Worship: Who You Gonna Serve?
Parashat Va’era, Exodus 6:2–9:35
Rabbi Russ Resnik
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody. (Bob Dylan, Slow Train Coming)
Exodus is the Torah’s book of worship. It takes Israel from the scene of oppression in Egypt, to Mount Sinai where they become a kingdom of priests, to the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness, where the Lord will meet with his people in the midst of the camp. Thus, when the Lord first calls Moses from the burning bush and sends him to deliver his people, he says, “This shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain” (3:12).
Worship in Hebrew is avodah, which is also the word for service or labor. Israel has served Pharaoh, and now they must serve God. In the Hebrew, we might say that Israel has worshiped Pharaoh—the verb is the same—and now they must worship God. They have devoted their time, abilities, and energies to the glory of Pharaoh, and now they must devote their time, abilities, and energies to the glory of God. Pharaoh, however, believes the people must serve him, so the Lord instructs Moses to tell him, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Let my people go, that they may serve me’” (8:16 [20]).
Here in three Hebrew words we have the theme of the entire book of Exodus: Shalach ami v’ya’avduni—“Let my people go, that they may serve [worship] me.” The first half of this phrase, “let my people go,” describes the first half of Exodus, in which the God of Israel forces Pharaoh to release his people “by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors” (Deuteronomy 4:34). This half concludes with the crossing of the Red Sea. The second half, “that they may worship me,” includes the encounter at Sinai, and the building of the tabernacle, where Israel worships the Lord who dwells in their midst.
This drama of worship in the book of Exodus teaches us much about our worship today.
1) Man is a worshiping being, created for a relationship with God.
Adam walks with God in the Garden, in a simple intimacy with God that is at the heart of all worship. After the expulsion from the Garden, men build altars, present offerings, and call upon the Lord. Worship is at the center of who we are as human beings. Hence, we are to worship with our whole being, not as an isolated event, but as we spend our energies, time, and passions to increase God’s glory. We sometimes hear the phrase “praise and worship” used to describe the musical component of a service. Such language pictures worship as a mood or an experience or a component, but in truth, the entire service is worship, and the service should reflect our entire lives given to worship.
2) There is a cosmic struggle for our worship.
We would like to imagine ourselves as autonomous beings, who may choose whom to worship or whether to worship at all. But Exodus reveals that, as Bob Dylan sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody”—God or Pharaoh. So when Moses makes a modest demand of Pharaoh to release Israel for three days to worship the Lord in the wilderness (3:18; 5:3), Pharaoh cannot compromise. If he acknowledges God’s claim here, he loses his claim on the very souls of the Israelites.
The temptation of Messiah (Matt. 4:8–11 CJB) reveals this same tug-of-war over worship.
Once more, the Adversary took him up to the summit of a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in all their glory, and said to him, “All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.” “Away with you, Satan!” Yeshua told him, “For the Tanakh says,
‘Worship Adonai your God, and serve only him.’”
Then the Adversary let him alone, and angels came and took care of him.
The adversary seeks to draw our worship away from the Lord, thus diminishing his glory and disrupting the divine order established at creation. He entices us with worldly power and comfort. Scripture does not promote asceticism or a narrow religiosity, but it does alert us to the power of the materialistic culture that surrounds us. We need to resist the images of greed, lust, and vanity that bombard us in the name of entertainment or success. The adversary does not insist on being worshiped directly; he is satisfied to simply divert our worship away from the God of Israel.
3) This struggle for worship centers upon Israel.
In Exodus, the Lord identifies Israel as his firstborn son, and contends with Pharaoh over Israel. Israel is representative humanity, the priestly nation. If their worship can remain diverted, then the worship of the rest of the nations will be as well. This contest over worship may help explain the intense struggle that has characterized Jewish history over the centuries, and continues today. It is a struggle not just over Israel’s destiny, but over the fulfillment of God’s plan for all humanity.
4) Falsely directed worship results in bondage.
So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage––in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor. (Exod. 1:13–14 NKJV, emphasis added)
The Hebrew root avad – serve or worship – appears five times in these two verses, to highlight the bondage of misdirected service. In contrast, through the sacrifice of Messiah, we are delivered out of the bondage of alienation from God and brought near to him. This personal story of salvation is just a part of the Big Story of the restoration of humankind to God. The message of Scripture proclaims deliverance to all who are serving false gods—whether the gods of paganism, or the gods of secular materialism.
5) We are set free from bondage to worship the true God.
The goal of our deliverance is not autonomy, but worship. God leads Israel out of Egypt not just to enjoy freedom and prosperity, but to establish the tabernacle and priesthood; Messiah comes not just to forgive us from sin, or to bring us into God’s blessing, but to restore us as worshipers.
The biblical drama ends with worship. The book of Revelation is the New Covenant counterpart to Exodus as the book of worship. There we see,
a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” . . . These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. (Rev. 7: 9–10, 14–15 NKJV)
We are created from the beginning to worship, and worship is our destiny in the end. The first man and woman were placed in the Garden of Eden to walk with the Lord in the cool of the day. In Messiah, we will be restored to such intimacy in the age to come when the purpose of creation is fulfilled.
For the journey: Am I a worshiper, or just someone who squeezes a few minutes of worship into my busy schedule? Does my worship on Shabbat, or Sunday, or other “religious” times, reflect a life of worship through the week? Do I spend my time, abilities, and energies to increase God’s name and reputation?
From Creation to Completion: A Guide to Life’s Journey from the Five Books of Moses, Lederer Books, 2006.