April 29, 2021
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Deuteronomy? Here’s today’s reading:
Deuteronomy 12 (NIV)
The One Place of Worship
1 These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess—as long as you live in the land. 2 Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods.......Continue Reading
It does matter to God where we gather. The church is an important and significant place to God. While I know we can pray, sing, worship, serve God anywhere this chapter does show that the church is important to God.
Deuteronomy 12
The Lord is very specific in His instructions regarding what the people are to eat. But what is the significance of the blood?
Does my comment below answer your question Suzanne?
Deut 12.
The Jews are to worship God in the one place He selects once they occupy the promised land. At that time the presence of God will be in the tabernacle and then the temple, and so the worship of God must be in that place. God associates worship that happens anywhere and in any way to be associated with the pagan gods. The Jews are not to worship like them and must destroy all the elements associated with pagan worship. God is a holy God and reflects His holiness in the specific instructions He gives the people for worship. The Jews are also instructed here not to eat blood. God wanted them to associate blood with atonement and therefore it’s use would be sanctified to offering sacrifices. The Northern kingdom will completely disobey these commands later on, ignoring what Moses says here.
We can be glad that the worshippers Jesus wants are those that worship in Spirit and truth because access to God is through a person, Jesus, and is not found in a place. Although the gathering of the saints is very important, the church is the people because they are where God’s Spirit dwells.
Man has a tendency to make God in his own image, to do what is right in his own eyes. I seem to recall reading this somewhere near the end of Judges where the people were characterized by doing what is right in their own eyes.
Following God, worshiping God, takes discipline, an active part seeking not to take away nor add to His prescription. As I read of God’s promise to set one place for worship, as opposed to all the high places and altars he asks them to tear down, I can see a foreshadowing of Christ, that he is the singular way to a relationship to God.
Deuteronomy 11 & 12
Serve the Lord in the place designated.
Eat your own meat whenever you like but don’t eat the blood.
Don’t even wonder about the worship of the false gods…..they do abominable things.
29The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, 30and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” 31You must not worship the Lordyour God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lordhates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
32See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.