Worship
the Lord
Deuteronomy 12: 1-28
The Great Covenant
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Max
A Forsythe
Introduction:
When I first started teaching twenty-five years ago, I stumbled upon a
form of discipline that required only slight modifications in all that time.
Simply put, I formulated five principles of behavior that applied to
every aspect of employment and instruction.
They advised:
Honesty:
in all classroom relationships
Maturity:
which included modesty, graciousness and responsibility
Amiability:
being able to get along with a wide variety of people, including the
teacher
Promptness:
being on time and consistent in attendance
Diligence:
in providing evidence of competent work and knowledge
There were trip wires of behavior
that I would jump on whenever an aspect of this necessary behavior was abridged.
By contrast the school’s student handbook began with a dozen or more
statutes, which specifically banned certain actions.
Over the course of years that list grew to at least three dozen, because
the students were inventive in creating more problems than the statutory law
could cover.
I report this experience to
demonstrate the necessary difference between what we call English Common Law and
Le Code Napoleon. The
English tradition is one of principle and the French one of listings. A French judge has an easy job, if he can find the crime
committed and the punishment is prescribed for the guilty party.
The English or American judge must wrestle with making the punishment fit
the crime. His real job is one of
teaching and explanation, whereas the job of the French and like-minded judges
is simply to pronounce a seemingly arbitrary decree like Hammarabi, with which
he may or may not agree. Rousas
Rushdoony comments on this problem of statutory law in these words:
“Hence the weakness of statute law: because
it insists on defining each particular variety of a crime precisely, it creates
a problem for law enforcement.”
By contrast with all worldly
systems, we in the Judeo-Christian tradition have set of ten revealed from which
a wide array of subordinate standards of several kinds may be derived.
Rusdoony gives a careful definition for the Hebrew word “Torah”
“The basis Biblical word for ‘law’ is tora
(or torah).
Tora
means not only instruction or teaching, but, fundamentally, “direction.”
The law thus gives the God-ordained direction to life; a lawless life is
a directionless life in the sense that no true meaning exists apart from God.
Evil is not an absence or thinness of being, but is an ethical, not a
metaphysical, departure from God.”
We of course in the Christian
community would agree and one study of atheists also confirms their lawlessness,
since the study indicated that most atheists refuse to believe in God because
they do not want to feel guilty about that aspect of His law that they reject.
And so they have their hearts desire – a lawless existence.
Old
Covenant Milieu: Now,
at this point in our survey of Deuteronomy, we move from a general assessment of
The Great Covenant to the specific “statutes and
judgments” derived and applied from the ten principles.
These do not have a life apart from the law, but redemonstrate the
application of those principles in a rural setting – to which the people are
preparing to move. We may
understand that once Moses established the seventy judges, he reserved the more
difficult interpretations of the ten principles for himself.
These, I believe are the assorted collection of “common laws” derived
from the ten scattered throughout the book of Exodus, Numbers and Leviticus.
Deuteronomy is a more codified
repetition of all that has been accomplished already.
Dr Wright outlines this next (specific application) section of
Deuteronomy in the context of the ten commandments with Moses preaching and
explaining that application of derived statutes, so as to demonstrate the
revealed process of defining and establishing legal jurisprudence for the nation
of Israel.
Chapters 12-13
the first through third commandments are reflected here.
Chapters 14-16
the fourth commandment underlies the majority of these three
chapters.
Chapters 16-18
the fifth commandment is the foundation for legitimate human
authority.
Chapters 19-21
the sixth commandment, with instruction on eighth - tenth being
alluded to.
Chapter
22
the seventh commandment is the basis for regulating intimate
relationships.
Chapters 23-26
the laws become more miscellaneous here, but a community ethos of
care and
compassion stands out for the benefit of the weak and the poor.
With that outline in mind, let us
proceed to consider the basic regulations for the worship of the One True God of
heaven and earth. In verse one
Moses begins by reminding the people of Israel that the land was a divine gift
in fulfillment of a dependable promise given to their ancestors. This gift now precedes the demand, the demand that the law of
the Lord must not only be heard but also obeyed.
Raymond Brown puts it this way: “obedience
was to be the obligatory response to the Lord’s generosity – a way of
acknowledging God’s goodness, not a means of earning his favour.”
Several themes spring out of
Moses sermonizing here. The first
demand is that the people “shall utterly destroy
all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods,
on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.”
Now, you don’t have to travel
too far from the highways and byways of America to discover a sense of spiritual
paganism. The Catholic shrines and
holy sites are barely a step up in this matter, and they fill the romanized
areas of Western Europe and to a lesser extent South America. However, you have only to go further east, or dig deeper into
the symbolic geography of ancient cultures to get a sense of what Palestine was
once like. In the last decade or
so, archeologists have ascended the high mountains of the Andes and there found
mummified sacrificial human remains. Sacred
areas to the Native Americans are also scattered here and there across the
western landscape. The Orient,
however still maintains holy sites without number where not only national and
local gods are worshipped but ancestors as well.
Sacred cows are protected in India.
The sacred destination of all Muslim pilgrims can be traced back to the
dawn of time. Animists in the interior of Africa and South America still
worship the spirits of tree, rock and water.
What a great temptation for the
mixed multitude that had come out of the pagan culture of Egypt.
They had already seen how Moses and the God of Israel dealt with
worshippers of a golden calf. But, could they avoid the local temptations of the
Palestinian environment – where every high place and tall tree was venerated
and its spirit worshipped? These
false altars were not only to be torn down but new names given to the places
where the heathen raged in their unholy embellishments.
The second demand is in verse
five: “You
shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to
put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go.”
