God reiterated the main things to Moses the second round. I was struck by verse 20. “No one is to appear before me empty handed”…I think so many days in our lives, we expect for God to protect, prepare, and provide for us. It is a reasonable expectation; He promises to do so if we will follow Him. But, like Israel, I think we start believing we are entitled to those gifts; and believe me, they are wonderful gifts.
Still, God wants His chosen to live lives that do not resemble entitled and spoiled children. We must come before God living sacrificially and presenting to Him selfless lives. It is not that He has any desire to take away the life He has provided; instead, He simply wants us to hold on loosely to the things of this world. Allow the Lord to bless us; but be willing to lay whatever we possess on the alter before Him and allow Him to do with it what He sees fit to do.
Israel was training to be God’s chosen people. All their grumbling centered around their selfish fears and desires. God was training Moses to change the attitude to one of gratitude and sacrifice. With that attitude, there would be no one or no thing that could stop Israel.
During this season of celebration of Christ’s coming to the world, We need to adopt the same spirit that God commanded of the Israelites. Do not appear before God empty handed. We must always follow with an attitude of gratitude and selflessness! If we will, we will not become entitled or spoiled.
Further, we will see God at His best guiding us to the amazing goal of His promise. I think Paul said it best in Romans 8:18, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
God Bless You
“No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
21 “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.
22 “Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year.[b] 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. 24 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.
25 “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.
26 “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.”
27 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.” 28 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.
The Radiant Face of Moses
29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. 32 Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.
33 When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. 34 But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.
Walking With God 