8th SUN ORD – “Let’s talk serving…”

  Yep, let’s talk “serving…”  The Greek word below translates the Hebrew, abodah, “to serve… to worship.” We’ll see how it shows up in Exodus as the difference between serving / worshiping Pharaoh or God.  Or in Deuteronomy as serving idols in the Promised Land.  Or in the prophets…  You get the picture.

To serve; worship; bond = douleuo

Matthew 6:24        “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Exodus 14:12         Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Deuteronomy 28:63f        And just as the Lord took delight in making you prosperous and numerous, so the Lord will take delight in bringing you to ruin and destruction; you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to possess.  The Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other; and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known.

Jeremiah 5:19        And when your people say, “Why has the Lord our God done all these things to us?” you shall say to them, “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours.”

Jeremiah 35:15        I have sent to you all my servants the prophets, sending them persistently, saying, “Turn now everyone of you from your evil way, and amend your doings, and do not go after other gods to serve them, and then you shall live in the land that I gave to you and your ancestors.” But you did not incline your ear or obey me.

Here’s my starting point:  I/we are inevitably and irreversibly attracted to serve other gods, even though we’re instructed to not seek after idols.  It’s a given.

SO… it’s into this reality that the word of God shines forth.  What do you see in the Light?  How do you welcome the Light?  –roc,sj