“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5-6)
This passage from Exodus describes one of the most important events in the Old Testament. The Lord spoke to Moses from atop Mount Sinai and Him the Law and Moses spoke the law to the Israelites and commanded them to follow. If they obeyed, they would be blessed. If they broke the covenant, they would be punished. The whole purpose of the book of Exodus, perhaps of the Torah itself is summed up here in 19:5-6. God had delivered His people from slavery and brought them to Mt. Sinai to make a covenant with them. They are called to be, first of all, the Lord’s treasured possession. Of all the nations of earth, Israel is the one in whom He delights. Israel is also called to be a Kingdom of priests, set apart for God’s service to all the nations of the earth. They are called to be a holy nation, set apart from sin, dedicated to the Lord, to be obedient to His Word.
The people agreed to do all the Lord had commanded them, but, as we know from their history, they failed. Eventually almost all of them perished in the wilderness never having seen or entered the Promised Land because they failed to trust the Lord and refused to obey Him. And their descendants proved to be equally faithless eventually rejecting the Messiah, Jesus, God incarnate.
We who comprise the Church today have the same calling as those Israelites had, but we have a greater covenant, one which the Lord has sealed by the blood of Jesus. We are all grateful that He has called us out of the world, that He has granted us eternal life. But still, like those ancient Israelites, when it comes to holiness and obedience, we balk. We look at the world and we see the happiness and pleasure that millions seem to enjoy apart from God and we want the same. We confuse the values of the world with the holiness of God’s kingdom. Yet as Peter (1 Peter 2:9) reminds us, the church is a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart. In the light of our calling we should reexamine our worldview as well as all those things we value. Only as we submit to the will of God and undertake our calling as His people can we be blessed as well as a blessing to all others who see the Lord Jesus in us.