A verse-by-verse explanation of the chapter.
An overview of the principles and applications from the chapter.
Melding the chapter to life.
Tying the chapter to life with God.
Historical, geographical, and grammatical enrichment of the commentary.
Suggested step-by-step group study of the chapter.
Zeroing the chapter in on daily life.
“Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is
the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment
of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His
beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of
will to His purpose—and all of this gathered up in adoration,
the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and
therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which
is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”
William Temple
Deuteronomy 12 declares that Israel will not be free to adapt the old pagan systems to their worship of Yahweh. On the contrary, they must obliterate the local shrines. Once they control the land, God will specify a particular city to serve as the home of their central sanctuary.
One of the central teachings of the Bible is the tri-unity of God, a being who is one in essence yet subsists in three persons. The universe provides no precise parallel to this, although it does contain hints. In their book Worship: Rediscovering the Missing Jewel, Ron Allen and Gordon Borror wrote:
Consider the biblical teaching about the essence of God. He is one God, three persons. Throughout the ages this concept has caused no end of confusion and frustration to theologian and layman alike. Much has been written and said about this eternal truth. But by no available means is it more beautifully expressed than in the music of Bach's trio sonatas for organ. Musicians through the years have marveled at the artistic excellence of these works. They have one melody in the right hand, one melody in the left, and yet another in the pedal line—all sounding at once, each retaining its own identity, yet together forming beautiful harmony. The composer intended this to be an expression, a tonal picture, of the eternal mystery of the Godhead.
While some profess to find such matters disconcerting, it is worth asking whether finite beings have a right to expect God to conform to the limits of their intelligence. If God should be fully understandable and totally predictable, he would not be the infinite God of the Scriptures.
Mortimer Adler came at last to realize this. Adler was one of America's most learned men. The editor of the Great Books series, he advocated the teaching of the classics, opposing the pragmatism of John Dewey that proved such an enormous influence in American education. He thought of himself as a philosopher for the common man, and he championed the idea that truth and values are absolute and unchanging.
Adler was unusual in many ways, not the least of which was his educational accomplishments. He was one of the few people in history to obtain a Ph.D. degree without obtaining a high school diploma or a bachelor's degree. When only fifteen, he dropped out of school to go to work as the secretary of a New York City newspaper. Two years later, while reading Plato for his own pleasure, he determined that he would become a philosopher and enrolled in Columbia University. He finished the four-year program of study in only three years, but he didn't graduate because he would not attend physical education classes or take a required swimming test.
Nonetheless, he obtained a faculty appointment and five years later finished the Ph.D. program (he in time would be awarded ten honorary doctorates). Moving to the University of Chicago, Adler began an extensive writing and lecturing career and made a special investment of effort in popularizing the great books and ideas of Western civilization. He eventually became chairman of the board of editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Although for most of his life he rejected any connection with revealed religion, he eventually became a practicing Christian, claiming that he did so for the very reason that others reject the faith—because only Christianity respected the fact that God at his core was not fully understandable. Adler in his faith recognized that God reserved at the center of Christianity a series of mysteries that he made no effort to explain.
God must be permitted to make the rules when it comes to his own unveiling of himself. As he sought to teach Israel, he must be approached on his own terms.
Only One Way
MAIN IDEA: Israel must be careful from the very beginning to worship God properly and on his terms. Those terms include the destruction of the existing pagan system of worship.
How False Worship Must End (12:1-4)SUPPORTING IDEA: Israel had no more important priority in the settlement of the land than the destruction of the existing worship system.
12:1. This verse marks a major turning point in Deuteronomy. Chapters 5-11 dealt with general stipulations of the covenant—the motivation for obedience once Israel conquered the land. Beginning here, Moses expounded the specific stipulations of the covenant, building on the motivations of the previous chapters. Verse 1 provides an introduction to the new section, which details the decrees and laws Israel must be careful to follow once they are in the land. These stipulations would apply as long as they were there inside the land God had promised. Moses began by explaining how worship would be carried on once the land was secured.
12:2. Verse 2 gives the general procedure. Before genuine worship could be established by the people of God, the competing pagan systems must be obliterated. The Canaanites typically used places on the high mountains and hills and under every spreading tree to establish their altars. God insisted that Israel destroy these places.
