Israel Worships God For The First Time (MP 40)

To worship God Israel did not yet know,
Though He’d spoken to fathers of the race;
To them as a whole Moses was to go,
Forming a nation that seeks for God’s face!
Moses knew the name of God, and His power;
His tasks for God were Israelites to free,
To teach them God was their mighty tower,
Revealing I AM as their leaning tree!
He told them God had heard their plaintive cry,
And Moses was before Pharaoh to stand;
“Israel’s God says their chains must be laid by;
Let them come worship me, is my demand!”
Moses revealed God’s signs, and they believed,
Accepting Moses as prophet and liege!

Scripture Quoted: Exodus 4:29-31 (NIV)
“Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.”

Commentary on Exodus 4:18-31 (NIV)
God had been working hard for 500 years on His Master Plan for the world to develop and organize the nation of Israel as the first step in His Plan for redeeming men and women; keep in mind that since Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden, all his descendants were condemned. But God loved the world so much—that is, He loved Man so much—that He had voluntarily included the redemption of Man in His Plan. He had revealed Himself by speaking to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and now Moses; but most of the children of Jacob didn’t know much about God. They had no written Bible; no priests; no organized system of religion. In Egypt they were surrounded by Egyptian idols; they intermarried with Egyptians; and other than the males being circumcised as a token of God’s promises to Abraham, they had no images of any god. In fact, many of them had drifted into idolatry, having been in Egypt more than 400 years.

Moses teamed up with his brother Aaron, and they called a meeting of all the elders of the 12 tribes of Israelites and told them what God had said to Moses on Mount Horeb, or Sinai. God had told Moses His name—I AM, which Moses now revealed to Hebrews for the first time. Remember that because of translation from the Hebrew language (which has no vowels), it can be Jehovah, Yahweh, or Yeshua. Now, in modern times, we may use these, or a number of other synonyms for God, such as the Lord, Christ, the Father, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, even Jesus, and many more. God knew a lot about Israel and considered them His Chosen People; until Moses, the Hebrew people knew very little about God.

God revealed to Moses His supernatural power. Since we have been looking at Man over God’s shoulder, so to speak, by reading this series of poems, scriptures, and commentaries, we know a lot about what He can do; for example, He launched this gigantic expanding universe with His spoken word alone. But the men and women we have been studying have been unaware of God’s mighty power. True, Abraham and Sarah gave birth to Isaac after she was too old to give birth, but God did most of His miracles behind the scenes. Now, however, He has shown Moses a flaming bush that is not consumed; He has taught Moses to throw his staff on the ground and it will turn into a snake; to put his hand in his bosom and pull it out covered in leprosy; and to pour water on the ground and have it turn into blood. These “signs” only work in front of Hebrews or Pharaoh, in order to prove God is Who He says He is. (When God came to earth as the man, Jesus of Nazareth, He performed hundreds of miracles, such as healing, turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead, etc. They had a wonderful effect in convincing people to believe that He was sent from God. The miracle is, how can we humans NOT believe in God?)

After Moses and Aaron had told the Israelites what God had said to Moses and shown them the three miraculous signs, they believed in God and bowed down and worshiped Him for the first time. What a momentous occasion! They also accepted Moses as the leader of Israel and the prophet of God.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not die, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)