The Lord is going over again some of the things that make Israel different from the cultures around her. Today we pick up our study of Chapter 34 with the other two festivals that the Jewish men were required to observe each year. The first is Passover (the Festival of Unleavened Bread), which we looked at over the weekend.
"Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel." (Exodus 34:22-23) These other two festivals are also known as Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. In the gospel accounts we find Jesus observing these festivals as the Lord commanded the Jewish men to do. We see Him traveling to Jerusalem each time these holy days come up on the calendar during the years of His ministry. I am sure He observed these festivals every single year from the time He became of age to be required to attend.
While the men are away from home, observing these festivals to the Lord, they need not worry about the safety of their homesteads. "I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God." (Exodus 34:24) The Lord who is going to uproot the pagan tribes from the promised land and plant the tribes of Israel in their place is more than able to keep their homesteads safe while they obey Him by observing the three highest holy days of their nation.
It's interesting that the Lord says while the men are away "no one will covet your land". Other tribes and other nations have always coveted Israel's land. This is true even in our own times. But the Lord supernaturally prevented Israel's enemies from coveting what these men owned while they were away from home worshiping the Lord in Jerusalem. The Lord commanded them to be away from home during this time; therefore He watches over everything they own while they're gone. He is responsible for protecting what He's given these men because He is the one who is responsible for commanding them to observe these festivals. They can go up to Jerusalem in obedience to the Lord without worry on their minds. Their wives and children and animals and homes are going to be protected by the power of the Lord.
The verses above really speak to me this morning. If the Lord is telling us to go do a particular thing or pursue a particular education or occupation, we need not worry that while we're being obedient other important things in our lives are going to fall apart or come to harm. Often we may know exactly what the Lord is telling us to do but in our minds we're thinking, "But what if this happens? Or what if that happens?" If the Lord is in it, He will protect and preserve whatever needs protecting and preserving while we're obeying His instructions. If the Lord hadn't protected the families and lands of the Jewish men while they went up to Jerusalem to observe the three festivals each year, the men would have been afraid to go. But He's telling them they have nothing to fear. The same God who miraculously brought them out of Egypt and provided for them in the wilderness is the same God who is going to protect the blessings He gives them in the promised land.
Next we find the Lord mentioning yeast again, and you'll recall how we've spoken before about yeast being a symbol for sin in the Bible. "Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to Me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover festival remain until morning." (Exodus 34:25) Only unleavened bread could be offered to the Lord. The Israelites ate unleavened bread on the first Passover because they didn't have time to wait for dough to rise. Also they were going to need to take dough with them so they could bake bread on the journey, and if they had made the bread with yeast it would have rotted before they got past the Red Sea and into the wilderness where God began to supernaturally provide manna and quail for them.
Many of the instructions we're studying in today's chapter come from Chapter 23. These were given before Moses received the first set of tablets. But since then the people fell into idolatry and celebrated a pagan festival to a golden image, so as the Lord prepares to provide a second set of tablets He brings up these same instructions again. This sets a wonderful example for us about how to get back on track when we've disobeyed the Lord. The first thing we must do is repent, of course, but the second thing we ought to do is get back into studying what the word of God says. That will help us to obey this instruction: "Fix these words of Mine in your hearts and minds." (Deuteronomy 11:18a) When the word of God is fixed in our hearts and minds we are less likely to fall back into the same sin we just repented of. As we said yesterday, over and over the Lord told Israel not to commit idolatry. He said it so many times because He knew a great number of them would be tempted time and time again to join in with the idolatry of the cultures around them. If He had not repeated this instruction so many times, no doubt the people would have engaged in idolatry even more often than we find them doing in the Bible. The Lord is repeating His instructions to the people here in Chapter 34 because they got off track and need these reminders to help them get back and stay on track.
We previously saw these next rules in Chapter 23 as well. "Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God. Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk." (Exodus 34:26) We owe our best to God. He is the One who provides the harvest, so when bringing offerings from the harvest to the Lord they are to bring the first and the best that their fields produce.
As we discussed while in Chapter 23, the reason for the instruction regarding the young goat and its mother's milk is unclear. Some scholars state that there was an ancient Canaanite ritual in which a young goat was offered in its mother's milk to a pagan god. Others believe this instruction was given to prevent cruelty so that a young goat could not be taken from its mother before it was weaned, so as not to cause additional distress to either of the animals. But a prevailing theory, among both Christian scholars and Jewish scholars, now seems to be that the Lord is telling the people not to mix the old with the new. They are coming out of Egypt where they've spent several centuries in an idolatrous land and they are not to try to mix anything from the Egyptian religion with their worship of the one true God. As they move into and take over the promised land they are not to try to mix anything from the ancient Canaanite religions into their worship of the one true God. They are not to revert back into the ancient religion which the ancestors of Abraham practiced in the land of Ur. Each time we find the instruction regarding the young goat and its mother's milk we will also find the instruction regarding bringing firstfruits to the Lord, so it seems to be connected with newness. The people are to be looking forward to the future, not back to what happened to them in Egypt and not back to ancient pagan religions. They aren't even to keep looking back at their own failures, such as their very recent fall into idolatry, because when a person keeps wallowing in guilt and in a spirit of defeat he will be unable to move ahead and be useful to the Lord. We must acknowledge our sin and repent of it, but repentance also means to turn away from our sin and move ahead into the Lord's will. So when we refuse to forgive ourselves after the Lord has forgiven us, and when we keep thinking of ourselves as being "disqualified" for the Lord's service, we are living in the past and are rendering ourselves incapable of fulfilling the Lord's will for our lives. God is a forward-looking God and we must look forward with Him.
"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.' Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant---the Ten Commandments." (Exodus 34:27-28) Moses is gone just as long the second time as he was the first time but the people don't make an idolatrous image the second time. They don't conclude Moses is dead or that he has run off and abandoned them. They don't question whether God has abandoned them either, since He's graciously willing to provide another copy of the commandments which they violated earlier in Exodus.
The Lord supernaturally keeps Moses alive during these forty days and nights. It's possible to live for forty days without eating but it's only possible to go a few days without water. The Lord who created the body of Moses is able to sustain Moses while he's on the mountain without provisions.
We have been told twice before in Exodus that God Himself wrote the ten commandments on the tablets with His own finger. I don't think it's a contradiction in verse 28 today when the Bible speaks of Moses writing down the ten commandments. Both times when Moses has been on the mountain he's been given lots of other instructions besides the ten commandments and we can only assume he wrote these instructions on a scroll or, as some have suggested, on the back side of the tablets. Moses may have written down the ten commandments (and other instructions) on the back side of the tablets or on a scroll but that doesn't mean God didn't write them out originally. The ten commandments have been reproduced hundreds of thousands of times, or even millions of times, since they were originally given. They've been written on scrolls, printed in books, engraved in stone, imprinted in various types of composite materials for lawn ornaments or home decoration, typed on internet websites, and engraved in jewelry. The fact that they've been rewritten so many times doesn't take away from the fact that God is the One who composed them, engraved them, and gave them to Israel in the first place.
This concludes the section we've been studying for three days. Tomorrow we learn about an interesting effect Moses' time with the Lord has had on His appearance and we compare the remainder of Exodus 34 with 2 Corinthians 3.
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