Service in the Old Testament

Strong’s Concordance has pages and pages of “serve, serving, servant, servant hood,” etc. It soon becomes clear that in Bible times “servant” was a widely-used term. People were forever referring to themselves as “your servant” to show respect, and such notables as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, David, Daniel, and Mary, Jesus’ mother, are called servants of God. What higher calling could there be?

In Strong’s one sees that frequently “loved and served” or “worshiped and served” appear together. Sometimes people, rather than loving and serving the Creator, are loving, serving, and worshiping other gods, such as the sun, moon, and host of heaven, as in Jeremiah 8:2. But mostly such people are said to have “gone and served,” or “left and served.” They have wandered from their true purpose in life. On the other hand, Psalm 100 equates serving the true God with praise and joy.

So service to God seems inextricably entwined with love and with worship. In Exodus, Moses’ constantly reiterated plea to Pharaoh is that God says, “Let my people go that they may serve me.” What does this entail? Is it just to hold worship “services,” as they were called thousands of years ago, (see for example, Ex. 12:25, 26; 27:19; Heb. 9:1) and as we call them to this day?

Deut. 10:12, 13 defines the service God asks of us quite clearly: “What does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you

today for your good?”’ (Fear, in this context, means to revere and be utterly loyal to. It does not refer to being afraid.) This passage sounds very similar to Deuteronomy 6:4-5, the famous prayer of Israel. Serve, it seems, means love and obey.

Then, is our service to God complete with our relationship to and worship of Him as Lord, Redeemer, and Creator? We might think that to be true, if it were not for the fact that the vast majority of those “commandments and statutes” have to do with how we treat and serve each other.