12:3. Verse 3 provides the specific steps that would be used to carry out the general procedure. Moses issued four imperatives, each applying to a different form of pagan ritual. Israel was to break down their worship altars. The sacred stones, which may have been male fertility symbols, were to be smashed (cp. Deut. 7:5; Exod. 23:24; 34:13). The Asherah poles, representations of Baal's female consort, Asherah, were to be burned. Other idols were to be cut down in an effort to wipe out the names of the deities from those shrines.
12:4. Finally, Moses gave the rationale for such a process. Israel was not to imitate any pagan system. Just as their God was beyond comparison to any false deity, so must their worship system be. Israel must not worship even the right God in the wrong way, the way of the nations they were to drive out of the land.
Where True Worship Begins (12:5-14)SUPPORTING IDEA: Worshiping God's way will require Israel to seek out the place that God would choose. All worship should take place at this central sanctuary.
12:5-6. Israel had been worshiping at a tabernacle, a portable shrine that could be taken apart, marched some distance, and then reassembled. Once they were in the land, the tabernacle would eventually be replaced by a temple (although this word does not appear in the narrative). The city that would serve as the headquarters of Israel's future worship was not specified by name; it was only called the place the LORD your God will choose. It would be inside the land, in the territory of one of the tribes, and would house the building representing God's dwelling on earth. It would also be the place where Yahweh would put his Name.
To the place of God's choosing Israel was obligated to bring burnt offerings and sacrifices. The former term describes an animal offered in its entirety to God; it was a specific subdivision of the larger category of sacrifices. Tithes were presentations of one-tenth of the produce of the land or of livestock. These were normally not gifts but mandatory offerings prescribed by law or taxes (cp. Num. 18:21-28; 2 Chr. 31:12; Deut. 14:22-28). The central shrine would also be the place where Israel would bring what they had vowed to give to God, as well as their freewill offerings. They would also be required by law to bring the firstborn of their herds and flocks. In some cases, animals (especially unclean ones) were not offered but were instead redeemed in exchange for cash (cp. Num. 18:15-17).
12:7. At the city God would in time choose—and only there, in his presence—Israel with its families would eat and rejoice in everything good that had happened. In the worship of God, eating and rejoicing are close partners. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the central act of redemption is a sacramental meal. In Hebrew Scripture, the meal is the Passover (Exod. 12); in the New Testament, it is the Lord's Supper. With the exception of the Day of Atonement, Israel's festivals generally included food as part of the event. Many of the sacrifices, in fact, involved killing an animal, a portion of which was offered in fire to God. Another portion was given to the officiating priest, and the rest was given to the worshiper to be enjoyed by him and his family together before the Lord.
More than anything else, however, it was joy that God sought in worship. The believer was to appear before the Lord as one who was satisfied in the wonder and caregiving of his God. The basis of the joy was the fact that the Lord had blessed the worshiper and that he was the kind of God who blessed people.
12:8-9. The wilderness travels of Israel by their very nature precluded any stable manner of national life. The nation, however, was approaching the resting place and the inheritance that was the land of promise. Since they were soon to arrive “home,” their national worship would become more regular. No longer would they be free to improvise about the timing of their worship. When life was stabilized in the land, they would be expected to appear before God at prescribed times and in the one central sanctuary at the place God would choose.
12:10. God viewed Israel corporately as his son: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos. 11:1). As such, God's son could be expected to receive an inheritance that would testify of the Father's love. In earthly fathers, such a bequest would necessitate the death of the father; but with God no such event could be expected. The suitability of using inheritance to describe the gift of the land was connected to the idea of a parental largesse. God provided Canaan simply because he wanted to give a gift to his people. He was under no compulsion to do so. He could have made them live as nomads, which they had been before. Instead, he granted them a gift that included not only a place to settle but rest from all their enemies and a life of safety. It is part of God's character to be lavish with his gifts and then call for a response of gratitude rather than to restrain his blessings until humanity takes the initiative.
12:11. Once the land was secure and Israel's enemies were displaced, then God would choose a city that would house a dwelling for his Name. The safety referred to in verse 10 would not, in fact, prevail until the time of David: “After the king was settled in his palace and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, he said to Nathan the prophet, ‘Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent’” (2 Sam. 7:1-2).
Even under Saul, his predecessor, the Philistines occupied much of the Holy Land, including its breadbasket, the Jezreel Valley. When Saul died, his head was taken and displayed in the temple of Dagon in Beth Shan on the edge of this region (cp. 1 Chr. 10:8-10). It remained for David to push the Philistines out of the land and secure the borders for Israel. Then he began to consider the possibility of a permanent location for the ark of the covenant.
