Don't die in Egypt !

This morning, in my daily Bible reading, I arrived at the story in 2 Kings 23 where King Josiah leads the people in renewing their covenant with God, and ridding the land and the temple of all the terrible evidence of years of idol worship.

One of the things they did at that time, was to begin celebrating the Passover again. Way back when they were slaves in Egypt (see Exodus 12: 14) God saved them from death and oppression, and gave them the Passover as a “lasting ordinance” to be observed throughout all generations. He wanted them and their children to remember who God is and what God had done for them.

It seems that they did remember to celebrate the Passover in the early days of settling in the Promised Land, but somewhere along the line, perhaps during the time of the judges or perhaps around the time that they rejected God’s rulership and demanded a human king, the people stopped celebrating this feast that commemorated what God had done for them. (See 2 Kings 23: 22.) And this led them to slide into all kinds of evil and idolatry. By the time Josiah came along and the lost Book of the Covenant was discovered, the Passover hadn’t been celebrated for hundreds of years. 

The warning to me is simple: if we don’t remember and express thankfulness for what God has already done for us, it will be much easier for us to slide into behaviours that are not honouring to Him. 

• If we don’t keep being thankful for the fact that Jesus died to pay the price for our sin, we will more easily fall into the sin of self-righteousness. 
• If we forget to thank God regularly that all provision ultimately comes from Him, we could end up feeling that we have provided for ourselves, and see what we have as “my” money to spend as I please. 
• If we forget to be thankful for God’s guidance and direction in the past, we could end up relying on our own understanding and making our own decisions without His input.

And so it goes on. I may not celebrate a Passover in 2014 but, Father, help me never to be presumptuous and forget to celebrate all You have done for me.

Ironically, although Josiah reinstated the Passover, reminding people of how God brought them out of Egypt, his son Jehoahaz chose to do evil in God’s sight. A Pharaoh carried him off to Egypt, and there he died (verse 34.) I don’t want to die in Egypt. Help me, Lord, to live with a heart that’s thankful for what you’ve done in the past and obedient to what you want done in the future.