17 Make for yourselves no gods of metal.

18 Keep the feast of unleavened bread; for seven days your food is to be bread without leaven, as I gave you orders, at the regular time in the month Abib; for in that month you came out of Egypt.

How often have we heard a preacher preach about God and His love? How often have we heard about a God that hates to share? About love we hear all the time. It makes us feel good. It is called it the feel good gospel. People love to feel good. If we talk about the other side we get criticized and ridiculed. If we talk about the end and God condemning to hell people will laugh at us. But to focus on love only gives us a view of God that is not very true. It would mean that God has changed from the Old Testament to the New. I dont think that is true. The argument is that now we are living in the New Testament rules, and Jesus is our sacrifice. That is very true. Jesus blood was the replacement for the daily sacrifice that the Old Testament required. What Jesus NEVER did was change the character and heart of God. But we dont look at God as a whole. I remember an older couple who bought a house. They loved their house when they bought it. A big yard for the wife to enjoy, and a big garage for the husband to do his work. What a great buy. But then they found that the inside of the house was not what they thought. It was nice of course but it had secrets. This made the house not what they thought. They had not taken a good look at the whole of the house. If we see God as a whole we must look at things like jealousy and anger. In fact the Bible talks a lot about this part of God and not so much about Gods love. The reason is this. God wants us to focus on Him. He wants everything we think and do in our life to be focused on Him. That is very tough. Lets look at the verses we read today. God is very clear about what He wants Israel to do when they enter the Promised Land. He knew that if they were to NOT do them that they would not stay focused on Him. In verses 4 and 5 we find that God reminded Moses of His character. Moses had to know that when God brought negative and bad things to Israel it was not a decision made in a moment. God does not do things in anger instantly like we do. God wanted only the best for Israel His chosen people. He had made many promises of protection and power. But God had only one concern. Now that Israel had escaped Egypt they would lose their focus.

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