason is that the men are to be the heads of their households and lead the family to be part of the worship of the Lord.
The ongoing nature of the feasts, their dovetailing with other feasts, and their placement throughout the year imply that worship is exactly what Romans 12:1-2 says: the entirety of our lives in the ongoing Sabbath reality of worship, and we are either remembering and following the Lord in it or we are unaware that we could be participating in dark and evil worship to our hurt and the shame of Jesus.
Our men are to be the pace setters in this regular rhythm of worship.
We worship in holiness. 23:18a
Making sure to not offer the sacrifice combined with anything leavened was important. This regulation is connected to the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Check out Exodus 34:25), and it applies to other sacrifices too.
The lone exception we’ve noted already is at Ingathering they would offer two leavened loaves as a wave offering. Other than that, they were never to offer leaven. This leavened grain offering in being waved in celebration before the Lord did not have to be combined with a blood sacrifice, so it was allowed as a celebration of the Ingathering.
As we have noted, leaven came to be associated with sin, so God prohibited them from putting together the blood sacrifice with any leaven.
The gospel point for us is that in all our worship we are to be conscious of our practical holiness. It’s not appropriate to offer to the Lord our worship when we are harboring sin. Jesus, the blood sacrifice for our sin was without spot or blemish, therefore, we are to partake in the Lord in holiness.
Paul is clear with the Corinthians they were not to approach the Supper without examination and repentance.
We worship holding nothing back, giving our first and best. 23:18b-19
The portions with the fat were the choicest parts of the meat, and it was to be fully consumed in offering it to the Lord.
This instruction differs from other sacrificial laws where portions of the sacrifice were sometimes allowed to remain overnight (Exodus 29:34; Leviticus 7:15-18). The key to understanding this lies in the specific context and purpose of this command.
The phrase “my feast” likely refers to these three feasts that required travel, and it has to do with complete devotion to give the Lord everything because it’s his.
They are to hold nothing back for selfish purposes. They were to offer their absolute best to the Lord.
We don’t give God some. We give him our all. Our whole selves.
We give him the first of our all.
Living sacrifices. Holy and acceptable.
We must guard ourselves from adopting practices for other gods. 23:19b
Boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk is a strange thing for Moses to include here.
This was something the Canaanites would practice. The Canaanites were a blend of nations, and many of those nations are descendants from the Nephilim, and these nations worshiped Molech and a host of other dark Elohim.
They lived in and delighted in a culture of death, and the very thing God designed to give life, the mother animal’s milk, would be used as a means of cooking the little one that momma goat gave life to. What was created for life was perverted into something deadly.
God explicitly tells his people not to participate in anything of the culture of death.
The culture of Molech is alive and thrives in our midst. The eugenics inspired practice of abortion has turned mothers against generations of children, and we’ve seen that culture of Molech thrive.
That’s just an example of the practices of other gods.
We are to be careful with what we incorporate into our lives of worship and what we bring into the corporate gathering that it is holy from our attitudes, intentions, our practices, and even our songs.
Here is a nefarious example: When we do things in worship for us, we are beginning to cross a line into dark practices we really don’t understand fully and really don’t want any part of. Any thought or action that makes the worship of Father-Son-Holy Spirit about us is demonic and destructive and a means of reveling in the flesh.
Let’s worship!