Recently, I spent the weekend in the Asheville area. Had been planning this trip for months, mainly to get off the grid and simply spend time reading Scripture, meditating on it, praying for my future and planning the priorities I want to focus on.
Due to my hippy tendencies I feel very at home in a place like Asheville…shoulda known the first shop I'd stop in would be a rare and used book store. I decided not to purchase the 1,200 dollar copy of the Book of Common Prayer that's a couple hundred years old (maybe next year) and opted for "The Five Books of Moses" By Robert Alter, a translation and commentary on the Torah. I have wanted for awhile to purchase one of his translations/commentaries and got quite deal on this hefty book. Someday I hope to acquire his "The David Story".
All this to say, I decided to jump right into Exodus as I've been studying in there lately. Below is Exodus 13:4-5 followed by his commentary.
In other words, the Lord set the Israelites free from the Egyptians so they could serve him instead. The same happens for the Christian. Before God saves someone, a Christian a slave to sin, and short of divine miracle, there is no escape. But then God saves us and we are slaves of Christ. And what a blessing that is.
Due to my hippy tendencies I feel very at home in a place like Asheville…shoulda known the first shop I'd stop in would be a rare and used book store. I decided not to purchase the 1,200 dollar copy of the Book of Common Prayer that's a couple hundred years old (maybe next year) and opted for "The Five Books of Moses" By Robert Alter, a translation and commentary on the Torah. I have wanted for awhile to purchase one of his translations/commentaries and got quite deal on this hefty book. Someday I hope to acquire his "The David Story".
All this to say, I decided to jump right into Exodus as I've been studying in there lately. Below is Exodus 13:4-5 followed by his commentary.
"Today you are going out, in the month of the New Grain. And so when the LORD brings you to the land of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Emorite and the Hivite and the Jebusite which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall perform this service in this month."
"this service. The reference is to the Passover ritual. As has often been noted, the Hebrew 'avodah, the term for service or worship, is also the word repeatedly used for the labor or slavery in Egypt; so the narrative traces a move from coerced manual service to service of the deity."
In other words, the Lord set the Israelites free from the Egyptians so they could serve him instead. The same happens for the Christian. Before God saves someone, a Christian a slave to sin, and short of divine miracle, there is no escape. But then God saves us and we are slaves of Christ. And what a blessing that is.
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