It was to that city (Jerusalem) that God would in time choose that burnt offerings and sacrifices… tithes and special gifts should be brought.
12:12. Moses again commanded Israel to rejoice before the LORD. This expression appears often in Deuteronomy (cp. 14:26; 16:11,14; 26:11; 27:7) but only once elsewhere (Lev. 23:40). Nonetheless, rejoicing is a central part of worship in Scripture. Such rejoicing was to be universal in Israel. The nation would engage in communal rejoicing at God's appointed intervals. The entire family was expected to participate: sons and daughters,… menservants and maidservants. In the midst of this celebration, the Levites, who had no allotment of property, were not to be forgotten. They were to take part in the festivities even though they were not property owners, living as they did on the food provided by Israel's sacrifices.
12:13-14. God's command to Israel not to sacrifice their burnt offerings anywhere except the place that God would choose was very clear. Nevertheless, it was persistently disobeyed through the years, giving rise to the frequent remarks later in the Hebrew Scripture about high places. Many of the ancient pagan altars had been built on the tops of hills and mountains, and these were taken over and adapted to the worship of Yahweh down through the centuries. These became widely used in the four centuries between the conquest of the land and the construction of the temple (1 Kgs. 3:2). Even Solomon perpetuated this blunder (1 Kgs. 3:3). Many of Judah's later kings tolerated this practice.
Before David secured the land, of course, local altars were used in genuine worship. Obvious cases include Gideon (Judg. 6:18,26), Manoah (Judg. 13:16), and Elijah (1 Kgs. 18:31). Elijah, as a citizen of the Northern Kingdom (Israel), had to make his case for Yahweh's uniqueness at a location accessible to that kingdom's people.
How True Worship Takes Place (12:15-28)SUPPORTING IDEA: Israel must make a clear-cut distinction between the sacred and the profane, between the consecrated and the ordinary. What is consecrated must be consumed or given only in the place of God's choosing.
12:15-16. Moses explained that it would not be necessary to offer to God all animals that were slaughtered for their meat. Israelites could enjoy as much of the meat as they wanted, assuming that the Lord had blessed their herds and flocks and they could afford it. Eating such meat was permitted those who were ceremonially unclean as well as those who were ceremonially clean. These categories were not moral ones. Godly people might fit in either category at a given moment, since people could be ceremonially defiled by bodily discharges and diseases that were no fault of their own. Those who were ceremonially unclean were restricted from certain religious celebrations until they had corrected the matter, but such concerns did not apply to the ordinary slaughtering of animals for meat. God only insisted that Israel not eat the blood of those animals; they should pour it out on the ground.
12:17-19. Although ordinary meat could be eaten in any location, the tithe (a one-tenth taxation for the Lord) of agricultural products had to be carried to the future central sanctuary to be offered. Firstborn animals had to be dedicated (or redeemed) there as well. Items that were part of a vow or part of freewill offerings or special gifts also must be taken there.
Such consecrated foods must be eaten in the presence of the LORD at the place of his choosing. All such items would become avenues of worship and rejoicing before the LORD in gratitude for his blessing. Some of these items should be set aside for the Levites as well, since they had no farms to sustain them.
12:20-25. It was not God's intent to restrict Israel's diet to vegetable or grain products. Once the land was settled and God had enlarged Israel's territory, they could eat all the meat they wanted. God merely insisted that they observe his restrictions against eating the blood of the animal. Israel's observance of this special restriction would ensure that it would go well with them and with their children in years to come.
12:26-28. Consecrated things were a different matter. God put into this category the offerings specified in Leviticus, including items that people had vowed to give as well as burnt offerings. These must be taken to the place the LORD will choose. Even with offerings of prescribed animals, however, the blood must not be eaten. Instead, it should be poured beside the altar. The prosperity and welfare of present and future generations depended upon careful adherence to these dietary laws.
Why False Worship Must Be Forsaken (12:29-32)SUPPORTING IDEA: Although misapplications might take place in the observance of Israel's faith, paganism posed an even greater threat. God's people were to avoid imitating the practices of the peoples they were driving out of the land.
12:29-30. Curiosity is an enormous challenge to godly living. With Israel, the dangers of curiosity lay in wanting to know more about the Canaanite gods. Moses insisted that Israel not even ask how the peoples of the land went about serving their gods, because if they did they would be tempted to do the same. Their curiosity would lead to their being ensnared by the paganism they were supposed to be displacing.