The pilgrimage to wherever the Tabernacle or Temple would rest is meant
to stabilize the true faith of Israel. There
the sacrifices would be administered, and the common bond of fellowship would
unify all Israel with their God and King who would rule over them if they would
allow. This establishment, which will only be accomplished in
God’s own time, is not meant to replace their family obligations to the Lord.
The tabernacle is not a full-service worship center with exercise
equipment, shops and entertainment options!
No indeed, it is meant to remind people of the holiness of their God, a
God who demands their worship, adoration and regular sacrifices for atonement.
Most of the year the people can
live on their land and in their homes. And
as we see in the latter part of this chapter, there they may also slaughter
their own meat. Unlike many of the
pagan religions, not all of the meat must pass through the temple complex, but
only a tithe (that which belongs to the Lord).
The only restriction to local slaughter is that the process must be
kosher – the blood must be drained into the ground as a reminder that all of
life belongs to the Lord who gave it.
A third demand is in verse
twenty-eight: “Observe
and obey all these words which I command you, that it may go well with you and
your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the sight
of the Lord your God.” This
is not a call to any sympathetic magic, like that practiced by the pagan peoples
in Canaan. By sympathetic magic we
are to understand the various ritual activities practiced by worshippers to gain
the attention and favor of the god or goddess in question.
The ancient world was scandalized by the temple prostitution and child
sacrifice meant to earn the favor of particular deities.
Of that unacceptable worship we will learn more next week.
The giving of acceptable worship is the awesome responsibility of God’s
people in every time and place.
We of course teach that the
people of Israel were indeed capable of worshipping in spirit and in truth if
they understood the sings and symbols of their faith full well.
To that end, the destruction of visually and experientially friendly
pagan worship was commanded. One writer, whose book was on the subject of language, hinted
that of the ancients only the Hebrews could read and write widely throughout the
whole population. Thus, he argued
– they alone were better able to think abstractly of an otherworldly God who
was neither visible nor affected by any manner of their behavior and
manipulation. The God of Israel in
that sense is a true God, a God who not only creates but acts above and beyond
the created order according to His own providential purpose.
New
Covenant Continuum: Well should
we teach that the Old Covenant was sufficient for the elect saints of Israel
whose hope for redemption, like our own was linked to the better sanctification
of the cross of Christ. However,
the Jewish people at the time of Christ did not anticipate that the Lord would
lead them further up and on into His kingdom of the Spirit.
Theirs was the temple with its various precincts, it was appreciated for
all its architectural splendor, and that proved in the final analysis to be
distracting when the Lord of their Temple came to claim it as His own and their
allegiance as well. This is the
real danger of religious sites where worship and adoration of the Holy are made
public. How quickly the concept of
“sacred precincts” infect the unspiritual mind.
Verns S Poythres writes:
“The theme that God dwells with His people
was fulfilled with the coming of Jesus Christ.
In fact, the tabernacle foreshadowed the fact that Christ would become
incarnate and dwell among us. ‘The
Word became flesh and lived for a while [tabernacled]
among us. We have seen his
glory, the glory of the one and only son, who came from the Father, full of
grace and truth.’ (John 1:14).
Christ’s glory superseded the bright cloud of glory.
Now Christ sends His Holy Spirit like a cloud of fire to make His church
and His people into a tabernacle of God.”
And yes, the word ”tented”
is in fact in that fourteenth chapter of John.
Paul glories in this concept and takes the image further in 1
Corinthians 3: 9 & 16-17: “For
we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. … Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that
the spirit of God dwells in you? If
anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.”
Contemporary
Application: Now,
what does all of this mean to us in the twenty-first century?
Three things, and they are all related to and derived from the three
points that we considered from the ancient words of Moses, given to Him by the
power of the Holy Spirit.
First, while we are to be polite
and respect the various religions that people have fallen into, we are not to
compromise the faith once given to the saints by agreeing with the widely held
theory of spiritual relativity. No
indeed, Christianity is an exclusive, not an inclusive religion.
Recently, someone asked me if I knew a certain pastor in our county,
thinking that we all hung around together.
I had to admit that I had never even heard the name.
When I was pressed to explain how I couldn’t know a pastor who lived
only a few miles from me, I had to admit that I did not generally associate with
pastors from that particular denomination.
I am always very careful with what ministers I appear in public, after
all there are precious few who hold the reformed viewpoint and I think I know
all three in my local county and the handful in this county as well!
Yes, sometimes to be polite – we do attend the churches of our friends
and relatives, and sometimes we are gratified to hear the gospel truth.
Whenever we do hear so, we should be quick to compliment and encourage
our friends and the pastor as well.
Second, when ever we move, we
should carefully seek those congregations where the Spirit of God is most
evident. Be assured – that
wherever the Lord our God might cause you to move, there is a purpose behind His
Sovereign will and I am certain that somewhere within the community to which you
move there is a congregation that preaches the gospel of grace.
Perhaps, like people I have talked with by phone and written by email –
the search for a church should precede any move that is mandated by the
sovereign will of our Father. Usually, you can live thirty miles or so from your place of
work and that is a fairly large circle that can take in almost three counties!
Therefore, your responsibility is to “seek
the place where the Lord your God chooses”.
Third, you are charged to keep
the Covenant as best as you are able, not to earn merit, but in order to fulfill
the law of God who gives salvation freely and asks only that you demonstrate the
fruits of the same Spirit that has changed your heart and brought you home.
Years ago, I had a sign on my school room door.
It read simply: Beware of
Calvinist. One student looked up
what the word meant and told me what he had learned.
A Calvinist was a person who knew they were saved by grace alone but went
on to obediently work his heart out for the Lord who was so gracious.
May that be our calling under the New Covenant of grace as we lay our
lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor before the very throne of Christ.
Amen.
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