I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 33-35.
When After the incident with the golden calf, God instructed the people to stop wearing jewelry and fine clothes. As I read that I thought that it made a good point about how we should live our lives. I still do, but I am not sure how to put that point into words. The people of Israel accepted God’s judgment of their actions and changed their behavior to reflect their repentance. We should live our lives so that they reflect our repentance for our sins, reflect our desire to be different going forward.
When Moses asked God whom He would send with them as He sent them to the Promised Land, God answered that He would personally go with Moses. To which Moses replied that God needed to personally go with the entire people. God acknowledged and accepted Moses’ clarification. I believe that God personally goes with each and everyone of us who has accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. God looks favorably upon us and knows us by name. It is God’s personal presence with us which sets us apart as His people. Now, this should cause us to have great joy. However, it should also cause us to have great trepidation because it means that He is right there when we do wrong.
I want to reiterate a little bit. We are not anonymous faces in the crowd. God knows who we are by name, more than that He knows us personally. So whatever we do impacts what God thinks of us. When we do something good, God is proud of us. When we do wrong, God is disappointed in us. I think we all know that someone who, when they notice us do something good, we get an extra warm feeling that makes us feel ten feet tall, and when they notice us do something of which they do not approve we shrink inside. That is how we should feel about God every moment of every day. He notices the good and the bad that we do.