Day 18: September 22, 2025 – Exodus 19-21

Moses and the Israelites continue to be in the favor of God even so far as God saying in 19:5 “You shall be my treasured possession.” It is here that the Israelites become the people of God and become those chosen by God to be His people. It is from here that we get the term: people of God, which we use as a church all of the time. God follows up this designation with the ten commandments which he gives to Moses and which the people of God hear and say that they will obey. This is all before Moses disobeys God and before God punishes the Israelites and Moses by demanding that they wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the generation that escaped from Israel and were making decisions have passed away.

The 10 commandments are a flash point today in general US politics which is a bit silly. They are being made to represent something that they never represented when God gave them to Moses and the Israelites. They were never meant to be commandments for the whole world but rather for the people of God back then in Moses’ day. The Levitical laws that came along later were a compliment to the commandments and Jesus himself with his greatest commandment and his words on Matthew 5-7 (which we will look at later and which are here today as an option) reflect what we as Christians ought to follow and obey.