September 4, 2017
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Reading along with us in Deuteronomy? Here’s today’s reading:
Deuteronomy 12 (ESV)
“These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth. 2 You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. 3 You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. 4 You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. 5 But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, 6 and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock.7 And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in which the Lord your God has blessed you… Continue Reading
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Purity matters
The warnings here in Deuteronomy 12 bring to mind Psalm 1:
1 Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
I found that when say they must pour out the blood of the sacrifices, it reminds me of Jesus during the last supper and how He gave His blood to be poured out for us and gave up His body for us. And later when it says the blood should be poured out like water it reminds me of on the cross how Jesus’ blood poured out and water came from His side. It’s just another reminder how Jesus was the sacrifice for us.
8″You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, 9for you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the Lord your God is giving you.
What a privilege to know God and to have the opportunity to worship Him! Here God directs the Israelites to destroy the relics of false worship to remove the temptation of worshipping the Canaanite gods and to reinforce the lack of value in these idols. He also specifies that once they are settled in the land, He will choose a location to worship Him, in other words, a place where the tabernacle will be permanently located. It reminds me of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman where she brings up the Jews and the Samaritans disagreed where that place should be. But what does Jesus say? God desires those who worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Gratefully location doesn’t matter anymore because we have the Holy Spirit within us and we no longer need to sacrifice animals due to the atoning work of Jesus on the cross. And I think it is the significance that blood had in providing atonement (representing the giving of a life) that causes God to sanctify blood in general and tell the Israelites not to eat it. It is too sacred and should be used and prioritized for the sacrifice of animals to purify from sin.
And as Jim M says above, it is clear that God prioritizes a right thing done in a right way!