Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 19-21.

Having provided the Israelites a learning test with the manna, where He taught them about following His instructions, God spoke to them at Mt Sinai.  First, He has Moses convey the “preamble” to the covenant He will make with Israel.  If the Israelites would obey God and fully keep His covenant with them, He would make them a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.  This reminds me of what Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2 when he said that those who follow Christ are “a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”  The Israelites failed to keep their covenant with God, so God created a new covenant in order to create a holy nation.  I want to note that in this case the word “nation” refers to a people group.  In the case here in Exodus, the people group out of which God wished to create a holy nation was the descendants of Jacob, something we today often refer to as an ethnic group.  The people group to whom Peter refers is composed of those who accepted God’s gift of grace through faith in Christ Jesus.  The former group one entered by birth, the latter group by faith in Christ.  God may have raised up a new holy nation to be his priesthood to the world but He did not forget His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob concerning their descendants.  Let us praise God and honor Him by bringing His Word to others so that they may join the people of God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.