12:31-32. Specifically, Israel should not imitate the practices of the Canaanites, since they were known to do all kinds of detestable things that the Lord hated. A dramatic case in point: they burned their sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods.
Moses concluded this exhortation with a solemn warning about either expanding or detracting from the commandments he had given. Believers have just as much to fear from legalism as from waywardness. The first detracts from the beauty of the message, while the second mars its content.
MAIN IDEA REVIEW: Israel must be careful from the very beginning to worship God properly and on his terms. Those terms include the destruction of the existing pagan system of worship.
Charles Bradlaugh, a well-known skeptic, once issued a debate challenge to H. P. Hughes, a British preacher. Hughes, who ran a downtown rescue mission in London, accepted with one condition. He challenged Bradlaugh to show the fruit of the message he advocated. Hughes explained that he planned to bring with him one hundred men and women who would give testimony to what had happened in their personal lives since they had been believers in Jesus Christ. The entire group would be composed of people who had once been drains on society, having been either involved in destructive lifestyles or coming from dysfunctional and/or poverty-stricken homes. He went on to explain to Bradlaugh that his one hundred friends would be willing to submit to cross-examination so that the validity of their testimony could be explored. Hughes challenged Bradlaugh to bring his own group of people, those whose lives had been changed by their lack of faith.
True to his word, at the appointed time Hughes arrived with his one hundred friends. Bradlaugh never showed up, so Hughes used the occasion as a testimony meeting. A number of people in the audience who had come to hear a debate heard of the living reality of the God of the Bible, and many of them were converted.
Worship is accomplished with the life as well as with the words and attitudes of people. Changed and transformed lives testify to the character and supernatural power of the God of heaven. Closeness to him produces changes in character and holiness.
PRINCIPLES
APPLICATIONS
God in his love did not leave us to figure out his ways by ourselves. He explains his thinking in his Word. One of the more profound teachings of the Bible is the notion that man cannot sit down with his thoughts and come up with a valid approach to God. He will always bungle things.
For example, God warned Israel, “If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it” (Exod. 20:25). To defile something is to make it ordinary. God insists that any approach crafted by human ingenuity will produce a worship system just like all the pagan systems in the world. In other words, it will be common or profane—just like everyone else's paganism.
By definition, if man contributes anything toward acceptance by God, he loses everything. God expects man to be the recipient, not the originator. Jesus paid it all, not 99 percent of it. Paul wrote, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).
We dare not trim stones to make God an altar, for if we do so we ruin everything. We would spend time bringing people to the altar and saying, “Look at those beautiful stones we trimmed!”
We merely need to accept the work that God has done for us in Christ. The object of his restrictions is to help us see how wonderful he is and to spend the rest of our lives rendering true worship to him.
Father, we long to take our eyes off our own flawed efforts to make you reachable and to rest in the perfection of your provision for us. Help us delight in the Savior who made a perfect altar and placed himself upon it for our sakes. Amen.
A. Burnt Offerings and Sacrifices (12:6)
Moses told Israel, “Bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Deut. 12:6) to the place God would choose. When these two expressions are used together, the word sacrifices often refers to fellowship offerings, consisting of meat that was shared among priest, worshipers, and God: “Sacrifice fellowship offerings there, eating them and rejoicing in the presence of the LORD your God” (Deut. 27:7). Burnt offerings, by contrast, were animals offered up entirely in flame to God (Lev. 9:12-14).
B. Special Gifts (12:6)
Among the offerings of worship to God were the special gifts, or, as other translations render it, “heave offerings” or “wave offerings.” The Hebrew expression means literally “the lifting up of your hand,” and it is found only in Deuteronomy, although the first part of the phrase is found elsewhere. The expression may be suggested by the way the offering was presented, since it was held up near the altar by the priest.
C. Consecrated Things (12:26)
Moses instructed God's people, “Take your consecrated things and whatever you have vowed to give, and go to the place the LORD will choose” (Deut. 12:26). The words for consecrated things often appear in other translations as “holy things.” The Hebrew root may be related to a verb meaning “to cut” or to make a division. Whether the etymology is related or not, Hebrew usage makes clear that the basic notion behind holiness or consecration is separateness. Whatever is God's is special, segregated from what is shared in common by the rest of the world. The concept applies regardless of the product itself. Clothes, pans, incense, animals, and especially people are made important by their association with God and his command to separate them. The New Testament word saints has a direct connection with this Old Testament concept.
A. INTRODUCTION
B. COMMENTARY
C. CONCLUSION: NO TOOLS ALLOWED
