Deuteronomy 12:1-32

God calls His children to be different from the world and the people around them.  We tend to like to fit in and be like our surroundings, but God calls us to stand out and change our surroundings instead of being conformed to them.  The children of Israel are about to enter a new land and God wants to make sure that they do not become just like the people that God is removing from the land.  In order to help the children of Israel stay away from the sinful practices on the other nations, God calls the children of Israel to obey some very specific instructions.

DESTROY ALL THE SACRED PLACES AND SYMBOLS: The land to which the children of Israel were going was full of altars and sacred places of worship that were dedicated to false gods.  The people worshiped every kind of thing imaginable and built shrines and temples all over the place.  Each family would have their own private place of worship and their own sacred idols that they kept in prominent places.  Every hill and every tree had the potential of being a special place of worship and eventually would accumulate the symbols of whatever deity that particular place was dedicated to.  Israel was to have nothing to do with these places.  None of them were to be preserved it was all abominable to God and was to be completely destroyed.  Every culture has some sort of religious tradition and produces some sort of religious artifact.  People instinctively like a god that they can see and feel.  We have been called to worship the invisible God who is spirit and must be worshiped in spirit.  We must never create objects of worship or assimilate the objects of other beliefs.  God has called us to worship Him and Him alone.

DEDICATE ALL SACRIFICES AT SPECIFIC PLACES: The sacrificial system could have easily become a means of recreating the same problems all over again.  If every person were free to erect an altar for offering their sacrifices wherever they chose the idolatrous patterns of the other nations could easily have been repeated.  God would designate the place where sacrifices were to be offered and the specific way that they were to be offered.  The people were not free to choose their places of sacrifice, God would designate them according to His will.  We do not make sacrifices today, but we do gather for worship and study of God’s Word.  We must never be deceived into thinking that we can become “free agent” Christians.  We must all become a part of a body of believers that meets together on a regular basis to study the Word of God, pray, be accountable, praise, give and worship together.  It is not right for us to just decide that we will worship God at home and follow God in the way that we see fit.  We are part of a body that must work together to achieve the purpose for which God has called us.

DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN SACRIFICES AND SURVIVAL: The problem with a sacred place for making sacrifices was that not all animals that were killed and eaten were sacrifices.  In fact, I would dare say that the far majority of the animals killed were for the purpose of eating by the family.  God makes it clear that slaughtering and cooking of animals was not in and of itself a sacrifice or an act of worship.  It was simply feeding the family.  They were not to eat the blood of the animal or save the blood of the animal.  Nor were they to slaughter the animal in a ritualistic manner, they were simply to kill, cook and eat in order to survive.  In many ways, everything that we do is an act of worship as it should be done with gratitude to the Lord.  However, we must be careful not to make our daily activities into ritualistic services to the Lord.  If we do so we run the risk of worshiping food and the sources of food instead of the God who has provided all things for us.  He alone must be the object of our worship.