Serve, Fear, and Obey

The Lord’s demand to Pharaoh is plain: let My people go, that they may serve Me. Israel was not freed for idleness, but for worship and obedience. Pharaoh would ask relief under the rod, confess sin with his lips, and then return to hardness when the plague was lifted. So a man may tremble at punishment and yet not repent. Temporary fear is not the same as a changed will.

The psalm teaches the better path: to fear the Lord, hope in His mercy, and praise Him whose word made heaven and earth. Clement says, “for by His word they were established, and all their host by the breath of His mouth.” The same Lord whose word created all things also judges all nations. Isaiah sets before us the end without ornament: no kingdom, no army, no proud man will stand when God arises to requite evil. As Hippolytus says, “The heaven shall be rolled together like a scroll: the whole earth shall be burnt up by reason of the deeds done in it, which men did corruptly, in fornications, in adulteries, and in lies and uncleanness, and in idolatries, and in murders, and in battles.”

Therefore Christ rebukes the religion that keeps its own customs while setting aside God’s commandment. Uncleanness does not begin on the hands but in the heart, and from the heart come the deeds that defile a man. Yet the same Lord who exposes what is within also opens deaf ears and loosens mute tongues. Let us then not honor God with lips only, but with obedient hearts: casting away vain customs, confessing real sins, and serving Him in truth while there is still time.